Thanksgiving,
PCV style
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| Adam prepping tomatoes for stuffing |
I was
in a tiny village east of Rich last week, celebrating Thanksgiving
with nine other PCVs.
I got
there on Wednesday after a 12-hour trip from Rabat that included a
2-hour train ride, then a series of grand taxi rides for the
remainder of the trip (about 400 km). Grand taxis are my least
favorite form of mass transport here. All the grand taxis are either
5-passenger Mercedes or Peugeot station wagons. They never leave
until they're “full,” that is, have six paying customers. So it's
7 people in a 5-passenger vehicle. Sometimes they'll stop and pick up
yet another person. And they seldom count children as passengers. It
can be a real ordeal, but often it's the only choice, so you just
make the best of it. It was near dusk when I arrived in Rich and met
up with a couple of other PCVs. We spent the last hour and a half in
a tiny Peugeot van that seats comfortably four. We had ten. That's
Peace Corps in Morocco.
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| Our feast. |
For
our Thanksgiving dinner, we had a real feast: the chicken type of
turkey, my cauliflower-cheese pie, mashed potatoes, green bean
casserole, collard greens, a potato-eggplant casserole,
stuffed tomatoes, cranberry-quince sauce, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and brownies.
After dinner we played Celebrity, a charades-like party game, till
almost midnight, then talked until nearly two. The next day, we took
a 3-hour hike up into the mountains.
And on
Saturday, we all headed home. Only an 8 and a half hour trip for me
this time, including my 45 minute walk home after I got to Kalaa.
Most of it was by transit and grand taxi, too, though my friends Zoe
&Adam were with me, so we always bought out the back seat (4
places for the 3 of us), which made it almost like luxury travel!
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| The two Graces and Zoe in "old lady" shawls typical of Grace's site |
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| Off to climb a mountain |
Ashura
A
couple days after I got home, I was surprised to find kids going from
door to door, chanting and asking for treats– or money. They were
dressed in robes and a few had masks on. It reminded me a little of
Halloween. At dinner that night, I mentioned it to my host family.
Yes, they said, it was tshura.
- known as Ashura to Jews and Arabic speaking Muslims – which
commemorates Moses' deliverance from the Egyptians, and which falls
on the 10th
of Muharram, the first month of the Muslim (lunar) calendar. I was
surprised because I didn't recall it happening last year.
I
was even more surprised when all the women in the room asked me for
money. “But you're not children!” I said. They laughed. “Oh,
women go around, too!” “You're kidding,” I said. No, they said,
still holding out their hands. I gave them each a dirham (about 12
and a half cents), which is what I'd given the kids. “Cheapskate,”
they called me. It was all good-natured, but for me it was one of
those jarring cultural moments. Not that the kids went door to door,
but that women did too. It was a reminder of the role of women here
in the bled (countryside), their lack of autonomy and control of
money, that they were, in effect, on a par with children in relation
to the man of the house.
Christmas
is Coming
The
fame of my cookie cutters has spread. Adam and Zoe ordered
several sets, but with Moroccan themes – a camel, a tagine, a palm
tree, a kasbah, and a Moroccan flag. The orders now number eight
sets. My host brother Mohammed (a very fine dagger-maker) delivered
them the other day. These designs were a little trickier than the
traditional ones I had him make for me last year, so Fatima, a host
sister, and I baked a test batch of cookies to try them out. And it's
a good thing we did, because there were a few minor difficulties with
them, which led me to modify the design a bit. But that didn't affect the taste of the cookies. They were gone in two days. All in the name of product
development!
I
went away for Christmas last year, but this year I'm planning to have
Christmas at my house. I'll have a celebration for my host family on
the 23rd,
insha'allah, then on the 24th
some of my PCV friends will arrive and we'll spend a few days of
cooking, eating, and conviviality. I have a good-sized oven (rare in
Morocco), so we're even going to try to roast a turkey! I'll
send pictures.
