Choose an image from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and illustrate it through art, audio, video, or any other creative medium.

Paint a picture, put the words to music, make a mashup, photograph a scene, write a short story, bake a Prufrock cake… anything!

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

Here’s a collage example:

(Also submitted as a #ds106 assignment.)

For fear of boring myself¹ I’ll try to keep this post brief. I took advantage of the long weekend at the end of week seventeen to attend a holiday market at the American Legation, where Moroccan women sold handmade crafts to benefit various local charities.² The next day I hosted the library’s second fundraising cinema night,³ which was a big success. Filled the library with happy third and fourth graders, who were surprisingly excited to be in the library on the weekend. They loved the film and some even helped me clean up at the end.⁴

Those who know me well⁵ will remember that I have very strong feelings about Thanksgiving. Thankfully,⁶ I haven’t had to deal with the horrors of selective history education since my elementary school days. But this year I found myself in a school for Thanksgiving, surrounded by construction paper turkeys, small children in various interpretations of Native American and Puritan dress, and an excited holiday atmosphere around the school.⁷

The first thing I did on Thanksgiving morning was send the following card via email to my friends and family:⁸

Unexpectedly, this particular Thanksgiving grinch was summoned to photograph the Kindergarten Thanksgiving lunch in the lower school. Picture this: four Kindergarten classes (roughly ages 2-7) all sitting around an enormous row of tables stretching all the way down the hall. Now add in the teachers and a few parent volunteers rushing around the perimeter, frantically distributing food and ushering children through the crowd. Remember, many children are talking, many are yelling, but all are making some kind of noise. A group of troublemakers at the end decides to bang their plastic plates against the table in unison. Another group fights over their seats. And then the plates are filled with food and a hush falls over the room. Children pose for me, mid-chicken leg⁹ and grinning.

Now, I’m not saying that my feelings about Thanksgiving have changed, but spending lunchtime with a room full of happy kindergartners made my week.

My eighteenth week in Morocco also saw the first meeting of the brand new upper school art club in the library. There are no official art classes for grades 7-12, so I started an after school art club with two other teachers. We’re just two meetings in, but it’s been great fun. Eventually, I think the art club will function as a kind of individual workshop time with group lessons for students who are interested in particular activities. We’ll be doing “traditional” art, knitting and crocheting, origami, sewing, beadwork, and much more! Teachers and students will take turns teaching the group, depending upon each person’s area of expertise. On the weekend I had more house guests, French ones this time, who were on a one-year bicycle tour of Mediterranean Europe. I showed them around town a bit and took advantage of the opportunity to practice my French. After dinner and dessert, we sat on a wall in the kasbah looking out across the ocean to Spain while a man played guitar and a group of giggling children practiced their flamenco dancing.

Week nineteen? More work. I had a dear friend visiting from DC for a few days, so we had great fun chatting, exploring the city, and figuring out which local foods might give him an allergic reaction. The week ended with another movie night, this time for the fifth and sixth grades.¹⁰ I celebrated my five month-iversary in Morocco with two Spanish friends, eating tagine and lobia at my usual haunt, and chaotic week twenty-one was full of “last week of school” activities.¹¹

Early Sunday morning I hopped on an airplane with two friends and–after two flights, a five-hour layover in Madrid, two more trains, and a short drive–we found ourselves at their cozy house in Wales. I snuggled into warm blankets and slept until morning.¹²

I have a secret to share with you, dear readers. After three weeks devoid of photos, blog posts, sunlight, and fun, I was feeling pretty demoralized. I seriously considered ending this weekly tradition for good, and instead returning to my pre-Morocco sporadic blogging schedule. And then I heard from some of you, in comments, via email or Skype, and even through a lovingly crafted letter in the mail.¹³ I thought for a while about my stress at work, lack of creative time, and shameful neglect of my camera and music. And you know what? Writing, reading, painting, photographing, music-making, and adventuring are the things that make me happy, and absolutely shouldn’t be relegated to the “well, if I have time” category.

So here I am, back and newly motivated. I’ll be blogging the next two weeks from England,¹⁴ and then back to Morocco in the new year.¹⁵

And in the way of an apology for the delay, here is a special bonus photograph of Loki supervising my blogging. It’s hard work, but someone has to do it. He’s especially adept at catching stray commas.

