Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween--Moroccan Style


Halloween isn’t celebrated in Morocco. However, that didn’t stop us from trying to share this American Holiday with Moroccans at our CBT site. We bought a squash at the weekly souq (buying a whole squash is a little strange, usually people will buy a chunk of squash for cooking with, when we bought the whole thing our cook thought we were crazy). Monday we carved the pumpkin with our LCF and cook, a traditionally jack-o-latern face. After class we lit the pumpkin, and ate pumpkin seeds (I made pumpkin pie with the innards later that night). The neighbor came over as well as one of the host families.

The initial trying to tell ghost stories was a little awkward. We were trying to tell a story, pause, and have it translated into darija with little success (after all, a ghost story is all in the telling). Fortunately, Moroccan women took over-- the neighbor had a spooky story of her own. The women eagerly passed around the flashlight and told stories. Our LCF translated some, but it was mostly about watching faces and gestures.

At the end of the storytelling we blew out the pumpkin and walked home, past the cemetery. Maybe Moroccans can do Halloween afterall.

1 comment:

Loda said...

awesome! I'm glad you had fun! I just can't imagine a bunch of foreigners sitting around with a flashlight telling scary stories, too funny! I like your jack'o'lantern, its cute! I made a mad black cat this year.