The First Noel

Last weekend while contemplating death on the bus to Marrakech, my thoughts were thankfully interrupted by the realization that Christmas would be here soon. It wouldn't be here exactly, but it would be somewhere. Without the sensory reminders of Xmas (lights, music, advertisments) one tends to forget about the holiday altogether. Without the religion to back up where the commercial and decorative elements fail to impact, Christmas seemed to be a time at least to appreciate everything and everyone you appreciate, or would like to. But wait, is that too much like Thanksgiving? And why just the one "season" or day? We could make it a regular thing, yeah? Without all the fuss?

Perhaps that would be diluting the concentrated "fun"; tradition + nostalgia + anticipation seem to equal lifted spirits in many cases, and at least a "season" provies many with the opportunity (or, er... obligation?) to visit loved ones.

Enough self-indulgent ruminations on the meaning of Christmas as ruminated by Nathaniel Krause; let's get to the self-indulgent memoirs of life in Morocco as memoired by Nathaniel Krause.

So here, in the High Atlas mountains in the Islamic nation of Morocco, Africa, I spent Xmas Eve sipping hot tea in front of a humble but fancifully decorated fake tree with my good buddy and site mate Ami and her visiting friend from America, Stephanie. We listened to some wonderfully horrific music-- Crosby Croons the Christmas Classics or something, cooked a bunch of food, ate a bunch of food, opened presents, chatted with family back home (thanks for the calls and e-mails everyone). It was downright merry.

A great last few days, in fact-- something to combat the withering sense of purpose and feelings of uselessness common in a Volunteer's first few months of service.

I'm anxious to get out of homestay-- another month seems like an eternity, but I'm sure there will be unforseen benefits to the time spent here. Having a place to live until I find a house is one that jumps to mind. Speaking of which, I have baited some hooks around town in hopes of finding a place. People seems eager to help and for that I am grateful, but we never seem to actually go see houses. It's been difficult to judge how active to be in such a situation, but we'll see. I'm considering hiring a simsar, or person whom you pay to find you a house, in order to hopefully speed up the process. Another situation in which I have to remind myself to be patient; that things take much longer than I'm used to in order to "make progress". I do have a deadline, however, and I don't want to have to rush a lack of progress as January winds down.

That's about it for things here at the moment. Peace Corps staff drove something like eight hours last week to deliver me a sweet new mountain bike. Have a look:

I'm sure I will further camoflague myself into the society pedalling my shiny red TREK through town. If I only had some sort of bright blue helment that I'd be required, under threat of immediate expulsion from Peace Corps, to wear....ah yes, here it is!

Happy Holidays to everyone back home as well as to my fellow Volunteers. I wish you all the best, all the time.

At the risk of

habitually updating only during times of considerable event or circumstance I thought I should provide this stunning development:

Today I bought galoshes.
For galoshing.

l-Eid Kbir

12/09/08

Today is l-Eid Kbir or “The Great Feast”, a religious holiday on which families slaughter a sheep in sacrifice as Abraham once did in substitute for his own son, as Islamic history tells us.

For the past week or so I had a companion on my floor of the house. Kept in a makeshift cage in the area across from my room, he mostly ate hay and bleated dishearteningly well into the night. We never really became friends but still, I was sad to see him go. This morning he, along with what must have been hundreds of thousands of his brethren across the country, with a slash of a knife, exited this earth in a pool of blood.

Sort of. Most of him is still here.

I returned home this morning at the beckoning of my host brother; the deed was about to be done, he said. I walked up to the roof area near my room in time to see the sheep, my irksome companion, in his last seconds of life on the concrete floor. Blood was splattered about, his throat cut, body twitching and occasionally thrashing as the butcher held his legs. When he stopped moving they hung him up by the tendons of his rear ankles *shiver*. Before that, however, they inflated his skin (to ease in its separation from the body) by cutting a hole in its coat and blowing. An inflated sheep, seriously. They proceeded to skin and disembowel it, placing the organs meant for consumption into buckets and trays. In order to remove the feces from the intestinal tract, the man-- I will never forget this-- placed his lips directly to the sheep’s rear entrance and blew forcefully several times. You could see the “digestive material” moving along through the transparent bulbous tubes of viscera dangling from its abdomen and, with the aid of a little water, it fell out in brown pebbles onto the ground from some severed end.

Still reading?

Its body, legs broken, hooves chopped off, decapitated, eviscerated and hollow, hung there from the ladder propped up outside my room. Its head, eyes still open, is sitting atop the heap of skin and fur nearby. I think I ate parts of it for lunch just minutes ago. Not the head, I mean. But that will come soon enough.

Kids have been out in the street, screaming and making taunting-sounding chants down the alleys in anticipation of something ominous to come. Men dressed up in goatskin suits and others with masks and black paint on their bodies (called harmas, I believe) roam the streets with wooden sticks, harassing and chasing people, stopping cars, and terrifying children who are obviously loving it-- all in good fun (I think) in a very Halloween-esque fashion.

Halloween and Thanksgiving, that’s what this holiday feels like. The togetherness, the visiting of family, the bickering, the mass slaughtering of animals, the costumes, the kids running around outside, and of course the eating and eating and eating. Though the official holiday is just today, the celebration will continue throughout the week as we make our way through the remaining sheep parts. I think brain is on the menu. Mbruk l-Eid!