Field Trip!

This past week, I traveled to Imilchil with Alex, one of my fellow trainees. We visited an Environment volunteer who is close to completing her 2 years of service. It was quite an adventure!

On Wednesday, we took an 8:30am souk bus to Errachidia...a souk bus means it stops at towns and villages and anywhere else someone flags it down. Needless to say, it was a long ride. All the seats were full and so was the aisle, so that when we went through a police checkpoint, everyone in the aisle had to squat down so the policemen couldn't see that the bus had more passengers than was legal. Luckily, we had boarded the bus at the beginning of the route, so we had a seat!
In Errachidia, we had the option of a bus or a taxi and we opted for the bus. I think we chose the wrong mode of transportation. It took us about 2 hours to go a distance that should take only 45 minutes! We stopped to pick up and drop off people almost every 5 minutes! When we finally arrived in Rich, it was 5pm and we did not have enough time to make it to Imilchil before dark. Note – due to the generally dangerous nature of travel in developing countries, PC forbids travel after dark when the dangers increase.

Our program manager, Mo, was visiting a couple volunteers on the road between Rich and Imilchil, so he met us at the bus station and took us to a hotel. For $5 we had a bed and a hot shower the next morning! A health volunteer named Jamie met us and took us for an amazing egg, potato and cheese sandwich. It was heavenly and less than $1.

On Thursday morning, Alex and I met Mo for coffee and then hopped into a PC 4x4 complete with a driver to head up the mountain. We stopped to visit an environment volunteer and then drove a bit further to have lunch at Jamie's apartment. She made a mean batch of spaghetti with garlic bread – a welcome dose of American food. Her site-mate is another environment volunteer Mo had to meet, so he also joined us for lunch and we heard a bit about his projects. He is creating a guide to local amphibians with pictures he's taken and local folklore about the animals. After lunch we finished the drive to Imilchil. Mo dropped us off with our hostess (Becca) and continued on his way back to Rabat.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were pretty uneventful. We met Becca's site-mate, who is a small business development volunteer and ate dinner. On Friday, we hiked to the closer of 2 nearby lakes. There is a legend about the lakes that is similar to the story of Romeo and Juliette. A young man from one Berber tribe fell in love with a woman from a different tribe, but were forbidden by their parents to marry. They cried so much that a lake formed from each of their tears. The lakes are named for the Berber words for bride (Tislit) and groom (Isli).
We attended a double wedding on Saturday night. It was for two brothers who were marrying women from a different village. We didn't arrive until about 9pm, but I don't think we missed too much. At dusk a big truck drove through town honking and playing loud music to pick up anyone who wanted a ride to the wedding. Once it arrived at the house, it is customary for the bride's male relatives to show the guests the clothing she will wear the following day. This supposedly includes all layers – panties, bra, etc.

By the time we arrived, the dancing was in full swing. The young men and women formed a circle, surrounded by the older guests. The people in the circle were close together and dancing, which mostly involved bouncing up and down and moving your arms/shoulders up and down in an animated, shrugging kind of way. The music was a drum and flute-like instrument. Inside the circle, female relatives of the groom were dancing. Surprisingly to me, most had their hair down – no scarf, not tied back, nothing, but loose, long hair. Sometimes they would dance and flail their hair about, which I'm told is a Berber tradition. This dancing lasted a couple hours and we alternately watched from the roof of the house and from outside the circle. After much encouragement, we joined in. I danced with a couple young girls who seemed thrilled I had joined them and just kept looking at me and smiling.

Meanwhile, the brides sit in a room in the house with their female relatives. They were dressed elaborately and had white veils covering their faces. It didn't sound like they got to participate in the festivities at all and they didn't look very happy. According to the PCV's the marriages were arranged, so the brides had probably only met their husbands a couple times in supervised situations. I would be terrified if I was in their situation.

Eventually, they herded everyone into the house to eat. They crammed a lot of people into the "living room." Everyone sat around the perimeter of the room and more people just kept squeezing in. They served 2 rounds of tea and then everyone sat and relaxed for a while. Someone started playing music again and a few men and women got up to dance. I'm told Imillchil is a bit of an anomaly – they are a bit freer in their male/female relationships. This was evidenced by the male-female coupling of the dancers and later as we ate dinner.
The young women next to me started talking to me and asking where we were from. I told her as much as I could with my limited vocabulary and Becca filled in the rest. She eyed Alex and asked about him. She wanted him to be her boyfriend, even though Becca told us she had a steady Moroccan boyfriend. She flirted with Alex for a while until it was time for dinner.
They brought in small tables and people gathered around those to eat dinner. Alex got stuck at a table by himself (no other Americans). Over the course of dinner, the young woman across from him started rubbing her foot against his leg and making eyes at him. He kept inching away and she kept inching closer. She was wearing a traditional head covering that indicated she was married, but apparently Alex was irresistible!

