Here ducky ducky ducky...

After arguing in volcanic Catalan over how best to put out the kitchen fire the stooped couple makes their way up the wooden stairs to bed. Though my stomach is heavy with meat I sneak one last piece of sausage from the big wooden object used to store all uneaten foodstuffs (this includes pasta, rice and other perishibles you might think better left in the refrigerator occupying the other room). The night´s dinner has been a feast of sausages of all shapes, sizes, colors and consistencies paired with an equally varied spread of cheeses. To this we add a bottle of wine and enormous slices of bread smeared with tomatoes. Why they insist on smearing their innards on bread making a soggy glue out of perfectly good leavened wheat I have yet to understand.

Still, this is no match to Sunday brunch – a marvel unto its own. Genna and I come in from turning cheese, a daily activity here on the farm, to find a steaming skillet of paella hot and beckoning. Paella is one of those things you are always tempted to order when offered on a restaurant menu and I have only recently learned that this inevitably leads to disappointment. Why is this so? This is so precisely because there are still some, albeit very few, people out there skilled in the traditional assembly of that incomparable acheivement that is paella.

Three times in my life I have had the fortune of reaching paella orgasm.

Number 1. David´s host mom in Quito, Ecuador manages to pull it off with only seafood (guilt rests on me, the lamentable pescetarian at the time).

Number 2. Grimy bar in Caracas, Venezuela finds me before a dish meant for 4 (across from Molly, lamentable vegetarian) with a tentacle hanging out of my mouth.

Number 3. Farmhouse Girona Spain at which arrives the paella to beat all paellas – fresh peas boiled and added afterwards to the unfathomably rich conglomeration of rice, mussels, whole unpeeled shrimp and the smallest bits of pork for flavor (absolutely nothing to lament).

Genna and I toss our diets out the window as if they were the frisbees we once so athletically threw and instead scoop up every last bit of gooey sauce not forgetting to clean our plates shiny with bread. Who needs a cigarette?

But there is no time for this. Unbeknownst to us, this is Sunday, and Sunday means that not only is there another course but there is the traditional Cava to go with it. Suddenly I recall yesterday afternoon when I inquired as to what Tia (Aunty) was tossing that whiskey into the piping pot on the stove. “Pato para mañana” comes her nonchalant reply. Pato? You mean delicious duck that is undoubtedly the brethren of our two friends that noisily amble in front of the house day in and day out? The very same, well, their brother actually.

And so it is that Tia disappears everyday to come back with either a rabbit from the barn to our left or a duck from the barn below. The woman is a miracle worker with barnyard creatures and whiskey. So, despite our distended bellies here it is, a duck feast, sitting before us emanating the most mouthwatering ducky aroma I have ever introduced into my craving nasal passages. There is nothing to do now but to ask Genna for another piece of bread.

If there is one thing I have learned about edibles on this trip it is how to eat and appreciate bones, spines and other small impasses that get between me and my meat. In Immesouane it was scale, spine and fin here it is little duck bones, shrimp heads and pork skins. Not only are these hurdles a pleasure to suck on or pick at, but they are the only thing that keep me from devouring my meals at torpedo speed allowing me to better savor every juicy morsel of recently slaughtered creature.

Oh the greasy tender insanity that is a slowly bubbled duck. Every time I think I can stop I reach over for another morsel of bread to sop up the reduced fatty broth that puddles on the center plate: here there is a piece of succulent duck skin, there I get a taste of gizzard. And I wash it all down with some bubbly bitter Cava – the champagne of Spain you might say.

And this is how Genna and I look forward to scooping shit, loading hay and hauling milk all day. Every push of the wheelbarrow, every lift of the shovel, every heave of the bucket is an excuse for that last tallow-logged morsel. And did I mention that we eat chocolate and hot milk for breakfast?

