Tès Jolie

Tu es très jolie Laura.  Ta hijab est très jolie.  Marrakech est très jolie.  Ton mobile est très jolie.  

It's a phrase that gets repeated a lot in this house, très jolie.  In my French classes I learned the word jolie meant pretty.  I practiced saying phrases like: La fille est très jolie.  La fleur est très jolie.  La robe est très jolie.  But here in Morocco the girls use it liberally and it has come to mean something else entirely.
It means you look pretty.
It means that is very good.
It means I like you.
It means I appreciate you for embracing my culture.
It means I can't communicate what I want to say, but I know you'll understand this.

If my trip had a catch phrase it would be très jolie.
But just like my textbook definition doesn't cover all the uses in this house in Morocco, it doesn't encompass all that I have experienced in Morocco or Europe.
Surely my trip has been pretty, but it's also been shocking, and eye-opening, and heart-breaking, and amazing, and a thousand other overused words to describe travel.  But above all it's been beautiful.
It's not that life in Morocco, or Spain, or England, or Greece, or Germany is more beautiful than life in the United States, it's just that with the newness of every single day the beauty is right there in front of you, and you can't avoid it.
In California I don't notice the beauty of my dog curling up next to me to sleep, because he does that every night.  I don't notice the beauty in the way my neighbor greets me with a raised fist and a quiet Yay team! the way he has since I was a child, because that's what he does every time we see each other.  I don't notice the beauty in the pot pie my mom spent all afternoon preparing, because she makes it on a regular basis and it's just a normal Allen family dinner recipe.  I don't notice the beauty of going to church with my grandmother, because that's what I do on wednesday mornings.
I don't notice because that's the way it always is.

But here in Morocco, or wherever I find myself, I notice.  I notice because every single moment is full of something new and every single moment I think to myself I may never see this again.  In a few weeks I may never see these girls again.  In less than a month I may never experience this again.  

Every place I have visited I have loved in some way.  Not every part of every place, but a little piece of everywhere.  And when you open yourself up to experiencing beauty and to loving somewhere new, you eventually have to say goodbye.  And as the list of places where I've been grows, so does the list of  places where a piece of me has been left behind.
A little piece is on the streets of Berlin, right where the wall used to stand.
A little piece is in the harbor of Chania, in a little restaurant that serves the best grilled mushrooms.
A little piece is in London, in the British Library, tucked away between the manuscripts and letters.
A little piece is in Valencia, hidden away in the bustling Central Market.
And a big piece is here in Dar Asni.

Contrary to popular belief, leaving all these pieces behind doesn't mean somehow there is less of me to give.  Loving the girls here doesn't take away from loving my family and friends back home.  And loving where I've traveled doesn't mean I love California any less.

For a few weeks about a month into my trip I started question why I committed to traveling for such a long time.  "I have a wonderful life back home," I cried, "why would I leave it all behind?"
Now I know.  I know that sometimes you have to go far away not just to appreciate the beauty of what you have, but the beauty of everything, wherever you are.  In my everyday routine I get lost in the monotony of doing laundry, running errands, and driving to school.  But when the daily routine of life involves doing laundry with a washboard, navigating a bustling souk and bartering for your errands, and driving to school in a rickety van with people hanging out the back and no seat belts, you notice.  You can't help it.

In some moments you notice how foreign everything feels and perhaps you desperately wish for some familiarity.  In others you notice some, perhaps small, similarities between life here and back home.  And in a few very special moments, you notice both.

It is painful and uncomfortable to hold both in your hand at the same time.  To try to reconcile the foreignness of a foreign country with the things that remind you of home.  In the worst moments it can lead you to search for a flight home, as the familiar things only grate against the alien ones, but I've found that here in Morocco I can embrace both.  I can hold the love and longing I have for my home and family with the love and longing I have to connect with the girls here at Dar Asni.

The thing about travel, and life in general I suppose, is that as soon as you think you have it figure out, as soon as you think you've got a handle on it, something changes and everything gets thrown out of whack.

Sometimes it's something small, like not being able to find pasta sauce at the grocery store after a long day.  And other times it's a big thing.

On Sunday my grandmother passed away.  My much beloved, stunningly lovely, 94 year old grandmother passed away on Sunday night.

