Come on Amal center, almost there!

 

 

After a good 2.5 months, work at the Amal center is finally wrapping up!  Every week, the contractor takes a look around and says “all right, I’m going to put more workers on this site and we’re going to finish this thing.  One week max, we’ll be out of here”. This is the first time that I think we might actually have a chance.  Let me show you a few of things we’ve been working on.

I’m very happy with these windows we found at Souk el Khmiss, the huge covered flea market where no tourist dares set foot. The windows are so very quintessentially Moroccan and they’ve got soul, that’s what we want for this place.

 

 

Do you see the wooden posts there?  They are the beginning of a picket fence that will be installed tomorrow, insha Allah, around the kids’ garden.  And that color of paint, it’s so Marrakesh, we had to stick with it.  It’s called Rose Mamounia.  

 

Just got aluminum windows put in the kitchen today.  It looks so bright and airy with the nice cream colored paint and tile work.  The industrial sink is also from the flea market.

 

 

Here is the reception area. Salam alaykum and welcome to Amal, how many are in your party?  Also it will be a display area for all the cupcakes, brownies, cheesecake and assortment of Moroccan cookies that the ladies will make…

 

 

Part of the indoor dining area.  Planning to put some nice Moroccan banquettes here.

 

The kids’ room!  The circles on the wall are chalkboard, so the kids can draw with chalk straight on the wall.  The chairs are also locally made, painted by our very dedicated volunteers.

 

The main dining room, all painted.  These chairs were also a flea market find. I was having such a hard time finding something wooden, comfortable, durable and inexpensive, but when we came across these chairs I was just thrilled.  They need a good sanding and oiling…volunteers….

 

And this is a view from the front door…the garden has been tiled in Moroccan brick called “bejmat”, and we actually opened up a new entrance from the street that is in line with the front door.

All in all, it’s turning into a beaautiful place.  And although I get overwhelmed by the weight and responsibility of it, I just have to remember to ask for help from all the people who believe in the project.  And most of all, asking for help from the One who sends forth all the we have.

In case you haven’t read my previous posts, the Amal Women’s Training Center and Moroccan Restaurant is a non-profit organization whose aim is to train and employ underprivileged women in Marrakesh, Morocco.  We plan to serve breakfast and lunch daily, and hope to open in March 2013.  For more information please email me at amalnonprofit@gmail.com 

 

Before and during pictures

Construction is going in full swing over at the Amal Training Center.  Luckily we have a really competent and patient foreman who is in charge of all aspects of the building, otherwise I might have already had a breakdown.  Everyday some combination of us gather to feel and talk through the space.  We’ve torn down a lot of walls, closed up doorways, and even removed a drop ceiling to create a sense of height.  Below you can see the future dining hall which was made by combining three smallish rooms.  Funny story about this space we rented, it used to be a doctor’s office.  The same doctor who delivered one of my kids.  We’re trying to get rid of that doctor’s office feel.  And this process feels a lot like pregnancy, growing something beautiful…

The kitchen was also made by combining 3 different spaces.  This part of the building was not used for like the last 20 years.  This is how it looked last week.

And this is what it looks like now…  The plumbing is just ancient and has to be stripped.

Outside of the kitchen, last week:

And now…

It’s been fun to figure out how the kitchen should flow, slowly the end vision is emerging.

And lots of people are coming forward to offer help in neat and unique ways.  I’ll write about some of them in the next few posts, but for now I’ll tell you about one of them:

We have a resourceful young intern named Rachel who is, at the moment, in charge of outreach (i.e. fundraising).  She’s put our project up on a site called RocketHub, which is a new kind of site called a crow-funding site, similar to Kickstarter (crowd-funding is now “a thing”, in case you didn’t know).  We hope to raise $5000 in 50 days for kitchen equipment, and it’s been amazing to watch the donations pouring in.  As of now, the site has been live for a week and we are at 70% of our goal!  Whenever I open my email I get about 5 notifications telling me that someone has donated to the project, it’s almost too much goodness for my heart to bear…  Now it’s really feeling like a community effort.  I am in awe as I see God’s loving mercy flowing and flooding these women’s lives.  Their lives will never be the same after this.

