Oued Ifrane

Welcome to the Berber village, Oued Ifrane!

This is the view of the city I stayed in with a Berber family. It has roughly 2,000 people none of which are used to Americans unless they are tourists stopping by on Sunday to see the souk.  They run on "old time" because they have daylight savings time like most of Morocco does so it was an hour behind.  Molly and I were living here with Mustafa and his family and his brother's family. They are also a host family for peace corp worker Cheryl, or Sharizad to them.  Three white people staying in the town was big news! When Josh and Addison dropped us off the family served us a version of afternoon tea: mint tea/coffee, miloui bread, honey, jam, olives, and a peanut and sesame food that I can never remember the name of. It was very good and then we said goodbye to our teachers.  They showed us our room which consisted of rugs on the floor, a twin mattresses on either side of the room on the floor, a blanket for over and under us, a pillow made with foam pieces stuffed in it, and a table in the center.  It was actually much more than we were expecting.

Cheryl brought us to her apartment to show us the view of the city from her roof. She then showed us a little of the town and brought us back to Mustafa's.  We sat around with three of five kids watching Hannan, Mustafa's wife, make a rug to sell.  Both Hannan and Fatima, are minimally literate in Dharija (Moroccan Arabic), while both the men are educated through high school and the children are all currently in school.  Dinner consisted of chicken tajine (mix of meat and vegetables) which was delicious.  We ate it with bread and with our right hands.  It was fantastic until we realized they gave us more bread if we ran out.  We ate faster than we should have, and ended up eating way too much.  Dessert was pomegranates which Molly's friend accurately described as the skittles of the world. After dinner we went to bed because we were exhausted from all the excitement.  

We slept in and woke up to breakfast which was the same as tea the day before. Then Hannan took us and her youngest daughter, Nouhaila, to the hammam! So we paid to strip down to our panties and join a steam room full of other women to wash up. We had a special bucket for water and a stool to put our stuff on.  When I first tried to refill the bucket, I accidentally filled it with nearly all hot water thinking it was cold because we were overheating cause we were in the hot room.  We had to use up some of that before we could put more cool in it but thankfully Hannan took some of it for us.  Hannan then gave us each part of an apple to eat while we were in there! Who would have thought to bring food into the shower? Finally an hour and a half later, we walked back to the house for lunch which was the same as dinner the night before, except we ate a little slower this time, and then naptime for the entire family, and me. When I woke up, Molly and I went for a walk around the town.  In the picture above is the only source of water for the entire town.  It is fairly dry right now but it fills up more in the winter when it rains the most.  We got lots of kisses from little kids who had heard of the American's in town and a little bit of rudeness from older kids but we just played ignorant and politely said, "Salam."  When we got back to the house, dinner was something similar to quiche that was delicious.  It had a little bit of egg just to keep it all together and then chicken, pepper, onion, tomatoes, and other vegetables in little squares.  Dessert was apples and grapes. Then I brought my Arabic homework downstairs.  Mustafa and his cousin were looking at my vocab words and comparing them to his notes from the English class he is currently taking with Cheryl.  We went to bed to the sounds of a parade going on the main street of town for a wedding that went on the whole night. 

When we woke up we attacked by flies! Literally, they would go after our eyes and mouth and head.  We had cover everything with our blanket, except the room was too hot to use blankets so it was a very unfortunate situation.  We had breakfast and headed out to get a closer look at the river.  We saw a man washing his clothes in it, children playing around it, and donkeys drinking from it.  It was souk day in the town so there were lots of donkeys around. They even had a sort of donkey parking lot for it.  The streets are all lined with sellers, and tourists and other townspeople crowding around to make purchases.  On the way back we found this white donkey and his mom which was also pretty adorable and abnormal.  We got back to the house and Addison was already there with Cheryl to bring us back to the school.  We kissed the family goodbye on the cheeks and headed out.  

Except for Mustafa who is taking Cheryl's English class and  a boy who is almost fluent in English from watching American movies, no one there spoke English. A few speak French but they can understand Foussha, or Modern Standard Arabic, even though they speak Moroccan Arabic. We couldn't talk much with them (although I have to say I was impressed with myself for how much I was able to speak and hear in Arabic, but it still wasn't much), but we still could communicate a little bit and learned quite a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience there and the visit to the hammam was probably my favorite part of this whole trip.  We are going back later to give them some presents from the school. Molly had brought sugar, and I brought cookies and a calendar but WPI felt it necessary to pay them for their hospitality, which I fully agree with.  The family, although not the worst off in the village, have almost nine people living in a house that is a third the size of mine and yet they even invited us in additionally.  I can't wait to see them again!

