Food

For most of the past 50 days, I’ve been eating five - six meals a day. That’s a lot. There’s breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, evening tea (only during CBT), and dinner. They nearly all include bread and mint tea; the condiments and fat content of the bread may vary, but not the presence of bread and tea. They were two of the first words my host family made sure I knew: aghrom and attay. Silly me, I’d thought that I had an advantage in knowing the words in classical Arabic: khobz and shay. Not a chance. My host brothers, who have been to about six years of school each, recognized the Arabic words, but insisted I learn what they’re really called.

When I get the chance, I like to eat *fewer* than six meals a day. During our most recent stint in [Mountain City], I’ve only been grabbing a cup of tea at breakfast, and skipping either the morning or the afternoon tea. Once or twice I’ve been out during dinner time, and missed that meal. Here at CBT, though, missing meals = insulting my host family.

All the same, I’m tired of being bullied into gorging myself several times a day. My stomach has expanded so far that I feel hungry all day long. This past week, I’ve been snacking on kaw-kaws (peanuts) in-between the six meals. Yeesh. In my experience, when I’ve been eating huge amounts of food – holidays with my food-loving family spring to mind – fasting for a day does the job of bringing my appetite down to normal size. I really didn’t think I’d be able to go a day in this village without eating anything, but I was determined to try to eat no more than one full meal.

My plan started with skipping breakfast. I pretended to sleep late (actually just reading in bed), figuring that I’d let morning tea substitute for breakfast. No dice. Mma was gone to the fields by the time I emerged, but Sis-in-Law had been drilled in proper procedure. My hard boiled egg (Mma’s solution for How do you keep a vegetarian from starving? Feed her at least one hard boiled egg every day) was waiting inside the coffeepot in the kitchen, and a dish of jam and butter was tucked into the cupboard. So I ate a full l-fdor, then headed off for our Earth Day fun.

After Competitive Trash Pickup (I really need to think of a more fun name for that), I went back to “our mdrasa” (not to be confused with the mdrasa that my host brothers and sister attend) and worked until my laptop battery died. (I kicked myself for forgetting the power converter at home, but whatchagonnado.) While I was there, Ali*’s daughter invited us down for tea. By the way, “Come and drink tea” was the first full sentence I mastered other than the tourist survival phrases like “I work for the Peace Corps” and “How much does that cost?” It’s “Adud ad-tsut attay.” Since I’d had a full breakfast not two hours before, and since a fellow PCT was doing the pouring, I was able to bypass drinking tea, and just had some kaw-kaws and water. I came home at 2, figuring that was the latest that the lunch window could possibly run. Silly me. My family was still finishing up, and asked if I’d had lunch already. I told them that I’d eaten (technically true, thanks to the kaw-kaws), but sat with them for the post-lunch-lingering and the dessert (an orange).

I underestimated the power of the village gossip mill.

My family seems to be on the fringes of village life, not only in the most literal sense – our house is one of the furthest north from the village center, and there are only two more houses before the expanse of sand and sage separating us from Bahallu’s village two miles up river – but also in that we veeery rarely get visitors, nor do Mma or Sis-in-Law ever talk about visiting any of the other families in town.

Through no means of communication I can figure out, Mma found out that I didn’t really have lunch. So when I sat down for afternoon tea, she served me a huge salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and a salty dressing. Plus, of course, bread. No tea, though, just hot, sweet milk. Mmmm. I could drink my weight in that stuff.

I ate a reasonable amount of bread and salad, and called myself done. I had to mightily resist the “Tsh, tsh!” (Eat, eat!) that Mma heaped out, but I did it. I hung out in the living room for a while, then, about an hour before evening tea, I said that I was tired, and retreated into my room. I read and studied for a few hours before Little Sis came knocking on the door. I thought I was being summoned for evening tea, or maybe for an early dinner, but no, my family just wanted to spend time with me. :) So we played cards for a bit and then danced for a bit (and then my two oldest brothers both dressed up in funny clothes, I have no idea why), and then came dinner. Which was lentils, l3ds, aka my favorite Moroccan dish. I forgot how to say that, but I remembered how to say I like lentils, which is surprisingly complicated. (The syntax is essentially “Please me they do, lentils.” (i3ajbi l3ds) There’s really no straightforward way to express liking something in Tamazight, so we’re stuck with Yoda-speak.) And since I do love Moroccan lentils, I ate a nice big helping, along with lots of water.

So if I was hoping to fast today, I failed. But if I was hoping to avoid eating six meals, I succeeded. I’d tally today as 1 full breakfast, 1.5 teas, and 1 dinner. Three and a half meals. Not too bad, all things considered. :)

*Another exception to the name rule...but then, Ali is the second most common name in Morocco, after Mohammed. Ali is the owner of the building we've been using as our mdrasa, and is also serving as the host father to our LCF, H**. We usually refer to him as "the landlord", but the more we get to know him, the more appropriate it feels to call him by name.