Amslane Day 3- interviews and couscous Fridays
Souad and I conducted our first more formal structured interviews today with Brahim and his brother Husain. Souad and I are still finding our rhythm with translation and interviews. Her English is quite good but we still had some words to go over and look up again this morning to prepare, and I had to rephrase them quite often during the interview so they made sense, but maybe more a problem because of my tendency to be so wordy and long winded with my questions. As someone who left the village it was interesting to talk with Husain. He was able to give some more perspective on why people migrate to the city, what they bring back to the village, and how that has changed life here.
I wonder how much I am missing in translation since sometimes answers are much longer than Souad’s summaries, but that is the nature of research in a different language. Between dialects of any language things can be lost or confused, but this is a little more complex. Also some languages take more words to say certain things- English can be very simplistic or easy to condense the same idea in different ways. Still so much about Tachelhit, Darija (Moroccan Arabic) to learn and new sounds and plant names too which is quite interesting (also relevant for my research of course).
Before lunch we went on another short hike and hung out in terkayne (walnut) trees. Lunch was the traditional Friday sicsou (couscous). According to Souad it is typical for families eat couscous on Fridays in Morocco and more men (sometimes women) attend prayer at the Timezguida (Mosque).
I helped Yemena make butter in the kitchen- quite a bicep workouts. We took turns shaking a large metal canister hanging from the ceiling filled with milk from her cow and water. It was funny trying to communicate with Yemena without my translator since I know only a few phrases in Tachelhit so far, so I just shook the canister and trying to emote with my face since. It’s a fairly intensive process, and takes about 1.5 hours of shaking, so takes a lot of arm strength to separate out the butter fat solids from the fluids. Must be tiring for Yemena every week especially as she is pregnant (we were just told by her mother who visited today).