Inauguration Day Dance Party!

Yesterday was the day that the newly-elected presidents of all the communes took office. Our commune has had the same president for the last 12 years, and he was re-elected again this year for a third 6-year term. I don’t particularly like the guy, and I’m not sure anyone is especially impressed with his work for our commune (still no paved road, running water, or working street lights), but the whole village came out for the dance party in the street that went on (with a few breaks for tea and meals and an afternoon nap) from 8am yesterday to about 4am this morning. It was hilariously fun, especially since I’m getting pretty good at the Moroccan butt-shaking dancing thing. I hear the real party though, is Saturday night, when we’ll get to do it all over again. The first three big parties I went to in Morocco, during training and then right at the beginning of my time in the village, were horribly boring and I’ve been dreading wedding season ever since. But then I went to a wedding last week which was one of the most fun days of my time in Morocco yet – we paraded a sheep around the streets, stopping traffic, with the men blowing these super long skinny horns and carrying wedding gifts on their heads. And then we danced and ate amazing food all night. And now I can’t wait for the next one, or really just any and all random excuses to dance in the streets.

The other thing that made last night so surreal was that we had a big rainstorm (which I got caught in the middle of coming back from a run), followed by the craziest flash flood I’ve ever seen – the road through the village turned into a raging river that continued all night, hours after the rain stopped. Reminded me of the random floods Houston would get, when we’ll all go play in the flooded fields and streets. Except in Houston, when the water recedes you still have roads and sidewalks and life goes back to normal. Our village road got completely washed out, pretty much rendering it impassible to anything but tractors. Even my really good mountain bike couldn’t get past some parts of the road this morning, which has turned into a sea of boulders and gravelly sand. As if getting in and out of the village wasn't already enough of a hassle, it'll be even more of a pain until the commune decides to send people to fix it. And with the busy week of sheep-roasting and dancing that the president has planned, I’m not sure when that’ll get done. But in the meantime, I'm planning to put on my new party jalaba and dance.

New Time or Old Time?

Every westerner with a blog in Morocco has I’m sure posted exactly this same entry sometime in the last two weeks. The last two years, Morocco has started doing a summer time-change for the same reason most other countries do it: to save a lot of money in electricity bills. The difference in Morocco is that this time change seems to be optional. Probably close to 50% of people I interact with have changed their clocks, while the other half are still operating on “old time”. This of course doesn’t make sense at all to me, as it seems a lot easier to take the ten seconds and move the hand on the clock, than to spend all summer having to clarify whether a quoted time is in “old time” or “new time.” I hear there are entire towns that have just decided not to switch to new time, including the whole old medina in Fes and other big cities. The first couple of days it was funny to have to clarify new time or old time, but now, two weeks after the time change, it’s just annoying and I’m almost looking forward to Ramadan (when the time will change back) just so the country can all be on the same time again. My neighbors, for example, are on old time while I’ve switched to new time. They don’t work in an office or take scheduled public transportation or have meetings, so they just don’t see the need to change their clock. I wonder whether America had this problem when we first started changing the clocks, whenever that was. And how many years it'll take for Morocco to accept and acknowledge the concept of daylight savings. I'm not holding my breath.

On Canadian Radio. . .

So my handoff of couscous in the London airport made news in Canada! Here's the link to the radio show that features an interview with Kate, the woman I sold couscous to in London at the end of April.

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2009/05/episode-78-may-20-23-2009/

The part about our couscous starts a little before halfway through the show if you want to skip over the other random (and less interesting, I'm sure) stories.

El Karma Couscous, the Famous International Brand

True to my suitcase-of-couscous traveling style, I packed about four times as much couscous as clothes and toiletries for my trip back to the states. I had arranged a hand-off in the London airport to a woman who runs a (rather shady looking) business importing hand-made food products from around the world and selling them on her website. I’d barely cleared customs and was terrified I’d get arrested for smuggling couscous into the UK. But the police didn’t even blink when Kate asked whether I’d brought “the goods” and we proceeded to make an extremely obvious handoff right under his nose of a poorly-packaged box that was spilling small brownish-crumbs all over the floor.

So I can check “export couscous” off my list of things to accomplish during my two years here. That made lugging a heavy suitcase across Morocco and onto a different continent, and all the paranoia, all worth it.

Check out Kate’s side of the story on her website: http://www.feraltrade.org/cgi-bin/package/2package.pl?action=format_waybill&edit_id=1483

Another case of an abrupt change of plans, mid-stride:

This afternoon I was on my way to my tutor’s house after lunch for our normal Thursday afternoon tutoring session, walking along, making a mental list of topics to cover with her. Up pulls a truck with one of my (many) “uncles”, offering me a ride for the 200 yards or so to my tutor’s house. Those 200 meters were enough to convince me not to go to Hanane’s house, but instead go with them on some mission to this place where they dig paint up out of the ground, grind it and sell it. They assured me it would be a short and super fun field trip that would only take an hour and I could just go to tutoring late.

Five hours later, I’d:

Climbed this mountain (and then slid all the way down it while all the men watched.)





















Colored on myself with this freshly-dug up paint.
















Traipsed over a plateau to find and hang out in this nomad camp.
















Where we ate this guy’s (“the cheese man”) freshly-made cheese. I wasn’t a huge fan of it – a little too goopy for me. .





















Gained a whole lot of respect for this river-fording, mountain-climbing, sheep-swerving, bush-whacking car.

















And discovered that views like these exist only a short harrowing hour drive away from my village:

Dance, Monkey!

My host mother and the other women in the village never get tired of watching me try to dance Moroccan style. I try not to be offended when they’re like, “Dance!” and then I get up and dance for them, while they all fall out of their chairs laughing at me. This happens almost every time my host mother has guests over. I tell myself I'm the comedian and not the laughing stock of the village.

Mmmm... hedgehog

The other night I was on my way to my house, looking forward to a quiet evening with a book or maybe a movie, when I was intercepted by one of the neighbor boys, excitedly trying to show me something he was carrying in the pitch blackness. Turned out to be a hedgehog, which I think I’ve decided might be the cutest animal in this country. I’d never seen a hedgehog run – their tiny little feet are so comical and cartoon-looking.
Look at how freaking cute he is:



And it turns out the hedgehog is known as the smartest animal here. I got to hear all the hedgehog tales, of hedgehogs killing lions, and how hedgehogs have one and a half brains. But I guess this one wasn’t smart enough to outwit my neighbors - we ate him for lunch yesterday!