Cultural Conundrums

At about 11:30 PM the crowds around the Medina in Marrakech begin to thin out. Families stroll to their homes in the newer areas of the city, couples wander off down the inconspicuous alleys towards their Riads and after a brief transition most mixed gender groups and tourists have dispersed. Thus around midnight the working men are left to pack away stands of fried fish, steaming escargot and roasted goat heads only to be reloaded the following afternoon when the "A-yoh" calls begin anew and people are led (often by the wrist) over to one area or, if you are smart enough to respond "Deja mange," made to promise to return once their hunger has.

After mounting this knife edge of time one arrives at the other side, the side where the x-chromosome no longer exists. Young men are in groups of two to seven. Old men crouch outside of one establishment or another looking unproductive. And middle aged men usually sit at the doorways to their Riads seeming equally worthless. Genna and I have become accustomed to these people and learn to avoid them, especially the young, as best we can as they coo to us or beckon us or straight up just try to greet us. The problem, of course, is the latter, as having a good man just crave a decent hello is something we care to encourage in the culture (not to mention is often turns out useful to know such people for informational purposes).

On this particular evening Genna and I have an insurmountable chocolate craving; and I dare admit that along with out recent Coke addiction has come a Snickers fetish as well. So, after losing a highly important rosham I set off down our alley to wander towards the last open shop window and retrieve our midnight treat. When I enter onto the main Medina road that our Riad alley joins I arrive at the bustling point in the evening where the people flow down the alley like Vesuvius has erupted and so I join into the stream and head off towards the corner shop.

As I arrive at the corner, no more than 5 minutes later, I notice the crowds have begun to rapidly thin and I know it would behove me to pick up my pace. Before entering the shop I am descended upon by a few young adults keen to chat it up with me and who knows what else. I do my usual pretend-they-don´t-exist routine and take refuge with the shopkeeper when they start to pursue. Unfortunately, as is the case in many countries, despite my being second in line, I am left until after the last to serve as I am the only woman who needs assistance.

Chocolate bar in hand I check outside the shop door to ensure that coast is clear. When I see no testerone obstruction in my path I make my way for the corner which I am about to round when the same man, in his twenties, heavy and hanging with a group of equally motley cronies approach me at the corner. I whisk by him at a pace impossible for conversation but am immediately pursued down the cobbled streets back towards my Riad. Despite my pace the man speeds up yelling at me in French and begins to reach his hands down his pants.

When I recognize what is occuring I set off at a run listening to the man and his disgusting noises of masturbation pursue me in the background. I still don´t know if the boy is joking to impress his friends or if he truly has decided to jerk off on a street that is at the least occupied by dozens of men. Sprinting around the corner I could vomit I am so disgusted by the behavior of this animal, his friends, and every spectator on the street that just let it happen.

So you could blame it on me for being out so late. You could blame it on the men for being pigs. You could blame it on the culture for leaving these boys no other sexual recourse than this level of degredation. But when it comes down to it - I don´t regret it.

The following day Genna and I are approached by another one of these nasty characters and asked if we like sex. It is only because of the previous evening´s events that I have had enough experience and am fed up enough with these men to let this boy have it. At the top of my lungs and in front of a crowded street of I let this boy know that he is a pig and should ashamed of himself. Before my eyes the boy´s face shrinks to a small pimple of an object. For the first time, after two months in Morocco, I feel power over this little puke who I am standing up to before a street full of onlookers. The boy stops dead in his tracks and for the first time we are not pursued halfway down the block like other fellow lady travellers. It is through this knowledge and this power that I have gained that I feel that I am able to protect myself better than before and am able to share this experience with others.

Of the many countries I have been to (and luckily there have been many) Morocco is one of the few that I will almost surely revisit. However, Morocco is also the country that has caused me the most distress as a woman and nearly chased me out by the time I purchased my ticket to fly to first world Spain. I write this in the hopes that these words empower other women because as culturally relatavist as the trip has made us there are some beliefs of mine that will never change. I am a feminist.