Christmas in July

Life here is astoundingly different post Ramadan which is something that everyone told me before I came, during the flight, and throughout the month of Ramadan itself.  But as with most things, it's one thing to hear about it and expect it and another thing entirely to experience it firsthand.  This past weekend was Eid-al Fitr which is the holiday that marks the end of the month of Ramadan and for some reason Morocco was a day later than the rest of world.  I still do not understand why.  From what I was told, I gathered that a religious authority looks to the sky on the 29th day of the fast and if he sees the crescent moon then Eid is the next day.  If he does not see the crescent moon then everyone has to fast for another day.  Since we can predict the moon cycle I assumed that we would know for sure when Eid was going to be but that was not the case.  There must be something else that goes into deciding when Eid is but despite all my questions I do not have a clear answer. Nonetheless, waiting one extra day after being in the thick of it for a month was not the end of the world but this is coming from someone who was not fasting for the majority of the month so I'm sure my friends and host family here were of a slightly different opinion on the matter.

Irregardless of the day Eid happened to fall on it was a wonderful day of celebration and time with my new friends and family.  More importantly, after waiting for a month I finally feasted upon some authentic Moroccan couscous!  And I'm not going to mince words here, it was pretty damn glorious. My host mother allowed us to assist in the cutting and skinning of some of the vegetables but I'm not going to steal Rashita's thunder because she killed the couscous game that day.  She also made a tomato-based sauce with some paprika and other spices to drizzle over the couscous.  It was perfectly moist and the flavors of the chicken and the sauce really meshed well and I loved the texture that the cabbage and carrots added to the dish.  Overall, one of my best culinary experiences in Morocco to date (Get it? Dates, morocco, trust me I'm a riot...)

Also, you're probably wondering at this point why the title of my blog is Christmas in July (unless you're muslim and have experienced Eid before and know about Christmas) and I am now going to tell you.  The entire day reminded of Christmas.  There you have it folks.  Only kidding but what an explanation that would be.  Anywho, on the morning of Eid people wake up and go to the mosque and eat a breakfast that consists almost exclusively of sweets.  Children and adolescents on Eid also receive presents and money from their families after the events of the morning most people proceed to adventure from house-to-house of their extended family to eat more sweets and drink more tea and coffee.  My roommates and I completed this "house crawl" of sorts to two houses, one in the old medina, and one closer to where I live in Northern Tangier.  In between houses we had a particularly interesting experience with a Taxi that I will never forget for as long as I live.

Most taxis in Tangier drive around major streets when they are vacant and search for eager people yearning for adventure but there is another kind of taxi, one that is considerably cheaper, a good deal more dangerous, but quadruple the excitement.  These taxis have a predetermined route with two major stops and when they reach the main destinations anyone standing around immediately rushes to the doors shoving and pushing any stranger out of the way to obtain a seat.  I honestly have never seen anything like it.  No one got overtly violent but there was definitely some horseplay going on. After about 20 minutes of waiting we were about to give up but then one last taxi came down and one of my roommates grabbed the handle of the moving taxi and hopped in pushing up against the door on the opposite side of the car in an attempt to leave space for all four of us in the back of the cab.  It was an ingenious plan that somehow managed to work and within a minute we were on our way to stuff our faces with more pastries and cookies then our bodies had room for.  I will say that I slept well that night but I unfortunately had to wake up at around 7:30 the next day for our day trip to a neighboring beach town.  Not the worst reason in the world to wake up early.

But early morning beach soccer with no breakfast is not the easiest thing to do in the world but I made it work.  And after a long game I had the freezing cold water to remind me where I was.  We went to an Archaeological museum set up in an old Berber city which was a little more interesting than I am going to make it out to be, but not a whole lot.  I liked what the museum had to offer which was ruins of a roman-era city and really fascinating construction plans and replicas of the city itself but the presentation of the museum left a lot to be desired in my opinion.  There was a lack of any discernible organization and if I didn't have someone from the school telling me what we were walking through this small paragraph about my visit might not exist and then you all would be sad because you all love hearing me talk so much.  It's ok guys I get that a lot.  It's ok to feel sad sometimes. I'm here for you all.

This week's discussions have been pretty on point thus far.  On Monday we had a listening about Moroccan music and I learned a little from that video but most of it was not new unfortunately.  I really want to learn about some popular Moroccan bands of any genre and I have been exposed to bits an pieces of the music culture here but I want more.  We read an interesting piece a couple weeks ago in class about the spread of Hip-hop from the Bronx to Morocco over the past 20 or thirty years. Basically the way things get to Morocco from the U.S, at least for a long time, was through France. Now the relationship is more direct with social media and the increase in programs such as the one in which I am currently participating.  What I'm trying to say is I want Moroccan Hip-hop and my current attempts to learn more about specific types of Moroccan music have been futile.  But I'm nothing if not persistent, and impatient, sometimes I think one may cause the other but I'll let you all decide which because I'm a man of the people and a people of the man.

Discussions on day two got a little more serious where we talked about issues of social and personal freedom throughout Morocco in addition to reading an article about why American journalism sucks. While I am not of this opinion, it was clear that this author was and I think he had some good points. The discussion about personal freedom was not as in depth as I would of liked but we only had about 40 minutes with that teacher before he left so I could always pick it back up in office hours. The discussion essentially consisted of a story about women being objectified and another story about gay people being out in the open in Fez.  Other than making sure we understood what the article was saying, we did not talk much about the issues inherent in the article which was disappointing but we had an article about sexual harassment to read tonight for homework so details on that discussion to come hopefully in the next post.

The journalism article basically attacked American Media as a whole for not producing quality or accurate news about subjects in the Middle east or outside the U.S. in general.  There was a lot of criticism about the 24-hour news cycle of sources like CNN producing "garbage" news as well as richer and more well known outlets catering to specific groups of people.  I do not know much about how journalists actually do their job, particularly foreign correspondents but I do know that it's hard to provided news to a country where the majority of people don't care about Foreign policy, at least as much as they care about other issues such as economic reform or social equality.  The article also stated that American was a place that prides itself on and preaches Freedom of the press while censorship still exists.  That is a point that I don't hear very often and I assume the author was pointing to the fact that at least some news papers are owned by wealthy businessmen who could conceivably affect what gets printed and what does not.  I am sure those people exert their influence but I also feel like the alternative is to be like Morocco and have the government own the majority of the papers.  Personally, I choose the former of the two options.

Well, food for thought by the pound tonight ladies and gentlemen.  As always comments and criticisms are always welcome.

Until next time,

-Johnny M.