A Week of Firsts: La Corniche, Cooking, Oriental Dancing, Bstilla and Pétanque

"A whole new world
Every turn a surprise
With new horizons to pursue..."

 This week was an especially full week of firsts - I had my first trip to La Corniche, an area of Casa along the waterfront, I cooked my first real, acceptable dinner completely from scratch, I tried bstilla and found it delicious, and learned how to play Pétanque at a costume party in Maarif quartier. 

La Corniche

On Wednesday evening, the staff of MEDA Maroc's Casablanca office went out for dinner, together with our colleagues from Waterloo, Washington and Cairo, who were all here to work on a training program we will be developing for microfinance institutions. I will elaborate more on this developing project in a separate post in the near future, as it extremely relevant and an exciting opportunity for MEDA in the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, and in general. We went to an Italian restaurant on the ocean's edge in La Corniche, an area filled with restaurants, shopping and big houses. Popular with tourists. 

The restaurant was positioned between two swimming pools, a stone's throw away from the beach itself. The public can pay to spend a day at the club and the water is filtered salt water from the ocean. Good food, and great company. 

On the way to La Corniche by taxi we passed through one of the shanty towns near the lighthouse which were juxtaposed by elegant restaurants with security at the entrances mere metres away. As we drove along the coast we watched the sun set.

Cooking

Pineapple and Pepper Chicken

I admit that most of my dinners after work have been pretty simple - sandwiches, bread and veggies, spaghetti with canned sauce or rotisserie chicken or chicken soup that my roommate and I make from the leftovers. While yes, that counts as cooking, I cooked my first creative dinner completely from scratch the other day, and had leftovers to enjoy later this week - chicken breasts with sautée peppers and pineapple. Yum! It feels good to cook something - but what I would give for an oven or a microwave!

Oriental Dancing

Friday night, my friend and I tried oriental dancing at the gym a few blocks from my apartment. I managed to get us a trial class for free before deciding if it is somewhere I want to get a membership, and my friend was game. The instructor was very low-key, and not particularly vocal, but we had a lot of fun trying to duplicate what the other women were doing. Similar to belly dancing, there is a lot of lower body movement, hip action and wrist and arm rotations to go with the steps. A fun experience, and a very good workout. The ladies in the class were friendly. The only things we were missing were the jingly scarves everyone was wearing around their hips.

Bstilla

I had to look this name up. While shopping for a few things yesterday with a friend, I bought a bstilla, a sort of chicken "pie" in layers of phyllo dough, and dusted with powdered sugar. The chicken (in researching this it says it could be pigeon - but I'm going to pretend I know for sure it was chicken) is seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices, and raisins and something that was perhaps cabbage round it out. Whatever it was, it was filling, delicious, and only cost 5 Dirhams. I have my friend to thank as she pointed out the store where they sold these, along with shrimp filled pastries, sweet pastries, msemen, and other typical Moroccan bread items. I will have to look for these at one of my local shops.

Pétanque

Saturday night I attended an apéro, then an "M" themed costume party. I got better acquainted with more of the French interns who come to Casablanca on a similar, but much longer program than our CIDA internships. They general work here for 1-2 years. A few of these new friends introduced me to Pétanque, a very popular game from the South of France that is similar to lawn bowling. In teams of 2 or 3, you attempt to get your team's balls closest to the "cochonette" or "bouchon", a much smaller, wooden ball, that you first toss to the other end of the "terrain" (must be thrown 6-10 metres, in the sand). Kind of like curling, you can hit the other team's balls away from the cochonette, but you can also hit the cochonette and send it closer to your balls. You play ends, and calculate points the similar to curling. The team to reach 13 first wins. Lots of fun, and I scored some points! 

I'll write about the fudge next time!

Fudge my wonderful grandmother sent me in the mail - definitely have to meter it out!

Bon Appetit!

Food stalls around the corner from my apartment building

So one thing everyone likes is food, right? If, for some weird reason you have no interest whatsoever in food, then by all means, feel free to skip this post.

Anyways, to start off with, I knew coming to Morocco, that food would be different. I know they eat a lot of breads, I know they don't eat pork, but I never thought much about breakfast foods...

Milk Snob
In my first few days in Casablanca, my roommate took me to the local equivalent of a mini-mart, where we get some staple supplies. She warned me about the cereal selection. Uh oh. I happen to really like cereal - I like to eat it every day in fact. We approached the cereal section and I am aghast - the main cereals to be found all have chocolate in the name...eek! But we're in a small store, so I brush it off and find some yogourt and some other items. Then we get to the dairy section, but I can't find a single carton of milk in the fridges...there is leben and another type of buttermilk-like dairy product people here drink but no ordinary pasteurized, homogenized cold milk. This could is a problem.

Coming from a dairy farm, I know that bought milk will never taste like home milk since it has to be treated. I know this. I tolerate this, but I like my milk on cereal. Having bought milk in Europe, I never thought I wouldn't be able to get fresh milk at the store. The only milk to be found is UHT milk in cartons that look like juice tetra packs, and they aren't refrigerated until after opening. What IS this? I have never heard of UHT milk before, so I decided to avoid it until I knew how it could keep, unrefrigerated - to me that just sounded wrong. I went home to look it up.

Cereal
Since avoiding the chocolate-coma cereal and shelf milk seemed like a good idea, I go with the flow and buy a "petit pain au chocolat" (Chocolate croissant) from the local bakery for breakfast each morning to go with some orange juice, and this is working out for me still (into week 3). Yum! The bakeries here are fantastic. 

