Rachidia Continues

It has been a long time since I have written anything worth its salt, but I hope that today I can make up for some of my recent absence.

Things have been good here, and I continue in Rachidia, with no definite date of departure. At the moment, I am thinking of staying until the 14th, at which point I need to begin to work my way up to Portugal.

My days vary in their activities, though every day has a number of similarities. I seem to do a lot of walking or cycling, a lot of sitting around doing nothing, and a lot of eating and drinking of tea.

Yesterday, for example, serves as a perfect average day here for me. I woke up early and headed off with Abdou and his brother to visit with all the friends and family that work in the painting business. We hung around for hours, tried our hand at waxing the walls (they have some very strange ideas, at least for me, regarding painting here, many of which involve glitter), cooked lunch (my first real tajine-it was simple but delicious), hung around some more, took a walk around the nearby university, fell asleep in the grass, and went back to the house that was being painted.

After hanging around some more, Abdou and I rode our bikes over to the town zoo--a very nice park with three or four sad cages filled with sad animals--and walked around a bit before heading back to our bikes, and ultimately, back home.

After taking a quick "shower" (more in a moment regarding hygiene), I headed over to the house of some other friends, Hassan and Said. I had been invited the night before to have dinner there, and Driss and Abdou were to join me. There, for nearly three hours, we were stuffed with food and tea. Everything was delicious, but the quantities were absurd, and as a guest, I am spoiled to the point of being ridiculous. Not to mention that only today did I learn a nearly failproof manner of denying more food or drink. More on that soon as well.

Needless to say, we left the full and exhausted, after having listened to multiple cds of local bands and seen every photograph in the house. A wonderful time, though full of traditions that can at time be somewhat tiring.

While this sort of day has been typical for me, I am starting to see that the typical day for locals is not quite as idyllic. Now, obviously life is difficult here. I am not so naive as to not realize that nearly everyone here wishes that they had more. Nor do I think that the men sitting around idle at their jobs would not like to be working, if only there were work to be had.

Nonetheless, I am not sure that I realized the extent to which violence, death, drug and alcohol abuse, and the like figured into the daily life of many here.

I began to notice this with news of universities around the country, and the violence between various groups, political and cultural, that exists. The most prevalent problems seem to be between the Amazigh (Berbers) and a group known as the 'Camaradas' (Che Guevara wannabes, as far as I can tell). The day that I arrived in Meknes, a 'Comrade' had been killed, and two have recently been killed here in Rachidia. That would explain the military presence around the University, I guess.

As if this were not enough, the wedding that I attended the other night (which I left early to go to sleep) was also the scene of acts of violence. Apparently some people from a neighboring community came to the wedding (all such events are held outside, and there is therefore no attempt to control attendance--all are welcome to attend certain parts of the ceremony). They had apparently been drinking, never a good thing for Moroccans (read: often inexperienced and/or socially outcast). Around four in the morning, various fights broke out (all contained within that same group) over silly affairs. Knives were drawn, bottles were broken, and blood was drawn. Later on, this same group set fire to a local man's handcrafted cane fences, which lie prone in the road at all times, ready to be sold.

I continue. Yesterday at Meski (the local natural springs where I often go swimming), a man and a woman, (a prostitute), fell into the water after having drank quite a bit of Mehhya (a local spirit, very strong, originally a Jewish beverage). When they pulled themselves out of the pool, the woman spit the water in her mouth in the man's face. He promptly began to beat her up, she returned the blows, cops were called, and they were both hauled off in handcuffs.

And to complete the trifecta of local blood and violence, a few days ago, again at Meski, a man fell from a palm tree while retrieving his bag (people often put their bags high in the tree so as to deter any theft) and died while waiting for an ambulance.

Now, all of these acts and accidents are not here described to highlight dangers of Morocco. Morocco is, on the contrary, a very safe country (note that all the violence described was within specific groups with specific grudges, and furthermore that I don't often climb palm trees). What I do mean to describe is an omnipresence of "real life" that seems to be quite expected and accepted here.

Fights happen, as does death, and people don't seem all that fazed by things. Driss is eighteen years old, and saw this young man die on the ground next to what is basically his town pool. I saw him later that day, and he did not seem disturbed or overly upset. In fact, he only told me about this today. If I had seen such a thing, I think that I would have nightmares and be unable to think of anything else, at least for a few hours, if not days.

This is, of course, but one of the many ways in which life here in Morocco differs vastly from life in the US and many other countries. This is the theme that I would like to begin to expand on in this blog for the remainder of the trip, and I hope to not fail in this plan. For today, I would like to present a few interesting points and thoughts about marriage.

First, let me get this out of the way, and leave this clear and simple. Cousins get married here all the time.

I guess that I should not be overly surprised, but I am.

I asked Driss the other day how a friend of ours had met his wife, as I am quite interested in the marriage traditions here. Basically, I was aware that mothers are often responsible for the organization of what is essentially an arranged marriage. This is not to say that freedom doesn't enter into the equation (at least for the man, I am not sure about the women, though I think they too have veto rights). On the contrary, I have spoken to many young men who tell me that they have told their mother to find them a wife. They seem to accept, and even enjoy, this passing of the marital buck. The mothers, it seems, get to work with enthusiasm.

Anyway, I asked Driss how this friend of ours had met his wife, and he began to describe--"Well, she is the daughter of his mother's brother".

"You mean his cousin?" I asked him.

"Yes, his cousin," he calmly replied. I continued to ask about the wives of other men that I know, and in the two or three cases I asked about, all of the marriages were marriages between first cousins.

I must say, I found this quite shocking, though I say again that I should not be surprised, as this happens all around the globe. Still, it is weird to see something so accepted in one place and so socially unacceptable in another.

Now, I must also say, and I mean no disrespect (although, cultural relativism aside, I find cousins to be a bit too close genetically for marriage) that, as far as my untrained eye can tell, this custom has its consequences. Just in this tiny suburb of a tiny city, I have met one person with Down's Syndrome, one man referred to as "crazy", but who obviously has some sort of mental retardation, and one deaf man. I have seen children and grown men with thumbs growing off of their thumbs, and more cross-eyed people than I have ever before seen. In general, people seem fine, and healthy, often healthier in fact than most Americans, but the percentage of birth defects seems too high for it not to be a direct consequence of this kind of marriage.

All that aside, I must say that a Moroccan marriage is a glorious affair (read my old post on that from last summer) and something not to be missed, if possible, by anyone visiting Morocco.

Okay y'all, that's it for today. Off to the desert-like roadside with some friends, a guitar, and a hookah. More soon on hygiene and more.