Here is the website if you would like to support the project.  I don’t enjoy asking for money, so please feel no pressure.  You support this project through your encouraging words, loving thoughts and prayers, and through this dream we are all carrying to give these women a chance at a new life.

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/12451-amal-women-s-training-center-and-moroccan-restaurant

 

Pics of the new place

Here are the pictures of the space we rented for the Amal Women’s Training Center and Moroccan Restaurant.  We went on a Sunday, a few of the actual women who will be training there, their kids, and a couple of volunteers, to see the space together.

Here is the front entrance.  The glass bricks are nice but will be replaced with glass windows for more connection between indoor and outdoor.  There is a lot of garden space, some of it will be paved with bricks to make a larger outdoor seating area.

This is part of the indoor dining area.  We don’t have electricity yet, and this was at the end of the day, so I could only take pictures of this front room. The other room that is visible there will have a display area for the baked goods.  In addition, there will be another dining room, an office, and a classroom where the ladies can learn to read/write.

Detached from the main villa, there are some rooms in the back.  We’re thinking that these would be the ideal place for the training kitchen.  Little Si Mohamed discovered a rickety old ladder, we had a hard time getting him down from there.  He’s right in the terrible two’s all right.

Little Chaima climbed the orange tree and picked as many as she could reach.  In the end her family went home with a bag full.   I smiled to think that this place is already yielding “fruits” and that seems like a good sign.

Fatiha, a dear friend and future trainee, with Melissa, a dear friend and volunteer.

That patch will  turn into an herb garden (inshAllah Godwilling):

A little orange party:

There’s a bit of work to be done.  Some of the place was well-kept and some of it is in disrepair.  Tomorrow I have a meeting with a builder to start in on the alterations.  I’m excited because I connected with the perfect person to help out with this project.  I was talking to Meriem, the young woman in the picture above (holding a shoulder bag).  I was telling her how I want to put together Sponsor Packets to present to potential sponsors.

Then she said “Oh, I’ve done that for a few projects at the University”.

I said “Wait, what did you study again?”

“Economics”

“And now you’re done with school?”

“Yes I have my Bachelor’s and I’m taking time off now”.

“Um, would you like to work on this project…for free?”

“YES!”

I’m so happy, both for the project’s sake and for Meriem’s.  I know she’s a smart, resourceful and hardworking person and will bring a lot of energy to this venture.  I’m much relieved to have someone of her caliber and skill set on board.  This project has been like this, serendipitous connections and unfolding of new things.  It’s so beyond what I might do or dream for it, it’s so much bigger and more beautiful.

 

Amal Women’s Training Center and Moroccan Restaurant

Doesn’t that sound good!!???  I’m so very excited and happy to announce that this dream is finally coming into reality.  I’m in excitement overdrive right now about the whole thing so bear with me.  

Last time I wrote about how we had decided to establish this project as a non-profit.  We had a general assembly, elected a board of 7 members from among the women.  Naturally, it made sense for me to be the president or director of the non-profit, Lalla Khadija is the treasurer, and a lovely woman named Meriem is the secretary.   After we did all this, we had to iron out our statutes.  We stated as our basic goals:

To establish a training center in Moroccan cooking and pastries for at-risk women to rescue them from poverty.

To establish a simple restaurant to sell the products of the training center.

Then we put together a dossier that contains the statutes, the list of board members, the minutes from the general assembly, and photocopies of each of the members’ ID cards.  All of this of course in seven copies, each page notarized, as is the custom here in Morocco.  A person’s signature here is worthless unless it is notarized.

But we still needed one crucial document to establish this non-profit, and that was a rental contract.  That’s right, to register any kind of business or non-profit in Morocco one first needs to have a rental contract.  If a person is a homeowner then they can use their home address temporarily.  But none of us are, so the final step of renting a place was crucial for us.

