Fez/El Menzel Updates

9-21-2007
MY SINFUL NAME
So I had an interview with my Moroccan site directors today, and I was joking around with them about my Peace Corps nickname “Haram” Chris due to the fact that my last name represents a forbidden food in Islam. APPARENTLY, as they pointed out, “Haram” isn’t actually translated best as “forbidden” it’s actually closer to “sin.” So they suggested I stray away from the nickname “sin Chris,” for the obvious reason that it’s just kind of weird that my friends walk by and say “What’s up Sin?” Ah, the beautiful subtleties of language that get lost in translation!

~The PCV formerly known as “Haram” Chris


9-22-07
MY MOROCCAN FAMILY
Today, five other trainees and I traveled to our “Community Based Training site” (CBT). We drove through the hills to the little city of Menzel—a pretty little town of about 8,000 nestled in olive tree covered hills. It’s not exactly on an important road, so it’s a relatively isolated town. We’ll be staying here with a homestay family for the next two months, organizing programs in the Youth Center (Dar Chebab—“house of youth” in Arabic).
I met my homestay family right away. I live with a grandmother, Ghita, and her unmarried daughter Hanan. Their house connects to the home of Ghita’s other daughter, Turia, and her husband and 2 kids. Since Peace Corps loves to REALLY immerse us in language and culture, they speak NO English whatsoever. I understand why they do it, so we can’t use English as a crutch, but it makes the first few moments quite awkward. My Arabic is still quite limited. I’ve started to measure how well I know the language, not by standard testing, or the number of vocab words I know, but by how long I can keep up a conversation with someone, which is now up to about 30 seconds. However, if you take out all of the “God willing’s” and “Thanks be to God’s” it’s actually only about 15 seconds.
This limitation did lead me to an interesting cultural discovery however. I had just gotten to the house, and Hanan brought me into the living room. We just sat, because of course, my Arabic had run out within 30 seconds of meeting her. We were just sitting in silence, and I started racking my brain for any casual Arabic question I could ask her. I started to stumble out the little “get to know you” questions we knew, and she sat there smiling as I stumbled over language. I finally remembered how to ask “How old are you,” so I did. Suddenly her smile faded, she raised one eyebrow and gave me an emphatic “Llllllla.” Which means “No.”
So for anyone who is wondering, it’s ALWAYS dangerous to ask a woman’s age—no matter what culture you live in—even if it’s the only Arabic phrase you know.

Live and learn,

~CB

9-25-07

THE LANGUAGE MIRACLE

Having a grand old time with the homestay family. Most of our dinner conversation consists of my pointing at stuff around the room and asking (in Arabic) “What’s that?... What’s that?... How do you say that?” They tell me, and then I forget right away, so they’ve started giving me quizzes at the end of the meal. Through this game—and a dictionary—I found out I’ve been eating liver every night for the last three days and didn’t even know it. It’s not that bad… until you find out it’s liver, then you suddenly don’t like it. Weird.
The rest of the time, we usually watch Moroccan sitcoms, which are surprisingly similar to American sitcoms—a dumb father does something stupid, the mother gets mad and makes him sleep on the couch, and sassy kids laugh at him. I think they even use the same canned laughter track.
Anyway, despite all the Moroccan TV and food quizzes, my Arabic is moving along kind of slowly. But Moroccans are very friendly and patient, and love to help me learn. Even when I’m holding up a line at the convenience store cus I’m trying to figure out how much I need to pay the owner, everyone in line smiles and comes up to help me count in Arabic.
I realized that this is a VAST difference from the way things work in the US. Moroccans absolutely love the fact that I’m trying to learn their language and are always eager to attempt to decipher my broken, terrible Arabic. They’re just so happy to help. If someone walks into a store (or anywhere) in the US and stumbles with their English, everybody glares at him and thinks “Why don’t you know frickin’ English, moron.” Whereas here, it totally makes their day to help me out.
It’s also miraculous how much learning the local language opens up a huge window into the culture. In my other travels abroad, when I wasn’t learning the local language, people (especially shop owners/cab drivers) were pretty short-tempered and unfriendly to me—usually because I was just another tourist who was wandering around their country expecting people to cater to my English. But here, when I simply greet them in their local language, and at least TRY to ask for what I want in Arabic, they treat me like family. The transformation is amazing. It really is beautiful to watch someone open up to you—realizing you’re not just another annoying tourist who doesn’t care. Though that still doesn’t mean I don’t feel like an absolute idiot for the 18 waking hours of my day that I can’t do anything other than point at something, say “What’s that,” and immediately forget the answer.

