How is it possible that it takes me almost 2 whole days to get from Casablanca to my site but right around 36 hours to get from Casablanca to Buenos Aires? And that’s with a generous layover partway there. Let me tell ya something, I didn’t expect to realize that I had taken ease of travel for granted! This has been one of the most insistent realizations though. Pretty much no matter how I spin it, it takes darn close to 6 hours (if I am lucky) to get to the nearest big city, and almost 24 hours to make it to the Atlantic Coast. 24 hours on the way out that is. It’s at least 36 hours in the other direction, if not nearly 48. It’s funny, because it really isn’t that far if you calculate the kilometers/miles. It just the transportation system. Either you take grand taxis (downside: you have to switch in each city most times, so sometimes you get stuck partway) or the suq bus (stops at every small town on the way, dramatically lengthening the trip) or a transit van (same problem as suq bus) or the train/high-end bus (expensive and only available in big cities).
Thus, traveling takes a while, and you never can predict what is going to happen. Once, the taxi I was in got stuck in 2 foot deep dust. It was supposed to be a short cut ("short cuts make long delays," anyone?) but the driver slowed way down before heading off road. ‘Keep going!’ I thought. Nope. He slowed waaaay down. So that our previous copious inertia was reduced to zip, and instead of scooting over the dust, we just sunk straight into it. It’s a habit of drivers here to slow waaaay down whenever they go over a bump or rough terrain. Good for the shocks I guess but makes you way more likely to get stuck. We spent a good 10 minutes revving the engine and spinning wheels (ie. sinking deeper in the dust). A kind transit driver stopped by, and attempted to pull us out with a very light weight rope. It broke. Twice. Then another vehicle got stuck nearby attempting to go around us. A bus went by to my destination… I contemplated jumping ship… er… taxi. Another truck came along with a chain (‘Ah ha! I thought. ‘Now we are getting somewhere!’) With difficulty we found a place to hook it on, positioned the truck, stuffed dead bushes under the taxis wheels and all the men got over there and pushed. (Yes, I tried to help, too) And, with a bit of spinning of wheels and a LOT of flying dust, we were free.
Or all that flooding washing out the road, and I had to get out and hike 5 km to meet another transit.
Or the time(s) I said, forget transit, I will take my bike and carry it across all the wash out zones.
Or the time I got stuck in Sefrou and had to stay with a Moroccan family overnight.
Or the time I got stuck between four carsick people, all vomiting at the same time. Good thing I don’t get carsick! Actually, it was pretty funny, because I had my kittens with me, too, and at that exact moment when I and the transit conductor were both realizing I was surrounded by vomiting on all sides my kittens started making a racket trying to escape (who can blame them?). The guys were like, "her cats are sick too!!" and we all laughed.
Or the sheep, goats, chickens, bags of flour, crates of grapes, blocks of cement, Tvs, beds… everything… that get packed into the transits with people.
Yup, transport is an adventure. I know volunteers who have even made a game of it, see who can find the most creative transport method from point A to point B. Any method will do… makes for good stories.
Nope, that’s right. Never a dull moment!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Religion Revisited... first real December post
Religion Revisited 01-12-08
On my way back from Thanksgiving with my family, I stopped in Fez to recover. At that point I had been traveling for about 38 hours straight… so I got a hotel near an area I know pretty well, and spent some time wandering the streets through the cold rain and more time chillin’ in the neat place called CafeClock. It’s a place where expats, students both foreign and domestic, and occasionally PCVs mix. They have good food, decent drinks, a cool culture of art display and (most importantly!) free wireless internet! So I came in, and found an open couch in the library area, and set up. A little while later two Moroccan-looking women came in and greeted the woman sitting next to me, and then commenced to speaking in excellent English! It turns out one of those two "Moroccan-looking" women was a cultural British ethnic Pakistani taking some time out of her teaching career to learn Arabic and immerse herself in a Muslim culture.
Now, all three of these women are well educated, intelligent, motivated, and religious people. So they started chatting about this, and that, and then the conversation moved to religion. Different experiences they have had, lessons they have learned, methods of prayer and worship they have tried… I am NOT used to listening in on these conversations! It was amazing!!! It was also a kind of trippy experience, because the way they were talking, even many of the lessons they had learned about God and about themselves were so very, VERY similar to what it sounds like when I get together with my close girlfriends who care as much about following Jesus as I do. Like, learning the benefits of repentance, or the beauty of certain prayers, or how difficult it is to balance modern life with religious life, or how frustrating it is when people of religious conviction use religion to continue to keep women "under control." I sat there listening for a very long time, an hour at least, and then finally screwed up the courage to say something about all these thoughts. I had chimed in here and there before, but it took me a while to chime in on the religious conversations.
And they were so understanding, welcoming, and pleased that I was joining in. I remember one of them saying, "well, of course this reminds you of your religion, for it is said ‘there are many roses, but only one water source.’" Which I still think is very beautiful. Forget for a moment all the debates about who is saved and who isn’t (I am SO glad I am not God and don’t have to make decisions like that!!), it was amazing to find this common ground with these young women, and to have that conversation. So often here, I feel isolated, just as that British woman feels surrounded and edified, by the religious life here. And I wonder if she feels like that in England??… maybe, but the general public here are far, far more religious than the general public in any other country I have been in. Secondly, it was amazing to get the educated feminine perspective on religion here. There are one, maybe two other women in my village who have been to college in my village. One is the doctor at the clinic and the other is nurse at the clinic. So often all I get for my questions here is "because God wants," or "because God doesn’t want" for an answer. And to just hear these women engaging their religion emotionally, spiritually AND intellectually was a huge, huge breath of fresh air. And made me take a step back from what I had been thinking. I admit it, I had been just about fed up with this seemingly close-minded, insistent, rule-heavy religion. And here, for once I found the fabled tolerance, devotion and thoughtfulness I had heard of. So, l-Hamdulillah (Thanks be to God) for the opportunity to meet those remarkable women!
On my way back from Thanksgiving with my family, I stopped in Fez to recover. At that point I had been traveling for about 38 hours straight… so I got a hotel near an area I know pretty well, and spent some time wandering the streets through the cold rain and more time chillin’ in the neat place called CafeClock. It’s a place where expats, students both foreign and domestic, and occasionally PCVs mix. They have good food, decent drinks, a cool culture of art display and (most importantly!) free wireless internet! So I came in, and found an open couch in the library area, and set up. A little while later two Moroccan-looking women came in and greeted the woman sitting next to me, and then commenced to speaking in excellent English! It turns out one of those two "Moroccan-looking" women was a cultural British ethnic Pakistani taking some time out of her teaching career to learn Arabic and immerse herself in a Muslim culture.
Now, all three of these women are well educated, intelligent, motivated, and religious people. So they started chatting about this, and that, and then the conversation moved to religion. Different experiences they have had, lessons they have learned, methods of prayer and worship they have tried… I am NOT used to listening in on these conversations! It was amazing!!! It was also a kind of trippy experience, because the way they were talking, even many of the lessons they had learned about God and about themselves were so very, VERY similar to what it sounds like when I get together with my close girlfriends who care as much about following Jesus as I do. Like, learning the benefits of repentance, or the beauty of certain prayers, or how difficult it is to balance modern life with religious life, or how frustrating it is when people of religious conviction use religion to continue to keep women "under control." I sat there listening for a very long time, an hour at least, and then finally screwed up the courage to say something about all these thoughts. I had chimed in here and there before, but it took me a while to chime in on the religious conversations.
