Beyond the Mountains

It has been an exhausting week. We have been working very long hours to try and stay on top of things. As I have mentioned before we have few hardcopy resources. Our Reading and Science programs are online, and our Math resources have not arrived. For the rest of the Language Arts we are expected to use the internet and design materials to best suit the curriculum. While this is good in many ways, such as you are not tied to one book and potential activities you don't like and it ensures you teach directly to the curriculum, it also means that we are constantly scrambling to get to know the curriculum, plan activities and plan assessment. Today is Saturday and we spent five hours working. Last weekend we were out on Friday and then away for the weekend. This meant that we spent the rest of the week trying to catch up. Combine this with a midweek evening trip down to Fes to see a friend who is leading a photography tour, and our school's Open House evening and this week has felt endless.

Taking last weekend away from school work was worth it, even if it made this week a little stressful. For an anniversary treat we went to stay in a riad in the medina in Meknes. Meknes is one of Morocco's four imperial cities and is 60km away from Ifrane and Fes. We took the bus down for a change, thinking we'd get more space and comfort than in a grande taxi. The increase in space was marginal but we did gain quite a lot of height. While this might usually be considered an improvement with the better views, it also means there is a lot more rolling and movement along the windy road. Having consumed a good share of two bottles of wine the night before I spent the entire 60 minute journey clinging the seat in front and trying to control my breathing to prevent being sick. It was with great relief that we arrived in Meknes. This relief was relatively brief as once there we had to stand in the blazing sun in the big square outside the medina while we waited for the manager of the riad to come and fetch us. As most riads are tucked away in windy back streets and hidden behind big walls, it is near on impossible to find them on your own. While we were waiting for our man we got to take in some of the goings on in the square. This large area was once used for announcements and public executions but is now a haven for cafés, lantern shops and a wide variety of street sellers. The most interesting of these were the African witch doctors. The area is renowned for its medicine men who mix up all sorts of weird and wonderful concoctions. One popular ware is dried ostrich legs and feet, complete with shrivelled skin and claws. Later in the evening the square filled with people watching performers. Snake charmers and dancers tempt people to part with money to get the tiniest glimpse of a performance. We watched a snake charmer for five minutes. There was a whole lot of shouting and parading around but very little action from the snake. If it was a snake at all. It was impossible to know for sure as it remained tied in a bag.

The witch doctors are under the umbrellas.

The riad we stayed in was stunning. At 200 years old it has been lovingly restored by a French family who used it as a home while they were teaching out here. Since they returned home 18 months ago it has been used as a hotel. With only four rooms it is an oasis of calm in the bustle and noise of the walled medina. We stayed in one of the two suites that opened onto the enclosed courtyard. Open to the sky with shade from the orange laden trees, the comfy courtyard loungers provided the perfect place for nursing a hangover. I have wanted to stay in a riad for a long time. It is impossible to know anything about what is behind the imposing doors and high walls from outside. Stepping through the door into a hall and then out into the enclosed haven of the internal garden is kind of magical. The experience was everything and more than expected. 

Our welcome mint tes at the riad.

Some of the beautiful details

The double doors to our room.

 

Compared to the medina in Fes, this medina was small. When we were in the Fes medina we found it surprisingly easy to navigate. This might be due to the fact that we stayed on the main routes. In Meknes we were not so mindful and wandered without too much thought for direction. I can honestly say that within five minutes of leaving the riad for the first time we wouldn't have been able to find our way back. While the shopping area is very condensed and we quickly walked through it, we soon found ourselves disoriented amongst narrow streets and the doors of peoples' homes. We stumbled out the other end of the medina and had to follow the wall back around to find another way in.

