A Man, a bus, a border

Our last assignment was to write a reporter's journal about an experience we had with someone or something. I wrote this while the group was on our Northern excursion. Enjoy.

A Man, a Bus, a Border

Granger Tripp

FNIDEQ, MOROCCO – He stumbles towards my resting spot in the bus’ cool shade and asks in spit-slurred Spanish:

-       Where are you from?

-       We are a group of American students who are studying in Rabat.

-       How many students are there?

-       I don’t know. 40 maybe.

It’s nice to converse (albeit poorly) with someone in a foreign language. He walks slowly to the bus’ open door and looks inside before turning his fuzzy gaze back to me.

-       Where’s the ------?

-       What?

-       -------?

-       I don’t understand.

He pretends to turn an oversized steering wheel while making deathly engine noises like a key in a vacuum.

-       Ah…he’s [the driver] on the bus.

He staggers back to the door and takes a longer look in.

-       No! He’s not! He’s not! He’s not there! Look! Come ------! The driver isn’t here!

I don’t know why he’s yelling, where his dying urge to find the bus driver comes from but since I know he’s right, I remain still, confused and worried and afraid of his intentions.

-             Yes. On the bus. Yes he is.

-             No he’s not! Come here and look!

I don’t respond and the next minute is spent in silence, his screaming black pupil directed at the driver’s empty seat and mine towards him. What does he want? Money? A ride to Casablanca? Student hostages for negotiation with the American government? Sutton comes outside and Ella does too and I can’t help but notice her outfit, which is a deep and windy blue like the Spanish coast. The man continues talking drunken gibberish.

-       Where’s the driver? Where are you going? ------- Spain? ---- France?

We stand silent and stare and don’t answer because there isn’t one. I call Badrdine, our Moroccan program coordinator, over. He speaks to the man with a forgiving softness, like he is some confused child. Although the man refuses to leave, Badr can’t stay so he gives me the signal to keep an eye on him. Sutton tries to tell him off too.

-       No, thank you. Enough. No.

-       Shut your mouth. ----------- me. You ------- ------ me. You don’t know what ----------. Don’t say anything to me. All I want ----------. I’m the son ----------- of this town, I ------------ do ---------- you. I’m his son! You faggot. You little ---------, shut your mouth. You are a bitch, you -------.

I don’t understand everything he yells. Sutton can but he knows he can’t punch so he stares, straightens his back and crosses his arms for protection against the slew of insults soaring. The man begins flapping his arms like a bird with slow and sticky wings, turning the normally elegant motion into something rigid and stiff. Why is he so desperate? What is he trying to fly away from? How did his eyes learn that dialectic dance, soaring then crashing, in hope and then despair? Noel, the other program coordinator, watches for a minute before coming over:

-       He’s crazy, please get back on the bus.

We leave the man with a look, something between pity and fear, and take our seats. When everyone is aboard and the door is closed and the wheels moving, Badrdine walks to me and I ask him:

-       What did he want?

-       He thought we were going to Spain and then to France. For work maybe or maybe he had a brother there, I’m not sure. I told him we weren’t going to France, that we’re going back to Rabat but I guess he thought I was lying. He was crazy, drunk. But, yeah, he wanted us to sneak him into France.

A flashback to earlier in the day. 40 American students crossing into Morocco from Ceuta, Spain; red faced, noisy and drunk from the two hours they spent there. They proudly hand their passports to the border guards and the loud stamp like welcome back (anytime). It’s strange how differently people can see the same thing. To us, that fateful fence, which we could see as we talked to the man outside the bus, appeared as some open gate to paradise, while all he could see was a prison wall and the bus his ticket out.

Eid al-Adha: An Experience (photos)

It’s 4:30PM on Wednesday, October 16^th, 2013 and the scene in Rabat’s Medina can be best described as apocalyptic. Skulls roasting on the bonfires that run the length of Avenue Mohammad V, tangles of blood-stained fur lining the deserted streets and men with knives for arms walking home in shirts covered with the entrails of the slaughtered.

Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice honors the prophet Ibrahim’s obedience to God when asked to sacrifice his son, Isma’il. Just as he is about to sacrifice the boy, Allah came and gave him a sheep to sacrifice instead, a thank you to Ibrahim for his devout faith.

The preparations became noticeable a little over a week ago; the nail-on-chalkboard screech of knives being sharpened, fire starter being sold in the market for BBQ and the cries of sheep as they were wildly carted around the Medina. And at around 10:00AM on the 16^th, families began retreating into their homes for the sacrifice. 

It’s a lengthy process that takes the manpower of at least two or three. The sheep is held down and its throat is cut, releasing a strong stream of blood that seems to always find its way onto somebody. After the sheep dies, the head is removed and set aside while the rest of the body is hung up and skinned. The difference between a skinned and un-skinned sheep is dramatic. What once had a powerful presence and was large and horned and was the off-white color of a dirty polar bear becomes something half its size, sticky and pink and exposed. 

Once the sheep is naked, the innards can be removed, washed and saved. Many families choose to eat these parts of the animal for lunch later in the day. The rest of the carcass is left hanging overnight. It is taken down and butchered the next morning. 

It might seem archaic but one must consider the religious and cultural implications of the holiday. The slaughter is a tradition that is past down through generations and is symbolic of the Muslim’s deep devotion to their religion. They don’t waste any edible part of the animal; it is either consumed by the family or donated to the poor (it’s expected that every family donate at least a part of the animal they sacrifice so families that can’t afford a sheep can still participate). In this sense, the holiday is a chance for Moroccans to reach out to people, any people, and interact with them in a way that isn’t always possible during the repetitive grind of everyday life.  

It’s also important to note the immense joy this holiday brings about among people. Talk of Eid al-Adha begins weeks ahead of time, growing louder as the day nears. When the sheep arrives at the house it's an occasion, the children go out to feed it during it's final days on the terrace and the sacrifice itself feels more a celebration of life, love and religion than it does anything else.

By the time the sacrifice is over, preparations for lunch have began. Bread, dips and vegetables are set out while the sheep intestine, heart, liver and lungs are cooked. Loud chatter and laughs from surrounding terraces replace the cries of the sheep. And beneath the swinging carcass, the family comes together, gives thanks to what brought them there and digs in.

There are photos below but please know that they are very gruesome. Please, if you don’t like blood or decapitated heads or counted sheep as a child and still sometimes, on nights when you can’t fall asleep, picture those large and fluffy creatures hopping over a white picket fence, basking in what’s more a green and grassy sea than just a mere field, not harming anything or anyone, just waiting patiently for their turn to get to the other side of that fateful fence and soaring when it is, don’t look at them! Note the length of this warning. Also, ensure there aren’t any small children around. I’m going to put a lot of space between this paragraph and the next so you have time to decide.

You’ll note that the sheep in the first picture isn’t the sheep being slaughtered in the photos. This is because the photos are from the slaughter of another family’s sheep, which my family attended. After this sacrifice, we returned home to slaughter our own sheep.

I think it's good "journalism ethics" to point out that the knife was placed here purposefully by Mama Fatima (who has a keen eye for photography) for the sake of the photo.

Finally, my friend Sutton, who is a film maker, made this short documentary about Eid al-Adha and I narrated/wrote it (you will notice some striking similarities between what is written above and what is narrated in the film). Check it out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF3R8PVPRDA

Two articles and a story pitch

Hi Guys,
Below I've posted two of the articles I've written during my time here along with the first draft of my independent study pitch! I'll have an Eid post soon!

Sugar in Moroccan Diet Causing Major Health Concerns

by Granger Tripp

Words: 395

Four oversized sugar cubes sit atop the mint leaves resting at the bottom of Fatima Hasson’s tin teapot. The taste is tough to beat – the cool refreshment of mint combined with the sugar’s sappy sweetness.

But, the excessive sugar consumption in the Moroccan diet comes at a price. The rate of diabetes is high in the country and is expected to double by 2030, according to the World Health Organization.

