I'm just going to tell you about my day yesterday because there just is no title for it.
I went to the new Starbuck's near the Twin Center uptown Casa for the weekly anglophone coffee group. I found parking on a side street, but you have to pay a parking meter and get a ticket. The parking meter looked very broken. I figured I would lose my money. I looked at every other car on the street, no one had a ticket on their dashboards. So, I figured well, I'm just going to let it go, there will probably be a consequence for this. I might get a ticket?? Or I might get lucky and nothing will happen.
The coffee went well. I persuaded my Lebanese friend to come to the group that morning. Afterwards, I persuaded her to come back and have lunch with N and me at home and then come to the Souk afterwards. The Souk is the local outdoor market. The one in Dar Bouazza is every Wed. It is a deep cultural experience. N wanted to buy veggies and chicken and said everything is cheaper there. I figured it would be better to go with N so I don't get ripped off and I may be the only non-Moroccan there as well, so since ALL the women will be wearing Jilabas and Hajibs, I will stand out. Not real keen on that.
Anyhow, my friend was happy to come home with me. We got to my car and whoops, it was still there, but it was booted. I wasn't sure what to do, but found they left me a little ticket on my window with a phone number and a price to get the boot removed. So, I called the guy. He actually spoke English. He asked me the name of the street and like most places in Morocco, there was no street name posted, so I asked around the people on the street and got the name. In about 10 minutes the guy came out to release the boot on my car.
I chatted with him a bit and tried to explain myself, my naivité and my innocence in this sad affair and tried to get him to not charge me without being too direct. The other cars paid a monthly charge and therefore had a sticker on their windshield. Unfortunately, he took my money anyway. It was only 30 dhm (3€), still a lot more than it would have cost if I just paid the parking meter in the first place.
As we were chatting with this man, we were spied by a very aggressive man selling Louis Vitton purse immitations. He came straight up to us as I was unlocking the car and trying to load it and would not take no for an answer. My Lebanese friend could pass for Moroccan, so she gets it much worse than I. It is very wierd. People try to get money out of her much more than out of me, like 3X more. So I told him "non" and "la" which is no in arabic and then straight up ignored him and tried to get everything in the trunk ASAP to get out of there before he robbed us. My friend had her baby and left her sitting on the back seat. She got in the front seat and was talking to this guy. She was looking at his wears and telling him it is too expensive. He wouldn't leave her alone. I wasn't sure if she was intersted and negotiating with him. I fervently tried to attach her baby as quickly as possible and considered leaving her unattached and just drive away from this crazy guy.
I was getting really, really irritated with him. Once I got the baby attached, I asked my friend "do you want to buy his purse?" She gave me some crazy answer like she has lots of purses. I said yes, but, "do you want to buy his?" She said "no." I think I then told him no again in French and Arabic and got in the car and shut the door. Once her door was closed, I locked the doors and kept the windows up and drove in any direction fast, just to get away from this human irritant. I was highly annoyed and almost went "Chicago" at him, but didn't trust my friend would have my back. I don't think she has that "Chicago" quality to tell a man "No" and mean it. She isn't that direct. So, difficult to explain this. If one chick of the two literally can't say the word no, then you're automatically in a weak position, if that makes any sense.
To go "Chicago" on someone
verb
1. enter his personal body space, take off the sunglasses, look him in his eyes and say "the answer is no. It is not going to change. We are not going to buy anything from you now or ever. Find other women who are interested, you are wasting you time with us."
This is a line I have actually used more or less when I was younger in Chicago to groups of aggressive young men who would try to pick us up. It never leaves much room for discussion and I've always had success with it. Distraction worked even better, "I'm sorry, we're not interested, but I saw a group of good looking women walking down road X, you might be able to catch up with them." Point finger into any random direction and off they pounce with a smile.
* * *
So, now I was annoyed and driving through the typical crazy Casa traffic home. Having no idea how to get to Route d'Azzemour, I decided to be really nice and blocked all traffic to ask a street cop for directions. He told me to pull a U-turn at the traffic light and head straight. So, that's what I did. In every country I've lived in, a U-turn in an intersection is illegal, except in Morocco. Food for thought.