I’ve been looking for spaces to rent since about May/June.  I’ve hired samsars (kinda fly-by-night agent that helps locate rentals), knocked on doors, found places that I got excited about but that weren’t meant to be, and spent probably 100s of hours day-dreaming and obsessing about “our space” (and the project in general, I even had very realistic dreams that we rented such-and-such a space).  I made a lot prayers, especially the prayer of asking for God’s direction in making a decision salat al istikhara.  It goes something like this:

Allah, if you know that this matter: renting this house for the women’s center, is best for me in my spiritual and worldly affairs, in this life and the next, in the immediate and the long-term, then will it for me, make it easy, and then put blessing in it for me.  And if You know that this matter: renting this house for the women’s center, is bad for me in my spiritual and worldly affairs, in this life and the next, in the immediate and the long-term, then drive it away from me and drive me away from it, and will goodness for me wherever that may lie.

A beautifully simple and liberating prayer.

Everyone I met and told about this project also would make prayers of ease and blessing.  Allahumma yassir, Allahumma barik.  We work and strive in this world of cause and effect, but ultimately where things are truly determined is in a realm far beyond us.  I never know who’s prayer is being answered or if it is a confluence of collective prayer…

Finally, the right space for our project materialized.  It’s the downstairs of a villa in the Gueliz area.  It has a wealth of light and all out good vibes.  The street is lined with trees, the house is south facing so receives good light all day, there is a nice garden for outside dining and an herb garden, and plenty of space inside to create a great training kitchen, dining area, and display area for the pastries (I’ll try to post some pics soon).  Thanks to private donations, we were able to pay the first year of rent in advance!

We are overjoyed with the space.  The villa is old and needs some work, but the general feeling there is that it’s a safe and beautiful place for these women to learn and grow.  Honestly it feels like a haven.  The next phase is to make the necessary alterations and aesthetic improvements.  An architect friend is kindly donating his time to draw up a plan of the space and make suggestions on how to proceed.  Then next week we will bring in a builder to start tearing down some walls, putting a few doorways and windows in, etc.  By the end of December, inshallah, we’ll be ready for equipment and furniture.  Then the actual work and training can begin, yeah!

At this point, like I said, we’ve received some very generous support for the rent and repairs.  We are now looking to raise the funds needed for the equipment and furniture.  I’m appealing to you, dear readers and blogging community, for this support.  I’d like to invite you to be part of this project with any donation that is possible to you.

I’m planning on asking some of the major equipment companies in the Food Service industry if they’ll sponsor our training center via some kind of donation of equipment and/or discount.  I’m talking about Promark, Arcade Equipment and Foyelec.  We don’t need a lot, but there are minimal pieces of professional equipment that we need like a big refrigerator, good range top and oven (I could go into great detail about what we need, I’ll save that though for a future post).  Maybe one of my readers is somehow connected to one of these companies.

Here is the bank info for the Amal Women’s Training Center and Moroccan Restaurant:

Bank name: Attijariwafa Bank

Account number (R.I.B) 007450000806500030059496

SWIFT code: BCM.AM.AMC

Here’s our name and address:

Association Amal pour la Cuisine et les Gateaux Marocains

Villa Simone

Angle Rue Allah ben Ahmed et Ibn Sina

Quartier l’Hopital

Gueliz, Marrakesh, 40 000 MAROC

 

Phone number: +212 613 10 84 60

email: amalnonprofit (at) gmail (dot) com 

(website coming soon!)

Facebook: AmalNonProfit 

Please support these needy and at-risk women with whatever donation is within your means.  Peace and blessings to you all.

Remember him?

 

He came into life under difficult circumstances.  He is Saeeda’s son (name changed for privacy).  Such a curious, funny, quick child.  Since his birth, his mother, who is unmarried, drew the veil of secrecy around herself and her child in order to protect them both from scrutiny.  With time however, she introduced him to her family as “the son of a woman who can’t take care of him”.  The family just adores him.  With time, many of them came to understand that he is in fact her son,   By that time, they all were in love with him already, they were able to come to terms with it in a palatable way.  The story is a still there “to save face” in front of others… neighbors, strangers.

