There is a lack of Palm Trees in Washington D.C.

Hello all,

I suppose that I should have written sooner, but I really did not have anything to write about other than the fact I have returned home safely. The return trip home totalled about 30 hours, and since then I have been simply relaxing by way of some novels by Ian Fleming. They are completely trashy, I know, but it sheds some light on why the modern character of James Bond is hilariously anachronistic. The last couple of weeks I passed in Morocco by making a trip to Marrakesh, which itself was a lot of fun, as well as some other places along the way. I go back to school next Tuesday, and I look forward to seeing many of you. In all I think the trip was fantastic, despite the illnesses and some setbacks, and I would not have any reservations about returning.

-Adrian

Ignore this man behind the curtain, this post is TOTALLY by Sarah

Last mass email, last update, coming from California this time. All I can say is reverse culture shock sucks (as most of you know), but I think this time around it’s better. Well, anyway, read on….

Hola a todos y todas,

It seems a little odd to me sending you a Dominican update from California instead of the Dominican Republic. On the other hand, not sending one last email to put some closure on these emails seems even stranger to me, so here we go.

My last week in the Dominican Republic I participated in the second house build of the organization I was working for. It was very similar to my first week down here: a group of Americans came down (including my own family) and, working together with the community of Las Charcas de Garabito, we built a lovely house for a young couple and their two children. After the house build, we spent the next few days touring the southwestern corner of the DR: we saw ancient cave carvings, hot springs, iguanas, the Dominican-Haitian border (no, this time I didn’t cross it), and beautiful white pebble beaches with Caribbean-blue water. Since the southwestern corner is not visited by many foreign tourists (yet—I predict that will change in a very short time), it was fun to see parts of the DR that many others don’t get to see. We spent our last full day in Santo Domingo walking around the Zona Colonial, where there are a lot of museums and historical landmarks, and caught the tail end of the merenge festival—a free concert in the heart of the Zona Colonial—and spectacular fireworks. On Tuesday I said the last of my goodbyes and left the country that has been my home for these past ten weeks.

Spending the last week with other Americans on the house build and traveling around the country was probably the best way for me to end the summer and start preparing me to come back to the states (although, as many of you already know, no amount of preparation will fully prepare you for returning to the states). But it also made me realize how much the people of Las Charcas were like a family to me while I was there. The night we all said goodbye to them, they surprised me with a plaque thanking me for the work I had done with them and Cambiando Vidas during this summer and they told me I had to come back soon to visit them—my Dominican family—again. As always, that is the hardest part about leaving—saying goodbye to the people you have met along the way, who have taken you in to their hearts and homes, and who have become part of your extended family. I called my boss the day after I came home and he told me that everyone in Las Charcas was asking for me and wanting to know when I was coming back. I’ve already had two phone calls from friends there asking me the same question. I suppose it’s nice that I can maintain contact with my friends there through email and phone calls, but at the same time I am constantly reminded of what I left there and that I need to go back soon.

And now I will sign off and get back to readjustment to life back here. That includes going through the hundreds of pictures I took, sending them back to Dominican friends, and hopefully putting them up online soon (I’ll send out the link). And, once again, if you’re interested in checking out who I was working for this summer, and seeing pictures of what I’ve been doing with the organization, check out www.cambiandovidas.info.

Amor y paz, como siempre.

Always,

Sarah

Medina, Mountains, and Marriage

The Medina

I have been trying to go into the medina every day now before I leave because I know that there is nothing like it that exists else in the world. Of course, there are a hundreds of medinas in towns across North Africa, but this is one of the biggest and the oldest. I have been living on the edge of it for the past month and a half, and I compare it, in my mind, to living on the edge of a whirlpool. The metaphor will make sense, I promise, once I describe what it is like to go deep inside of it. If you start at Bab Boujloud, a giant, blue tiled gate that marks one of the Medina's entrances, one can follow one the main arteries that run all the way through the old city. On your right you will pass the ex-pat café, and you start going down, down into the heart of the whirlpool itself. I have often felt the sensation during the first part of this descent that I am slowly entering hell for multiple reasons. The first being that as the path becomes steeper and steeper, you sort of begin to wonder as to whether or not it is ever going to level out. The second is that the top of the whirlpool is not always so pleasant. There are tourist shops of every kind, with every single merchant trying his best just to get you to look at what he has to sell.

"My friend, have a look, please just one minute, just to see, just to look."

I have also learned that one should not walk directly in the middle of street in this part of the medina, as you are more likely to be run over by a cart, horse, or the occasional herd of donkeys. There is usually some kind of animal manure in the street, which was something Julian was usually upset about.

"There is shit on the street and trashes. It smells terrible."
"Oui, Julian. Il se ressemble Montmartre."

I remember him smiling at that. When you get further down, you start seeing less of the things that tourists would buy, and more of the things that real Fassis' would buy. This means of course that it is more crowded with people shopping for dates, candles, religious items, both religious and non-religious clothing. As you get further down towards the Kharoine mosque, you start to see big collections of shops that cater to specific crafts such as bronze working or the special furniture needed for a wedding.

At what I like to call the centre of this whirlpool are the tanneries. You would not have known they existed unless you lived in one of the houses that surround them that had a panoramic view of them and the town. The tanneries are a collection of 30 to 40 giant stone vats that are used to dye and prepare leather. It has been a part of this city's economy since the middle ages, and many people still work in them despite the triple digit heat on some days, slapping big pieces of hide in the dyes and leaving them out to dry.

Trying to find your way back out of the whirlpool is a little daunting, but it can be fun, just for the heck of it, to get lost on your ascent because you often stumble onto little corners of the medina, which you would not have otherwise found. There are little cafés everywhere, which you can stop into if you need water.

There are no shortages of men who offer their services as guides to you, and, like shop owners, will try anything to let you accept their services. One trick is to say that the way is closed, and that they can show you a way around that leads through the side streets and alleys. It is something that they have to do, because it is technically illegal to be an unofficial guide for someone. They will often walk far ahead of you to avoid suspicion from the police, and will run from you if they see anyone wearing a uniform.