When we approached the area called Hay Hassani, there were people on the street selling kleenex. Yes, a box of kleenex. Sometimes they are men or grade school aged boys. Unfortunately my window was down a little too far. This guy came up to my side this time and was totally relentless. Again I said "non" and "la." And he said some blah, blah, blah in French along the lines of come on, just 10 dhm. I'm sitting here debating whether or not to just roll up the window in his face and am watching the traffic light willing it to turn green, stuck with no where to go. Finally the traffic light turns green and he asks, "Why won't you buy it?" I answered in sadly grammatically incorrect french "parce que vous m'embêtes." (translation - because you irritate me) Obviously I was struggling with calling him either tu or vous and ended up somewhere in the middle.
I drove away leaving him predictably without a sale and with a stupid smile on his face.
The Souk = Deep Cultural Experience
Now we have me, N, and my Lebanese friend who is dressed chic, western cloths and looks Moroccan. She has long black hair and is wearing it down. She and I are the ONLY 2 women not dressed in Jilabas and Hijabs at this souk. We have the baby in a stroller. Dust, dirt, hay garbage is flying everywhere. I was wearing sunglasses, but kept getting shards blown into my eyes. Every Tom, Dick and Henrietta went up to my friend and tried to get money out of her. They come here to buy food and they go begging to her?? They say things like "may God be with you and bless you in your life, can I have 10 dhm?" Craziness. My friend just smiles and doesn't respond. They speak to her in Arabic, so I can't understand, very frustrating. She translated to me after the fact.
No one came begging directly to me. Some kids came up to me to sell me a plastic bag that I can get for free, or water from the guy who was carrying a cracked clay vase filled with water and 2 metal cups that absolutely everyone drinks out of. I don't care how desperate I am for water, I'm never putting my mouth where everyone else also has. So my response is typical clipped Jennel "la." (because in truth that's just about all I can say in arabic for the moment) Then I turn my back on them right away to drive the point home.
N wanted to buy 2 chickens. Ok, I wish I had a camera. I wish I could give to you the smell. The chicken vendors are all together. The chickens all start out live. Hundreds of them. The souk has been going all day. The mud ground is soaked through with blood and water. There are chicken remnants all over the place. Piles upon piles of chicken feathers are littering the ground, all sticky and wet and dirty.
There is a chopping table set up in the middle running with blood. It has blood coated chicken feathers stuck to the sides of it. There are chicken feet littered all over the ground and some organs. I didn't whitness the entire process this time though it is roughly the same as the other in town. This time there is no machine to help them. They boil the chicken in hot water, then manually remove all of it's feathers. I gave N my money in advance and left my purse in the car. We only had 300 dhm (30€) for our groceries here. They were selling turkeys. N asked how much and they said 300 dhm. Turkey was about 2X more expensive per kilo than chicken. We ended up paying I think like 64 (6.40 €) dhm for 2 chickens. Very good price. I did wonder what they had been fed.
In the end, we spent a total of 25€ and got kilos, upon kilos of veggies. It would have cost me at least double at the Wasabi market near my kid's school in Oasis. The souk is always great for cheap things, it's just so dirty that I have a hard time dealing with it. I asked N if she could buy me a scarf to cover my head sometimes like at the souk. I think in small towns, you just should cover your head.
A few things I've learned. Women are not allowed to show their hair, or wear make up in public because it's a sign of sensuality. I think the sensuality thing is more of an issue when it's long which all Moroccan women have. My hair is pretty short so I haven't had any problems. I make an honest effort not to show any cleavage no matter how minor. I've had shirts that I wore to work in France without thinking anything of it and here, it feels too racy. Crazy. Someone told me you're not allowed to kiss in public. Now there goes half the fun. What would I do with my time if I'm not permitted to objectify my husband in public?