And they were so understanding, welcoming, and pleased that I was joining in. I remember one of them saying, "well, of course this reminds you of your religion, for it is said ‘there are many roses, but only one water source.’" Which I still think is very beautiful. Forget for a moment all the debates about who is saved and who isn’t (I am SO glad I am not God and don’t have to make decisions like that!!), it was amazing to find this common ground with these young women, and to have that conversation. So often here, I feel isolated, just as that British woman feels surrounded and edified, by the religious life here. And I wonder if she feels like that in England??… maybe, but the general public here are far, far more religious than the general public in any other country I have been in. Secondly, it was amazing to get the educated feminine perspective on religion here. There are one, maybe two other women in my village who have been to college in my village. One is the doctor at the clinic and the other is nurse at the clinic. So often all I get for my questions here is "because God wants," or "because God doesn’t want" for an answer. And to just hear these women engaging their religion emotionally, spiritually AND intellectually was a huge, huge breath of fresh air. And made me take a step back from what I had been thinking. I admit it, I had been just about fed up with this seemingly close-minded, insistent, rule-heavy religion. And here, for once I found the fabled tolerance, devotion and thoughtfulness I had heard of. So, l-Hamdulillah (Thanks be to God) for the opportunity to meet those remarkable women!
Books I have been reading and the thoughts they inspire
A Generous Orthodoxy. Hmmm.
I’m reading a book called A Generous Orthodoxy. It’s good, I recommend it so far, to just about anyone. Just buckle up and be prepared for a very cerebral look at faith. Which is cool, because I just read a different book that approached faith from a very different angle. Mysticism and experience. Eat, Pray, Love was the name of the second book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Both of these books happen to be a part of some things I’ve been thinking about.
First off, let me say, I have yet to be convinced by any of the arguments presented to me intending to convert me to Islam.
However, I’m curious. I’m looking around me and trying to learn from my neighbors, both American and Moroccan. Plus, faith is practiced differently for me here. No weekly communal worship, very little in the way of singing. It was an emtional experience to listen to the recording of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" by the Trinity College Choir, complete with amazing organ music. Just to remember that I am not, in fact, the only Christian/Jesus-follower left on the face of the planet.
But!! This is not all bad! I’m being forced to make this work, just me and my God, and that is a good thing. So, my prayer now includes Yoga, because it focuses me in the present, which is a good place to pray from. I am slowly working my way through the Bible, front to back. And there is, actually a church in Ifrane, a mere 6 hours away. I hope to go sometime in the relatively near future.
All of this has been a bit toungue in cheek, but I am quite serious about all this. Praying gets me through the day. Yoga gets my day started right, and so does reading the Bible. Meditating on 2 Timothy 1:5-7 (-ish) motivates me. "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of love and of power and of self-discipline." So when I’m afraid to call a meeting because I don’t know… so many things… I remember that. I am not to be afraid, because of the spirit that was given me. I just have to live in that spirit. (Just? Yeaah… it’s not easy always… not in America and not here either) And I remember that all I really have to worry about now is the next step. The one after that comes after this one, so I won’t really know what it is anyway until I take the step that’s right in front of me so I might as well take it and see what happens. Hell, I came here to take chances! So take ‘em already!!
So, a generous orthodoxy… well, I got sidetracked, but a generous orthodoxy is a cool book. It’s got stuff on all sorts of different Christian denominations and talks about the strengths of each. It also talks about the current downfalls of the church, and he doesn’t pull his punches. For all those out there who died a little inside every time certain political leaders professed their faith brazenly, this is a breath of fresh air. And as for the other book, well it’s about healing. From the heart, in a place of openness and freedom. Freedom to practice devotion in whatever way comes sincerely from the heart. And that, too, is a breath of fresh air. Perhaps especially here, in a place of tradition that guides and encloses. Not always in a bad way, but not always in a good way either. So yeah, I’d recommend either book, and if you do read it, please DO share your thoughts with me. I love talkin’ about this stuff! By whichever modes of communication I find available to me. J
I’m reading a book called A Generous Orthodoxy. It’s good, I recommend it so far, to just about anyone. Just buckle up and be prepared for a very cerebral look at faith. Which is cool, because I just read a different book that approached faith from a very different angle. Mysticism and experience. Eat, Pray, Love was the name of the second book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Both of these books happen to be a part of some things I’ve been thinking about.
First off, let me say, I have yet to be convinced by any of the arguments presented to me intending to convert me to Islam.
However, I’m curious. I’m looking around me and trying to learn from my neighbors, both American and Moroccan. Plus, faith is practiced differently for me here. No weekly communal worship, very little in the way of singing. It was an emtional experience to listen to the recording of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" by the Trinity College Choir, complete with amazing organ music. Just to remember that I am not, in fact, the only Christian/Jesus-follower left on the face of the planet.
But!! This is not all bad! I’m being forced to make this work, just me and my God, and that is a good thing. So, my prayer now includes Yoga, because it focuses me in the present, which is a good place to pray from. I am slowly working my way through the Bible, front to back. And there is, actually a church in Ifrane, a mere 6 hours away. I hope to go sometime in the relatively near future.
All of this has been a bit toungue in cheek, but I am quite serious about all this. Praying gets me through the day. Yoga gets my day started right, and so does reading the Bible. Meditating on 2 Timothy 1:5-7 (-ish) motivates me. "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of love and of power and of self-discipline." So when I’m afraid to call a meeting because I don’t know… so many things… I remember that. I am not to be afraid, because of the spirit that was given me. I just have to live in that spirit. (Just? Yeaah… it’s not easy always… not in America and not here either) And I remember that all I really have to worry about now is the next step. The one after that comes after this one, so I won’t really know what it is anyway until I take the step that’s right in front of me so I might as well take it and see what happens. Hell, I came here to take chances! So take ‘em already!!
So, a generous orthodoxy… well, I got sidetracked, but a generous orthodoxy is a cool book. It’s got stuff on all sorts of different Christian denominations and talks about the strengths of each. It also talks about the current downfalls of the church, and he doesn’t pull his punches. For all those out there who died a little inside every time certain political leaders professed their faith brazenly, this is a breath of fresh air. And as for the other book, well it’s about healing. From the heart, in a place of openness and freedom. Freedom to practice devotion in whatever way comes sincerely from the heart. And that, too, is a breath of fresh air. Perhaps especially here, in a place of tradition that guides and encloses. Not always in a bad way, but not always in a good way either. So yeah, I’d recommend either book, and if you do read it, please DO share your thoughts with me. I love talkin’ about this stuff! By whichever modes of communication I find available to me. J
Fun with Knives
Fun with Knives
16.11.08
Actually, I’m kind of surprised I hadn’t done it before. Slice my finger open, that is. See, there aren’t really cutting boards here. So, when I was helping my host mothers prepare dinner, it’s just our hands, the veggies, and a knife. Sometimes terribly dull, sometimes very, very sharp. And this includes vegetables like carrots and onions and tomatoes. There are some different techniques that I learned to avoid cutting myself, and they worked while I was living with my host family, and cutting veggies the Moroccan way. For example: when chopping an onion, hold the onion in the palm of one hand and chop it up, but don’t go all the way through. Then slice through the now pre-cubed onion. Pretty slick, right? Peeling tomatoes is tricky. Yes, I said peeling tomatoes. Moroccans (or at least Berbers in the two regions where I have lived) have a strong predilection to peeled vegetables. So, not only carrots, turnips and potatoes are peeled, but tomatoes and cucumbers, too. I believe this may have something to do with the general lack of teeth often observed… but who knows! So, to peel a tomato, you really do want a sharp knife, because a dull one just can’t make it through the skin. But you can make do by stabbing the point of the knife in to make an entrance and then pull of the skin from there.
