The Past Two Weeks

I once again find myself apologizing for a lack of updating! Those of you who know me well are aware of the fact that I have never been able to keep a journal of any kind longer than two days, and I guess even updating this blog once a week became too much for me. OK, that sounds terrible and I promise to at least try and be better about posting in the coming weeks. In my defense, I haven't done many interesting things since Fez. Schoolwork has finally caught up with me and between studying for midterms and starting papers that I've been ignoring, my weekends have become study time, rather than adventure time.

So, to dredge up ancient history, the last trip outside Rabat I've taken was to my Arabic teacher's farm located about 45 minutes outside the city. Our morning began with a trip to the local souq. Now, I know the souq in Rabat pretty well. I'm familiar with the many stands selling clothes, jewelry, 5 dirham undies, shoes, and crafts. I also know how to get to the tailor souq, the food souq, and the stolen cell phone/ pirated DVD souq. The country souq was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were carts of people selling all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and meats. Some of the meat was still alive. Our teacher took us to the livestock section and showed us how to tell how old a sheep is by its teeth. It was all a little surreal.. The best part of the souq was the Fantasia. A Fantasia is a horse show which mainly consists of teams of guys on horses riding at a judging tent in a straight line and firing off their guns at exactly the same time. Our teacher said that the Fantasia only happens every couple of months and it's an opportunity for the local farmers to show off their horses. Horses are a big deal here in Morocco. I don't know very much about them because my own horseback riding career ended rather unspectacularly at the age of seven when I took two lessons in which I was afraid of the horse and my teacher made me cry. Anyways, Moroccan horses are special because they are a mix of Arabian and Berber horses and apparently really super fast. Watching the Fantasia was pretty awesome even though my teacher said that most of the teams we saw were not very good (meaning they didn't ride in a straight enough line or fire their guns at the same time). I guess that the professionals were supposed to come later in the afternoon. We began our Fantasia watching in the spectator section (read a dirt bank next to the field), but one of the families that owns a stable invited us all to sit in their VIP tent and drink tea while we watched, which was cool. I would love to see a professional Fantasia sometime because even the amateurs were amazing. The traditional costumes were lovely and the horses themselves were breathtaking.

After the visit to the souq we continued on to the farm. My teacher really does own a legit farm with a small orchard, vegetables, and chickens. He's currently working on a swimming pool as well. We all went on a tour around the gardens, and my teacher insisted on sending us home with fresh fruits and veggies for our families. My Arabic class is eight girls, so after our walk through the farm we helped the women of the family prepare lunch, which was couscous, salad, and grilled meat. Dessert was fresh fruit and it was all delicious! Lunch was followed by another walk and the inevitable Moroccan tea. My teacher says that he wants to have us back sometime so we can all stay the night and see the stars.

Even through I've been hanging around Rabat for the past couple of weeks, I've still been doing some cool stuff. Last weekend my friend Sarah and I decided to do a little medina shopping. We wandered around for a little while and I ended up buying two bootlegged DVDs and a CD with three Cat Stevens and one Carole King album on it all for three dollars US. I consider this a rather smashing success even though Inglorious Bastards was completely in French, and thus I understand none of it.

I also spent an afternoon last week exploring Chellah with my language and culture partner, Ilham. Chellah is an old ruin from Roman times right near the Palace and it's in remarkably good shape despite the laissez-faire attitude that Morocco takes with most of its historic monuments. Ilham explained that only recently had the government decided to take an active interest in the preservation and renovation of Chellah. The highlight of our afternoon was being pulled over by one of the gardeners, who guessing that I was American and that Ilham spoke English, asked if he could use me to exchange a five dollar tip he had gotten from some American tourists. After negotiating a proper exchange rate, with much help from Ilham and much joking from the other gardeners, I was the proud possessor of a $5 bill and out 40 dirhams. The gardeners figured out that Ilham is Amazigh, or the politically correct term for Berber, and they all tried to teach me a little of the Amazigh dialect that Ilham speaks, but it was a rather spectacular fail. Our evening ended with smuggling a bag of some really large citrus fruit that I don't know the name of in English (compliments of the gardener) out of the orchards. I really like Ilham because she's an exceptionally nice young woman and very different from my host family. She's studying for her doctorate in biology right now, so she's busy, but she still takes time to listen to my pitiful Arabic and show me around Rabat. She even offered to translate for me if I need to talk to any Moroccans for school projects...which leads me right to my last bit of exciting news!

I have to do a project on some aspect of Moroccan society for my contemporary Moroccan culture class, and I chose to write about murshidat, or women who preach in the Mosque. They are not Imams, so they can't lead prayer, but they do offer classes, advise, and general religious support to the women in their communities. The program to train women murshidat began in 2006 as part of Morocco's "religious reform" which aims to promote a more moderate Islam in Morocco. Since the murshidat program is very new, I quickly learned that there is virtually no material published about it anywhere. All of my research will need to be through interviews and first hand accounts, which is more than a little intimidating. Luckily my Moroccan culture professor and Gender, Islam, and Society professor were able to give me some people to talk to. Next week I am interviewing the director of one of Morocco's leading Islamist newspapers (thank God he speaks English!), and a murshidat that AMIDEAST got me in touch with. I am also supposed to talk to one of the women who teaches murshidat courses in the big religious school in Rabat, and a couple of women's rights activists that my professor knows. I feel in a bit over my head, but hopefully this will be a great learning experience and I won't offend too many Moroccans with my ignorance!

So, that's about it folks. I'll try to update sometime next week, but with midterms it's most likely that you won't hear from me again before next Sunday.