Moroccan Fashion

I am working on another grant application. I am having a hard time finding both motivation and inspiration; after two frustrating other ones, I just can’t find the energy to put what want I want to do in yet another new set of words. I had sort of hoped I could recycle what I wrote for the last one, and which I felt good about, but as it turns out the maximum length of this proposal is about half that of the previous one.

In any case, because this grant is due on November 5, I am spending a fair amount of time at home, upstairs, trying to come up with something to write. I think my host family feels sorry for me that I am at home so much. I catch them saying things to each other like ‘poor girl, spending all day at home working.’ I explained to them as best I could what I’m working on and why it’s taking up time, but still.

I think this is why they keep inviting me out everywhere. And because a) I can’t find inspiration to write this grant, b) going out with women and seeing what they do all day is precisely the reason I’m here, and c) I also think being out is much more fun than working on this thing, I say yes to everything.

So last night Manal showed me where she works. She makes jellabas and caftans, and shares a little shop/workplace with a few others where she makes these garments on order.

A jellaba (pronounced ‘zyell-AB-a) is a kind of coat/dress with a hood on it. It looks like this:



This is daily wear for whenever you go outdoors. Simply slip it on over the PJs you wear day & night in the house, and you’re ready to go. The model is always the same, but they come in all fabrics and colors. Men and women both wear them (although they choose different fabrics and colors). The official national costume for men is a white/cream colored jellaba with a red fez hat and yellow slippers. The king (Mohammed VI) wears this on all national holidays. Here he is with his son, crown Prince Moulay Hassan:



(These shoes, by the way, are also very traditionally Moroccan. They also come in all kinds of colors and fabrics, but the yellow ones go with the national costume).
During Ramadan, I noticed that all photo studios had set up these elaborate studios outside, featuring a rich-looking fabric backdrop and an ornate couch. Alma explained to me when she and I passed one together, that it is tradition during Ramadan for parents to have their young children dress up in traditional costume for the first time and officially photographed. And indeed, when we walked past this particular photo studio, we saw tiny little 3 year-old boys in tiny little white jellabas, tiny red fez hats, and tiny yellow slippers. It was too precious for words.

But while adults really will wear a jellaba most of the time they go outside (though not everyone does so – Alma and Fatima almost always wear one, but Manal hardly ever does. And women wear them more than men do), I haven’t seen anyone under the age of, let’s say 25, wearing one on a daily basis.

When men wear white jellabas, women wear caftans. This is Moroccan eveningwear, so to speak. They look like this:



Mostly they come in three parts; a dress of sorts, an overcoat made of a thin lacy fabric, and a wide belt that is worn over the top. But there is much more variation with caftans than there is with jellabas; not only in terms of fabrics (often much more luxurious than those used for jellabas) but also in terms of model or cut. There is a whole fashion industry devoted to caftans, and every year the magazine ‘Femmes du Maroc’ publishes its Caftan-issue, with hundreds of pages of pictures from runway shows that feature the latest models. Designers can be as avant-garde with the traditional caftan-design as they are with Western clothing. Manal had hundreds of these magazines stacked in a corner of her shop, and I spent a fair amount of time looking through them. I think these dresses are beautiful, and I kind of want one – but when would I ever wear it?

Sensitivity

Amma is not very good at English, she says, and so yesterday I helped her with a homework assignment. This gave me a chance to look at her English textbook – a Moroccan method that satisfies the national requirements for secondary education. Mostly, it is a language book like any other. Exercises ask students to match appropriate responses to questions, to fill in the right form of a verb, to summarize short articles, and so on. But I was struck by the tone of the book. Every single article for reading comprehension is about the third world, its development, and its problems; and every single exercise asks the student to imagine him- or herself being asked to respond to English-speaking humanitarian aid-workers. “An employee of an NGO has come to your village and has asked you to advise him about some villages that need help. What is your response?” Or, “Your e-pal has asked you about what kind of work he might do if he comes to Morocco. Write him an email in which you respond to his question. Be sure to use lots of comparisons.”

