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. 

Day 1 in Nairobi

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Christmas in Kenya: Part 1

Though the Christmas season is over, I guess it’s not too late for my holiday blog.  I was lucky enough to get a week vacation from my language study and travel to Kenya to spend Christmas on safari with the family.  I left Morocco and flew to Brussels, where I spent the night and adjusted back into what seemed like such a foreign world.  The first thing that shocked me was snow, and lots of it.  In my rush to pack, I merely thought about what to bring to Kenya (a place that was going to be warmer than Morocco) and so, forgot a heavy jacket for my night in Brussels.  However, upon seeing the snow and all the Christmas lights, I braved the weather and went into downtown Brussels.  The whole city was lit up like a fairy tale and every street corner, there were vendors selling everything from hot cider, to chocolate covered waffles, I even saw a burrito stand.  After I purchased a strong glass of cider (to help deal with the cold) and proceeded to walk around the city and take in the sights.  It was my first time in Brussels and it was a nice way to get into the holiday spirit.

After spending the Brussels, I woke up early to meet the rest of my family at the airport to fly to Nairobi.  It was great to see them and catch up before the 7-hour plane ride.

We arrived in Nairobi at around midnight and went straight to the hotel. It was my first time in East Africa and I was eager to see the city, but it was the middle of the night and streets were empty.  After arriving in the hotel, I agreed with my family that now was not the time to explore, and after the long plane ride, the comfortable hotel bed was calling my name.

We awoke the next morning and saw the sights of Nairobi.  Nairobi is infamous for its traffic, and luckily we had a driver who helped us navigate around it.  At first I was overwhelmed by how developed and sprawling Nairobi seemed.  There were high-rises, fast food chains and people everywhere.  Our first stop was the elephant orphanage.  (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40709206#40709206) As we waited with the rest of the excited tourist, a pack of baby elephants came sprinting out of the brush.  They had one goal in mind: the bottles that their trainers were holding.  In about 30 seconds each elephant downed two huge bottles of some sort of formula.  After that we spent about 40 minutes watching the elephants play around with each other and stay in the mud.  Afterwards we went and visited the home of Karen Blixen, who was the inspiration for the film Out of Africa.  It was still decorated and even had some of the same furniture as when she lived there. 

Afterwards, we had a nice dinner at the hotel and went to sleep early in preparation for our flight out to Amboseli National Park.  Amboseli is famous for having lots of elephants, and lots of elephants we did see.  After taking off in our tiny, tiny airplane we landed on some sort of mixture of dirt that appeared to be some version of a runway.  For someone with a fear of flying, I was not amused.  However, we made it safely and were greeted by our guide Ali.  We rode in a Landcruiser that was open completely open on all sides and almost immediately we started finding animals. At first it was just a few birds, ostridge and some buffalos, but the further we got into the national park, the more animals we started to find.  I still remember so clearly seeing the first giraffe, we drove right near him and he continued to munch away on his grass, as if we weren’t even there.  After a few hours of animal watching, we arrived at the camp where we would be staying.  It was absolutely secluded and consisted of about 15 tents.  Each tent has its own bathroom and shower (which was especially necessary after a plane right and 4 hours on safari).  We got settled in our rooms and then went out again to look for animals in the afternoon.  At night, we enjoyed a nice relaxing dinner overlooking a watering hole.  We then used our flashlights to find our way back down the hill and to our tents for the night.  It was pretty refreshing  not having any internet, television or electronics to play with.  It was probably the best sleep I’d had in years.

After spending another day at Amboseli, we packed up and headed back to the airport to take another one of the small airplanes and travel to Masai Mara where would spend Christmas and the next few days. 

However, the highlight of the time in Amboseli (and a good story to show off how close you really are to the animals) was one morning my Mom came over to my brother and my tent to see if we needed something.  She left her tent unzipped.  About five seconds after she left our tent, my brother and I heard a scream.  It was my Mom as a little monkey ran passed her, cookies in hand.  When my Dad asked her if the monkey stole a cookie, my mom replied “He stole all the cookies!” as if the real issue wasn’t that there was a monkey in her tent, but that the monkey had not stolen one cookie, but all of them.  The monkey then proceeded to sit on top of the tent and enjoy each cookie in front of us.  My brother and I subsequently shared our cookies with my Mom.

video of a Moroccan wedding

a Moroccan wedding

Blog post soon to follow, but until then here are some pictures to enjoy!

In my traditional Kaftan my family lent me.

My home stay mother and her nephew before the wedding

The bride makes a very fantastic entrance

This continued for about ten minutes...

The bride and the groom sit while a woman applies henna to the brides hand.

A little sample of the food selection.

The brides outfit change (and my favorite Kaftan of the night!)

The Bride changes again, and this time her and the groom reunite.

The final dress of the night while the bride and groom cut the cake (this is around 3:30 in the morning)

Finally some cake!

a view from Rabat

The land of olives

Local 'souk' or market here in Morocco

Mausoleum next to my house

Hassan Tower, also right by my house

Inside the mausoleum, beautiful architecture

Tomb of former King of Morocco

Sweet Moroccan guard outside the mauseleum

Bathing: Moroccan Style

The hammam in Morocco, where do I begin.  The hammam is a public bath or bathing area that is still very populat around Moroccans today.  Since I constantly see women with their buckets coming back from the hammam, I figured it was an experience I had to have.  After asking around, I found out about a nice clean one close to my house.  I asked a couple of other Americans if they wanted to come, for moral support, and off we went.

Now when you enter a hammam, there are separated doors and places for both men and woman.  The first room resembles a ladies locker room and there are women who you can leave your stuff with while you’re inside.  In this locker room you strip down to just your underwear grab your bucket and whatever other soaps or shampoos you may want and enter the hammam.  Once in the hammam there are three areas of varying degrees of heat.  We headed to the hottest first and grabbed a spot.  Luckily, Moroccans are always so generous and some women noticed we had no idea what we were doing.  They showed us how to fill our buckets with warm water and then how to scrub ourselves.  The key (and the best part) is to have the correct soap and scrubber.  The soap feels a little bit like clay and has a brownish.  It is made from henna and you smear it all over your bed.  After you’re nice and lathered you  take something that resembles a coarse glove and scrub.  Slowly but surely dead skin falls off.  You can actually pay woman to scrub you, and they do so not as a massage in mind, but to make sure you are really clean.  I elected to just try and see how well I could do my self while one of my friends opted to pay.  The amount of skin that came off of her was for lack of a better word, disgusting.  After the long scrubbing session, I washed my hair with the water from the bucket and rinsed off.  We spent some time in the warmer rooms, but after about 40 minutes we were all ready to leave. 

As we returned to the locker I couldn’t believe how clean and relaxed I felt.  It was like I had just taken the best bath of my life.  I wrapped my hair in my towel, put on my sweats and headed home.  It is not uncommon to see Moroccan woman with a towel on their head and in their sweats walking in the street.  I got home, made some tea and crawled into bed.  I had never felt so relaxed in all my life.

I am planning my next trip to the hammam ASAP, but I have been so busy with all my festivities. 

This weekend I will be attending a Moroccan wedding and a birthday party.  In preparation for the amount of food, sweets and tea I am about to consume I ran an extra 40 minutes today.  I am bringing my camera, and I will be borrowing a traditional Moroccan outfit for the affair.  Pictures to come.