Interior and Exterior Affairs: Confronting the Lingerie Merchants

Continuing on with my observations and reflections on gender roles and public and private spheres in Moroccan society, I wanted to bring to your attention an interesting article about a movement in Saudi Arabia aimed at replacing male attendants or merchants of women's lingerie with female attendants. Once again, it was another bit of news that helped me to take note of my surroundings and to try to understand why Morocco would put men instead of women as vendors of women's undergarments.

The BBC article titled "Saudi lingerie trade in a twist" goes on to say that a lot of women feel uncomfortable providing information on sizes and preferences to male strangers. You may wonder why a guy couldn't just estimate from looking, but even that would be difficult because in Saudi Arabia they are dressed in black from head to toe. In Morocco, you have a full spectrum of western wear to the more traditional djellabas worn by both young and old, but more so by older generations. The djellabas do have a lot more spice in terms of colors, fabrics(even leopard and tiger prints), and other accents like hand-knotted buttons and embroidery, but they also do not reveal much in terms of waist size. The article adds that even men are just as uncomfortable asking questions of their female patrons who may find their comments to be inappropriate and  could potentially get them in trouble.

Remembering back to my days working at various retail stores, I can't imagine being asked to manage the women's lingerie section; not that I wouldn't have minded helping the ladies, but I just know that I would not be able to provide the customer service that they would have needed. I can speak about men's underwear all day, but about women's I only have information from mass media like the Victoria's Secret fashion shows that I watch occasionally to monitor market trends and other commentary from some voluptuous ladies that complain that the current glorified anorexic look in much of the western world is making it harder and harder for them to find undergarments that fit. I can only imagine how weird it must be for my fellow Moroccans who manage the women's undergarments and the women's clothing shops. It's true that it is often hard to find a candid salesperson, but would the men ever tell a woman that that dress does make her look fat? I don't think most men conservative or liberal would, but women may and it is this honesty and personal experience that would likely keep customers coming back. From a profit standpoint, I am glad that I was put in charge of managing the gangsta rapper wear instead; despite having no real affinity to the style, but it's certainly a better match.

Venezuela is pretty open about panties and underwear. Females are for the most part the attendants of women's undergarments and clothing at your typical department store, but I always enjoyed the male street vendors(buhoneros) who would have no qualms about the merchandise they were selling and would yell from the bottom of their lungs, "PANTALETAS, PANTALETAS, PANTALETAS DE EEUU!!!"(PANTIES, PANTIES, PANTIES FROM THE USA!!!). And if they didn't get your attention then, they would put them in front of your face and yell in your ear that they were on sale. I'm sure there may be a number of male street vendors in Moroccan souks (markets) who have no reservations about what they're selling and are yelling "SLIP, SLIP, SLIP MN FRANSA!!!"(PANTIES, PANTIES, PANTIES FROM FRANCE), but I have yet to hear any and I would be surprised to hear one since sometimes Moroccans add a "Hashak"(I beg your pardon) when they talk about their slip(underwear).

Given the uneasiness on both sides, it makes perfect sense to replace the male attendants with female ones. The movement and its organizer, Reem Asaad, acknowledge that doing so would put a large quantity of men out of work, and as such the government will be reluctant to make any drastic changes. Ms. Asaad is also going up against a very conservative society that believes that the women's place is in the home. Morocco is no Saudi Arabia, but they do have a number of things in common. If Morocco was to put in a ban on men staffing lingerie or women's clothing shops, they would also be putting a lot of men out of work--I do want to note that many women in Morocco do staff your more upscale boutiques and stores in your major cities, but in the medina[old city] and rural areas most of the vendors are men. Women in Morocco can work, drive, vote, and enjoy many of the same rights that women in the western world have, but there are societal expectations for women that have a religious or cultural basis that expect women to be solely, as my host father explained to me once, the ministers of interior.

I encourage you to read the full article because like Annika Sorenstans's debut in the PGA, the movement is bringing to light an issue that has been widely accepted or perhaps adhered to, but now that it is under a spotlight and because of the attention it is receiving, the powers that be are reconsidering the situation. Ms. Asaad is putting pressure not on government, but on the retailers themselves by organizing boycotts of male-staffed stores. She is also putting together lingerie training workshops for ladies, and she is spreading the word about her movement through social networking sites like Facebook, which I believe has a fan page where you can keep up with new developments.

I do like her approach in terms of confronting the issue at a consumer level.  I hope that the owners of the lingerie shops start taking notice and begin employing some women. I do not say this as an American or as a desensitized Venezuelan, but as a man who acknowledges his limited knowledge of women's undergarments and stands in solidarity with women who I believe can best equip a lady with the garments she needs to feel comfortable and look fabulous.