It’s a completely passive form of language learning – not in the sense that students are asked to listen and read rather than to speak, but in the sense that it is geared toward people who are receiving English-speakers in their own country, rather than people who are going out on adventures to explore the English-speaking world on their own. Students learn what they need to know to interact with foreigners (who apparently are all here to work toward Morocco’s socio-economic development) on their own soil, to respond to requests and offer help. They do not learn how to initiate conversations, how to use English to explore Anglo-Saxon culture. It is always ‘your English guest…’, and never ‘your English host…’. This is really curious, I think, and I wonder what thought process lies behind the structuring of language learning this way. And in the same vein, what philosophy lies behind Western language-learning textbooks? Does it affect how well someone is able to learn/use the language?

I need to express some frustration: There are so many questions I have but am hesitant to ask because I do not know how sensitive they are. I want to ask Amma if she has a boyfriend, and ask Alma why she doesn’t work, how come she’s not married? I want to ask them about shouafat, about jnun (plural of jinn, a ghost or spirit), if they believe in all that, about their thoughts on religion. I want to ask them how it is that Lahcen is so old and frail while Khadija is not.* I want to ask Amma how she feels about the fact that her parents are divorced,** and how her family feels, how Moroccan society feels about that. Mostly, I want to not worry about asking these questions and just try them out, but the thing is that I don’t want to do that with the people I live with, the people I have to be on good terms with for the next three months at least – and hopefully longer. I don’t want to risk awkwardness or even offense with them. I’ve thought about prefacing each question with a note of caution, of sorts: to tell them that if this is too a sensitive question, I am sorry and I won’t ask them to answer. But despite the relative lack of a language barrier we’ve had there are already so many little miscommunications here and there, and I’m worried that the subtleties of my inquiries and cautions would be completely lost.

I guess Ilyas is the one to ask about the sensitivity of questions. And other than that it’s probably just my own shyness that I need to get over.

* I had erroneously assumed that Lahcen was a little senile – because he sits in his room all day calling out names of people without end, until someone screams at him that whomever he wants isn’t here. So the other night, when I saw him leave his room and then heard the front door of the house open and close, I got very worried: I pictured him alone on the street, unable to recall where he lives, completely lost. No one else really looked up at all, though. I thought maybe they simply hadn’t noticed, so I went up to Amma, worried that I would sound completely stupid, being worried about nothing, and asked, ‘your grandfather just left, is that ok?’ Her response was completely carefree – ‘oh, really?’ And that was it. Later on he came back, and of course everything is fine. So I did feel a little stupid. But at least, I thought, better safe than sorry… I now think that Lahcen is less senile than he is just really old, and mostly blind. Last evening, I was by myself in the living room when he started calling out for Amma. Without anyone to scream at him, he came out of his room and walked straight into the living room where he clearly saw me. “Amma? Amma?” he said to me. “No,” I said, “Amma isn’t here. I’m Charlotte.” He walked right up to me, hovered over me, gave me a kind of Larry David-like scrutinizing once-over, and then said, “Oh. And who are you?” “I’m Charlotte,” I responded. “Oh,” he said again, and then “How are you?” “I’m fine sir, how are you?” I responded. “Alhamdulillah,” he said. Then once more, “Amma isn’t here?” I repeated that she wasn’t, he said “OK,” and he went on his way. I’m a little ashamed that I assumed he wasn’t all there anymore, and I don’t really know why I thought this.

** This became clear when I asked her where her father lived, because he clearly does not live with us. She had already mentioned once that her mother lives in Spain. Her father, she now told me, lives somewhere else in Rabat with his wife and their daughter. Why don’t you live with them, I was man enough to ask. Just because I prefer it here, she replied. I’m used to the medina, it’s a more vibrant area, all of my friends are here.

Eating Ramadan

The topic of today’s class was Ramadan. On the basis of another magazine article, we discussed what it means to fast, and what it means when some people don’t. It is a huge transgression to ‘eat Ramadan’ in Morocco: it is worse to violate the pillar of Ramadan than it is to violate the pillar of prayer.* Apparently it is even illegal to eat in public during the month of fasting, and being caught can lead to jail time or fines. In fact, Ilyas explained, fasting is taken so seriously in Morocco that there is even a North African joke about it. There are five countries that make up North Africa, just like there are 5 pillars in Islam: Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya (apparently Egypt doesn’t really count – too much part of the actual Middle East, I guess). As it happens, each country seems to favor one pillar over the others. So the joke is that the North African countries divided up the pillars amongst themselves, each taking responsibility for one. Morocco has fasting, Tunisia has prayer. Mauritania has alms giving, Libya has pilgrimage, and Algeria has the profession of faith. Just a joke, said Ilyas, but there’s certainly some truth to it.

