What a lovely wedding. Now, here is a nice video. For those of you who are not keen on seeing a sheep begin to be skinned, I suggest you give it a miss. For those who are interested, here is the camera-work of my Moroccan Mum.
EDIT: Apparently not not the video front. I’m sure there was one at some point. No idea where it’s gone now…
Ok, I lied. No picture-post yet. I’ll get onto that later tonight after class.
So today I had a lie-in until 9am. It was the most lovely thing ever. I forget how much I honestly enjoy bed sometimes. The downside is that I was going to walk to school, but I doubt I have time now, what with getting up a bit late, and then deciding to blog about said gettingupabitlate.
There is nothing else I can really think of to write, which makes this a very lame attempt at a post. I do apologise. To make up, how about you check out So about what I said…. It’s a really nice blog, written by a very inspirational woman. And she has really good taste in jewellery, which she has a give-away of every few days. Since we’re mostly not in the USA around here, I doubt we can join in, but it’s a really nice idea anyway.
Seeya later!
Today at lunch, I went to the old Medina, to see some of my classmates houses. Almost everyone has moved out of homestays and into apartments, but as yet, I’d not seen any.
I cannot lie, I might have jumped up and down in excitement at the prospect of going.
This is because, inside my tough, cynical and in all ways ‘older than my age’ exterior, I’m a little child. I love looking at things. When I am in a car, all I want to do is stare out of the window at all the things going past. And so going to new places honestly does excite me. Which brings me to my next point. For all that I love looking at things, and find it exciting, I don’t always notice the obvious thing. For example, two of my girl friends here are Muslims who wear the hijab. I have to admit, until today, I’d not really noticed that they did. It’s just part of who they are, in the same way that I wouldn’t necessarily notice a persons hair colour. This is what I mean about not noticing the obvious.Today, I saw my friend without her hijab. She has lovely hair, but that wasn’t what struck me the most.
I’ve missed pictures on my blog. Have you? Next I’ll do a picture post. Anyway, back to the content of the picture. What is different between these two women?
You can see the Umbrella girls neck.
Did you get it? Seriously, have you ever thought about it like that…a lot of people sit around and wonder what girls hair looks like underneath a headscarf, but I’ve never thought about the fact that I don’t know what their necks are like. Of course, hiding the neck is just another part of the work which the scarf does, along with wearing clothes which cover the rest of the body in it’s entirety. It’s just one feature of that which I’d completely forgotten about.
This, incidentally, also really excited me. I am so excitable. But it can only be a good thing, right?
Predictably, I have homework, which I am not doing.
I should probably stop retreating here every time I get work which I’m not keen on. Today the reason I am not keen on working is fairly straightforward, and it is that I am annoyed about my class (again). I got my most recent test back, and I got 30.25 out of 40. Now as an optimist I look at that and see 75%, which is a 1st by our University grading system. But all the same, I was worried to have missed out on an entire quarter of the marks, so I asked the teacher if he thought I was working at the right level.
He told me I had the second highest mark in the class.
Then later, everyone had their hissy fit about the speed of the lessons once again. Now, I can sympathise, because we are going slowly. But equally, we’re not getting high marks in the tests, by anyone’s standards. This is not an isolated incident, and it seems like some people just need to wake up and realise that until the class starts taking in the material, there is no point in moving any faster. Why work on harder material when we can’t even master the basics?
Consequently I am annoyed with our work today. Our homework is the present tense. The present tense. The tense I am presently using, the first tense which any language student learns in any language. I am finding the exercises quite spun-out, but I know that I am having to think which is good. What annoys me, is that tomorrow, half the class will not have bothered with the homework.
I think I need to sit back and count my blessings again!
One thing I have realised this morning is that I don’t appreciate the things which I have enough. I felt grumpy when I woke up because it was cold, and 6.30am, and I have class at 8. But after a bit of grumping around, I realised I am being silly.
1) I have a wonderful family who love me and keep in contact most days.
2) I know a nice young man called The Boy who always makes me smile when I need it.
3) I have a great group of friends who want to know what’s going on and brighten my spirits.
4) I have a great host family who make stuff nice for me.
5) I get my own room, with internet access.
6) I’m living in a beautiful flat, in a nice area.
7) I don’t need to worry about food and I’m learning to cook Moroccan.
8) I am on a degree program at a good UK university, and studying at a reputed language school.
And that is before I even get on to how I have water, clothes, food, and a roof over my head, some things which people in parts of the world not far from here would kill for. Really, I’m a very lucky person indeed.
