22 June 2008
The taste of plums is in my mouth. Not quite ripe ones, so they are satisfyingly tart, but still delightfully plumy and a little bit sweet. I wasn’t expecting to have good fruit in the mountains, but when it’s the season, the fruit here is nothing short of very, very good. Plums, peaches, figs, grapes, apples, cherries, apricots, and then oranges, bananas, and dates from the plains and Agadir (which is the California of Morocco, that is you can grow anything there all year round). Spoiled as I have been in the past, I still wish for mangoes, passionfruit and fresh avocadoes, but this is not the tropics. It is the Mediterranean.
I thought I would do a little entry about the food. Now that you know about the fruit, you perhaps think that this must be ideal… and it all depends on how much money you have to spend on food. You can eat very, very well indeed here if you want to and have the money to buy the supplies. I get the feeling, though, that there are certain families that do not eat so well at all.
Traditionally the main meals of the day are served in one very large platter: tajine, dwaz and sksu (couscous) are big traditions. And bread. If you run out of bread but have plenty of say, rice on hand, many a Moroccan will say that they NEED bread. One of my teachers was particularly adamant about this. You would have thought he was going to die if he didn’t get his bread! In my region dwaz is the commoner of the first two (which are more or less the same thing just cooked in a different container). I hadn’t had any tajines here at all until my older host siblings came home to visit.
(non sequiter… my 11-year-old host brother just stood up and started wiggling his hips around to the music as loose-jointedly as any of the hottest Carribean/Latin dancers you’ve ever seen… this culture will never cease to surprise me…)
If my host mother doesn’t want to go to the trouble of cooking a dwaz, she is likely to put some couscous in a pot with milk and salt and butter and then heat it to a boil. We eat this every few nights it seems. Sometimes small noodles or rice are substituted for the couscous. Homemade couscous, by the way. Not store bought. They are decidedly different animals, store bought and homemade, by the way. There are bunches of ways to eat couscous…
Also there is the homemade butter (adhan) and the homemade buttermilk (aghi) and cheese (jbnn)… the first two of which I like. The adhan tastes like yogurt a little bit, and the buttermilk is drunk alone or mixed with couscous for a snack. The jbnn tastes like I imagine the color white would taste if it had been left out a little bit too long…
There are five meals a day: ldftar, thduayif, imshli, kaskarot and iminsi. People also drink atay (tea) and kahwa (coffee) whenever someone comes over to visit, and usually at meals too. Some people call atay Moroccan whiskey. J Sort of… they certainly are well caffeinated from a very early age. The food is, in short, good, but I am missing all kinds of food… ice cream, frozen custard, cheddar cheese, Colby cheese, swiss cheese, reubens, spinach salads, Afghani food, mangoes, Mexican food, and good chocolate.
Monday, June 23, 2008
job description
18 June 2008
My work currently is: Needs Assessment and Personal Integration.
Yes, I know, it sounds terribly interesting and noble.
The thing is, you can’t do development work if you don’t know what is there already. Well, you could (and people have and probably do), but it’s generally not terribly effective or sustainable. So. Assessment it is. Environmental, Social, Financial, and Spiritual. Because it all applies. What does that look like? Me wandering around, and asking as many questions as I can make understood (easier said than done), and asking to meet with people, associations. I am, hopefully, holding my first community meeting next week. Two, actually. One for the men and one for the women. If you are a praying person, PLEASE pray for this… that I would be understood and understand, that I would get a functional seasonal calendar out of it, and also daily activities… we can even do some gender roles assessment if all goes well, but… that relies on lots of things. Like people coming, for one. Like me getting the proper permissions from the proper people. Like me remembering all the words (cheatsheets!!) and grammar structure necessary. Like the chemistry of the whole thing gelling… yes, I am a little intimidated by it all, but here we go!