But tonight I was chopping veggies American style, that is, using a plastic plate as a cutting board. And I was chopping fast, thinking about other things, and then I felt my knife hit my thumb tip. No pain, not yet. Too sharp of a blade and too fast moving. My nerves felt mostly the pressure. And there I am halfway through a soup recipe with my thumb. As I want to eat dinner, I keep cooking, and administer first aid to myself at the same time. Hopefully no blood got in the soup, but I guess it doesn’t really matter since only I am eating it anyway… somehow the soup got cooked, and my thumb was washed, allowed to stop bleeding and bandaged all at the same time. The soup turned out well, but the beans still aren’t quite done. I haven’t mastered beans yet. But the real miracle is that I didn’t take off another patch of skin at least while making first aid white bean soup. J
16.11.08
Actually, I’m kind of surprised I hadn’t done it before. Slice my finger open, that is. See, there aren’t really cutting boards here. So, when I was helping my host mothers prepare dinner, it’s just our hands, the veggies, and a knife. Sometimes terribly dull, sometimes very, very sharp. And this includes vegetables like carrots and onions and tomatoes. There are some different techniques that I learned to avoid cutting myself, and they worked while I was living with my host family, and cutting veggies the Moroccan way. For example: when chopping an onion, hold the onion in the palm of one hand and chop it up, but don’t go all the way through. Then slice through the now pre-cubed onion. Pretty slick, right? Peeling tomatoes is tricky. Yes, I said peeling tomatoes. Moroccans (or at least Berbers in the two regions where I have lived) have a strong predilection to peeled vegetables. So, not only carrots, turnips and potatoes are peeled, but tomatoes and cucumbers, too. I believe this may have something to do with the general lack of teeth often observed… but who knows! So, to peel a tomato, you really do want a sharp knife, because a dull one just can’t make it through the skin. But you can make do by stabbing the point of the knife in to make an entrance and then pull of the skin from there.
But tonight I was chopping veggies American style, that is, using a plastic plate as a cutting board. And I was chopping fast, thinking about other things, and then I felt my knife hit my thumb tip. No pain, not yet. Too sharp of a blade and too fast moving. My nerves felt mostly the pressure. And there I am halfway through a soup recipe with my thumb. As I want to eat dinner, I keep cooking, and administer first aid to myself at the same time. Hopefully no blood got in the soup, but I guess it doesn’t really matter since only I am eating it anyway… somehow the soup got cooked, and my thumb was washed, allowed to stop bleeding and bandaged all at the same time. The soup turned out well, but the beans still aren’t quite done. I haven’t mastered beans yet. But the real miracle is that I didn’t take off another patch of skin at least while making first aid white bean soup. J
Games Children Play
Games Children Play 15 November 2008
Ever watched children play with nothing but trash and rocks and love it? Well, I remember doing it as a kid, and I know that my friends did but I bet that is a sight increasingly rare in the suburbs of the US of A.
Anyway, I know for a fact that I was nowhere near as creative with my rock and trash games as the kids here are. Or, perhaps, some of the rock and trash games have been ‘tidied up’ over the years. For example: every child and woman (and probably men, too) knows how to play a complicated version of jacks. Find 5 small rocks and toss them up and try to catch them all on the back of your hand. How many you catch determines how many you have to pick up each time you attempt once you put all the rocks but one on the ground. You toss one rock into the air, scoop up a certain number of rocks and then catch the first rock on its way down. Or something like this… I still don’t get it entirely. They play hopscotch, too, but they call it meetch. It goes like this: scratch out the grid on the ground with a stick (there are two main shapes) and then throw a rock to a specific square and hop everywhere but there, and then come back, but pick up the rock with one hand on your way. And the ever popular mud-pies… sardine cans, some of mom’s baby celery, bottle caps, dirt, rocks = lunch!! And the most impressive of all: trash fastened together properly makes an awesome car for boys. You can even steer it if you attach a long stick to the front axle. Neat, huh?
And then there’s rock paper scissors. Yup, that’s right, it’s here, too! Only the kids say "Siss, boom, bah!" and then they shoot. I think the general method is to have the whole group throw down, and the losers step out, and then the winners go again. If there are ties, then they go against each other specifically. Or so it seems… I love rock paper scissors… as a decision making method between people it’s great. Definite and entertaining decision-making! If only I could play rock paper scissors with myself effectively…
Ever watched children play with nothing but trash and rocks and love it? Well, I remember doing it as a kid, and I know that my friends did but I bet that is a sight increasingly rare in the suburbs of the US of A.
Anyway, I know for a fact that I was nowhere near as creative with my rock and trash games as the kids here are. Or, perhaps, some of the rock and trash games have been ‘tidied up’ over the years. For example: every child and woman (and probably men, too) knows how to play a complicated version of jacks. Find 5 small rocks and toss them up and try to catch them all on the back of your hand. How many you catch determines how many you have to pick up each time you attempt once you put all the rocks but one on the ground. You toss one rock into the air, scoop up a certain number of rocks and then catch the first rock on its way down. Or something like this… I still don’t get it entirely. They play hopscotch, too, but they call it meetch. It goes like this: scratch out the grid on the ground with a stick (there are two main shapes) and then throw a rock to a specific square and hop everywhere but there, and then come back, but pick up the rock with one hand on your way. And the ever popular mud-pies… sardine cans, some of mom’s baby celery, bottle caps, dirt, rocks = lunch!! And the most impressive of all: trash fastened together properly makes an awesome car for boys. You can even steer it if you attach a long stick to the front axle. Neat, huh?
And then there’s rock paper scissors. Yup, that’s right, it’s here, too! Only the kids say "Siss, boom, bah!" and then they shoot. I think the general method is to have the whole group throw down, and the losers step out, and then the winners go again. If there are ties, then they go against each other specifically. Or so it seems… I love rock paper scissors… as a decision making method between people it’s great. Definite and entertaining decision-making! If only I could play rock paper scissors with myself effectively…
Thursday, November 6, 2008
election night
Barack Hussein Obama is our 44th President-Elect!!!!! (I sincerely hope I nailed the spelling on his name…) I am very much excited about this. Do you know what this means to the developing world? In this country where there is both blatent and latent racism, people have told volunteers that there was no way Obama would win because he is African American, this is a powerful statement. We Americans are inching toward being truly colorblind!! We’re not there yet, but this is a great step. I cannot say how proud I am. His heritage, too, is of great encouragement to the developing world. If the child of a Kenyan and an American can become the president of the United States, then there truly is vast opportunity for all peoples on this planet! The message says, have hope! Shoot for the stars, you just might make it!!
I am currently at in-service training, or IST, and that means that we have access to the internet and to televisions every day. Last night, we set up camp in the sitting room in the hotel where we are being put up for the training. There’s a 5-hour difference between us and the eastern seaboard of the United States, which means that the declaration of Obama’s election happened at 4 am for us, and his acceptance speech wasn’t until nearly 5 am. So, yes, we stayed up all night long. It was fun! We drew ourselves a map and colored it in as the election results came in. The majority of us had already voted by absentee ballot, so yes, we did participate in this election. And in some states, like North Carolina, it’s so close even absentee ballots are needed to determine the result! The result of this is that there are some very tired PCVs wandering around like zombies this morning. J I myself snagged between 3-5 hours of sleep, I’m not really sure.