A correction of sorts: 06 Nov 2010 - When I wrote this blog, I wrote that I had yet to hear a Moroccan street vendor advertise that he was selling women's underwear.  Well, the other day as I was walking through Khenifra's souq, I heard a young kid probably about 15 years old yelling in auctioneer mode "SLIP, SLIP, SLIP, miyatayn ryal (10DH)".  I was happy to hear it.  I only wished I had been walking with a female so that I could then observe how he would go about promoting the quality of his product.  Oh well, next time, inshallah.

Tribute to the Sympathetic Interlocutor

I want to dedicate this entry to all those sympathetic interlocutors in the world.  You know who you are.  When you've heard someone struggling to vocalize their thoughts, you have been there to fill in the blank.  You're The living thesaurus ready to jump in with the right word at the right time.  You are there to interject a little bit of context to explain what may seem like someone else's odd or offensive behavior.  You are the bridge builder, the peacemaker, and the best friend any Peace Corps volunteer can have.

My Darija-language tutor Ali and I on one of our many sessions

So what is the character profile of a sympathetic interlocutor?  How do you become one?  My guess is that the individual has had to struggle learning a foreign language at some point in time, and perhaps has had to adapt to customs and traditions different than his/her own.  This struggle has forged a sense of compassion for those who are deep in the struggle.  The sympathetic interlocutor feels the pain and the sense of helplessness because he/she too has been ridiculed for conjugating incorrectly, mispronouncing, not inflecting properly, and saying or doing completely inappropriate things without even attempting to do so.  He or she has also felt out of place and sometimes alienated by the strange culture surrounding him/her and bewildered by what seems to be an indecipherable mumble jumble.  He or she has felt the humbling experience of coming from an environment where he/she felt in control of his/her domain to another setting where he/she is overjoyed by the accomplishment of the simplest of tasks.  

The sympathetic interlocutor loves playing nonverbal charades and often cares more about communicating than communicating correctly.  He/she will often mimic you as you try to contort your lips, tongue, and entire face to say whatever you're trying to say.  If he/she happens to be your language tutor, he/she will repeat the same word a hundred times until you finally remember it the 101th time.  


Fortunately, I have come across many sympathetic interlocutors, but I have also met a number of not so sympathetic ones.  The non-sympathetic ones will sometimes laugh, ridicule, and will show no patience whatsoever.  I am encouraged when a sympathetic interlocutor tells the unsympathetic ones to respect the struggle of the language learner and urges them to empathize.  I am also grateful to the sympathetic interlocutors for introducing me to his/her circle of friends and family and sharing a bit of history about why, in his/her point of view, people in his/her corner of the world do what they do.     


I certainly could not have gotten this far in my Peace Corps service without the help of countless sympathetic interlocutors.  One of the many sympathetic interlocutors is my tutor and friend Ali.  What's amazing about Ali is that he taught himself English.  He learned from a few books, lots of American films, and from interaction with past Peace Corps volunteers.  He graduated with a degree in sociology, which he studied in French, another language that he speaks impeccably.  I am grateful to know him, to have been his student, and to have shared many a cultural tid bits that only served to reaffirm how similar we all are.  For all you sympathetic interlocutors, keep up the hard work of translating, clarifying misunderstandings, resolving disputes, and just making the world a more harmonious place to live in.  Thank you and God bless you all.  


P.S. You may ask why the formal "sympathetic interlocutor" title.  Our Peace Corps language proficiency exam rubric had that titled scattered throughout the various levels and sub-levels of language proficiency.  For example, at the beginner level it states that it will take a sympathetic interlocutor to have the patience to figure out what the heck is coming out of your mouth.  At the intermediate, you're making coherent sounds, but it will take a sympathetic interlocutor to put your sounds into comprehensible sentences.  At the advanced level, your language is flowing, but your English-structured Arabic may not make a lot of sense from time to time so it takes a sympathetic interlocutor to translate your Arabic to a more culturally-adaptable format.    

Interior and Exterior Affairs: Comparing Glass Ceilings, USA and Morocco

During my senior year in college, I had to take a number of gender courses not by choice but because they were the only ones I could fit into my full-time work schedule while staying on track for graduation.  In one class I was one of three guys in a class of 30 and in another much bigger class I would estimate that we were a just a little over 10%.  It was a real drag to go to some of the classes because often the subject matter focused on how men continued to oppress women in every facet of society.  One class went segment by segment showing statistics on the disparity in education, income, occupations, media, and sports just to name a few.  It was tough to show up day in and day out to hear how we men conspire on a regular basis to keep women down.  I promised my female friends that I did not meet in dark, shady rooms to discuss strategies on how to ensure women could continue to earn 20-30% less than what a man makes.  The classes began to sound like a broken record.  Then, towards the end of gender course, there was an interesting development that made everything click for me.

Image may be copyrighted

Back in 2003, Annika Sorenstan, the number one golfer on the LPGA tour, requested to play in a PGA tour event.  At first, I didn't think much of it.  I thought that it was a bold move to attempt to compete with the best male golfers.  I was surprised to read that some male golfers did not want Annika to participate.  I thought, "Why would they object, did they feel threatened, and what is it really that they're objecting to?"  Vijay Singh, the number two golfer in the PGA at the time, dropped out of the event and said she had "no business" playing with men and others said it was a publicity stunt.