The windy alleyways in the medina

Spice stacks

  

We have been advised by a few people that for shopping it is best to look in Fes but to shop in Meknes. With less of a crowd, fewer tourists and a more compact area to cover, prices are also cheaper. Moroccan haggling is legendary. And we were expecting to find ourselves in quite a few long winded bargaining discussions. Surprisingly most people we have tried to bargain with have shown very little interest and are happy to let us leave without decreasing the price at all. Locals and expats alike always say the real price is 50% of the starting price and not to buy at full price. This is somewhat hard when faced with shopkeepers who are happy to let you walk away with no apparent interest in trying to make a sale. We did have one scary experience where a guy was asking about $120 for a mirror and then ended up chasing us down the street offering it us for $30. He had been so hard sell that he scared us away. We ended up leaving the medina with a 3ft black lantern, numerous pairs of shoes and four wall lamp shade to replace our dodgy pink ones. The apartment is still a work in progress but we are getting there. It might just be heading towards the nicest place we have lived in. Now we just need some visitors to show it off to... bring on November.

Bit of a funny one... on the way back we stopped to do some food shopping. In the store there was a food court with a selection of restaurants. Entertainingly one of them was named 'Bangkok Cafe... Japanese Restaurant', specialising in sushi and Chinese food. Looks like I'll be sticking to our Thai food at home still.

Steve Davey photography tours http://www.stevedavey.com/galleries/index.html

Riad La Maison Du Cote Riad La Maison D'a Cote | Booking.com

Getting into the swing of things...

It is early on Saturday morning, way to early to be respectable... before 7 am early. Little sleep was had last night, as seems to be always the case when too much red wine is drunk. We had our first proper night out in town with three of our colleagues. A straight out from work for Friday drinks kind of night... definitely not the done thing in Morocco, but we made it work non the less. We went to the 'pub' with beer garden overlooking the lake. Somewhat disappointingly we were not allowed to sit outside in the empty garden to have a beer and had to sit in the gloomy and empty restaurant style interior where they were blasting out Celine Dion and other dodgy artists. I see a return to my late teens on the horizon, with purchases of coke from the bar to be topped up with vodka from the bag. The early morning and late afternoon weather is too good here at the moment to be cooped up inside on a Friday afternoon. 

This weekend is the weekend we needed last weekend. Last week after surviving the first week of school by holding out for the weekend in desperation, we had to go on a school picnic. This was designed to welcome all the parents to the new American/International school system and for them to meet with the teachers on an informal basis. Our community is strange, you bump into your students and parents at every turn, so it is a good idea to break the ice with something fun. Apart from taking up a Saturday we would have liked free for planning and recovery, it was nice to meet new people and play games with the kids. On that note I have found that quite a few of the monsters who were screaming constantly and causing havoc on the playground all those days before school started are now in my class. The one who screamed the loudest is anyway.

Last weekend we went to one of the apartments across the way for a 'carpet educational'. Arranged by some of the foreign teachers it was designed with new teachers in mind as a way of stopping us getting ripped off when we went and bought the inevitable Moroccan carpets. Apparently most people who live here end up developing quite an obsession with carpets and buy far more than they have the space for. The people who went had around twenty huge carpets to sell or swap. It got quite intense at times with many people getting very into their descriptions of 'earth movement', 'joyous rebellion' and even 'women’s womb' representations, but it was lovely to walk through an apartment door and be handed big wine glasses and a bottle of tasty red and welcomed into the fold of a very established social community. There is so much more going in here than you'd expect. Most of it is far more Americanised than I am used to, but this is said in the nicest possible way as people here are remarkably generous. As well as being offered lifts, church money until the bank sorted our ATMs, and the loan of a car, we also had one lady send her husband back from his Friday evening out just to change our gas bottle. She had mentioned in school that her husband usually kept spares and as ours had run out he would swap it and then go and replace it. She forgot to mention this to him until he was halfway to Azrou to watch a local Berber concert. He dropped her off, came back to ours, collected the empty bottle and then went to the marche to get a new one as he didn't have a spare. He then came back, carried it up three flights of stairs, replaced it before accepting only a beer in reward and then drove 20 minutes back to Azrou. It often amazes me just how far out of their way complete strangers can go for you.

