Ok, back to the task of filling in the last few weeks. Here are a few more noteworthy occurrences that I haven’t mentioned.
1. My camera broke during Southern Excursion (it did not appreciate the sandstorm) and I’m waiting until I’m back n the US to get it fixed, so I probably won’t be posting many photos—though I do intend to steal them from my friends (and steal their cameras to take pictures), so I might get a few up. It’s kind of interesting for me to not have a camera. I expected it to bother me a lot more than it does.
2. During ISP time, we are given about $25 a day to cover food and housing and left to figure the rest out on our own. I intended to stay in/near Rabat for the first two weeks to interview students, and I really wanted a kitchen, so I set out on the task of finding a short-term apartment. I searched a lot of sites in French and sent out lots of unreturned emails, but in the end, we had a few possibilities, so one Sunday, Erin and I went out apartment hunting. The apartment of the day was in Temara, a town in the suburbs of Rabat. Both of our host families discouraged us from living there—they said Temara was too far away and that it wasn’t safe, but we decided to at least take a look. So we got directions, got on a bus, and hoped the ticket-checker had understood my Darija when I asked if she could tell us when we were at Massira 1.
Though we had thoroughly researched the location of the apartment and had drawn a map in my journal, when we got off the bus, we realized that it would not help us—we had no idea where we were in relation to the map, and Rabat does not use street signs. Luckily, we met a very nice man (yes, they do exist, and I’m getting more comfortable making judgments as to who they are) who helped us find the café next to our turn.
The apartment was cute, but we decided that Temara was a bit of a treck, slightly sketchy, and my host mom had a friend with an apartment for much cheaper.
3. Erin and I introduced her host fam to oreos and peanut butter. Success.
4. One Saturday, my academic director invited all the students to his vacation house to witness olive pressing. So we got up at some obscene hour, rode the bus for 3.5 hrs, and arrived at a little town in the mountains. The light was so pretty and warm and the town was really cute. Abdalhay’s house was a mini paradise—a handful of different terraces and a big garden at the bottom with banana trees, orange trees, pear trees, a pomegranate tree…
It was really interesting to see the process of making olive oil. The way they do it hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years. It is so simple, but also so efficient. They beat the trees with long poles to make the olives fall, catching them on tarps. Then they scoop the olives up in a bucket and toss them down the hill, catching them in another tarp. This eliminates most of the leaves and sticks, which float off in the breeze, whereas the heavy olives are carried all the way to the second tarp. The pressing process begins with grinding the olives. The olives are dumped in a giant basin, with a grinding stone in the middle, which is pulled round and round by a donkey and people. Next, the ground olive mixture is placed in wicker baskets and placed under a press to squeeze out the oil. Finally, the oil is collected in a basin and filtered with water.
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