Taboo Subject

I had a sick day today. My stomach is suffering from too much Morocco.

There's no way around it; this country is just hard on the digestive system. Chemically, I wonder what the exact issues are, but even the locals report trouble more frequently than I'm accustomed to. Everyone who visits here gets sick, it seems... foreign bellies just aren't ready for the dense, delicious traditional cuisine.

After several months here, I had considered myself immune, but I realize that my diet while living here has been fairly basic. When I cook for myself, I usually eat sandwiches with delicious khubz bread, or some combination of the endless yogurt products. Since last month, I have been determined to prepare real Moroccan cous-cous correctly, and this weekend I tackled my first tagine. I made a tagine with steak pieces and potatos, carrots, zucchini, turnips, and a couple other vegetables I don't know the English names for. It actually turned out quite well, and the seasoning was decent. I made this for my Moroccan friend and her mother, who I hosted at my house yesterday after school for only about 5 hours. We had a lovely time together, and I got some ideas for next time I make tagine.

However, my body maybe doesn't like this frequency of eating traditional Moroccan cooking every day. I stayed home from school, since I wasn't really able to be vertical safely, much less move around to teach.

It entertains me that, though digestive sicknesses of all kinds are not considered delicate conversation topics in my home culture, here people are quite matter-of-fact. A friend and co-teacher who called me asked straight out, "Do you have diarrhea? Are you throwing up?" I guess that's the result when the digestive system presents such a regular interference to daily life.

I'm going back to sandwiches.