Wow, it sure has been awhile since my last post. Let me bring you up to speed!
Three weeks ago I moved from Fes to my homestay in Rabat, the capital of Morocco. The cities are very different: Fes is an imperial city, known for its ceramics and for being very traditional. While I enjoyed Fes, Rabat is definitely a nice upgrade. Aside from a showerhead (though bucket showers weren’t so bad), proximity to the rest of the city by foot, and surrounding area, Rabat is on the beach, my personal security is much higher here. The medina in Fes is impossible to navigate because its one of the largest in Morocco and, according to Wikipedia, the world's largest contiguous car-free urban area. The medina in Rabat is smaller and more spread out. About half the group is living with families in the medina (the rest is living the The Residence, a dormitory for international students) and we’re all close. Rabat is foreigner friendly, probably because as a cosmopolitan city, they are used to non-Moroccans traveling through or staying for a while.
Plus, the beaches in Rabat are beautiful and the sunsets seem surreal!
THE WEDDING:
Imagine a room full of excited women and children dressed in Kaftans (like jellabas but much fancier and with out a hood), dancing and celebrating the wedding of a common friend/family member and sporadically yelling with joy.
Such was the Moroccan wedding I experienced two Saturdays ago. It was more of a wedding celebration than a wedding itself, but it was held in our home because my host mom is good friends with the mother of the wife. The couple married about a year ago in Syria (that’s where the husband is from) and since this was his first visit to Morocco, the mother wanted to celebrate her daughter’s marriage – the Moroccan way. Generally, weddings in Morocco are HUGE and include lots of dancing, lots people and lots of good food. However, if men are present, the women don’t/can’t dance. Since weddings can be very pricy, the wedding celebration at our home was a smaller and only women were invited (accept for the band members, random family members and of course the husband), so there was plenty of dancing.
Like everything else, the celebration was on Moroccan time, i.e. lots of idling. But it was well worth the two-hour wait. The bride was paraded outside the house in what looked like an open four-post compartment (see below). The four men who held it eventually took her into the house for the guests to see her in a beautiful white gown.
After the wife was paraded inside and around the house, she sat with her husband on a decorated loveseat/couch. The traditional band continued to play and people danced around them and with each other.
After awhile, the husband and wife slipped into another room to change into a different set of robes. Again, people danced all around them until the couple joined the dance party.
I met a girl my age who speaks a little English and she dragged me to the front of the room to dance with all the other girls. Thankfully my Oriental Dancing class in Fes showed me the proper way to dance, I just never really got the hang of it. All was good though because I had a wonderful time dancing with the women, even though I probably looked ridiculous trying to mimic their dance moves. And being the only white person, I called a lot of attention to myself.
The band continued to play throughout the whole night, even when the couple slipped away for another dress change! It was like a play, I believe the wife wore three different elaborate dresses all night, and she looked stunning.
After the second dress change the husband was then paraded about in the four-post compartment thing (im still unsure of the name) and people threw petals on him. Then, more dancing! The dancing continued for another three hours until it was time for dinner. It was 11:30 pm, right on time for a typical dinner in Morocco (thankfully in our home we usually eat on the earlier side: 9:45). We rolled out round tables and positioned them around the house. The first course was a communal dish of chicken and bread, and it was DELICIOUS! I’m pretty sure the chicken was cooking all day because it was so rich in flavor. After the waiters took the chicken dish away, they brought out the second dish…beef! The beef dish was also excellent and was topped with cooked prunes that melted in your mouth. Large meat dishes are eaten on Fridays and for special occasions because it’s expensive and considered a specialty dish. Meat is served during the week as well, just not by itself.
A large fruit platter completed the meal once the meat was taken away.
AND THEN, just when I was ready to kiss our guests goodbye and fall into my bed, there was a second wave of eating for everyone else who didn’t get a chance to eat.
AND THEN, at 1:30, when I was full from dinner and tired from dancing, we danced again! We danced around the couple before dancing them out to the street and then we all danced all together in the street for the last time. Phew, it was exhausting but so much fun. My family and I talked about the dancing for days afterward.
THE CLEANSING
One of the reasons why non-Muslims can’t enter a mosque is because they aren’t considered to be properly clean. When I first learned this in Morocco, I found it ironic because it seemed the entire country doesn’t believe in deodorant, changing clothes daily (its more on a weekly basis here) or even showering a few times a week (forget daily), and I rarely see my host family members showering.
