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.

Some photos from the southern excursion (and a couple others)

The Medina of Fez

 

 

Pouring milk for lunch. On Friday we had cous cous!

My Camel and I in the desert

Taken in the Middle Atlas Mountains

Mama Fatima showing me how to make Riffa, a fried Moroccan bread.

The sun beginning to set in the desert

Lots of sand!

So much sand!

The skinny streets of Fez's Medina

Did I mention the sand?

A funny story from the weekend

On Tuesday of last week, each member of my program was paired with an English-speaking, Moroccan journalism student to work with for the remainder of the trip. On Friday night, a few of us Americans went out for the evening with our Moroccan partners. We went to a neighborhood called Agdal, which is much younger and more hip than the medina, and went to a bar with live music. We spent the evening drinking, dancing and bonding; my partner is named Mohammad, he loves music (especially Israeli music) and politics and seems like he will be fantastic to work with. But really, that’s beside the point, all you must know is that it was a late night and I looked forward to sleeping in the next morning.

Now for some background information. Along with the Ben Mekhish family, there is another family that occupies a room in my house. It’s a young couple (mid to late twenties I’d guess) and their young boy (he might be 1 year old). They are very kind and join us for some meals and the boy is adorable and he can’t stand being without his mom and, like so many infants, has the power to bring you to smile no matter what mood you’re in.

Over the course of the week, a strange phenomenon had been occurring during meals whenever Haitem (that’s the boys name) came into the room. My family would giggle and point to me and then Heitem and then me again while speaking Darija and making the sign for scissors with their index and middle fingers...above their genital region. My first thought was utter confusion, which I feel is an appropriate emotional response to a table full of Moroccans laughing and pretending to cut their penis’ off. This confusion turned to fear when it was made clear that I was to be somehow involved in whatever was to occur. A few more giggles and points at Heitem and I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen: Haitem was going to be circumcised. What I had to do with any of it was still a mystery to me.  

So Saturday morning arrived, it was raining outside (the first rain I’ve seen in this country) and I was in bed. I wasn’t awake but I wasn’t asleep, enjoying immensely that in-between state one enters in the morning, where the line between your dreams and your conscious blur and you lay there, content with everything that enters your drowsy mind. Suddenly, a knock on the door; it was my brother summoning me for breakfast. Although another half an hour in bed would have been nice, 9:30 wasn’t the worst hour to be called upon and so I rose and joined the family for coffee, milk, bread and cheese. During breakfast, there was a certain buzz about the house, people were coming and going, people I didn’t know. At 10, Haitem’s mom came into the living room, smiling proudly and said something that made everyone stop eating and form a small parade that marched, frenzied and giggling, straight into my bedroom. Confused and a bit worried, I followed them and there, on the table crying, lay Heitem, his legs spread and his family circled around him.

I can’t say I really watched the procedure. Instead I paced, awkward and uncomfortable, in and out of my room, sitting on my bed, leaving to "use the bathroom," walking to the kitchen for no apparent reason, trying to conceal the fact I didn’t want to be a witness from the enthused crowd that did. After it was done, Haitem cried for about three hours while the family, in true Moroccan fashion, prepared a feast to celebrate the boyhood Haitem gained that morning…and I guess what he lost too. 

Over the next couple days, I'm going to try to get some photographs of my family members so you have an idea of what they look like...I know that I often say that I will do/post things on this blog and often fail to but I will try! 

A poem, something I don't write many of.

I didn't have the best night tonight, so I wrote a poem for a family member I love. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

You called to tell me the news two years ago,

You said pray for me Granger, God will hear your call.

You called to tell me the plan of attack,

You said rally the troops Granger, and may we all pray.

You called to tell me good news

And we shared smiles over satellite

            Who says they aren’t as sweet?

You were the first to call after getting the news,

You said I’m praying for you Granger, God will pick up for me.

You were the first to call after surgery,

You said I have an army praying for you, God won’t ignore us warriors.

And when the results came in,

You called again and we exhaled deep together

And I felt your breath tickle my ear.

A call tonight, this time not from you,

But I am praying for you, I can’t really say I know how.

A call tonight reminded me of what we shared,

A fear so infinite and an impossible need to call.

So through the moon high above me in Moroccan night,

                        the one that will soon head West

and shine eternal light upon you,

            in it, I’m packing my call

            of love

of hope

of belief  

of thanks

So tonight, when the moon rings, pick up.

And know that it’s me on the line.

With so so so much love,

                          Granger Jr.

An American in Morocco: The Struggle of Cultural Immersion

One thing that the Southern excursion really made clear to me was the power (privilege, burden, pro, con, joy, stress, trouble) of being an American in a developing country. This probably also rings true for Europeans or Canadians or any “Western” traveler, but since I am American I will speak as one.

Anywhere I go in this country, I am seen not just as a person but also as a walking, talking, white-skinned leather wallet. I am a Moroccan salesman’s chance at an extra dirham of profit; perhaps their shot at a cigarette after work or an extra piece of bread on their family’s dinner table. And they treat me like anyone does money: carefully but with greed, wanting to take as much of me as they can while understanding that they need me to exist. If they do take all of me, they lose just as much.

And who can blame them for seeing like this? Let’s say I get charged two dirham more than a Moroccan for a bottle of water. For me, that’s less than a quarter extra spent, a shrug of the shoulders and a happy gulp of cool refreshment; a 1.5 L bottle still costs me under a dollar. If a taxi driver charges me 10 extra dirham for a ride, I’m still brought to where I need to go, happy as a clam because the total is less than the price of a cab in San Francisco before it even starts to move. Or if a shoe salesman in the souk gets 50 dirham of extra profit from me; the boat shoes still only cost $20 and he smiles because his wallet is that much bigger and I do too as I admire how they match my outfit.

While I understand that not all Americans have the luxury to see money in the way expressed above, I think it’s safe to say that if they are traveling to Morocco there’s a good chance they do. A dollar means something much different to me than it does to many Moroccans as a product of the cost of the life that I’ve grown up living.

In a strange way, the money I have seems to undermine the cultural immersion that I’m supposed to be experiencing. The more I try to dig my way deep into the depths of Moroccan everyday life, the more I’m reminded of the huge differences between that life and my own. I’m treated differently; at my homestay, in the souk, out at bars or restaurants because people can perceive my privilege. It’s like some unbreakable window keeping me from a true cultural experience, a window I can look through and punch at and lick and smell, one that I can press the whole of my body against, but simply can’t break through.

This is interesting to me because of the overly simple and idealistic view of immersion that I grew up believing. I was taught by family and friends and teachers that in order to really learn about the world, you must become one with it. And in order to become one with it, you buy a plane ticket, a new change of colorful clothes and dinner at a local restaurant. And yet, here I am, slamming my head, arms and legs against this window, trying with all my might to gain access to true immersion and I’m left with just bruises to remind me of the seemingly impossible task at hand and it feels more isolating than it does uniting.

And so the question becomes why do we even try? The window really is unbreakable and a walk through the city square and a visit to the museum are just light and meaningless taps against it. However, I think that if you really try, you can push the window just a bit closer and scratch away at it like sandpaper to make it thinner. It takes work and conscious effort and much discomfort but you do it with a hope, a hope for a moment, a very brief one that occurs one day as your walking through the souk. And the sunshine is flawless in the noon sky and a sticky sea breeze off the Atlantic cools your sweaty face and the barber down the street gives you a friendly wave. It all feels right, your senses are alive and dancing in ecstasy and there’s a smile crawling across your face and as you take it all in, a thought in your head shoots shivers down your spine: I’m an American in Morocco and I feel a little bit at home.