"Buenas noches hey chicken"

Every year on Thanksgiving my sister lets me into the kitchen with a very specific task an ape could complete. Cut this-like this, mix this already made mixture, crack eggs into that bowl. I complete said task, not always successfully, and then try to avoid touching everything else so as not to mess up the cooks magic – but mostly actually because I have no idea what I am doing.

It’s Ramadan – not, in my opinion, terribly different than Thanksgiving in one of its major manifestations, lot’s of food with family (and some stragglers). Just like the turkey, there are traditional specific meals that Moroccans eat at break fast – but because Muslims are fasting for a full month on the Islamic Calendar from sun up to sun down, there is variation in what gets eaten each day. 

Just like my last 4 or so years, I am fasting. Unlike all the other years, there is no one making me really filling meals that I just have to show up at, regularly for the whole month. Though Tarah, and I are getting our fair share of community meals, we are still cooking a bunch in my kitchen. And by we are cooking I mean Tarah is cooking.

Anyway, the way it works is at sun up, around 3:30ish am you take your last sip of water, or last bite of something. Then you fast all day, not even a spoon lick. Then around 7:30pm you break fast with the meal called ftour.  During this meal it is typical to have soup, some sweets, and a lot of liquids (water, milk, coffee, tea, juice etc.). You then digest for a while, depending on the family an hour to a few hours, and then you eat a larger dinner. Then you either sleep or stay up, again depending on family and mood (and whether you did in fact have the coffee at 8pm) until around 3am when you prepare the last meal before the fast.

Yesterday, Tarah decided she wanted to make apple pancake cake for the morning meal. She loves me, so she trusts me to be capable of basic things. She asked me to mix the pancake mix while she sliced the apples. (Might I add, this was after she cooked delicious homemade pizzas for the dinner – I got extremely lucky in life if I do say so myself). Anyway, I took out the cookbook -  a Peace Corps production  -and started to mix all the ingredients. While reading it, I was not surprised that just like the accidental spelling mistakes in our textbooks, this cookbook used capitalization liberally. It called for 2 T sugar and ¼ t of salt. I was doubling the recipe as per Tarah’s request, so I added 4 tablespoons of sugar and 2 of salt. Now for those of you who are functioning adults in society, you see that A. ¼ x 2 = ½ not 2 and B. a capital T in a cookbook is a tablespoon while a lower case t is a teaspoon. Anyway, while doing this I say out loud, “This looks like a lot of salt,” and Tarah says “I mean, it doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as you are following the receipe.”

A half hour or so later, out came the most disgusting cross between street pretzels that have sat in the wet salt thing for way way way too long, and a delicious apple cake.

Thankfully Tarah didn’t mock me too hard, and we made smoothies for breakfast, and fed some of the neighborhood bugs/cats.

I guess Allie never letting me touch anything for Thanksgiving was a great idea.



This Ramadan is also a bit different than the others, I have experienced because I have really consistent work throughout the days. Men’s swim practice early in the AM – English camp during the afternoon – children’s swim practice just before break fast and Women’s swim at night.

Unfortunately, but understandably, the hours for all of the above have been cut down drastically from what they were before Ramadan. For example, the women are only practicing 2 days a week for an hour each time, when it was 3 days at 3 hours each day.

Tonight we had both children, from 5 to 7pm and women from 9 to 10pm. These were our first Ramadan swim practices. I was convinced no one would show up to either.

I was almost right, because I usually work with the oldest children, so they are almost all fasting, and are still new at fasting so aren’t expected to swim a full practice just before break fast. My students barely showed up (and the coach I usually switch off with wasn’t there accordingly).  One of the other coaches reshuffled all the groups and gave Tarah and I each groups of our own. I had 15 pretty young children, and I started just watching them swim some very silly versions of freestyle (said with love, not mocking, I promise). We spent the whole practice doing silly drills which they had no idea were absolutely making them better swimmers. At the end of practice I had them swim again and was just so proud.  I debated dancing around but settled on a huge smile and high fiving them all and asking them to focus on what they learned when I work with them again on Friday.

The next group I had were a slightly older bunch of knuckleheads and their regular coach told me they were starting backstroke. For those of you who don’t know, starting to teach children backstroke when you aren’t in the water with them and when there is nothing over their heads that they can watch to make sure they are swimming straight is hysterical. The number of times I had to run the length of the pool to stop them from hitting their heads or flag them down to stop them from hitting into each other was very high. I explained as best I could though, how the trick is that both sides of your body have to work equally hard, if you kick stronger on one side you will swim at an angle. After many drills, and games, they were doing great. We finished with a few silly random things to work on strength (races, underwater contests, tredding water monkey-in-the-middle,, and dives to the bottom of the pool).

Walking home from there I was in a glow. I am completely in love with the Moroccan youth that I am blessed enough to be surrounded by.  I was gone for a couple weeks for In-Service Peace Corps Training and when I had no idea what my return would be like, I was completely welcomed with open arms. One of the little girls said in Arabic ‘lady teacher we missed you so much.’ The other coaches all asked how my training was, and about how Ramadan is treating me etc.

I also am probably in an excellent mood tonight because I receive about 1/50^th the harassment on the streets of my town during Ramadan that I normally do. People are on their best behavior because it is the holy month. What I do hear/see during Ramadan is also of a different nature. It becomes French or English phrases, that aren’t curses or sexual in any way but are just interesting. Today a man said, “Buenas noches hey chicken,” as if it were one correct phrase, in the language I speak. I laughed hysterically, and tried to contain my smile so it wouldn’t be on my face in the street.  

I don't condone any harassment ever, but I much prefer the kind that makes me laugh to the kind that makes me cringe or cry - so Ramadan man, I love this month.