In any event, this is history, this is our history, to my generation, this is ours!!! Ours to celebrate and, as our new president-elect said in his acceptance speech, our opportunity to make change in the world. It is also an opportunity for all ages, but for my generation this is our first testing. Let us all remember that hardship is an opportunity, because it means change, and change can go either way. It is entirely up to us what we do with our lives. I encourage everyone to make the most of the time given them. This has been inspiring and motivating for me, and I hope it is for you, too!
I am currently at in-service training, or IST, and that means that we have access to the internet and to televisions every day. Last night, we set up camp in the sitting room in the hotel where we are being put up for the training. There’s a 5-hour difference between us and the eastern seaboard of the United States, which means that the declaration of Obama’s election happened at 4 am for us, and his acceptance speech wasn’t until nearly 5 am. So, yes, we stayed up all night long. It was fun! We drew ourselves a map and colored it in as the election results came in. The majority of us had already voted by absentee ballot, so yes, we did participate in this election. And in some states, like North Carolina, it’s so close even absentee ballots are needed to determine the result! The result of this is that there are some very tired PCVs wandering around like zombies this morning. J I myself snagged between 3-5 hours of sleep, I’m not really sure.
In any event, this is history, this is our history, to my generation, this is ours!!! Ours to celebrate and, as our new president-elect said in his acceptance speech, our opportunity to make change in the world. It is also an opportunity for all ages, but for my generation this is our first testing. Let us all remember that hardship is an opportunity, because it means change, and change can go either way. It is entirely up to us what we do with our lives. I encourage everyone to make the most of the time given them. This has been inspiring and motivating for me, and I hope it is for you, too!
Monday, October 27, 2008
note on flooding
it continues. its bad. one storm dropped over 70mm of rain in one hour in a nearby city. that's well over 20 inches of rain for you non-metric folk. people have died (not in my town, but nearby). our mud houses are in danger of falling down. mine seems to be weathering the weather really well, considering its previously decrepid state. only minor leaking, and not in a way that makes me worry. a village up the river valley that is located directly below a cliff is in danger of a landslide.
as far as i can tell i am safe (or as safe as i can be) but we could use prayers. we could also use a forest. we could also use a long break in the rain.
as far as i can tell i am safe (or as safe as i can be) but we could use prayers. we could also use a forest. we could also use a long break in the rain.
frustrations and hopes
24 October 2008
Thoughts on a Macalester magazine… today, I looked out my front door and saw some ominous looking clouds, moving our way fast. I got dressed in a hurry, because I wanted to make it to the post office: maybe the package from home had arrived! The rain clouds were moving in quickly, but I got to the post office and back just as the first drops of rain began to fall. With a package!! In it my mother had thoughtfully supplied newspapers and magazines to read. One with the headline: “DOW falls 778.something points on the delay of the relief package.” Other similarly dire headlines accompany… the other newpapers were from tamurtinu (my land/place/earth/floor), Mount Horeb, which instead sport headlines about building referendums and such. And then there was the Macalester College magazine, most of which is devoted to pages and pages recognizing the many, many folks who donated money to the school in recent times. Bravo-alik! (means what it sounds like: bravo or good job) The rest of the magazine was stories about faculty, alumni and current students. Touting their successes and how Macalester helped them get there. Some people went on to work for Morgan Stanley, or become a professor at another esteemed college. And then there are the current students. So full of promise, excited about life and passionate about what they are studying! That is why I loved Macalester, that attitude. A mentor of mine once said she loved working with Mac students because “You are going to change the world!” Takes some living up to! Not that I ever minded a challenge, though. J There is truth in what she said. Some examples: one of my fellow alumni is Kofi Annan. One of my good friends from Mac is going to be a doctor, another already has her Masters degree and is out there traveling the world and chasing down job experience so that she can use said Masters degree, others are scientists, teachers in hard places, after school volunteers in the city… suffice it to say, looking around me and seeing the company I’m keeping, it encourages a little introspection.
Am I doing good where I’m at? Is this what I wanted it to be, am I satisfied that I am using my time well? In other words, am I “living up to it?” Well, I don’t know if I can answer that last question with certainty—time will tell—but I am satisfied that this, living in Morocco, and trying to be a little catalyst in a little town in the most overlooked region in northern Morocco, is well worth my time, my effort. So many of the women I talk to don’t know how to read or write, and not because there aren’t schools. Most were kept home by their parents. Parents who sent their boys (or, at least, most of their boys) to school, where they could learn and do some good, while keeping their girls at home. Where they are safe (from what? Boys, maybe), where they are needed (yes), where they belong (…), and where they will live their lives (most likely true). And now, their husbands tell them, “no, no I cannot spare you for an hour or two to go and learn to read and write. You must make my tea and my dinner and take care of the children and the animals and clean the house and the clothes and keep us all alive and healthy!” And maybe they tell themselves the same thing, and put their desire to learn aside in the pursuit of raising good, healthy children. Which is honorable. What is more honorable is that they are not often bitter about this… it is also sad!
I hope to help people here, all people, to see the value in education! In the basics, so that knowledge of healthcare and nutrition and changes in laws (like marriage laws) spreads and works its good work. And even more, so that people understand what is going on in the world beyond what the TV tells them. And even more, so that the people of this village understand the multiplicity of value that a forest holds. Not just firewood, not just fruit and nuts, not just shade, not just beauty. No! Erosion control, flood mitigation, the slowing of desertification—in other words, safety and livelihood security! (Would that I knew all of THOSE words in Tashelheit…) In a village that has claimed the only semi-flat ground in the middle of a treeless, steep slope, anything that keeps the flashfloods at bay and the soil on the ground should be highly valued. Education! How important! Not memorization, but knowledge integrated and made one’s own. And applied. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do here. Apply what I learned at “dear, old Macalester.” Wish us luck, say a prayer; we shall se what we can do with these rocky slopes!
Thoughts on a Macalester magazine… today, I looked out my front door and saw some ominous looking clouds, moving our way fast. I got dressed in a hurry, because I wanted to make it to the post office: maybe the package from home had arrived! The rain clouds were moving in quickly, but I got to the post office and back just as the first drops of rain began to fall. With a package!! In it my mother had thoughtfully supplied newspapers and magazines to read. One with the headline: “DOW falls 778.something points on the delay of the relief package.” Other similarly dire headlines accompany… the other newpapers were from tamurtinu (my land/place/earth/floor), Mount Horeb, which instead sport headlines about building referendums and such. And then there was the Macalester College magazine, most of which is devoted to pages and pages recognizing the many, many folks who donated money to the school in recent times. Bravo-alik! (means what it sounds like: bravo or good job) The rest of the magazine was stories about faculty, alumni and current students. Touting their successes and how Macalester helped them get there. Some people went on to work for Morgan Stanley, or become a professor at another esteemed college. And then there are the current students. So full of promise, excited about life and passionate about what they are studying! That is why I loved Macalester, that attitude. A mentor of mine once said she loved working with Mac students because “You are going to change the world!” Takes some living up to! Not that I ever minded a challenge, though. J There is truth in what she said. Some examples: one of my fellow alumni is Kofi Annan. One of my good friends from Mac is going to be a doctor, another already has her Masters degree and is out there traveling the world and chasing down job experience so that she can use said Masters degree, others are scientists, teachers in hard places, after school volunteers in the city… suffice it to say, looking around me and seeing the company I’m keeping, it encourages a little introspection.