Many female organizations supported Annika's move and began exposing a side of golf that I had not really been aware of.  Several organizations built campaigns pushing for changes to the many all-male membership policies of many golf country clubs.  The organizations claimed that the policies of these exclusive establishments were discriminatory. The campaigners pointed to the advertising that goes on during golf events to demonstrate how important it is to gain access to the country club.  The sponsors of the marquee events are usually some of the biggest and most prestigious corporations in the world: Rolex, Accenture, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, BAE, Audi, Polo, and upscale spirits companies round the list.  To the women organizations, the country club is a place where the CEOs of some of these sponsors gather to iron out a merger, secure venture capital investments, or decide to launch their IPO while playing out a round of 18 holes.  Women CEOs or women who want to climb the corporate ladder, unable to join the boys, miss out on the wheeling and dealing that may take place.

I slowly began to understand why my gender class professors kept repeating the same tune. It was not to bash men, but to expose how the oppression is systematic.  It was to show how both men and women sometimes discriminate or perpetuate oppression upon one another sometimes deliberately and sometimes without even thinking.  We all do a number of things as second nature for a number of reasons: sometimes because mom said so, tradition, culture, or perhaps religion.  Before Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, or Ghandi, the thought that certain rights or privileges belonged only to a select few was widely accepted and adhered to by a vast majority in both the oppressors and oppressed camp.  Both camps content with the status quo or scared of change would have probably justified their stance by saying that things are simply the way they are and that things would likely remain the same so why fight it?  Why not just adapt to it?  These revolutionaries did not believe that premise and boldly began to expose the injustice and to preach the gospel of self-determination, and over time a number of people began to see their point of view and joined their cause.  It took guts to stand out there despite what seemed like an insurmountable resistance, but their audacity brought about change and a new way of thinking about what's right and wrong.

So when Annika made the choice to give the PGA a shot, some people were, not surprisingly, upset with her decision because she was confronting a norm that a number of folks in the golf community had grown accustomed to and just felt her appearance ran contrary to the way things were.  She did not get political on her decision.  The women organizations did.  The story of the the all-male country club as a discriminatory franchise got more attention in the media.  Some of the women organizations reiterated that the all-male country club did indeed reinforce the glass ceiling.  The golfers that stated that her move was a publicity stunt perhaps did not want their environment exposed and did not want it described like the women organizations were describing it.  They probably did not feel the same way that the women organizations did and maybe thought having grown up under the all-male franchise that their tradition was reverent.  Annika's move was not revolutionary, but it was noteworthy for how it made some folks in the golf community a little uncomfortable.

The all-male country club and restaurants still exist today in the good ol' US of A.  Women organizations are challenging some of them in court (You can catch up on some of the recent developments at the Discrimination and Country Clubs blog).  With more pressure, they may become a fixture of the past, but for now they will continue to welcome some very wealthy and well connected male patrons who simply feel more comfortable in a room full of dudes because it's what they know and how they've grown up and who may be oblivious to how their actions affect others or there may be others who could be conspiring in the darkest and shadiest of rooms on ways to further the oppression.

Anytime I wish to speak about an aspect of a society different than my own, I first take a look at how my society is doing with regards to that particular aspect.  For example, in my last blog, I wrote about the segregation of the sexes when it comes to the outdoor cafe in Morocco.  It would be easy to point fingers at Morocco's almost exclusive male establishments and regard them as discriminatory and perhaps oppressive, but the U.S., despite its many advances in bringing parity between genders, it still has places like the all-male country clubs and upscale restaurants much like Morocco that are exclusively male.  Morocco has no law preventing women from going to cafes, but it has social norms that are widely accepted especially in more rural areas where men are generally expected to interact with other men outside while women have their home as their conference space.  I wrote that my host mother and sisters were not disheartened by not being able to visit the cafe because they were not drawn to the large screen televisions showing football games, did not like the cloud of cigarette smoke that hovers idly in some cafes, and did not go because their friends were not going there.  Their responses made sense, but then I thought about what the women organizations had said about how the country club is the de facto board room for many CEO's.

Much like the all-male country club, work and politics is often a topic of conversation at the cafe.  Personally in many occasions, I've expressed a difficulty in finding an association or an individual that could help me with a specific task or project, and in some instances my cafe friends have been able to point me to people they know that could help.  I am pretty confident that in many cases this networking goes on at the cafe among government officials and business owners—a dear friend of mine once said that because the marquee cafes are better lit, have heating and AC, and have more comfortable chairs than the municipal offices, the cafe becomes the default city hall.  Also, because at times men travel distances to find employment, knowledge of the country and the economic environment of other areas is exchanged.  Thus, because women are absent, this wealth of information and any negotiations rest with the male cafe goers.  In this regard, the country club and the Moroccan cafe seem to be on par. 

