Slowly, slowly

Things are getting better already. The first day (and the following morning) the about-to-leave student, Jamie, wasn't around at all. She had a farewell dinner for her program that went late, then slept late. But it turns out that she is really nice. After the initial shock of seeing a new student walk unannounced into her host family, she cleaned up her room, and made it so I could put some stuff in there. She packed up one of her suitcases, so there is some room on the shelves. Wednesday the rest of her stuff will be out, so I can put all mine away and banish the suitcase.

I've been able to ask her a lot of things, like 'how do you say x' or 'how do you get this message across?' Seeing her talk with them as well gives me an idea of the level of words she does/n't know and how they get around it. As always, lots of gestures, no fear of looking silly, and plenty of sound effects all help. Even the mom said today that I'm learning more words. Ha, starting from 2-3, it isn't hard to add more! With Jamie on her way out, too, there are some things that she isn't taking with her, like a different travel guide. I have found it useful for the different language section in the back. They complement each other fairly well. Plus in her program, they take 2 content courses (culture/history stuff) and a language course. She chose to take the local dialect since she doesn't study Arabic at home and came more to experience everything. From the class, she has a textbook that I also got to flip through and pull out more basic words to add to my gestures and noises.

Right now Jamie is writing a paper on arranged marriages in Morocco. She's gotten a wide variety of information about them, from those who are (or were) in them to those that say only rural people, and maybe just 30 percent, still do them. Today we got more information from a guy that she knew already that owns a cafe close to our house and a snack stand at the language school. I'm not sure how old he is, but I'd guess 35-40. It was fun - she speaks some darija, but obviously it's a complicated topic. He speaks some English, but again not enough for the topic. So I played interpreter, with some conversation directly between them, and he could understand me well enough to correct anything that I might have forgotten or severely misunderstood.

Basically, arranged marriages definitely still happen. From what I can tell from her notes/reports, they are more common with poorer people and more rural people (of course, those can overlap.) The man often has some say, sometimes a lot, and the woman's say depends on a lot of factors. Even when they both are allowed to agree to it, the families have to agree as well. I think it goes back to times when marriage was more about the money and connections than anything else. In some areas, it still seems to be.

All of the young people she talked to are happy to wait. They are not in any rush. They all say that a man needs to have enough money first. The guy today added that this shows he is responsible. 'Enough' varies widely, of course, and while he insisted that it doesn't have to be a lot, he himself owns two places and seems fairly comfortable, but isn't married (yet, inchallah.) I only saw her talk to one girl, who was with a bunch of younger guys, but from what Jamie has seen there tends to be an age difference of at least 10 years. Yikes. I know that she talked to a 20 year old about to be married to someone 16 years older, and a 22 year old that has a kid and is either divorced or separated, I forget which.

A common thread is that they all agree that family is the most important. If you don't have money, your family will help you. If you get married really young, that's fine because both families are around to help you out, give you tips, help take care of things while you finish school. Even if you have a kid relatively younger, you might still go to college (according to the guy today... I wonder how many actually do.) If you have more kids than you planned on (natural birth control methods are the only ones ok w/ religion, but others are used by some people) then your family is expected to help you make ends meet. As you might guess, some families are better at putting this into practice than others.

Divorce is seen as a last resort, but sometimes necessary. The guy today said that if people get divorced, it tends to be after just a couple of years and that after 28 (an American he knows) it's basically unheard of. Traditions and expectations vary by region as well as by class, so in one area he heard that girls get 'married' for the first time at 13-14 (first period), and if it sticks, cool, if not, no big deal - she'll find a 'real' husband later. The point is to have a kid and show you are a woman (gross oversimplification, yes.) The younger people in the city said that they think it's normal for girls now to get married closer to 25-28, and the girl there thought that 25 or 26 was the right age, but they were all hanging out at a cafe - not exactly a traditional thing to do, but with a high level of unemployment, a relatively common reality.

Classes start tomorrow, so I'm enjoying bumming around right now. Looking over my textbooks, the travel guides, Jamie's stuff. Lazing about because I can. Playing spider solitaire on the computer, snake on my new phone. And writing to let you all know that I am still alive and well. I have had some slight allergies since Lisbon, but nothing else yet.

I don't know why still, but the time zone in Morocco isn't what I thought. I am 6 hours ahead of central time, not 5. But the 2-3 sites I saw had Morocco 5 hrs ahead. And someone else's iphone said the same. We asked a Moroccan on the train from Casablanca to Fes if the whole country shares a time zone as the answer was a confused yes. We explained why & he was confused, too. His only guess is that they just started doing summer time a couple of years ago, so maybe the sites weren't taking that into account. It's the most logical explanation, but still weird. Why wouldn't the iphone ppl and others just get it right?? The world may never know...