What about Personal Integration? Well, that’s learning the language, more wandering around and asking questions in the language, and introducing myself and helping people to get to know me and learning the language. I suppose I mentioned language in there somewhere…
So there you go, that’s what it means to be an environmental educator right now. Sounds an awful lot like figuring out what the blue blazes is going on, doesn’t it? :)
My work currently is: Needs Assessment and Personal Integration.
Yes, I know, it sounds terribly interesting and noble.
The thing is, you can’t do development work if you don’t know what is there already. Well, you could (and people have and probably do), but it’s generally not terribly effective or sustainable. So. Assessment it is. Environmental, Social, Financial, and Spiritual. Because it all applies. What does that look like? Me wandering around, and asking as many questions as I can make understood (easier said than done), and asking to meet with people, associations. I am, hopefully, holding my first community meeting next week. Two, actually. One for the men and one for the women. If you are a praying person, PLEASE pray for this… that I would be understood and understand, that I would get a functional seasonal calendar out of it, and also daily activities… we can even do some gender roles assessment if all goes well, but… that relies on lots of things. Like people coming, for one. Like me getting the proper permissions from the proper people. Like me remembering all the words (cheatsheets!!) and grammar structure necessary. Like the chemistry of the whole thing gelling… yes, I am a little intimidated by it all, but here we go!
What about Personal Integration? Well, that’s learning the language, more wandering around and asking questions in the language, and introducing myself and helping people to get to know me and learning the language. I suppose I mentioned language in there somewhere…
So there you go, that’s what it means to be an environmental educator right now. Sounds an awful lot like figuring out what the blue blazes is going on, doesn’t it? :)
thoughts while cutting grass related plants
15 June 2008
I spend a lot of my time harvesting alfalfa. We go out and harvest some for the four cows and 13 or so sheep and goats twice a day most days. We also cut down the weeds of the fields and bring those back. What are you picturing right now? A big, glossy John Deere tractor and hay rake behind it? Perhaps you were more conservative, and thought of an old-fashioned hay-rake behind or horse. Or, closer still, a long handled scythe. All of these are incorrect… we squat on the ground, grab bunches of alfalfa with one hand and fit the small one-handed scythe behind it, cutting it off, bunch by bunch by bunch. Then it is loaded onto the back of a) a mule b) a donkey c) a woman/girl or d) rarely, a man/boy. This is loaded high and wide and cinched down tight with a long rope with a wooden hook or loop on one end of it.
Skills I did not know I would learn… but I’m getting pretty good at it now. It’s not hard, but if you’re not careful you can slice yourself. No, I have not done that… merely abraded one of my fingers slightly…
Speaking of cuts, I also ended up helping out with a large cut on a mule. Now, I’m not a veterinarian, or even a health volunteer, but this was a big gash (4 inches long and pretty wide) and I do know a thing or two about taking care of such things. I am a lifeguard, I have worked with horses for the greater majority of my life, and I have spent long hours following vets around in Wisconsin. Thus, I know that it is quite important to get the wound clean!! And olive oil is OK for little cuts and stuff as far as keeping it clean goes, but you have to wash it thoroughly first… Anyway, we got it flushed out with clean water and ran some good disinfectant through it followed by more water, and attempted to bandage it, but the olive oil put an end to that idea. She seems to be doing OK anyway. Eating and drinking and looks bright-eyed and all that good stuff.
And I wonder once again: is this what I should do with my life? Get my DVM and then find a place to work? Would I want to be a part of the factory farming that is the reality of so much agriculture in the US? I doubt it… sigh. Quandries.
I spend a lot of my time harvesting alfalfa. We go out and harvest some for the four cows and 13 or so sheep and goats twice a day most days. We also cut down the weeds of the fields and bring those back. What are you picturing right now? A big, glossy John Deere tractor and hay rake behind it? Perhaps you were more conservative, and thought of an old-fashioned hay-rake behind or horse. Or, closer still, a long handled scythe. All of these are incorrect… we squat on the ground, grab bunches of alfalfa with one hand and fit the small one-handed scythe behind it, cutting it off, bunch by bunch by bunch. Then it is loaded onto the back of a) a mule b) a donkey c) a woman/girl or d) rarely, a man/boy. This is loaded high and wide and cinched down tight with a long rope with a wooden hook or loop on one end of it.
