Morocco has a very good defensive team, allowing only one goal in 3 games in the Cup championship. Unfortunately, usually a good offense helps. In Morocco’s case, they have NO offense, literally. They did not score a single goal in the 3 games they played; thus, they are out of the Cup. They finished with a record of 0 wins, 1 loss (1-0 on a penalty kick) and 2 ties (both 0-0). It’s a moot point, though, as host Egypt slaughtered (as far as football goes) Cote d’Ivoire 3-1. Dare I say that perhaps the Ivory Coast team played dead? Nah. Maybe “extended professional courtesy to the host team” might be a more tactful description of the match. The World Cup begins in June in Germany, but, unfortunately, Morocco did not qualify. So, who might I root for . . . hmmmm, the USA? No. There are a few African teams I could cheer on, including Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo. But, no. Instead, I’m going to support the team of my erstwhile abode in the Land of the Morning Calm, the South Korean team. If Thailand or Laos were playing, I’d be numbered among their staunchest fans, but, alas, neither qualified.
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Tonight might be the final match for the Moroccan team in the Africa Cup. They could only manage a 0-0 tie against host Egypt last Tuesday, but they needed to win. Only a miracle puts them in the quarterfinals. Cote d’Ivoire (already guaranteed a spot) must beat Egypt soundly and Morocco must trounce Libya. However, since Egypt is the host country, the chances of them not advancing are pretty slim, my students tell me. Politics, it seems. Both games are tonight, being played at the same time (5 p.m. local) in different stadiums. I assume the Morocco-Libya game will be shown here. (I wonder of Khadafy will be attending.) Lots of rain and wind the last 3 days, chilly but not cold. Not a tropical monsoon type of rain, just a steady drizzle most of the time. The forecast calls for more of the same the next couple of days. I suppose that’s better than a foot of snow and 30 below. As Karen, my friend in Boston, reminds me, the start of baseball spring training is getting closer. It seems not that long ago that both her and I were down in our cups when both of our favorites were knocked out of the playoffs. Ahhh, but this year . . . Mohammed wants me to teach a 10-week course at one of the local universities on the subject of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). It would be just one two-hour class per week, and I think it would be fun and interesting to do. I’ve already planned to do a CALL module at the CPR, so it’s not really an extra burden. I have to get John’s approval first. There are certain guidelines about where I can and can’t teach. I talked to my friend Nai in Laos earlier today and found out that his brother Pui (pooey) got into a motorbike accident and had to go to the hospital. Geez, these guys and their motorbikes. Nai’s had a couple of accidents on his and he tells me about accidents that members of his extended family have had. A few of his relatives and friends have died riding these things. Fortunately, Pui will be ok. Right now they are celebrating the Chinese New Year (Year of the Dog), so there are probably a lot of folks riding around with more than a few Beer Laos under their belt. Even though Nai is not a big drinker, I told him to be careful, especially of other riders, who will swerve to avoid the numerous potholes found on most of the Laos roads. More later. The Africa Cup is currently being contested for in Cairo, with 16 teams making the cut, 4 in each division. Today I watched the match between Morocco and Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) on my somewhat fuzzy TV, reception being what it is with only a pair of rabbit ears. I opened up my window, despite the slight chill in the air, because I wanted to listen to the neighborhood’s reaction when (and if) the Moroccan team scored. About the middle of the second half, down 1-0, it appeared that they had finally put the ball in the net. Yup, people in all the surrounding cafes erupted with shouts and cries of joy. I dare say most of Meknes and, indeed, most of Morocco, were tuned to the match. Alas, the camera angle only made it look like a goal; the ball actually went wide, hitting a supporting pole and bouncing into the back outside of the net. Morocco went on to lose by the same margin, 1-0. I’m sure the whole country is disappointed. But, they play again on Tuesday against Egypt and then a few days later against Libya. If they can come back to win those two games, there is a good likelihood that they will move on to the quarterfinals. Saif left a comment on the “Feast Day . . ” entry asking why I didn’t post the photo he took of me with the sheep. Well, even though I love taking photos, I’m a bit camera shy myself, but, if you’re interested,click here. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but not because of laziness or hard work–there’s just been nothing to post about. I took a long bicycle ride out to Marjane Supermarket today, the Wal-mart of Morocco. It was a gorgeous afternoon, a bright sun in deep blue skies and temperature near 60. It felt a bit like a warm spring day in Montana. The reason I had to go out that far was because the ink cartridge in my printer was empty. I tried everywhere in the downtown area, but no one seems to have the correct cartridge for my printer. Marjane was my last hope, but they didn’t have it either. They told me to check the Marjane in Fes or Rabat. Sheesh. The store at which I bought the printer doesn’t stock parts for it. Pretty bad customer service, as they can’t even tell me where to buy the cartridge. It’s a bit of a hassle, since I print out loads of pages for my students. I can always put the documents on a memory stick and take them to the local internet cafe to print out, but it’s still a hassle. At least the scanner, which I depend on heavily, still works. Well, lucky me, I get to go to Fes on Feb. 2 to do a workshop for Peace Corps volunteers. If the Marjane there doesn’t have the cartridge, then I’ll have to take the train to Rabat or Casablanca to see what I can find. I might have John look in the Rabat store for me. After classes this coming Tuesday, the 24th, I’m off until Feb. 14. Next Thursday the public schools start their mid-term break, so my students can’t do their practicum, which has been rescheduled to the week of Feb. 7th. It seems, though, that the CPR also has no classes while the public schools are out–don’t ask me why, but I’m not complaining. More later. Here’s one I forgot to post to the photo gallery. I’m particularly proud of it, though I think I got very lucky capturing the exact moment of impact. Master Kim, my former taekwando instructor in Andong, Korea, gave an open house in March of 2005, a few months after my tired, broken old body had given up the discipline of taekwando. However, he invited me to take photos of the event, in which his younger students gave demonstrations to their parents and friends. About half way through the event I told him that things seemed to be going pretty well. He responded that he was nervous. I asked why. He told me that he planned to break 9 marble slabs with his hand at the end of the program, but he had only broken three at a time before! Yikes. But, he did it, as you can see below. He blew this photo up, from the original I took, quite large, and has it hanging on the wall of his office. He tells me the other taekwando masters in Andong are jealous of it. < The day of the Feast of Sacrifice, Wednesday, was beautiful. I sat with Saif and his family on the roof of their apartment in the bright sun, waiting for the butcher to arrive. I even got a bit of sunburn. The fellow was an hour or so late, so we sat around talking–Saif, his younger brother, sister, mother, Saif’s friend, his brother’s friend and me. We ate oranges and a dish that tasted a lot like macaroni and cheese, only it was made of bread and milk and baked in the oven. Really quite tasty, as was all of the food I ate the past few days. Try some of the Moroccan recipes here; you won’t be disappointed.
Finally the butcher arrived. He had already had 10 appointments that day. The sheep was well taken care of before, as it was given water to drink and salt to eat. After wrestling the reluctant animal to the ground, it was hogtied and the butcher then sliced its throat, the blood flowing out on the rooftop, though not as much as I expected. It was all very quick, and I don’t think the animal suffered much, thankfully. Muslims feel a lot of respect and gratitude for the sheep, though there was no religious ritual involved. After it was decided that the sheep was truly dead, Saif used a bicycle pump to inflate air into the carcass through a cut made in the leg. It started to puff up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon; this was necessary to make the separation of the skin from the meat easier. I watched the whole process, from taking the skin off, to the removal of the “innards” and their subsequent cleaning, to the burning of the head in order to remove the horns and to cook the brain. It was quite a long and tiring procedure, taking the most part of two hours, with the entire family and friends involved. I took photos, but I’m only posting a few here (none of the bloodier ones, though). In the photo below, the butcher finishes off the “balloon.” Clockwise from left are Nouaman (Saif’s younger brother), Saif, his mother, and the butcher.