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Hammam and Radio 22/3/2012
This morning I was doing the normal drive with the kids and my husband into Casablanca for school and work. On Luxe radio, they were discussing the rights of women in Morocco. A few things mentionned on the radio are women's right to abortion only if her life is in danger. They also said that it is good no one takes seriously the idea that a woman should be killed if she cheats on her husband, which I guess was the case in the past.
Then, one guy said that in the US, I believe Texas, it is legal to hit your wife once a month. I made a loud gasp of disbelief when I heard that. Then, my husband reached from behind and playfully slapped me on the face and said "well I'm good for the month of April," and started laughing hysterically in back seat of the car.
My daughter in the front seat was confused. So I explained to her that the man on the radio is obviously misinformed, that no one is allowed to hit in America, even in Texas. It's called assault and assault is illegal.
Hammam
I went to the hammam today with 2 women. It was fantastic. It was finally my first time going there. I wasn't sure what to expect. There was no one else there, just the 3 of us. We paid 11€ for 2 hrs.
The woman working there washed us with black soap first, then laid us on a warm marble slab and exfoliated us. You bring in your own gomme (like a rubbery, sandpapery, washcloth that fits over your hand.) It hurt at first, but then I got used to it. She took off probably 1 kilo of skin. Kind of gross really. It's hard to imagine you have that much skin just waiting to come off. Then we got soaped again later with a body scrub that has herbs and oils. It was brown goup that smelled like cloves. She only spoke arabic so I had a hard time communicating with her. She poured scalding water on me at first, I cried out as a reaction and said, "trop chaud." I think she understood because she cooled off the water a little after that.
My skin has never been so soft. We were there in the steamy room for about 2 hrs. After 1 hr, I felt like I was going to start passing out, so I had to pour cold water over myself.
I wasn't sure what to wear, so I just went in my birthday suit. I figured that way I'd get everything exfoliated, but I read in a guide book you're just supposed to bring in a towel and shower shoes so that was all I planned for... Oops.
The other 2 women wore bikini bottoms, so I felt a little uncomfortable and exposed. I read you can pick up things in hammams, so you should bring a towel, except it's so wet, you can't really sit on a towel, especially if you've only brought one like I planned to dry yourself in the end. So, next time, I'll be sure to bring a little towel to sit on, since all my bathing suits are somewhere else; hopefully in the freighter on their way to Morocco.
Then, one guy said that in the US, I believe Texas, it is legal to hit your wife once a month. I made a loud gasp of disbelief when I heard that. Then, my husband reached from behind and playfully slapped me on the face and said "well I'm good for the month of April," and started laughing hysterically in back seat of the car.
My daughter in the front seat was confused. So I explained to her that the man on the radio is obviously misinformed, that no one is allowed to hit in America, even in Texas. It's called assault and assault is illegal.
Hammam
I went to the hammam today with 2 women. It was fantastic. It was finally my first time going there. I wasn't sure what to expect. There was no one else there, just the 3 of us. We paid 11€ for 2 hrs.
The woman working there washed us with black soap first, then laid us on a warm marble slab and exfoliated us. You bring in your own gomme (like a rubbery, sandpapery, washcloth that fits over your hand.) It hurt at first, but then I got used to it. She took off probably 1 kilo of skin. Kind of gross really. It's hard to imagine you have that much skin just waiting to come off. Then we got soaped again later with a body scrub that has herbs and oils. It was brown goup that smelled like cloves. She only spoke arabic so I had a hard time communicating with her. She poured scalding water on me at first, I cried out as a reaction and said, "trop chaud." I think she understood because she cooled off the water a little after that.
My skin has never been so soft. We were there in the steamy room for about 2 hrs. After 1 hr, I felt like I was going to start passing out, so I had to pour cold water over myself.
I wasn't sure what to wear, so I just went in my birthday suit. I figured that way I'd get everything exfoliated, but I read in a guide book you're just supposed to bring in a towel and shower shoes so that was all I planned for... Oops.