So how do you remedy the situation?  How can Moroccan women entrepreneurs succeed without this wealth of information or exchange?  Back in November of last year, a Seattle-based NGO called The Center for Women and Democracy brought a delegation of women CEOs, lawyers, community leaders, and students to hold a forum to identify some of the obstacles facing Moroccan female leaders and to provide a place where ideas could be exchanged.  At the event I met a number of remarkable women who were trying to fill the information exchange void that exists among Moroccan women.  One association was led by Ilham Zhiri, Vice-President of AFEM, Association des Femmes Chefs d’Entreprise du Maroc.  Some of objectives of Ms. Zhiri's organization are to orient, inform, and assist women entrepreneurs in their search for a competitive advantage for their businesses, create a network of women business owners, encourage entrepreneurship among women, promote the image of women business owners, and organize forums and seminars for women to learn and to network with one another.   Another was a consortium of women who had pooled funds to invest in women-owned enterprises.  And in the political front, a few women who were part of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs were providing campaign training for women interested in running for elected office.  These are just a few examples of many exemplary women leaders I met who I believe will change the business, political, and perhaps the social environment of Morocco.

But will all Moroccan women benefit from their efforts?  After the event, I spoke to my counterpart, Amina Yabis, who I accompanied to the event and asked her what she thought about the different women she networked with.  She was skeptical that many of the initiatives by these dynamic organizations would ever reach the rural parts of Morocco.  She explained that some of the city women would never inconvenience themselves by going out to a remote part of the country where amenities are sometimes non-existent to hold their seminars.  Rural women, on the other hand, generally do not have funds to travel to the capital or another major city or they may be discouraged from traveling by their family or community especially if they are to travel on their own for safety reasons as most travelers are men and verbal and sometimes physical harassment is common.

My counterpart also noted that many city women cannot relate to the lives of rural women.  Some of the city women having traveled or studied abroad may act a little more pompous than usual and that attitude is sometimes reflected in their language when they make fun of the tough living conditions some of the women face on a daily basis.  Given this huge divide in lifestyles, it seems that the efforts of the Moroccan women in the urban hubs may take a while to reach a large swath of women who could seriously use the help.

My counterpart's remedy has been her association's community outreach work.  Through the Golden Buttons Association she organized a number of women to demand literacy courses from the Ministry of Education for adult women.  With the help of Office of Development and Cooperation (ODCO) and Sefrou Delegation of Artisana, she was also able to get training on how to establish a cooperative and to get weaving training for herself and a few other ladies.  This collective action was later converted to a cooperative named the Cherry Buttons Cooperative that now represents 40 women in the almost exclusively women-produced djellaba button handicraft.  Peace Corps helped her in the development from an association to a cooperative and they continue to collaborate with her on the formation of empowerment camps for young girls.  I will expand a bit more on the philosophy of the camp in a later blog, but basically the camp's target group is rural young women who for some reason or another dropped out of school, may be illiterate, and may not have access to resources or other women to connect to that could lend support to their micro-enterprise idea.

Last summer a university student that came to Morocco to study Arabic came to my hometown to find out about some of the work that I had been doing.  I explained that I was helping a women's coop that wishes to become a major vendor of the djellaba button handicraft, a craft that is almost entirely produced by women but sold by men.  I was so entranced by my zeal to help these women gain parity that I failed to recognize the societal implications of my activities.  She asked, "By helping these women over the men bazzarist, aren't you going to be putting some men out of work?"  That very well could be and by putting some of these middlemen out of work, I may be messing with the established Moroccan fabric making it difficult for the men to bring home the Halal bacon and adding more to the homemaker than she can handle.

When I feel I may be messing with the fabric of Moroccan society, I am encouraged, however, by a book I read and also blogged about titled Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen.  In this book, the author states and I'm paraphrasing to the max here that an increase in women's literacy has the effect of reducing infant mortality, reducing the number of births because women who continue going to school put off marriage and child rearing for a later age, changes the dynamics of the home as women who earn an income feel more empowered by their economic independence, and creates a more representative democracy as more women run for political office or participate in the process.  In a country where women's illiteracy stands at over 50% nationwide and even higher in rural areas, I feel it is absolutely necessary to try to work with women.

One time I saw my host father get chewed out by my host mother for bringing something for dinner (don’t know exactly what because my Arabic was still pretty rough at the time) that did not please her.  I was surprised by the outbreak, but rather happy to see that she didn’t hold back.  My host father was speechless.  Noticing that I had witnessed the entire ordeal, he turned to me and said in Spanish, “Yo soy el Ministro del Exterior y ella la Ministra del Interior”(I am the Minister of Exterior and she is the Minister of Interior).  That statement I think is very true of the understanding that each sex has of its role in some parts of Morocco today.  He doesn't infringe on her territory and she on his.  When either does, then naturally a scolding is due.

