Leid Mqur...

Explaining Leid Mqur to Americans is as difficult as explaining Christmas or Thanksgiving to Moroccans. I don't know much about Leid except that it is one of the biggest religious holidays for Moroccans. A big focus of the holiday is charity and of course, getting together with family. The charity ususally consists in giving those less forntunate some of the sheep that has been slaughtered. Every family, with the means to do so, is expected to slaughter a sheep on Leid. They cannot, however, slaughter it until the king hs slaughtered his own sheep. The head of each family slaughters a sheep and then proceeds to skin it and dissect it. There is a certain order in which the sheep is eaten. In my town eat the liver, heart, pancreas and intestines on the first day. Most of these are eaten on skewers. One such delicacy is heart wrapped in tummy fat skewers. Yum! Some of the photos below show my host dad slaughtering the sheep for our family (you can also see some of the women preparing the organs for consumption just as they come out of the sheep).
The pictures with the boujlood (guys wearing sheep skins) may be very specific to this town. I know only of one other town near Marrakech that does this. The night of Leid a bunch of young guys wear donated sheep skins and parade around town asking for monetary donations. Notice that those skins were on the sheep only a few hours prior to this parade. They do this procession (while beating drums) for a coupe of nights in a row. It really is quite interesting to partake in.
This Leid, like the one at the end of Ramadan; requires that people visit their neighbors and friends. I made the usual rounds and drank tons of really sweet tea and ate bunches of sweets. Lucky that I am vegetarian because I got to skip all the skewers at every house that I went to. Can't wait for Leid next year :)

keyboard isnt working... will write about leid later
se ths owits ig ntirw hi sie

Utfl

Its snowing! I can't feel my toes haha. We had our first big snow the day before thanksgiving, but that snow melted within a day. Monday's snow is still here! Yesterday I walked around on roofs observing what everyone in town was busy with. Now that it finally stopped snowing our poor mud roofs are laden with snow and in some cases are leaking as well. Everyone has been up on their roofs shoveling snow. My town looks quite beatiful right now, but its rather cold for someone that has lived in southern california her whole life :)







Im standing on my sitemates roof surveying the snowfall.

My sitemate in my my muddy alley. Earlier in the day everything was pretty and white and now as the snow is shoveled and starts melting, we just have a muddy slippery alley.

Utfl! (snow)

I'm actually standing on a roof while taking this photo. And so are those guys. They are shoveling the snow off their houses to stop leaking in some cases or possible caving in of the roof.

Photos...

Part of our bridge got washed out during the recent storms that we were having so now we have to climb over these rocks to get to the other parts of town. (thats my sitemate by the way)

My town. Isn't it pretty?

This is how people in my town get wood for our fornus. People that live on the other side of the mountain bring wood on horses or donkeys. They walk about 2-3hrs to get to our town and then walk back. Sometimes they make various trips in a day, especially when the weather is nice and sunny.

My fornu! This is a little wood burning stove that has pipes going out through my roof. I make fires in it to keep my room warm. If it wasn't for this amazing stove, I think I would freeze :/

I went to a craft fair with the women of the weaving cooperative that we have in town. I helped them set up this zween tent. Isn't it pretty. They make this kind of stuff everyday. Its incredible how dedicated the women are to their work, especially now that its freezing cold in the building in which they work.

This is one of the nearest large towns from where I live. This is a view of Azrou and its beautiful mosque as seen from the roof of one of the city's hotels.

In the Fes medina. These guys bang on these pots until they shape them perfectly. The sounds of their work just fit in perfectly with the atmosphere of the rest of the medina.

A Little About My Work

my town from the mountain behind it :)



I realize that I have not mentioned much about the work that I am supposed to be doing here. My first six months in site were to be dedicated to learning the local language and to assessing community needs as they relate to health. I am currently in the sixth month of service and I am rather disappointed with the way that my language has progressed. I have, however, been assessing community needs.
My job is really that of a job educator. I can educate through whatever medium suits my community best, whether that be by health education at the elementary school, tea talks, or whatever else I can think of. I don't yet have permission to teach at the school, but it is the place where I most want to work. In the meantime I have been hanging out at the clinic and doing informal education primarily with the women of the weaving cooperative in my site. The women are very curious about the causes of hypertension and high cholesterol, so I have been telling them what little I know about these topics. In the future (iunshallah) I want to talk to more women about these topics and others such as birth control and STIs. I was surprised to learn that many women have STIs, but don't know what they are. Also surprising was the fact that many women use birth control, but most use only the pill and use it rather irregularly. I want to tell them about its proper usage and also to inform them about alternative methods.
In the schools, I want to focus on three topics: dental hygiene, general hygiene, and nutrion. These are all topics that I feel are good to focus on for kids because at this age bad habits can still be changed.
I will write more about my work in the future.

Anzar, anzar, anzar

Rain, rain, rain. Its been raining everyday for some time now. We haven't had people or animals dying in my town like is the case in other parts of my province, but there have been many crops lost and just LOTS of flooding. I bought my veggies in a very muddy souk today. But my biggest problem thus far has been my leaky roof. I know this may not be of much interest to anyone, but seriously, a leaky roof is no fun.
Last night I awoke around midnight because little drops of water were falling on my pillow! I had to rearrange all my furniture(ponjs, table, and rug) so that nothing would be in the path of the leaks(all 10 or so of them!) My poor mud house... I think that my landlord is probably mixing mud and straw(hay) right now to remedy this small mushkil (problem).
Hopefully this rain eases up a bit because there are many areas that are super flooded and many people are losing their homes.

Ramadan Pt. 2

Ramadan is finally over. I can eat lunch again!
The last day of Ramadan is called the 'laeid' and was actually quite interesting. We didnt know when the last day was until late the night before because he had to wait until they could spot the new moon. Once the official news arrived that Ramadan had ended we had a big dinner and got henna done :)
The next morning felt like halloween, as my sitemate described it. Everyone puts on new clothes and goes around town to relatives and friends homes. They stay and have some sweets and a cup of tea and then move on to another home. My sitemate and I baked sweets early in the morning and then started our rounds. We passed out date 'cookies' and banana bread since we werent staying at home to invite people in for tea. We went from house to house eating cookies and drinking very sweet tea. Despite how full I got and the amount of sugar that I consumed, it was fun nonetheless.
Maybe next year ill stay home and invite my neighbors over :)