The other 2 women wore bikini bottoms, so I felt a little uncomfortable and exposed. I read you can pick up things in hammams, so you should bring a towel, except it's so wet, you can't really sit on a towel, especially if you've only brought one like I planned to dry yourself in the end. So, next time, I'll be sure to bring a little towel to sit on, since all my bathing suits are somewhere else; hopefully in the freighter on their way to Morocco.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Food
There have been requests to hear about food in Morocco.
As most women know, we are the ones who most often have the job of food gathering for the family. This includes grocery shopping, farmer's markets, butchers, bakeries, etc.
Chicken:
As you know, downtown Dar Bouazza is a dirt road, kind of like a small dirt/rocky square filled with working men, rubbish, and wild cats. One day, I took 2 of my kids out to walk around the downtown in search of a bouncy rubber ball for Austin and found the chicken vendor. The chicken vendor had live chickens tied by their feet. Like all city kids, my children view these live chickens as something to pet and not as potential lunch.
The "store" consists of about 8 sq meters. Along the back wall are crates stacked with white live chickens. The counter wooden board running its length has a few meat cleavers stuck into it. Next to the men is a machine to defeather the chickens. There is no running water for the men working to wash their hands and they don't wear gloves. There is no door to protect the food from the dirt and grime located 1 meter from the stall. The children didn't seem to notice the cut off chicken feet littered along the ground.
I said to the kids, "hey, you guys want to buy a chicken?" They were in agreement. So, I ordered 1 chicken. The chicken vendor selected a chicken and weighed it live. The poor thing was squawking like mad. He put it on the dirty ground, placed his boot on his body, held his head in his right hand and sliced his neck with a knife. Then, he put him upside down in a plastic box to bleed him into an old plastic vegetable oil bottle. After a few minutes, he took him back out and started slicing him open. Things started flying out of his body. I was describing the biology of the bird to my kids as it was coming out.
"Look kids, those are his intestines, there's his lungs.." My daughter said, "Where's his heart? I didn't see a heart." I said, "don't worry, his heart already came out, it was attached to his lungs." She kept insisting that the chicken didn't have a heart. I told her it came out so fast, she just missed it. But she kept insisting. What can I do? It's already out, I can't show it to her.
Chop here, chop there, off fly the feet onto the ground. There goes his head. Another chop chop and there go part of the wings.
Then it was time to defeather the chicken. The kids seemed to be very interested in this process. They were leaning around the counter to try to watch the chicken in the machine. I explained to the vendor that the children have never seen this before, that where I'm from chickens come already processed so the children have never seen a chicken go from live to lunch, including myself. The men working were very friendly. They offered the kids to come around and watch them defeather the chicken. I tried to encourage them to go inside to watch. They both refused, but continued to watch from the side.
When the chicken was finally finished being "processed," the vendor handed me the chicken in a plastic bag. It was still warm. We walked home and on the way saw a couple of wild dogs laying about directly in our path. I coaxed the kids to cross the street. I was afraid the dogs would smell the chicken and come after us to try to steal it out of my hands. Well, maybe a little dramatic, but you never know.
When we got home, I wasn't sure what to do with the chicken. I tried to put it in the fridge and N told me that you shouldn't do that, the chicken needs to be cleaned first. So she soaked it in a bath of water, lemon juice and salt. That gets rid of the blood apparently. She soaked it for a couple of hours. An American from the suburbs of Chicago could have never guessed how to clean a chicken and come up with that answer.
N said she was going to make a wonderful tajine with the chicken and my daughter said, "I'm not eating that chicken. It didn't have a heart." Sure enough, when dinner time came my daughter refused to eat the tajine. I was worried she would stop eating chicken altogether, but she ate another chicken later as long as it came from the grocery store already processed. I made a mental note not to bring the kids to the chicken vendor anymore because it may be a little too much of a culture shock, though it is really intersting.