ALSO: I don’t know if the internet knows I am a language student or if this happens for everyone. When I click the ‘next blog’ button (on the bar at the top of the page) I always get blogs in random languages. Today’s language is: Russian!
Love is a funny ol’ thing. For example, I love my blog, but due to the ridiculous amount of work which I didn’t take with me to Temara, I’ve had to abandon it in favour of that. Then, I love my family, and The Boy, and since they have both been on Skype, work has taken a back seat to them. Which is why I am now here, ready to blog, having spoken to loved ones, and done some (but not all) of my work.
I already explained to you what I think about love. This week, while I was away, I learnt a lot about how the Moroccans see love, and marriage. It was an interesting experience for me. I’ve grown up knowing that once I found someone I wanted to marry, I would marry them (provided they also wanted to marry me, otherwise we might get into a really weird situation where I would get crazy and take them hostage in the hope that they’d get Stockholm Syndrome and fall in love with me too but then I’d get caught and arrested because I’m not cut out to be a criminal because I get a guilty conscience even if I say a mean comment about someone. But I digress).
ANYWAY
So I would just go ahead and get married. Cool. Here, not so simple. For example, BMB has a girlfriend now. He’s not exactly kept her a secret, but he doesn’t want his parents to know her name, because from that they can find her parents, and then discussing will happen, and pretty soon it will all be set up without him. This quite clearly scares him. BMS has a boyfriend too, and he is strictly completely secret. Also, she’s really inexperienced with boyfriends, which of course is odd to me, because my little brother has girlfriends and he’s like, 9. Or something. Ok, I joke, he’s older than that [yes I do know my own brothers age, thankyou] but you get my drift. BMS is 23, and secret man is her first boyfriend. When she asks me about relationships I feel like the older sister, which is a weird feeling.
The parents are the same. Halima talked to me at length about long-distance relationships, and how being involved is viewed in the UK. While she clearly isn’t bothered if I have a boyfriend or not, she would never allow BMS to have one. It’s just “not done”. And BMB may have a girlfriend, but she doesn’t want to know unless it’s serious.
Then this week, I met Fatima-Zahra, the lovely cousin of the family. She is really friendly, and we got chatting easily. Which wouldn’t be hard anyway, since I found myself in her room the first time I met her, helping her pick out clothes to meet her future mother-in-law in. She’s been with her boyfriend for two years, and last week was the first time either of them met the parents. It will be January before the families finally meet eachother. Picking out clothes for this meeting was a massive issue – What would future mum think if she wore a dress? Should her hair be up or down? Did it matter that she doesn’t wear a hijab? The tension in the room was amazing. When we got the call from her the next day, saying it had all gone fine, everyone was elated.
All of this made me think. In our culture, is marriage all a bit too easy? Should we wait around, be secret and stressed and worried? And should our parents have more of a say in who we end up married to? Would they choose better for us than we can choose for ourselves? There is such a high rate of divorce now in the western world, you wonder if anyone ever discovers the truly ‘right’ person for them. However, while there is something to be said for the Moroccan way, I think I’m happy living the way I am, for now. I have no idea what kind of man my parents would pick out for me, but I like to think that I personally have good taste!
Here are my thoughts, organised in a chronological fashion, for those of you who might be annoyed at the way I have clearly posted events in a backwards order.
You should read these posts as follows
The wedding and the first few days
Eid ElKbir
The last few days
And once again, sorry for the large blocks of text. It is all interesting (I hope) and informative (maybe) and at any rate means you can easily spy on my life.
Day 7 – Thursday
I feel like I’ve gone on a lot over the last few days, but I didn’t want to miss out any fun detail which might interest you guys. Or that I might want to remember years from now, since this blog is essentially my diary. More pokémon was played yesterday evening (I decided that today would be a good day to document this trip, as I won’t get back to Fes until Saturday now) once I had fully decided that I didn’t understand the cards. I was also horrified by the fact that it got dark at just after half five. Tuesday night classes are not going to get any easier for me, that’s for certain.
Today I woke up at half 7, but stayed in bed until half 10 on account of fun lucid dreams and it being really comfortable. I took a shower, which proved unfortunate for BMS, because it meant that during hers the gas ran out, leaving her without hot water. Apparently it always catches her out, rather than anyone else. I had breakfast while the rest of the family chopped up Jimmy the Sheep (if you name them post mortem it’s not as traumatic, I feel) for the rest of the meat. Some goes to Fatema, the maid, and then the rest will get eaten by us, over the next few days. I’m hoping for more meat and less offal, but I will get what I am given, so best get over that hurdle now. We’re having guests for lunch, and then possibly going out for dinner. Twill be fun, no doubt.