~Chris


9-28-07

MY 3-FOOT TALL TEACHER

Still can’t talk. However, my 5 year old host cousin, Wedaad, doesn’t seem to care. We still play games in the international language of kids, such as “If I put a blanket over my head and chase you, you’ll run away and giggle.” It’s amazing how similar kids are all over the world. She even makes up elaborate games for us to play. She’ll ramble off scenarios and orders to me in Arabic, I just sit there an nod, but she doesn’t seem to care. I just sort of follow her lead. They’re quite complex games. At one point I was playing “hide the ball” with her, and I somehow ended up going to “prison” by the end of our game. At least that’s what I think happened, cus she pulled me to the other side of the room making siren noises, ordered me to sit, and shacked my hands together. Still trying to figure that one out.
I’m not sure if she can even conceptualize that we speak different languages. I think her parents have tried to explain to her that I don’t know Arabic, because now she’s decided to become my teacher. She’s just learning how to read (Arabic script). She’s at that stage where she just loves to read every word she sees on TV, or on a sign, or whatever. I’m just starting to learn the Arabic script too. So now, each night, she comes into the living room with an Arabic children’s book, sits down, and orders me to read. When I mess things up, she promptly corrects me, and orders me to repeat. She’s quite strict. And of course, I follow orders and learn how to read, because I don’t want to get put in prison again.

~CB

9-30-07

HOW I BECAME CELINE DION

Yesterday, another volunteer and I got invited to go play soccer with a bunch of Moroccan guys. When we got to the field, a kid who had heard I played guitar handed me a beat up, out of tune guitar with two broken strings and gestured that I should play. I did the best I could (though they were sad I couldn’t play any Metalica). The kid indicated that he wanted me to teach him to play. I got some other kids to translate for me that I couldn’t teach him correctly because the guitar was missing strings, but that I’d try to bring my guitar the next week.
Today, he showed up at the field with 2 new strings for his guitar. He had taken a bus a half hour to the next city to buy them. The guitar was still broken, but I tuned it up, and showed him the four chords he needed to know to play The theme from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On,” which is HUGE here for some inexplicable reason. I wrote down the chords so he could practice later, then he went off to play soccer and the other kids made me play the song four more times in a row. Now I have kids walking up to me and saying “I want to hear Titanic” multiple times a day. Thank you Celine Dion for making me the most popular American in town.
Other than being leading the neighborhood guitar madrasa, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Dar Chebab with the other volunteers trying to organize youth activities. Really, all the kids want to do is play cards or learn English, so we’re trying to do a little bit of both. The younger kids in this town are quite creative when they have a lot of free time. Tonight, on my walk to the Dar Chebab, some little kids had started a trash bonfire in the city square and were taking turns jumping through the flames. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen, but they needed something to do. One of the kids even managed to get fire on a string of some sort and started doing a fire-twirling dance. That’s about the time I decided to leave. It’s odd though, cus even though I wouldn’t exactly call fire twirling a safe, structured activity, I found myself thinking, “Well, at least they don’t sit around watching crappy TV like kids do in America. I’m sure fire-twirling develops a lot more brain cells than a play station. So twirl on little guy. Twirl on.” I think I need to drink less Moroccan tea (or “Moroccan whiskey” as café owners like to call it.”

A big fan o' Moroccan whiskey,

~CB

10-3-2007

3 WEEKS!

Happy October! I’ve officially been in the Peace Corps for 3 weeks, though it’s seemed like 3 months. Time passes at an odd pace here. Well, not so much odd, as SLOW. I was talking to an older Volunteer last night who said “Yeah, your whole training is like that. It’ll suck until you get your own place (keep in mind that’s 5 months from now). Yeah, the next five months will probably be the hardest, probably of your life.” And I’m thinking, “Wow. THANKS.” I think the slowness is due to a combination of having been in 5 different (and foreign) cities in the past 21 days, and having to learn how to talk all over again, which I haven’t done since I was 2-years-old. Which I think is why little kids sleep so much. Discovering and naming a new world is exhausting! This may explain why I’ve been napping like crazy, or it could be because I have nothing else to do cus I can’t talk to my host family. They’re incredibly sweet to me though, every time I fall asleep on my bed or a couch, there’s a blanket on me when I wake up.
We all came back to Fez today, because we have to get more shots over the next few days, and it was CRAZY how excited we all were to see each other. All of the volunteers spent the entire afternoon and evening just randomly hugging each other. I think we’re all just kind of starved for physical contact, or to speak in English, or both. Either way, it was refreshing to see everyone again. Even though we’ve all only known each other for 3 weeks, there’s already a strong bond between all of us. Nobody’s dating anybody yet though. Which apparently (according to older groups of volunteers) makes us a pretty boring group. It turns out at least half of our group has relationships back in the US, making us even more boring to other PCV’s, but we all have fun talking about how we keep up contact with our loved ones back home, how much being away sucks, and how consistently but wonderfully DISTRACTING they are (thanks Noemi)!
Anyway, it’s back to Menzel in a few days. I plan to learn at least 3 more impressive Arabic phrases so I can wow Ghita and Hanan for at least 45 seconds before I lapse into silence again and end up taking another nap.

Sleepy in El Menzel,

~CB