What is sad sometimes is that when the way is actually closed, but you are hesitant to trust what they say. This happened once to Julian and me. As we were walking down a narrow sidestreet once, a little girl in a yellow dress said to us that the street was closed, but Julian kept going completely ignoring her. As it turned out, the street was actually closed, and we both sort of felt ashamed for not listening to her.

The Medina is as big and intricate as it is mysterious. I have gone into it for hours at a time, and come out of it knowing only just a tiny bit more about it.

The Middle Atlas Mountains and Beyond

Someplace that I had wanted to visit for a long time now was the region south of Fez that includes a section of the Atlas Mountains. I had heard that a good place to stay there was a small Berber town called Azrou, from which one could explore the surrounding region. On Friday morning, I woke up at 5:40 AM, which was not too bad because the sun was already up before me, got dressed, packed up the last of my gear, and headed out the door. Something that I learned from backpacking in Europe was to always have, along with the rest of my gear, a good supply of water, a pack of cookies, and at least one roll of toilet paper. I have found all these items to be essential in some form or another when I am on the road, and I always make a trip to the supermarket the night before I go anywhere. The supermarket, Acimah, is always a spectacular place to go and visit, so I go there as frequently as I can. I left my house at 6:00 AM, walked to the taxi stand in Batha, and found a taxi driver asleep at the wheel. I had to gently prod him in order to wake him up, but he came around eventually and took me to the bus station.

The bus went on a route through the hills surrounding Fez up and over the Atlas Mountains. What I find continually interesting about the geography of this region is the fact that there is a very clear division between where the forested mountains of the Atlas begin and where the bare, rocky, and windswept hills that surround them end. As you climb into these mountains, one sees forests of pine and other trees that are sporadically interrupted by rocky pastures. The road to Azrou goes up and over the mountains to the town itself, which is built into the side of a hill just below where the mountains begin. It is built with the sort of atypical Moroccan architecture of rectangular houses with flat terraces on the rooftops where people hang their clothes to dry. It hardly ever rains here, so there must be no need for a slanted roof. When I got into the town itself, I managed to find a hotel for about 12 euros a night that had a vacancy for two nights. There is not a whole lot to do in the town of Azrou itself, so I decided to take a hike into the countryside itself on the first day to get a better glimpse of this region.

It is a peculiar, North American sentiment to want to go off into the wilderness, which is sort of inexplicable, and difficult to describe to others. I found this to be the case when I was trying to explain to two police officers on the road south of Azrou as to where I was going. They were tremendously helpful, however, because they said that the Benedictine monastery I was trying to reach, which was listed as 3km away from the town in the guidebook, was actually more like 20 or 25. Thank you Rough Guide. While this was a small disappointment, it did feel great to go off on my own climbing up and down hills, scaling cliffs of shale and granite, and following the sporadic donkey trails that make their way through the hills and up into the mountains. After living in Fez for so long, it felt great climbing into the mountains and getting some spectacular views from the top. The temperature was cool and windy for most of the day, but even then the sun beat down upon my head so much that I had to cover myself with a towel in sort of Arabian fashion. It just goes to show that Douglas Adams was right about the towel being the most useful thing ever invented. Eventually, I did have to turn back towards the town because I ran out of water.

On the second day I was in this region, I went to visit a mountain spring called Oum er Rbia. I had to take a taxi from Aïn Lou, a small Berber village along the way, which cost me about $40, but I think it was worth it because countryside was, as before, absolutely gorgeous. As the taxi curved over mountain passes and dodged herds of goats and sheep that often occupied the road, we eventually found ourselves on the edge of a large gorge where the edges were lined with red earth and white cliffs of rock. We came at last to the bottom of the gorge where the water of the spring flowed into a reservoir for the town, parked the car, and followed the spring up to the source where the water came gushing straight out of the rock face. The water was so cold and clear that some vendors were actually funnelling the water from the spring to their shops into buckets where cold drinks and water were kept. There were even some cafés that were built on the banks of the spring that were simply made with wooden posts and straw roofs. Here is a picture.

When I left Azrou the next day, I made my way towards Ifrane, where I met up with my old buddy Jihan as well as her friends Zeynap and Rika, the latter being from Germany. I took a grand taxi there in an old blue Renault, and while the ride did not cost very much, we did run into some bizarre engine problems on the way. As the taxi was climbing into the mountains, the radiator started leaking water. It first splashed onto my side of the windshield in little spurts, but it soon built into a gushing stream of water. The cab driver did not seem to notice it, or even pay much attention to it, which prompted me to ask:

"Excusez-moi, Monsieur, est-ce que il y a un problème avec le radiateur?"
"Non, c'est pas grave."

As Julian once said to me, "Hey, man, this is Morocco!"

The guy did eventually have to pull over to a gas station and fill the radiator up with water, and explained that the mechanic was not working today to fix this problem. I did make it to Ifrane safe and alive.

Ifrane is sort of an interesting town because the French built it during the days of the empire as sort of a resort where the colonial administers could escape from the heat of Fez during the summer. It sort of looks likes an alpine village that you might find in Switzerland or Germany because all the houses are built in sort of a chalet style. Apparently, it even snows there during the winter. There also exists in Ifrane an English language university, Al Akhawayn University, the only one in Morocco, where Jihan actually goes to school. I got a brief tour of it, and it honestly looks like a typical New England college, complete with dormitories, a gym, a swimming pool, classrooms, all sort of built in the Ifrane style of architecture, with white washed walls and red roofs that slant sharply downwards. If you visit, you honestly do not feel that you are in Morocco, because it might as well be New Hampshire or Maine.

As Jihan and her friends had to go to Fez that day as well, we all took a cab from Ifrane back to Fez.