It’s been almost two years since his birth, since that day when she was penniless and homeless and still weak from childbirth, and we were able to open our home to her for a few weeks.  Things have gotten so much better.  I have had the great pleasure of working closely with Saeeda over the last year in the context of our baking endeavor.  Often times she had her son on her back, and when he was older, scampering about with the pots and pans.  I can honestly say she is one of the best mother’s I’ve seen.  She talks softly and reassuringly to her son, a soothing narrative of what they are doing together.  She takes great care in preparing his special food, soups and baby bottles.  She keeps him clean and well-dressed although she has very little money.  She laughs at the 100 funny things he does, her own small rewards.  Her eyes just shine when she looks at him.  She doesn’t get impatient, she always gives him time.  Being around them both is very soothing and joyful.  Everything in her life has always come to her at great difficulty, even the circumstances around the birth of her son.  But even the burden of being a single mother in Morocco is nothing compared to the love she has for him and the joy he has brought her.   I can see that he is clearly her dearest treasure.

 

Starting a Women’s Non-Profit in Morocco

 

Farewell Ramadan, hello Eid el Kabir.  Never mind that there are two months between the two.  Two months that were filled with back-to-school and all that that entails with three kids.  Plus there’s the whole women’s cooperative project.  We applied for Cooperative status back in May, and now, five months later, I can confidently say that I’ve been initiated into the high realm of Moroccan beauraucracy.   It’s everything they promised it would be, long, unclear and unexplained, and hopelessly rooted in the ’50s.   The application has gone through 4 different offices and now comfortably resides somewhere at the top level.  Each of us seven founding members is waiting to receive a visit from local authorities to check on us, to see if we are serious about creating a cooperative or something.  And there seems to be nothing we can do to speed up the process, so far only three people have been called on (they come to your house).

Luckily we have a good advisor at the Chambre D’artisanat (Chamber of Handicrafts) who strongly advised us to create  a non-profit instead of a cooperative.  They can both function in similar ways, we can have our training center and restaurant, except that in the cooperative the profit is divided up between the members, whereas in a non-profit it’s not.  It’s a lot easier to create a non-profit, and when I think about it, it’s more aligned with what we are planning to do.  We are planning to train local women in Moroccan cooking, making Moroccan sweets and Western baked goods.  The women are from marginalized situations, from the 10 we have as a starting group 3 of them are raising kids on their own, 3 are illiterate, none have finished high school, almost all are in abject poverty.  The locale we are planning to rent will be set up both as a training center and restaurant (it makes me so happy to type those words, I’m so excited about this project).

So we had our first general assembly a few days ago at the Chambre D’artisanat.  The great thing is that Moroccan cooking and pastry-making is considered a traditional handicraft.  Yeah!  This is exciting for several reasons.  There is a lot of government importance place on the traditional handicrafts like woodworking, leather goods, weaving, etc.  Morocco really has a lot of fine craftsmen and the government knows that this is one of the national treasures.  It’s exciting to be a part of that.  Plus any cooperative or non-profit that is created in the handicraft field is automatically exempt from taxes.  For our meeting, they let us use their super swanky facilities, check out the main door.

 

We had a good meeting.  We talked about how a non-profit is different than a business.   How we hope that it will enrich all of their lives not just financially but in several ways.  Those who are illiterate will receive classes from the get-go to learn how to read.  Those who know how to read will build on that, a few of the women have shown interest in learning English.  We will invite people with cooking expertise to come give workshops and demonstrations.  We will have trainings in hygiene and provide the women with all that they need in terms of medical tests, uniforms and cleaning products to be thoroughly in compliance with hygiene standards (if you’ve seen some of the local restaurants and the staff who work in them, you’ll appreciate this point.  No soap in the bathroom, is all I’m going to say).  We also talked about having high ideals and long-term goals such as: using local products and ingredients and eventually sourcing organic ingredients, supporting other local craftsment e.g. when we buy the furniture for the restaurant it will all be locally made, going back to old methods of cooking (which are invariably healthier).  I told the women not to be scared of the immensity of the project, that the responsibility will be shouldered by all of us.  (Uh, I think I was speaking mostly to myself as I kept repeating those words several times during the meeting).