Below, Saif’s brother and sister are roasting the head of the sheep over an open flame. (I cropped out the head, but if you want to see the full photo, it’s in the gallery.) They roast, then scrape off the fuzz or beard, roast some more, scrape off more, roast, scrape, etc. Takes quite a while. Then the horns are chopped off with a hatchet that, to me, resembled a small medieval battle axe. Eventually, the skull is split open and the brain is removed and cooked. I didn’t have any brains, I don’t think. (No derogatory comments, please.)
Afterwards, we ate sheep-liver kabobs cooked over a charcoal grill, stuffed in bread and sprinkled with salt, cumin and mildly hot red pepper. You can’t dine on meat any fresher. . . The sun began to lower in the west, the afternoon becoming chilly, so we went downstairs to the apartment. More conversation followed, and eventually I mentioned that I’d better leave, since I was riding my bike and I didn’t want to ride in the dark, but I was entreated to stay for the evening meal. This consisted of warm bread fresh out of the oven, a stew of various parts of the sheep and oranges. Again, pretty tasty. Finally, I took my leave. I was invited back, though, on Friday for lunch. Because of all the work involved with the sheep, Saif’s mother did not have time to cook a proper meal, so I returned today. Two of Saif’s uncles and an aunt were there, visiting from Casablanca, Tangiers and from a small village just outside of Meknes. Today we ate, guess what? . . . yes, sheep! This was a roast, smothered in prunes and apricots. We tore off chunks of fresh-baked bread and used it to scoop out the fruit and meat, which was so tender it virtually fell from the bone, no knives or forks needed. We also had more sheep kabobs and oranges. I was fairly stuffed. The meal was preceded by tea and followed by coffee. Basically, I’ve eaten more sheep these two days than I’ve eaten in the totality of my life before. It’s pretty good. I think the whole of Morocco and, indeed, most of the Muslim world have been eating sheep for the last three days. I suppose a sharpster could invest in sheep futures and make a small fortune. Of course, my heart goes out to the families of all those lost in the tragedy of the Hajj in Mecca. At any rate, I was very happy and honored to be invited by Saif to his house. This is not unusual in Morocco. The country is reknowned for its hospitality, where the “guest is king,” according to one of my guide books. More later. Big bus collision killed 25 near Marrakech. Here’s the BBC article. Very tragic. I also forgot to mention in the last post that when I returned from Saif’s home, I smelled a “livestock smell” inside the front entrance to my apartment building, but I didn’t think too much of it. In the back of my mind, though, I imagined someone had a sheep somewhere. Sure enough, I can hear one bleating in one of the apartments. Don’t know whether it’s upstairs or downstairs. It’s not so loud that it will keep me awake, but folks are very serious about having a sheep for this religious holiday, serious enough to keep one in their home overnight. I’ve no idea where they will take it for the sacrifice. Saif, one of my students who lives in Meknes, invited me to his home tomorrow for the Feast of Sacrifice. He said that if I got there early enough, I could take photos of the actual sacrifice. Well, I don’t know . . . but, maybe. I promise I won’t post anything here that might offend delicate eyes. I went to his apartment earlier tonight so that I can find my way there tomorrow on my bicycle. We took a taxi, since he lives on the outskirts of the main city, a bit of a way out there. I asked where they would kill the sheep, and, apparently, they will do it on the roof of the apartment building. Anyway, it should be an interesting day. I ate the evening meal there, dining on Berber bread (his family’s ethnic origin is Berber), dates, olives, and harira (Morocco’s bean soup). He lives with his mother, father (a retiree from the Moroccan army), a 17-year old brother and a sister, who is leaving in a few weeks to join her husband in Montreal. By all accounts, there are quite a large number of Moroccans living and working in other countries, especially in Europe, due to its proximity, but also in Canada. It rained for a few hours while I was there, but it’s supposed