We are learning more and more about our international community, as well as the Moroccan community in the area. We have a mixture of very wealthy, highly educated Moroccans and less educated farming Berber communities. Through the university and the local markets and travelling souqs we have chance to interact with all sorts of people and most are lovely. Sadly I have heard some unpleasant things about some of the more privileged. It is not uncommon out here to hire Filipino teachers or nannies for wealthier children. It is also not uncommon for these international hires who are so far from home and family to be incredibly badly treated. A few years ago there was a case of one woman being locked up and starved and having to be rescued by concerned university staff. Thankfully all the Filipinos I have met so far seem to be happy and treated well, if somewhat overworked. It is something of a dark side to an otherwise friendly and welcoming community. 

Seem to have deleted all my pictures from this week... slipping into slight chaos of ridiculous long hours of planning... working much later than required in order to get organised... hopefully be better in the next few weeks.

First Week of School

Well, the first week of school is over and we are officially exhausted. Perhaps not as exhausted so much by the students as we would have been in Thailand, after all there are only twelve of them in my class and not thirty plus like I’m used to. We are more exhausted by slow bureaucracy and failing technology. Having signed our bank papers about three weeks ago, banked our travel allowance cheque and been paid, we have yet to receive ATM cards. The queues at the bank make it impossible to make it to the bank during school time, and it closes before we finish. This has meant that we have run out of money. We refuse to take any more money out on credit cards when we have our pay sitting in the bank down the road. Yesterday this all came to a head and our boss and superiors at the university heard about the situation. Our boss brought us pizza as she was convinced we had an empty fridge and offered us a loan from the petty cash. The female reverend from the university dropped in to school today to see if she could run us around and help us at the bank. Finally, Hannah, the Moroccan lady in charge of admin at the school arranged with the bank manager to go and collect some money for us. This is really a community that pulls together to support each other.

As for technology, this has nearly broken us this week. Nick more so than me as everything he tried to print, copy, or prepare seemed to fail. We have a photocopier that works about 45 minutes every day, a printer that often runs out of paper or ink and computers that lose connection with the printer for no reason and switch between French and English keyboards without rhyme or reason. When you have no books and no resources this drives you to distraction. It can take an hour to prepare something that the students finish in five minutes. We are with our students twenty-four hours a week and have little preparation time. This means that to get stuff ready for the next day we often have to stay an hour or two late. Writing our year plans and getting everything we need together for the semester is a distant dream right now.

Happily, it is not all doom and gloom. The school is beautiful and the time in the classroom is a pleasure. The school has 47 elementary students and has lots of space for them. A sand playground, football field and the tallest sloping-red roofs that contrast against the most incredible blue sky I have ever seen. There are ceder trees, weeping willows and pampas grass all around. it is stunning.  The students are lovely and have a far higher level of English than I am used to. Having twelve students in the class means that I already know how to get each student to work, how to control them, and what makes them tick. I’ve never had that chance before as there have always been so many kids I only get to know them properly when I tutor them. Here I am able to talk to even the most reclusive. After teaching boys for four years it's also really nice to have girls in the class. By the second day they would attach themselves like Velcro to me at the end of break. They are a really friendly class.

The administration building and lucnh hall. There is a staff room with computers, coffee machine and sofas.

The entrance

Outside my classroom window.

 

 At the end of last week we went to our first authentic Moroccan cous cous meal. Provided by the school, it was an opportunity forall the faculty to get together. With around nine people round each round table, they brought out a high sided plate that was about 50 centimetre diameter. This was piled high with cous cous, baked vegetables and tender beef and chicken. The traditional way of eating it is to all eat with your hands out of the one bowl. You have an area in front of you, like a slice of pizza. This is your space. You pick up the cous cous in your fingers and toss it in a backward motion into the palm of your hand repeatedly until it forms a compact ball. This you can then pick up and eat. This process took me so long and with my coordination meant that more went on the table than in my mouth. I quickly resorted to a spoon, as did most of the locals after the initial display of tradition.

