A week in culture

A week in culture

This week I had the opportunity to attend a Moroccan ‘naming party’, an American potluck and my weekly African church service in France.  It was not until this afternoon when I started to reflect back on my week that I realized how much cultural-jumping I had been doing.  To give a proper rundown of the week, I’ll start with the first party that I attended last Sunday.

To be fair, this all started last Friday with the birth of a little girl in my home stay family.  In relation, I supposed she would be some sort of second cousin.  So in Morocco, three days after the birth of a child there is a small party held for the close family members.  When Moroccans say small party however, it is not what I expected.  There was of course, tons of food, dancing and tea.  From around 2pm to 10pm I did nothing but eat, dance and drink tea.  Feeling exhausted on the way home, my home stay sister laughed and reminded me that the real party (the big one) was on Wednesday, seven days after the birth. 

On Wednesday morning I woke up around 9am and headed over to the party, skipping my Arabic class for the day.  The party was held in a beautiful banquet hall, the exact same one as the wedding I attended.  By the time I arrived, people were already on the floor dancing and sporting their beautiful Kaftans.  Breakfast was served, which consisted of hard-boiled eggs, around 8 different platters of pastries and all the bread, butter, jam and honey you could imagine.  In addition to that, in the period of about 30 minutes I had about three cups of coffee and four cups of tea.  After breakfast was finished and cleared away I noticed three men come out and lay down a plastic tarp.  I had forgotten the main reason for the naming party: the slaughter of a ram.  This is down to give the newborn baby her name and according to everyone I asked, is mandatory. So within ten minutes the music started up again and everyone gathered around as the ram was brought out.  This was the first time I had witnessed anything like this in my entire life.  Between the loud traditional Moroccan music, the flashing of cameras as people took pictures of the newborn and her family, to the sudden appearance of the ram overwhelmed does not even begin to describe how I felt.  The slaughter was over within seconds as the baby was given her name and the ram was immediately carried off to be prepared for lunch/dinner.  The most surprising part of it all was the amount of blood and the color of the blood.  It was more of a pink/orange than a red, and even with the tarp, blood was everywhere.  However, within five minutes the workers had everything cleaned up and people took back to the dance floor as if nothing had happened. 

The rest of the party was full of more dancing, including the hosting up of the father and the grandmother of the child, and of course more sweets than you could possible imagine.  I ended up having to leave the party early because of my research, and when I returned back to my house around 7:30, my home stay sister informed me my home stay mother was still dancing away at the party.  Moroccans love to dance.

Last night (Saturday night) I attended a Pot Luck hosted by and attended primarily by other Fulbrighters.  The food spread was equally impressive (including a delicious lentil salad and wine) and it was nice to be with Americans for awhile.  It’s so easy to take for granted how at ease and aware you are of your own cultural norms.  At the Moroccan party, I was constantly struggling to understand the language, music, way to dance, what to say for congratulations.  At the Pot Luck, it was relaxing and comforting to speak my own language and know what is socially acceptable to say, wear and act.  This is something I have absolutely taken for granted the first 22 years of my life living in America.

This morning, I woke up and again was off to experience another culturally different experience: Sunday morning church.  Even though I normally go to church here every Sunday, the service, the language and the music are all foreign to me.  Everything is performed in French and I stare at the projector screen, attempting to sing and pronounce the French words correctly at the same time as I try to clap and sway to the rhythm (something that does not come easy due to my genetics).  After the service on my walk home it began to hit me how unique this week has been in terms of varying degrees of experiences and how truly exhausted (mentally and physically) I am.  Before arriving in Morocco for my research, I thought I had imagined all the different barriers or difficulties I would face during my time here doing research.  All of my experiences this week were truly fantastic and I am so grateful for the opportunity, but as I bounce around from culture to culture, from French to Darija to English, it is hard to have enough energy at the end of the day to finish my research goals for the day.