The Cows Came Home

So the first week I moved to the village, in November, the Association was really excited about the herd of cows they were about to get. I got all excited about an ice cream project and a cheese project and all the yogurt I was going to make. And then every week for the next seven months the president of the Association told me that we were really close to getting the cows, just one more piece of paper work that had to be submitted in Khenifra, or Midelt or Meknes or Itzer. Well, after about 30 weeks of waiting, the cows finally came home last week. I wasn’t there to see this production, so it all feels a little anti-climactic to me, especially since it turns out we got the kind that don’t even produce that much milk. The one funny thing that happened though is that two of the baby cows (they brought home 16 cows that each had a baby) got switched as the truck was being unloaded, and the two people whose cows suddenly refused to nurse the babies had to find each other and switch them back.

Update on the Kookie/Izzie feud

I found out some more of the history behind what still seems to me to be the silliest feud I’ve ever heard of. It turns out pretty much the entire area, for miles on all sides of the village, was the property of this rich Arab guy a really long time ago, who was descended from some important saint in Fes. He settled the area and brought all of his slaves with him. So basically everyone in the village is descended from either that guy’s family (his descendents have the huge house and include the president of the Commune), or his slaves. And all of the land legally belongs to this family, with the rest of the town basically squatting on it. The people of my village get along well with the rich family, know that they’re all descended from slaves, and continue to all work for the rich family. I used to think everyone had their own plots of land that they farmed, but I’m realizing that really they’re all just working for the rich family and only have really small plots themselves. So the Kookies have come to terms with this arrangement, which feels a lot like serfdom to me. The rich family employs most of the men, and everyone more or less gets along.

The Izzies are another story. Their village is on land that belongs to our rich land owner as well, and they’re all squatting too. However that village was settled by a group of Portuguese people a long time ago, and in the beginning the rich land owners didn’t mind since they had so much land anyways. But then the village grew and grew, until now the Izzies outnumber the Kookies almost 2 to 1. And as the village grew, they became more and more insolent and uncooperative, for example addressing the current rich land owners by their first names, instead of showing them the required respect of calling them by their full names. And not immediately pulling their sheep vans over off the road when the landowners want to pass in their big fancy cars. And I guess they don’t show the proper gratitude to the landowners for widening the road all the way down to their village so that sheep vans could drive on it, when before it was just a narrow donkey path. The most interesting – and horribly disturbing - quote I’ve heard on this topic (from one of the current rich landowners) “If there were no police, we’d march down there and kill them all.” There are times when I feel like I’m very well integrated and understand this culture and know these people really well, and then someone talks seriously of wanting to massacre an entire village of people.

This is the second highest mountain in Africa, really?

A group of us climbed Jbel Toubkal a couple of weeks ago, the highest mountain in North Africa, and second only to Kilamanjaro in Africa. It was surprisingly (and a little disappointingly) easy for being so high, and felt more like an uphill walk than a serious mountain climb. We just set off from Marrakech in our sneakers and whatever clothes we had with us, and walked up almost to the top, slept in the lodge close to the top, got up early, reached the summit, and walked back down and went back to Marrakech.


As easy as the actual hike was, we were not at all prepared for how FREEZING cold it would be at the top. Even in the middle of June there was almost a foot of snow on the ground for the last hour or so of the climb, and the wind was vicious. I survived a pretty cold and miserable winter in the Middle Atlas this past year, but that was nothing compared to how ridiculously cold the top of this mountain was. My fingers hurt now just thinking about it.

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