Revisiting Fez and Meeting Some New Friends in Azrou

So much to do so little time! We had our first weekend without any activities so a smaller group of us decided to return to Fez to do some shopping which we didn't get to the first time. I woke up with a bit of a cough and scratchy throat, and we were a bit worried about going with all the protests sparked by the anti-Islamic movie that was recently posted but we decided to go anyways. Just in case though, we thought the best way to stay safe was to say we were from Canada! When we got to Fez we spent some time just trying to get into the medinat itself and stumbled across some boys who showed us to a riad that had just been restored.  We went inside and it was great for my project! The woman that was doing most of the renovations was from Belgium and spoke French so we were able to ask her plenty of questions.
The place was so big and beautifully decorated! She took us all the way up to the roof so we could see over the top of the medinat. We finally decided to leave and so traveled back down the hundreds of stairs, thanked her for her time and information, and went on our way.  Well we tried to go on our way but ran straight into a dead end.  We turned around back to the entrance of the medinat to have a lunch of either delicious coucous or tagine with some of that Spanish melon. After we took a different route into the medinat and successful found some of the less touristy stores and more of the craftsmen's stores.  I bought several gifts for people (obviously not going to mention what they are here haha) and helped some of the others make purchases with my almost-there-French. A couple hours and exhausted students later we headed back to the Best Western.


The Tuesday after the trip to Fez the whole group went to Azrou where we walked around another Souk for a bit (I have to admit it wasn't that interesting, although we did see this adorable donkey) and then met with a Peace Corps. worker named Cheryl or, as the locals call her, Charizad.  She took us on a tour of an artisan center where she is helping out by creating a website to attract tourists and teaching English for.  We went to lunch where my professor asked her if she knew any places a student could do a homestay for a few days and she said her homestay family would love to. So it was planned that I would visit the family for a few days the next weekend to see how they lived and Molly would come with me.  Another great opportunity for my project. The trip in Azrou ended with a visit to some very special friends. Monkeys!

You are probably wondering how I got such a great close of up the monkey in the middle.  Well I had my camera in one hand, food in the other, and he was sitting on my leg while grabbing my shirt to hold on until I gave him the food. It was pretty darn awesome :). Khaleil was the best at getting the monkeys to climb up his leg so every one has tons of pictures of him with a monkey friend.  Then he helped me almost get the little guy in the left picture to scramble up my leg but not quite.  So we just settled for him helping me get a great picture of the little dude. The monkeys were climbing on cars and tried to make the alarms go off, would steal the entire bags of peanuts we had just bought, and would chase each other away to get  food from us.  It was quite worth the trip that day just to see them.  We went back to the Best Western and crashed again.

At the end of the week we were told we were finally moving to the nice apartments in the Best Western that would have lots of kitchen utensils and working light fixtures. Woohoo! So Becca, Jenn, and I all decided to move in at midnight on the last day.  We showed up at the desk and basically told us we were crazy for moving in so late at night but whatever here is the key, we will show you the room.  The only thing that was wrong with the room was that the stove didn't work for some reason but they sent an electrician to fix it the next morning. When he left I started to cook some meat for lunch...lets just say after about an hour and a half it was perfectly room temperature. Oh well. I had just gotten another email that said, 'Don't unpack your things, we are moving you onto campus!' Well I was already unpacked and repacking for my visit to the Berber village and my roommates had gone to Spain for the weekend so moving was postponed until Monday. Oh and lastly (I know someone who will appreciate this), I saw my first and only Ford Mustang in Morocco this week.

Roman/Berber Excavation Site and Meknes

So it has been a little more than a week since my first entry so it might be a tad long again. Not quite as much because it is mostly just going to be about my trip two weekends ago (oops, don't worry the one for last weekend should but up super soon).  First though, a note on my hotel room. When we first got to the hotel we were amazed because its really nice a big, and very nicely decorated. Now, one of our two toilets just doesn't work at all, in order to turn off the light in that same bathroom we have to switch off the breaker, and the light bulb in my room is burnt out.  In one of the other rooms, the wires burnt completely through and the whole light fixture crashed to the floor. It worries me a little bit staying in these rooms, but they are moving us on Tuesday and Wednesday in more apartment style housing. Hopefully it will last a bit longer. So moving on to the weekend.

The first place we went to visit was an old Berber town that had been "turned" Roman. This is very vaguely turned because although they tried to look and act Roman, they messed up in many many things. The first house we visited was called the House of Venus. It was a house of one of the richer and more respected at least in the eyes of the Romans. It was called the House of Venus for the tiling in one of the rooms that is shown to the right.  We could see the remain of the layout of the house with the garden and fountain in the middle with smaller rooms around the outside of the house. 