Am I doing good where I’m at? Is this what I wanted it to be, am I satisfied that I am using my time well? In other words, am I “living up to it?” Well, I don’t know if I can answer that last question with certainty—time will tell—but I am satisfied that this, living in Morocco, and trying to be a little catalyst in a little town in the most overlooked region in northern Morocco, is well worth my time, my effort. So many of the women I talk to don’t know how to read or write, and not because there aren’t schools. Most were kept home by their parents. Parents who sent their boys (or, at least, most of their boys) to school, where they could learn and do some good, while keeping their girls at home. Where they are safe (from what? Boys, maybe), where they are needed (yes), where they belong (…), and where they will live their lives (most likely true). And now, their husbands tell them, “no, no I cannot spare you for an hour or two to go and learn to read and write. You must make my tea and my dinner and take care of the children and the animals and clean the house and the clothes and keep us all alive and healthy!” And maybe they tell themselves the same thing, and put their desire to learn aside in the pursuit of raising good, healthy children. Which is honorable. What is more honorable is that they are not often bitter about this… it is also sad!
I hope to help people here, all people, to see the value in education! In the basics, so that knowledge of healthcare and nutrition and changes in laws (like marriage laws) spreads and works its good work. And even more, so that people understand what is going on in the world beyond what the TV tells them. And even more, so that the people of this village understand the multiplicity of value that a forest holds. Not just firewood, not just fruit and nuts, not just shade, not just beauty. No! Erosion control, flood mitigation, the slowing of desertification—in other words, safety and livelihood security! (Would that I knew all of THOSE words in Tashelheit…) In a village that has claimed the only semi-flat ground in the middle of a treeless, steep slope, anything that keeps the flashfloods at bay and the soil on the ground should be highly valued. Education! How important! Not memorization, but knowledge integrated and made one’s own. And applied. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do here. Apply what I learned at “dear, old Macalester.” Wish us luck, say a prayer; we shall se what we can do with these rocky slopes!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Flooding
20 October 2008
I have lost count of how many times the river that cuts the floor of this valley has flooded in the past month and a half. I think the novelty wore off two or three weeks ago. Flash floods are still exciting, though. Not least because at least some of them result from rain here (as opposed to further up in the mountains), which means I find out just how waterproof my house really is.
Last night it started raining late, maybe 12 midnight or 1 am, and kept it up most of the night. By morning, when I stepped out my door to run down the stairs through the light rain to the bathroom, I could hear the river roaring already. So, having planned an early morning walk anyway, I decided to make the object of that walk viewing the river. I saw a youngish man and his younger and very pregnant wife on their roof looking around and shaking their heads. I greeted them and asked them how they were doing: “Labas Shwi.” Or “we’re doing just OK.” Was his answer. Rain had soaked through his roof and was now dripping off of the beams. Most roofs have decent sized pipes or other water exits on them for just this reason. A mud roof will eventually saturate with water if you don’t get that water off quickly. I asked about the flooding river, and he invited me up on his roof. I declined and asked directions to see the flood (I know the way, but I wanted him to feel good about something after I declined the invitation).
I walked down a back path, it cuts just below the post office and along several fields by a house where I know the family. Their teenage son, Ahmed appeared as I passed. We chatted as we walked… this sounds very simple and not very interesting, but he is one of the most animated people I know (he can give Katherine, and my Emiline a good run for their money!). Thus, it was quite entertaining! he asked me if their was water escaping into my house, great concern all over his face. No, I said and he nodded a satisfied grin. Your house? No, he said, still smiling but his face said: preposterous! At the transit stop we parted ways.
I found a high vantage point next to the president of the women’s association. Half the village turns out to watch the river destroy the fields each time it floods badly. This was the highest I had yet seen the river. The entire 200 ft wide riverbed is covered with pale brown, milky water that bludgeons everything in its path. This morning, some trees were over half submerged, and throwing up a spray on either side like a water-skier as they struggled to remain upright in the torrent of water. I asked the people near me where their fields were. Some said, up high, with a satisfied and relieved nod. Others pointed and said, ‘see that huge milky brown mess? That’s mine.’ ‘What’s growing there?’ ‘Turnips.’ ‘Will they be OK?’ ‘Yeah, they’re not corn.’ Corn doesn’t stand a chance in a flood, it ends up flattened and stripped of its ears.
I stood and watched for a good while, noting the beauty of the view even in the presence of a natural disaster. The colors of the earth are darkened by rain: there is red, purple, maroon, teal, yellow, orange, brown, and grey depending upon where you look. Contrasted by the rich greens and yellows of the patchwork terraces of the farm fields, and the swirling grey of the clouds it is beautiful. Speaking of those clouds, they way they were tumbling over the mountain hinted there just might be more rain on the way. I also noted the transits stopped in Ait Bartal… so the other river is flooding, too. This has to be at least the 6th or 7th time the road out of town has been buried by literally tons of rock, sand and mud. Hopefully, the bulldozer will come today and clear it off… otherwise I’ll be hauling my bike over that mess to get to souk tomorrow.
At this point, I have a couple questions: 1) will it ever stop raining? 2) is it like this EVERY autumn? I suppose the answer to first question is, of course, yes. And the second I have asked of folks. No, they say, last year we had very little rain in the autumn.
Somehow I never expected to be writing about constant flash-flooding in my blog from a village that is placed right on the very edge of the Sahara desert…
I have lost count of how many times the river that cuts the floor of this valley has flooded in the past month and a half. I think the novelty wore off two or three weeks ago. Flash floods are still exciting, though. Not least because at least some of them result from rain here (as opposed to further up in the mountains), which means I find out just how waterproof my house really is.
Last night it started raining late, maybe 12 midnight or 1 am, and kept it up most of the night. By morning, when I stepped out my door to run down the stairs through the light rain to the bathroom, I could hear the river roaring already. So, having planned an early morning walk anyway, I decided to make the object of that walk viewing the river. I saw a youngish man and his younger and very pregnant wife on their roof looking around and shaking their heads. I greeted them and asked them how they were doing: “Labas Shwi.” Or “we’re doing just OK.” Was his answer. Rain had soaked through his roof and was now dripping off of the beams. Most roofs have decent sized pipes or other water exits on them for just this reason. A mud roof will eventually saturate with water if you don’t get that water off quickly. I asked about the flooding river, and he invited me up on his roof. I declined and asked directions to see the flood (I know the way, but I wanted him to feel good about something after I declined the invitation).
I walked down a back path, it cuts just below the post office and along several fields by a house where I know the family. Their teenage son, Ahmed appeared as I passed. We chatted as we walked… this sounds very simple and not very interesting, but he is one of the most animated people I know (he can give Katherine, and my Emiline a good run for their money!). Thus, it was quite entertaining! he asked me if their was water escaping into my house, great concern all over his face. No, I said and he nodded a satisfied grin. Your house? No, he said, still smiling but his face said: preposterous! At the transit stop we parted ways.
I found a high vantage point next to the president of the women’s association. Half the village turns out to watch the river destroy the fields each time it floods badly. This was the highest I had yet seen the river. The entire 200 ft wide riverbed is covered with pale brown, milky water that bludgeons everything in its path. This morning, some trees were over half submerged, and throwing up a spray on either side like a water-skier as they struggled to remain upright in the torrent of water. I asked the people near me where their fields were. Some said, up high, with a satisfied and relieved nod. Others pointed and said, ‘see that huge milky brown mess? That’s mine.’ ‘What’s growing there?’ ‘Turnips.’ ‘Will they be OK?’ ‘Yeah, they’re not corn.’ Corn doesn’t stand a chance in a flood, it ends up flattened and stripped of its ears.
