Cave Dwellers

Just about 10 minutes away from us is a series of streams leading to a lovely waterfall. This is one of our favorite places to go in spite of the fact that the waterfall it is a tourist area which means there is a lot of trash and people harassing you for horse rides. This time we gave in and had a nice ride on the fantasia horses up the hill to where there are a series of small caves. "Ifrane" means "caves" because the original inhabitants of this area lived in caves.

Wind

When we moved here, little did we realize that we would actually have MORE wind here than in Kansas! Because we are on the edge of town at the top of a "mountain" (as they say here) and because the tiny trees they have planted have not yet matured, there is no windbreak for us.

If I have all my windows open, my hair blows all over the place some days. A while back, we had kids in our house throwing up pieces of paper and laughing as they literally floated through our house on the wind. My sheets on the laundry line are frequently wrapped around the line several times by the time they are dry.

A few weeks ago the wind blew relentlessly for about 3 days. It sounded like a train was passing by as it howled and whistled on and on at what we guessed to be 50-60 mph continuously. I was ready to buy earplugs or at least go into town for a few hours just to have some quiet! Since then it's been unusually calm with amazingly blue skies. No good thunderstorms, yet, though. I hear they come in the spring - I hope so!

What is church?

Everyone knows that a church is not a building, but rather the people in it and the God whom they worship. This fact is very evident to us here in Morocco. There are very few church buildings in Morocco and they are mostly made up of foreigners.

We have two church settings. One is with Ron and some other foreigners (about 15) from Meknes where he lives. They meet in homes or come up to Ifrane and meet outside as you see in the two outside pictures. How refreshing it is to worship among the cedar trees or on the grass near sheep, a stream and a few cows! No building is needed or even wanted. This is a very casual setting with lay leaders, teenage musicians, choruses and lots of kids. We meet with them every month or two.

The second setting is right here in our building. Believe it or not, the university allows (but doesn't pay for) a campus pastor. One of the original goals of AUI was to facilitate communication between Jews, Christians and Muslims. So far there have been no Jewish gatherings (although Morocco did used to have a sizable Jewish population), there is a large mosque in the middle of campus for the Muslims, and one apartment in our building is used as a church for the Christians (inside picture). Our pastor is a wonderful woman from Kentucky with a Baptist background but who leads a very liturgical service. The church is made up of foreign professors, exchange students from the States and a few folks from the nearby orphanages making a total of about 20. We range from Southern Baptist to Catholic to Armenian Orthodox making discussions and services quite interesting! This setting is much more formal although relaxed enough to share concerns and praises every week. Afterwards we have a potluck which the students eagerly attend! There is no Sunday school but there is a children's time during the sermon and communion.

We enjoy both places and are thankful for others with whom we can worship!

Our Fan

This was written in the middle of the night described in the middle of the summer when the days were over 100 degrees and we had no AC. At this time we were house-sitting in Meknes soon after we had arrived. This is long, but so was the night.

The picture is of us celebrating our 11th anniversary at Ron's house.

By the way - the next blog will be in a week.


Our Fan

I do believe we have bought the worst fan on the planet. You can feel almost no air moving when standing anywhere in its path. This would not be so bad if it were not a fan. But it is. Its entire goal in life is to move air and it does not seem to care. I decided yesterday it was because the blades must be in backwards, so I stood behind the fan. No wind there either. How can one make a fan that doesn’t blow air? Tonight is the hottest night since we bought the fan. Away it goes on high – and my hair is not even fluttering when I stand one foot away.

