My host family has been fantastic. After the initial shock of having a turkish toilet/shower (aka squatting over a porcelain hole) and having to live with 7 children, things have gone great with my family; 4 girls and 3 boys, all under 19. I am very lucky because my host mom, who insists I call her Mami, speaks French very well. When she was my oldest sister's age, she was at the top of her class in school, but unfortunately couldn't continue her studies after her surrogate mother died. Needless to say she is a very informative informant (not in the spy sense, in the anthropological sense!), and has given me much to think about in the coming weeks. On Saturday, for instance, we stayed up till 2 am talking about what it means to be a Muslim and particularly what it means to be a Muslim in Morocco. Her generation fell between those who were very strict and more lax on the definition of a Muslim woman, and so while she wears hijab (the headscarf) whenever she goes out, for any reason, she allows her daughters to leave the house in whatever they choose to wear. Her logic is that if you follow the correct way of living, according to Islam, then it shouldn't matter exactly what you wear. A very moderate position to take on such a controversial issue, I think. Mami also places a great emphasis on education. She expressed to me numerous times over the past few days how much she dislikes the government for shutting down several of the public schools in the Medina, and combining them into one that is right behind our house. However, like our homestay coordinator said about Morocco, the more you attempt to understand of the country, the more confused you get. While Mami doesn't like the images of crime and illicit behavior she sees on the TV (all Moroccans have satellite TV by the way), she really wants to send her oldest daughter, Aman, to the States to study. Denounce one moment, praise the next. Just as Morocco is part modern and part traditional. It's quite an interesting mix to learn about and live among.
As for a description of my house: it's fairly modest but has lots of stairs! From the gigantic front door, you go upstairs to the second floor of our house. It's kind of like living in a condo. You have people with a door next to yours but living on the first floor of the structure, while you live on the second. So you go upstairs, turn down a long hallway, and all of the walls are covered in this decorative tile, which I think is unique to Morocco. Then you come to the entrance to one of our small salon rooms (kind of like a living room) that has couches lining two of the walls, and TV on another, and a doorway at the far end. If you got to the doorway, you come to a hallway that leads to another living room which also has a TV, Mami's room, and a more formal salon for greeting and meeting distinguished guests or having parties. One thing I instantly found out upon my arrival is that Moroccans love the TV, even if no one is watching it, the TV will still be on. If you go back the way you came, you'll find a fairly large kitchen on your right and a small set of stairs on your left. You take the set of stairs up to my room, which is very modest, and my sister's room. If you open the little hatchway/door next to her room, you'll find yourself on the terrace looking out on the soccer field for the school and the Medina wall. It's absolutely beautiful up there, and I love to spend some rarely found quiet time there in the evening just before everyone gets home from school.
With 7 kids, you'd imagine the house would be filled with noise day in and day out, and you're most certainly right! Debates, fights, jokes, and crying are no strangers at my house. Either the youngest, Abdellrahaman (you'll have to excuse the spelling), and the next youngest, Idriss, is crying, screaming, or doing something they're really not supposed to be doing. For instance, one time I walked into the room to find Idriss and Abdellrahaman playing with the lighter we use to light the stove. Just about what you'd find any boys that age attempting to do when they think no one is looking. And I must say it is definitely a change going from being the youngest to being the oldest. Kudos to the older siblings for being able to put up with anything and everything little boys can dish out! But apart from the fights and the jokes, my family has really helped me adjust to life in Morocco by making me feel as welcome as possible. My sisters already laugh and joke with me, though sometimes I have to ask them to translate, and my oldest sister, Aman, took me to her Egyptian dance (belly dancing) class Saturday night. I'm definitely considering paying for the month so I can ward off at least some of the incoming pounds!
The culminating experience of the weekend, however, was the visit to the hamam, Morocco's version of the Roman bath house. Aman took me there on Sunday, and it is definitely an experience I won't soon forget. We donned djellabas, put our toiletries in a little bucket, our clean clothes in a bag, and off we went. The real experience started when she told me to strip naked upon arriving; what?!? Aman bought black soap, bain noire, at the front desk, which is supposed to bring out toxins in your skin and help take off the dead skin, and then we went into the actual hamam rooms. There are three rooms, which vary in temperature from steaming hot to a little warmer than room temperature, and we filled the large buckets we had gotten at the front desk with hot and cold water from the spigots at one end of the room. The bain noir isn't like any other soap you'll ever encounter. It's a goopy, semi-solid the color of oily mud, so I was a little apprehensive about spreading this stuff all over my body. However, we then proceeded to spend the next hour exfoliating (aka scrubbing the living daylights out of all the skin on my body), washing, and rewashing. It was very relaxing but at the same time I couldn't figure out what to do for remaining 40 minutes. All in all a good experience, and very cleansing, though I still took a shower yesterday...
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