People always want to know what it is like here.  We walk down the dusty streets no longer noticing the obvious. Men in djellabas, women with headscarves, chicken scurrying between feet, and children riding two, sometimes three at a time on a much-too-big bike. The call to prayer is like the rising sun, we expect it everyday.

What is it like? You probably won’t believe me. It is like home.

People wake everyday and go about their routines. They wake, wash, and eat. They go to work wherever that might be or they gather for tea and socialize. People greet friends and family as they pass on the street. They gossip. People make jokes, tease, and laugh at silly things. They worry about their children and the future. They reminisce about better days. They look forward to the holidays. Teenage boys are oh-so-cool.

Ok, so on market day sheep and goats are loaded into the trunks of taxis. They have more space back there than we do in the backseat 4 grown-adults full. It is like home because it is home to so many people. Once you know your neighbors, you become part of the community. You adjust to the sound of dog packs fighting for territory at night. You begin to step aside without much thought to let the trotting donkey pass. Without hesitation you respond to greetings with greetings in the gurgling local language. You adjust your schedule to accommodate hours of prayer so you aren’t waiting out front of a closed shop for bread and eggs.

Cold water, no water, hand-wrung laundry, no heat, no air conditioner, no all-night diner or 24-hour grocery store, no liqueur store, and a number of inconveniences that could exist anywhere exist here. A rainstorm could wash out the road. You may need to walk a couple of hours to get somewhere. Lack of rain could mean people go hungry.

When you live somewhere, all of the details, the facts about a place, you come to accept and expect. You fill your time with work, friends, and activities. You get busy and stop noticing differences so much. It is just like being home, somewhere new.

Every day, parents walk their children to school, pick them up again for lunch, and then return them to school for the remainder of the afternoon.  The preschoolers try to sit still and listen to the teacher but it is not easy.  The teacher tries to keep the restless minds engaged with activities she writes up before school.  During breaks, the children play outside.  The preschoolers are the smallest in the schoolyard which is open to older children attending primary school.  The playground is rocky and preschoolers sometimes get hurt.  Parents want to make preschool better for their children so they can do well and succeed in school.  

What if you knew that your child’s future depended on whether you could teach them numbers, letters, and words?  What if you couldn’t read or write?  What if there was no one else to teach them? 

 I’ve always taken for granted the skills I learned at home like holding a pen, sitting in a chair, sharing toys, listening to stories, creating art, and recognizing letters (thank you mom and dad). Do you realize how important these skills are as building blocks for future learning? I recently read that a children’s success in school begins in their early development years when they acquire the social and cognitive skills required for reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

Consequently, these skills learned as children are also the foundation for gaining employment, accessing health care, and voting (among other things) as adults.  A child who faces setbacks at this early stage and does not acquire these basic skills will struggle to succeed throughout school and in life. 

In places like Morocco where only 52.3% of the population over the age of 15 can read or write, so many parents are unable to teach their children these skills and preschool is the only viable option.  Unfortunately, preschool education is not subsidized by the government and is therefore only available to those who can afford it.  Many children do not have this chance.

Mark and I are asking friends and family to support a preschool project in our new community instead of sending care packages or gifts.  We want to help a local organization, Association Tifaout, make preschool an option for families in Touama, Morocco who do not have the resources to help their children succeed in school.  Gifts made in support of this project will allow us to buy toys and teaching materials that inspire eager minds to learn, and create a safe space for children to play. Your gift will make learning fun for eager children who face a number of obstacles in their future.  Preschool can help prepare children with the basic skills necessary to succeed in school and in life—an opportunity that many of their parents never had.

The Association Making Education Possible:  Association Tifaout is a community organization Mark and I work with in the rural community of Touama, about 30 km southeast of Marrakesh.  The organization is made up of mothers and fathers from all economic and educational backgrounds that are trying to make it possible for all children in Touama to attend preschool.  

They have opened a two-room preschool at the primary school in Touama Centre where a teacher instructs 30 3-5 year olds.  Association Tifaout has secured the space rent free in order to keep costs affordable.  A small monthly fee parents pay supports the teacher’s wage.  In the future, Association Tifaout would like to develop alternative revenue sources so preschool will be available at no cost to all families.  To fulfill the demand in Touama for preschool education, they plan to open four more preschools.