Skills I did not know I would learn… but I’m getting pretty good at it now. It’s not hard, but if you’re not careful you can slice yourself. No, I have not done that… merely abraded one of my fingers slightly…
Speaking of cuts, I also ended up helping out with a large cut on a mule. Now, I’m not a veterinarian, or even a health volunteer, but this was a big gash (4 inches long and pretty wide) and I do know a thing or two about taking care of such things. I am a lifeguard, I have worked with horses for the greater majority of my life, and I have spent long hours following vets around in Wisconsin. Thus, I know that it is quite important to get the wound clean!! And olive oil is OK for little cuts and stuff as far as keeping it clean goes, but you have to wash it thoroughly first… Anyway, we got it flushed out with clean water and ran some good disinfectant through it followed by more water, and attempted to bandage it, but the olive oil put an end to that idea. She seems to be doing OK anyway. Eating and drinking and looks bright-eyed and all that good stuff.
And I wonder once again: is this what I should do with my life? Get my DVM and then find a place to work? Would I want to be a part of the factory farming that is the reality of so much agriculture in the US? I doubt it… sigh. Quandries.
Monday, June 9, 2008
harvest part 1
08/06/08
It is harvest time here! Yes, I know, it is barely June. But it is still time to harvest the wheat and the rosemary. I have helped some with both of these harvests. It’s fun! In a hard labor, dusty, satisfying sort of way. It had been a while since I had done any real agricultural type work like that, although I used to work on a vegetable farm and then after that worked at a horse farms for years. Lots of hay bales and straw bales got thrown around by rather smallish women over those years at the horse farm… Similarly here: lots of stacks of wheat and sticks get carried around by very small women.
The rosemary harvest has been going on for some weeks now. Rosemary grows wild all over the mountains here… it smells quite beautiful when it rains. Taking advantage of this, some of the people in my village have formed a Medicinal Plants Cooperative. They go out and cut lots and lots of the rosemary, and then pile it in long lines to dry in the sun. Rosemary is a small bush, so what they are cutting off is essentially lots of sticks with pine-needle-like leaves all over them. Once it is deemed dry enough, people take small piles of it and beat it with a stick to knock all of the leaves off. The branches and sticks get set aside and then carried away to be used as firewood. It seems that it is mostly women who do this. I have seen some men working on it or at least overseeing it but for the most it is the women who did the gathering and beating, and only women who carry the wood back to the village.
It’s ingenious, really. They stack the sticks probably 5 feet high, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, tie rope around it, put a burlap bag on their back to keep from getting scratched and lash the whole thing to their backs with the end of the same rope, as though it were a hug, bulky, scratchy backpack. They do the same with alfalfa, wheat, big tree branches, and bags of flour. All of these loads range between 20 and 50 pounds, I would estimate. Keep in mind only a few of these women are over 5’5" and many are a good deal shorter.
The wheat harvest was somewhat different. The men did most of the cutting and binding into sheaves (with a break for tea), and then the women come and haul it all back to the drying and threshing grounds (also with a break for tea). There it stays for a while, all piles of gold. You can hear groups of men working in one part of the valley or another, because they sing when they are harvesting. The women I worked with weren’t singing, though. We also used donkeys and mules to help carry the wheat. It amazes me how much weight they carry too.
I helped with the beating of the rosemary and the carrying of the wheat. Little enough, actually, because sometimes people seem to think I am not strong enough to help. Which I am, right now. But I will not be if I don’t get to do my part carrying heavy loads. I guess that is just a matter of stubbornly offering my help and hopefully it will be accepted. :)
It is harvest time here! Yes, I know, it is barely June. But it is still time to harvest the wheat and the rosemary. I have helped some with both of these harvests. It’s fun! In a hard labor, dusty, satisfying sort of way. It had been a while since I had done any real agricultural type work like that, although I used to work on a vegetable farm and then after that worked at a horse farms for years. Lots of hay bales and straw bales got thrown around by rather smallish women over those years at the horse farm… Similarly here: lots of stacks of wheat and sticks get carried around by very small women.