Day 8 – Friday
Friday was a ridiculously long day (this is now being written on Sunday – for anyone keeping up). We got up nice and early and started organising the house at Temara. Then Aziz, BMS and I went to Marjane to buy fleeces because it’s getting cold here now – aside from all the rain. I bought a nice purple one. On the way back from Marjane we stopped by Avenue Bir Kacem to look for my old house. We found the right road, but I couldn’t remember what the house looked like from the outside. It was cool to go back though, at any rate. From there we carried on to an aunties house, where we met with BMB and Halima and much more family to have Couscous. I ate copious amounts, on account of being sat next to the grandmother, a fabulous lady who though she didn’t talk to me at all gave me some of the most stunning smiles. I had girl time with BMS and our cousin Fatima-Zahra, which shall be related in the post Love and Marriage. BMB left to go to Marrakesh with his friends, leaving us in a single car, with all the food – sheep included – to cart back to Fes in a single car.
In the afternoon, we went to Casablanca. This is because in Morocco (as in my family in England, as my brother will testify gladly) plans change without anyone actually telling anyone else. So the plan changed in favour of us going to Casablanca. We ate with yet more family, and stayed the night.
Day 9 – Saturday
Today we drove. At 11 we set off from Casa after a good breakfast. We reached Temara at midday. At one we were finally packed up in Temara, and ready to leave for Ifrane to drop off BMS. I physically couldn’t move once we were in the car, such was the amount of sheer STUFF we had with us. When going on holiday in a Moroccan family it is wise to consider that they bring the whole amount of food and drink which they could possibly want with them. Not to mention they leave nothing in the freezer, in case of it going off. Which begs the question – has anyone ever explained to a Moroccan mother exactly how a freezer works?
It took us until about 5 to get to Ifrane, which seemed long. I didn’t sleep (I don’t really sleep on car journeys) and it rained, and Aziz kept his window open, and it was cold. We dropped off BMS, and then quite swiftly hit the road again. We stopped off at Imouzzer for apples and doughnuts, and made it back to Fes for 7. It took half an hour to unload the car, and then took me another half to re-install all the programs which I had lost through my computer troubles. And thus we find me back in Fes, tired and greasy, and finally finished with my blogging for the week I was away. I shall now wash, and then get back to you all. Because I’ve missed you EASILY as much as you’ve missed me.
Sorry for the general density of text. It’s interesting though, go back and read if you missed some.
EID MUBARAK SAID (pronounced eeed moo-ba-rack sah-eed)
We got up at 9am on Eid morning. I’d spent all night having crazy dreams where people talked like sheep, due to the sheep being tethered outside our window all night. We had a nice chilled breakfast, and then everyone got changed into their sheep killing clothes. Let me explain a little of the background of this festival, for those of you who don’t know.
Abraham, one of the Old Testament prophets, was ordered by God to kill his son Isaac. Because he was a good believer, he went right ahead and was all ready to kill his son when God stopped him and told him he had proven himself. In reverence to God, he slaughtered a sheep in place of his son, as an offering. Very Old Testament by anyone’s standards. Now, as those religious ones of you will recognise, that means this story appears in all three religious texts, that is to say The Bible, the Qur’an and the Torah. However, it’s the Islamic faith who really do this one – it hardly figures for Christians.
So back to my story. Vegetarians, look away now. There was a bit of fiddling to get the sheep over onto it’s back with it’s legs tied. Then there was a bit of word-saying before Aziz bared the neck and sliced it right open. Blood spurted right up the wall of the courtyard. It was an experience. Even once the neck had been half severed, the sheep still twitched. BMB told me that sometimes it gets right up and tries to run, with its head hanging off. I’m glad that didn’t happen. After most of the blood had drained they snapped the neck and took the head clean off. They made an incision in the leg and took turns blowing the carcass up, so that the skin would come off more easily. It took about an hour for BMB and Aziz to skin the sheep, doing it delicately, with a scalpel. Its funny but you just don’t think of sheep as having tails, but they really do have quite long ones, this being a point of slight struggle in the skinning process. Then they sliced the torso open and took out the innards, which were our lunch. Liver and heart kebabs. I didn’t eat much. The rest of the innards and meat will get eaten over the course of the next two or three days, until we go back to Fes. For some families, this is the meat they save up for all year.
I’m not squeemish, and I watched the whole thing. I’m also not vegetarian, so I cannot be high and mighty about the killing of animals. But there is something about watching the person you live with take the life out of a living thing. Its not something I’m interested in repeating. The rest of the afternoon thankfully didn’t follow suit. After lunch we just chilled, and then the loud men who I met on Sunday came round to play Spanish cards, a game which is even more difficult to understand in Arabic, as it turns out.