I stood and watched for a good while, noting the beauty of the view even in the presence of a natural disaster. The colors of the earth are darkened by rain: there is red, purple, maroon, teal, yellow, orange, brown, and grey depending upon where you look. Contrasted by the rich greens and yellows of the patchwork terraces of the farm fields, and the swirling grey of the clouds it is beautiful. Speaking of those clouds, they way they were tumbling over the mountain hinted there just might be more rain on the way. I also noted the transits stopped in Ait Bartal… so the other river is flooding, too. This has to be at least the 6th or 7th time the road out of town has been buried by literally tons of rock, sand and mud. Hopefully, the bulldozer will come today and clear it off… otherwise I’ll be hauling my bike over that mess to get to souk tomorrow.
At this point, I have a couple questions: 1) will it ever stop raining? 2) is it like this EVERY autumn? I suppose the answer to first question is, of course, yes. And the second I have asked of folks. No, they say, last year we had very little rain in the autumn.
Somehow I never expected to be writing about constant flash-flooding in my blog from a village that is placed right on the very edge of the Sahara desert…
typcial day
5 October 2008
Typical Day in Site:
This morning I woke up in my new room. Yesterday I did a lot of cleaning, building and moving to get my stuff out of the sitting room and into the room where I have always intended to sleep. Thus, I woke rather disoriented at 6:38am: I still haven’t got things set up the way I really want. I read a book for an hour, and then got up to feed the kittens and make breakfast—crushed barley with whatever I feel like putting in it. Then I got dressed (stay off the cold, cold floor!!) and contemplated what to do with the day. My plan for the day was to call my program manager to ask him for more information, and then go find the raisa (female president) of the women’s association and tell her about the neddi project, and go to the far dwar (tiny village) that I haven’t explored yet, and then return and work around my house.
The information I wanted from my PM (program manager) is about the National Initiative for Human Development, a program that is tied to the U.N. According to the Water and Forest Department representative with whom I work, it has chosen Ouled Ali to be eligible for funds to be used for human development. I don’t know much about the INDH, but am hoping to use that money to build a “neddi”, a sort of women’s center. It would be great thing for the women here: a neutral place outside of their homes where they could do communal artisan work to be sold in Missour, tourist joints, or even Ouled Ali if we can get tourists to come. They could hold literacy classes there, or even have a library. It is worth noting that these are my dreams for them—the only hopes I have heard expressed thus far are generally restricted to the husband-favored money making ones. Either way, it would be a great thing for them. Thus my desire to get more information.
So I beeped my PM and settled down to wait for him to call me back. That’s standard operating procedure here, because the Peace Corps specifically foots the phone bill at the Office, while we volunteers have to budget our money ourselves. It’s a bit of generosity that is greatly appreciated, and completely taken for granted at the same time. In the meantime, I read A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is so far quite good. He called me back, and promised to send me the information later today, along with other previously promised and forgotten information. So then I got up and prepared to leave the house, cleaning up after my still-sick kittens (Poo! Scat! Shit everywhere!! Bring out the Wet-Ones!!!…), and packing a back pack, I started walking over to Ait Ahendor, where the Raisa lives (I live in Ait Abou, which is on the other side of Ait Ali from Ait Ahendor, which are all duwars within the village of Ouled/Ait Ali). At the central transit stop/cluster of stores I met a women I know (she’s my host mothers sister, and her name might be Aicha… I wish I had Grandma’s memory for names… it would make life easier!) and we talked and walked until we came to a field where a family was harvesting their corn by hand with little hand scythes. The women went on, but I stayed to help load the corn onto donkeys and into bags so the women could carry the corn and cornstalks back to the house. While helping I was invited to tea, so I accompanied them back to their house and had tea with bread and oil and homemade butter and l-helwa (buttery finder cookies). Tasty! I ended up getting roped into staying for lunch, too, which was fine. I made friends with one of the next generation of mothers in the village. Her name is Aziza. There, now I can’t forget!! Extra good because her uncle is the president of the Medicinal Herbs and Honey Cooperative that exists here, and I need to get to know them better! They’re rather successful, and the money supplies this family with a nicer-than-usual home… ie. more rooms, actual decorations on the walls, a completely equipped kitchen, concrete walls and floors and ceilings in most rooms, and stairs to the roof instead of a ladder.
After this I left and found my Raisa, who was back from her own morning or corn-harvesting, and very tired. But I explained to her the some newly discovered hoops the association and I are going to have to jump through to get that INDH money for the neddi project!! We’ll see… if this goes really slowly, I’ll start talking to people about honey production and see if we can’t improve that, it’s been pretty “piss-poor” the past two years (to borrow an euphemism from a family member). And then walked out of town across the deep gorge that floods every once and a while and is home to a small river that dips in and out of the ground like a butterflier swimming in a pool. I then climbed up on the path that I know leads to that other duwar I haven’t been to, and spotted a raptor, probably a falcon! I whipped out my binoculars and planted myself on a rock to watch and see if I couldn’t glean enough to ID it. I got lucky, not only did I get enough info to ID it (a male Kestrel), but I got to see it hunting! A successful kill and then I watched it munching on what seemed to be a mouse. I then walked over to the other duwar, but found no one outside, so I decided to explore the path a bit further… it turns into a rather thrilling path along a steep mountainside that extends quite a way, who knows, it might go all the way to Tirnest (where a fellow volunteer lives). I then walked back, and met two women from that duwar, but decided to return to my house instead. I then made myself some tea and at a bunch of dried figs, and read a bit of the Christian Science Monitor (a fascinating newspaper, generally liberalish in the social justice area, but surprisingly conservative politically because of moral issues like pro-life/pro-choice… or so I believe… feel free to correct me!). And then more of Owen Meany… I am still super susceptible to a good book. :)
The plan from here on out is to take a shower (brr!!! There’s no door on my bathroom, so a bucket shower is unfortunately drafty!! Maybe I’ll just wash my hair instead…), and take some phone minutes over to my host family, and prepare some questions for my tutor and then have a lesson, come home and eat the chili that I made last night. Which was a decisive victory!! Not only did my host sister and mother like it, my much pickier younger host brother liked it too!!!! It seems I just need to pick and choose what food to introduce to Moroccans… things that are too unfamiliar don’t go over so well. Lesson learned.
Typical Day in Site:
This morning I woke up in my new room. Yesterday I did a lot of cleaning, building and moving to get my stuff out of the sitting room and into the room where I have always intended to sleep. Thus, I woke rather disoriented at 6:38am: I still haven’t got things set up the way I really want. I read a book for an hour, and then got up to feed the kittens and make breakfast—crushed barley with whatever I feel like putting in it. Then I got dressed (stay off the cold, cold floor!!) and contemplated what to do with the day. My plan for the day was to call my program manager to ask him for more information, and then go find the raisa (female president) of the women’s association and tell her about the neddi project, and go to the far dwar (tiny village) that I haven’t explored yet, and then return and work around my house.
The information I wanted from my PM (program manager) is about the National Initiative for Human Development, a program that is tied to the U.N. According to the Water and Forest Department representative with whom I work, it has chosen Ouled Ali to be eligible for funds to be used for human development. I don’t know much about the INDH, but am hoping to use that money to build a “neddi”, a sort of women’s center. It would be great thing for the women here: a neutral place outside of their homes where they could do communal artisan work to be sold in Missour, tourist joints, or even Ouled Ali if we can get tourists to come. They could hold literacy classes there, or even have a library. It is worth noting that these are my dreams for them—the only hopes I have heard expressed thus far are generally restricted to the husband-favored money making ones. Either way, it would be a great thing for them. Thus my desire to get more information.