 What your gift will support:  Currently, there are no toys and few teaching materials at the preschool.  There are no colorful posters or even crayons available to stimulate the imagination of the small children. The teacher handwrites all lessons and creates her own materials.  The playground is a steep slope made up of boulders and is open to the larger children who often disturb preschool classes or play too roughly for the preschoolers. 

With your support, Association Tifaout can buy toys like balls and puzzles, and purchase teaching materials such as posters, cd’s with educational songs, and a cd player to improve the learning environment at the preschool.  They can also grade the playground to remove rocks, build a protective wall to make a safe space for the children to play, and install a slide and swing set.  

The total cost of the project is $1800.  (Association Tifaout is providing labor for playground improvements.)

With your gift, Association Tifaout can make preschool a fun possibility for children who deserve an equal chance at a good life.  

To make a gift online, go to:  http://teach.chipin.com/education-is-a-gift

To send a check or money order, please email me for my U.S. address at: jenimcenery@gmail.com

Staying true to the Christmas spirit, we shot targets and each other with a toy gun. We ate too much candy too. The day after Christmas, the fun continued.  We ate leftovers and watched Christmas movies.  We walked a new path through an olive grove that led to souk.  And Lena made more purchases at a store recently opened by local women.  They love her best I think.  We reluctantly said goodbye to our friends and PC family the next day.  I can’t wait to see everyone again on the next holiday.  Happy New Years!   

Christmas was just how I imagined it would be!  Good friends filling the apartment with holiday cheer.  We gathered together on Christmas Eve to decorate the tree and apartment while listening to classic Christmas tunes and eating green and red Christmas cookies.  Then one of the Mark’s made a smart remark followed by another Mark comment and the tunes turned into some alternative blue Christmas melody.  The water went out and we had to ration toilet flushes while piling dishes high on the sink. By Christmas morning we had adjusted to the odor and Santa had left a pile of gifts.  Our stockings were full of loot from souk; I’m sure we all got what we deserved.  Pace and Mark (sort of) made breakfast, Jim and I fetched water from town, and we spent the morning in our PJ’s before heading out for a walk, visiting family for tea, and then returning to the house to cook a grand meal (served at 11:30 pm).  We played games and laughed until we fell to the floor exhausted.  It was the best PC Christmas EVER!

This is one of my Moroccan families.  I love them.

Raw flesh splattered the walls, dish-rack full of clean dishes, floor, and just about everything else within reach. My host sister arrived early to help me make the tajine for the crowd of relatives that would arrive later. She attacked the chicken I had just bought from the butcher with unyielding determination. At all cost to my spotless, sterile kitchen, she would conquer the protesting feather bits still stuck in the poultry carcass. I stood helpless in my own battle against the urge to tackle dinner from her wrath. Have you guessed yet that my first tajine didn’t go as planned?

Naima made the tajine because helping Moroccan style (from what I gather so far) means actually doing the work. I didn’t even mix the tajine spice. No, it wasn’t Naima either. The meal actually began at souk in Ait Ourir when we ran into a friend from our local association who sells spices at the weekly market (aka souk). His years of selling spices to husbands of women making tajine inspired him to make a special spice mix perfect for my first tajine. Watch out McCormick!   

Naima arrived just after I had sat down exhausted from cleaning the apartment. It is a new apartment inherited from a prior volunteer and we’ve only spent a few nights in it. We haven’t yet unpacked everything. Naima sent me up the road for a few more ingredients that I had forgotten. When I returned, her 8-year-old daughter, Aisha, had arrived and so had Mark. In an extremely tight kitchen, Naima cleaned the chicken, cut the produce, and directed me to a few menial tasks while Aisha watched and asked a million questions that I struggled to answer in TashHleet. Around 7 pm, Naima’s sister (Rashida), mother (Hadda), and cousin (Nora) arrived. Rashida and Nora joined us in the kitchen.  At this point there were four women and a little girl in a room of approximately 3 sq feet of free space and hot stoves/ovens burning at our elbows.

Nora only speaks Darija, not TashHleet, so I could not understand most of the clucking all around me. I proceeded to mix brownie batter for dessert with Aisha sneaking tastes in spite of my warnings of raw egg poisons and Rashida swiping the spoon to show me how to mix the batter (or rather how to fling flour and brown sludge all over the walls!). After my brownies entered the oven, Naima’s father (Abdesalam), brother (Hassan), sister (Samira), and baby neice (Layla—I helped name her!) and brother-in-law (Said) arrived. They all had a house tour and then asked why we didn’t have a television.