For me, this project is immensely personal and exciting.  It’s creative: dreaming anything up from scratch is.  I need this level of creativity in my life, and Morocco needs it.  And if I can use my creativity compassionately then it’s perfect.  There are also challenges for me here to be faced, such as delegating tasks.  There are a lot of people who want to volunteer with this project and I need to organize them into teams, an advertising team, a crew to work on the space, etc.  I’ve had some freakouts about this project, I get scared that it will be too much or that I won’t be able to give it as much as it needs to be a success (not unlike those dreams I used to have when I was pregnant.  I think freaking out about things means they are real to me).  Honestly switching from the idea of a cooperative to a non-profit was a huge relief, it feels right.  It doesn’t feel so much like I am trying to open a restaurant (people in the restaurant business keep telling me how hard it is, I believe them) , rather that I am helping set up a training infra-structure for marginalized women that will sell food as a way to support itself.

When I talk about the project, it strikes a chord with a lot of people.  At this point in history, it’s time for women to shine.  To learn, to grow, to speak, to be heard, to live in safety, to believe in our power.   To nurture our spiritual bond with the Creator, ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, the Compassionate, the Bestower of all bounty.

 

Ode to the hadga

Ramadan is already a quarter over.  In Morocco, Ramadan is known as a time for, among other things, putting extra care into food preparation.  This post is an ode to the women who work in the kitchen all year around and go the extra mile in Ramadan, the hadga’s.  What is a hadga?  She’s a hardworking, thrifty, creative, resourceful woman whose work stands testament to her character.  The triumvirate she rules by is cleanliness, thrift and nourishment.  Here are a few ways to recognize a hadga…maybe you know one…maybe you are one…

• She knows that dishwashing liquid is not enough to get the eggy smell (zfouria) off dishes, always has her combo of bleach, fairy and tide near the sink.
• She’s been known to scrub old dingy tiles with hydrochloric acid (ma el qat3) to bring out the shine.
• Otherwise, she never mops tiles with plain water because that leaves that same weird eggy smell as with the dishes.  Always has Mr Propre or Sanicroix in the bucket.  She knows the only real way to mop a floor is stooped over a jiffaf, a sort of towel that she works side-to-side from one end of the house to the other.  The house is mopped daily.
• Even though she works outside the home, she makes tomorrow’s lunch tonight so that her family can come home to a nice hot tajine.
• She personally inspects every single vegetable she buys based on specific hadga criterion of size, firmness, smell, sheen, hue…She’s been known to snap a carrot in two the check the core is not woody.  Knows that tomatoes have to overripe for tajine or red sauce, but on the firm side for salad.  Wilted green beans or spongy cucumbers hold no place in her shopping bag.
• Her family doesn’t know what store bought bread tastes like because she bakes it fresh every morning.
• Turns 10 or 20 dirhams into a feast when you come visit.  Laughs dismissively when you praise her for it.
• She comes over to see you, notices you have dishes in the sink (and that you are likely too overwhelmed with your lively young’uns to get to them).  She says “let’s take care of these” and cheerfully does so.  Then she asks if you have flour and oil and proceeds to make you a batch of msemn, staying cool, calm and collected throughout.  She leaves the kitchen sparkling and full of nourishment.  Makes it look effortless.
• She never serves stringy, chewy chicken because she bought today’s chicken yesterday and gave it a thorough salt scrub followed by an overnight lemon bath.  Her chicken tajine is always as tender as can be.
• Turns one orange into a decanter full of juice by boiling it with the peel, adding sugar, water and a teaspoon of citric acid.  She always has it in the fridge a standby.
• Her home is never in a state of C.H.A.O.S (can’t have anyone over syndrome).
• She shows up at the hammam with all natural, homemade beauty treatments.  Body scrub made from ground chickpeas, body mask made from henna and herbs, argan oil with her own additions of essential oils.  She even lets you try some after you’ve asked enough nosy questions about all of it.
• Prepares for Ramadan the month before, filling the freezer with briwat (stuffed pastries), chopped celery and herbs ready for harira soup, soaked and hulled chickpeas too.  Chebbakia and sellou sweets of course in large covered buckets.

