I spend the weekend with a local family

I spent this last weekend with a family in a town about 10 minutes away called Zouia. There are about 250 people who live there, and they have a strong Berber heritage. They used to live in caves, and a lot of families still use their caves for storage, livestock, etc. My family had their kitchen in their cave. Zouia was the original Ifrane (the town that جامعة الاخوين [Al-Akhwayn University] is in), until the French came and decided they needed to build a ski resort, which is the current Ifrane. "Ifr" means rocks, which there are a lot of.

Anyway, we all had the option of doing a homestay for the weekend, but only 8 of us chose to do so, which apparently is a lot more than in past years. They dropped us off on Friday evening and picked us up on Sunday evening. My family had built a concrete house around their cave, adding a hallway, two small living rooms with those giant couches, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The bathroom had a really nice squat toilet. The kitchen was in the cave, but the floor was concrete, and there was a drainage hole. This made it really easy to clean. Remember how in China, they cleaned everything, even the carpet, by throwing water on it? Same thing here (though the carpet was swept, not mopped). To clean, you just sweep everything on the carpet in the living room into the hallway and out the door. Then you throw water on all the floors that don't have carpet and sweep the water into the kitchen and down the drain in the floor. Then you squeegee the floor. I want to buy a squeegee now, it seems like a fun way to clean.

I've only had three weeks of fusHa (standard Arabic), the first two of which were spent learning the alphabet. My family only spoke derija (Arabic dialect) and Berber, so we pretty much only communicated with hand gestures. In Arab culture, people are never by themselves, so the little neighbor girl Fatima was put in charge of me. When we first arrived, we kind of just sat in the living room for about half an hour while I tried to give her my speil about being an American student from the state of Missouri who studies the Arabic language at Al-Akhwayn University, but she didn't really understand a whole lot of it, and I didn't understand anything she said. Then I decided that we should go for a walk outside, so she took me around town, by which I mean she took me through all the fields (as far as I could tell the fields were either for growing peas or grazing their animals) and around the stream. I pointed out all the animals whose names I knew, and she taught me the ones I didn't know. It was actually very pretty. There was a small stream that ran through all the fields, and at times it got deep and wide enough to swim in. To swim is one of the 10 verbs I know, so I actually understood when her brother Yassine told me that he was going to swim in it- which he did. I didn't think "to swim" would be a useful verb to know, but it turns out it was.

After touring the town, we came back to the house and Fatima put henna on my hand. It looks pretty awesome, even though it is obviously not professionally done. After that, someone came back with a kaftan that they put on me so I could take pictures. They also had this big rug thing that was decorated with sparkly thread that I wore over the kaftan. Pictures are hopefully forthcoming. That night we had couscous for dinner. We all sat on the couches in the living room, and a table was brought in. There was a giant communal dish of couscous and vegetables, with broth to pour over it, and lots and lots of bread. The children and I were issued spoons, but the adults ate it with their hands by grabbing some couscous and rolling it around in their palm to form a ball, then eating it. They kept putting bread in front of me. I'd eat a piece, they'd put another down; I'd get halfway through that one, and they'd give me two more. They kept telling me to eat, eat! Our teachers told us this is also part of Arab culture, that guests are offered more and more food even if they decline it. I went to bed pretty soon after dinner, since dinner was at 11. Fatima and I both slept on the same couches we ate dinner at, while the children slept on the couches in the other living room and the adults I think slept in the bedroom.

