Two straight weeks of Rain Rain Rain...

Me, Raja and Mama

After a long wait, Spring is finally here. The house has already warmed up a tiny bit inside, which means a small fire early in the evening is all that is necessary to keep my room warm for the rest of the night. But, while warmer weather slowly arrives, the rain does too, which means it is more like mud season. My morning runs are impossible for the moment, with the paths full of mud and street full of puddles.

I'm the only one here disturbed by the rain though. Everyone else has been praying for it...across the whole of Morocco. A long drought has hurt the agricultural produce and the farmers (which Morocco depends upon) are hurting. Their prayers have been answered, but damage has still been done. And rain isn't the only thing falling from the sky, it hailed practically every afternoon this past week. Ugh!

My landlady recently invited me to spend the night at her house. While I prefer to sleep in my own bed and on my own schedule, I just couldn't say no. She explained that her husband, MBarsh and her son, Omar would be going on an overnight trip to Fes to sell all their animal hides (they are our local butchers) to the tanneries in Fes. And since it would be just her and her daughter, Raja she insisted that I join them for the evening.

She told me to come over around 9pm and that we would have dinner, play cards and then sleep. Dinner was interesting...not in a 'guess what organ you're eating' kind of way, but more, 'is this really dinner' kind of way. Cold corn cous-cous with fresh buttermilk and equal measurements of sugar to cous-cous. Hmmmm...I don't really care for buttermilk, especially since it is homemade and unpasteurized which means you risk getting tuberculosis, but buttermilk with cous-cous and heaps and heaps of sugar was all a bit much, especially before bed. I was polite as always and ate all that was put in front of me, but I hope I don't ever have to eat that again...I'd much rather play 'guess the organ your eating'!

After a few card games, which is always a good time, mainly because my landlady is a ruthless cheater and isn't very good at hiding it and it was time for bed. I was told I would sleep next to the wall, with Raja next to me and then my landlady on the the other side of Raja. A million blankets were brought out and stacked up as a makeshift bed on the floor and we all crawled somewhere into the middle of them. A couple minutes after the lights had been out, I heard this squeaking near my head...it got louder and louder and I finally couldn't deny it any longer, I was sure a mouse was about to crawl into my hair! I woke Mama and Raja and asked them to turn the lights on. I told them I could hear something near my head and was pretty surprised that they had not woken from the noise too.

Mama and I pulled the blankets back and low and behold three inches from my head, there was a rather large hole in the corner of the wall. Mama laughed her head off and so did Raja, they told me not to be scared, to which I replied that I wasn't scared, but I wouldn't be able to sleep there knowing that a mouse might run out of it's house and directly onto me.

Mama then thought she would solve the issue by stuffing the hole with a plastic bag. I tried to explain that the mouse would either move the bag or eat its way through it, but Mama wasn't having any of it, she was sure that the mouse was now stuck in its hole. I apologized and explained that I wasn't going to be able to sleep with my head next to the hole and too be honest I was pretty embarrassed as I think they thought I was terrified of the mouse, which to be clear, I am not scared of mice. I just don't like the thought of knowing that it might crawl on me while I am sleeping, plus it was making an awful lot of noise and I'd never have been able to fall asleep with all the racket it was making.

Mama laughed at me...a lot. Then she helped me move places to the other side of the room. Right, time for bed. The lights went out for the second time and off we went to sleep...that is until I then realised that I was now lying in the exact spot where Bahalu (grandfather) had passed away, just a month or so before...

I finally fell asleep after counting backwards from one hundred a million times, trying to not to think about the mouse or Bahalu. And then the mouse found the plastic barrier inserted in its door and began to eat its way through the barrier. I still don't know how Mama and Raja slept through that. It seriously woke me up from the other side of the room.

Needless to say, it wasn't exactly a good nights rest, but I guess it made a pretty good story!

Waiting for the cows to come home...

The cows...coming home

I've accompanied my landlady, Mama, a few times now on her daily trip to the foothills to collect her cows. Basically, she goes to the foothills (five minute walk from our homes) around 5pm everyday and waits for the cows to come out of the mountains. There are 200 cows in Toon Town and each family pays the same lady 50 dirhams a month to accompany the cows into the mountains each morning and bring them back every evening. Sometimes we wait five minutes for the cows to appear and other times it takes over an hour. It's kind of funny watching 200 cows come tumbling over the mountain and even funnier as we herd them back to the house. The cows know where they live, but the occasional, "How How How" is necessary to keep them moving.

Temporary restaurants on souk (market) day in Toon Town 

Toon Town

Cafe Owner, Dris and Me 

Preschool in Toon Town (that is the Tifinagh (Berber) Alphabet)

Souk (Market) Day in Toon Town