A Day Off

13 March 2010

A Day Off

It’s Saturday, one of the days I technically have “off.” As a ‘cultural exchange agent’ I don’t really get time off as long as I am in People-of-Ali, my site. It’s actually Aixht Ali Yussef in Tashelheit and something else entirely on the map, but that’s the translation into English. So, I woke up at about 8:30 am this morning, and wiggled out of my sleeping bag—a bit of a task for a still-fuzzy-headed person. I have been doing laundry every day for 4 days and I still have laundry to do, and since I could already see the sun coming in through the window, I was anxious to get started. This week was cold, rainy, foggy, drizzly, damp; in other words, truly terrible laundry weather. For the weeks before that I have been traveling a lot, and that means laundry piles up. When you run out of underclothes, you are forced to wash something, but things dry poorly when you hang them up in weather that is raining one second and sunny the next. My suqmate E told me that my mountains look like the Misty Mountains (Lord of the Rings if you didn’t know!). I agree. They certainly felt misty!

So, this morning I washed dishes so that I could fill up the bucket for the rinses of the laundry, so that I could get the laundry out on the line so that the big bucket would be free for me to take a bucket-shower. No, I don’t have very many buckets. It’s actually kind of relaxing, sitting down in my doorstep with the sun on my back, listening to the noises of the village and scrubbing my clothing piece by piece. It’s also rather satisfying to hang it up on the line and see it waving brightly in the wind. I love how laundry on a line looks… it says, “someone lives here, someone is cleaning and keeping up with life, someone has done something today: this, at least!” And you can see if there are babies, or kids, or young women, or old women, stylish women or any of those same things for men. It tells a bit of the story of that household.

After laundry I took the bucket shower, which means I heated up two kettles of water, and carried my towel, my big bucket, and my heater into my bathroom that’s outside downstairs in the animal “barn” section of the house. I can’t walk to my shower wrapped in a towel because people can see onto my balcony. People routinely tell me “I saw your laundry out today,” or when it’s hot weather, “I saw you wearing a tank top on your roof. But it’s OK because it’s your house.” Needless to say, an appearance wrapped in only a towel would be occasion for comment! So I strip inside and put on a long apron and my fleece jacket and flip flops for the trip to the bathroom.

I ate lunch on my stairs to let my hair dry, and to enjoy the sun on my back and to read a book. A novel, just for fun! I’ve been reading a book of recent Arab history called “The Arab Predicament,” and while I am thoroughly enjoying it, it feels more like work than fun.

I took my chicken out to eat the grass and plants growing outside my door—all that rain means I have a lawn of sorts! There are two roosters who are courting her. Actually, one is courting her, and the other makes a mad dive-bombing dash for her whenever he sees her. The courtly one visited today, making a very impressive show as he made a beeline for us. She watched him coyly, eating daintily and keeping watch surreptitiously. He strutted, flapped, crowed, and flew as he came toward us, and then made the circling motion with one wing dragging against his legs making a sharp thwacking noise. Well, t least I was impressed. She’s still shy from the other rooster, the dive-bombing one, and Mr. Courtly wisely backed off when she shied away. He retreated to his little harem of hens, but I swear he sent them after her to gather her into the fold, as it were. They came over and tried to lure her away. Succeeded, too; I had to go chase her back to my house.

Such a lovely day just cried out for a walk. There’s a path that follows the river downstream. You can see it from the road in and out of town, and I have been curious about since I first saw it a year and a half ago. I told myself, today is the day I explore it! Anyway, it is my day off, and so I went for a walk! I brought my camera, and kept snapping pictures of the scenery. The path starts from the far side of Ait Ahendor, across town from me. Then it plunges down into the ravine where the little river is, and climbs up through “Mars.” I call it Mars because there’s a spot where the ground goes from orange to grey to teal to red to purple all in the space of a couple hundred feet. Then it tops this ridge and there are the last three houses of People-of-Ali. No way to avoid an invitation for coffee, but I told them I would stop by on the way back. Not that I don’t want to visit, but visiting is cultural exchange, and kind of work. The trail then drops precipitously down toward the river in a zig-zag, and follows the river from a safe distance. There is vicious erosion down there: deep channels cut through the earth, and there are big ravines and canyons. I found a little spring trickling down one. In some places the path runs along the top of a small cliff, in some places you find yourself scrambling over the rocky lip of a ravine and then up the other side. The mules here are pretty badass to carry heavy loads over these paths.
The rocks look like someone took them and turned them on their sides, creating long stripes running up and down the mountains. As if God took a comb and ran it through the rocky ground. The river goes from sort of meandering the sort of wide valley by the village to rushing headlong through shallow canyons by this path, and twisting between the feet of the mountains that push it this way and that. The view exposes new terrain behind each turn, and it was lovely. The wind was whistling around the corners, and pulling my hair out of my braid, freezing my nose and ears and fingers, and making my eyes water like tears. I loved it! I called my boyfriend and told him how cool it was. So often I am walking around here and I wish, I wish, I could show it to you all! It’s so beautiful, yet so stark. See what happens when you remove all the trees and let erosion play unhindered. See what this really cool geology looks like, see how rugged terrain is completely normal for the people here. I have realized over and over what a soft land I come from. The sun dipped behind the huge peaks across the valley, and the temperature dipped with it. I turned around. On the way back, I did stop for coffee.

I think I will make Cream of Vegetable Soup, from cauliflower, carrots and parsnips/turnips. And maybe pumpkin bread for desert. I may watch Lord of the Rings, too, since I can’t seem to stop thinking about those “Misty Mountains.” Or maybe, I will just wiggle back into my sleeping back and read some more of that novel!