Finally. We ate an authentic Moroccan dish. With our fingers. It was chicken and vegetable tagine with khubz, and it was delish. Now that R is in the past, the cafeteria at school serves lunch, plus coffee, mint tea, and other stuff. Ahhhh.
Also, we found a dead cockroach in our room. Dead, as in dead already by the time we saw it; so I guess that’s much better than having to dispense with the thing ourselves. Where it came from and how it died are mysteries we shall not pursue.
Now we’re beginning a unit about family and family relations, which is a good subject for me to know well, methinks. Mohammed says that the women care mostly about this subject, not the men. Men don’t sit around the coffee shop asking each other, “how’s the brother of your wife’s sister these days?” Women, remember, drink mint tea in their homes and discuss family topics. I’m memorizing words for “father”, “mother”, “my brother”, “your brother”, “our sister”, and “the son of my father’s sister” (who would be my cousin…except no).
Mohammed also told us that after class today he would attend the naming party for his new granddaughter, born last Friday. This involves killing a sheep and feeding about 200 people, and it also sounded like many of those people were spending the night. (And here I am, 6,000 miles from home, co-hosting a baby shower for Amy the weekend after we get back. Erin – let’s forget the sheep, shall we?)
In a bit, after the sun sets and dusk falls, we’re taking a walk in the garden to watch the bats. Cool, right? We did this a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t been out after dark since then. Now that we’ve finished White Gold and Thomas Pellow is safely back in England, we’ll turn our attention to night life in the oasis. Cats and bats, folks.