Grieving is a lonely process, but grieving in a country where no one speaks your language, where everything is harshly different seems even lonelier.

Just when I think my heart can't handle any more stretching, any more pain, or beauty, or love, it is expanded a little bit farther.

After talking with my mom and receiving the news, the girls crowd around me and kiss my forehead and stroke my hair.

My cousin and I share memories over a pixely skype connection, her in her home in Napa and me in a village in rural Africa.  I cry tears of grief or happiness or something thinking about the beautiful life that my grandma led.
"We're not even distantly related" I marvel, "I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be her granddaughter."
"Yeah, Grandma was the shit," she replies.

After I thought I was through the worst this trip could throw at me, again I find myself searching for flights home.  Searching to find guidance.  Searching for the "right" thing to do.  My heart longs to be at home with my family and it longs to be right here in Morocco with these mountain girls.

After all these months of longing to be in two, or three places at once, after weeks of loving people spread across the world and living with the knowledge that there are people I care about that are hours and hours away, the feeling of this divide is starting to become familiar.

But I'm also realizing it's not an either-or situation.  It's not either beautiful in the United States or in Morocco.  I don't have to choose either to love life abroad or love life back home.  I can be present wherever I find myself and still stay involved in the lives of the people I love, even if they're halfway across the world.

Because above all, that a girl who has never lived outside of Santa Rosa, California for 22 years can find connections and things to love about a country as different as Morocco isn't just beautiful,  it's so stunning that sometimes I don't think my heart can handle it.  Sometimes I feel like it will literally split in two from the beauty of it.

And when I think about my grandmother, and how last time I went to church with her she slipped her hand into mine, gave me a shinning smile and whispered, "I'm so thrilled you're here darling!" I feel those tears well up in the corners of my eyes.  Those tears that aren't quite grief and aren't quite joy.  They're both.

Because life is très jolie, even in the heart-breaking, difficult moments, no matter where in the world we find ourselves.  Sometimes it just takes a lot for us to notice it.

Up the Mountain

I came to Morocco because I thought I had something to offer the girls at the boarding house here.  I had grand plans to teach art classes, and bring in supplies.  I planned to teach the girls English and I figured I would spend my evenings planning activities for the next day, creating lesson plans and mapping out all I wanted to accomplish during my time here.

I've been in Morocco a week and a half and I have yet to teach an art class.  I have yet to plan any structured activities.  The most structure I've had to offer the girls here was a short dance lesson and going over the colors in English.
Yesterday I hid in my room until 4 pm, emerging only to eat meals.   In fact most of my mornings are spent on my own, not planning anything, simply trying to take care of myself and recovering from the constant overpowering newness of every moment in Morocco.

The girls on the other hand, have be in a constant state of giving since I arrived.  They give me little notes and drawings, flowers picked from the garden, and near constant affection that ranges from holding my hand while out on a walk to literally applauding my attempts to speak Arabic.

Wildflowers from the girls

I have had far more Arabic lessons then they have had English.  I have had henna applied twice, I have learned how to make Moroccan tea, and I have tried more new dishes than I have in the past 10 years combined.

One of the villages I visited

This weekend I accompanied a few of the girls on their journey back to their villages in the High Atlas Mountains.
Their families, living in bare, concrete houses served me meal after meal, cup after cup of tea.  I had plates full of salad prepared especially for me (funnily enough, Moroccans have the same reaction to finding out I'm vegetarian as Americans do) and heaping plates of freshly picked cherries placed in front of me with an encouraging mangez, mangez Laura! repeated through out the meal.   I had entire cakes baked for me, and plates of cookies served to me by families that sleep on thin mats on the floor.

I used squat toilets, and didn't brush my teeth or shower for 3 days straight.

My salad.  Yes, I was expected to eat it all by myself

Since I returned, I've been trying to reconcile what I saw over the weekend with the exuberant, joyful girls that I have come to love since arriving in Morocco.  Girls who love nail polish but hike up mountains on a weekly basis to return home wearing only thin flip flops.  Girls who love Shakira but have houses lit only by a bare bulb on a wire in a handful of rooms.  Girls who carefully make sure their hijab (head scarf) matches their outfit and shoes but wear the same clothes for a week straight.
Girls who suddenly get shy and timid when surrounded by boys but have a cousin who recently got engaged at only 16 years old.