Fruit and Vegetable Cleaning:
All this time I was rinsing the fruit and veggies in the sink under water just like at home. Whoops. I went out to eat with some Americans and got an education. One uses iodine to clean all of her food. The others were using bleach. I thought, "surly that must be more toxic than anything that could be on the food." Or, perhaps not. They assured me that sometimes waste water is used to water the fruit and veggies. Personally, I have a hard time believing this. They also assured me that everyone has gotten sick from eating in restaurants.
The woman who works for us studied cooking at school and she worked a bit in different restaurants. She verified that improper things can happen in restaurants and you can't tell which ones based on the way they look. She said there were some places that she worked that she would never eat at. She said they don't always clean the food properly, or will use a pan that is still dirty and cook new food in it and not wash it properly. Kind of scary. There is corruption in Morocco as far as I understand and food inspectors can get paid off.
N told me the right way to clean fruit and veggies is to soak it in water with either salt, vinegar, or lemon. My favorite is vinegar. It only takes a tsp of vinegar. She said lettuce is another story. It can have worms in it, so sometimes she will pour in a capful of bleach to get the worms out. Those worms will make you sick. So far, we haven't gotten sick from food or restaurants.
Yummy Moroccan Food:
Avocado Juice - ground avocado mixed with milk, delicious
Tajine - any kind of stew chicken, beef, fish add saffron, oil, lemon and sometimes coriander. Usually with potatoes. Can have olives, or dried fruit added.
Pancakes - They make a specific moroccan pancake unlike anything I've ever had. Heat it with butter and honey. X loves this.
Mint Tea
Homemade Bread - okay, N makes the best homemade bread I've ever had in my entire life. It is made from a specific course flour. It's round and fairly flat. I love it with nutella.
Pâte Pastilla - N made this incredible dish out of this thin papery dough called pastilla. I bought it fresh at the outdoor market. She put chicken and ground almonds in it. When it was finished, she covered it in cinamon and powdered sugar. I was dubious as first, thinking oh my god, she just put sugar on a chicken meal. So I asked her if it was sweet?? She said it's both sweet and tangy, and it was. It was awesome.
Meat/Butcher
Remember the chicken vendor? The butcher is the same style shop, except hanging out front is a hook and on that hook is a giant slab of cow. Out in the heat, the air, the dust, the flies, the pollution. Not sure how long it stays outside, all day?? It is not refrigerated. When I say dust, I mean the dried dusty dirt roads that gets kicked up high into the air choking everyone and landing everywhere just 40 meters from the slab of beef.
I ventured to the local butcher with my son once in Dar Bouazza, I figured at some point I'm going to have to just go for it and hope he speaks French. It was fine. The meat looked fine. I needed ground beef so he took that meat on a hook, sliced off a giant slab and put it in the meat grinder. My son was fascinated. It was kind of cool and I didn't get ripped off. And, I didn't get sick.
Cooking Steaks rare is no longer on the docket for us. We just don't trust the beef here. I will only eat carpaccio in very good restaurants. I haven't tried any beef tartare, but again, I would only eat tartares in really good restaurants. Sadly my favorite things to eat besides all forms of chocolate desserts are carpaccio, salads and fish tartare.
Mutton - Lamb
People eat a lot of it here. Once as I was driving on a back road, I saw to my horror in the middle of Casablanca a large open "field" filled with sheep grazing. There was not one single blade of grass or greenery on this field, yet the sheep were grazing. What could they be grazing on you might ask?
Garbage. The lot was filled back to back with plastic bags of garbage. A woman came outside with her garbage bag, presumably from her kitchen, walked right up to one of the sheep that was grazing on the trash and emptied it right in front of him. Yogurt cartons, tin cans, plastic bags, leftovers. Everything you would normally throw out, dumped right there for him to eat.
Now when I eat meat I have to think about, what on earth has this presumably herbivore been eating before? Was it toxic? I see chickens always on the shoulder of the toll road eating. Not sure what could be edible there? I see people taking their cows out to graze on the fields of sort of grass and weeds, strewn with garbage. The amount of trash just out in the open is scary. People burn their trash here. Morocco desperately needs environmental awareness. So does the US by the way. We preach it, but fail to practice. The best country I've seen for environmental awareness is Germany. Kudos to the Germans for leading the way.