Obviously a failure to fast is a religious violation, and suggests that you disrespect the faith or maybe even that you are an atheist.** But perhaps even more so than a religious sin, it is a cultural violation. Not to fast is to turn your back on the community, to suggest a lack of identification with the rest of society, or even to imply that you stand above the rest. Religion is imposed in Morocco, Ilyas explained. It is not sold to the masses; it is forced upon them, and most people have no choice but to accept. Except for the rich few, the bourgeoisie (same word in Moroccan, just pronounced with a thick Spanish ‘r’); these people can afford to disregard society’s peer pressure. And these are often the people who do not fast. But, he said, once they turn 40, 45, all of a sudden they become concerned with fasting. Why did I think that was? Well, I began, perhaps they begin to fear death, and turn back to God?

No, Ilyas said. Not God. Culture. They want to belong, all of a sudden they become concerned with their identity as Moroccans. And that’s it, I am now thinking. I get the sense that Ramadan is not simply more cultural than religious; in fact, Ramadan is precisely what defines or maintains Moroccan culture for Moroccans. It reinforces and thus sustains precisely what Moroccans take pride in about their cultural traditions: solidarity, togetherness, hospitality, merriment. I mentioned at some point in the discussion that I had been so surprised to see my host family in such good spirits after a month of fasting and very little sleep. That’s not surprising at all, said Ilyas. That’s the point of it all, that’s Moroccan culture, and Moroccans take pride in this self-defined characteristic of always being good-humored and inviting. In fact, he explained, that’s why the terrorist attacks of May 2003 in Casablanca were such a blow to the country. Because who would do such a thing in this country where even those who have nothing are always smiling? And that’s what Ramadan is meant to remind us of: to be happy, be together, be kind, even when you must endure deprivation. If it weren’t for Ramadan once a year, Ilyas said, we would lose those values – we would lose what it means to be Moroccan.

Strangely enough though, despite this strong connection to culture and community, fasting is and remains an individual duty. I asked Ilyas if one person’s refusal to fast has repercussions for the whole community’s relationship with God. No, he said – each person is individually responsible for his or her relationship with the divine. Apparently, however, this individual duty does not translate into personal freedom to do what you wish. As I’ve mentioned already, religion is quite a compulsion in Morocco (and in most of the Muslim world, according to Ilyas). Religion may be an individual duty, but it is part of culture to urge one another to fulfill that duty. Religion has become the property of culture, convention, and tradition, and has thus moved from the realm of individual choice into community pressure.

*The basis for the practice of Islam rests on five ‘pillars’: the profession of faith, prayer five times daily, almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca.

**The article had conducted a poll on this question: can someone who does not fast be a Muslim? Forty percent had said no, someone who fasts is not a Muslim. Ilyas confirmed again how inconceivable atheism is to some people. I am glad I didn’t reveal myself to my host family.

Internal music

Amma has a new phone, a gift from her father. Apparently phones are Moroccan teenagers’ mp3 players. She and Yunus have been swapping songs between their phones for the past few days through Bluetooth (‘Bluetoot’). Now that she clearly has a fair amount of songs on her phone, she’s inseparable from it. Day and night she is listening to music, and usually singing and dancing along with it, seeming not to care that the rest of us can’t hear a thing. She listens to it when she’s doing homework, when she’s in the kitchen helping out, even when she’s watching TV or talking to her grandmother or aunts. My parents would have told me long ago to turn off the music, but no one here seems to mind at all. But then again, everyone in the family plays around with their phone day and night. Even Khadija, who is indeed illiterate (but who is going to school – this morning she came back and proudly showed me a paragraph she had written), has a phone that she carries with her everywhere.

So I am not the only one whose phone is a lifeline.

Stigma

A productive day. Taking care of business felt so good I felt like I was walking on air, felt like I was bigger than Rabat – until I had my first Moroccan Arabic (also called ‘darija’; pronounced DArizya) class today and realized how far I have yet to go.

