Just Another Sunday

After a weekly visit to my town’s market, I saw Batoul, an Association member and close friend, making a fire for their Hamam on my way home. She said I should go see Naima (Batoul’s sister and Association President) at the Association. She had some updates to give me regarding the upcoming festival in town. So I dropped off my groceries and went to meet her. She was having mint tea with Latifa and Malika, who’d just finished their order of bread for the day. FtaH, Naima’s nephew, was off delivering. Once the 2 women left, Naima and I discussed the festival. The Commune has recently decided to organize a type of fair in town during school spring break. It will last a minimum of two days, April 5-6 (but may extend for the rest of the week if the turnout is good). There will be stands available for local associations to display and sell their products. One of the stands is reserved for us. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next week, preparing pastries and figuring out the logistics. The Commune has also asked that I help them coordinate some environmental activities: trash management education, community clean-up and tree planting activities. (Finally, something related to my educational background!).

For the next couple hours, Naima and I organized the Association locale. We moved all the equipment we don’t use on a daily basis to the empty room, on top of the newly purchased table. Batoul and I had spent the day in Marrakech yesterday, buying the remainder of the equipment for the SPA grant. As we were emptying one of the large cardboard boxes of plates and bowls, I reached in to shift some items around and saw a sudden flash of dark fur swirl out of the box. I screamed and jumped upright. It was the biggest mouse-rat I’ve ever seen! Well, I’ve seen bigger in my house in Benin. But, it’s been years since I’ve been so close to one. Naima was in the other room and yelled back in alarm. I told her it was just a rat. She’d just filled two mouse holes in the room with pieces of rock and glass. I saw the rodent run straight for one of them and banged into the wall. He couldn’t find a way out. We slowly started emptying the rest of the equipment to move to the other room, wondering if the thing was still around. I eventually spotted it behind the flour bucket. As I moved it, the mouse-rat made a run for the oven. Naima and I cornered it there, emitting sporadic giggles and shrieks from the gross excitement of having a rat in our midst. We could hear its great mass clunking around between the gas tank and the storage cupboard. We shook the oven around until the rat finally exited the room and scurried out the front door to the gardens across the way. Hopefully it’s been terrorized enough never to return.

We finished organizing all the equipment and ingredient stock, making sure to keep all the foodstuffs in closed containers. We don’t have enough storage buckets for all the kilos of nuts, sugar, and flour we purchased for the upcoming festival. It will be good to get that display case and closed cupboard we ordered from the welder. Any day now… At 1, we went home for lunch, and returned a couple hours later to work with the women. A good group showed up: Naima, Rachida, Saida, Aisha, and Malika. Batoul was at home for her Hamam day. I’d made a comment to her about it yesterday while in Marrakech. I’d said, “what is it about the Hamam that renders women out of commission for the entire day?” She’d just laughed, then patiently explained yet another cultural norm I’d thus far failed to comprehend: The Hamam is a once a week event. It takes hours to prep the Hamam (if it’s in the home), scrub yourself down, and gather the energy afterwards to get yourself out of the hot steam room. It’s true, I’ve felt it. One is completely drained after that experience. Batoul gets a sort of flu half the time she goes. That’s why I’ve been staying away from the public bath. My flash bucket showers with never enough hot water are quick and sometimes painfully cold, but it gets my blood flowing fast and leaves me with enough energy to go about my day, most of the time.

Anyway, we made 4 kg of Qrishlat (little goldfish cracker-sized cookies with anise and sesame) today and discussed our gameplan for the festival. This will be good practice for the larger Moonfest taking place in September, and hopefully any other festivals we can attend during the summer. We are making Karbozel tomorrow: Crescent -shaped pastries filled with marzipan. I need to buy a carton of eggs and some margarine in the morning.

The Bakery

I’ve finally made some time to conjure an update of my work in Lalla Takerkouste. The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind of activities at the Association, which has been a welcome change in routine for me as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In early February, I received a Peace Corps Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant to set up a bakery at the Women’s Association in the village. This wonderful news came just before I went home for a brief vacation in Ohio. With the immense help of my family and friend Caitlin, I took the opportunity to host a Moroccan dinner to share my experiences and talk about my upcoming bakery project. Just before going to Ohio, my Moroccan friends Naima and Batoul spent a day teaching me how to make couscous and tagine, so that I could replicate the feast in the States. We served traditional Moroccan salads and bread, Couscous with vegetables and caramelized onions, beef tagine with prunes and almonds, and an assortment of Moroccan baked goods, some of which were made by the Women’s Association members. All of the guests who attended the dinner, plus other family friends wanting to lend a hand, graciously donated funds to supplement the SPA grant. I returned to Morocco quite excited to get to work!

On February 28^th, two Association members and I began purchasing bakery equipment in Marrakech. We spent hours in various house-ware shops and covered market stalls in the old city hunting for all the items on our list and negotiating with store owners before transporting it to the village in an ancient little covered pick-up. On March 4^th, we set up shop and started operating from the newly rented locale. It’s an old house on the edge of the village, near the river, and right next to the olive and fruit orchards. For the past 10 days, a group of 5-6 women have been spending a minimum of 6 hours in the afternoons and evenings baking Qrishlat (little tea cookies we served with the dates and nuts at the dinner) and Ghriba (sesame cookies). Two women have also started working from 6-9AM to make traditional pan bread. They deliver it to the tagine café owners each morning, who’ve been selling them like hot cakes. We are currently the only source of this type of bread in town, and the demand is quite high!

The funds collected at our Moroccan Dinner in Ohio has been extremely helpful and will continue to be so in the early stages of the bakery. We’ve been able to purchase start-up ingredients and some extra equipment that hadn’t made it on the SPA budget. I’ve been monitoring all the expenses with the Association Treasurer and we’re aiming to get the bakery on its feet as soon as possible, so that we can save the funds for other projects. For example, we would like to do a computer literacy class for the women and students in the village and purchase internet modem sticks. This would permit students to do online researching for school, and allow the women to look up new baking recipes.

Yesterday, March 13^th, we had an opening ceremony, along with a visit from Peace Corps staff from Rabat. We gave the staff a tour of the locale with our newly purchased equipment on display, along with samples of tea and cookies. The Association boomed with dancing, laughing, singing women all afternoon.

There’s much work left to be done, but we’re advancing, little by little!