As most women know, we are the ones who most often have the job of food gathering for the family. This includes grocery shopping, farmer's markets, butchers, bakeries, etc.
Chicken:
As you know, downtown Dar Bouazza is a dirt road, kind of like a small dirt/rocky square filled with working men, rubbish, and wild cats. One day, I took 2 of my kids out to walk around the downtown in search of a bouncy rubber ball for Austin and found the chicken vendor. The chicken vendor had live chickens tied by their feet. Like all city kids, my children view these live chickens as something to pet and not as potential lunch.
The "store" consists of about 8 sq meters. Along the back wall are crates stacked with white live chickens. The counter wooden board running its length has a few meat cleavers stuck into it. Next to the men is a machine to defeather the chickens. There is no running water for the men working to wash their hands and they don't wear gloves. There is no door to protect the food from the dirt and grime located 1 meter from the stall. The children didn't seem to notice the cut off chicken feet littered along the ground.
I said to the kids, "hey, you guys want to buy a chicken?" They were in agreement. So, I ordered 1 chicken. The chicken vendor selected a chicken and weighed it live. The poor thing was squawking like mad. He put it on the dirty ground, placed his boot on his body, held his head in his right hand and sliced his neck with a knife. Then, he put him upside down in a plastic box to bleed him into an old plastic vegetable oil bottle. After a few minutes, he took him back out and started slicing him open. Things started flying out of his body. I was describing the biology of the bird to my kids as it was coming out.
"Look kids, those are his intestines, there's his lungs.." My daughter said, "Where's his heart? I didn't see a heart." I said, "don't worry, his heart already came out, it was attached to his lungs." She kept insisting that the chicken didn't have a heart. I told her it came out so fast, she just missed it. But she kept insisting. What can I do? It's already out, I can't show it to her.
Chop here, chop there, off fly the feet onto the ground. There goes his head. Another chop chop and there go part of the wings.
Then it was time to defeather the chicken. The kids seemed to be very interested in this process. They were leaning around the counter to try to watch the chicken in the machine. I explained to the vendor that the children have never seen this before, that where I'm from chickens come already processed so the children have never seen a chicken go from live to lunch, including myself. The men working were very friendly. They offered the kids to come around and watch them defeather the chicken. I tried to encourage them to go inside to watch. They both refused, but continued to watch from the side.
When the chicken was finally finished being "processed," the vendor handed me the chicken in a plastic bag. It was still warm. We walked home and on the way saw a couple of wild dogs laying about directly in our path. I coaxed the kids to cross the street. I was afraid the dogs would smell the chicken and come after us to try to steal it out of my hands. Well, maybe a little dramatic, but you never know.
When we got home, I wasn't sure what to do with the chicken. I tried to put it in the fridge and N told me that you shouldn't do that, the chicken needs to be cleaned first. So she soaked it in a bath of water, lemon juice and salt. That gets rid of the blood apparently. She soaked it for a couple of hours. An American from the suburbs of Chicago could have never guessed how to clean a chicken and come up with that answer.
N said she was going to make a wonderful tajine with the chicken and my daughter said, "I'm not eating that chicken. It didn't have a heart." Sure enough, when dinner time came my daughter refused to eat the tajine. I was worried she would stop eating chicken altogether, but she ate another chicken later as long as it came from the grocery store already processed. I made a mental note not to bring the kids to the chicken vendor anymore because it may be a little too much of a culture shock, though it is really intersting.
Fruit and Vegetable Cleaning:
All this time I was rinsing the fruit and veggies in the sink under water just like at home. Whoops. I went out to eat with some Americans and got an education. One uses iodine to clean all of her food. The others were using bleach. I thought, "surly that must be more toxic than anything that could be on the food." Or, perhaps not. They assured me that sometimes waste water is used to water the fruit and veggies. Personally, I have a hard time believing this. They also assured me that everyone has gotten sick from eating in restaurants.
