Last Friday, I went to the home of one of my favorite families here in Morocco. They live in the town where I live down in the Sahara. If you don't know people well here in Morocco, it's proper etiquette not to show up at their home unannounced. On the other hand, if you've established a warm, familiar connection, it's acceptable to arrive at their home without having been invited on a specific day when you arrive at their home. Indeed, it almost seems that it's expected that you'll show up unannounced. With this particular family, in the past when I hadn't shown up to dine at their home for weeks, and then when I ran into them while out and about in town, they asked me where I had been and when I would be coming over to their home.
Accordingly, as it had been a few weeks since I had been at their home due to my recent travels, last Friday I went to their home for lunch. Given that it was Friday, they served couscous for lunch. Moroccans usually eat couscous for lunch on Fridays. Thus when it was time to eat, around 2:30 p.m., one of the daughters in the family brought out a large tajine filled with couscous. The word "tajine" refers either to the stew-like culinary creation bearing that name, or to the actual clay pottery in which either the tajine stew, or, instead in this particular case, couscous, is served. To keep the meal warm, the high, pointed clay pottery tajine lid is kept on top of the tajine dish until the meal is served. In the large tajine dish which was about 18 inches wide, on this particular day the couscous was topped with well-cooked carrot and pumpkin.
When she brought the couscous, she brought a few spoons for us to use in eating the couscous directly out of the communal tajine dish. Her sister, however, as usual, ate the couscous without a spoon, as some Moroccans do. She gathered some couscous from the tajine dish and rolled it into a ball in her hand and brought it to her mouth in her hand.
After we had finished with the couscous, we had some muskmelon for dessert, which I always enjoy. I find the muskmelon quite refreshing during warm weather such as we're having in the Sahara now.
As I rapidly approach my COS (Completion Of Service, or Close Of Service) date, which, at this point, is now less than a month away, I'm beginning to note in a fresher, almost urgent kind of way, what I have been appreciating during my time here in Morocco. I certainly include the hospitality I've experienced here, including at lunch last Friday, amongst the aspects of my experience here for which I've been most grateful to God.
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