to clear up by tomorrow. Walking back from the taxi stand, I was quite cold–almost felt like Montana on a warm winter’s day. Ok, maybe not THAT cold. I read an article on BBC News today about National Voodoo Day in Benin, Africa, a small country I had the pleasure to work in during my brief Peace Corps experience back in 2000. Read it here. I spent many a hot, sunny day on the beach in Ouidah, along with Karen, Chris, Erin, Craig, Tuve and other PC friends. Brings back a tear or two, doesn’t it, gang. More later. No, you don’t have to go out to a farm to buy a sheep for the holiday. LaBel Vie set up two rather large tents in their parking lot on New Year’s Eve day, the last time I was there. I thought at the time that it was something they were doing for the New Year celebration, but, no, it turns out that you can go into the tents and buy a live sheep for the Feast of Sacrifice. The price is 36 dirham per kilo, or about $1.75 per pound. I don’t know if that includes the butcher’s fee, and maybe you could recoup some of the price by selling the wool. However, that’s not the point; as I posted before, some of the meat is given to those less fortunate. The weather has turned nasty, as forecast; it’s been chilly (about 45-50 degrees F.) and rainy most of the day. A great day to cook up a large pot of hearty bean soup. Yummmmmmm. Chock full of white beans, carrots, potatoes, onions and secret spices. Dip into it with a warm, fresh baguette. Yeah! More later. So, the New Year begins. My sort-of prediction that it might be a noisy and somewhat dangerous New Year’s Eve celebration turned out to be wrong. It was rather quiet–I didn’t hear any fireworks or sirens in the wee hours of the morning, though I conked out well before midnight. Hopefully, then, parties were confined to people’s homes and no one was involved in any fatal traffic accidents. Next week is the Feast of Sacrifice, as I posted earlier. One of the religious traditions surrounding the Feast is that families who can afford to do so will buy a sheep, offering one third of it to the needy. Larouz is buying his this week, he told me on the trip to Rabat. I asked if he would slaughter it himself, but the farmer he buys from will do it. My students asked me if I had bought one, but I told them no, I didn’t have a place to keep it and feed it. They laughed, so I assumed they got my joke. They’re a great bunch of young men and women. They gave me a very colorful, fragrant bouquet of pink roses and red carnations as a New Year gift, a much-appreciated and thoughtful gesture. Many of them have invited me to visit their hometowns, one of which is Er-Rachidia, where I hope to be going at the end of the month or the beginning of February to give a workshop to Peace Corps volunteers. If I get to travel that far south, I hope they’re out of school (yes, there is another holiday of sorts coming up in February after they do another week-long practicum at the end of January). If so, it’ll be nice to know someone who can fill me in on where to sightsee. I’ve also been hoping to take the new bicycle for a spin in the countryside, but the forecast is calling for rain the next three days. I’ve been told that December is one of the rainiest months, but it didn’t seem like we got all that much precipitation. Maybe January will make up for it. Today seemed colder than usual, and riding the bicycle to work at 7:30 this morning was a rather uncomfortable awakening. I rode it back to the school this afternoon for the semi-monthly teacher/administration meeting. Usually one of the other English teachers is there to translate for me, but I was really a fish out of water today–I was the only one from our department attending, and the Arabic and French swirling into and around my ears left me rather bewildered. About the only words I understood were “photocopy” and “projector”, so I assume they were talking about lack of equipment or lack of funding to buy equipment. If there is anything important, someone will phone Larouz and let him know. Afterward, our very friendly and helpful Student Affairs Director, Fouad, told me that I really didn’t have to attend the meetings, especially if Larouz or one of the others wasn’t attending. Thank you, Fouad. I’ve never enjoyed this type of meeting anyway. More later. |
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