So I beeped my PM and settled down to wait for him to call me back. That’s standard operating procedure here, because the Peace Corps specifically foots the phone bill at the Office, while we volunteers have to budget our money ourselves. It’s a bit of generosity that is greatly appreciated, and completely taken for granted at the same time. In the meantime, I read A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is so far quite good. He called me back, and promised to send me the information later today, along with other previously promised and forgotten information. So then I got up and prepared to leave the house, cleaning up after my still-sick kittens (Poo! Scat! Shit everywhere!! Bring out the Wet-Ones!!!…), and packing a back pack, I started walking over to Ait Ahendor, where the Raisa lives (I live in Ait Abou, which is on the other side of Ait Ali from Ait Ahendor, which are all duwars within the village of Ouled/Ait Ali). At the central transit stop/cluster of stores I met a women I know (she’s my host mothers sister, and her name might be Aicha… I wish I had Grandma’s memory for names… it would make life easier!) and we talked and walked until we came to a field where a family was harvesting their corn by hand with little hand scythes. The women went on, but I stayed to help load the corn onto donkeys and into bags so the women could carry the corn and cornstalks back to the house. While helping I was invited to tea, so I accompanied them back to their house and had tea with bread and oil and homemade butter and l-helwa (buttery finder cookies). Tasty! I ended up getting roped into staying for lunch, too, which was fine. I made friends with one of the next generation of mothers in the village. Her name is Aziza. There, now I can’t forget!! Extra good because her uncle is the president of the Medicinal Herbs and Honey Cooperative that exists here, and I need to get to know them better! They’re rather successful, and the money supplies this family with a nicer-than-usual home… ie. more rooms, actual decorations on the walls, a completely equipped kitchen, concrete walls and floors and ceilings in most rooms, and stairs to the roof instead of a ladder.
After this I left and found my Raisa, who was back from her own morning or corn-harvesting, and very tired. But I explained to her the some newly discovered hoops the association and I are going to have to jump through to get that INDH money for the neddi project!! We’ll see… if this goes really slowly, I’ll start talking to people about honey production and see if we can’t improve that, it’s been pretty “piss-poor” the past two years (to borrow an euphemism from a family member). And then walked out of town across the deep gorge that floods every once and a while and is home to a small river that dips in and out of the ground like a butterflier swimming in a pool. I then climbed up on the path that I know leads to that other duwar I haven’t been to, and spotted a raptor, probably a falcon! I whipped out my binoculars and planted myself on a rock to watch and see if I couldn’t glean enough to ID it. I got lucky, not only did I get enough info to ID it (a male Kestrel), but I got to see it hunting! A successful kill and then I watched it munching on what seemed to be a mouse. I then walked over to the other duwar, but found no one outside, so I decided to explore the path a bit further… it turns into a rather thrilling path along a steep mountainside that extends quite a way, who knows, it might go all the way to Tirnest (where a fellow volunteer lives). I then walked back, and met two women from that duwar, but decided to return to my house instead. I then made myself some tea and at a bunch of dried figs, and read a bit of the Christian Science Monitor (a fascinating newspaper, generally liberalish in the social justice area, but surprisingly conservative politically because of moral issues like pro-life/pro-choice… or so I believe… feel free to correct me!). And then more of Owen Meany… I am still super susceptible to a good book. :)
The plan from here on out is to take a shower (brr!!! There’s no door on my bathroom, so a bucket shower is unfortunately drafty!! Maybe I’ll just wash my hair instead…), and take some phone minutes over to my host family, and prepare some questions for my tutor and then have a lesson, come home and eat the chili that I made last night. Which was a decisive victory!! Not only did my host sister and mother like it, my much pickier younger host brother liked it too!!!! It seems I just need to pick and choose what food to introduce to Moroccans… things that are too unfamiliar don’t go over so well. Lesson learned.
10 October 2008
Living Healthfully
I don’t mean not smoking, drinking in moderation, or sleeping enough, though those are all legitimate subjects for such a title. No, I mean figuring out how to live in a new place: cook for yourself, adjust to the local microbes, local customs and lack of familiar stress relief. It’s a challenge. One that I was definitely looking forward to before I came here. I remember thinking how cool it would be to successfully turn whatever food is available to you into nutritious meals… buy/harvest it, get it back to your place of food preparation, get the bad parts out of it (rocks, bugs, rotten spot, peels, whatever), use unfamiliar cooking tools and turn out something both delicious and healthful. I can boast that I can do that now, and it is awesome, as expected. Boy, it took me a while to get there though! At first it was training, and then living with a host family (excellent experience though it is, it does not afford much opportunity to cook…) keeping me from figuring it out. And then there’s the whole adjusting to the local scene: microbes specifically… the microbes thing is pretty darn tricky if you are in a situation where you can’t cook for yourself. Then you must trust to whoever is cooking for you to take the necessary precautions to shelter your poor, weak GI tract. And while the cooking standard of said host family was good, it wasn’t quite good enough to keep me in health. I spent the vast majority of those 3 and-a-bit months with my host family sick. What with that and Ramadan, I had definitely lost weight—enough that my tutor noticed when he returned after his 2 month summer vacation. What did I have to lose you ask? Not much… Those who know me well know that I am one of those people who worry about losing weight more that gaining. It’s the result of a fast metabolism and an athletic history—it’s just difficult to keep enough weight on to feel good. Which is why it is so amazingly awesome to have been in good health for an entire month (!!!) and cooking good food and eating it and enjoying it and Hamdullah (Thanks be to God) gaining back that weight!
The other thing is learning how to deal with stress in a new situation. All, well not all, but most of the stress relief techniques used in the United States have either been modified by necessity or are simply not available here. Example: my faith—it’s hard to be a practicing follower of Christ when there is no community of fellow followers within 200 km. I have still only been to a church service once since I’ve been here, and had two Bible studies with other people of vaguely similar religious persuasion. That’s 3 in 7 months. Inchallah (God willing) I will be going to church in Azrou with an older volunteer one of the last weekends of October, but that’s not a trivial distance either: it takes 5 hours of blessed travels conditions to get me there, and if travel goes slowly en route, it might take all day. Aside—I’m not trying to complain here, I’m just trying to paint an accurate picture. Or music: I have lots of music to listen to (THANK GOD… no, seriously) but I, for some reason that I frankly fail to understand, did not bring my guitar with me. I don’t know what exactly inspired me to do that, especially after how much I missed having a guitar with me when I was in Tanzania, but I decided it wasn’t worth it (what were you THINKING, Jeannie???). I did, however, buy a fiddle. So, I’m learning how to play the fiddle, which is plenty fun, but… how many of you musicians can understand: having a new instrument to fiddle with (whoops, that’s a pun!!) is just not the same as noodling around on an instrument you know, you own, you can bend to your mood.
The point being, there have been some adjustments. I have adopted new stress relief activities—yoga anyone?—and learned about the depths of other ones.
I don’t mean not smoking, drinking in moderation, or sleeping enough, though those are all legitimate subjects for such a title. No, I mean figuring out how to live in a new place: cook for yourself, adjust to the local microbes, local customs and lack of familiar stress relief. It’s a challenge. One that I was definitely looking forward to before I came here. I remember thinking how cool it would be to successfully turn whatever food is available to you into nutritious meals… buy/harvest it, get it back to your place of food preparation, get the bad parts out of it (rocks, bugs, rotten spot, peels, whatever), use unfamiliar cooking tools and turn out something both delicious and healthful. I can boast that I can do that now, and it is awesome, as expected. Boy, it took me a while to get there though! At first it was training, and then living with a host family (excellent experience though it is, it does not afford much opportunity to cook…) keeping me from figuring it out. And then there’s the whole adjusting to the local scene: microbes specifically… the microbes thing is pretty darn tricky if you are in a situation where you can’t cook for yourself. Then you must trust to whoever is cooking for you to take the necessary precautions to shelter your poor, weak GI tract. And while the cooking standard of said host family was good, it wasn’t quite good enough to keep me in health. I spent the vast majority of those 3 and-a-bit months with my host family sick. What with that and Ramadan, I had definitely lost weight—enough that my tutor noticed when he returned after his 2 month summer vacation. What did I have to lose you ask? Not much… Those who know me well know that I am one of those people who worry about losing weight more that gaining. It’s the result of a fast metabolism and an athletic history—it’s just difficult to keep enough weight on to feel good. Which is why it is so amazingly awesome to have been in good health for an entire month (!!!) and cooking good food and eating it and enjoying it and Hamdullah (Thanks be to God) gaining back that weight!