“About one and a half million people suffer from diabetes in our country,” said Dr. Jamal Belkhadir, President of the Moroccan League for the Fight Against Diabetes, in an article he published earlier this year.

“The latest national estimates now reach nine percent for those older than 20 years,” he said. “And if we consider the age beyond 50 years, the prevalence exceeds 14 percent.”

On top of this, Dr. Belkhadir approximates that almost 50 percent of diabetics don’t know they suffer from the disease due to lack of awareness and proper screening.

“The diagnosis of diabetes is usually made on the occasion of suggestive symptoms,” he said. This means the disease often progresses before it’s treated causing other complications such as hypertension, infection and blindness.

For breakfast, Fatima offers her family sweetened tea or coffee, a baguette with butter and apricot jelly spread on top. As a side, five or six crème-filled cookies lay in a pile on the tray. It’s not her intention to serve a breakfast that lacks nutritious value, for her it’s simply what makes sense.

After 53.4 billion dirhams, about $6.5 billion, in government subsidies, sugar, flour and oil have been made cheaply available to Moroccan families.

Dr. Belkhadir believes the answer lies in educating the Moroccan public about their eating habits and the consequences those choices have on their health.

“Education should be considered, and rightly, as one of the most important pillars for the treatment and care of diabetes,” he said.

However, it may not be that simple, considering that less than 70 percent of Moroccans are literate, a percentage that drops even lower among women and in rural populations.

Creating a public that is well informed on the food choices it makes and the health consequences will take time, energy and money. With the focus of the government turned to issues like unemployment, education and health care, a food revolution doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. 

Rural Moroccan Farmers Would Benefit From Insurance Coverage

by Granger Tripp

Word count: 466

Rachid Lazaar, 26, needs only a steady flow of water and a small hoe to flood his entire field before the next crop is planted. He carves countless narrow valleys into the barren land to funnel the water exactly where he needs to go, it seems more a work of art than fieldwork.     

With the hottest and driest part of the year over, watering his land like this is a relief for Lazaar. Drought is a dangerous reality for small, rural farmers in Morocco and it appears he has escaped it, at least this year.

“I’m lucky,” Lazaar says. “The region where I work doesn’t suffer too much from drought, it’s very rich agricultural land.”

During a drought season, farmers get little to no yield from their land, drastically reducing or eliminating revenue. With less money in their pockets, farmers are forced to cut back on spending the next growing season, starting a vicious cycle.

Drought also has consequences beyond just the farmer’s lives in the fields. It also means less money for their families to spend on food, clothes and supplies.

To supplement his farming, Lazaar has a second job as a metal worker. Although the income he gets from this job is less, it is steadier than what he makes doing farm work. This allows Lazaar some breathing room when he doesn’t reach his desired yield.

The volatility of the rural economy could be drastically reduced for small farmers, like Lazaar, if they were able to purchase insurance coverage for their land. However, these farmers are often overlooked by insurance companies who concentrate on insuring the country’s largest landowners.

“The service I can afford doesn’t guarantee full coverage of what I’ve lost,” Lazaar says,  highlighting the disconnect between what coverage rural farmers need and what insurance companies offer them.    

Studies show that the implantation of rain-based insurance for small, rural farmers in Morocco could combat the instability within the agricultural sector of the economy. One such study, done in 2001 by The World Bank, found that these programs “could have potentially significant benefits” for farmers and could go even further by “increasing the potential interest of international re-insurers and capital markets in investing.”

This seems as though it would be quite appealing to the Moroccan government as it strives to accomplish “Plan Maroc Vert (The Plan for a Green Morocco).” This initiative aims to double the value of the country’s agricultural sector, which currently sits at 19% of the GDP, while adding 1.5 million jobs to it by the year 2020.

However, until small farmers, like Lazaar, can find a way to protect themselves from the volatile economy they work within, “Plan Maroc Vert” will be merely relying on good growing seasons rather than the farmers who give life to the country’s agricultural sector.  

