Moroccan Host Family, March 2010

My host family is all I could ever hope for. My host father’s name is Brahim. He’s a tall lanky man of 33 with a quiet demeanor and striking green eyes. My host mother, Najat, is 26 like me, and one of the sweetest women I’ve ever known. She is fresh faced, always smiling, extremely attentive, and very beautiful. They have 2 children: Hiba is 4 and Mohamed is 2. Mohamed has rosy round cheeks and is going through his terrible two’s so he spends a lot of time squealing and throwing tantrums, but he’s grown accustomed to me and no longer hides in his mother’s skirts when I come around. Hiba likes to do whatever I do and even got her hair cut just like mine! Little by little, I am able to communicate better with my host mom, Najat, who really speaks no French. There’s still a lot of charades and laughing and shrugging, but I can get more things across and I catch on a little faster. If I’m just with my host dad, I speak French with him and I have the advantage of learning a lot more cultural information from my family because we have less of a language barrier.

Brahim’s mother, Khadija, also lives in the house. She’s quite stern with her daughter in law but apparently really likes me and keeps saying she doesn’t want me to leave the village after training is over. I don’t talk to her much, as she spends her evenings sitting on the couch, clutching her prayer beads with her eyes fixed to the television. Yes, they have a fetish for Brazilian soaps here too. Khadija even times her evening prayers around the commercial breaks of her favorite shows

Then there’s Brahim’s severely handicapped brother Tayib, who is 38. I am pretty sure he has some extreme case of autism. He really can’t talk, he just moans all the time. His eyes are crossed and he has trouble with depth perception but he has an obsession with picking up debris from the rug or fixing an upturned slipper in the pile of shoes at the living room doorway. He’ll suddenly get up, pick up a crumb or piece of food from the floor and then throw it across the room. Sometimes if I’m playing with Hiba on the floor, a random orange peel or macaroni falls on us from above. Sometimes the item is slimy and unidentifiable and it’s disconcerting, but he otherwise keeps to himself. Najat takes care of him along with everyone else in the family with much patience. Another brother, Haziz, passed away a couple years ago and was supposedly even more handicapped. Najat says he was violent at times, and would yank at her clothes and break windows and glasses. Brahim’s father chose to build this house for his retirement in Asfalou, his birth village, instead of a big town like Ouarzazate because he knew it would be better for his handicapped sons. Here, they could wander outside and wouldn’t get harassed by people or get in trouble on busy streets.

Brahim has a total of 11 siblings. Two brothers are in the phosphate business, with one based in the Manganese mining village of Imini, and the other is in Casablanca. One is a military commander in Marrakech. He has 4 sisters: Fatima, Zahara, Maryan, and Halima who is deaf-mute. Family bonds are strong here, and every weekend all the siblings that live in the region come to Asfalou to drink tea and eat couscous together.

My favorite host aunt is Zahara, who lives in Timdlin, about 15km away. Her husband is an accountant at the regional secondary school. She is a housewife but extremely involved in her community. She’s a member of a women’s group in Timdlin called “Hope”. Every week she volunteers about three days here at the Asfalou development center to teach local women Arabic script, Islam, and to discuss women’s issues. She never finished school but learned a good deal of French by encouragement from her husband. She’s strong-willed yet at the same time the most devout Muslim woman I’ve met so far. She’s the only one I’ve seen wearing a full head scarf in public- she covers everything but her eyes and even wears gloves sometimes. In the home, though, the scarf comes off and her sass comes out.