Host families, the medina, and urban rovings

Day Six! We met our host families for the first time yesterday, which was both exciting and terrifying. We're placed in families as pairs; my room mate, Sarah, is from New Hampshire and goes to American University in D.C. We were REALLY EXCITED to discover that we are both post-structuralists. Given my life at Grinnell, this made me feel totally at home.

Anyway, after a morning session on the subject of street harassment (don't dress provocatively, ignore verbal harassment, ask shopkeepers and taxi drivers for help, etc.) and our second "Survival Moroccan Arabic Class"* (my name is, thank you, give me, coffee, tea, water, here, there, etc.) we all gathered nervously in one of the classrooms and waited for the host families to arrive. After a few minutes, the host mothers started coming in and, soon enough, Sarah and I were introduced to our host mother, Rachida. The first few moments were slightly painful, as we had been strictly instructed that we should speak Derrija with our host families and try to avoid French so that our families didn't get into the habit of speaking French with us. Unfortunately, coffee, tea and directions were not particularly relevant to the context. After a few minutes, though, as we wrestled our luggage outside, we started speaking French and fs-haa, which is what I've been studying for three semesters. Rachida told us that her family comes from the southern city of Essaouira, but that they all live in Rabat now.

Our host brother Yassin came in the car to pick us up. As it turned out, there wasn't enough room for Sarah and me and our luggage and Rachida in the car, so we climbed in to ride with Yassin and Rachida took a taxi.** Yassin is 23 and a university student studying politics. After a thrilling ride,*** we arrived at the apartment in Rue de la Resistance. The apartment is fairly large, but has relatively few rooms compared to an American residence. Sarah and I are staying in the guest room, which is to say the fancy room where you spend time with guests. There's one bedroom, where the host parents, Rachida and Hamid, sleep, and where much of the family keep their clothes. I think our host sister, Rehab, sleeps in the big living room with the television. Many Moroccans eat in these room on couches, but we always eat in the kitchen.

When we arrived, the neighbor from across the hall, who Rachida said is like a sister, was over at the apartment. Her family has also hosted AMIDEAST students in the past, so we talked a lot about their previous students while we ate a delicious lunch of what seemed to be leftover tagine with chicken, rice, and, for some reason, french fries, which seem to have been absorbed as a fairly ubiquitous part of Moroccan cuisine. In Morocco, it's normal to eat with your hands, and all from a common dish. This is one reason why the ritual of hand-washing before a meal is so important. There's also a constant stream of tea, which is served in little tea glasses with mint and a formidable quantity of sugar.

After lunch, our host mother suggested that we lie down a little. Later that afternoon, she said, she would show us the route we should take to school. When I woke up, however, I was surprised to see that the sun was setting. It was nearly six o'clock and the apartment was empty.**** Soon, however, he heard someone unlocking the front door, and after struggling with the locks for a moment (I've noticed that difficult locks seem to be a bit of a trend in Morocco) our host sister, Rehab, appeared. Rachida and our neighbor had described Rehab as "crazy" and "always dancing," so Sarah and I weren't sure what to expect, but Rehab turned out to be perfectly nice, if consistently overenthusiastic. Rehab had a friend with her and didn't seem overeager to entertain us, so Sarah and I started asking if we could go for a walk just at the moment that Rachida came back. We'd probably rather have stayed with Rachida, but it seemed we were past the point of no return, so we ended up following Rehab and her friend towards the medina. Not to the medina, but towards it, because when we came in view of the medina they were like, "Ok, there it is! See you later!"

We ended up wandering through the dark and twisting streets of the medina, glancing at street vendors' wares and trying not to make eye contact - but, you know, in a good way. We came back for dinner at 9 or 10, and then fell asleep pretty much immediately.


(Note: This took me forever to write because there's no internet at the apartment. In the future I'll have to be less detailed or long-winded or something.)






*Morocco is by far the most multilingual place I have ever been. Derrija, the Moroccon dialect of Arabic, is what people learn from birth. Then everyone (or at least most people) learns fs-haa or formal Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic, in the language of American course catalogs) as well as French in school. AMIDEAST is an American organization, so everyone in our building speaks English, and most highly educated people or people whose businesses sometimes attract tourists (waiters, street vendor) speak at least a few phrases. For instance, in addition to their mother tongue of Derrija, all members of my host family are fluent (or near enough that I can't tell the difference) in both French and fs-haa. My host father, Hamid, and host brother, Yassin, also speak excellent English, and my host sister Rehab knows some English phrases. Our neighbor seems to know a fair amount of English, too. She says she understands everything, but has more trouble speaking, which suggests to me that she may have learned from American television and movies.

**Or more accurately, said that she would take a taxi but later told me that she hadn't been able to and had had to walk. It's about a 35-40 minute walk from AMIDEAST, which is in a district called Agdal, to our apartment, which is in l'Ocean. That's a walk we intend to do once in each direction every day. Also, taxis are actually really inexpensive here. Today we took one from downtown to the AMIDEAST building for 10 dirhams, which is a little more than a dollar.

***There aren't really traffic laws in Morocco, which is to say that such laws technically exist but in practice it's every pedestrian or motor vehicle for hirself. Traffic lights and lanes are sort of fluid concepts, and we were warned always to look both ways, even on one-way streets.

****I think our host mother was probably with the neighbors. It's very common for Moroccan housewives to spend lots of time in neighbors' homes; socializing is their chief means of entertainment.