Girls who squabble with their little sisters but who tell me they have a total of 10 siblings, 3 of them dead.

Girls who dread exams but are the only girls in their village to receive a secondary education.

The sign for the village primary school

In many ways they are just like American kids.  They argue and hug and giggle and pout.  They complain about school and don't want to do their chores.  They are just like American kids, until suddenly they aren't.

Suddenly the reality of growing up in a village so remote it is accessible only by donkey or on foot comes crashing down around me.  Suddenly having illiterate parents and a mouth full of rotten teeth hits me square in the chest because these girls aren't just a sad photo in an infomercial asking me to donate to needy kids in Africa.  Their names are Kadija, Maraem, Mina and Fatima- Zhara.  They bring me flowers and hold my hand and burst out laughing when I make a face after trying a disgusting milk drink.

Where I slept for the weekend

Going to the village for the weekend was an exciting adventure for me.  I got to trample up and down a mountain for a few days, sleep on the floor and wake up before the sun.  I had my backpack carried by a donkey and sticky babies climb all over my lap.

I keep wanting to come to some definite conclusion about my trip up the mountain.  I want to know if these girls have it better or worse than kids in the US.  Is their life harder or better or more meaningful than life in the US?  Are these girls stronger, more determined than their American counterparts?  Or are they more disadvantaged?

I keep comparing and contrasting and trying to pin down a definite answer.  My human mind likes certainty, but try as I might I can't come to a single conclusion to the many questions bouncing around my head.

One of the girl's houses I visited

The United States has poverty and kids with mouths of rotten teeth.  It has unemployment, and kids going to bed without enough to eat, kids getting married and having babies extremely young and girls dropping out of school.  Morocco isn't better or worse than the United States, it just is.

My time here isn't better or worse than my life in California.  My trip isn't either worth all the money and anxiety or not worth it at all,  it just is.  I am not a good traveler or a bad one, I just am.

I am here and having these experiences, absorbing all I can, and for now, that is enough.  Maybe one day I will untangle this messy knot of feelings regarding my Moroccan mountain girls but for now I am here and it is enough just to be alongside them.

Morocco

For a bit of background, I'm currently in Morocco for a month volunteering with the organization called Education For All.  They run 4 boarding houses where girls from poor families and rural villages are given room and board so they can continue their education.  There are no secondary schools in the villages and it is too far for the girls to walk every day. The organization brings in volunteers as a sort of cultural exchange for the girls.  I am living at one of the boarding houses called Dar Asni which houses 27 girls ages 11-15.  

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In the other four countries I've visited during this trip I've kept an ongoing list of "Things I Don't Want to Forget," but I've been in Morocco for 3 full days and I have yet to add anything to the list.  It's not because I don't want to remember anything, but because I want to remember everything.

The Strait of Gibraltar from the airplane. Two continents are in this picture, Europe and Africa.

I want to remember the way Moroccan tea is made, with fresh mint leaves and blocks and blocks of sugar, and how the first thing I am greeted with each morning is a friendly bonjour and a cup of freshly brewed tea.

Tea on my first day

I want to remember the way the girls greet me not with the formal (but still lovely) handshake followed by touching your heart that is the standard greeting here, but by pulling my shoulders close and pressing their cheek up against mine.  Four or five kisses above the two typical of friends is standard now.

I want to remember the funny gesture people did when they saw the photo of me and the girl I mentor.  "Ta soeur??" they asked, while rubbing their index fingers together.  I later learned the gesture means sisters, and I want to remember that this is a culture where family relations are so close that there are gestures that means certain members of your family.

Notes from the girls

I want to remember the way the girls will carry my massive journal off to a quiet corner of the house and flip through each page slowly.  I want to remember how they are filling the pages with their artwork and how I have no idea what I'm going to do when I run out of pages (soon at this rate!) and how I don't care one bit.

The girls working away on a page in my journal

I want to remember the way one of the girls spent nearly an hour trying to translate something from Arabic for me.  Even though she could have asked one of the adults with better French she kept at it.  I want to remember that desire to connect that transcends language barriers.  And I want to remember how somehow we came to some understanding despite French being my second language and her third.