I went to the ATM to get huge amounts of money to pay for my stay with the host family, and then stopped by the Dutch cultural center, the NIMAR, basically to show my face and let them know I’m back. Last summer they were incredibly helpful and inviting, and I spent a lot of time in their limited but relevant library reading up on Moroccan history and on the healthcare system. There is an American center in Rabat as well (the MACECE), but they’ve told me explicitly they cannot/will not offer me any assistance, because I do not have an American passport. Apparently it does not matter that I study at a US university, or that I’m a permanent resident. But I digress. At least there’s this Dutch center, and the administration there has indicated it is wiling and able to help me with contacts, research permission, and the like. Which is why I had to go and tell them I’m back, and that I might (hopefully) actually need their help with all that pretty soon. It turns out that the director is in the Netherlands at the moment, but I talked to someone else for a while, a woman who coordinates migration studies, and spent a wonderful hour in the library on their wireless connection – which meant internet access on my very own computer.

On the way back home for lunch I bought today’s edition of Le Monde and spent another wonderful hour on the couch finally catching up on world affairs. That might be the thing I miss most, being here – access to the news, being up to date on what’s going on, with the presidential campaigns, and with the markets. I hate it that I’m missing the debates, missing Palin’s gaffes, missing SNL renditions of those gaffes, missing the shifts in public opinion. There is a news broadcast here in French, but my host family is not necessarily interested, and they are so loud that I usually can’t make out what the newscaster is saying above the conversation going on around me.

This afternoon I had my first class. And despite what the first sentence of this post might suggest, it was great – but it was also a wakeup call as to how much work I have ahead of me. I seem to understand a fair amount, at least when the Arabic is spoken slowly, but producing it myself doesn’t quite go as I’d wish. My tongue is not used to the sounds anymore, it doesn’t roll out smoothly yet.

The class was basically unstructured; Ilyas, my teacher, mostly asked me questions and kept a conversation going, writing words I did not know on the board and explaining in Arabic what they meant. I’m curious to see if this will be the basic gist of all classes to come. It made me feel a little lost; I like structure. I want grammar explanations, verb conjugations, tenses, systems, regularity. I want to know what a word is, grammatically, so I can conjugate it, play around with it. This may be difficult to provide with a language like Moroccan Arabic, because it’s mostly a spoken language. But of course I’m sure I could ask for more systematized grammar explanations if I need them, and I have my own grammar book for reference.

The conversation was interesting though, and useful. Ilyas asked me what I was doing in Morocco, and I explained – as far as was possible, substituting a lot of French words for the Arabic I didn’t know – the basic gist of my research: a comparison between psychiatry and traditional healing in Morocco. He in turn wrote on the board all the key terms of my research in Arabic, so I now know how to refer to psychiatrists and various traditional healers by their appropriate local names. Then he asked me precisely the questions that basically constitute my main research problem: why do people choose one over the other? I gave him the socio-economic reasons (because those I knew how to explain in Arabic): because they don’t have money they go to a healer rather than a doctor, or they do so because there is no doctor in the area. But, Ilyas said, people with money avoid psychiatrists, too. Apparently, as he explained, this is because when you go to a psychiatrist, you are labeled as crazy (‘hmaq’). This does not happen when you go to a healer, because that’s labeled as ‘culture’. This is interesting. Because much of the literature I’ve read features prejudice too, but toward the other side: people (should) seek psychiatric help, because healers are part of a backward tradition, they’re unscientific – and those who visit traditional healers are thereby backward and ignorant, too. Of course this is all literature with a particular agenda. They are ‘performing modernity’, as Professor Zhiri said at my proposal defense. They are part of a Morocco that looks toward a European modernity as the ideal. What Ilyas’ comments suggest, at least, is that the amount of money you have does not determine your outlook on what is an acceptable part of culture and what is not. Having money does not automatically mean you ascribe to a modernity that favors psychiatrists over religious healing. I wonder if there is an automatic connection between that choice and any other factor. Education, maybe? And if so, how is education related to wealth? Or piety? Because as much as it may be culture, these traditions of ‘religious’ healing are strictly forbidden by Islam.

