You Are My Liver .. and more funny stories

1/10/2006 12:10 PM

(Four of my six host sisters)

Thought I would recount of the latest stories and strange sites..

YOU ARE MY LIVER

On of my host sisters has a baby. They call her all kinds of funny names and one day I set about trying to figure out what some of the words were. Nadia said that mothers like to call their children their liver. I wasn’t quite sure I really understood so Iman went out and brought in a bowl. The bowl contained the heart, intestines and liver of the sheep killed yesterday. She picked up the liver and set it on the table. Nadia motioned cutting the liver into parts, saying that each part was one of her children. I was doubled over in laughter trying to imagine calling someone my liver as a term of endearment. “You don’t say ‘You are my liver, my love?’ in America?” Nope.

WHERE'S THE SOAP?

Every day there are new mysteries to figure out. For a couple weeks it was the mystery of the hand soap in the bathroom. Some days it was sitting on the sink, where one might expect to find hand soap. But many days it just wasn’t there. I felt it was my lucky day when I went in to use the restroom, finished and voila! There was soap. Other days I would search all around the bathroom and could not find it. Then a few hours later it would re-appear. Then some days it would be sitting next to the shower (bucket bath area). I began to realize the whole family used this bar of soap for their hands, their faces, in bucket baths in the mornings and whenever they went to the hammam (communal bath in the center of town) it accompanied them. Probably for a lot of things I don’t even want to know. They probably can’t afford or just never considered buying more than one bar of soap for every need to wash oneself in any situation. So, when I don’t find it, I go look through cabinets or in buckets that might be sitting somewhere remaining from someone’s last trip to the hammam. Usually it turns up, otherwise I just go into the kitchen and grab the Tide from one of the cabinets. Tide is used for dishes and hands and clothes and floors.

BITE HER!

(My friend Jessica recounted this story on her last trip to the center of Agdz.) Some tourist lady was walking through the village center when a Berber guy with a monkey on his shoulder began pestering her for money – as any good Berber with a monkey on his shoulder should do when encountering a tourist. She declined and started to walk away. The guy whispered something to his monkey. The monkey promptly jumped onto the lady, ran up her shoulder and bit her. (She had to go to the police station to report the incident and afterwards to the hospital to take care of the wound.) Nice monkey; nicer Berber man.

MORE BATHROOM MYSTERIES

Showers, bucket baths, hammams, all the customs of bathing are still something I’m getting used to. I have to admit that already, going four or five days without a shower is quite normal and I don’t even think about taking one until my hair eventually is too obviously limp to ignore. (The nice thing is that it is extremely dry here, so one doesn’t exactly sweat and since it is around 45 – 60 degrees inside in the house most of the night and day, we wear lots of layers of clothes… so skin isn’t exposed to that much dirt.) When I first arrived, I gleefully discovered my family had a showerhead. I took a nice long shower, but felt afterward that somehow this wasn’t appropriate. The next time I tried to take a shower the family said there was no butagas. “When are you going to refill it?” I asked. Oh, the butagas store is closed. This went on for a week. I told a Moroccan friend what they were telling me and he laughed. Of course they could get butagas any day they wanted. So then I thought that this must be simply to prevent me from taking showers. In fact, I had never heard anyone of them take a shower. So I wasn’t quite sure what they did or how they bathed. I went to the hamman … which is quite another experience all in itself (and can be a bit traumatizing at first, all the boobs and dark concrete floors flooded with soap, hair and dead-skin, scalding hot water, dangerously hot steamy rooms, screaming babies and big Berber women in your face blabbing away in Shilha begging you to scrub their backs … and you concede, trying to avoid looking down because their underwear are only half on…but don’t worry, after a while you will discover this is a the women’s version of socializing at a coffee shop.) Then one morning my host father (he and I usually share breakfast together since the rest of the family leaves early for school and work) asked if I wanted a hot shower. I was shocked. Yes! He pulled out the oven, turned it around and unscrewed the gasline from the butagas tank and dragged the butagas tank across the kitchen to another gasline, tightened it with a butter knife, flicked around it with a lighter (to make sure their were no leaks, and if they were … well I guess getting blown up is just part of process… ) flipped a switch and said, okay, go get your clothes! I reveled in the hot shower. This went on for a couple weeks, every four days or so he would ask and I would help him switch it, take a shower and go on with my day. But I began feeling guilty taking these showers, as no one else did and he was always careful to do it when Mama Lakibira was not around. One evening I came back from a long bike ride with Antoine and asked if it was okay if I took a shower. Lakabira consented, but didn’t seem crazy about the idea. Half-way through enjoying a steamy bathing experience, my host sister knocked on the door. Mama says you have to turn the shower off. I finished quickly, dressed and guiltily returned to the family room. My host mother sat there with her intimidating glare, arms crossed. I always know I’ve crossed some line when she’s like that. I pretended nothing was wrong and drank some mint tea. Finally she broke her silence. You can’t take showers. It uses too much butagas. Oh, really? Then what do you do? Use it like a bucket bath. Okay, then what’s the point of having a shower? Oh well. Things are different here. Just because you have a shower doesn’t mean you have the luxury of using it.