As I mentioned before, one of the big highs of moving into our apartment was the huge great open fireplace that we have. After living in Thailand for so many years we are thrilled at the thought of having real fires when there is snow outside. When the temperature dropped last week Nick was checking the fireplace and found that the chimney had been cemented over. I was horrified. Apparently people couldn't live without the fireplace a few years ago, but now there is central heating it is more of a luxury. The chimneys were blocked up as there was a problem with birds flying down them and the university didn't want to pay for them to be cleaned any more. I’d be happy to pay for cleaning and take my chances with the birds if it meant that I could have a real fire. Sadly it doesn't look like it is an option. Instead we went out and bought some giant pine cones from one of the local souvenir shops. At the shop they went from asking for one cone for 100 dirahms to four cones for 120. When we agreed we were ushered quickly into a back room of the shop where we had to inspect pine cones. We left feeling like for the second time in a few days we had been involved in a back street black market deal.

As for the alcohol... the drought is over... a slab of beer and a couple of bottles of wine were acquired. Definitely not for the connoisseur, hopefully this weekend we'll make it down to Fes for more drinakble stuff.

Outside the classroom

View from the classroom

 

In the classroom

The Magical Middle Atlas

It has been a hectic week. Every time I sit down to write this I keep a few things on my list to write about next time as I’m convinced that sometime soon I’m going to run out of things to say and new events to share. Beyond settling in, exploring, meeting colleagues and getting into school I figured that there wouldn't be much worth telling about life in sleepy little Ifrane. Well, this week included two spontaneous dashes to Fes, dinner out with friends, an adventure to a sheep farm deep in the mountains, escaping crayfish, a snake in the hall, our first Moroccan cous cous experience and an illicit appointment in a hotel car park. This might be a long one. 

Last weekend started well. Having met some friendly returning teachers in school, we were invited down to Fes with our coordinator and his wife. He is from Austria, she is from Guatemala, and they have lived here for a while and know a lot about the area. They took us shopping to Carrefour. This French chain of supermarkets has yet to let us down. As always it was reliably filled with specialist cheeses, meats, mayonnaises, mustards, cereals and other things that you can't find anywhere else. Sadly, the wine section was still closed. When we tried to go to the second supermarket for the things we'd missed we found it was closed for an hour for the breaking of the fast. This gave us the perfect opportunity for us to find a hotel where we could enjoy our first beer in 30 days. Our first Moroccan beer was Spécial. At $2.50 for a small bottle in a hotel, this is the cheapest beer in Morocco... cheap beer really never tasted so good.

At the new faculty welcome meal a while ago, I mentioned to Kim's husband Mustafa that we really wanted some plants for our apartment. Having lived in Thailand with a mini jungle our apartment here seemed to be really lacking something. Compared to steamy Thailand that is bursting with them, suitable house plants are quite hard to find in dusty Ifrane. The cedar trees are nice, but not sure we'd get one up to the fourth floor. On Sunday morning Mustafa phoned us to say he'd take us out to find some, that there was a place about half an hour's drive outside Azrou. Kim and Mustafa own a big old farm about half an hour beyond Azrou, and after bargaining hard for us and arranging for our four big plants to be potted, he drove us out into the country to visit the farm. This was the first time we have really had chance to appreciate just how beautiful and vast the Middle Atlas are. We drove along a track off the main road for about thirty minutes, though fields dotted sparsely with small farms and holdings. We drove deeper and deeper into the hills until we reached the farm. Once there he introduced us to the family that take care of it for them and showed us around the house. With tall, tall palm trees out the front and jagged brown and dusty peaks as far as the eye can see, all you can hear is the wind blowing through the trees and the occasional bleat of a sheep. You are miles from anywhere. As stunning as it is now, in a couple of months, after the rains, the whole place will be green and fertile. While not quite as dramatic, this place equals that Lake District in grandeur just for the sheer scale of the area. We wouldn't even know where to start with walking the area. There are no maps or guides as such, just local herders who know the best places to grace the sheep at different times of year.

After leaving there it felt like we'd been on holiday for the day. It was only when we went to collect the potted plants that we realised we had left ourselves with quite a lot of hard work to do at the end of the day. Once in the pots, with the heavy clay soil, the plants weighed twenty to forty kilos. Carrying them up the three flights of stairs to our apartment nearly ended us. Two of them were so heavy and awkward that I couldn't even lift them. It was definitely worth the effort though as we now have the greenery we've become accustomed to. 

The Farm, they even own the hill behind.