Morocco has made great strides over the last ten years to change the perception of the gender roles that my host dad has grown up under and probably wholeheartedly upholds.  The advent of the Moudawana, Morocco's new Family Code, gave women more rights in the case of divorce, custody of children, and inheritance issues.  In addition, the Kingdom put in a place a quota reserving 12% of all municipality seats for women.  These two measures are a step forward towards opening a path to women.  These early pioneers who have filled these inaugural posts will hopefully pass on their knowledge and experience to younger women and hence recreate their own support network thereby supplanting the need to join the boys at the cafe.  While I think it is necessary for women to gather to create a collective front, I do hope that at some point in time there will be a fusion of the interior and exterior ministries like there has been in the states.

The U.S. still has a ways to go in terms of bridging the gap between the sexes, but with more women attaining higher levels of education, joining the workforce or managing their own enterprise, and running for political office, the line between what is solely male and female has become blurry.  I am not advocating for a U.S. style work and household environment.  There are a lot of things about the U.S. lifestyle that I find dysfunctional.  I am only suggesting that there may be women who may not wish to fill a certain gender role and may wish to fulfill the dream of becoming the next industry leader and could probably be a better minister of exterior than her husband and that aspiration should be supported.

The country club is a great example that shows that many U.S. Americans are still working out territorial issues between the sexes.  Discrimination still persists.  Oppression is still in place and we sometimes do it without even thinking.  I'm not sure if Moroccan colleges and universities include gender courses in their curriculum.  These courses are helpful because at some point a Moroccan Annika may presents herself and with the help of women organizations a student may then finally see how a seemingly harmless and culturally accepted all-male environment that only a few seem to question could also be a place that is reinforcing the glass-ceiling in Moroccan society.  

Interior and Exterior Affairs: Moroccan Cafe Culture, Static or Dynamic?

Morocco loves their tea and their coffee. They've even branded their sweet as molasses mint flavored green tea, using their French, Le Whisky Marocain. I blogged earlier about the syncopated and sometimes harmonious tea and coffee slurping that goes on in many cafes. Women are no strangers to the slurp. In fact, one of my host grandmothers could slurp it better than anyone, teeth or no teeth. Nonetheless, because the cafe is a public space, my grandmother would never be able to establish her slurp as one to be reckoned with, but bear in mind that this may be something she has no desire to do.

A year into my service and I still feel like something is wrong when I walk into a cafe replete with men. Some are reading their newspapers and others engage in conversations that involve a lot of arm waggling and hand gestures that appear to be heated but are completely normal.  Most, though, are staring out yonder, people watching.  As a man in Morocco, I do my best to meet societal expectations, which means frequenting a number of cafes on a regular basis and performing the aforementioned behaviors with great dedication as doing so is part of my job as a Peace Corps volunteer. The PC mission is to spread "World Peace and Friendship" and its goals are, in abbreviated form: first, to provide technical assistance; to promote a better understanding of Americans to the locals; and third, to have Americans understand my host country friends. So when I pause from saving the world with my technical prowess, I hit a cafe and chat it up with the men.

We have man talk, which comprises of the weather, the price of the vegetables, work, the lack of work, a lack of social entitlement benefits, the latest news, some politics, some minor sex talk, the kids, questions about whether I like Morocco or not, some more convincing that I am American, am I Republican or Democrat, Obama, and do I like FC Barcelona or Real Madrid. These are great conversation topics. My Arabic is to the point where I can understand just enough to get the gist and throw in another follow up question that may only be slightly related, but still demonstrates that I understand. As much as I enjoy crashing the cafe, I must admit that these conversations get repetitive and I wonder how would the cafe be with more women around. Would we perhaps talk about Hillary instead of Obama?

Because the cafe is a public space, it is almost exclusively a male franchise. The big cities can be exception to this rule, but the percentage of patrons at cafes is still overwhelmingly male even in the biggest and most progressive of Moroccan cities. As a westernized women's rights promoter, I would join any "Take Back the Cafe" movement if there was one, but there isn't one that I'm aware of and I'm not sure that women were ever present in cafes in the past so the movement may need to be named something like "Taking Over the Cafe", but then that implies ownership.  The slogan and acronyms need to be given more thought, but you get my point.

For traditional and perhaps some religious reasons, public social interaction between men and women is highly segregated especially in most rural areas of the country.  As such, women have ceded places to men that men frequent and men have likewise ceded to women the home as women's domain. I remember during homestay how I would rarely see my host brother who would only come home for brief moments to grab a bite to eat and then fly out as soon as the meal was over, not to work but to the cafe. Sometimes there was a must-see soccer game to catch and it made complete sense since now a lot cafes are equipped with top of the line flat screen televisions. Not feeling like hitting the testosterone gathering or to exit out of the cafe smelling like cigarettes, I stayed home to study with my host mother. However, my host mother had an agenda of her own. It was time for tea talk with ladies. After some odd glances from a number of ladies, I understood that I needed to take my studying from their conference space to another room so the ladies could chat it up.