I wake up sweating in the middle of the night and Gerald is not in bed. I roam around the house and find him lying under an open but airless window in the living room. “Is it any better in here?” I ask. “No.” He replies. We hear someone calling us and I am halfway to the girls’ room before I realize it’s actually a lamb bleating. I suggest we go back to our room and sleep with our heads at the foot of the bed, closer to the fan. There, at least, with lots of positive thoughts, we can imagine the air is moving. We lie there a few minutes and I start giggling. It’s just no use. Gerald gets up and marches the offending piece of equipment to the living room. The bedroom actually gets hotter. The “fan” must have been doing something. I wander into the living room, unable to sleep. Gerald fusses with the fan and goes on a hunt for a screwdriver. Apparently he finds “50,000” screws and not one screwdriver. He finally locates one in one of our huge bags which we hadn’t unpacked yet. He takes the blades off again and discovers the fan says “Loosen” and “Ighten.”

I wander into the kitchen and am happy that it is much cooler because of the cross-wind created by the placement of the windows. I excitedly suggest we sleep in the kitchen. Gerald reminds me we have a king-sized mattress and that the floor in the kitchen seems permanently dirty no matter how many times we wash it. This shall not defeat me. I find a smaller “frosh” (couch/bed) mattress and triumphantly lay it down on the kitchen floor. Ahh… Happy am I until I hear the dog incessantly barking out that particular window…and until I remember all the 1 inch cockroaches I’ve met in this room… and until I remember the gas cylinders in the kitchen for the stove, oven and water hearter whose fumes I’m sure to die from. I pick up my mattress and wander around again. This time I end up in the girls’ room. Lying beside Katrina I can feel their oscillating fan every ten seconds. I close my eyes, unwind, and sleep. The next morning I find out Gerald ended up back in bed after the discovery that the fan actually works better on medium. The blades are so flimsy they flatten out when going any faster.

The irony? Many Moroccans think a fan blowing directly on them causes sickness and would rather sweat than feel the breeze. I guess we’re not Moroccan yet.

Oum er-Rbia

Oum er-Rbia is the longest river in Morocco. A few weeks ago, we went with Ron & family to see its source. Over a winding, potholed road we drove a few hours into the mountains to this lovely spot. Over 40 springs feed into the river at the source and then cascade over the cliff you see here. It is accessible via footpath and with the help of kind Moroccans who whisked our girls over the difficult parts.

Below the waterfall and hugging the side of the stream are a delightful series of little restaurant huts in which we ate a Moroccan chicken tajin off of low tables while sitting on the floor.

Moroccan School

Pictured: Katrina's classroom with her teacher on the right, Katrina on her first day of school.

Katrina is now attending a Moroccan school part time. All instruction is in French and most play is in Arabic. The school's normal hours are 8:30-11:30, then a break for the "French lunch," then back again from 2:30-6:30. We are thankful the director is allowing Katrina to just attend three mornings a week. The other mornings and afternoons as needed I continue to homeschool her.

This has been a hard decision as the teaching methods are different from what I would like and because the play is rough - but we are giving it a try. This way she gets a start in French and Arabic at a prime age for language learning.

So far Katrina does not have a lot of good or bad to say about school. She is happy to go and is happy when we pick her up.

She doesn't really understand what is going on yet, but has started to learn to count as well as the all-important word for "snack!" When we first came, the only thing Katrina didn't seem to like about Morocco was being surrounded by other languages. Now this doesn't bother her and she is very interested in learning new words. We are thankful.

Please pray that this will work out and that Katrina will be able to overcome her shyness and participate in the class as she becomes able.

(All pictures on this blog can be enlarged if you double-click on the picture itself.)

Perpetual Princesses

When, I ask myself, will the princess/girlie phase be over? I have tried dinosaurs (then they play Mommy and Daddy dinosaur), cars (then they play the family in the car going to the ball), fort-building (they make a sweet house)... you get the point! I am glad for something they always love, though!

Here are the girls with Hannah whom I watch two mornings a week. Her mother is an American professor of literature here and her father is a Moroccan professor of Arabic. They live, as most of our friends do, around the corner.

Cute car, cute guy

Here is our "new" car! It is extremely difficult to find used cars in Morocco because people run their cars until they completely die or give their car to a family member if it becomes too small. When a used car is actually on the market, it is highly suspicious. That is why, when a professor moving to Saudi Arabia offered to sell us his car, we realized it was a unique opportunity to get a reliable used car.

