Eid Mubarak Said! - Definitely some graphic pictures.

Wach mabrouka! Llah ibark fik! TbarkAllah!

All of the happy phrases we know!

Today was our first Eid al-Adha, or Eid Kbir (Big Feast, in the local darija) in Morocco, and it was definitely somethin'. Of course, we've heard all about it and researched it some and read blog posts from volunteers in previous years, but it's always different in person, you know. And by different, I mean more intense, but in a good way.

The people we know in Taounate are all great humans, and we had six total invitations to different families for the whole sha-bang. We chose to go with the family that we broke fast with the most during Ramadan for the part where a ram is sacrificed and the beginning of the day, then we had a snack and dinner with our host family. We ate a lot of ram, in other words.

I'm going to try and go through the day chronologically from here, including pictures. If you have problems seeing blood or don't want to see the in-process pictures of the slaughter, maybe cover them up with a post-it while you read... because we have quite a few of them. It's not pleasant to look at, but it's an important part of the day. In fact, it's so important that we saw it done on national television a few different times. Fun fact: the King's rams are very clean and very big.

We went to our friends' house at 9:30 this morning, with some homemade cookies and kettle corn as a gift(!), to get things started. They live on the sixth floor of their building, and have a roof where the ram has been for a few days. He was a good lookin' fella and cost them 47,000 ryal - sounds expensive, yeah? Well it is. And it's a big deal to get a good one. That comes to 2350 dirham, or just a little less than $250.

Here he is with some little boys dressed in their best for the holiday:

After we had some tea and went through a series of greetings, they started tying him up and getting everything ready. In order for the whole process to be Halal, the ram can never see the knife; he's not supposed to know what's coming to him. At the same time, they had us look across the street while the neighbors killed theirs. I think it was a way of leading us in to the process gently. It's easier to see something far away than up close. This family also knows that this is our first time experiencing most of these customs and traditions.

Then, well, they slit his throat and waited for him to bleed out. 

Then the real process began. In order to separate the skin from the meat bits, you have to get a layer of air in between them. I had heard about this part before, but wasn't expecting the dad to make a good cut in one leg then blow it up with his mouth. This year was an unusual one, though, because they usually have another dude come to do the throat-slitting and they usually get an air pump for the skin part. But they decided to do it the traditional way this year.

It was crazy to watch it just blow up like a balloon. The next step was to hang it up by the ankles, take the head off, and work all of the skin off. Once the skin was completely off, which took about a half hour (still not sure what's going to happen to it), he slit it open below the ribs and it was time to take out all the internal organs. This part was a whole family affair - even the little kids were helping. Conveniently, they assume we have no idea what we're doing and they set up a seating area for us outside so we could drink some tea while we watched.

That was the hard part. Now the sheep meat has to rest/drain for a day and we'll eat that tomorrow with couscous - we'll be with the same family, so plenty of pictures of that, too!

For today, we ate the inside bits. But first, and definitely most importantly, it needed to be cleaned. It took a long time, but it was also cool to see how thorough they were with every single step. And nothing gets wasted! It's an awesome process.

After all the cleaning, the mom brought out the liver (which she apparently took into the kitchen and cooked at some point...) and the dad cut up pieces of caul fat and wrapped it around small pieces of liver and put them on skewers to be grilled. Liver and fat kabobs for breakfast! Not a joke.

Honestly, with some salt and cumin, they aren't bad. It's called Boufaf. We also had some large intestine that was wrapped around the skewers and grilled for a while. Once again, if you add some salt and cumin, it just tastes like grilled fatty meat stuff. We also had some heart, throat, spleen, and kidney - at some point, I couldn't really tell them apart any more.

At this point, we had to take our leave, but not before securing that we would be there for couscous tomorrow!

Next, we ran home quickly to grab the cookies we made for our host family and went over there. Luckily, the sacrifice was already done, and the skin removed. We just had another chance to eat the Boufaf and some other internal organs, but then also a lot of cookies and tea.

This family knows a few other Americans, so they weren't upset when we said we needed to go home and sleep for a while. Which we definitely did.

Our night was capped off by going back to our host family for dinner at 9 and eating some beef. Host-sister, Najwa, doesn't like sheep organs so much, so Mama Fatima made some grilled beef, which was tasty. Of course, we also had a few pots of tea.

Now, we're home, eating some Pepto, and preparing for more family and sheep times tomorrow!

I, Alexis, also had the very important task of keeping their new kitten, Liya, away from the mess today. I clearly took it very seriously.

Before the Holiday

We've got a big week coming up! This Thursday will be Eid Kbir (in darija, which translates to The Big Feast), or Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice. We are 100% not experts, but Wikipedia generally knows some stuff.

Insha'Allah (God willing), we'll have a better understanding by the end of the week. Or at least a solid understanding of how the festivities go down.