The woman who works for us studied cooking at school and she worked a bit in different restaurants. She verified that improper things can happen in restaurants and you can't tell which ones based on the way they look. She said there were some places that she worked that she would never eat at. She said they don't always clean the food properly, or will use a pan that is still dirty and cook new food in it and not wash it properly. Kind of scary. There is corruption in Morocco as far as I understand and food inspectors can get paid off.
N told me the right way to clean fruit and veggies is to soak it in water with either salt, vinegar, or lemon. My favorite is vinegar. It only takes a tsp of vinegar. She said lettuce is another story. It can have worms in it, so sometimes she will pour in a capful of bleach to get the worms out. Those worms will make you sick. So far, we haven't gotten sick from food or restaurants.
Yummy Moroccan Food:
Avocado Juice - ground avocado mixed with milk, delicious
Tajine - any kind of stew chicken, beef, fish add saffron, oil, lemon and sometimes coriander. Usually with potatoes. Can have olives, or dried fruit added.
Pancakes - They make a specific moroccan pancake unlike anything I've ever had. Heat it with butter and honey. X loves this.
Mint Tea
Homemade Bread - okay, N makes the best homemade bread I've ever had in my entire life. It is made from a specific course flour. It's round and fairly flat. I love it with nutella.
Pâte Pastilla - N made this incredible dish out of this thin papery dough called pastilla. I bought it fresh at the outdoor market. She put chicken and ground almonds in it. When it was finished, she covered it in cinamon and powdered sugar. I was dubious as first, thinking oh my god, she just put sugar on a chicken meal. So I asked her if it was sweet?? She said it's both sweet and tangy, and it was. It was awesome.
Meat/Butcher
Remember the chicken vendor? The butcher is the same style shop, except hanging out front is a hook and on that hook is a giant slab of cow. Out in the heat, the air, the dust, the flies, the pollution. Not sure how long it stays outside, all day?? It is not refrigerated. When I say dust, I mean the dried dusty dirt roads that gets kicked up high into the air choking everyone and landing everywhere just 40 meters from the slab of beef.
I ventured to the local butcher with my son once in Dar Bouazza, I figured at some point I'm going to have to just go for it and hope he speaks French. It was fine. The meat looked fine. I needed ground beef so he took that meat on a hook, sliced off a giant slab and put it in the meat grinder. My son was fascinated. It was kind of cool and I didn't get ripped off. And, I didn't get sick.
Cooking Steaks rare is no longer on the docket for us. We just don't trust the beef here. I will only eat carpaccio in very good restaurants. I haven't tried any beef tartare, but again, I would only eat tartares in really good restaurants. Sadly my favorite things to eat besides all forms of chocolate desserts are carpaccio, salads and fish tartare.
Mutton - Lamb
People eat a lot of it here. Once as I was driving on a back road, I saw to my horror in the middle of Casablanca a large open "field" filled with sheep grazing. There was not one single blade of grass or greenery on this field, yet the sheep were grazing. What could they be grazing on you might ask?
Garbage. The lot was filled back to back with plastic bags of garbage. A woman came outside with her garbage bag, presumably from her kitchen, walked right up to one of the sheep that was grazing on the trash and emptied it right in front of him. Yogurt cartons, tin cans, plastic bags, leftovers. Everything you would normally throw out, dumped right there for him to eat.
Now when I eat meat I have to think about, what on earth has this presumably herbivore been eating before? Was it toxic? I see chickens always on the shoulder of the toll road eating. Not sure what could be edible there? I see people taking their cows out to graze on the fields of sort of grass and weeds, strewn with garbage. The amount of trash just out in the open is scary. People burn their trash here. Morocco desperately needs environmental awareness. So does the US by the way. We preach it, but fail to practice. The best country I've seen for environmental awareness is Germany. Kudos to the Germans for leading the way.
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