I Get Myself Invited to a Moroccan Wedding

On the way back from Ifrane, Jihan suddenly turned to me and asked, "Adrian, do you want to go to a wedding right now?" It was an invitation I could not refuse. In the words of Conan O'Brien, "If I am invited somewhere, anywhere, I show up." The bride and groom were friends of Jihan's family, who I had met before several times, so it was not particularly awkward that I was there. Rika also came, as well as the fiancé of one of Jihan's cousins who was Swiss, so I was not the only westerner there.

The wedding was on the second floor of an apartment building in the nouvelle ville, and, from what I was told, was small in comparison to other weddings. There were two large rooms in the apartment with couches lining the walls, and it was filled with people dancing, eating small cakes and pastries, and drinking mint tea. No one was particularly dressed up, which made me feel better because I definitely was not, and it seemed to be pretty informal. There were some girls in sort of Moroccan dresses, but as is the rest of Morocco, there were some girls wearing the headscarf, and others who were not.

There were two kinds of music that were played. One, which was played through loudspeakers, was mostly Egyptian popular music that people were dancing to when we arrived. The other was played by a live band of five musicians, who were dressed in yellow shoes, yellow pants, white jalabas, and the white cover that goes over the head. All of them had microphones, and all of them played some sort of percussion instrument. I really do not think that they needed amplification because they were pretty loud by themselves. I got to talk to one of them a little bit later on, and he answered a couple of questions that had to do with what kind of music are you playing, is this a normal sized group, what are the names of the percussion instruments you are playing, and other kinds of questions that only I, a massive ethno-musicological nerd would ask at a wedding. I was a little bit nervous about bringing out my notebook and conducting sort of an informal interview with him because I did not know what they, and also other people at the wedding, would think of me for doing something like that. However, they seemed honoured that I was really interested in learning more about what kinds of music are played at a wedding. I did not get a chance to record it, even though I had my device with me, because they had invited me to come and I did not want to walk around with a microphone when everyone was dancing and inviting me to dance. It was also really loud, and it would not have been a good recording.

Anyway, when I entered the wedding I must have looked really funny walking into that room with my big blue backpack and non-ironed shirt. Immediately, one of Jihans cousins (Halima? I'm really bad with names) took me by the hand and showed me where I could store my backpack and things I had brought back from the mountains, and also assured me that I was dressed appropriately.

And then there was dancing. And then there was me dancing, which I know you are laughing at right now. Just because I am on a different continent does not mean I cannot see what you are doing. In all the experience was a lot of fun. I had been talking to Zeynap, one of Jihan's friends from Ifrane, about how many Moroccan men in cafés and in taxis had asked me if I wanted to marry a Moroccan woman, so we got to joking about that.

"Adrian, I think you maybe would like to marry a Moroccan woman now?"

When the music and the dancing stopped, the actual marriage ceremony began. The band started to play as the bride and groom descended from another room upstairs from the apartment. The groom wore a grey wool suit with a red tie, while the bride wore a gold coloured dress that covered the arms, shoulders, neck, as well as over the head. I'm not sure if the part that covered the head was part of the dress itself, but it looked like one, big, golden apparatus. She also wore a thick golden belt and a loose golden necklace, both of which were ornamented with small, flat, golden, round-shaped things that by themselves could probably pass for Christmas tree ornaments. I know that is a terrible simile, but I cannot seem to think of any other way of describing them.

As they entered the room, people were taking pictures of them, and everyone was served another round of hot mint tea and pastries. They eventually made their way to a large, silver coloured, marriage throne that are made specifically for these kinds of things in the Medina of Fès. Again people took pictures of them, and also started to dance again as the music continued. One thing that I could not help but notice was that the bride looked rather young. She was completely covered up, so I could not really tell what age she was, but Rika managed to ask the questions that I was wondering about myself.

"I have heard that the groom is forty years old. Do you want to know how old the bride is?"
"Rika, do I want to know?"
"She is seventeen."
"Wow, although I probably shouldn't say anything."
"Apparently, she had a chance to say no, but I guess this is what happened."

I do not know the whole story behind the marriage, but if I had to guess why it happened I would say that it is probably a better social or economic situation for her and her family. You read about these sorts of things happening in old issues of National Geographic, but you do not really believe it can happen until you see it happening before your eyes. At the same time, however, you never really understand all the reasons and customs behind it, so I feel it is better to just leave it as one of the great mysteries of this country.

After some dancing and some more eating, the couple got ready to leave. As they did, the bride took off the golden layer of her apparatus to reveal a white covering beneath it. It was hard to get a closer look so I apologize for not being to describe it further. They then made their way to a car specifically decorated for them, and they escaped to their honeymoon I imagine. We left shortly afterwards, because most of the people who were there left when the couple left, and I managed to say my goodbyes to everyone before I caught a taxi back to Batha.

This is going to be my last email for a while. I finish my internship this week, and I am going to be travelling in the weeks afterwards. I will try and write another one before I leave.

-Adrian

Sarah + blog update = this

that didn't really make sense, did it?

------------------

Another mass email, hope you guys enjoy. Conn kids, I just found out that I will be getting back to the east coast the Wednesday before school starts (I know, I’m cutting it really close), so I will see you all then if I don’t talk to you before.

Hola a todos y todas

These past few weeks have been getting busier and busier as the end approaches and the amount of work that needs to get done increases. It seems that we always have five million things to juggle, both small and large. Besides being almost completely in charge of this preschool project, I’m helping to get everything ready for the program’s second house build, which will take place the last week of July (also the last week I am here). It sort of brings this summer here full circle for me: I spent my first week in the Dominican Republic participating in the first house build, and will spend my last week participating in the second house build.

The house build will especially be a nice way to end my stay here because my family is coming down to participate. While my parents have traveled a lot—mostly in Western and Eastern Europe—they, nor my brother, have ever been to a country south of the border, and, as far as I know, have never been to, or spent much time in, a third world country. I’m excited to show them a place that I keep coming back to, hoping, I guess, that maybe they’ll understand a bit more why I keep coming back to Latin America. It probably will be weird at some points—I’m not sure what they will think of the life and culture here—but hopefully it will be a good experience for all. Besides, I haven’t seen my parents since March and my brother since January, so the reunion is long overdue. I wish they were able to meet my Nicaraguan host family instead of my Dominican one, but maybe they can meet my boss’s family, who has become my second host family here, and, at times, more like a family to me than the one I’m staying with.

