Family Outing

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Today was a big event for my family. We had a family outing. We went to have a picnic in the palmery, at a sweet little campground.

As I walked along the trek underneath palm trees, with four sisters and my host mother in tow, the thought struck me as to how unusual this was. It was the first time that the whole family (or most of them, Nadia and my host father made appearances later in the day) had gone out together somewhere. The women almost always stayed at home watching TV, reading, cooking or cleaning when they weren’t at school or teaching in the Nedi.

My host mother made a tagine over a fire (the wood was brought specially for us to the campground, and they campground owners made a German friend of mine who was working at the campground clean everything in preparation for our visit, poor guy). We sang Berber chants, and took a stroll through the palmery, waiting for lunch to cook. After lunch all of us walked to the river, (Henry, the German included), with Afru, the dog in tow. Moroccans typically don’t have pets. It felt like a day in America: the family walking along a river, a guy (Henry) friend along (I mention this because normally males and females do not socialize together much here), playing with a dog, munching on cookies, the girls doing silly gymnastic stunts over each other’s backs. Of course, begging a couple kids to get a picture on top of their donkey might not have happend on a picnic to the park in Cincinnati, but ahh… what a great day.