Last weekend, we did another trip to the Acima, a larger grocery store, further away. This time I bought some Frosties (not Frosted Flakes, Frosties) which should be the French equivalent of Frosted Flakes since they are Kellogg's, have Tony the Tiger on the box and the packaging looks the same, right? Wrong. Along with the Frosties I bought some whole milk (it's either whole or skim), and have some for breakfast one morning in lieu of a croissant.

The cereal doesn't taste the same. The "pétales" of corn (not "flocons") are different, texture- and size-wise. The milk also has a different, heavier taste to it. I'm not sure if it is the sweeteners from the cereal or the milk flavour, but something is TOO sweet. I've tried it again to see if I can pinpoint it, but I can't. Maybe trying the Special K equivalent next will be an improvement.

Local cuisine

A lovely entrance in Rabat's Oudaya Kasbah

Being so close to Europe and as the 6th largest city on the continent (fun fact), Casablanca has considerable Western influences on the menus of local restaurants. In terms of Moroccan foods, I have tried a chicken couscous, their version of pizza (on a flatbread rather than a dough), and msemen with dried meat (kind of like a crepe). At a work lunch between meetings today we ate in a hotel restaurant, where they served a delicious lamb tagine with raisins and caramelized onions. I look forward to trying more dishes like this. 

I must say, the orange juice here is very good. None of the oranges I see in the market look particularly nice for eating, but the juice is sweet and smooth. I'm personally surprised not to see more clementines (all the ones we bought in Quebec came from Morocco!) but maybe it is not the season?

In other news, since I don't seem to take photos of food I'm eating, I'll illustrate this post with 1 market photo, and 2 from my recent day trip to Rabat, the capital!

Guards on horses at the entrance to the Hassan Mosque ruins and King Mohammed V's mausoleum in Rabat

First week adventures: cockroaches, communications and coordination

First impressions
I arrived just over a week ago in sunny Casablanca, and noticed a few things right away:

the view of my street from my balcony

-it is hot. We're talking 28-30 degrees Celsius on a daily basis. They're predicting 31 for this weekend. And the sun is brighter that I've ever seen it. On the walk to work at 9 a.m. it is high in the sky, and on the way home, it is blinding. I even got a bit of a sunburn on my 3rd day. There's only been one semi-cloudy day so far in 10 days, and it cleared out to allow the afternoon blinding to begin. 

-it is big. The city is 3 million people and you definitely can get lost if you're not paying attention. Luckily I live about a 7 minute walk from work, so that is an easy daily commute. We (myself and another MEDA intern) have a lovely large apartment, in a Moroccan neighbourhood (I think we are the only Westerners). But there is a market down the street and tons of local shops. You don't have to go far to get what you need, despite it being a huge city.


-it can be smelly. With this heat, and that many people, there is a lot of garbage in the streets. Of course, that can create a certain aroma...They do collect it regularly, and there are street cleaners, but you appreciate your recycling and compost at home more when you don't have access to either. 

-there are feral cats! This might seem obvious to some people but I've seen dozens of cats all over the city. Not house cats, wild cats. A mother cat even gave birth in the hall in our office building. The kittens were adorable, but sadly, they had been displaced when we came in on Monday.

Communication Development Internship

I walked to the Hassan II Mosque one evening, it is stunning

 The whole reason I am in Casablanca for six months is to work as the Communication Development Intern with MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) Maroc office. I started on Monday, and they've been letting me get acclimatized, but I did learn what my tasks will be for the duration of the internship and they sound both challenging and fun. I'll be writing up financial success stories about youth that have participated in the YouthInvest program (3 per month) which will involve monthly trips to Oujda, where MEDA Maroc has a regional office, to interview youth. Did I mention it is a 10 hour train ride overnight to get there? It will be a great opportunity to travel and see more of the country. 

I'll also work on the English version of the newsletter, help with a study they will be doing, and help put together a document that details all of the financial services for youth in Morocco. This will be the biggest job to take on. I'll also help with additional communications work as needed, and help do some knowledge management for MEDA. 

Cockroaches
Now you want to know why I put cockroaches in the title. That's because, having never seen any before arriving in Morocco, I have now had to dispose of two of these intensely gross, huge, FAST bugs. The first was pretty dopey, so maybe it was on the way out anyways, but I helped him out by tossing him out the window. The second was much more creepy as I watched it race through our apartment living room and into the kitchen. Then, while I tried to figure out how to catch or kill it, it raced to our bathroom. Crouching under the sink with the cabinets open, I managed to stun/hit it several times with the dustpan before quickly scooping it up and flushing it down the toilet. No one warned me about cockroaches before I arrived. *Shudder*


Coordination 
I am quickly getting settled in to life here in Morocco. Having a roommate who is also an intern has been really helpful - she arrived before me and has helped me learn and adapt quickly to the neighbourhood. The apartment is furnished but, for my own peace of mind, I bought sheets and a new pillow for my bed. I don't know where Moroccans buy their linens, but it definitely wasn't where I bought mine! The cost me 3 times what they would have in Canada! Oh, wal-mart, how I miss you! Everything else here is very cheap. A chocolate croissant (they love bread and it seems to be the staple of all meals) is only 3 dirhams (about 30 cents) and everything else (other than American bedsheets I suppose!) is similarly priced.

The Hassan II Mosque from the seawall, it is one of the largest in the world, about 15 mins walk from the apartment