As the preschool program won’t start until after I leave, I oftentimes wish I could be here to see it start up—to know that the work that I’ve done here this summer has been worth it. But last week, during a meeting with community leaders to discuss both the upcoming house build and the preschool program, I was able to see some of the long term results of what we’ve been working on this summer—and foreshadowing of more sustainable long term results to come.

Last Thursday, José and I headed out to the community to have a meeting with the community leaders to talk about getting ready for this second house build: the dates, how it will run, how the leaders should show up this time to show that they really are interested in the project, etc. We’ve had two of these meetings before, and most of the time the community leaders just listen and agree to what we tell them. This meeting started out this way, although we could tell that these meetings were improving, since at this meeting the attendance rate was the highest it’s been at any meeting we’ve had. The discussion slowly shifted from the house build to the preschool program, and from there to talk of the lack of parent participation in the schools. One of the school teachers was there, and told us a story about how a mother came to visit him to see if her children had past their exams, and she didn’t even know which grade they were in! Other leaders started to share their stories, and the conversation took a new turn. Apparently there is a clothing factory in the community, but it was so poorly run that the community decided to shut it down. After venting about the irresponsible leadership, the leaders started to talk about re-opening it, starting it all over again, to boost the community’s economy. Someone then remembered about a bakery in the community, where a similar situation had occurred, and there was talk about opening that up again, using the bread for the breakfast at the preschool, and selling the excess to benefit the community. When we ended the meeting, all the leaders were talking excitedly about next week going to take inventory of what was still at the clothing factory and inviting other community members—even those who had mismanaged the factory before—to join them in re-opening it. I have to say, I have never seen these leaders so excited about a project before. And I realized that, without us having a meeting to talk about the house build, these leaders would probably have never met otherwise. And with a community-operated factory and bakery, the leaders will continue to meet and generate more ideas to boost their own community’s economy—without needing anyone to come in to organize a meeting. I left the meeting beaming, just as excited as these leaders were. It may have taken many other meetings and many months to get to this point, but to be part of this meeting was worth the wait!

And then on Sunday, for a change of pace, I went to Haiti.

San Juan is about an hour from the border town of Elías Piña, where many people cross over from Haiti to sell various items on the weekdays at the market there. Because I went on a Sunday, the market was empty, but I was able to drive around and see that there really isn’t much to Elías Piña. The people I was with told me that the town had improved drastically in recent years, which made me wonder what the town used to look like. Actually, you wouldn’t know you were leaving the country just to look around. There is a custom office, but there’s not much to it. There are military officers, but as there are military checkpoints all over the country, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. All there was separating the two countries was an open gate, around which people—Dominicans? Haitians?—sat around talking, some playing dominos. I got out of the car and walked towards the gate, expecting to be stopped by the soldiers, but they didn’t even give me a second glance. And, just to say that I did, I crossed the gate and went into Haiti. I wanted to take a picture, but as a white female, I was attracting enough unwanted attention, so I decided against solidifying my status as a tourist. I asked why the guards didn’t even want to see any form of identification from anyone passing the gate—it’s obvious that I am neither Dominican or Haitian—and I was told that Haiti is so dangerous now that the guards’ attitude is, “cross at your own risk.” I suppose I have only scratched the surface of the differences between the two countries.

But I will have to learn more about that later. Tomorrow begins the construction of the second house and already I see the excitement building within the family who will receive the house and their friends who are helping to build it. So tomorrow I’ll have to put away the computer and get out the work boots and shovel (and tell you all about it after I go back home).

Sending amor y paz.

Always,

Sarah

Le Stage, and Fun Times at the Ex-Pat Café

What I Do at the Foundation:

The simple answer is not a whole lot right now. I was doing a tremendous amount of work during the festival and during the first month I was here, and while it was very exhausting I had a really a wonderful experience.

Right now, however, there is really not a whole lot for me to do. When the foundation first laid out for me what I was going to do, they made it very clear that the majority of the work I was going to do was going to be with the festival. They sort of gave me indications that there would be things to do after the festival was over, but it was a little vague. What has been happening in the past weeks is that I come into work in the morning, sit at the desk of Julian, and primarily work on my thesis.

Occasionally they have given me some small projects to do. One was to research all of the themes of the past festivals, and put them all into one document. I managed to do this in an afternoon, and after this was done I met with Amel and Naime, the latter being the directrice, to discuss what the title of the next festival would be. Unfortunately, the directrice had her heart set on <<>> (Live and Let Live en anglais) even before the meeting began, and so nothing really got done. Amel and I were sort of dancing around how to say that this was a bad idea, but it seemed that this was really what she wanted.

The other big project I was working on last week was to read about 200 articles in French, and then to write up if they were informative, or if they offered any sort of criticism of the foundation or the festival in general. It gave me something to work on for that week, and the only problem I had with it was the fact that I had two different people, Naime and the person in charge of press relations, Laila, tell me two different instructions, and therefore two different translations in my head, for what I was supposed to do. After a bit of confusion, I managed to get a seven page document done for them, which I hope they find useful.

There also seems to be a civil war in the office between the directrice and the rest of the people who work here. Isham, the man who is in charge of the finances, comes over to my desk daily to rant about how bad a job she is doing. Sometimes, a bunch of them will go into Amel's office or onto the balcony to rant to each other about their experiences. More often than not, they will rant near my window, because it is the furthest from her office, and I will wave hello to them rather awkwardly. I feel that the war maybe has something to do with why I haven't been given any work to do this week, and I hesitate to ask sometimes what is happening. For the most part though, I try and keep my head down.

As of now, it is Thursday, and I'm going to see if I can actually get through this entire week without doing any work for them. Its not that I don't want to do any work, I'd be happy to do something just to feel useful. I feel sort of awkward showing up here every day, using their internet, and working on my thesis. It's not a bad life, but I think it is usually how an internship goes.

