Nice to Meet You

9/10/09

Another volunteer arrived in our house today! Her name is Chloe - she is from New Jersey and will be working at the Hospital where Lise and Tom work. She is going to become a Midwife. She has been to about a zillion different countries, speaks French (thank God), as well as some German and Sign Language. All these people are starting to make me feel very poorly educated! She goes to Hampshire College and is, of course, a total hippie. I like her very much.

9/11/09

So today Lise led me, Amrita, Barbara, and Chloe to the Hammam and showed us how it's done. So basically this is how it works:

-Grab your bucket, stool, bowl, exfoliating glove, black soap, shampoo, and comb

-Walk to the Hammam (you can buy your glove and soap there if you want)

-Pay 9 dirhams (under $1.25)

-Go into the changing room and strip down to your bikini. Exchange 1dirham for two buckets

-Pick a room (there are three: hot , hotter, and nearly unbearable)

-Fill your buckets with hot water 3/4 of the way, then the rest with cold water

-Find a spot near the wall, sit on your stool

-If you are Moroccan, get completely undressed, if you are Western and more shy, take off your top.

-Bathe (you can also pay a little extra to have someone else bathe you)

It was so beautiful to see all these women completely comfortable being naked in front of one another. On the street they are so covered up, but inside the Hammam they aren't a bit shy. This would NEVER be so common in the West. I was speaking with Chloe about it, and we concluded that because the women here are so covered up in their daily lives, they aren't plagued by the same body-image issues Western women are. For us, we see daily other women's bodies flaunted in our faces, and this makes us compare ourselves to them. Here, it is a complete non-issue.

It was wonderful to be in such a communal space filled with women of all (and I mean ALL) shapes, sizes, and ages, each one happy and excited about being clean and feeling smooth and pretty. If I were to go to such a place in the West, I'm sure I'd end up extremely depressed and feeling ugly because I would've just been embarrassed about my body or something. How silly!

At any rate, I feel very close to the other female volunteers now.