I don't think my mother or some of my host sisters are disheartened about not being able to crash the cafe. I have only come across a few Moroccan ladies that have asked me whether I liked Barca or Real Madrid.  That's not to say there are no female soccer fans, but going to watch a soccer match may not be a major draw for a large majority of ladies. Also, I don't encounter a lot of female smokers (perhaps one of the reasons why women outlast men by over 6 years) so I presume that they don't need a venue to do so.

There is no law in Morocco preventing women from congregating at cafes.  In my small town cafes, I have seen some young people, male and female, meeting up, which I've yet to determine if that is a new generational trend that will continue to grow or if they will adhere to the norms after a certain age kind of like how the Amish do in my state of Indiana. Then, supposedly as I've been told by the locals, some ladies that go unaccompanied and light up a cigarette at some specific cafes or with more certainty at a bar are perhaps going there not for casual conversation but for business reasons, which is nothing out of the ordinary in many U.S. establishments. Perhaps another reason why some women refrain from going to cafes unaccompanied and from lighting up.

In this patriarchal society like much of the western world, men are still expected to bring home the Halal bacon. They interact with fellow men at work, travel to other parts in search of employment, and when the sun goes down, they relax at a cafe.  On the other hand, the women do their shopping at the local market sometimes in the morning, prepare the meals, and mingle with other women throughout the day and into the evening in the comfort of their own homes.  Both men and women sip and slurp their mint tea or coffee in the company of their dear friends, men in an outdoor cafe and women in their respective living rooms.

I think granny is fairly content sipping her tea with her female friends.  It's what she has known and how she has lived.  With the rise of Western influence on the younger population through countless media outlets and many more Moroccan women attaining higher levels of education, joining the workforce, and filling prominent political roles in Moroccan society, will younger generations continue to leave things as is?  Will the cafe as with many other public spaces remain primarily a male environment, and vice versa will the home continue to be the meeting place for many women?  Will cafe owners seeing the growing buying power of some women retrofit their cafes to attract female clientele?  I can't really say, but I'm curious to see if and how it may develop.   

Going Against What Nature Intended: Surviving Two Winters in the Maghreb

When I first heard from my Peace Corps recruiter that I had the choice of either central Asia or Morocco, I thought, "Hmm, do I want to freeze my butt in a Stan country or toast in the desert of Morocco?"  I decided to go for the heat.

I've never enjoyed the cold other than a day or two in the winter when the snow falls and everything looks squeaky clean with that fresh blanket of snow, but then that image is quickly ruined when a big semi-truck passes turning that fresh coat of white into dark, gray slush.  I also enjoyed creating softball size snowballs and hurling them at family and friends when they least expected it.  Other than that, winter for me has been about hibernating until the depression-inducing, gray overcast skies cede their control to the serotonin-reviving warm sun.  So when I got to Morocco in late August of 2008 and feeling the hot sun on my face, I felt I had made the right decision.  Little did I know what was ahead of me.

Living in Indiana, I endured a number of insane blizzards and temperatures that would make my nostrils freeze every time I would breathe.  Temperature-wise and as far as blizzards are concerned, Morocco pales in comparison.  This year, for example, my town got maybe two light coats of snow that disappeared within a day or two and it only got to about freezing a few times during the course of the entire winter.  However, I must say that this last winter was by far the worst winter I have ever endured.  It was a true test of wills.

Of course other volunteers deep into the Atlas Mountains had it much harder, but perhaps some of my lighter-skinned fellow volunteers of European descent have a genetic disposition that is better able to deal with the cold.  I know for a fact that I'm not made for cold weather.  Both my parents are from Venezuela.  They are descendants of generations and generations of tropical climate dwellers.  Their genes are specifically designed to weather the year-round hot sun and humidity coming from our dense Amazonian jungle forests and the always balmy Caribbean waters.  When my family decided to make the move to El Norte, the grand U.S.A., they did so for economic reasons not because they enjoyed wearing several layers to the point where they resembled the March of Penguins.  When I was born, I lived in the States for a couple of years, but then I returned to my parents' natural habitat.  For 8 years, I thrived in my natural habitat.  My melanin rich milk chocolate skin fended off the harsh sun hardly ever encountering sun burns.  Also, when the heat was stifling, my internal temperature controls turned on the boosters generating more sweat to cool me off.  I was in sync with my environment.

Then, our family decided to move back the good ol' US of A.  We moved to Oklahoma where the winters were relatively mild.  We lived there for a number of years before our family decided to continue the migration northward despite my many objections.  Once again, economic reasons took precedence over my need to live in a warmer habitat.  In Indiana, I endured five long winters.  Not wanting to endure another, I left for the sun-drenched coast of South Florida.  Sometimes I think it was my inner evolutionary survival of the species voice speaking to my subconscious urging me to return to a more favorable environment.

