Hello! I can’t believe it’s already late April and I’ve been at my site for 22 weeks so far. The classic mantra of Peace Corps is “days go slow, weeks go fast,” and I’ve definitely felt that to be true. Sometimes I’ll check my clock on a slow weekend and think, “how is it only 3pm?” and then other times, Ramadan is suddenly over and I’m trying to wrap some things up before my upcoming vacation and school break.
Last weekend I went to Agadir for the first time in a while with some friends from my region. I don’t think I realized how nice it would be to sit outside, in public, with multiple friends, drinking my first real unsweetened iced latte in over 7 months. Not only is iced coffee a rarity in Morocco, but it was even rarer to be drinking it outside with a mixed-gender friend group.
I say this because for some of my friends, particularly women who are at smaller sites, it’s not feasible or safe for them to sit at cafés on their own. This is because in rural areas, for Moroccan women, socializing happens primarily inside each other’s homes, and it is very rare to see a woman sitting at a café in a rural area. Besides small stores, most other small businesses in rural areas are cafés and my town has one (or more) on pretty much every corner. At all times of day but especially at night, men in town gather at cafés to watch soccer, drink tea, and socialize with one another.
Thankfully, there are a couple of hotel cafés at my site that are a safer option for me—they’re much less crowded during the day and they’re generally very friendly to foreigners. I should note that I am in a very privileged position to be able to go as a white foreigner; I can all but guarantee that the same cannot be said for the average Moroccan woman my age or older who lives at my site.
That all being said, there are still other cafés that aren’t as safe for me. One time I felt like trying a different café that was closer to my apartment, and I walked in only to receive a considerable amount of unwanted attention and thus immediately turned around. It’s tough to cope with, and as I’ve discussed many times on this blog, I’m one of the lucky ones in this regard due to having a touristy site.
Being in Agadir was therefore very refreshing because there is much more mixed-gender socializing and it is much more normal for women to be out and about at restaurants and cafés.
The other surprisingly wonderful thing about Agadir that I didn’t expect this time around was the fact that the latte was… unsweetened. Before I came to Morocco, a couple of volunteers who had arrived the year prior emphasized that sugar is a major cultural phenomenon. This is seen everywhere from daily tea time—which is usually accompanied by bread with sweet condiments and sometimes more sweets—to nonalcoholic juices at cafés, to weddings, where a customary gift is a giant cone of sugar.
As a result, more Western-style cafés in larger cities that have iced coffee—which is slowly making its way to Morocco—will often create wild syrupy concoctions resemblant of Frappuccinos because the default in Morocco is that drinks are generally very sweet. I did not know this initially, and one time I ordered an iced something-or-other in Beni Mellal during our training period, excited to have something cold and theoretically less sweet, only to be given the sweetest iced coffee I had ever tasted. Lesson learned! I’ll never forget the look on my 13-year-old host sister’s face when we made coffee one morning and I said I didn’t want sugar, just a little milk.
One thing that has also been interesting has been the variety and quality of tea that I’ve been served. Tea is the default drink in Morocco. In America, if you show up to someone’s house, I feel like the default drink is water, whereas here it’s tea. Generally, the tea I’ve been served at people’s houses is really pretty good and most women I know have nailed down their preferred recipe.
The loose green tea leaves are boiled with the water in the teapot, then either mint or absinthe is added to remove some of the bitterness of the tea. After the herbs are removed, you stick a fat chunk of sugar in the teapot, let it dissolve and cool down a bit, and then it’s ready to go. While I absolutely love a giant mug of unsweetened, plain green tea, I really do enjoy the sweeter tea, particularly the absinthe variety, in smaller quantities. My host mom has absolutely perfected her tea recipe, resulting in a delightfully sweet, less-bitter cup.
Other cups of tea, especially at work or outside of people’s homes have been a different story. Though any website will tell you that in order to avoid bitterness with green tea it’s best to steep it for a very short amount of time, that’s not what happens here. I’m not sure why. That means that extra sugar and herbs are added in order to mask the bitterness, but you still have a very bitter aftertaste. Moroccans don’t seem to mind, interestingly enough, but I’ve also never directly asked anyone. There’s kind of a running joke among volunteers that sometimes you will be served an absolutely vile cup of tea, in which case the best choice is to smile, nod, and sip it slowly.
In any case, the culture around cafes, tea and sugar in Morocco has been something that has been a cornerstone of my experience here, especially as a female volunteer who socializes with other women. Though it can definitely be a lot at times—there was a period right after I moved into my apartment where I didn’t want to touch any bread, tea or sweets for a while—in moderate doses the hospitality is lovely and sometimes you’ll be met with some of the best tea and sweets you’ve ever had.
In the future, I think mint and absinthe tea will be things I will always enjoy, as is bread with apricot jam and surprisingly, a triangle of plain Laughing Cow cheese. And, although I’ve continued to surprise Moroccans with my love for unsweetened things—apparently and ironically an American stereotype—I definitely do enjoy the distinctly Moroccan versions of tea and sweets and it’s cool to be able to experience another country’s cultural traditions in a very authentic context.
Anyway, that’s all for this week. As always, more to come!
Anna Weber 