Fun Times at the Ex-Pat Café

The area where I eat the most frequently is a place that I have taken to call The Ex-Pat Café, mostly because nearly all of the people who I meet there are travelers, ex-patriots, and foreigners like myself. The area itself is a string of cafés, restaurants, and shops that line the road below the giant blue arch of Bab Boujloud, one of the old entrances to the medina. I have taken to call it one big café because everything is sort of compressed together, for as you walk down that road there is literally one café that is next to another, in sort of a conglomeration of places to eat and drink. If you are not hungry, or are looking for a specific place to eat, it is bit like running the gauntlet as you walk down this road at dinnertime. A lot of people will try their best to get you to eat at their restaurant, “My friend, you are hungry? I make you very good breakfast. Why you not try my food?”

I was first introduced to the Ex-Pat Café when I was working as a team for Julian. On most days for lunch, Jihan, Ismael, and I would go buy sandwiches in the medina, and bring them to one of the cafés to have lunch and tea. In those days, it was not too hot outside, and one could still sip a hot tea outside and still be fairly comfortable. I still drink tea outside, but I sweat a lot more for it. It is actually one of the few places in Fez where there are a lot of restaurants and cafés fairly close together.

The place that I frequent the most nowadays is called Chez Rachid. Rachid himself is an elderly, dark skinned, Berber gentleman, who has a mustache and is missing several teeth. He always wears a white cotton cover over his head, a kufi, that is typical of traditional male muslim dress here. For practical purposes, I’m sure it must keep the sun off of his head very well. He always greets me with a smile and handshake.

“La bes, monsieur, ça va?”
“Hamdullah, Rachid, la bes?”
“Hamdullah, Hamdullah. T’as faim?”
“Comme habitude.”

Julian, who insisted that Chez Rachid was by far the cleanest, the cheapest, and the best restaurant, introduced me to Rachid one night, and I subsequently started going there with Julian often, and sometimes with Celine, the person from whom I am renting this apartment. While Rachid is the restaurant’s only waiter and host, there is another woman in the back, who I assume is his wife, who does most of the cooking. The food is usually quite good, as I enjoy eating their pastilla quite a bit, and it is also cheaper than most of the other restaurants. Since I eat there almost every other day, he usually gives a discount from the price that is printed on the menu. It is a nice place, and I enjoy going to eat there. The only problem is that it is closed on Friday, the Muslim holy day of the week.

Most of the people who I have met at the ex-pat café or around there are nice, level headed people that traveling around Morocco, and just staying in Fez for a few days. There are some people who I have met, however, that have been absolutely bonkers. As I was walking to lunch one day in one of small streets in the medina that leads to Bab Boujloud, an Englishman, who was holding a fairly large map and accompanied by his wife, came up to me and asked me how to get to the Dar Batha museum. This was no ordinary Englishman, however, for he was wearing a long-sleeved, green safari shirt, green, safari-looking, long pants, black leather boots, and a pith helmet. Now, I have only seen people wearing pith helmets in photographs of books with such historically romantic titles as The Scramble for Africa, or in films such as Indochine, and usually these people were colonial administrators of countries that no longer exist. Take Rhodesia for example. He looked like a walking anachronism, and this came up later in the conversation when he was satisfied with the directions I had given him, as I shall recount (accents included).

“I very much admire your choice of headgear, sir.”
“Thehy’re greayt ahren’t they? Thehre desoygned fah this type o’ weathah.”
“Yes, it is very rustic. Very 19th century.”

His face sort of soured at this, and thanked me for my help as he walked away. I’m sorry, but someone had to tell him. I could have been blunter and said:

“My God, man, everyone else your age here, except for maybe the more conservative Muslims, is dressed in a short sleeved, buttoned down, collared shirt with khakis and leather shoes. This is not French West Africa, you are not on safari, and the year is not 1907. You are about a hundred years out of style, and you look absolutely ridiculous dressed like that.”

I think, however, he got the message. What is even odder is that I usually don’t even notice or comment on what people wear, but this was such an extreme case. The fact that this man took himself very seriously was even more comical. (Inquiètes-pas. I will be as equally judgmental towards Americans.)

There are other people who I have met who have been as equally as strange. This one American guy I met over lunch with an English couple and two Australian girls was quite a peculiar creature indeed. He must have been in his twenties, not terribly much older than I am, and quite tall with reddish hair and pale skin, but was striking about him was that he was absolutely rail thin. The width of his chest must have been the length of a pencil. He was sort of picking at his food the entire time I was there, and describing how he had been in Egypt and had gotten sick there.

“Are you all better now? Do you have enough medicine with you?”
“No, I actually don't take any medicine. I had some bad experiences with doctors when I was younger, and I refuse to go to them now, or take any medicine. I think the body has a way of curing itself if I just keep drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.”

And with that, he ordered coffee, pulled out a guilloise, and started smoking it. It is probably the worst medical advice I've ever heard in my life.

Another strange American that I met was at the Kasbah, a restaurant in the Ex-Pat Café, who had come with a group for the music festival from San Francisco. I was sitting with Isabel Carlisle, an English intellectual who I was supposed to look after, and some other American journalists from the Wall Street Journal, when we suddenly started talking with this other group of English speakers. I tried talking to this one girl by mentioning I had a friend from the area, but it did not go over so well.

"Hey, you are from the San Francisco area? I actually have a really good friend from Walnut Creek."
"That's, like, not San Francisco, man."
"Well, same general area of the state, right?"
"No, man."
"Oh..."
"Thats not even, like, California, man."
"What?"

My dear, I think that it is time to the put the drugs away. I actually would not be surprised if that was a big reason why they had come. Last weekend I took a weekend trip to a town in the Rif Mountains called Chefchaoen, and no less than 25 different people offered to sell me hash in the day and a half I was there. The best line I used to say no was that I had asthma, which they seemed to understand, but I would not do it on principle because it would further the problem outsourcing. Think about all the hard working American drug dealers that I would be depriving of work if I just went up into the mountains and bought it from the Moroccan growers themselves instead.