Another interesting thing he mentioned: apparently people do visit psychologists (tbib n-nafsia) with increasing frequency, basically because of the exigencies of modern life – stress, burnout, and so on. Apparently these psychologists prescribe antidepressants (‘antidepressor’ in Moroccan Arabic). There is no stigma attached to this kind of therapy. But a psychiatrist, that’s a different story. So there is a third category of practitioner here. I need to figure out exactly what a ‘psychologist’ is under the Moroccan definition, and how such a person is different from a psychiatrist. A ‘tbib’ is a doctor – is this really a medical doctor who just doesn’t work with the real ‘crazies’, or is a psychologist just called ‘doctor’ because he or she works as a clinician? And if something requiring antidepressants isn’t ‘crazy’, then what is?

During the second hour of class, we read an article from a magazine that was clearly ‘performing modernity’. A reporter had decided to go undercover and expose the hoax that is shouafat – seers. People visit these mediums for any number of problems, ranging from medical to social to psychological. The treatment can involve all sorts of things: sacrifices (chickens, goats – “it’s a whole animal farm,” Ilyas said), concoctions of spices and everyday pantry items, protective amulets, the works – and of course, payment in money or kind to the shouafa (pronounced ‘shuWAfah). This particular reporter went to about five different shouafat, citing the same troubles for all of them: she was in love with a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife, her new boss didn’t like anything she did, and she was generally unlucky. And basically, the proposed treatments included all of the possibilities mentioned above. We didn’t finish the piece, but I think the fact that treatment varied so much was (part of) the reporter’s proof that all this shouafa-business was BS.

ZemZemZemZem

Tonight we – Khadija, Alma, Fatima, Amma, Mustafa and I – went to visit that friend who had returned from Mecca. Driss, another one of Alma’s/the family’s friends, drove us there in Fatima’s car, but waited downstairs at a coffee shop while we went up. Upstairs, this woman’s sitting room was full of women (is the social world divided by gender after all, and is my host family just an exception?). Visiting Moroccans is a lot like going to a family gathering in the Netherlands. When you arrive, everyone sits in a circle on couches or chairs around a coffee table, and you have to make the rounds and greet everyone individually. This woman’s coffee table was full of cookies in all shapes and sizes (though I didn’t see the ones we made). The host took each tray and went around with it, urging us to take more and more. But here’s where this is different from the Netherlands: in Holland, you take one cookie and that’s it. Here, you pile your plate full of them, and still the host will tell you to take more.

Before we were served cookies, the host went around with plate of dates and a tray of what looked to me like shot glasses with a transparent liquid in it – I was confused; what else would you serve in glasses like that but vodka, or gin? But Alma told me: these are dates and water from Mecca, and it’s tradition to bring some back and share it with guests. The water is blessed; a shot of it is believed to bestow blessing on the drinker as well. So when you drink it, you make a special request to God; because of the water’s power that request will have particular force. I’m not sure if telling someone about the request invalidates it, but very selfishly, I wished for my research here to go well.

This water comes from the spring at Zemzem, which is one of the stops on the pilgrimage to Mecca. It’s the site where Hagar (apparently she’s called Hajar here, with a soft, French j: ‘hazyar’), Abraham’s slave who gives birth to his son Ismail (Ishmael), finds water after she’s been banished to the desert.* I double-checked this with Alma, who was so impressed that I knew this that she told everyone around her three times in a row that I knew the story better than she did. In the car on the way back to the Medina, she and Mustafa asked me what other prophets’ stories I knew. We went over Mohammed, obviously, and Yusuf (Joseph – does the Bible also claim that he was more beautiful than anyone else in the world? Apparently that is the crux of the Muslim version: that he had been given 99% of the human beauty in the world, and the rest of humanity had to share the other 1%). Then we got to Jesus, and the conversation I had dreaded came up: do I believe in Jesus? Am I religious? I hate answering this question because I don’t want to lie, and I don’t want to say something that they won’t understand or accept. At first I hedged again. Did I believe in Jesus? Well, I said, Catholics do. Oh, they responded, are you Catholic? Well, I said, … my family is Catholic. And then came the moment of truth (or rather, of lying); Alma asked me, are you Catholic? And I said yes. Because I think it’s better, in their eyes, to be a part of a defined religion than to float amidst abstract beliefs of your own, and if I admitted to having my own version of spirituality, I fear they might not be as open toward me anymore. If you’re Christian, at least they can categorize you as someone who believes in the same God they believe in, even if you’re wrong in believing that he had a son. You’re cousins in religion, so to speak, part of the same tradition. But if I try to explain my own views, I'm afraid it'll sound like an instant dismissal of what they believe in. And because those beliefs are precisely what I’m interested in, I want to make sure they remain willing to share those beliefs with me – which means no dismissal, even if that means lying. Though maybe it wasn’t a complete lie. Culturally speaking, I’m more catholic than anything else.

