Back in Morocco

Bonjour,

After being on the road for such a long time, it felt great to return to our house in Morocco. Our first few weeks here, though, were not exactly restful.

We arrived only a few days before school started for Anna and Tommy, and I spent days running around Rabat searching (increasingly frantically) for all of their supplies and textbooks that it turns out I should have purchased back in July(!). Who knew?

Anna and Tommy on the first day of school:

Both public and private schools here do not provide the needed textbooks; instead parents are expected to track them down and purchase them -- to the tune of hundreds of dollars per kid. It's a huge burden for poor families, and it means some poorer kids don't get to go to school. In addition, since no one store has all the books, you have to go from store to store trying to find them all. I visited eight bookstores before I gave up on all of them and resorted to Amazon Francais (we'll see if it works. The books haven't arrived yet).

In addition, just a few days after we returned, we started to welcome more friends for visits. First up: Christina and David.

Christina and David traveled to Fes with Bob, and then we took the kids to the local botanical gardens, yet another complete kid-fest.

Anna and Tommy say these are the best gardens in the world. They have paths, a labyrinth, rope and wood bridges, lots of frogs and turtles, exotic birds, and a snake/spider museum with vicious-looking (and acting) cobras and vipers in it.

This place would make the perfect set for an Indiana Jones movie.

The kids spent most of their time there trying to evade my camera.

But I spy with my little eye something blue....

Oh, look: It's David (and Tommy)!


And look, there is David again!

And again!

So, we returned to Morocco in the middle of Ramadan. I was very glad to be here for part -- but only part -- of the month-long holiday. Those stores and cafes that opened at all were often closed at what were, for us, odd hours of the day, and people were tired, hungry and thirsty. And I felt uncomfortable eating anywhere, knowing that just about everyone around me hadn't had anything to eat or drink since before 4 a.m. that day.

Then, because everyone broke fast at the same time, around 7 or 7:30 p.m. (after the call to prayer or a cannon sounds), the streets would suddenly empty and become eerily quiet for about an hour. But after 8:30 p.m., the parties began: The medina, stores and restaurants were hopping with animated people, rushing around doing all the things they had little energy or enthusiasm for earlier in the day. The traffic was heavy and noisy until the wee hours of the morning.

We were invited to join our friends Fouad and his family for Iftar, the meal used to break the fast, with harira (a chick pea-based soup), dates, hard-boiled eggs, salads, Moroccan crepes, sweet cookies (dripping with honey), a crumbly sesame paste, and bread. It was delicious, but you can imagine growing tired of these items by the end of the month (Fouad says that they understandably choose to eat some of these items only during Ramadan).

Coming from a country with many religions, it was fascinating to see how these traditions are shared and celebrated by nearly everyone here -- and how completely it permeates the culture.

A bientot,

Kim