The rosemary harvest has been going on for some weeks now. Rosemary grows wild all over the mountains here… it smells quite beautiful when it rains. Taking advantage of this, some of the people in my village have formed a Medicinal Plants Cooperative. They go out and cut lots and lots of the rosemary, and then pile it in long lines to dry in the sun. Rosemary is a small bush, so what they are cutting off is essentially lots of sticks with pine-needle-like leaves all over them. Once it is deemed dry enough, people take small piles of it and beat it with a stick to knock all of the leaves off. The branches and sticks get set aside and then carried away to be used as firewood. It seems that it is mostly women who do this. I have seen some men working on it or at least overseeing it but for the most it is the women who did the gathering and beating, and only women who carry the wood back to the village.
It’s ingenious, really. They stack the sticks probably 5 feet high, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, tie rope around it, put a burlap bag on their back to keep from getting scratched and lash the whole thing to their backs with the end of the same rope, as though it were a hug, bulky, scratchy backpack. They do the same with alfalfa, wheat, big tree branches, and bags of flour. All of these loads range between 20 and 50 pounds, I would estimate. Keep in mind only a few of these women are over 5’5" and many are a good deal shorter.
The wheat harvest was somewhat different. The men did most of the cutting and binding into sheaves (with a break for tea), and then the women come and haul it all back to the drying and threshing grounds (also with a break for tea). There it stays for a while, all piles of gold. You can hear groups of men working in one part of the valley or another, because they sing when they are harvesting. The women I worked with weren’t singing, though. We also used donkeys and mules to help carry the wheat. It amazes me how much weight they carry too.
I helped with the beating of the rosemary and the carrying of the wheat. Little enough, actually, because sometimes people seem to think I am not strong enough to help. Which I am, right now. But I will not be if I don’t get to do my part carrying heavy loads. I guess that is just a matter of stubbornly offering my help and hopefully it will be accepted. :)
laughing the hailing rain
07.06.08
Today I went for a hike! I had planned to go with my 12-year-old host brother, but I couldn’t find him right away, so I called one of the neighbor girls over and we went. Her name is Fatima, a pretty common name. As it turns out she is scrappy and curious and loves to laugh. We found my host brother, who proceeded to tag along behind us the whole time.
For weeks I have been eyeing the rock quarry halfway up one of the mountains on one side of the valley. You can see it from well over 50km away as you drive up to my souk town. It is visible as a white gash in the side of the mountain. So we set off, at first up the road and then up a dirt and rock path, scrambling a bit to short cut past several of the switch backs. It is really steep! Up the side of the mountain there is a large expanse of area that is thoroughly grazed by sheep-herders. The only things that grow in abundance are two aromatic herbs: rosemary (azier) and zushin (whose English name I do not know). Everything else is scrappy bits of grass and flowers that have managed to claim a root-holdm but not much of it. Most of the land is packed dirt and/or loose scree and rocks. There are rocky outcroppings all over the place; it is starkly beautiful and in amazing contrast to the lush green of the river floodplain and farm fields.
So we come up over the first long scramble to a long slope upward along the floor of a huge bowl in the mountains. Cutting across the switchbacks we found a bunch of cool bugs! Insects, I should say. Fatima was really helpful with giving me the names of things, which I have dutifully written down and will hopefully commit to memory over time.