The view from the terrace outside my bedroom door

My first day here I was walking down the stairs and I had a moment where I couldn't believe that all this was real.  That I have been so unabashedly welcomed into this culture by not only the girls and staff at Dar Asni but by nearly everyone I've met.  By the driver at the airport who gave up his seat so I could sit down while I was waiting.  And by the shopkeeper who bantered with me in French, and enthusiastically repeated bienvenue (welcome) over and over when he learned it was my very first day in Morocco.

My days are long.  I roll over for a few extra hours of sleep after the call to prayer sounds at 5 am, and am surrounded by at least 3 enthusiastic, chattering girls until all 27 are herded up to bed at 10 pm.

Although I've been abroad for a while, in countries where other languages are spoken, this is the first time I've been in a country where virtually no one speaks English.  Straining to communicate in French and having 30 new Arabic words and phrases thrown at me daily (which I am immediately expected to remember) is exhausting.

The heat is exhausting.

The girls are exhausting.  As soon as one group settles down it's time for them to go to school and shortly after the next group arrives.

Trying to remember customs for a very different, conservative culture is exhausting.  I cannot use my left hand at meals, despite being left handed.  Each morning I stare at my small selection of clothes, trying to judge what is conservative enough to be appropriate, while not stifling in the heat.  I never know how often kisses on the cheek are appropriate, as some girls greet me every time they see me, while others have not since I arrived.

My precious journal that I usually carefully guard has things falling out after being flipped through by so many little hands.

I have called adults the offensively familiar tu, and the girls the cold and formal vous more times that I like to admit.

I've choked down olives on several occasions and had "vegetarian" meals served drenched in meat juice.

All food safety advice I was given has completely gone out the window.  How do you politely turn down a salad that has been prepared specifically for you when you know you should avoid anything that can't be peeled?  And when you know it has been washed in the very water you are trying to desperately avoid?

The town near the boarding house

By 4 o'clock I am toast and desperate for a moment to myself, but then one of the girls will slip me a little note, written in 3 languages "I love you Laura, tu es très joile, شكرا لك لورا."

Or I will catch one of them flipping through the photo album I made, and I will see them give the the baby photo of me a little kiss.

Or the girls will crowd around me when they learn I used to teach dance, begging me to teach them and our night will conclude with a tap/ ballet/ Shakira/ traditional Berber dance party.

The days are long but they are full.  Full of new, amazing, definitely once-in-a-lifetime, wonderful, indescribable, overwhelming moments.  One right after the other.  My list of things to remember is not confined to a few moments each day, a few subtle cultural differences, a new museum, an interesting dish.

My list of things to remember is woven into the very fabric of every single moment here in Morocco.

My first ever sentence in Arabic "I love my family very much"

I have realized during this trip that I am not a typical backpacker, if there is one.  I like to settle in, to have time to get to know a place, to develop favorite places and dishes.  I am nearly always sad to leave a destination and still after dozens and dozens of transitions I still struggle my first night in a new location.

When I was back in the U.S. I imagined that this trip would turn me into someone who could just arrive in a destination with no plans, just going wherever the wind blew me.  The reality is that I've realized some of the things I like best about myself are fundamentally incompatible with that type of personality.
But if there's one thing this trip has taught me is to be flexible and let go of my expectations.  I am not a bad traveler, just a unique one.  The fact that I didn't manage to only pack a small backpack does not negate my growing expertise at choosing the best hostel.  The fact that leaving a destination fills me with dread while my fellow travelers are chomping at the bit to explore somewhere new does not invalidate the stamps quickly accumulating in my passport.

I have spent the first 21 years of my life planting deep roots in California and that is not a habit that is easily broken.  And the more I travel the more I realize I really like that about myself.

After a lot of back and forth about calling off my trip completely and questioning whether I could handle the inevitable culture shock in Morocco, what has been most shocking is just how easily I've adjusted to life in a tiny village in an Islamic country in Africa.   I am truly, unreservedly, heart-breakingly happy here.

If there's a right way for me to travel the world, I think I've found it.

My home for the next month