It is a Ford Focus (I guess we had to move to Morocco to buy an American car!) but it is made in Belgium so doesn't look like those in the States. The owner really babied the car which is good for us. It is a stick and runs on diesel like most cars here. The diesel part makes it really loud which I still have to get used to. Fuel is expensive here so it takes $40.00 to fill it up, but thankfully, it doesn't use much!

When we got the car, we had been without one for most of 3 1/2 months. What did we learn? The humility of depending on others, the ropes of public transport, and how it feels to not have personal transport like many Moroccans.

The first day we had it, I got to give two people rides. It made me so happy since we had just spent the last several months being given rides. Now we can go to the forest, help other people out, or go places without getting a series of taxis. After we test-drove it with the Algerian owner, Kendra said, "That was a nice taxi!" to which Katrina replied, "Yeah, and we didn't even have to pay for the ride!"

Where have all the vowels gone?

Here is a picture of me with Asma, my neighbor and Arabic tutor. We are the same age, both have husbands teaching at AUI, and both have two little girls. They lived in the States for 9 years, so her English is excellent. I love her perspective on things because she understands the American mindset as well as the Moroccan. She has become a very good friend and we have to be careful that we study language together instead of chatting! Asma is fluent in Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, French and English.

The hard thing about Moroccan Arabic is that they shortened the Arabic words from which they came by taking out the vowels. So you end up saying things like "khdmtkm" leaving you feeling sentimental about every vowel you ever knew. The process is slow and I find myself frustrated and wishing I could fast-forward several years and be able to speak without major effort, but that is not possible! "Shwia ba shwia" as they say here - "little by little..."

Trick or Treat!

Halloween in Morocco? Yes, we joined in with the international school here for some games and trick-or-treating to the apartments. Our friends, Dennis (MUD) and Barb had sent some costumes October 2, but alas, there is no sign of them. So we raided a dress-up box of a friend the night before, and Tinkerbell (with a pose imitating Tinkerbell's picture) and a little bride (who plans to marry Katrina) emerged.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

A few months ago, Gerald and I really wanted to get the girls a pet. When an adorable little puppy became available, we felt like this was the one. Then, within about an hour, we heard from three separate people that dogs are offensive to Muslims. Having grown up in Muslim countries, I had never even heard some of these things, but they are stong opinions here held by only the most conservative... and the most conservative just happen to be in our building.

According to Islam, a house is unclean for prayer for forty days after a dog has been there. No angel enters a home if a dog is present. If a dog touches a Muslim, he/she becomes unclean and has to re-do all the ablutions (ritual washing) before the next prayer time. When I asked the reasons for this, one lady shrugged, "We don't know - we just have to obey. Perhaps science will reveal in time why dogs are unclean."

We had just been studying how our Lord set people free from their endless list of rules and that holiness and our relationship with God does not depend on such things. I was struck once again by the freedom we have.

Understanding we simply could not have a dog, and in spite of the fact neither of us actually like cats, we realized this was probably our best solution. So I prayed, "Lord, if we cannot have this puppy, please give him a home.... and give us a kitty."

The next day we found out the puppy had a home. The following day a friend brought by a tiny kitty! The little thing had crawled into someone's engine and had protested the entire way here although the car's owner, Fatima, kept stopping and looking for the source of the sound. When Fatima arrived here, she kept her hood open and sure enough, the kitty climbed out after a while and was discovered by the kindergarten class (I'm not sure which is more terrifying- being in an engine or being discovered by a group of 5-year-olds!).

So now we have "Tobila-" which is her name modified from Arabic meaning, "little car!"

A few days later, the neighbor from upstairs stopped to thank us for not getting the puppy. She said it meant a lot to her that we were sensitive to her beliefs and so we were able to have a nice conversation.

Oh- Gerald and I found out that maybe cats aren't that bad. And the girls? I think you can guess!