Then my host brother decided that we should cut off the next bunch of switch backs by climbing straight up a rockfall in between two rocky outcroppings. Which turned out to be difficult but a lot of fun! I love rock climbing. We met a man from the village up there, where apparently he lives, guarding the entrance to the quarry. He hiked out on the rocks to us, and my host brother stayed and chatted with him. Up and up and up and then along the road a bit and we were there. Big cliffs of white calcite type rock, carved out by the quarrying. It is as if someone took a knife and decided to cut slices out of the mountainside. Very, very impressive to walk into, a little intimidating, too, as I reminded myself that this is a seismically active region. J
About then we heard the first rolls of thunder. The fluffy clouds overhead were morphing… in the ten minutes we were at the top the thunder went from random to consistent and then constant. We started walking down as the first raindrops fell. We met my host brother and started jogging… the smell of rain in dry dust rose up. The drops were startlingly cold to feel as they fell, and then began to pelt down. We passed up an offer to wait out the storm, and kept booking it down the mountain. And then the hail started falling. Lots of it! Somehow it really surprised me. No wonder the rain was so cold! The biggest one we saw was well over a quarter-size in diameter. It was so beautiful, though! Rain is precious here, and we were loving the wet and cold of it after the hot climb up. And the thunder in the air was wonderful. The view of the other side of the valley kept changing as the sun peeked out from behind one cloud or another, lighting up this rock out cropping, that peak, or encrusting a flat plain in light. We kept running and walking alternately, laughing at the hail and our increasing soaked clothes, loving it all! By the time we got back down to the village, we were soaking wet. I took the opportunity to jump in a couple of puddles. You know, seeing as I was already soaked and dirty. Totally worth it, too!!! As we walked down the village road, saying hi to people and laughing at how absurdly wet we were; I chanced to look back. There was a rainbow arching delicately over the exact place we had just ascended and descended.
Today I went for a hike! I had planned to go with my 12-year-old host brother, but I couldn’t find him right away, so I called one of the neighbor girls over and we went. Her name is Fatima, a pretty common name. As it turns out she is scrappy and curious and loves to laugh. We found my host brother, who proceeded to tag along behind us the whole time.
For weeks I have been eyeing the rock quarry halfway up one of the mountains on one side of the valley. You can see it from well over 50km away as you drive up to my souk town. It is visible as a white gash in the side of the mountain. So we set off, at first up the road and then up a dirt and rock path, scrambling a bit to short cut past several of the switch backs. It is really steep! Up the side of the mountain there is a large expanse of area that is thoroughly grazed by sheep-herders. The only things that grow in abundance are two aromatic herbs: rosemary (azier) and zushin (whose English name I do not know). Everything else is scrappy bits of grass and flowers that have managed to claim a root-holdm but not much of it. Most of the land is packed dirt and/or loose scree and rocks. There are rocky outcroppings all over the place; it is starkly beautiful and in amazing contrast to the lush green of the river floodplain and farm fields.
So we come up over the first long scramble to a long slope upward along the floor of a huge bowl in the mountains. Cutting across the switchbacks we found a bunch of cool bugs! Insects, I should say. Fatima was really helpful with giving me the names of things, which I have dutifully written down and will hopefully commit to memory over time.
Then my host brother decided that we should cut off the next bunch of switch backs by climbing straight up a rockfall in between two rocky outcroppings. Which turned out to be difficult but a lot of fun! I love rock climbing. We met a man from the village up there, where apparently he lives, guarding the entrance to the quarry. He hiked out on the rocks to us, and my host brother stayed and chatted with him. Up and up and up and then along the road a bit and we were there. Big cliffs of white calcite type rock, carved out by the quarrying. It is as if someone took a knife and decided to cut slices out of the mountainside. Very, very impressive to walk into, a little intimidating, too, as I reminded myself that this is a seismically active region. J
About then we heard the first rolls of thunder. The fluffy clouds overhead were morphing… in the ten minutes we were at the top the thunder went from random to consistent and then constant. We started walking down as the first raindrops fell. We met my host brother and started jogging… the smell of rain in dry dust rose up. The drops were startlingly cold to feel as they fell, and then began to pelt down. We passed up an offer to wait out the storm, and kept booking it down the mountain. And then the hail started falling. Lots of it! Somehow it really surprised me. No wonder the rain was so cold! The biggest one we saw was well over a quarter-size in diameter. It was so beautiful, though! Rain is precious here, and we were loving the wet and cold of it after the hot climb up. And the thunder in the air was wonderful. The view of the other side of the valley kept changing as the sun peeked out from behind one cloud or another, lighting up this rock out cropping, that peak, or encrusting a flat plain in light. We kept running and walking alternately, laughing at the hail and our increasing soaked clothes, loving it all! By the time we got back down to the village, we were soaking wet. I took the opportunity to jump in a couple of puddles. You know, seeing as I was already soaked and dirty. Totally worth it, too!!! As we walked down the village road, saying hi to people and laughing at how absurdly wet we were; I chanced to look back. There was a rainbow arching delicately over the exact place we had just ascended and descended.