Granger Tripp

ISJ Pitch: Draft 1

William S. Burroughs shooting heroine and writing his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, in the city of Tangier, Jimi Hendrix conceiving the guitar riffs that brought him such fame in the town of Mirleft, and the Living Theater perfecting their experimental fusion of art and performance in Essaouira. While it’s an often-overlooked part of the Morocco’s history, American counterculture runs deep in the veins of the country and is still present today.

What made Morocco so appealing? An Islamic country, with strict rules and harsh punishments for the sex, drugs and liberal lifestyle these counterculture icons are so known for seems like the last place they would want to go. How did the country affect their work? And how did they affect the country?

By interviewing counterculture experts, seeing the places these artists spent time, and searching for those who fell so in love with the country that they never left, this story will tell a muted history of Morocco and the hub it once was for the freethinkers of America’s past.  

The Village Stay (Saturday, October 5th – Friday, October 11th)

Immediate celebrity status, the children from the village stared in awe at the bus full of new faces. They swarmed and laughed and shook our hands and begged to be photographed. We went inside the school building and were served lunch before being picked up by our village homestay families.

Rachid came early to pick up Sutton and I. He had eyes that seemed to always be longing for something and a lanky frame in rolled up blue jeans. His smile was friendly, small teeth and big gums and eyes that would squint when he laughed. Although we couldn’t really understand what he said, he was both stern and soft-spoken, quickly moving from a friendly laugh to a firm command. What we didn’t know when we first shook his hand (which was strong and stiff and well-callused from working on his farm) was that he would be with us at all times for the next 144 hours of our lives.

Rachid took us back to his house, which consisted of a courtyard with 6 rooms surrounding it, a barn, a chicken coup, and maybe an acre of land where the cows, dog, and mule spent their free time. He lives there with his mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, brother, nephew, and two or three other women whose relation to him is still unclear. Rachid is 26 years old but looks closer to 30. 

Sutton and I were led into a 14x12 ft. room with a small futon against each wall, a 14-inch television, and a small table in the middle. Rachid, Sutton, and I would eat every meal, sleep, and spend all our in-door time together in this room. We walked around the property for a bit, helping Rachid water his olive trees and enjoying milk straight from a cows utter before leaving to go spend the early evening working in the field. On this evening we picked onions, packed them into crates, and loaded these onto the mule-drawn carriage. We hopped on too and rode (setting sun burning brilliant orange-red-yellow-blue behind mountains, miles of field lying flat between mountains and us, body sore and the sweet sweaty smell of onion stuck beneath dirty finger nails) back to the house. We dropped off the mule and walked to the café where we sat and drank Fanta and watched soccer on the TV, Real Madrid against another team that I forget (not Barcelona). Real Madrid won. The night ended back at home with a delicious dinner, some star gazing, and sleep.

The next day we woke up and went back to the schoolhouse where we spent the morning painting and planting trees. It was hot and the work was exhaustive but we left the place looking better than it was when we got there. Sutton, Rachid and I went back to our house and took our afternoon siesta (it’s too hot to really spend time outside midday). In the evening, we went back out to the fields and pulled dead squash plants from the ground. The plants aren’t tough to pull but they do sting, like nettle, and cut your hands and leave a burning irritation in your palms that doesn’t leave until you fall asleep hours later. Rachid laughed when we complained, holding his cemented palms up for us to see, saying “meshi mushki” which means no problem. It’s still unclear what emotional reaction he was going for from Sutton and I. We left the fields after a few hours and walked around the village for a bit before returning home for dinner, star gazing, and sleep (a nightly pattern that would become known as DSS between Sutton and I).

On Sunday, we woke up early to go back to work. This morning, our friends JP and Ishan decided to join us for the fun and so we rode the mule to their house to pick them up before heading out to the fields. One of the real joys of being in a place where no one speaks your language is the fact that you can say anything you want while knowing that you won’t offend anyone. As you can imagine, this was quite helpful when, after finishing a row of pulling dead squash (which you would always hope was the last for the day) Rachid would look at us and ask “wahid (1)?” and do the rotating finger thing like he was ordering another round from us at a bar. Our responses were uniform: "ah waha (yes, okay)," a smile and a thump sticking straight up. At the halfway point of any given row, we would begin to play the game “what would I rather do than pick squash for another hour in the burning midday sun.” Although I won’t get too specific, popular answers normally included bringing about pain onto oneself in the most horrifically gruesome way you could imagine (often involving the amputation of ones own genitalia) or the oral consumption of various forms of human bodily fluid. 