So in August of 2008 fast forwarding to Morocco, my internal temperature controls were functioning in proper form once again in the hot sun of Morocco, but this moment of comfort would soon be a cherished memory.  Our larger training group was divided into smaller sub-groups, which would then leave the urban Azrou valley to smaller rural villages deep into the Middle Atlas Mountains.  The day I arrived to my CBT site it rained.  I thought nothing of it.  Having seen what appeared to be an arid and parched countryside on my way there, I was happy that the rain had come.   Then, little by little the temperatures began to decline, and out of preservation I began to add one layer after another of whatever clothing would restore my body temperature to its homeostasis.  Little did I know, that was the start to what would be some of the toughest months of service.

We were told in training how cold it would get in Morocco, but not how the cold plays out in Morocco.  What do I mean by that?  Well, in the U.S., the temperatures go down and every household spoiled by the comforts of central heating makes a degree adjustment to the thermometer so that it can restore the house temperature to an optimal temperature where you can lounge in your home in a t-shirt as if there was no winter at all.  In Morocco, the realities of winter are ever present.  Your home, which should be your refuge, becomes an ice box because it is generally colder inside than the outside temperature.  In the winter, I turn off my refrigerator because my house is sufficiently cold.  My all-cement walls absorb the moisture of the cold rain and snow and cool my home to a cold-to-the-bone 40-45F.  You may think that 40F is not quite so bad given that I've endured below zero temperatures in Indiana, but I never worked, ate, and slept in 40 degrees day in and day out without any relief in sight.

My body, feeling out of sync with this environment, pleaded for the temporary and necessary comforts of the hammam (Turkish steam bath houses).  During homestay, I frequented the hammam more than the locals.  I was told that I would get sick by going so often.  I did not care.  The hammam transported me to my early childhood in Venezuela where just sitting outside would produce fat beads of sweat from my sweat-drenched head or to my many days laying out on the South Florida beaches and taking in the warm mist of the ocean--I also closed my eyes and reminisced often to avoid having to watch scruffy men scrubbing their privates.  While my host family members went only once or at most twice a week, I went every other day.  The hammam was my savior throughout my first winter in Morocco.

My first winter was easier to manage because not until late January was I responsible for a number of chores.  Most of the winter of 08-09 I was chilling with my host family who took care of washing my clothes and dishes.  I said thank you to my host mother for doing these things for me, but what I should have been doing was kissing her feet in utter gratitude.  I stated in an earlier blog how I plan to incorporate the Moroccan-style one-dish-serves-all tradition into my dining routine in order to rid myself of the burden of washing dishes.  Well, in the winter, washing dishes is the equivalent of dipping your arms and hands repeatedly in a fishing hole in a frozen lake bed.  You could boil water, but then you're using precious buta gas reserved for cooking.

The same applies to washing your clothes.  I remember staring long and hard at the wash bin where my clothes soaked for hours as I procrastinated and procrastinated the task of giving my clothes a few turns and a few swishes in and out of the water that I was told were necessary to ensure a decent wash.  As you can imagine, the swishing and turning became less and less important the colder it got and I began to place more faith in the magical disinfecting, cleaning powers of stationary soaking.  I became a full believer in the Tide commercials that showed how a simple application of the detergent would miraculously whisk away all impurities leaving the fabric white as new.  These two simple chores were put off until there was no option, but to confront it.  I braced myself and let out a few obscenities before digging in and shivering my way through it.

As soon as I learned that I was to be placed in a site at the foothills of the Middle Atlas Mountains, I immediately called my parents and asked them to send me all my wool, fleece, and UnderArmor that I had left behind.  Last year, October was a two garment month, November three, and December four, January and February 5 or 6 with a coat on, and then gradually in mid-March I began shedding the layers until I was back to one in mid April.  This year, October and November were warm except for a shower or two that would bring a bit of cold, but I was mostly in long sleeves.  Then, December announced the start of winter in the form of a series of  blustery and rainy days, and I'll never forget the howling of the winds made as they  funneled through my makeshift windows and doors.  In January, the rains fell persistently and temperatures plummeted.  February brought little reprieve as it continued to pour and kept my home at a steady 45-50F.  Now in late March, my house sits at a cool 62F.  I still have three layers on, but I feel liberated.


Some interesting things happen at 45-50F that I never saw before in the States.  I could see myself breathing at all times inside my home.  Whenever I decided to torture myself by taking a bucket bath despite the cold emanating from the walls, I could see the warm water evaporating from my skin creating an aura of steam all around me.  I just needed a light behind me and it would have looked like a scene from Close Encounters.  With the temperatures hovering over 40F degrees, it is impossible to dry your clothes unless the sun makes a rare and brief appearance.  At the sign of sun, you lay out your clothes strategically on the clothes line so that the sun's rays can hopefully get your clothes from wet to damp (the picture shows my steaming pants under the sun's rays).

