Thanksgiving:
I spent a lot of the day trying to explain what "Holiday of the Turkey" was all about to my family and other random village members. They surprised me by actually cooking turkey for dinner (on a stick and grilled over a fire, but it was still turkey!)
Eid Kabbir (lit. "big holiday"):
This is the really holiday for Muslims, when they celebrate Abraham slaughtering the sheep instead of his son Isaac. Every Muslim family in the world has to slaughter its own sheep and then eat it piece by piece until it's gone. So that was pretty exciting. Ate some random sheep parts that I'd never eaten before, and photographed the whole thing. We spent two days beforehand making dozens of varieties of cookies, and then spent the day of Eid visiting other houses in the village and eating cookies and drinking tea. A bunch of relatives came in from out of town, so it felt a lot like Christmas.
Christmas:
I didn't do anything special on Christmas itself, but the weekend before a bunch of us went to Fes for a little holiday party and gift exchange. The weather was gorgeous (and has been every day for a couple of weeks here) so it didn't really feel much like Christmas. And then last weekend a couple of my closest friends, volunteers in other sites kind of near me, came up to my site to visit and we cooked dinner and watched some movies and took a long hike up a volcano.
New Years (Muslim year 1430):
This was about two days ago, I think, and not much exciting happened except we baked a cake and then ate it. We drank some apple-flavored soda and I tried to pretend it was champagne. I explained the custom of New Year's Resolutions to my family, but they didn't want to come up with anything, because everything is "God willing", everything, and I guess it's maybe presumptuous to feel like they can really change anything themselves.
New Years (2009):
Well, I guess we'll see what they do tonight, though I'm not expecting too much. Maybe some more apple soda.
About the Couscous business: we're just about in business. I made labels and got them printed, found a machine to seal the bags, and am about to start constructing the website (hopefully this morning). The goal for the next month or two (or, really, the next two years) is to figure out where and how to sell it. I'm hoping to do some traveling to the nearby cities that are big enough to have grocery stores to see if they want to carry it. And maybe a couple of restaurants in the touristy cities. We'll see. I think there might be some paperwork we need to do to make it exportable, I'm not sure yet, but I'm planning to meet with the Ministry of the Artisanat next week to find out.
How you can help my couscous business if you want to:
- If you happen to secretly own a grocery store or international handicrafts store and want to carry couscous, you can order a bunch from me. Or if you know someone who does, put me in touch with them. It's good couscous.
- If a store near you sells couscous, check it out for me - see if you can find any couscous that is made by hand, not by machine, or imported straight from Morocco. Let me know how much it sells for.
- If you have any other ideas for how to sell couscous, let me know! Our goal is 10,000 kg a year eventually.
