Circumcisions and Extreme Exfoliation, March 27, 2010

On the weekend of March 27-28, Brahim’s sisters Maryam and Zahara invited me to a circumcision ceremony in their town, Timdlin. Their women’s association was sponsoring a mass circumcision for families in surrounding villages that lack the means to properly go through the ceremony. As soon as I finished class on Saturday, Brahim and I hailed a bush taxi to Timdlin.

Unfortunately, the ceremony and festivities were pretty much over by the time we arrived. A total of 76 boys age 1-3 were circumcised at the Timdlin hospital that morning. The association had set up tents outside the hospital and fed the families couscous for lunch. I was invited to share a platter of couscous with the cooks. They beckoned me to sit in the makeshift kitchen void of furniture. I sat on a metal stovetop on the floor and had 2 mouthfuls of food before Zahara took me to a tent where the women’s association had their lunch. I convinced them I’d eaten enough so they had me sit outside the dining circle. I got to watch a feeding frenzy of 13 wholesome women crowded around a couscous platter the size of a manhole cover. They babbled merrily in their high-pitched Berber dialect and hungrily ate fistfuls of couscous. Meanwhile, the desert wind was causing the tent flaps to billow violently, yet they didn’t seem worried about the tent flying away, as I did.

The mountain of food before them disappeared in minutes. There was a slight lull in the conversation and Zahara said something about going to the Hamam. They all sighed and nodded. They’d spent an exhausting two days preparing for this ceremony, and now a group of them were going to reward themselves with an afternoon at the Hamam. I of course was invited to partake. I wasn’t prepared to go to a Hamam but Zahara provided me with all the necessary items; we trekked from her house across town with buckets, clothes, soaps, and shower mats to the public bath house. There’s a women’s side and a men’s side of course; entrance is 7.5 dh, or just under 1 US dollar.

It turned out to be probably the most exhausting bath I’ve ever taken. We stripped to our undies and entered the steamy bowels of the hamam. First we lathered our hair with henna, then they mixed some waxy Moroccan soap with henna and I was instructed to cover myself in the brown goop. For the next 2 hours, we scrubbed every inch of our bodies through and through. The women laughed when I lightly passed the scrubbing glove over my arms and legs and started rinsing off. They told me to scrub until my skin turned red. Zahara scrubbed my back and it felt like my skin was getting stripped off. After all the scrubbing, we washed with regular soap, then we washed again with flower-scented soap before rinsing out the henna from our hair and shampooing it. Meanwhile, 2 of the women’s 4 year old boys ran naked around us dunking their heads in buckets and having water fights. The heat and steam was exhausting. We came out squeaky clean, drained, and so relaxed. My hands were like prunes. We put on several layers of sweats and head scarves and sprawled out on a rug for a cup of tea. Moroccans typically bathe like this once a week and don’t really shower any other day. They just do a quick cleanse before prayer. They asked me if we go to hamams in the states. I said only once in a while and it’s expensive. So these women considered themselves lucky.

During our bath, Brahim had gone to another village for a funeral and didn’t return before dark. So I had to stay at Maryam’s for the night. I fell asleep at 8:30 and didn’t wake up until 7am. I had desperately needed sleep as I caught a bad cold and had lost my voice a couple days before. I woke up feeling groggy with a stomach ache because I’d drunk water at the hamam. My moral on Sunday was kind of low. I was stuck at Maryam’s house for long hours in the morning while the women did housework and told me to just sit and watch tv. All I wanted was to go back to Asfalou and brush my teeth and be able to walk around freely in a familiar house. Finally, at noon we piled into Zahara’s husbands car and returned to the village. It’s spring break for schools so the house was full of people. It looked like it would be another afternoon of sitting around and drinking tea while people babbled at me in Tashlhit and threw their hands up when I didn’t catch on.

My host mom could tell I needed some quiet so she invited me to go do laundry in the “urti”. The urti is reminiscent of a green, blossoming garden of bean plants, almond trees, and flowers. We sat by the irrigation ditch and washed clothes (I mostly watched her doing it) while Hiba and Mohammed picked fragrant roses and blew petals out of their palms. At 5:30, Brahim and his niece Mayma invited me for a walk. We were just planning on going in the fields for a simple stroll but then I pointed at the mountain across the river and asked if we could go up. I was sort of joking but Brahim said ok, and up we went. It was absolutely beautiful. We walked through a red rocky canyon to a hidden water spring and up to the mountain top where there was a view of the river valley and the villages along it. The sun was setting when we reached the top, and we walked back down to Asfalou by the enchanting light of the full moon. My moral was soaring by the time I went to bed.

On Monday, the sky was clear of the typical dusty haze covering the valley so our CBT group decided to climb up another mountain during lunch time. We could see all the way to the snow-capped High Atlas to the East and West. I am definitely looking forward to more hiking once training is over.