Finally…..

So, finally the update which you have all been waiting for with insatiable excitement has arrived to your thunderous, exuberant and roarous applause…(que gasps, gaping jaws and that little bit of saliva that falls from the edge of your mouth when you least want it to)…. abate your breath no longer. Or rather, since you have actually been waiting so long, you may be shocked to the point where you hold your breath the entire longeur of this message, for this I apologize. This is for sure not going to be a short read. Please stop reading this now and seek out a friend to sit with you and monitor your breaths if you feel necessary. I would prefer that you are all still living when I return and I believe it impossible to retain a single breath while reading this and survive. For those of you who are into competition…this is of course a challenge and it begins…….NOW!

The only way to truly help you know exactly what’s been going on here is to start with why I haven’t updated you all. No, this isn’t exactly meant to cover my lack of communication since my arrival but rather only pertains to why I haven’t fulfilled my FB promise of updating ‘soon’. Unfortunately, this reason is not at all happy and has proven to be slightly more than slightly stressful.

A few weeks ago, an amazing Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) passed away. From what, it is not yet certain, but it was sudden. This volunteer had been, apparently, sick for a while, but with nothing short of minor cold symptoms. These persisted over a quite extended period of time and came to an unfortunate halt when she passed in a hospital in Marrakech. Her illness declined with frightening rapidity with her falling extremely ill one morning and passing the next night. This of course came as a huge surprise to other PCVs as well as was accompanied with a sort of panic. I don’t really blame a lot of the volunteers for feeling this way. We are after all, in the Peace Corps (PC), and we do have luminous and somewhat fateful thoughts lingering in the back of our minds as to the unknown an example being thoughts about insanely obscure illnesses that maybe haven’t been discovered yet….at least not in the European sense of discovery to which we have all accustomed ourselves. I do wish I could go into further detail about how great this volunteer actually was, but in all honesty, I hadn’t even met her once. All I know is what I’ve heard, but I do still think she deserves the adjective amazing, even if the judgment call isn’t entirely my own.

In the PC world, whenever a volunteer passes away the host country’s medical services both part of and apart from Peace Corps are evaluated by the US government to ascertain the safety of volunteers in that country. For the most part, this ‘evaluation’, as it is entitled by Congress, is independent of the majority of volunteers save those with heavy medical needs and those who are on VAC (Volunteer Advisory Council). I am happy to not count myself among the high medical needs group and feel somewhat mixed to call myself among the latter. No matter, this council was summoned to Rabat to meet with a rather intimidating medical team from PC Washington as well as a special team from Congress. As a member of VAC it is my duty to communicate the needs, questions, desires, fears and just about everything else my stage wants to say to PC, or, in this case, a highly accredited, knowledgeable team of both law and medical experts….not at all stressful. Needless to say, a blissful 3 days was spent in constant meetings communicating frustrated and confused sentiments about every possible aspect of this case ranging from possible causes to the possible political impacts. I’ll leave this topic for now, but I just wanted you all to know that I haven’t been ignoring you. I miss all of you tremendously, but unfortunately there are just times when you can’t do what you ‘want’ per say….you do what you must.

I’m hoping now I can steer away from the grim and embrace l’hm (in English, the meat)…..

Around Thanksgiving (I know forever ago) l’Eid Al Kibir was celebrated. An incredibly powerful and pivotal holiday in the Islamic calendar, l’Eid Al Kibir is centered around two things: Allah and….of course, l’hm. The beginning of this festival is marked with the sacrifice of at least one sheep and, if your family can afford, this can be doubled tripled or what-have-you with a few goats tacked on for luck. The overall initial feeling of this holiday can most definitely be compared to Christmas, only with a bit of uncertainty which, personally, adds to the excitement. The Islamic calendar is a lunar one and unlike the Hebrew calendar it has not been mathematically adapted. It is rather dependent upon someone, a particular someone, actually seeing the moon and observing its current position in the lunar cycle. This, rather laughably, makes it impossible to know when a holiday is going to be. You are instead given a three day range of when it could be. So, in a way, you can potentially go through three Christmas Eves only minus the gifts and food plus exponential growth of excitement. This can be extremely frustrating, however, to someone who is coming from outside of the culture. You find yourself being told about this great feast weeks in advance and then when you finally think “Yes!!!! It’s today!!!” you wake up with all the joy and splendor you can muster to find everyone else in a normal mood wondering why you’re so excited and giggling a little….I mean after all, didn’t you look at the moon last night, silly American.