This is not to say that all of the people I have met at the ex-pat café have been wildly strange or ridiculous. The greatest group I met there one night were a bunch of Erasmus students who were on holiday in Fez. I recognized a guy who I had shared a room with in Chefchouen, who was sitting with a bunch of people, and went over to say hello. They invited me to sit with them, and I ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the night. Two of them were from France, one from Spain, one from Italy, and one from the former country of Lithuania. They were taking a train at 2 AM to Marrakech, and just wanted to hang out until then, so I took them to the nouvelle ville and showed them the way to the train station. We eventually found ourselves in a café and talked until around 1:30 in the morning to go and board the train. They were interested in what I was doing in Fez, what I am preparing to write about in my thesis, and how it was living and travelling alone in Africa. I think I managed to warn them off eating salad after recounting my experiences in the hospital, except for maybe Olga, the person from Lithuania, who said, “I think I’ve had so much vodka in my life that it wouldn’t make a difference to me.”

We had a long conversation about anthropology, ethnomusicology, Sarkozy, language, and Albert Camus. They were undoubtedly, one of the greatest groups of people I have ever met. Olga, the girl from what is now Sweden, even invited me to come and visit her in Sweden in August, which sounds tempting even if just to escape from the heat.
It is getting a little harder to write these. I come home everyday and just collapse from working in the heat all day. But I will try to write at least one or two more.

My Ud Teacher and I

Currently, I am taking lessons in how to play the Üd, which is an instrument used in both classical and modern Arab music. It is also helping me learn Arabic music theory. The two sort of go together as everything I learn I get to play to see how it sounds like, and are sort of combined into two one hour and a half sessions each week, which I record using my small digital audio recorder. I suppose this all started when I was in the medina about a month ago. As I was walking along the main street that eventually leads to the Kharoine mosque, I stopped at this little music shop when I noticed that there was a violin there. Being curious about what kind of violin it was and how much it was, I stopped in and asked if I could maybe play one of two of them. He wanted something like 800 dirham for them, about 80 euros, which was far too much for something that I was not going to be able to bring back to the states anyway. I thanked him, and continued on my way. A few weeks later I found myself in the same shop with Julian, who happened to know the owner of the shop next door, and I inquired the owner as to whether or not it would be possible to take lessons in the Üd. I explained to him my interest in al-melhûne music as sort of a representative of fassi musique, and asked if I could learn something about how to play the Üd in this style. He agreed to two lessons each week for 150 dirhams each, and that he would teach me how to play the instrument, as well as maybe a few melhûne songs.

So far, I have had three lessons. Every time, I come to his shop around five in the afternoon, when the heat is not too dreadful, we exchange greetings in French, English, and Arabic, and we each drink a glass of hot, mint tea. We sit in the back of his shop, which is about the size of a small dormitory room that has instruments lining the walls, and he begins the lesson as I set up my sound gizmo. A lot of what the lessons consist of is him telling me what he is about to play, him playing it, and me having to repeat what he plays. There is no music, even though he has told me for the last two lessons that he can make a photocopy of some instructions about how to play the thing, and I have to remember exactly what he plays. To make it a little bit harder, there is only one Üd in the shop that he likes to play, and that he bothers to tune and change the strings every so often, so that when he is done playing, he hands the thing to me to repeat what he just did.

I know that it doesn't sound that hard, but there is that sort of an immediate audio and finger memory that you sort of lose when he does that, especially when starting a new instrument. It is a bit like in sight-singing class, in the exercises where the professor plays something on the piano and you have to write down what the exact melody is. You can remember the parts in the beginning, but the parts afterwards are a bit fuzzy. Sometimes when I forget, I play what I think I heard him do, but that does not really work, as he says to me often, <> (maquams are the scales I am trying to learn about). Most of the time, I ask him just to play it again. It is hard, but I sort of feel better knowing that probably every music student in the last six or seven hundred years who has wanted to learn how to play the Üd, as well as every single anthropological/ethno-musicological nerd, has gone through the exact same thing as I've been going through. I'm learning this instrument in the old way of the oral tradition.

I am sure that many of you have no idea what an Üd is or looks like, but I will try to describe it as best I can. Picture in your mind the form of a guitar. Now erase in that image the curving body of the instrument, and leave just the fingerboard, strings, and the neck. Now curve back the part of the neck just above where the fingerboard ends and the tuning mechanisms begin so that that part is almost a 90 angle from the neck itself. Remove the frets, and replace the tuning machines with wooden pegs, like on a violin. Now make the neck more slender, almost like that of a violin, and add the body. If you have ever seen pictures of a lute, or even a very old mandolin, it looks somewhat similar to that. It has almost a curved triangular shape on the front side with a rounded sound hole in the middle, similar to guitar but more often oval shaped or with a decorated rose. It also has a rounded back that curves outward so that when you play it, your stomach sort of molds itself to its shape.

The way it is constructed and the also the way it is tuned is somewhat similar to that of a 12 string guitar. It has 11 strings, with 10 of those tuned together in the way a lute or mandolin is constructed so that you pluck two strings at a time that are tuned together so that they sound the same note, and with 6^th string, the bass string, not doubled and by itself. You play the instrument with a plectrum, fancy name for pick, which usually is a long thin piece of plastic that you primarily hold with your thumb and index finger, but it is also supposed to curve between your ring and pinky finger.

One thing I've been asked when describing the instrument is whether or not you can play chords, which technically you cannot. Arabic music in general I found seems to be defined largely, of course by western attitudes and tastes, by an absence of polyphony in the melody, or multiple voices. One thing that I have found is that there is a great repetition of the octave, and I suppose in that way there kind of a chord. From my Üd lessons, I have found the setup of the strings is so that you can actually hit the octave pretty easily without having to rearrange your fingers in a difficult way. But, even when you see a large orchestra of stringed instruments, they are all playing one line of music, perhaps at different octaves, but pretty much all the same pitch classes. The only contrast with this monophony in the melody is the sort of steady rhythm you get from the percussion section. But even during some parts, the rhythm section matches exactly the rhythm that the strings and <> section are playing.