If you suffer from bad circulation to your extremities, the joints to your feet and hands can begin to swell up in response to the cold.  Because my fingers were numbed by the cold, I was unable to type for any extended period of time.  Because the thought of the cold pervaded my mind, my work productivity slowed to a grinding halt at times and then sputtered along just enough to meet the most pressing of deadlines.

I never thought that in coming to Morocco that I would be camping for almost three months out of the year inside my own home.  Granted, I'm not sleeping outside exposed to the elements, but for roughly three months sleeping inside my sleeping bag was the only way to rest in comfort during the long, cold nights.  In the process of going to sleep, you had to master the art of zen meditation both to forget how cold it was and to help you remain completely still because moving an inch in your sleeping bag could potentially lead to the escape of what my bag's manual called convection heat (air that has been warmed inside my bag) that needs to remain trapped in order to preserve any level of comfort.  Trapping convection heat became the task of utmost importance.

When I cooked, I took advantage of the heat generated by the stove by "huddling around fire" and singing kumbaya, placing my hands around pots and pans until they were uncomfortably hot, and even inserting a warm toasting pan within my layers of clothing.  Indoor camping activities were limited to reading and thoughtful film criticism of the best movies of 2007, 2008, and 2009, all five seasons of The Wire, the first two seasons of The Office, and the best documentaries of 2009 just to name a few.

The Hills Come Alive

I felt guilty at first that I was not writing, researching, or meeting my artisans as often as I had done in the past, but when I did go to see my artisans, they too were laid out, wrapped up like mummies catching the latest Mexican soap opera dubbed in darija or chain movie-watching anything that came through their cable movie channels.  My artisan would ask me, "Wes shbeti sta? (Are you full/fed up with the rain?"  To which I responded with a resounding, "Iyeh, kayna sta bzzef ou l-brrd saib (there's a lot of rain and cold is rough)".  When any reference to the rain was made, most Moroccans would say with gusto, "L-hamdullah (thanks be to God)!"

This praise to God for the rain took me by surprise at first.  In the states, we seem to look down on rainy days.  They can be such an inconvenience and forget all the bumper to bumper traffic that is bound to come up.  However, in a country that is at the edge of the Sahara trying to prevent the expansion of that barren wilderness, the rain is welcomed and greeted with praises.  So on those rainy and cold days, people hunker down.  Acting in a culturally-sensitive manner not wanting to alter my artisan's routine, I joined her family in watching the latest prime time Mexican soap opera, Margarita, and gladly drank their mint tea.

Back in the states, I took for granted the central heating that was everywhere.  Sometimes I would only wear a t-shirt under my coat because some places would jack their thermometer well over 80F.  In Morocco, the saying goes that the only thing that is kept warm in the winter and cold in the summer is money.  Hearing this, I, from time to time, visited a few local banks, picked up a number to be able to speak to one of the bank consultants, would befriend some people by offering them my soon-to-be-called number for their number so I could continue to chill in the lobby basking in the central heating, and then when the security staff became suspicious, I always remembered that I needed to go somewhere else or acted lost and confused.  The bank was the only place that was humming with productivity.  Until that point, I never really gave much thought to how much the infrastructure of central heating can affect an economy.

Heating thyself

I could have made it easier on myself by purchasing a heating device that would fall under the generous 800DH($100) Peace Corps offers as reimbursement.  Looking back, I still have mixed feelings about getting a heater.  The two options available in Morocco are your electric radiator type or the butane gas heated ceramic plates type.  The butane gas heater is the cheapest, but also the most dangerous.  As you know, in order to have any sort of combustion, you need oxygen in the mix.  In the winter, in order to prevent the cold winds from invading your home, you naturally close all your windows firmly.  As soon as you turn on the butane gas heater though, the fire begins to eat up the oxygen in the room.  If you are not careful about ventilating the room by say opening a window, you could suffocate from a lack of oxygen.  Because a number of deaths are attributed to these heaters every year, several Moroccan TV stations run public service announcements every winter reminding citizens to ventilate the room and not to fall asleep while the heater is in operation .  The second option is the much safer electric radiator heater, which uses a kilowatt of energy a minute.  My former site mate told me that he once received a bill for nearly 500DH (a little over $60).  This may not be a lot in dollar terms, but in Peace Corps salary terms, 500DH is a quarter of our paycheck.  Preferring to forgo the risk of asphyxiation and to save my dirhams for future travel, I decided to tough it out.

If I could do it all over again, I think I would buy that heater and buy myself a water heater as well.  It is an investment in your sanity.  Some volunteers and some of the Moroccans I work with have asked me if I have considered extending my service for another year to which I reply, "No, because I would for sure go insane."  Some think that I'm referring to how difficult it may be living in Morocco, but I'm mainly thinking about how much I miss the warm sun and humidity of the tropics and how staying in Morocco would simply be going against what nature intended.