Sense-scape

Ok. So I figured the theme for this post would be to give you all an idea of what my environment is like, because I realize almost every single time I take a picture that it just doesn't do the scene justice, especially with so many new scents and sounds. I also want to do this before everything becomes natural, because I think I'm even starting to get used to the sensory overload that is the wonderful souk (market). It feels like I've been here a long time already - I can't believe it's only been a little over a week.

So anyways. My day starts with my alarm waking me up and hearing the sounds of the older woman, Hadija, shuffling around the house making me breakfast (I feel bad when I wake up later, cause she fasts for Ramadan so prepares me breakfast but doesn't eat it. Waking up before school seems to be early enough tho that she joins me). I usually wake up covered in sweat though, because my room gets a tad stuff and there's not much ventilation in the house. Buuut as soon as I'm done getting dressed and all that, have my breakfast of bread and marmalade and sweet mint tea (ate be nana) I leave the house to go to Arabic lessons outside the medina. I really wish I were a morning person and could be up this early all the time, because the streets then are the best. It's fairly quiet but people are starting to wake up, so some people are milling about. Most of the medina streets are fairly narrow, maybe 4 people could walk abreast? but are certainly wide enough for a motorcycle to go zooming by. Most areas smell pretty neutral in the morning, but you do pass areas where someone clearly took a piss there. The walls are either white, cream, or some kind of blue (some areas also have red painted halfway up) and are pretty decrepit and dirty, but for some reason I love them. I don't like when things look too new anyways, and I guess there's something bare and honest about them. I took pictures this morning, so as soon as I find time to load my pics on my comp I'll put some up. Ooo yeah, they're there all the time but particularly in the morning I see tons of cats. They're adorable but keep to themselves, which is good since rabies isn't uncommon here. Ha one scared me this morning though, because it jumped down from over a door but looked like it kind of feel, and it just startled me.

To get to the Arabic school, we have to walk through Mohammad V (Mo 5 seems to be the consensus abbrev) which is one of the main streets in Rabat and cuts through the medina. Mo 5 is awesome - there's always people there, but particularly at night and the afternoon. Bustling would put it lightly - especially at night there are TONS of vendors out, selling everything from these slipper shoes to shirts to candies to hardware items to snails, fresh fruit, and oo yeah. DVDs for 5 dirham (about 50 cents) that definitely have a little while til they come out on DVD. Inception anyone? Titanic 2? Found out that came out last week - but vendors on the street in Rabat have it! Walking through the medina, and also the souk thats perpendicular to Mo5 brings with it all kinds of scents/sounds. You get the smell of baking bread, yummy looking pastries, frying or rotting fish, raw meat (hanging up everywhere - slabs of lamb but also cow and lamb hooves, lamb heads, cow tongue, etc) leather if you're going through the shoe souk, etc. But you also get the smell of piss, some B.O, and some other unpleasant scents. Ahh the sounds are awesome though. Tons of people speaking in darija or French, vendors yelling constantly, traffic sounds, motorcycles zooming by, little kids yelling 'Maman!' and sometimes the call to prayer. I'm definitely gonna miss hearing the call to prayer everyday - the muezzin have such beautiful voices. It's entrancing.

That's something I've found interesting though - I pass mosques all the time, but in the madina you wouldn't necessarily assume they were mosques from the outside. Some have minarets, the tall tower-ish structures that muezzin originally would climb to do the call to prayer, but now just house loud speakers. But many are buildings in among the houses, and you only know they're mosques because the doors are open and you see rows of pillars and carpets and, if you're lucky, people kneeling praying. Sadly, as a non-Muslim, I'm not allowed in any. Ah well, I'll just keep peaking in.

To continue with my soundscape though! Language is a huge huge part of it but is still so new to me. I like the sound of darija... but mimicking those sounds is. Yeah. There are a bunch of sounds in Italian, Spanish, French, whatever that are difficult and that we don't use in English but you can figure them out eventually. There are several letters in Arabic though that we don't have anything even close to in English, and trying to pronounce some of them is like trying to roll your r's for Italian or Spanish and literally not being able to do it - that's how at least 5-6 letters are in Arabic. Needless to say, everyone hearing you trying to say some of the Arabic words gets a kick out of your pronunciation.