What I am learning to play mostly are the instrumental parts, or the taqsim, that precede the sung portion of the melhun. These portions are sort of improvisations, but strictly based on the maquam scale. During the first lesson, my immediate reaction to the idea of the scale on which to improvise was that it was going to be something like Jazz, in the sense that you have a scale, and you can use different notes of that scale to create an improvisation over chord changes. But I learned quickly that I was wrong. What sort of happens is that you have different notes that are paired with each other in the idea that there is a note, and then a response to that note. In that sense, there is not a whole lot of freedom that you have, other than what you can do with the rythms as you alternate from one note to another.

The absence of frets is also interesting because it allows you to play the quarter tones that are frequently common in Arab and North African music. Quarter tones are pitches that are between whole tones. For example, one quarter tone that is used frequently used in the maquam rast is between E and F. From what I have learned so far, most of these quarter tones are not something you rest on in the scale, but serve as sort of passing notes. They are usually accomplished by either making sort of a very wide vibrato, as you would do on a violin, or by making a quick grace note with the ring finger.

When the taqsim ends, the Üd and other stringed instruments such as the violin follow the melody that the singer has exactly in a monophonic style. There are brief moments where the ud has little instrumental parts between the stanzas, but from what I have read, the music follows the text in a melismatic way with many notes per syllable.

Something which maybe I should not have done is I actually bought one. Even though it is a smaller size Üd and designed for travel, there is no way I can possibly bring it back to the states. For my purposes here, it is rather useful. I bought it last Wednesday, tuned it, practiced it, and during my lesson on Monday I understand a lot more about what he was telling me. I even learned how to play the maquam rast, which serves as an introduction to a popular song by Oum Kalthoum, as well as part of that song. So in that way it is useful for right now as sort of a temporary learning tool. The instrument itself is not of very good quality and it didn't cost very much. I won't get upset when I have to leave it here, and I might just give it to the family up the street that Julian knew, if they want it, at the end of the month. Ah well…I just might end up ripping the frets off one of my father's old student lutes when I get back and putting different strings on it. I probably shouldn't tell him that though…

Life Under The African Sun

If there were one thing that I would have to describe as being a principal factor in daily life here, it would have to be the sun. It is something so basic, and yet so important to life that at first one does not notice the routines that people have that revolve around it. I will explain how this works. The day begins for many people around four or five o’clock in the morning when you hear the first call of the mu'addin at sunrise. It is cool during those early morning hours, but it does not last for long. At seven o’clock the sun is already at full force, and it is blinding as you walk outside for the first time. Of course, it is not the sun I know from North America or even northern Europe. It is the African sun. Hot, bright, and blinding, it penetrates all and is almost maddening if you stay under it for too long. You find that most people are generally not outside during the day. You see a couple of people walking around and cars on the roads, but even still there is hardly anybody in the cafés, and it almost seems as if everyone has left for the beach. During the day in the medina, the most populated sections are those that have placed palm tree branches over the street to protect themselves and their shops from direct sunlight. I have not gotten sunburned here, but only because I use a lot of sunscreen, cover myself up, and stay in the office for most of the day.

But there is life under the African moon. Around 6 o’clock or so in the evening, people start to swarm to the public places, and there is a great amount of activity in the streets and in the medina. At place du Batha and place Boujloud during the day there is hardly anyone around, but at night it is thronged with people sitting on benches and enjoying the coolness of the evening. There are even a lot of food vendors that come out only during the night and sell everything from nuts, to egg sandwiches, to corn that they roast on a bed of coals and sell to you right there.

The headscarf here also serves a practical purpose. As far as I can tell, it seems to be something of personal preference as to who wears it or not, and probably also upon the family. With or without the headscarf, I can tell from conversations I have had with the women in the office that there is a lot pressure to dress modestly and even conservatively because it is a sign of respect for one's self and one's culture.

Moroccan Food and Cats

Other than the fact that I would not recommend eating a salad, the food I have been eating here is pretty good, but it is sort of hard to describe because I do not know exactly what goes into the preparation most of the time. The dish I have most frequently is the tagine. The name comes from the kind of pottery that it is cooked in, which consists of two parts: the bowl and the funnel shaped cover that goes over it. The meal itself consists of something you might call a stew, consisting of either chicken or beef with vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, eggplant, and what I think is asparagus. Another kind of tagine is kofte, containing egg and sort of little paddies of beef. Aside from those things, I eat chicken or beef kebobs with rice, or many different kinds of sandwiches. I have no idea what a vegetarian would do here for a long period of time in terms of eating. I’m guessing they would have to go hungry.

I’ve experienced the way the real Moroccans eat a few times, but not on a daily basis. The most fun thing is to communally eat a chicken, or multiple chickens. Once, I was invited to lunch with a friend of Adil, and we ate lunch at the factory of where his friend worked (I think I mentioned it in one of my earlier letters, he is the one who I helped with his green card application and who manages a ceramics factory). The first course was a large bowl of couscous, which everyone shared using spoons, and the second was another large bowl, but this time containing four small chickens covered in sauce. To eat these chickens, one either had to pick the meat off the bones with your fingers, or take a piece of bread, put it between your fingers, and use it to grab some piece of chicken or soak it in the sauce. Despite the fact that I was not really used to eating with my hands, it was quite good. I had a similar experience when I ate lunch with the ladies in the secretary’s office once, only we used forks instead of our hands.

The tea is undoubtedly absolutely delicious. Hot, sweet, mint tea is the most common, and they bring it to you with the leaves still in the glass. It is so hot that usually you have to put a napkin around over the edges of the glass to keep your fingers from burning. Another kind is called Verven, which has a different taste and is usually reserved for after a meal. They make the tea in large pots with the tealeaves and sugar together during the day, so it comes to you already made.

