Highs and lows...

This week has been a mixture of highs and lows. We have furthered our knowledge of the area, and have got more to grips with language, shopping and bargaining. We have found another good hotel for visitors, a realistically affordable one for those who don't work as lawyer/banker/accountant, and a pool where we can pay £5 to spend the day sunbathing. Granted the number of kids and pumping Arabic music takes some of the relaxation element away but tanning by the pool is still always going to hit a high with me. We have also had a bit of an awesome week on the food front, with the discovery of some incredible local dishes, as well as some hits (and of course the occasional miss) from the in house chef's experimention (that'll be me).

As with all facets of life, where there are highs there are lows. Our progress in school is slow. I feel like I have managed to waste two very useful weeks doing little. As we are walking into a school that was previously teaching the French curriculum, we are having to not only learn a new curriculum (American), but also implement everything from scratch. This doesn't sound too difficult, but for most new teachers (or old but new in our case), when you walk into a new job there is at least some structure in place for you to build on and develop. We are having to plan out the entire sequence. A sequence that is not just for a one year rotation but two. We have our students for two years, as we teach two grades. Our boss has been great and given us quite a lot of help and some professional development already, but having never done this before it is really hard to know where to start. In Thailand we started where the textbook started. Now we don't have textbooks, which is fine, but it leaves little in the way of direction. So far I have managed to make my classroom look pretty. But not that pretty, as yet we have no access to printer, limited colour paper, and only one tiny roll of sellotape. All the supplies have been ordered, and hopefully will arrive soon, along with interactive whiteboards, projectors, a whiteboard for me and bookshelves for Nick; inshallah (the locals response to many things delayed or challenging, literally meaning 'god willing'). On a plus side I do have a computer and speakers in my classroom for the first time. Just need a teachers desk to put it on now.

Another positive is that the roofers finally seem to have finished. Gone is the 6am dawn chorus of chirpy Arabic shouting joined with cacophony of hammers. Instead this has been replaced by a further Ramadan related negative (along with the fact that we are now 24 days sober), in that for many evenings this week there have been entire families playing on the playground in the U-shaped courtyard until 3.30am. This is not helping to endear our neighbours and future students to us.

Outside from the school stuff and the irritating positioning of the playground, life is getting better. It is not as blisteringly hot as before and the more we find out about the area the easier life is. Every weekend there is a traveling souq (market) that sets up on the outskirts of town about a kilometre from our apartment. Here farmers selling piles of fruit and veg, herbs, spices, and general kitchen tat arrange themselves inside a large boulder-strewn compound area with old disused livestock pens around the outside. The first day we went we wasted about an hour wandering around all the stalls looking at the incredible amount of junk available. You can find everything from old pressure cookers, pots and pans to washing machines, vacuums and even desktop computers. We bought a second (or fifth) hand iron for about $5. Obviously it didn't work when we got home, but hey, what did we really expect. At least it was a reasonably cheap lesson to learn. While the household equipment is best left there, the fruit, veg, herbs and spices are fantastic. Waste high piles of bright yellow honey melons, watermelons the length of your arm, and more peaches, grapes and figs than you can imagine. Last week we came home with four kilos of fruit and veg and more fresh coriander and parsley than we could ever use, all for the princely sum of $6.

Our weekly shop. We have to wash all the dust
and people's hand prints off.

A random pic from Ifrane market

It is a good job that vegetables are so cheap, as meat is not. One turkey breast fillet costs about $4. Granted it is enormous and feeds us for about two weeks when used sparingly. In the last few weeks I have made a great new discovery of cooking with spices. This is Morocco after all... land of the freshly ground spice. It is a country frequently depicted with colourful images of spices stalls and buying them is an onslaught on a number of senses. Instead of buying our spices locally, we get a grande taxi to Azrou twenty minutes away. This is a mountain Berber town famous for its ethnic hand woven carpets, fresh trout and spices. Walking into a spice merchants and choosing ingredients from their large barrels to be freshly ground while you wait is quite an experience. I now have more than I know what to do with or jars to store. As well as coming back from Azrou with spices, we have bought our first rug. Well two actually. These bright orange and red rugs are the local Berber colours, and although we opted for the cheap thin versions rather than the thick wool rugs, they brighten up our empty white corridor.

 

One of the things I was most looking forward to about coming here was the food. I have loved tajines and cous-cous for years, and wanted to try the authentic versions. Our first sample was incredibly disappointing and gave me rise to the thought that as with some other ethnic cuisines the westernised versions are tastier. Last week our house lady came for the first time and as well as cleaning, one of her tasks is to cook a Moroccan dish for us. She made us a beef and date tajine. It has to be one of the best meals I have ever eaten. Sadly I have no idea how on earth she got it to the flavour or thickness she did, but I'm going to try and get a lesson off her. We have yet to eat and pass judgment on authentic Morrocan cous-cous as they only ever eat it on Fridays apparently, and not during Ramadan.

Because we have a more limited access to food here than we have had anywhere else we have lived, I am being a lot more adventurous with my cooking. I've always been an ok cook and can do many dishes, but have always relied on pre-made pastes for things like tajines and curries. Now I'm being forced for the first time in my life to make things from raw ingredients. I made chicken bangalore a couple of days ago using a combination of twelve ingredients to make the paste. It was by far the best curry I've ever made. No more lazy meals for me.

We have also been trying lots of the breads and pastries that are so popular at Ramadan. They are served at Ftor (breaking of the fast) each day. During this meal people eat carbohydrate rich foods often packed with sugar to quickly restore energy and calories after fasting. There are a variety of these, but the most common meal is Milwhe (roti type bread), served with a cold boiled egg with cumin and salt, a few dates and a sticky sugar, honey and sesame seed laden chewy pastry called shebekkia (very fattening but so good we've had to buy some for our daily sweet treat). This comes with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, a glass of hot-sweet mint tea, and a bowl of chickpea, lentil and beef soup. This meal is eaten most evenings by locals here. They eat this at soon as the fast breaks, then go and pray before returning to the restaurants to eat tajines and other heavier dishes. It is common for people to be out and about eating and doing shopping at around 10.00-11.00pm. Some people stay up all night eating, hence the 3.30am playground visits.

On a last foody note, we tried pastilla for the first time the other day. Another famous Moroccan food, this is a filo pie stuffed with spices, meat and fruit. We had a chicken one for lunch and we weren't quite prepared for how sweet it was. Now I know I've lived in Thailand for six years where they put condensed milk on toast and sugar on scrambled eggs, but thats nothing compared to this. It is quite disconcerting to sit down to eat a chicken pie and think that it's lacking a large dollop of custard. Not sure about this delicacy.

Shebekkia and pastilla