Some words are easy though and I've been trying to use them as much as possible! My friend and I are even buddies with a guy in a shoe store, who taught us a few little phrases. Ah that's another thing - prices of things. Everything here is so. damn. cheap. At this shoe store, I bought a nice pair of leather shoes, with a colorful design apparently of Berber origin (the people who originally inhabited Morocco, before the Arabs came) for roughly $6.50. That doesn't even seem fair, but that's how everything is. Internet cafe's charge $1/hour, compared to what, $3-4/hour in Europe? A really nice scarf was $2.50, a small nice leather purse is probably $8.00 tops.

Which reminds me of the next thing I have to write about! Leaving the sense-scape a little, I have to tell you about quite the deal I got a few nights ago. 60 dirham, or about $7.50, got me a whole night of entertainment. That was the price of a ticket and 20-ish minute ride, there and back, to see the national Moroccan soccer team!! Ooohh my lord that was an experience. A bunch of us piled into the back of a truck to be driven to the stadium (one of the guys on our trip lives in a household with a Moroccan guy about our age, and he had a friend who had the truck and offered to drive). We were dropped off about a half mile away from the stadium (tons of traffic) and walked the rest of the way. Getting closer was funny, and my one friend put it perfectly - it was like walking to the Quidditch World Cup. There were no lights for miles around, except for the stadium. We had to go through a huge parking lot and foresty kind of area, and everyone was hurrying to the same place. Gooood thing we had some Moroccan guys with us - I don't know how we would have figured out how to get tickets/get into the stadium otherwise. Once in the stadium, we sat behind one of the goals because it was less crowded. And the game had already started - Morocco vs. Central Africa!! As stereotypical and cliche as this might sound, this is the first time I actually felt like I was in Africa - everyday I have to remind myself I'm in Africa, because it feels more like I'm in the Middle East or even India. But the soccer game was great. Anyone watch the World Cup? No vuvuzelas (sp?), but there were other reminders. The crowd was never quiet - there was always either some chanting going, whistling, cheering, etc. My favorite though was that several people around us had some drums out the entire time, so people were dancing together and running all around. It was incredible, to say the least. I have the feeling the crowd gets a little out of control some of the time though ha - there were policeman with shields next to their feet around the entire perimeter of the field, some with dogs as well haha. Ooo boy. This wasn't the most exciting game in the world though, and ended in a tie, but I'm so so glad I went. Soccer in general is fun, but the atmosphere of the stadium totally made the game. We did leave early though, so we could beat the crowd. And I'm glad we did cause it was already kind of crazy when I left. The truck picking us up again turned around and came to the side of the road where we were, and about 10 guys we didn't know were trying to jump in the back of the truck. We had to quickly hop in and drive away, and still 2 or 3 managed to find a spot on the back of the truck. It was kind of funny though, can't lie.

We went to the beach the other day too, which was pretty fun because a big group of us ended up together. There are some pretty awesome waves at the beach, and a surf club - so lessons this semester? Maybe? It's a little more expensive though so we'll see.

I guess the thing that some of you are wondering about, which I haven't really written much about and which I'll write more about later, is the whole concept of gendered spaces. Most of the things I'm doing are clearly in the men's domain - beach, soccer game, even cafes at night. Saying girls are a minority in all these places is an understatement, but in places like cafes an all girls group can kind of get away with it because we're clearly not Moroccan. And though there were women at the soccer game, we definitely stood out, and at the beach? I usually see 5 Moroccan women tops at this very crowded beach when I go, and when I do they're covered from head to foot (many women dress in a pretty Western style, but at the beach for some reason, that's the time to cover up and be way more conservative). And though I'd like to say as girls we can do the same things as guys, it's definitely more difficult at night, and helps a ton to have male escorts to accompany us. It hasn't been a problem so far, but I think it's definitely going to get frustrating to have to have a guy walk me back to my house every single night I go out, because the madina can get kind of sketch at night. I'll write more about that issue because I'm just about to leave right now actually! Trying a juice place our Arabic teacher recommended for us today that apparently serves any type of juice you want - mango? almond? avocado anybody?
Talk to you soon!!!

Word of the day:
Darija

mashi mushkil (pronounced mesh-y moo-shki) - no problem. I have to say it in person for you but it sounds soooo great and I love saying it.