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Published: January 30th 2013
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January 29-30, 2013: Exciting new places -the dar chebab and souk!
Tuesday morning language class - - numbers and telling time. UGH!!! How on earth can we fit any more language in our heads in this short amount of time!?!?! Okay, here we go (“yell-la” is let’s go). The number three is phonetically tul-let-tah, and for the time 3 o’clock, you just say the same word with the first letter stressed, so tttul-let-tah. Really?!?! It is almost like breathing much harder to stress the letter… and as a bonus, doing it makes our heads go forward. So not only do we sound completely crazy, we look crazy too!!! You try it and you will see… there is no “cool” way to practice this language. You WILL look funny and sound the same!!!
Also on Tuesday, Clay was sick with violent phlegm (not to be confused with the Violent Femmes of the 80’s) so Ann attended class with the group but without him and shared the lesson in the evening. Irritatingly to Ann, Clay really picked it up easily (must be Ann’s teaching skill…). As with the words for three and three o’clock above, there are SO many words that
sound the same (and mean very close to the same thing). We are always being corrected by our family with the tiny nuances, but the similar sounds really do not sound any different to us at all. We talked about how we will answer when someone asks us what time it is… we both agreed, we will just show him/her our watches! I hope no one tells us, in Darija, what time to be at a meeting right now… because he/she will probably be waiting a very long time. But all in all, we are starting to say many things in Darija and if we are lucky, sometimes we are actually understood. Understanding what people say is harder because they speak really fast- - maybe to them, we do too.
Our mama is a great cook. She really seems to enjoy feeding us and every meal is hand-prepared. We feel almost badly that she feels she has to wait on us like this, but it seems to be the way things are done. We talked to her yesterday about how, in the US, we served our coffee in cups with saucers and today, she presented us with cups and
saucers for our coffee. Wow! On top of that, at lunch (slow cooked beef, potatoes and carrots on the communal plate with bread to sop it up… remember, no silverware).
Today Ann made the mistake of verbally admiring our 17 year old sister’s bracelet and immediately, our sister gave it to her with the biggest smile on her face! Ann was told that this is what Moroccan’s do and “no” was NOT an acceptable answer. Ann is afraid to admire something else. Clay immediately told Ann NOT to verbally admire the baby in the house and everyone laughed hysterically!!!
At a little after 5:00 p.m. (5:00 is ham-sah but with flem in your throat when pronouncing the “ham” part), our group headed to the dar chebab (youth center, literally: House of Children) for our first scheduled meeting. We had no idea of what to expect. Everyone but Clay prepared an introduction (he was sick, but went with us anyway). When we arrived, people were sitting outside of the front door in chairs and we hung out there for a-while, basically saying “Salam” to everyone and smiling a lot. Some of the youth of our group’s families came and
we met them, also. Eventually, we all went inside and introduced ourselves to the group in Darija - - well, as best we could. Ann had one of her hobbies as cooking and when she said the word, which has a sound completely foreign at the beginning of it, she received warm-hearted, but very animated laughs. After that, the locals talked about their goals for us and our teacher translated some of it to us in English. At one point, the manager of the dar chebab said that they didn’t have much in the way of resources or money that he was sorry that there was not more to work with. Clay asked Fatima to translate for him and said to the manager the following, “Money does not make a great dar chebab, the people and children do.” Leave it to Clay to schmooze it up without even having prepared a speech. The room applauded and things seemed to go more smoothly afterwards. It was all very positive from what we could tell. After the meeting, we played with the kids who were there (about 10 of them) with Frisbees, etc. They seemed to really have a good time and
we did as well.
We walked home and arrived at 6:30 pm (ssssst-tah nuss – 6:30, for time only) just in time for the nightly snack, served (as we have said) every day, no matter what, and our third meal of the day. In the nicest way possible, we say, “when will all of this eating end!!!!” In reply, there was only a smile as if to say, “Silly people… we will never stop feeding you!” In any event, last night’s dinner and our fourth meal of the day, served at 10:30 p.m., was pretty interesting and completely comforting – small pearl-like pasta in hot milk (a soup). It was savory, which we liked, but people put sugar on it here. We did not. We are lucky that our family knows that we are not big sugar eaters and they allow us the courtesy of putting sugar in things as we see fit. Our other group members’ families are not necessarily so flexible. At meals, we are all prodded to eat more and more and it is difficult to say no without hurting feelings - - we say we are full and then l-hamdullah (thanks be to God). It
seems to make sense that we are full, then.
After dinner, we watched a show where people were walking through the streets of Beruit, Lebannon carrying guns. We don’t know what we were watching or why… but our mama saw the weapons and got animated. HUH?!?! She said something to us in Darija, which we did not understand, and left the room. Thirty seconds later, she comes back with a rifle in camouflage rifle cover. I just looked at Ann as if to say… REALLY?!?!? But nothing was going to stop this scene! Out came the Russian made shotgun for our inspection! She said it was for shooting birds and chasing people. Sure… sounds like a solid answer to me! Please see photos of Ann and the gun (Tim M., be proud… She actually held it!).
Wednesday is the local market day and we have been waiting patiently for Wednesday to arrive!!! At around 9:30a.m., our group went to the taxi stand for a trip to the local souk (market), which is about 2 miles away. We could walk, but we did not know what we might purchase (which turned out to be 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) of
tangerines (85 cents US), 1 kilo of oranges ($1.21 US) and 1 head scarf for Ann’s trips to the Hamman ($1.50 US). Sodas come in the typical glass bottles which cost 42 cents US for coke or orange soda (that’s all they had). Lunch was a plate of ground beef (ground right before you eat it), cooked into chunky football shaped meatballs with onion and tomato and all of the bread you could possible eat for $2.42 US per person. The lunch is set up under tents with plastic tables and chairs. Neither Clay nor Ann could eat the entire plate of food. Instead of napkins, which are costly, you tear off a piece of the brown paper that the bread sits on and wipe hands and mouth. Clay made a sandwich from the leftover meat and brought it home to our mama. She offered to make us another lunch when we arrived…. Eat, eat, eat! We politely declined. See photos of the market and our group. Do we look excited? We are!!! The market was such a nice break from classes. All of the girls got stares and some whistles. If a guy started to stare, Clay would look
right at him and he would quit. Clay is a great anti-harassment device.
Tomorrow we will be travelling away from our site temporarily. We must return to the Fes area for a debriefing and status report. You will have to stay tuned to find out more. We can’t wait to find out what we will be saying to you next time! Bslama!!!
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Wendy Norman
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Was just talking with Sharon Johnson about you guys yesterday and am now officially one of your followers (not in a religious sense, of course, so no kool-aid for me). Am looking forward to following you on your adventures and continually being amazed by you!