We left after dinner was finished – it was close to midnight and we had to leave early this morning. Becca told us the dancing would begin again and continue through the night. We could hear the music from her apartment when we went to bed.

The ride back to Ouarzazate was interesting. Instead of going the long way around, we took the Tinghir pass, which continues over the mountain and cuts a couple hours off the ride. To do so, we boarded a transit – kind of like a conversion van only larger – in Imilchil. Becca had warned us that if women or children got on we should watch out because they don't ride the transits very often so they tend to get motion sick. The ride was uneventful and we didn't experience any sick passengers.

When we got to the end of the transit route, we grabbed lunch and then walked to the taxi station to get a taxi to Ouarzazate. Along the way we found Omar who tried to convince us to stay at his hotel. We tried ignoring him, but he kept walking with us and we told him we didn't want a hotel. He asked where we were going and we told him that we were going to the taxi stand. He wanted to know where we were going, so we told him. Coincidently, his brother drives a cab and was going to Ouarzazate that very moment. Fearing Omar was taking advantage of us, we walked to the taxi station and asked the manager. He directed us to a taxi that was indeed driven by Omar's brother. Omar gave us an "I told you so" look.

We were passengers 4 and 5 so we had to wait for a 6th passenger. While we did so, Omar gave us his views on the Democratic race in the U.S. He's pro-Obama because "women can't be president." I asked why and he told us that when women are pregnant, they are mean to men. Clearly this is why Clinton couldn't cut it as president. Although we had explained to Omar that Alex and I were friends and co-workers, he kept insisting that we were romantically involved. He turned to Alex and said, "When your wife is pregnant" and pointed to me, "You'll know what I mean. She'll be awful to you." After insisting that we were not married, Omar turned his attention to me and told me how beautiful I was. He called me a gazelle, which he thought was a compliment, but I took as insulting.

Gazelle is the term men on the street call out when a foreign woman walks by. I'd gotten plenty of it over the past month in Ouarzazate. When I told him it was insulting, Omar explained that gazelles have wide hips and are curvy, so naturally I should be flattered. Then he told me that since I have big hips I should have no problem finding a husband in Morocco – they like women who can pop babies out easily. I was really annoyed with this guy because he wouldn't leave us alone. Every couple minutes he'd suggest that Alex and I buy out the last seat in the cab so we could go.

While that was tempting because it meant we were finished with Omar, PC had given us a limited travel budget and neither of us was inclined to dip into our own money. Plus, it felt like we would be feeding the image of Americans as wealthy visitors with unlimited money. So, we waited and we tried to avoid Omar by walking up and down the sidewalk, but he followed us.
I had a candy bar in my backpack and the top of it was sticking out of a side pocket. Omar spotted it and asked me to give it to him. I said no, it was mine and I wasn't sharing. He kept insisting that we owed him something and should give him the candy bar. We kept saying no and then he said we should all share it. We still said no. Moroccans are generally very open and share everything, but it felt weird that he was asking us to open the candy bar for him. If I had sat there and ate it all by myself, I guess he would have had an argument, but it was still wrapped and in my backpack.

While this was going on, Omar told me that I looked Chinese or maybe Japanese. I have no idea what he saw in me that looks like either of those heritages. I am average height and weight, and he previously mentioned my wide hips. Plus, I'm white as white can be. He tried to justify it by mentioning the hat I was wearing and by saying my eyes were oblong. I think this guy was on something because after this line of conversation ended, we were back on Obama vs. Clinton. We exhausted this topic, and he turned to me and told me I could find a man in the desert. Apparently, they like fair-skinned women, especially ones with freckles. This is more how I would describe myself, but Omar seems to have forgotten that he thought Alex and I are married. Just as I was reaching my "I can't take this anymore" moment, a 6th passenger arrived. I have never been so happy to get crammed into the back seat of a car with 3 other people.

The ride back to Ouarzazate was uneventful, but I think I'll always remember Omar. It was the most bizarre conversation I've had in some time.