1. And you, too, dear readers.
2. Bought a little surprise for my mum. No guessing! You’ll have to wait ’til Christmas.
3. These biweekly movie nights are going to fund new shelf labels, a better speaker system, new furniture, and, of course, books.
4. I may or may not have bribed them with candy.
5. Or casual acquaintances who have unwittingly made the mistake of bringing up the subject.
6. See what I did there?
7. The fact that there was no *actual* holiday that week didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits in the least, and the kids were still running around the school chattering excitedly.
8. I spent the next few hours feeling simultaneously accomplished and guilty.
9. Chicken was served instead of turkey, for the most part, due to availability. Other dishes included salad, fresh fruit, rice, and some Moroccan cakes.
10. Getting closer to buying nice things for the library!
11. I even managed to find a decent fake Christmas tree and put it up in my apartment living room, which now cozy and feels a bit more like home. After making construction paper decorations, and adding some house guests and friends to complete my little Tangier family, I was all set.
12. Rainy morning, of course, since this is Wales in winter.
13. You know who you are.
14. Hopefully with cheering holiday photographs.
15. The jury is still out on whether I should continue the “Morocco, Week __” titling scheme while in England. Maybe I’ll stop being lazy and write clever titles for each new post.

On Saturday I wandered through sunlit streets to a little shop with art supplies and bought a set of drawing pencils and some acrylic paints. Picked up a fresh baguette and vegetables on my way home, then made a delicious pasta sauce for lunch.² In the evening I headed downtown for Tanjazz, Tangier’s annual jazz festival. The featured musician, Fouad Hani, played about five different instruments, which were lined up in front of him and switched after each song. The crowd was full of young people, who were jumping, riding each other’s shoulders, throwing hats and scarves into the air. Near me, a mother and daughter danced together. The musician, who had a big gray beard and jaunty yellow cap, pranced about the stage as he sang. He stomped, kicked, grinned into the flashing lights. The drum pulsed through the crowd like a false heartbeat.³

I explored the city docks on Sunday, frightening a flock of seagulls and, later, a school of fish. Met a cat with the kind of eyes that cats only have in Halloween storybooks. Befriended two travelers from Bristol, England and showed them my favorite spots, then enjoyed a late-night tagine. Fell into bed just in time to catch my breath before the coming workweek.

1. It’s all arranged on an unused door, so there are big letters that say “DINO DOOR”. The girls keep asking for books about princesses, so I think I’ll make a princess corner next, featuring reigning women throughout history who defied gender roles to make a difference in the world.
2. Green peppers, two perfect tomatoes, onions, garlic. Fresh baguette.
3. Later that night, Loki caught, killed, and devoured an enormous cockroach in my apartment, reaffirming that adopting a kitten has been one of my smartest choices since moving here.

Step 1: Find twigs.

Step 2: Light the fire and arrange a few large stones around it.

Step 3: Heat oil in the tagine dish.³

Step 4: Assign onion chopping duty to the bravest member of your group.

Step 5: Assign carpet-guarding duty to the most experienced member of the group.

Step 6: Rinse your chicken and toss it in.⁴

Step 7: Cover and simmer for a few minutes.

Step 8: Stir in your spices.⁵

Step 9: Add about half the onions.

Step 10: Sprinkle in parsley.

Step 11: Add the other half of the onions.

Step 12: Top with tomatoes and cover. Simmer for at least an hour, or until chicken is done.⁶

Step 13: Prepare some mint tea while you wait.

Step 14: Eat dessert first. Don’t worry, though. If you prepared properly–as we did–you’ll have at least two more desserts to go.⁷

Step 15: Drink some more mint tea.

Step 16: Welcome an unexpected visitor to your picnic. Offer him tea, but recognize that not all coleoptera feel the same way about Moroccan mint tea.

Step 17: If you’re very lucky, a member of your group will have remembered her musical instrument. After passing it around for a while, you may want to complete the band with a bucket drum and tin tray tambourine.

Step 18: Chop some green peppers for a salad.

Step 19: Eat the salad.⁸

Step 20: Ta da! Your tagine is done. Uncover, put out the fire,⁹ and dig in.

Step 21: Eat your second dessert.¹⁰ Have the most experienced member of your group test it for quality control.

Step 22: Run around on the beach for a while.

Step 23: Return to your picnic site to enjoy a well-earned third dessert.

Step 24: Don’t forget to congratulate yourselves and set a date for the next tagine adventure!

1. Really useful if you’re, you know, hiking through the wilderness with a heavy clay dish and lid.
2. In all fairness, Mustapha did most of the actual cooking while I hovered with my camera so I could have photos for this blog post. Documentation is important! I still call that a group effort.
3. Both the clay pot and the finished food are called “tagine” so for the sake of clarity I’ll be referring to the receptacle as “tagine dish” and the food as “tagine”.
4. Omit step 7 if you are vegetarian/vegan, or if you forgot the chicken.
5. I will find out later–for your sake, dear reader–the type and amount of spices used. I saw cumin, paprika, and saffron, but Mustapha may have slipped some others in as well.
6. Make sure the bottom of your tagine dish is not getting burnt!
7. Seriously. Over the course of a few hours, we had flan, then fruit salad, then cookies. And that’s not even counting all the sugar in the mint tea.
8. Tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and parsley with a light vinaigrette.
9. This is important.
10. In our case, a delicious fruit salad with peaches, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and mint.