there are many good insects in the world...
01/06/08
New most despised insect: fleas.
That’s right, I have fleas. This kind of disgusts me. I am not certain where I picked them up or if they are just endemic to my host family’s house. I could have picked them up at the wedding I went to. We slept overnight on the floor there. Or it could have been the adorable puppy that I petted (although I washed my hands immediately afterwards and didn’t pick him up. I wanted to but after feeling lots of little bumps on his head I investigated and found the worst tick infestation I have ever seen. The little guy literally had 15 ticks at least per square inch…). Or it could be the huge rug my host family insists I lay my sleeping pad on. Or it could have been the cows. Or something else… anyway, I don’t know. What I do know is that fleas are really irritating. I am learning what they feel like, and have managed to catch six on me. All of them have been summarily torn in two or thrown out the window. I also am learning where they like to hide in garments. In the seams. If you unfold the seams and move quickly (REALLY quickly) you can catch them before the little buggers jump off and disappear into the carpet. And then you can rip them in two. Which is every bit as satisfying as ripping ticks in two. Who used to be my most despised insect-type-thing.
Methods used in my flea control: 1—Catch an kill, as previously described. 2—Spray self and bedding down with bug spray every night. 3—Put sprigs of rosemary all over my room and in all of my clean clothes (it is supposed to discourage insects). 4—Take bedding outside and leave it in the sun for a day. Or two. 5—Put nasty chemicals underneath the blanket that goes under the rug that goes under my sleeping pad. My next plan is to research fleas online and learn more killing methods. If you know any, dish! OK? I need back up plans.
I think the score is Fleas: 30+ Jeannie: 16 or so. But I am staging a comeback.
New most despised insect: fleas.
That’s right, I have fleas. This kind of disgusts me. I am not certain where I picked them up or if they are just endemic to my host family’s house. I could have picked them up at the wedding I went to. We slept overnight on the floor there. Or it could have been the adorable puppy that I petted (although I washed my hands immediately afterwards and didn’t pick him up. I wanted to but after feeling lots of little bumps on his head I investigated and found the worst tick infestation I have ever seen. The little guy literally had 15 ticks at least per square inch…). Or it could be the huge rug my host family insists I lay my sleeping pad on. Or it could have been the cows. Or something else… anyway, I don’t know. What I do know is that fleas are really irritating. I am learning what they feel like, and have managed to catch six on me. All of them have been summarily torn in two or thrown out the window. I also am learning where they like to hide in garments. In the seams. If you unfold the seams and move quickly (REALLY quickly) you can catch them before the little buggers jump off and disappear into the carpet. And then you can rip them in two. Which is every bit as satisfying as ripping ticks in two. Who used to be my most despised insect-type-thing.
Methods used in my flea control: 1—Catch an kill, as previously described. 2—Spray self and bedding down with bug spray every night. 3—Put sprigs of rosemary all over my room and in all of my clean clothes (it is supposed to discourage insects). 4—Take bedding outside and leave it in the sun for a day. Or two. 5—Put nasty chemicals underneath the blanket that goes under the rug that goes under my sleeping pad. My next plan is to research fleas online and learn more killing methods. If you know any, dish! OK? I need back up plans.
I think the score is Fleas: 30+ Jeannie: 16 or so. But I am staging a comeback.
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