TV is essential for Moroccan dinner parties. I brought out our computer and played Harry Potter before choosing a TashHleet DVD that a young friend had lent us. Said and I rearranged the furniture so everyone could gather comfortably around the small screen. We dove into the brownies before dinner was served (sorry Naima!). Finally, we devoured Naima’s tajine.   

I feel confident I can make tajine myself next time and without defiling the kitchen. I made a couple of hostess mistakes over the course of the evening though. First, I hadn’t made tea because the stove was occupied. Second, I forgot that we needed a washbasin to wash hands prior to eating. Naima helped me find an appropriate kettle & pot substitute. Third, I almost killed the baby.  Maybe that is an exaggeration but she did choke on the mandarin I gave her (oops!).  

Everyone dressed to leave and Hadda pointed to the crumbs under the table telling me to sweep. Mark and I were kissed, thanked, and invited to dinner.  Order restored, we selected which room we each would clean before going to bed.  As I swept and scrubbed, I realized that I have never been so filled with love and joy from chicken bits on my ceiling or under my chairs. The most meaningful part of the evening was when the women took turns praying in our entryway facing Mecca. Without question they felt comfortable practicing their faith in our home. I realize now that my first tajine wasn’t so much about my ability to cook Moroccan food. It was about sharing good food and making a concrete building and strange town feel like home. I can’t think of a better gift for Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your home is filled with love and joy too.

The Berbers I’ve met will walk up mountains in pretty sandals carrying tajines and buta-gas tanks to show you a good time.  They will take you to visit family and serve their best food.  They will laugh with their whole heart and body, and forgive your broken language.  They’ll ask to learn English and search for the English movie channel if they have a TV.  If tired, you can nap among them in the salon with a comfortable pillow and breeze.  They will ask your name and possibly rename you as part of the family.  You are always welcome.

“Mark, the man wants a cookie.”  It was the day before Ramadan and Mark and I were on our way to Marrakesh to stock up on some provisions before the holiday.  It was a notoriously hot day – the kind of day the sun bleaches the landscape white with its burning brightness and shadows of movement are blurred in a steamy haze emitted from anything not yet wrung of moisture.  We gulped warm water from our reused plastic bottle to wash down cookies purchased at a roadside stall near the bus stand.  The man had just boarded and upon sitting beckoned to me for a cookie.  He wasn’t whom you might expect to make the request.  He was fit, hair trimmed, well dressed, and obviously able to buy his own cookies.  We were, however, on a bus in Morocco, a country where sharing food with strangers is as natural as sitting down is in the States for supper with sisters and brothers.  

I have been in Morocco just over six months and I have looked for signs of what is Islam versus what is Moroccan or even what is Berber.  Religion is so tightly woven into the culture that I cannot distinguish what influences behaviors more or less.  If someone were to ask me about my experience with Muslims, I would say they are the warmest, most inviting people I have ever known.  It is almost guaranteed that if you walk into a village hungry and tired, you will soon find yourself drinking tea, eating tajine, and invited to stay the night.  Nothing but your company will be asked for in return.  If they asked me about my experience with Moroccans, I’d say the same.  I can’t distinguish.

Two days returned from Marrakech, a day after the nation-wide fast had begun, Mark and I biked to a village 9 kilometers north of our town center.  We hadn’t eaten breakfast and it was our first bike ride in 10 years.  The rising sun promised to burn once more.  When we arrived at our destination, our host introduced us to four or five men at a small store.  All of the men were fasting, as required by Islam, and would wait out the day without food or water until sunset.  Accompanied by three of the men, we spent the morning touring the fields to see the irrigation system and were quite exhausted by noon when we finished.  We returned to the store and were surprised for what awaited us.  Fresh figs from the trees, fruit from the cacti, cookies, bread, cherry jam, oil, and tea were brought to us on a table. Ice-cold water was poured. We protested knowing that all of the men were suffering too, but they insisted.  We were guests and not Muslim, so we weren’t obliged to fast.  The men rested and laughed as we sheepishly feasted and rehydrated.  They insisted we return after Ramadan for a proper meal with their families.  We spent the heat of the afternoon in the cool salon of our host resting with his family and then road back home. 

I have yet to experience discrimination because we aren’t Muslim.  I’ve only experienced kindness and welcome.  Even as the news of bombs falling in nearby countries emerges, I am treated as an individual separate from politics, as a human being at one with Moroccans, and as a friend.  I hope I do the same, and always share my cookies.