As far as we've heard and noticed, thus far, town kind of goes crazy real quick then shuts down. We went out to the marche today and found it more packed than we've ever seen it (excluding Ramadan nights, of course). Everyone was buying those final things they need for the coming holiday, and it was a little overwhelming. But this time! As compared to Ramadan, we knew what was coming and also knew that we had to get all of our shopping done, too.

Here's Alexis trying to maneuver around a Hanut. 

Here is our bounty for the week:

We spent 89.5 dirham. Ack! So expensive! We're volunteers - not made of money! Yeah, it was approximately $9.23.

(1 kilo of unpopped corn, 2 kilos of macaroni, small box of cornstarch, 8 small (freshly cooked) baguettes, 1 dirham worth of spicy peppers, 1/2 kilo of green peppers, 1 kilo of tomatoes, 1 kilo of red onions, 1 kilo of oranges, small bottle of vinegar, 1 kilo of carrots, 4 packets of vanilla flavoring, and 1 massive head of cauliflower). 

From what we've been told, everything will pretty much close Thursday-Sunday while people are spending time with their families. Here in Taounate, we have a lot of people who just live here but their families live off in the small communities near-by, so maybe everyone will be gone? Or not? Stay tuned.

Anyway, the attitude in town is really peppy and upbeat. It's really a lot like the holiday season in the US and Europe, but it's still summer out and there are sheep everywhere.

The same people who were really excited that we fasted during Ramadan are also really curious about our Eid activities. Here's an example of an average conversation with any of our neighbors or random people who decide to talk to us while we're out and about.

Note: Yes, translated. Also yes, this is how limited our language is.

A&T: Salaam u-alaikum.

Other person: Wa-alaikum salaam. How are you?

A&T: Good. I'm good. How are you?

O: Good. I'm fine. Everything is great. How is your family in America?

T: They're good. Everything is good.

O: The feast is coming this week. Will you be in Taounate?

A: Yes, the feast! Yes, we will be in Taounate at our house.

O: Good! That is great. Did you buy a sheep?

T: No, a sheep is expensive and we are only two people.

O: That's okay! You can buy a small one!

A: The poor things!

O: *laughs for a while* okay, see you! Have a good feast!

We've gotten a bit formulaic about it, but everyone seems happy with our response. 

Here's one of the sheep. Every family has at least one. They'll all be sacrificed on Thursday. Read the Wikipedia. It'll explain better.

Another perspective... sort of

We like to keep things pretty up-beat here on The Blog, which is a conscious decision that we both have made. However, as with anything in life, there are some days or moments that are a lot more difficult or a lot funnier than others, and it's hard to put it in writing. They always say that Peace Corps is "hardest job you'll ever love." Honestly, we're only about a quarter of the way into our time here and only slightly understand what that means, but it's starting to come together.

This blog does a pretty good job of summing up a few of these moments for us. It's not 100% representative of our lives, or of PC Morocco, or any one category of volunteer at all, but it is pretty entertaining. As always, everyone's service is different.

Enjoy!

Fes, Ribat Lkhier, back to Fes, and home.

We are pleased to announce that, since our last post, we've actually done things!

Once a year, all members of each Peace Corps region come together to meet for the first time, catch up, and plan events for the coming year. We're in the North-East region which is the largest and most awkwardly shaped of all the regions. 

It covers the whole Mediterranean coast (hence North) and then swoops down around the edge, including Figuig and the Er Rachidia region (that would be the East part). Because of the size and shape of the area, we met in Fes, which isn't actually even a part of the region. But anyways, we took the hour and a half taxi ride down, said bye to the cat, and had a very productive meeting. 

We were able to spend a lot of time talking to second and third year volunteers, which we both really wanted. We learned about projects that worked well, ones that didn't go as great, and that they all remember what it's like to be new and have no idea what you're doing with your life. Hamdullah (thank god). But now we have all sorts of ideas to move forward with and people to talk to who have already worked through them. 

Plus we had an awesome view. 

From there we decided to head back to Ribat Lkhier, our training site from January-March and visit our host-family. It turns out, they're still the best people in the world. 

We imposed ourselves upon them (not at all, really. They're the most welcoming people in the world) for some couscous and a kaskrut (tea time) and it was like nothing had ever changed. 

While it's definitely not the same as going back to the States, it was awesome to have a whole family of people who are just genuinely interested in our well-being. 

Update: the bees at their second house are flourishing and we got to eat the freshest and most glorious honey ever. 

Special thanks to Steve and Jennie, the volunteers there currently, for letting crash at their lovely home. Hopefully next time, they'll even be there!

After just one night, we hopped back in a taxi to Fes to do some much needed shopping for Enib (we couldn't come back after four days empty handed). But we also had the opportunity to meet up with a friend from Portland who just got here to be a Fulbright English Teaching fellow in Tangier for the next school year. Sure, we had just spent the week with a bunch of Americans, but this was different. Gus was one of Alexis' fellows from our time on the Obama campaign, and he's just a wonderful human. 

And now. We're back home in Taounate. Work starts at the Dar Chebab on Thursday (Insha'Allah) and Enib is moderately pleased.