Although I know it is something that I’m not really supposed to be doing, but I do sometimes go to the McDonalds in the nouvelle ville. Surprisingly enough, it is not because I crave the taste of a hamburger. Julian, who left on Friday for France, told me that he went there almost every day for lunch, simply for the reason that they import all their material, from the beef in the sandwiches to the McFlurrys, and he knew that he wouldn’t get sick from there. You do take sort of a risk when you eat something here, and going to Mcdonald’s for him was almost sort of like a survival technique. The irony is absolutely astounding for an American to think of McDonalds as a clean and safe place to eat, but for Julian it is not. Thinking back to what McDonald’s were like in Europe, I can see why. For them, it is not a truck stop joint where you can eat a quick and non-healthy meal. It is rather a well-to-do place to eat the exotic and authentic American hamburger. For me, going to McDonald’s is not quite the same thing, as I do not go there frequently. It is a little far, and is also the most expensive meal in town.

One thing that you cannot help but notice when you go out at night is the abundance of cats. There are literally hundreds of strays in the streets that live in garbage cans, or cracks in the manholes, or anywhere they can find a place. They are there for a purpose however, for as Julian said to me one day, “If you look carefully, they are no rats,” which is something I had not really thought about before. I knew that this city had been around since the Middle Ages, but I did not fully comprehend it until I considered the age of this symbiotic relationship. Cats must have been an important part of the city in the beginning hundreds of years ago, and they continue to be an important part. They look like the typical tabby cat that is common in the states, but they are small, abundant, hungry, and come in every type of color. When I go out to eat every night, at least half of my dinner goes to the cats.

The neighborhood in which I live is respectable and nice. I live across the street from a barbershop, and the guy who owns it usually sits outside when he is not cutting hair. He is very friendly, knows everyone in the neighborhood, and greets them as they go by. There is also Saïd, who runs the cyber café off the main road and is the landlord for the apartment I’m living in right now. I think he is the unofficial head hauncho of the neighborhood itself. He helped Julian find his apartment, so I was introduced to him as someone who was living in Julian’s apartment, and now Celine’s apartment. Despite the fact that it is nice to have a place to myself for all of July, I actually loathe living here. The kitchen is dirty, grungy, has no light, and the sink leaks water all over the floor. I have a Turkish toilet, which I have to clean frequently because it smells, and doing laundry takes about an hour and a half by hand, and my clothes are still dirty afterwards. But it is a roof over my head, and I think I can hang on for a month.

Asilah

This past weekend, I went to Asilah as sort of a miniaturized vacation. I wanted to go someplace this weekend, and since my plans to go to Rabat sort of fell through, I decided on going to this beach town by train. The train system itself is surprisingly cheap, it was a four hour train ride each time, and it only cost me about $20 roundtrip in the second class compartments. The trains themselves are relatively nice and clean, but you run the risk of not getting a seat if you buy a second-class ticket.

On the train-ride up, I transferred at Sidi Kacem, and made my way up through the foothills of the Reef mountains to the seaside. Much of time on the train I looked at the rolling landscape, herds of cows or sheep, farms, and mountains in the distance. One has to remember that much of Morocco is not part of the Sahara desert, and that this part of the world was once the breadbasket or the Roman Empire. A few weekends ago, I made a daytrip to Volubilis, the last permanent roman settlement in this part of the world, and it was surrounded by very rich countryside. Something that I found interesting also was that like Volubilis, many of the towns I passed were sort of built into the hillside. I suppose one obvious answer would be that the hill or the mountains provide shade for the sun.

As the train made its way around the bend of the last hill before arriving at Asilah, one could suddenly see the water of the Atlantic Ocean as the direct sunlight and the reflection of the sunlight on the water hit the train as it curved around the track to the right. A few minutes later, we were at the train station, and from there I took a taxi to the town. With the help of a guide found a youth hostel in the medina that had a terrace overlooking the harbor. The town itself is an old trading post built by the Portuguese in the 16^th century, and it still has that sort of colonial atmosphere. In the section of the medina that overlooks the ocean, one can walk along the ramparts and look at the blue and white painted old houses that face the sea. There is even an old, though relatively small, fort but it is closed to the public. At around 5 or so I made my way to the beach.

One thing I was sort of curious about as I made my way out there was how Moroccan women dressed for the beach, and you can probably guess why. Surely this would have to be the place where they would make an exception to the headscarf and the modest dress, right?

Wrong. Almost all of them wore it, and I only saw one or two or them wearing a bathing suit. In fact there were almost no women in the water itself, and it was mostly guys who were out, running around, playing soccer, or in the water. To top it off, everyone was off the beach at 7 PM sharp and into the mosque. I swam in the ocean for about an hour and a half, and it felt great. After being in the hospital the week before, I needed a weekend adventure like this for my mental health, and this suited me perfectly. In the evening I went out to dinner and explored the town itself on a Saturday night. I found the same sort of ritual with the sun, in the sense that there was no one out during the day, but at night it was absolutely thronged with people doing their shopping. Of course, I was asked the same sorts of questions:

“Hey, my friend, Hâlo? Where you come from?”

“C’est un mystère.”

“Un mystère? Haha! Tu veux acheter l’hashish?”

“Non merci, Monsieur. Il est mal pour la tête.”

“Mal pour la tête? Haha!”

In the morning, I packed up my gear, ate some coconut cakes that an old woman was selling near the entrance to the medina, and made my way out again towards the beach. The train station is only about 4km up from the town on the coast, so I took off my shoes and walked along the beach with my blue backpack. The sky was clear over my head, and in the distance to my left dark clouds loomed over the ocean’s horizon. The water was at low tide, and the sand was cold and flat beneath my feet. At one point, I was walking with a man, his son, and the two dromedary camels they trained to give people rides on the beach. I didn’t have enough money for the ride, but I was trying to talk the son into letting one of the camels carry my bag. He would have done it, but there was no way to attach the backpack to the camel without it falling off. I do not think the camel was particularly happy with the idea either. So I continued on, making my way eventually to train station. By one o’clock, I was on the train back to Fez, and here I am writing in my apartment under the African sun.

-Adrian