This next picture here is showing the gates into this Roman/Berber city. We were asked what they were used for. Usually gates would be for protection but come on, we are in the middle of the desert here. Who wants to take over desert? So instead the primary use of these gates were to ensure that taxes on products were paid before going into the city. Since Volubilis was chosen by the Roman because of it was the political and economical center in the area, this was one of the sources of money from the city for the empire.

Guess what this picture is? Well I can guarantee you probably won't figure it out. When we moved on to another example of a house we were shown a "fancy" kitchen. This is actually where they would keep fish alive before they killed them for food. I only thought when I heard this, 'Boy is that shallow for fish.' I was also wondering where they got the fish from. Is there a river or other body of water nearby?

 The mighty triumphal arch!! To bad it was never going to be used. It was built for if the Emperor ever visited the city but a) he never did, and b) if he had, the army wouldn't have been able to march through it triumphantly like they are supposed to. There wasn't enough room on either side of it to allow that. Just one example of how uninformed the Berbers actually were of Roman ideas. There was really only one family or so that was born Roman in this city which owned the house shown below. Their house was made with more expensive and sturdy materials than the rest of the city.

This part of the house is actually the bedroom section of the house. We were told the story about how if there were "naughty girls" they would get walled up in their bedroom to preserve the honor of the family. They couldn't physically kill her themselves because that would also disgrace the family so they left her to die by 'her own fault.'

Another aspect of women learned from this trip is that the Romans actually helped spread the use of the veil because the Berber people started to complain that Roman soldiers were being disrespectful to their daughters so to fight this the Empire suggested they veil them and it was to warn the soldiers that they were not to bother these girls.
 

While Romans did have their religion that was focused around Mars, they did allow the Berbers to practice their own family religions inside their home. The only exception to this was that the Berber families must still provide an offering for sacrifice every year on the alter shown the the left. The Roman were fine with them having their own local gods and goddesses as long as the people were also helping to contribute to the entire empire through the Roman's religion. If the Berbers did not offer a sacrifice then they would be discriminated against and would not be not become apply to become one of the upper-class that was allowed to run for office and partake in committees.

So one of the supposedly "nice" places we visited in these ruins was the bathhouse. This picture shows the toilet room. There are stone benches around the side and the spots on the ground were where people could step without slipping. Gross, but it gets worse. If you were doing your duty and another person came in then it was considered rude for them not to be able to sit next to you. To them the bathroom was just another place to have daily conversation and discuss politics or business.  The rest of the bathhouse was designed so that people could move from the hot room to the warm room to the cold room, then an oiling down (because bathing dries you out and it is already a dry landscape), all the while talking with your buddies. There was also a little garden and dining area inside the bath house. So apparently they made quite a day of bath day. The closest thing I can think of to all this is gossiping in the dorm bathroom while washing up for bed or everyone singing together while showering. I miss those days. I've never seen anything like it outside a dorm though haha.

This next picture is of the one of the entryways into a palace in Meknes. It is supposed to be a simple palace, but also one that basically spreads throughout the entire city. A little strange I think but I really liked this entrance room with the lantern and the fountain to wash yourself with before you entered the mosque area. I didn't get to see almost anything else of the rest of the palace but I thought this room was plenty beautiful.  Last but not least, the camels below, well I might have kinda snuck the picture in because the guy standing next to them wanted us to pay to have pictures with them. Well I did not want a picture with them but I wanted one of them so I super-spied it and casually held my phone at just the right angle and happened to touch the screen on my phone...and look I have camels on my camera for some strange reason! Oops :)

So I left home and all the people I love on August 21st. Yes, I miss you all dearly. Hope you don't mind that I've included you in this. we started off landing in Rabat with a slightly confusing Taxi ride to our Hotel Majestic. We all decided that we needed showers after so much flying. What a surprise when you find out that you push a big button on the wall to get water for about 15 seconds before it shuts off again. Probably to preserve water I would think and actually thought it wouldn't be a bad idea at home. You can still have all the water you want but for when you are shampooing your hair you a) don't have to use up the hot water, b) aren't hurting the environment as much, and c) don't have to bend out of the way of the water. Just food for thought I guess. We had tagine for supper (usually pieces of meat in a thin puddle of sauce and veggies) which I have to say was delicious and my first chance with Moroccan food. Then was bed time. Do you know how difficult it is to sleep when right outside your window people are driving their cars and honking the whole night? Well when you are exhausted, not too difficult. At least until morning prayer which came blaring in around 4:30 or 5 am.