And I don’t dismiss what they believe in. I have a different worldview, but I still respect theirs – it’s just a different way of looking at the same basic values, as far as I’m concerned.


*Incidentally, Muslims believe that while Jews descend from Abraham’s son Isaac, they themselves are descendants of Ismail, his first son by Hajar. They also believe it was Ismail, not Isaac, whom Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice.

Sickness & Culinary Experimentation = Bad Combination

The old man – Lahcen – is like a phantom presence in the house. I forget he is there, except for the two minutes a day that he comes out of his room to go to the bathroom. He takes about two steps a minute, dressed in his long-sleeved kaftan (a sort of shirt-dress that comes down to just above his ankles), a little knitted cap on his head, and his socks. He holds his dark, misshapen and wrinkled hands in front of him and thus struggles to the bathroom. No one helps him. The rest of his day and night he passes sitting or lying on his bed in his room, watching Moroccan public television. He hardly interacts with any other member of the household. He says little, sometimes calling out a name, and no one speaks to him – except when they walk into his room to turn down the television. The interactions never sound friendly. He yells (I’ve even seen him kick Alma for turning down the sound), and they yell back. They treat him like an angry old man, which he probably is – but I wonder what came first.

I went to Marjane tonight with Khadija, Manal and Mustafa – a big supermarket right on the edge of town that sells everything from industrial-size grocery items to clothing and appliances. I notice that the prices say very little to me. Everyday items range from 12 to hundreds of dirhams, but I have very little index for it. When I calculate how much something would be in dollars, everything seems immensely cheap – very roughly, you take off a zero and get the dollar amount, and for some reason that process seems to make everything dirt cheap in my head. I have to remember, first of all, that the dollar isn’t worth that much anymore at all. And second, that to a Moroccan these prices are much steeper. I don’t know how much because I am not sure of the average monthly salary here, but a cheap washing machine - something that I’m pretty sure is a serious purchase in any country – is about 2500 Dirhams. To think that I spent half of that on minutes for my phone without a second thought…

I think Khadija is illiterate. After an aisle or two at Marjane I began to realize she was asking Mustafa for the price of everything, though it was printed clearly on every shelf. I guess in a sense it’s not surprising that she cannot read; she must be at least 70 if her fifth child is 42 (Amma gave me the lowdown: her father is oldest, then Fatima. Then Manal, then another sister who lives in Marrakech, then Alma, then two boys who are in Italy and the UAE, respectively) – and 65 years ago, in the middle of the protectorate period, the average Moroccan girl did not routinely go to school.

I am getting sick, I think, which is unpleasant. My nose is congested, I have a headache, and that feeling that my head is about to explode from sinus pressure. I wonder if it’s something going around – Khadija and Alma have both been complaining of headaches. I know I am sensitive to these things when I am stressed and exhausted – and I guess I am both. I feel a lot better, but this week – the voyage, the adjustment to being here, the stress of being a guest in strangers’ house – has been tense, and the sleeping schedule has been erratic to say the least. First of all Moroccans seem to sleep very little (which becomes a lot more doable because of all the lounging around and napping after lunch that is done), and sleeping together in one room does mean that I wake up whenever anyone else gets up – like at 4 am, to pray/eat. This they don’t do quietly. The light is turned on, people talk – I wake up.
Anyway, I hope it passes by without doing too much damage. If I take it slow tomorrow, maybe it will get better.

As luck would have it, though, my host mother seems to have chosen these same few days to serve meals that feature, shall we say, less conventional animal products. Yesterday I was given liver for lunch, for dinner that evening at 11 pm, Khadija served what I think was the foot of a cow, and tonight around the same time, she gave us what I think came from some animal’s spine. Only the shape of the bones gives me any clue as to what all this is, and on the plate I saw what I really suspect were vertebrae. I am trying to get away with eating as little as possible, despite continued urgings to ‘khoudi, kouli’ (‘have some, eat’) – when I am feeling under the weather, unfortunately I am not at my most culinarily adventurous. My host family loves this stuff though – the meal is not over until all these weird bones are sucked clean of all juices.