The terrace at the farm

Our plants

 

This week we have had both the best and the worst weather so far. This morning while I type I have the windows wide open, the crickets are chirping and a cool breeze is blowing in. Gone is the dusty haze that we had for our first three weeks. Now most days the sky is crystal clear and as deep a blue as I’ve ever seen and we can see the hills in the distance. It is a high of around 25 degrees and always refreshing. At night it cools enough to need a jumper and appreciate slippers. I have found my perfect temperature. It quite literally fills me with joy and well being every time I walk outside. In Thailand these days came once a year if you were lucky. I’m hoping this is our fall weather for a while. Yesterday was a bit of a shocker though. We had low clouds and horizontal rain for most of the day. They say in the winter when it does snow here, that it just dumps. One day there is nothing, the next day you can have a metre or two. Fingers crossed this will be a snow year. 

Today Mustafa phoned Kim while we were in a meeting. He'd just bought a ton of crayfish and wanted to know if anyone wanted any. Always game to try something new we said we'd give it a go. He bought a dag with about ten crawling around inside. Each crayfish was about the size of my hand... and to me, terrifyingly, seemed to be mostly claws. They waved at me when Nick picked them out of the bag. We left them in a plastic bag sitting on a table by the door while we continued with the meeting. A little while later as Sarah was leaving she found that one had escaped, fallen off the table, and was making a very slow dash for the door. Sarah, is a vegetarian and seems to have a love of animals of all shapes and sizes, has talked about finding a place to keep one of the many sheep or donkeys that live in the area. If she'd had an irrigated tank, two of those crayfish would have found themselves a new home and have been spared from the pot. As it was, we bought our bag of squirming goodies back home with us, via our colleagues flat where we stopped off to see if he wanted any. We ended up stopping in for a chat for a while, during which time repeated attempts were made to escape the bag. We kept imagining his wife walking in to find them scuttling across the floor. Now many know just how uncomfortable I am with anything possessing over four legs, and dealing with crayfish, which not only seem to be all legs, but also antenna and claws. Nick doesn't seem to have quite the same issues as me and was happily chatting away to them while they swam around in the sink, right up to the point of putting them into the boiling water. I had to be on the other side of the room, quickly googling how to prepare and dismantle them. The result from ten reasonable sized crayfish was a handful of meat for a Malay curry, and a tasty cumin and chilli topping for one crostini each. A very small reward for a lot of mess and work. 

To add to our encounters with things that make me squirm, Nick was walking out of his class and into the hall the other day, when he saw what looked like a large worm. It was only as it struck out to try and bite him that he realised it was a snake. It had to be the smallest snake I have ever seen and looked like a tiny puff adder no longer than your hand. It made a dash for it and ended up crawling into a crack in the wall outside the Kindergarten classroom. Thankfully it was seen a few days later and escorted from the building.

Wednesday this week was the end of Ramadan. To celebrate surviving the fast there is a two day holiday where people buy new clothes for everyone in the house, feast with friends and family and generally congratulate everyone for making it through another fast. We had hoped that this would be the time that not only brought life back to normal, but also brought back the owners of the only alcohol store in town from wherever they have been hiding. Sadly it did not. A colleague advised us that on the third day after Ramadan ended that it would be possible to buy alcohol. Every person had a different theory, and even the staff at the big supermarkets in Fes didn't know the exact date. Theories range from 1 day to three weeks. Not what we wanted to hear after waiting so patiently for the end of Ramadan.