I’m sorry to say that I’m most likely not a hadga. It doesn’t come naturally to me, I haven’t seen and lived enough of it to be it. It takes a lot of exposure to, and infusion from other hadgas, grandmothers, aunts…It takes a village and all that.  But I’ve personally witnessed every single one of these instances (and the list is only a thin-slice, by no means exhaustive.  Just when I think I’ve seen it all, I’m exposed to something else that leaves me in awe).  Chances are if you live in Morocco or have spent time here, you know what I’m talking about here.  What else can you add to the list?

 

Preparing for Ramadan 2012

Wow I sort of forgot I had a blog.  It’s less than a month now until Ramadan, and I realize that inshallah this will be my third Ramadan “on the blog” (and maybe 22nd or so Ramadan in real life, alhamdulillah).  Already there is an electric feeling of anticipation, houses to be cleaned (Moroccan no-joke cleaning: wash the walls, wash the carpets…do they still take the stuffing out of the pillows and wash it?), delicious stick-to-your-ribs-straight-to-your-hips shebakia and slilou to be prepared, schedules to be turned completely on their heads (hello 4 a.m. breakfast)…but the deepest preparation is the feeling that my soul stirs and awakens from its hibernation, anxious and yearning another season of nourishment.   Another time when this world slips away of its own accord and we are yet again allowed to experience other possibilities.  There is also a tinge of apprehension, for me personally, and I get this before every Ramadan.  I think, will it be ok?  Will I be able to do this again, now the days are even hotter and longer?  I didn’t ever use to have this fear, then I took some Ramadans off while pregnant and nursing, and it sort of broke my flow.  That fear usually subsides after the first day when I realize, yest this is hard, but so worth it.  The great thing about fasting in a country where everybody fasts is that we all agree to reduce our mutual expectations of each other to bare minimum.  Work dwindles, productivity is not even mentioned, faults are overlooked as being just side effects of the fast.

At the same time we are all busy trying to wrap up the year’s work in time.  The women’s baking project is slowly but surely turning into something wonderful.  We are trying to establish it as a proper women’s cooperative.  The aim is to train and employ women from among the most vulnerable strata of society: poor or even destitute, illiterate, divorced mothers, single mothers, older women who have no one to care for them.  Already the number has grown to 12 women.  We have submitted an application to become a cooperative, and as I understand, it should be *only* six months before the final seal of approval is given.  There are many, many stages to the application, including a phase where a committee actually visits the house of each woman.  In the meantime, we continue to look for a good locale for the restaurant, continue to have training days, continue to chase the paper trail, continue to brainstorm as to the big picture.

It’s all very exciting for me and for the other women.  Things are moving slowly which is good because it has allowed me to process in many stages what it means to invest myself into a project like this.  It’s no longer simple volunteer work, a few hours here and there taking someone to the doctor or time in the kitchen working on a new recipe.  The compassion that spurred me to action is no longer sufficient to carry this project to term.  Now there is a long list of questions the only seems to grow.  Will the cooperative model work with women who come from such intensely needy backgrounds?  These women are not used to a democratic structure, will they even want that, or do they prefer to have a boss who runs a tight ship.  I really want the core spirit to come from them, not from me.  Together some of us visited an embroidery cooperative called Al Kawthar, for handicapped women.  It’s a beautiful space deep in the old city, a nice light-filled workshop with large windows, very well organized with shelves of different colored threads.  There are 40 women in the cooperative, with about 7 of them forming the board.  They were very gracious in talking to us, showing us their business structure, talking to our women about how they run their coop.  It was enlightening.

So, all in due time.  If we could only find a space…that’s the piece that’s driving me crazy.  There are places that are too busy and crazy, and other places that are way to quiet and remote, so hard to find a decent place that strikes a medium.  My ideal space would have a garden and a few indoor rooms to set up in simple Moroccan decor.  Like the bottom floor of a small villa, nothing fancy, somewhere in the Gueliz/Asif/Isil/Daoudiate areas.  I’ve also looked at cafe spaces, apartments, etc.   If you happen to have any leads for us, please pass them on.

In the meantime, it’s summer, the crops are in, the roses are blooming, the kids are swimming, the heat’s a-blazing, and here we are blessed to see it all.