Still, I managed to get away from my books and my PHP code every once in a while, if only out of a sense of responsibility to my readers.¹ If I didn’t do interesting things each week, there would be nothing to write about. And definitely no photos.

I broke the fast on Monday evening, the second-to-last day of Ramadan, with Mustapha’s family. Same delicious food, even better conversations and jokes. I brought my notebook this time and asked to be taught some common Berber phrases and words.² For dessert we had pastries and bread with really, really delicious honey. I don’t even like honey, and I loved this honey. Seriously. Come to Morocco and eat honey. We watched a Moroccan TV show in which the characters had many conversations in stairwells.

Next I was shown some videos of traditional Berber music and was astonished to see a banjo being played in all of them! Though not a strictly traditional Moroccan instrument, the banjo has been embraced here, and fits in surprisingly well with the musical traditions.³ I even learned a few dance steps.

As soon as this was over, Mustapha’s sisters asked me if they could put Moroccan makeup on me, and–blissfully full of harira, honey, and music–I accepted. After half an hour of eye-poking and lip smacking, I emerged with smoky eyes⁴ and more lipstick than I’ve worn since I was five years old and trying on my mother’s makeup.⁵ Photographic evidence below.⁶ (I have no idea what one normally does when coated in makeup, so I took goofy photos.)

The following night I ended up in my favorite rooftop café, sipping mint tea with two Russians and a Moroccan friend. We wandered up to the Kasbah and sat outside another café where a group of local musicians were performing traditional Andalusian music.⁷ My friends left, and I moved inside the café, which was small with padded benches lining the walls and carpets hanging everywhere. The musicians were spread out across most of the room. None of them seemed to care about their audience; they had the air of a group of old friends, having fun together and creating something wonderful. They would even give each other goofy looks when one of them missed a beat, or smile appreciatively after another completed an especially difficult solo. I grinned like an idiot and tapped my foot to the music. I couldn’t tell whether it was just one song or a string of them, but it lasted for about an hour. Figuring they needed a break, I clapped awkwardly at the end (I was their only audience at that point, as the group of Spanish tourists outside had departed about half an hour earlier) then put my hand on my heart and smiled (what I hope is a universal gesture) and said thank you in Arabic. Next time I’m going to ask one of them to show me how to play or sing.

I spent Eid lunch the next day with Mustapha’s family, and the girls had a surprise for me: my very own haik! A haik is, essentially, a long piece of fabric that Berber women (in the south, especially) wrap around the body and head, which sounds much less glamorous than it looks. After lunch (scrumptious chicken tagine) I broke out my mandolin. It was exciting for everyone, but especially the neighbor’s baby, who sat next to me, wide-eyed and full of amazement, as I sang to him and plucked the strings. Soon we broke out makeshift drums, in the form of a bucket and silver serving tray, and played with great enthusiasm for about half an hour, until the baby began to give us all very stern looks.

In the afternoon we visited a cousin of the family’s, who, it turns out, loves to garden but can’t get any help from her family. (They prefer only to eat the literal fruits of her labor.) Her garden, in a courtyard surrounding the house, is lovely. She has one of every kind of fruit tree, countless flowers, happy air plants, and much more. I offered my assistance, and it looks like I might have a new gardening buddy!⁸

On the weekend I cooked some food, worked extra hours, chatted with friends, and walked through a park in time to catch sunset over the cliffs. Walked home in the dark, accompanied by a friendly cat and a cool breeze.

1. If you really exist.
2. When I look at my notebook now, I squint down at my notes and make what I hope are the appropriate vowel sounds, suspecting that if the Boussta family were here now they’d be in stitches over my pronunciation.
3. I think I liked the banjo more in two Berber performances than in all of the bluegrass songs I’ve heard, put together.
4. The dark eyeliner is called kohl. (http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Kohl) Fun fact: it’s been banned by the FDA due to risk of lead poisoning. So glad I read that a week later and not at the time.
5. She had a bright crimson shade that she never wore, for obvious reasons, and shimmering blue eyeshadow that I applied all the way up to my eyebrows.
6. Seriously, guys, this is more makeup than I wore for my Charlie Chaplin costume.
7. I think they’re there every night.
8. I miss my makeshift greenhouse in DC,  and find myself wishing I’d brought more seeds with me to Morocco.

More photos on Flickr.

1. Against all logic, this restaurant is housed in an Irish pub.

You can hear some of Brady’s music on his website, or watch him play a newer song in the music video:

1. He teaches poetry at UMW.

(You might want to pause and wait for it to load. HD is cranky like that.)