Looking back on our complaints now and sitting inside writing this and thinking about how, at this moment, Rachid is probably out there picking squash or onions or weeds, it's interesting to think about why we complained and what we accomplished by doing it. I think that we complained because the work was miserable – back breaking, knee bending, pain inducing repetition of boring and simple physical movements – and we were in search of the world’s pity. We complained because the work we did with Rachid was some nightmarish vacation, something that we wanted recognition for but knew we only had finite time to get it. There's no point in complaining if nothing's going to change. Simply put, the four of us complained because we could.

After work that evening, we went back to the café and hung out with Rachid’s friends while they taught us inappropriate things to say in Darija. After this, we walked home and DSS’d. 

On Monday, the group met and rode the bus to the Basma center for mentally and physically disabled boys. All the boys who went there were from the Commune the village was located in. We got a tour of the center before they arrived and, when they did, we broke up into groups and played games and sang songs with them before having a massive dance party. (There will be more on this experience in the non-play-by-play post, it was really pretty amazing). We said sad goodbyes and went back to the village for lunch, nap time, an afternoon in the fields (we picked weeds), an evening at the café, and then DSS.

On Tuesday, Sutton and I worked in the morning before we were taken to a town near the village called Moulay Yacoub. The town is known for their sulfur spring baths, in which we all got the chance to bathe for the first time since getting to the village. We got to walk around the town for a while afterwards and watched the sunset from a beautiful, grassy hill. Back at home, the evening was simple: DSS.  

Wednesday was another full day with Rachid. Sutton and I worked the morning and evening shift (which canceled out any hygienic progress made the day before) and then went to the café before that night's DSS.

Thursday was our last day in the village, Sutton and I woke up and worked before lunch, the walk home on this day was especially sweet since we knew it was our last. In the afternoon we went to a local soccer field where we played against the villagers, one game for the boys another for the girls (the Moroccans won both of them). We didn’t get home until well after nightfall so it was a quick DSS that night. The next day we woke up and met the bus. We were given the option to spend Friday night in Fez if we wanted. 4 friends and I accepted. We spent the afternoon walking around the medina and hanging out on the hostel’s terrace, which had a stunning view of the city. We were all pretty exhausted so we took it easy that night. On Saturday we explored the Royal Palace and the surrounding neighborhood before taking an early afternoon train back to Rabat.

There are some photos on Mark's blog of us working in the field. Below you will find a link to the photos that JP took of Rachid working. I will also post the article I wrote about him and the challenges of rural farming once it has been edited. Lastly, there’s a non-play-by-play blog post in the works that will include descriptions of the sheep slaughter tomorrow so stay tuned! Until next time.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpkeenan/sets/72157636511329393/

 

The next week!

Sorry I've been gone for the past week...well more than a week I guess. I was doing a village stay with my group and internet was inaccessible. I will have a blog post about that trip for you in the next few days. Until then, you can go back and look at Mark's blog (Beyond the Palisades) where you will find a number of wonderful photos from the trip.

Back in Rabat, the house is abuzz because on Wednesday the Muslim holiday Eid will begin. The family has purchased a sheep to be slaughtered (the poor guy is living on the terrace of the house for his final few days) and are constantly reminding me of the special occasion with a quick smile, a "BAAAA" (in the style of a sheep), a hand gesture of slitting a neck, bending their head to the side, closing their eyes, sticking there tongue out, and of course ending the impression with another excited smile. I will write a blog post about this experience too and will also make sure you all get to see some photographs from the day. Supposedly, the Medina streets run red with sheep blood and guts and carcases (because every family slaughters a sheep on this day) and there are butcher's walking around covered in blood with their knives in hand going from house to house cutting up the meat for the family to enjoy...it's going to be a sight! But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Check back soon. Until next time.