Since I didn’t have tinternets while we were in Temara, I wrote this up separately. Because I have a poor memory, and didn’t want to miss anything out. Enjoy.
Day 1 – Friday
The journey to Rabat takes about two and a half hours by road, and was well accompanied by some funny conversation from Aziz and a crazy sausage and olive sandwich and chips. It was over in no time and we arrived in the family flat in Temara which is a town about 11km from Rabat itself. The family have a flat in every city in the country by the looks of things. It was really nice, felt like home right away. We went to bed late, as usual.
Day 2 – Saturday
Wedding day, the wedding of a cousin, so very close family. The day started pretty early when we went to the medina searching for slippers for BMS. She is quite tall and the Kaftan she was borrowing was short, so she couldn’t wear high heels. We spent a good while walking around only to buy the wrong colour. Never mind. After lunch I went to the Hammam with Halima. Its an experience every western girl should have – go sit in a steamy room with a load of naked women you don’t know, and get really really clean. I have honestly never felt so clean in my life, or seen so many boobs. It was a good experience though. The only problem was, it made me tired, so I fell asleep with wet hair. About a half hour later when I woke up, we were getting ready for the wedding and I could feel the illness which I’ve been fighting since Wednesday last creeping up on me. The wedding started at 9, with a meeting of all the grooms family. There I met Mehdi, a friend of BMB from university, who firstly mistook me for a Moroccan (HAHAHA) and then kept disappearing with BMB to the car where they had a stash of vodka…In retrospect, I probably should have joined them. The whole groom’s family then trekked all together to the main event. There was dancing, and music, and amazingness, and it would have been awesome had I not had one of the worst headaches I have ever experienced in my life. I felt like death, but I didn’t want to say anything in case I ruined it for the others, which in retrospect was stupid, because it meant I had a really terrible night, full of people laughing because I looked so tired, and trying to speak to me in Arabic. We finally made it home at 6am, where I took some painkillers and gratefully fell asleep. Photos of this will follow.
Day 3 – Sunday
We got up at 1.30 after our ridiculous night. I had a healthy glass of Berocca (if you haven’t had it, don’t. Unless you are really ill) before we went for lunch at an aunties house. My extended Moroccan family is so huge, I have stopped trying to work out how people are related. Suffice to say that the dinner was nice, and people didn’t go on at me too much in Arabic, though there was a quite significant amount. Then me, BMB and BMS went to meet with Mehdi, and we all went for coffee and chats. It was good. We had dinner at home, and I got a lovely early night.
Day 4 – Monday
A semi-early morning, starting at 9.30 meant that we managed to do a lot with our day. In the morning BMB and BMS took me to the Oudayas (google it) which was lovely because I have some real memories of it there. BMB had to buy a birthday present for his secret girlfriend because he was going to hers for dinner, so we headed towards the big supermarket Marjane in Hay Ryad, the really rich part of Rabat. On the way there we got lost, and by complete chance ended up driving down the avenue next to the road where I used to live. It was super exciting for me. We came home for lunch and I spent an hour and a half agonising over an e-mail, because though I could access the internet there, it was SLOOW. And I mean that in capitals. Spent the afternoon just relaxing, while Aziz went and got the sheep we were going to kill on Wednesday. It was really pretty, and I felt genuinely really sad for it. I held back from naming it, which I think was probably a good choice. I spent most of the evening playing Pokémon on my laptop, a fact which I’m not proud of. Actually that’s a lie. I am very proud of my Pokémon.
Day 5 – Tuesday
The family left me to sleep. Bad plan. You see, I love my sleep, and if you don’t wake me up, I just keep sleeping and sleeping. Thankfully the sheep woke me at 12, but I could have gone on much longer. Maybe I should have as well, because I woke up dizzy and disorientated, and no amount of food and drink cured me for hours. Lunch was good but I could hardly enjoy it I felt so off. Then my laptop decided to inexplicably bluescreen on me. I take great pride in being able to fix things, but nothing I did for my poor baby computer worked. It broke my heart, and completely destroyed any good feeling I’d had. Finally at about 4.30 the kids and I decided to go out. We visited some friends of BMB’s who have a new baby girl, who is just the most beautiful little thing you ever clapped eyes on. Then we went for coffee with BMB’s secret girlfriend, Mehdi, and BMS’s secret boyfriend. I felt much perked up after that which was nice, and when I got home decided to full restore my laptop. I lost my programs, but kept all my files, and it worked, which is all that matters. I went to bed in a much better state than I woke up.