To make this a little more personal, maybe I am a silly American but to promise me a huge feast and then just have it linger off in the distance just out of my reach is not mean….it’s a torturous cacophony resemblent of my hell that will reverberate throughout my entire psyche never rendering me the pleasure of deafness. Yes, I take my food VERY seriously.

We then finally arrive to the actually eve of the Eid, where I was assured that the Eid was the following day, I asked multiple times and promised that if this was yet another cruel joke, I was making my own feast….a feast of host family Moroccans. This was greeted with uneasy laughter.

So I find myself waking up the next morning, certain and feeling completely reassured that today was the day. The day of all days and the feast of all feast and, in a way, I was more than correct. I woke and greeted the host family and had an amazingly wonderful breakfast…one that was interrupted by a burst of excitement from everyone and a sudden grabbing of cameras and video recorders (all very prevalent despite the prevalence of constant electricity or running water)…and me. I was rushed outside while being told, “It’s about to begin, come see, come see”. I was succumb with excitement and confusion as well as filled with, well, that Christmas morning feeling…..but, what I was soon to become witness to was not so Christmassy nor in anyway congruent with this joyjoy feeling coursing through my veins.

A man with a large knife, from what I consider to be out of the blue, appeared, rapidly approached our sheep and slit its throat. Where was my warning!! Isn’t there like a one, two, three count or something! To say the least I was malprepared. Especially considering that this was no simple slit, walk away and bam dead sheep….oh, no, the cut was not nearly deep enough. Just enough to cause a little spray, and be able to slowly set the intensely confused animal down to the dirt. The next twelve minutes or so were spent watching our sheep thrash around on the ground and being witness to random spats of blood gushing and being projecting amazingly far distances….end scene…or so I thought.

What happened next was… I have no adjective to qualify what exactly was next. I leave it up to you. The same man now began to ask for a smaller knife and once provided with it he slit a tiny hole in what could be named the right hind leg (or passenger side hind leg if you were driving said beast). Once the slit was made the rather striking man with once large knife puckered up his lips, pressed them ever so gently and sensually to the orifice he had just created while wielding his saber and his incredibly endowed muscle filled arms, and began to blow….blow….blow…..blow. Slowly, gracefully, poignantly, succulently, sensually, the sheep began to inflate, zeppelin style. Half expecting the sheep to float away and half expecting it to explode in some fashion, I looked on with jaw dropped and Americanness exposed. While an effective mechanism for loosening the skin, a not so effective mechanism for appetite sustainability. Once half inflated, my ever so warm and loving host dad passed the camera to me and named me the official director of the next biggest blockbuster hit, Silence of the Lambs: Morockin’ It Out!

You name the camera angle, I for sure shot it. Partially edited sneak peak soon to arrive at your local YouTube, assuming the electricity stops going out.

The following skinning and disembowelment was incredible efficient. The still warm carcus was hoisted and the magic began. As all the organs, connective tissues, fats and slimy gooky stuff were removed they were all washed and placed in appropriate baskets that were ever so graciously basking in the ever so warm African sun. Ah, the wonderful smells of sacrifice…or maybe that’s just my host mom burning the fur off the sheep’s head just behind me. Yes, definitely the second one. To think, I was under the impression they were heating up the small grill to make fresh kabobs. I should have known it was just meant for the scorching of the skull and precooking of the brain. Hello silly American and goodbye sweet, sweet innocence.

As not to spoil the film, I’ll save you from the other details of sacrifice. But for future reference, if anyone ever offers you lung or spleen, take it! It’s actually super zween! (zween: Moroccan Arabic for something pretty, nice or really yummy). One thing I’ll let you figure out for yourself is whether or not to try out kordaz. This is Moroccan Arabic for intestine, liver, spleen, esophagus and stomach fat all wrapped in a section of stomach and tied tightly with extra intenstine (sometimes a little rectum is thrown in for a little extra mmmpph) which is salted and “cumined”, tied to a close line and then left out in the sun for about 3 weeks to let all the goodness soak in…..(momentary pause for your reaction. Continue reading when you feel up to it)…

This is actually, I must say, really good! It’s the closest thing to good sausage that you can get here. Only complaint is that is kind of stringy and there’s nothing worse than picking who knows-what out of your teeth.

I do however wonder if this was the actual Eid or if the family took my threat of eating them a little too seriously. Then again, had I not gotten my feast there’s no guarantee that the smell of roasting head wouldn’t have filled the air despite that damn moon…..

more to come inchallah (Moroccan Arabic for God willing)

oh, and mailing address

Jason Marchese (Ali)

Gourrama Centre

Province Errachidia

Morocco