Anyway, our colleague was convinced that Friday was the day. We drove to the local grocers and found it still locked up. There we were advised that for sure the shops were selling in Fes. So we drove in slow traffic on the windy road 60 kilometres to Fes. There we faced the unwelcoming view of the shuttered alcohol section. While muttering profanities under his breath our friend got chatting to some guy who said he knew someone who worked in a hotel and if we called him in an hour he'd be able to get us anything. To cut a long (5 hour) story short, first we were directed to meet a guy in the Royal Mirage Hotel car park who never showed up despite repeated promises, then we met someone else who took us to black market sellers in the medina. Sitting around waiting in a variety of car parks waiting made it feel like we were doing something illicit and not just searching for a cool beer to finish off our working week. It was an adventure but I’m not even that bothered about beer so it was a rather long night. It was more of an issue for our friend, he'd given up beer for Ramadan and given us his left overs earlier in the week thinking we'd be able to replace them easily. It was quite a dejected car that drove back. Thankfully we found somewhere yesterday and we had our first proper social night that broke the 11.00pm mark last night. Typing with a fuzzy head from cheap Moroccan red wine hence there are probably even more grammatical errors than normal. Probably wouldn't have drank it in normal circumstances, but beggars can't be choosers. I did find out that the wine was from the vineyard in Meknes and is owned by the parents of one of my students. They own all the vineyards in the area and are one of the biggest wine producers in Morocco. Pretty sure they have some pretty good wines down there if you can afford it, fingers crossed for generous Christmas presents! Not sure how appropriate it would be for me to show interest in my students vineyard though... not the done thing for a teacher, especially not here.

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

Ifrane and around...

During our first few days at school we have been given a crash course in Moroccan history, traditions, and general way of life. The first of our discussions was about Ramadan. Now I thought I’d done pretty well with my google research, and was quite proud of my efforts to be culturally aware. What I failed to discover in my research is that during Ramadan all people are expected to dress more conservatively than normal. Having spent the first few days with long trousers and sleeves I observed that some local women wore vest tops, shorts or skirts, unaware that as it was before Ramadan this was fine. As a result of this I have occasionally worn shorts, sleeveless tops and fitted Lycra 3/4 length trousers to run around the compound. Little did I know that I have now probably offended nearly every person I have passed in the last week or so. The realisation of this came along with an even worse realisation that when I had been out running I had been taking a bottle of water out with me to keep on a wall and drink on each lap round the compound. This has been before sundown each evening and when many families are out for their evening walk. How, after being so careful each day when out and about the town could I have been so oblivious that I forgot I still couldn't drink water in the evening. It is actually illegal in Morocco to consume food or drink in public during this time. I have not only been dressing inappropriately in front of the parents of my students, I have also broken the law. Yes, few cultural boo boos there then. Good start all round.

As well as learning more about Morocco we have been learning some Arabic. This is a language that has so guttural arrah! sounds that it has to use a 3, 7 and a 9 when it is written phonetically. Nick seems to be grasping it pretty quickly, as usual. Whereas I am experiencing that same blush inducing fear that I always felt when in a language classroom. I’m going to focus on my French for now.

For two of the three afternoons that we have been in school we have been taken out to explore. Our coordinator Kim and her Moroccan husband are going well beyond the call of duty to help us settle in. As well as taking us out for ftor (the breaking of the fast meal) on the first evening, they have driven us around Ifrane and the neighbouring town of Azrou. While exploring Ifrane we went up to see the recently refurbished Michiflin Resort. This is five star luxury at its best, well beyond our price bracket, but a treat for an occasional meal or spa day. http://www.michlifenifrane.com/eng.html The restaurant, spa, pool and view definitely rival that of Bangkok's top hotels, and a main meal in the brasserie costs from $12-$18, an affordable treat. 

The next day after our tour of Ifrane, Kim and her husband, Mustafa, took us on a two car tour of the surrounding countryside. We are in the Middle Atlas Mountains which are at around 1600 metres above sea-level. Although the area directly around Ifrane is quite flat, the journey 16km to the neighbouring town of Azrou is quite hilly. On the way there we learnt more about the history of the area, Mustafa is part of one of the most powerful Berber tribal families in the area and still has a very grand house with land and orchards which we drove past. This is a fruit growers heaven; peaches, apples, pears and cherries are everywhere. I have never eaten so much fruit. It's about 60% of our diet at the moment. We went up into the National Park area to the Grand Cedar, a huge and now dead cedar tree that has become a tourist hot spot. Here every car gets accosted by men touting horse rides on highly decorated Arab horses. There were also lots of little wooden shacks that were closed up, presumably normally selling lots of the same tourist tat. This is a mineral and fossil rich area and people sell them everywhere. As well as going there to have their photo taken in front of the depressingly dead and graffitied 'grande cedre', many tourists go up into the forest to feed the Barbary apes that live there. Once wild, they have become tame from being hand fed plums for so many years. Obviously sick of 'Ramadan restraint', one of the apes decided to try and pull Kim's skirt down. Sadly, along with the 'tame' wildlife, one of the most noticeable things about the area and the beautiful cedar forest was the large amount of trash everywhere. People here haven't developed the same level of environmental appreciation as we've become used to in the countryside. Just wait till I start teaching... time to do some environmental awareness brainwashing.

