Answers, Stuff from Mike, and More Tea

Hi! Jana here. I realized that I am terrible at answering the questions that people ask in comments, and so I am going to be better at answering them! Here is some from the last entry.

About Jack...

"Will he be a house cat, or is there even such a thing in Morocco?"
Jack will be a housecat. Most cats here are not, they roam and I think probably have a few family's that are "home" where they get a little food. They are not generally mistreated, but tend to be a little skinny. Jack is not going to roam, but his house involves a courtyard where he can be outside, and at night hunt grasshoppers that are attracted to the light, so, he gets the best of both worlds I think. Staying away from other cats and the stray dogs around is safer for his little self, and keeps the fleas away!

"Is there any place to get drops for his eyes?" "Did you have to take him to the vet for his crusty eyes?"

Due to dust and flies, etc. eye concerns in people are pretty common here (the not very friendly trachoma used to be a big problem in our area, but due to a concentrated campaign to eradicate it, it is on the decline). Anyway, because of that eye cream is everywhere, and the doctor at the sbitar recommended using a little of that. I bought some last week, but his eyes, with some cleaning in the am and pm, are now non-crusty and the redness is gone... hopefully for good! I'm a little afraid to use human strength medicine on him, but don't think there is a pet pharmacy around...

What kind of food do you feed him?

Right now we are feeding him rice and tuna, eggs, bits of the meat we eat...whatever we have handy. I'm doing some internet research on kitten nutrition to try and make sure we are doing alright, but most of the sites talk about which manufactured food to purchase! Any advice here would be appreciated, if you happen to know something we should know.

About Tea...

Is there mainly one kind of tea sold in your area, or do they have many varieties like we do here?

Tea sold here is Gunpowder green tea. Check out that link for good info. That is pretty much all that is used. In a trip to a bigger city that has a bigger supermarkety store, you can find herbal tea and "regular" tea bags.

Alright :) I'm going to finish up this tea business, and then Mike will finish up.

So, we just finished rinsing. Next step is just to pour out your rinse water into one of your cups, and then discard of the rinse water if you need the cup (depending on how many people you have) and clean it out.


Fill the teapot about 2/3 full with water, and put it back on the buta.


This is about what the tea looks like when it is done...about when it comes to a boil.


There are two words for sugar. One for sugar that comes in a cone shape, and one for granulated sugar you use for baking, etc. Cone sugar is what you use for tea, but you have to break it up into chunks first. A lot of people in our area, including us, just find a rock...

And then use it sort of like this to break up the cone.

This is about how much sugar is in a typical pot in our area. Yes, it is sweet :)

So, after putting in the sugar, the way to melt and mix up the sugar is to pour tea into the glasses and then pour the glasses back into the pot. It also helps to cool it down a little. Everyone I've seen pour tea here can do the really tall pour -- here is Michael doing a darn good demonstration...

When you have poured the tea in several of the glasses and back into the pot, you taste it to make sure it's alright (meaning, does it have enough sugar?) and then pour out your glasses. More bubbles (from a tall pour) are better, and you only pour about 1/2 a glass full.

Here is the man behind the tea. :) Now, enjoy tea, and the way we do it here is to add more water to the pot and put it back on the burner and make a second, and maybe third, pot, all with lots of good conversation and such.


Okay, enough from me. :)

Here's Mike --

It’s been a crazy month for Jana and I and I don’t really even know where to begin. We are beginning to feel settled into the community a little, and even more so into our own house. We are starting to get a routine, but maintaining the motivation to continue working on things wanes at time when the temperature makes sleeping at night a tough task, and makes everything almost too hot to touch including walls, and the ground. Our little Jack has taken to sleeping in the bathroom because we usually take a couple showers in there, keeping the ground cooler. At first he thought it would be good to lay on the squat plate itself, but luckily a bath later, and a cover for the squat plate, and he sticks to the floor now. I haven’t yet given him a full blown shower but I have been getting my hands wet and wiping him and he seems to like that. I have never seen a cat pant so much. Anyways, we do have actual work and lives outside of the cat so I will move on.

This month has moved as quickly as we expected as we went to a SIDA, (French acronym for AIDS) training that was led by a volunteer who is about to finish up her service her in December. It was really a great opportunity to meet her and get her perspective on life here, the challenges and perspectives, but mostly techniques for overcoming those challenges. She commented that she appreciates Morocco because everything is a challenge, nothing and I mean nothing, is easy. Transportation is probably consistently the most difficult and frustrating because we have to use it but it is so unpredictable. For example, when we were trying to return from our SIDA training, we went to the bus station to ask when the bus would be there because we knew it only returned every other day. We were assured by someone who we thought worked there, or at least answered like he knew that yes, Monday the bus would be at the station and leave at 9. Perfect, that would get us home at a good hour. We show up and another guy washing buses says, oho… no bus here today -- it was here yesterday though and should be coming tomorrow. So we rushed to get a taxi to a different place about an hour and half away only to miss that bus at 10 by about 15 minutes. There was a taxi going to tata but it only had one spot, and of course we are two. We had to wait from 10:15 am until 4 pm when last bus arrived. It was packed, and we had to stand for the entire 5 or so hours it took for us to get home. That is was I call excruciatingly frustrating. But we rode home standing next to the sister of one of the ladies who works in our clinic as a cleaning/assistant type person. We had a nice chat and only the next day did we find out who she was. The point? None except to say I have yet to appreciate frustration, anger, and disappointment like our friend Lo has learned and to realize that while those things are challenges, if we overcome them, they are the things that mold us and make us the people we are supposed to be either by teaching us patience, love, or understanding or another life lesson.