Ait Benhaissa is becoming more and more my home everyday. I don’t feel as new here anymore, and people get used to see me walking along the paths that snake through my village. None of the kids try to speak French to me anymore and everyone knows I live here. People are talking to me normally (as normal as Tamazight can be) and asking me questions about everyday stuff.
My conversations have developed into more sophisticated enterprises. My vocabulary is wide, includes both Arabic, Tamazight and Southern Tamazight and my pronunciation works. The subject matter has evolved from “Me Merican like weather nature here I work company but not company America” to speaking confidently about topics like education and government plans for our village.
Still every once and awhile I say something and everything stops for 5 minutes while the community discusses what the fuck Casey is trying to say.
Things are beginning to seem normal, and the things that were bothering me before no longer do. Before I thought the bus to the market was really uncomfortable and sweaty, now I enjoy it. The everyday things like no running water, spotty electricity, squat toilets, dirtiness, etc are not only no longer problems, I look back at my life in the states and wonder how I lived with myself and proclaimed to care at all about the environment. There is nothing you can do with running water you cant do with buckets except pressurize a hose. The lack of consistent electricity does two things to me and my western inclination to modcons; made me realize how little I actually need it (especially in summertime it is possible to use virtually none comfortably), and makes me appreciate nighttime and the amount of light that comes from the moon. For about a week before and after a full moon, an area with low light pollution is completely lit up, and in Morocco the lack of moisture in the atmosphere means unfiltered, pure, bright moonlight.
I am not going to go so far as to say squat toilets are better, but once accustomed to the ritual, one realizes its virtues. I have been told a few times in my life that squat toilets are better for you, and I am not going to go into details, but it really does feel like a more healthy operation when squatting. I will not give up TP though.
The requisite daily shower I became so dependent upon for so long has been tough to let go, but made me realize how egregiously wasteful the process really is. Not only are people like me back home using gallons upon gallons of hot, hot water and large amounts of soap filled with pollutants, but they are showering for virtually no reason. In a land of subsistence agriculture, consistent 100 degree and up heat, mountain pass crossings for everyday chores, hauling water from the spring, and dust storms among other impure realities, I can assure the American reader that they did not get dirty at the office today. Beyond that, they didn’t even get dirty at the gym, if they went.
I use a tea pot, a 4 liter bucket, soap, and a scrubber to shower. I heat the tea pot to almost boiling and mix to create a desirable temperature. I shower less than twice a week on average. I supplement this cleaning ritual with periodic visits to the hammam, or public baths here in Morocco.
If one plans on going to Morocco for any reason, and fails to visit a hammam, they have failed to participate in one of the most unique national pastimes and also failed to remove pounds of dead things from their skin. You have no idea how much dead skin is on you until you get scrubbed to near death by a burly Moroccan man in his scivvys.
Also if you fail to visit a hammam, you have failed to observe what I believe is a key to Moroccan approaches to personal space and interaction. If you trust that everyone is being faithful about their hammam usage, getting scrubbed with proper intensity and returning the scrubbing favor, then this makes other parts of life here much more bearable.
For the country-raised New Hampshire guy, the homophobic feelings involved with early hammam visits were real, and questioning the scrubbers motivations and enthusiasm seemed prudent. After a few goes at it, the barriers get knocked down and the scrubbee realizes the scrubber is only scrubbing because of his need to get the dead skin scrubbed off his back. He wants to get clean. Don’t worry about his attraction to you. He thinks you’re terribly strange looking, probably retarded, and definitely a pussy after watching you fumble with your buckets, burn yourself and suck air in through your teeth when he scrubbed the point of your shoulder.
With these interpersonal obstacles cleared, some of the perceived unpleasantries of Moroccan daily life lose their offensive edge. For example; transportation. To get to a major city like Fes, I have to come in very intimate contact with at least 5 people. If I know this dude I am spooning with in the taxi has been in the hammam, then I know that not only is he clean to a very specific level, but he is over the childish homoerotic hurdles that westerners would have trouble with because you’re touching a mostly naked stranger. With these ideas fully digested, I am able to come to terms with the placement of Homeboy’s hand here on my neck. Homeboy’s hand is not there because he wants to fondle my Adam’s apple or trace my chin-line with his pinky, but because he has to go to Fes, too. Just like Moroccan hammam-goer Mohammed is about as interested in an close moment with the retarded white guy as he is with being covered in dead skin.
All these goods things being said, there are things that truly bother me here.
Last month my good friend from New Hampshire, Adam Hermans stopped by Morocco for a month during his year-long Watson Fellowship in which he was filming monkeys on three continents. Our conversations, always excellent, were fueled by our recent experiences with cultures and adventure. We weeded a lot of things out concerning the way we feel when we are traveling, and we spent time discussing the ups and downs of experiencing new places and cultures.
Adam and I are both well traveled by American standards, and we both have spent the majority of our time abroad in the developing world; no parentally-funded Eurotrips. Both Adam and I have our favorite countries that we’ve visited, and neither of our favorites are attractive at first glance. We both placed desperately poor and war-torn countries at the tops of our list. While we love the feel of the developing world, there are things we hate, and say we hate, about places.
Both of us were annoyed at the all-accepting approach that some people take to other cultures. The “oh its not bad, its just different” attitude is wrong. There are things about cultures that are just bad. Sometimes there is food that is bad, sometimes there are bad people, sometimes there are religious beliefs people follow that are bad. Less often, a place has bad food, bad people, and a bad religion. Maybe the transportation network is bad, too, shit where are you?
My favorite country is the Philippines. It is a wonderful place for me. Unfortunately the Philippines is home to Asia’s worst food. It is terrible. So much ketchup. Just awfulness on your plate. I call it bad because it is.
There is nothing wrong with making value judgments, or any judgments at all when traveling. Yes, you are probably there to experience new things blah blah blah, but if something sucks, it just sucks. Some people will chalk things up to cultural differences, but there are shitty things that cultures include, like Chinese shark-fin soup. It tastes terrible and is terrible for the world, generally. America’s approach to petroleum consumption sucks. Cambodian music videos are so bad they are terrifying and no pleasantness can exist in a building in which one is playing. I don’t care if there are some people that like the practice, if it is garbage, call it garbage. The people that like it are lying to themselves. Don’t fall in the trap.
Morocco, like a lot of the developing world, is full of wicked, corrupt, immoral, depraved, debauched, unscrupulous, ruthless, merciless, cruel, base, and shameless things. Luckily, the things that are awesome overwhelm them, so it is a pretty nice place to be. To ensure that my blog does not get censored by the Government (I am an employee) I will not make specific references to HOW things suck, just mention their categories. This list contains the category of the crappiest thing at the top.
The approach to Females
Dudes
Doing any kind of financial transaction outside a bank
Going to a bar, or outside anywhere at night
The approach to solid waste
The French colonial legacy
There you have it, openness.
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