Hygiene and Health

I've avoided this post for as long as I can because I feel like writing about it will just make it even more real :S

I just finished scrubbing the tiled floors in my room for the second time since getting here. I guess I did it partly because I was feeling brain dead and couldn't work on my internship application anymore and also partly because I feel like it's one of the few aspects of hygiene that I have control over. You're probably thinking it can't be that bad, right? Well, I didn't think so either until I saw my family members picking up bread that fell on the ground and putting it back in the bread basket. And then eating it. And yes, the ground does in fact = the ground that our dirty shoes step on. I sometimes have to try really, really hard not to think about where my food might have been-- on the dirty looking kitchen counter? With the rest of the bread in the bread basket that has probably never been cleaned?-- or how it might have been prepared-- with clean, soap washed hands? Or with hands that have been all over the kitchen...

The food my host mom makes is generally good. For a while, I had been eating half a piece of bread stuffed with egg every morning for breakfast, sometimes a hard boiled egg and other times a fried egg.

Moroccan bread

It is pretty tasty, but a few days into it, each bite seemed less delicious as I wondered if my cholesterol was slowly rising with each swallow. I sometimes tried to subtly scrape off or make the egg yolk fall off my bread, but I don't think that made much of a difference since it wasn't that much anyway. I also noticed that my host mom added a good amount of olive oil (and sometimes a bit of salt) to my eggs.. O.o I finally said something to my host brother last week and asked him if it was okay for me not to eat egg every morning... I don't want to offend my host mom, but I am getting a little worried about eating so much bread everyday and olive oil! I'm pretty certain that the delicious chicken tajines, kefta, and other savory meals are also soaked with olive oil too... why why why?! :(

As if large amounts of olive oil isn't already bad enough, Moroccan LOVE their sugar. And I mean LOVEEEE. Since we have dinner so late (around 9 or so), we usually have tea time at around 7 or so. Every Moroccan family has tea time and yes, we are served tea, mint tea in fact! I have become a fan of mint tea, though I sometimes think it tastes like toothpaste tea when it's overloaded with sugar, which is usually how it is in our family. I've never ever drank coffee before coming here and I had planned to never drink coffee regularly, but unfortunately, to avoid drinking sugar tea, I have coffee instead since the sugar isn't already added to the coffee pot, which means that I usually get to decide on how much sugar I want to add.. but sometimes my host my gets to the sugar before I do and puts in a HUGE spoonful of sugar into my itsy bitsy cup.

Small Moroccan tea/coffee cups

Well, I guess now that I do drink coffee, it doesn't taste so bad when there is some sugar in it. I now enjoy cappuccinos and had my first one with a lovely slice of cake at a café in Rabat a few weeks ago :)

at a nearby café offering Western dessert and drinks

Oh, and did I mention that Moroccans eat with their hands? The only times I've been offered any utensils have been a spoon for when we eat couscous for lunch on Fridays and the occasional small fork for a small dish of fresh veggies. Otherwise, I am now quite pro at eating chicken thighs (with the bone still on it) with my fingers. And I think I've also mastered using my bread to scoop up food, though I try and avoid the olive oily looking sauce..

Chicken tagine.. yumm!

In terms of bathroom hygiene, well, as you probably already know, Moroccans don't shower everyday. In fact, they traditionally shower only once a week at the hamam. What is a hamam? Well, I still have not been to one yet or invited by my female family members (probably because we have a "shower") so I can't tell recount my personal experiences, but I have heard from many friends that you basically spend 2-3 hours in the hamam scrubbing yourself with this Moroccan black soap kind of thing, and then regular soap afterwards.. oh, and it's a public bath, so all the women are on one side and all the men on the other side and well I guess everyone is naked together, unless you choose to keep your underwear on :-O I feel like I need to experience this at some point before I leave Morocco, but every time I think about scrubbing myself naked in front of a lot of female Moroccan strangers, I don't really feel all that enthused about it.

Luckily, we have a "shower" at home. It is located directly next to the toilet and literally consists of just a shower head and no bathtub or sliding door, so the water can get all over the place. Unfortunately, it is very difficult and maybe even nearly impossible for me to get warm water. I have to turn my water onto super hot, wait for it to get hot, and then slowly turn it back to cold, but I usually only have warm water for about 3 seconds before the water is freezing cold, which means it's time to start all over again. So I guess even though the water temperature isn't ideal and I have to wear flip-flops while showering, I can shower at home. As for the toilet, I'm pretty lucky to have a western toilet that you can sit on. I didn't think it would be that bad if I were stuck with a Turkish toilet, except I found out on our southern excursion that the whole you urinate into for Turkish toilets is rather small, unlike the squatting toilets in Taiwan which leave you a larger margin for error..

A cleaner than usual bathroom with a Turkish toilet..

Despite the luxury of having a western toilet, it is not uncommon for there to be no toilet paper and for the toilet not the be flushed by whoever used it before me.. who said Morocco was going to be appetizing?

Oh, perfect timing-- time for dinner.. !