The School of Ifrane

15 days and counting until the end of Ramadan. Well, it could be 15, or it could be 16 depending on when the new moon is seen, but at this point, when we are only 12 days in and I am most definitely feeling it, I like to try and look on the optimistic side. I just can't wait for life to return to normal. The other day we went out for a walk to explore some of the back streets around town. We ended up getting lost and walking a lot further than intended, mind you bonus was we did find the pub: a pretty but run-down building overlooking the lake. It looks similar to everything else out here only it had a hallowed beer sign out the front....15 days.... Anyway, after getting lost on our walk in 36 degree dry heat, unable to drink any water, I was hit badly by dehydration. Now for those who know me well, I’m not one for needing much water, and have got by on less than a litre most days whatever the climate. I have occasionally felt slightly parched and assumed I was dehydrated, but that was nothing compared to what happened after getting lost that day. It may have had something to do with the fact that I had been running for the two evenings before and failed to rehydrate properly (dry heat at 1650 metres above sea level apparently takes a little more toll on the body than I’m used to), but for about four hours afterwards I was queasy, weak, and very dizzy. It took a long time for the effect of liquid replenishment to kick in.

Watching the roofers who have been working on replacing the tiles and waterproofing on all the apartment blocks at work only make me feel more of a pathetic weakling. I walked around for a few hours without water and became a swooning wreck. These guys work in the blistering sun, without shade, without food, and more importantly, without any water since 5.30 am. They walk/slide around twenty metres above the ground without any form of rope or security. God help them if they get a case of the dehydration dizzies. While I have the utmost respect for them I am getting rather tired of being woken up between 5.45 – 6. 00 am. by hammering and overly cheerful shouting. I have also found myself running across the kitchen to hide when they unexpectedly appear on the roof opposite and I’m only dressed in T-Shirt and underwear. This morning I got up early in search of a cool breeze and stretched out on the sofa bed next to the lounge window to read, only to look up after a while to find a man perched on the edge of the overhang about two metres away from me and with full view of my 'inappropriate' dress. 

A few days ago we went into the school for the first time. Our apartment is less than fifty metres from the entrance. I foresee many last minute roll outs from bed in the near future. The school is slightly run down at the moment and had the decorators working. It has big open spaces with thirty feet vaulted ceilings. The classrooms are a reasonable size and are very colourful, but at the moment they lack any form of creature comforts. They are just empty canvasses. All those posters I lovingly made and left behind in Bangkok would be really useful right now.

The students at the school range from two years old to eighteen years old. This year there are only 86 students enrolled. About sixty of them are in the primary section. I have fouteen. This year there are no Grade 9 students. The aim is to increase the size of the school but it will take time. We will be following an American/International Curriculum, and in this town many feel that the stricter and more regulated French system is preferable. Ifrane School was changed to the French system five years ago at the request of the parents as they felt the American system too soft. The University (which the school is part of) was apparently instructed by the king that they had to revert to the old system, which is why we are here. We now have to get the students back on track for an international education.

While in the school we met with the other new teachers for the first time. There were six of us in all, including our new boss who is a lady from America who has lived here for 28 years. One lady is Moroccan but has spent the last fifteen years in New York, another Italian but has lived in Ifrane for five years, and then the last is a young Canadian girl who is here with her partner who has never really travelled before. It must be quite a shock to the system. Myself, Nick and Sarah the Canadian girl make up the entire elementary department. Thankfully we were given free reign over choice of grades. I had been put down for the five year olds, which I wasn't really thrilled about, but Sarah loves the little ones so was keen to swap. I now have Grade 1-2 and Nick 3-4. In Australia I really loved teaching the older kids, but here I think my lack of French would make it hard for the switch over to English at that level. After teaching native speakers I’m quite nervous about going back to ESL. Hopefully it's a bit like riding a bike.

