Apartment building? Elementary school? It's hard to say.

Post Soundtrack - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Lauryn Hill

I had a long, perhaps overly-wordy Ramadan schpeal typed up and ready to post... but I'm choosing to hold off on posting on Ramadan and (L)Eid, as I'd like another week or so to process it. Ramadan was a really interesting time, in that it was the longest, chill-est 'holiday season' I've ever experienced. Being in a Muslim country for a holiday that's also one of the five tenents of the faith was amazing, of course, but it's also interesting to see how the religious blurs with the cultural, and how things come together in a very mechanical-yet-still-fully-incha'Allah kind of way.

I'll explain what that means in the next post, incha'Allah.

Anyhow, onto the show: the after-Ramadan picnic.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment (photos of which I'll post... eventually), which is - believe it or not - the biggest apartment in the building (there is no concept of 'bedroom' in my part of the country, so calling it a one-bedroom when referring to size is arbitrary. It's a five-roomer, how about that?). There are six units in my building, two of which are on the ground level and open into an alleyway, and the remaining four (including my own) are up a half-flight of stairs. Up another flight-and-a-half of stairs is the roof, which is casually-partitioned with walls that are only about 4 feet high.

Five of the six units are currently filled, with tenants including a foreigner living alone (which is absurd in this culture), a married couple of school teachers and three families with a combined total of eleven children ranging in age from born-during-Ramadan to approximately thirteen.

The building is part of a larger structure that also houses a youth association that's open daily, and is located across the 'street' from an elementary/middle school. Next to the school is another complex of three units with children bursting from the seams. Needless to say, there's never a dull moment around here (with the exception of the recently-ended summer months).

Anyhow, what started as an afternoon rooftop dance party has turned into a routine banging down of my door at all hours of the day. Anytime the children aren't in school, really, there's banging, begging and pleading for me to come out and play. The children, bless their little Moroccan hearts, don't understand what living alone entails: doing all of the housework yourself.

With that in mind, it should be clear that "I've got work to do," "I'm cooking [insert whatever meal is next]" or "I didn't answer the door because I was showering/napping/etc" are not valid excuses for not coming to the door, and then out to play until it gets too dark to see each other.

The Ramadan fast left me weak (and maybe a little bit brain-dead), and last week I told my Executive Board that I'd be willing to do a picnic with them. They've been begging me for a picnic since I moved in, and to their surprise (and later, my chagrin), when they brought it up on the roof, I agreed. Yesterday was that picnic.

Two nights ago, one of the smaller girls knocked on my door to remind me about the picnic, and we agreed on 6:00p on the roof. I decided that we'd do American-style tea and an almond-sugar cookie recipie from my Peace Corps cookbook, and then I went back to preparing for the next day's trash meeting (I love to talk trash, but that's still a few posts away).

Eid is two days long here in Morocco, and my trash meeting was therefore bumped forward a day -- so I slept in and treated myself to a pancake brunch. I popped in a movie, sat down with my pancakes, and heard a knock at the door.

I have a Peace Corps-mandated metal door, and when someone knocks on it, it's nothing short of jarring.

Before making a move, I knew how this was going to play out. I looked longingly at my plate of pancakes, took a sip of juice and got up.

Ah yes, I thought to myself, just as I expected. It was not one but seven children at my door, wanting to discuss the picnic. I told them that I was eating breakfast, and that I'd come and find them when I was done.

The knock on my door eleven minutes later was disappointing. I kept eating.

The subsequent knock at the 24-minute mark was just annoying. I was sipping tea at this point.

I finally got up after thirty-three minutes, threw on some appropriate clothing (read: my beloved, ugly-as-sin housewife nightgown) and went outside to talk about this picnic.

I told them that I'd contribute tea and cookies.
They told me that they wanted sandwiches.
I asked them if they'd really want sandwiches at six o'clock in the afternoon.
They said that they wanted the picnic right now.

Oh.

Twenty minutes later, we had it all worked out. They'd provide the ingredients (bread and tomatoes), and I'd throw the sandwiches together now. And then, at 6:00p, we'd do tea and cookies.

After thirty minutes of sandwich-assembly, providing blankets, clothespins and other accessories to facilitate rooftop shade, and answering the ten thousand door-knocks that ranged from "we need ten sandwiches, not six" to "I want to see the inside of your house. Do you need help?," the picnic was officially kicked off with a group hand-washing and a resounding bismillah.

The sandwiches - tomatoes, onions and basil-laced Laughing Cow - were a great success.

The incessant knocking on my door of "what are you dooooooing? Aren't you going to come out and plaaaaaaaay?" after lunch was finished and I was back in my house, was a bit much. I had dishes to do, and had a nap planned.

I don't play around when it comes to napping.

So I took an abbreviated nap, did dishes, and then invited the eldest neighbor-girl in to watch me make American-style tea. I boiled water, brewed some strong fruity tea, and threw some sugar and milk into it. It was pretty basic, but she enjoyed the lesson. Unfortunately, when there was a knock on the door and she answered it before I could get to it, things went downhill.

The fact that Eldest Neighbor-Girl got to see my house and the other kids were not permitted entry was, in a word, incendiary.

Confession: it wasn't fair for me to invite one girl in and not the others, I know. But she was the only one who asked, and she came to the door alone. Also, cultural differences make me uneasy about allowing anyone into my house, let alone seven unsupervised children at the same time.

There were threats to boycott my tea, but when I told them that Eldest Neighbor Girl and I would drink all the tea alone in my house and would play all afternoon without a care in the world, they changed their story. They ultimately hated the tea (which I knew would happen, mainly because I thought it was delicious), but it was the fist-fight between the two eldest neighbors that really killed the mood for me. Things ended on a sour note, and I stopped answering the door at 5:45p.

The kids didn't stop knocking until about 7:15p.

I love my job, I love my community and I love this country. I'm comfortable living under a monarchy, and in a culture that's far more repressed in the areas of sex and gender than my own, but I reserve the right to not answer the door should I not be in the mood.