We also visited Casablanca while we were staying at this hotel and went to the third largest mosque in the world with the first tallest parapet. It was gorgeous. I found out the reason they have us take off our shoes is mostly just to keep the place clean. It is so big, there are so many chandeliers and titanium doors, and many other things to clean that they look for ways to keep it clean however they can.  On the way back we stopped at the house of a professor who teaches at WPI and visit Morocco during the summer. We had couscous and some yellow, football shaped melon that was absolutely delicious. I guess it is called Spanish melon and one of the girls bought one in the medinat here in Ifrane. Well then Tahar took us to the beach which was even more crowded than Hampton Beach from home is on a gorgeous day and when we got back I met my first preying mantis!

So I am going to skip over a few days because otherwise this blog will be very long. Essentially in Rabat we went inside the medinat there to explore and walked around Rabat and then we got in a bus and headed out to Ifrane on August 24th.

In Ifrane, it was a bit confusing from the start. We weren't sure what parts of freshman/exchange student orientation we were supposed to go to or when to register. We eventually figured it out. Khaleil and I had to take an Arabic placement test to see what classes we should register for. He, being from Lebanon, obviously did very well. I was placed in Beginning Arabic II. Which is good because my Arabic classes at home moved a little too fast for me so it will be good to review and learn the material more in depth. The other class I am registered for is Islamic Civilization. I love both of these classes. I am looking to sit in on an Islamic Art and Architecture class to help me with my project. My Arabic class actually ended up being more difficult than I expected because the professor doesn't speak very much English during it so we have to really pay attention to know what he is saying. I always come out of that class feeling like my brain has melted into a puddle because I have concentrated so much. It's okay. I'm learning. 

I've also been able to make some friends here. It's taken some time because for the first week all the WPI kids traveled in a pack and we began to be known as a cult. We are branching out finally and getting to know other people better. Everyone I have met here is so nice! I ended up talking to some of my friends for about an hour and half last night until I had to go home for bed. I'm also thinking of taking some belly dancing classes with some of these friends and some girls from WPI. I want to find the salsa dancing classes too because I miss ballroom from home. Micah might be joining me for that one. I haven't learned that much salsa at WPI because it is a social dance but I will be an expert when I get home. 

Ifrane I have to say, is not that interesting. Every lawn is manicured to perfection, all the houses look the same, and there aren't that many places to go and have fun here. 

The fountains near the Lion are beautiful though. Molly and I were taking pictures of them one day and when I finished and was waiting for her I sat down on some steps and started braiding my hair. Some girls came over to stand about two feet in front of where I was sitting to ooh and aww at it. Then some boys from the same group came over and began talking to me in a myriad of languages to find out where I was from. They seemed fascinated in me! I was going to offer to braid a girls hair or at least get a picture of the twelve or so children but then their teachers pulled them away. I was left sitting there laughing at the whole situation because I honestly didn't know how else to respond. Later, Keegan and I went to the Lion and got to see some people dressed up for a wedding and the fountains glowing. Also, if you are wondering about the little dog in the picture up there, his name is Patrick and he is a stray we met one day. So adorable.

I promise, I'm almost done catching you up.

This past weekend we visited the Fez medinat. It was a tour around to the different artisans in the medinat so that we could ask them questions and see the type of shops they worked in. We visited a leather shop and looked out to see dozens of people working in different dies or chemicals to make the leathers. We went down to this area and walked next to the big vats made from stone or limestone and I looked over at one of the people and his feet and calves were died completely red! I wondered if it washed off but I forgot to ask. Silly me. Do you know how they get the acid needed to make the leather the softest in the world? Pigeon poop, and limestone but that's not as important. Who would've thought. Actually, I'm wondering how someone thought of that but I'm not sure I want to know. I do want to know how these people live. What makes one want to work or at least look for a job in a leather place? How much money do they make? Doesn't it cause health problems? So many more questions I should have asked that I'm not realizing until now. I'll have to notice my stream of thought more when I visit these cities.

So this is a brief summary of how everything is going. I realized today that a quarter of the trip is already gone! I know there's a ton on this blog right now and yet I still missed a ton, but I'm going to do these every few days from now on so you can see what I'm up to. Please leave me messages! I miss you all and want to know how you are doing too! I know you're thinking, "How can the U.S. be interesting compared to Morocco?" Well I'll answer that by letting you know that I didn't find out that Neil Armstrong had died until days later. And he's famous. So I will leave you now until a few days from now. Au revoir!