In the morning, the table was brought back into living room and we had bread and butter and jam and coffee. The coffee was steaming hot milk with Nestlecafe instant coffee and lots of sugar. They offered me a shower, but I declined. Fatima and I went around town some more and took pictures. This time Rashid joined us. Rashid was the son of Zoha, who I am not sure actually lived in the house I stayed in, but was my "mother" for the weekend and cooked in the kitchen there and everything. I think she lived in the same little alleyway, and probably sort of lived in the house, because her house was just a living room and a bathroom, no kitchen or anything. I never figured out how everyone was related or who actually lived there. I didn't realize Fatima didn't live there until the next day when we went to her mother's house. It was pretty awesome that the kid's name was Rashid, though, because in class we made up a story about رشيد الدوب (Rashid the bear) who we always use for examples now. The Arabic word for "bear" is "doob," and "my bear" is "doobie," so some of the guys thought this was hilarious. After taking lots of pictures, we went back for lunch. I watched them make couscous, which took an hour and a half- no wonder it's better than the couscous at home (no offense!) I was so tired, though, that I totally fell asleep. After that, the kids made fun of me and always asked if I wanted to take a nap. After lunch (which was sometime between 2 and 3), they asked again if I wanted to take a shower, and I declined. So Fatima, Yassine, and Rashid took me to the Cascades, this park that was about 10 minutes up the road. It was gorgeous. On the way there we stopped by two guys with horses who asked if we wanted to ride the horses, so we each took turns riding up and down the road. A lot of people were riding horses, and some were riding donkeys. One of the horse-guys spoke some French and offered to pay me money to marry him so he could go to the states. I don't think he was joking.

We spent a few hours at the Cascades, which were really pretty and cool because of all the shade from the trees. I drank some water straight from a little waterfall there. I haven't gotten too sick yet, and that was Saturday. When we got back to the house, I was covered head to toe in dust and dried sweat, and I knew I smelled pretty gross, so when they offered me a shower again, I agreed. They boiled a giant bucketful of water for me, and gave me a stool and a towel. Since I only had one pair of shoes, one of the women even gave me the shoes off her feet to wear while I showered. Then I sat on the stool in the bathroom and poured water on myself using a little cup, and scrubbed down with my Dr. Bronner's. There was a clothesline hanging above the toilet for the towel and my clothes. Since the floor was concrete, and the toilet was on the floor, all the water just goes down the toilet. It was exactly like going to the Hammam in town, but without the 20 naked Moroccan women fighting for the bucket. Afterwards, I helped make dinner by chopping a bunch of herbs that went into this delicious soup. When I went to bed that night, I realized that poor Fatima had to go to bed at the same time I did and wake up at the same time, because I couldn't be alone even when I was asleep.

We had mint tea several times every day, and I finally learned how to make it. You put several spoonfuls of tea into the tea pot, then fill it with boiling water. Then you dump out all the water, and fill it again. Then you put seriously about a half pound of sugar in the tea pot, which you then stuff full of mint leaves. To mix it all up, you pour tea into a big glass, then pour it back into the pot... you do this several times. Then before drinking the tea, you pour it between several glasses to cool it down. Delicious!

On Sunday morning, after breakfast, we went to the souq in Ifrane. Because finding a taxi is so hard in such a small town, we paid some guy who was taking his van into town and was also taking a bunch of other people. We walked around for a while, but it was really hot. We bought some figs and some grapes. I felt kind of bad, because Zoha only had 15 Ds to spend, but when I bought the grapes, all I had was a 100 D bill, which I had to carefully extract from my wallet without showing the other 100 D bills in there. But the program gives the families 200 Ds a night for each student, so I guess it was okay. I also did exactly what everyone tells you not to, and ate the grapes and figs straight from the souq without washing them or peeling them first. There were consequences, but nothing dire. Anyway, Zoha told me she was pregnant, and that the sun was really hot, so we went back home, but not after waiting a long time to get a grand taxi back to Zouia. Grand taxis take six passengers, and when you're not with other AUI or American students who can afford it, you wait for all six seats to be filled. It helps, though, when some of the passengers are really tiny, like Fatima. It turns out Fatima was fifteen, but she looked about nine.

After the souq, we cleaned the house and folded laundry, then made lunch. I'm pretty sure that for lunch I had fried intestines and liver. The intestines tasted like bacon. The liver tasted like liver. We also had this awesome sweet couscous for desert. I think it may have been made with milk, or cream, or buttermilk, or some sort of diary, and it had sugar on top. It was very لذيذ (tasty). We watched some weird TV show after lunch, but I never quite grasped the concept. And then it was time to go home. But my friend Amanda (who also did the homestay in the same town) and I promised that we would come back next weekend to give them some of the pictures we took, so I guess we will be doing that.

Anyway, the first "semester" is almost over, and we have a final exam on Friday. The kids who are only staying 4 weeks leave this weekend, and some new people will be arriving. And now it is time to do my homework, because I have to write a 300 word essay about myself in Arabic, and give a presentation on my homestay. This should be fun!