Cabin Fever

I seem to be suffering badly from cabin fever at the moment. We have been here for thirteen days without really having anything to do other than read and watch TV programs that we downloaded before we came out here. I am beginning to go a little stir crazy.

It is Ramadan at the moment. This is the time of year that Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and any impure thoughts during the hours of daylight. It is meant to instil self control and an appreciation for the suffering of others. Ramadan lasts just under a month, and each year starts ten days earlier. This means that in 34 years a complete cycle of the year will have been made. Unfortunately for those in the Northern Hemisphere this means that for now and the next ten years or so, Ramadan is taking place during summer and the longest and hottest days of the year. For people in Morocco, they have to wake up and eat before 5.30 am and then last through the 35 degree dry heat of the day without a drop of water or food, before being able to break the fast after 7.30 pm. For Muslims in the north of England, this means fasting for almost 16 hours every day.

Before Ramadan Ifrane was a bustling little tourist town with a great café culture. Now either they have closed completely or they only open at 7.30 in the evening. This has put an end to our daily time killer of wandering into town and watching the world go by over a coffee. Now the streets are really quiet. Some die-hards still sit in the cafés, only it feels a bit strange to me without any food or drink. Instead we find ourselves just hanging out at home all day and night. I’ve had to change the chair I sit on in the lounge just so I have another wall to face... having a different view worked surprisingly well. If it was not the height of summer here we would not have these concerns. There is lots of exploring to be done... the two imperial cities of Fes and Meknes are only an hour away, we have a lakes area about 25km away, and there is lots of hiking and forest walking. All good, but just not practical at 35 degrees. We only came this early as we have were told our new contract started on the 1st as we have lots of planning to do (actually not starting until the 10th), next year we'll make sure we're occupied with something elsewhere!

At the end of last week we went down to Fes for our first exploration of the medina. This huge and ancient medina in Fes is thought to be the largest continuous car free area in the world. Surrounded by a high fortress style wall with gated arch-ways, it's narrow, winding alleys full of mosques, riads, shops and houses covers an area of around 15 square km. It is said that up to 400,000 people live within the medina walls, and it is home to the world's oldest university. Parts date back to 800 AD, and the 'new' part is a mere 900 years old. This is a place that I have longed to visit for around ten years. When we decided to make a trip down there during the height of summer, at the start of Ramadan when people are tired, hungry and grumpy, I didn't hold up many hopes for it reaching high on the enjoyment scale. All the information you can find on the place tells you just how crowded and hot the narrow alleys can be, how you have to watch out for getting harangued by wily salesmen (possibly the most highly skilled in the world at selling you things you had no intention of buying) and getting squashed by foot carts and overladen donkeys. Oh yeah, and the chances of you not getting lost are minimal. Needless to say we expected the worst.
  

We arrived at the medina at around 11.00. Many of the shops were still closed and the streets were quiet and surprisingly cool. The first thing that really hits you about the place is the hills. Not only do you have to deal with alleys shooting of in every direction, you also have to deal with climbing up and down steep hills. We must have dropped 100 metres in the first fifteen minutes. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill our legs juddered every time we stopped to look at something. We followed the main alleys for a couple of kilometres. The further you go in the narrower they get. The majority of stuff in the medina is transported by donkey. These poor overladen creatures are pushed through the crowds of people with boxes and bags strapped across them. Thankfully I haven't seen any of the horror story cruelty yet, but all of them lead a pretty hard life. Shopping was a lot easier than expected. We were hassled very little and in many shops when we tried to bargain we were stone-walled, even when we walked out they just said 'so be it, see you again' or something similar. All in all the experience was quite enjoyable. It was 42 degrees out in the sun, and it did get busy, but we didn't get lost, or run over by a donkey, or convinced to buy an 8ft antique carpet or giant lantern we didn't need. We did come home with two mirrors and four smaller lanterns, but the were definitely intentional purchases. Well, nearly all of them were anyway.