From my mother’s garden:

Mother’s roses and painting:

The one who is almost 5:

There are never enough pics of roses:

Dyed in the wool, using Koolaid.  Done by crafty Karima and her grandmother.

Meanwhile in the kitchen, the ladies were taught to make warqa, that papery thin dough used in so many Moroccan goodies.  Barely there:

Can you see it?  Can you imagine making hundreds of these?:

Peeling them off so carefully:

Cutting them into strips, filling with an almond center, and wrapping them into triangular briwat:

For most this was the first time making these labor intensive sweets:

She stood and deep fried them for hours:

Then dipped them in a syrup made from…coca cola:

Crispy, syrupy, almondy goodness!

3 cups of {Saharan} tea

Today my daughter made this interesting remark “I don’t really like tea, I just drink it to be Moroccan”.  Indeed it’s very much an entrenched tradition and to refuse tea would be antisocial.  The tea itself varies by region, and I can’t believe that until a couple of months ago, I’d never had Saharan tea (from the Sahara that is).  I’d heard that in the desert teatime can last for several hours,  hot water being poured over the same tea leaves and reboiled at least 3 times, the hours whiled away in talk and socializing.  I was lucky enough to witness this ceremony in Rabat of all places.  My sister’s in-laws are from the South and I was at her house when they came for a visit.  Almost the first thing they did after the long car ride was set up the tea stuff in the living room.  They explained to me that it’s a “3 cup tradition”, the first cup or brew being the strongest and most bitter, then more water is added on to the tea leaves for the next two brews .  They said that a gathering is only complete after all 3 cups have been shared.  I mentioned that there is a famous book that refers to a similar tradition in Afghanistan.  They said that Afghans must have Bedouin roots in that case…

My hosts were excited to test me out and see if I could stomach the infamously bitter and strong “1st cup”.  I couldn’t.  I had the second cup.  The portions are very small but so potent.  The tea is poured from cup to cup to cup, creating an impressive layer of foam.

I’m digging the butane bottle in the middle of my sister’s recently redone living room:

This innocent looking cup made me lose 6 hours of sleep, no joke:

Today’s Saharan woman: traditional sari-type clothes (melhfa), tea, cellphone and laptop open to Facebook.  University educated.  This whole tea experience was like travelling to a new place for me.  I’m not much of a tea drinker but the company made it worth it.  I agree with my daughter on that.

Southern Gem

Our family of five recently took a vacation down to the south of Morocco, Agadir and the region called Souss.  It was special to be together and discover parts of Morocco we hadn’t seen before.  The kids are now at a great travelling age so there may be more and more travelling in Morocco posts on here, insha Allah.

There were a lot of gems on the trip, but as I was going through my photos this set jumped out at me.  It’s the tomb of a woman called Lalla T’ezza Semlalia.  We just came upon this in the middle of a pretty remote, deserted stretch of highway 2-lane road, and I was immediately drawn to the fact that such good care had been taken of this tomb.  In fact there is a  very large, lushly ornate mosque there that serves as a traditional center of Islamic learning.  I was heartened (in the very literal sense of the term) to see that this sort of center does indeed exist in Morocco.  We were told that anyone who wants to study intensively is welcome and will be given food and a blanket.

The Souss region is largely arid, mountainous, empty and open.  It’s gets more and more desert as you go south.  The Islam there is very traditional and strong, and seeing this tomb/mosque/school complex I got a feel for why this region produces many fine scholars.

What a jewel in the rough, no?

I’ve never seen anything quite like this, certainly not in the countryside.  A beautiful place to remember God and ask Him for a measure of virtue, mercy and nearness to Him, as He granted this woman.

The Arabic inscription on her tomb and also on the wall reads “every soul shall taste death”.  Although some may not choose to dwell on death, I appreciate any reminder, as one of my main goals in this life is to work towards what is called “husn al-khatima”, a good ending.

And then there was the mosque, with a large prayer hall inside and a very nice school and dormitory.

The serene interior, quiet now between prayer times.

I don’t know anything about Lalla T’ezza Semlalia, and didn’t manage to find anyone to ask in our short visit.  I’d be thrilled if someone who read this blog actually knows a story or two or about her.  Please share!