And then I went to a Hamam, which is similar to a Mikvah in concept (a Jewish bathing ritual). All I had known about Hamams was that you go here to get clean, and you can pay someone there to scrub you down (literally). They are also separated by gender, but are communal inside. I went with my host sister to one close to our home and it was great, I walked away cleaner than I have ever been. Hamams consist of three rooms of different temperatures: the first area/room is of normal temperature and this is where you change out of your clothing. It acts as a locker room of sorts. The next room is warmer, and this is where you spend the bulk of your washing time. The third room is like a sauna and you’re only here for the actual scrubbing. Basically, you start off in the hot room with buckets of water and you wipe olive paste all over your body and then wash it off. You then go to the sauna-like room with something like a scrub brush/hard dish sponge and you scrub every inch of your skin and watch the dirt crumble off. It’s remarkable how dirty we actually are!
After the scrub down, you head back to the hot room to wash your body again, but this time with your own soap. After your body is clean, you move on to washing hair. My host showed me the proper way of washing your hair at the hamam: she lathered shampoo and massaged it into her hair for maybe 10 minutes. She then brushed her hair before washing the shampoo out. The conditioner was no different; accept instead of lathering for 10 minutes, we let it set in our hair for 10 minutes.
The final step was pouring buckets of water on your body. I don’t think I have ever been so clean! I’m now starting to understand why westerners don’t appear to be so clean. Along with our lack of effective showering, we also have a completely different system of cleaning ourselves after using the bathroom. You know, toilet paper. But here toilet paper isn’t enough, and often isn’t used at all. In its replacement, they actually wash themselves with water after each time they use the restroom because, as I’ve been told, toilet paper doesn’t clean you fully.
The Sahara!
Last weekend the IES group piled into a bus for a 9 hour ride to the Sahara! We stayed in Erfoud and Merzouga, two known desert destinations. The first hotel, Kasbah Hotel Xaluca, in Erfoud was stunning. It was built in the traditional style, but included many modern amenities (like running hot water, a swimming pool, etc). While the architecture was breathtaking and the views extraordinary, the meals were the highlight of my stay here! It was buffet style and included a mixture of French and Moroccan cuisine. It was a Thanksgiving feast! The following day we visited two women’s associations that educate women but also allow them to learn how to create something (usually dolls or other crafts) to sell in the streets. We then departed into the sunset by camelback. We rode into the desert for about three hours, watching both the sun set and the moon rise on either side of the sky, before arriving at our campsite. It was a traditional Berber setting, but definitely a place tourists come to experience “traditional” Berber life. I enjoyed my time here, but I often wondered how authentic it was being a tourist spot. Upon arriving to the desert camp site, a few friends and I decided to climb what looked like a modest sand dune mountain. About ¼ of the way up the dune we realized how vast it really was.
Nevertheless, we prevailed and made it to the top breathless and a few friends short! The view from the top was extraordinary, for lack of a better word. The coolest part was sitting atop the dune and seeing Algeria in the distance.
We camped in tents and woke up at 5 am to watch the sun rise on the dunes. It was quite beautiful, but the large amount of flies made it difficult to sit still. Once the sun was well into the sky, we packed our things and rode our camels out of the desert. Camel riding was a good experience, although like horseback riding, it left me sore for days! I wish we could have stayed longer in the desert, but it was a nice sample of the Berber culture.
And finally, my favorite part: FOOD!
Before I left the US, I was told that Moroccan’s know how to cook, and that sure has proven true! Because I can’t possibly write about every meal/dish, I’m going to choose one dish each time I update so that all you food lovers can get a good idea of Moroccan cuisine.
Last post I wrote about the couscous, which still holds as my favorite dish I’ve tried thus far, but my host mama in Fes cooked what I consider to be the second best dish I have tasted.
The dish:
pan fried baby swordfish filled with spices and herbs. We eat a lot of green side dishes and green spices/herbs topped many things, and whenever I asked what specifically was in these green dishes the answer from my Fes host Father is always “herbs! Moroccan herbs!” The response for the swordfish filling was no different: Moroccan herbs, which I have gathered to mean a large compilation of many different kinds of herbs and spices that are grown in Morocco and are used in every dish. The fish were first cut and filled with these herbs and spices and then pan-fried. The result: a rich blend of deliciousness. My host mom in Rabat cooked this same dish but used sardines. Equally delectable.
Tagine: Alright, so this is dish #2, but Tagine is a staple to Moroccan cuisine!
The tagine dish is similar to a Crockpot accept that has a particular shape (it looks like a pointed witch hat) and cooks on a flame. Like cooking brisket, the trick to a delicious tagine, is allowing the vegetables and meat to slowly cook, for a long, long time!
In Fes, we learned how to cook tagine during a cooking lesson by a woman named Leila. She showed us everything- how to properly slice the vegetables, check on the dish, and serve it. I wrote down the recipe in painful details and then relayed it back to her so make sure it was correct, this is definitely a dish I was to mimic back home!
Stay well everyone!
Love,
Hannah