The other thing is learning how to deal with stress in a new situation. All, well not all, but most of the stress relief techniques used in the United States have either been modified by necessity or are simply not available here. Example: my faith—it’s hard to be a practicing follower of Christ when there is no community of fellow followers within 200 km. I have still only been to a church service once since I’ve been here, and had two Bible studies with other people of vaguely similar religious persuasion. That’s 3 in 7 months. Inchallah (God willing) I will be going to church in Azrou with an older volunteer one of the last weekends of October, but that’s not a trivial distance either: it takes 5 hours of blessed travels conditions to get me there, and if travel goes slowly en route, it might take all day. Aside—I’m not trying to complain here, I’m just trying to paint an accurate picture. Or music: I have lots of music to listen to (THANK GOD… no, seriously) but I, for some reason that I frankly fail to understand, did not bring my guitar with me. I don’t know what exactly inspired me to do that, especially after how much I missed having a guitar with me when I was in Tanzania, but I decided it wasn’t worth it (what were you THINKING, Jeannie???). I did, however, buy a fiddle. So, I’m learning how to play the fiddle, which is plenty fun, but… how many of you musicians can understand: having a new instrument to fiddle with (whoops, that’s a pun!!) is just not the same as noodling around on an instrument you know, you own, you can bend to your mood.
The point being, there have been some adjustments. I have adopted new stress relief activities—yoga anyone?—and learned about the depths of other ones.
re-modeling
7 October 2008
About remodeling a house in Morocco. Lessons learned (could probably be applied in any country, actually): 1—assume that you will not be moving in on the day you are originally told you will be moving in.2—be prepared to be amazed at the number of ways rocks can be used in building3—being involved in the building process will help to ensure that you get better quality, and that little things don’t get forgotten.
I wish I had taken before pictures so you could all see the transformation (as yet not-quite finished)! The house had not been lived in for 8 years. It had been neglected, used as a good place to slaughter goats, and to store random bits of stuff. There were broken pots in the back room along with old shoes and an inch of dust, and the roof needed structural help in a couple of places. The roof was also leaking very badly, I remember looking at the floor when I first got there and noting the drip marks in the dirt floor… not a good sign. Why, you ask did I decide to live there when I had another perfectly good option? Well, there was the fact that my host family really wanted me to live in this house (for a variety of reasons; money, proximity…), and then there is the balcony. ( Like my mother, I looked at the view from the balcony and was more or less sold on it. It’s a pretty typical house for Ouled Ali: mud walls, and floors. Kind of like an adobe house in the southwest, actually. The roof is made of logs and sticks with mud, plastic and more mud over top of it all. The windows don’t have glass in them but do have iron grating in them and wooden shutters. The house is built onto my neighbors house. Most houses are sort of paired up with at least one neighbors house. The result is a kind of warren of curvy, narrow, steep walkways between chunks of houses. For example, my host families house shares roof and walls with both their neighbors and the mosque. This meant that at prayer time I had to be careful about going from my room to the kitchen, because the east facing windows looked right into the courtyard area of the house. Not so good to be distracting the men while they are praying. Anyway, the point is, houses are built together like combs in a beehive here.
4 months, major structural work, plastic on the roof, concrete added to the floors and half the walls, after the installation of stairs (instead of a steep and rickety ladder), and the installation of a bathroom, and a sink and counter, running water, electricity, two windows, a clothesline, a new metal door, a layer of whitewash and the rebuilding of the door frames later… I am living in a comfortable house. No furniture… cooking appliances for sure, though! I am lucky to have electricity, so I can have a refrigerator.
I painted a goodly portion of that whitewash myself. I don’t know what the whitewash is made of here, but it is super, super corrosive. I have scars on my arms from where some of the whitewash caked and dried and gave me chemical burns. Needless to say, after that I decided to buy some heavy duty rubber gloves so that I could whitewash with my skin intact. Whitewashing has been followed by scrubbing. LOTS and LOTS of scrubbing, to get the drips off of the wall and the floor. I still have some scrubbing to do. The thing is that I’m trying to keep things moving along as far as getting projects going and integrating into the entire community. This keeps me out of the house and away from scrubbing and washing and furniture building that needs to happen. Oh yeah; I’m stealing my friend Dan’s good idea and building myself some furniture. I bought 50 stalks of bamboo and a roll of wire to build myself some risers and shelves for storage. It should be an adventure, I’ve never worked with bamboo before, nor have I ever built furniture! Good thing I have wire-cutters with me. Thanks Dad!
Most creative use of building materials: my host father installed a new lock on my kitchen door using the old top of a sardine can as a backing for the lock… talk about reusing possible trash materials!!! It looks good, too, with its brassy finish. Kudos to him!
About remodeling a house in Morocco. Lessons learned (could probably be applied in any country, actually): 1—assume that you will not be moving in on the day you are originally told you will be moving in.2—be prepared to be amazed at the number of ways rocks can be used in building3—being involved in the building process will help to ensure that you get better quality, and that little things don’t get forgotten.
I wish I had taken before pictures so you could all see the transformation (as yet not-quite finished)! The house had not been lived in for 8 years. It had been neglected, used as a good place to slaughter goats, and to store random bits of stuff. There were broken pots in the back room along with old shoes and an inch of dust, and the roof needed structural help in a couple of places. The roof was also leaking very badly, I remember looking at the floor when I first got there and noting the drip marks in the dirt floor… not a good sign. Why, you ask did I decide to live there when I had another perfectly good option? Well, there was the fact that my host family really wanted me to live in this house (for a variety of reasons; money, proximity…), and then there is the balcony. ( Like my mother, I looked at the view from the balcony and was more or less sold on it. It’s a pretty typical house for Ouled Ali: mud walls, and floors. Kind of like an adobe house in the southwest, actually. The roof is made of logs and sticks with mud, plastic and more mud over top of it all. The windows don’t have glass in them but do have iron grating in them and wooden shutters. The house is built onto my neighbors house. Most houses are sort of paired up with at least one neighbors house. The result is a kind of warren of curvy, narrow, steep walkways between chunks of houses. For example, my host families house shares roof and walls with both their neighbors and the mosque. This meant that at prayer time I had to be careful about going from my room to the kitchen, because the east facing windows looked right into the courtyard area of the house. Not so good to be distracting the men while they are praying. Anyway, the point is, houses are built together like combs in a beehive here.
4 months, major structural work, plastic on the roof, concrete added to the floors and half the walls, after the installation of stairs (instead of a steep and rickety ladder), and the installation of a bathroom, and a sink and counter, running water, electricity, two windows, a clothesline, a new metal door, a layer of whitewash and the rebuilding of the door frames later… I am living in a comfortable house. No furniture… cooking appliances for sure, though! I am lucky to have electricity, so I can have a refrigerator.
I painted a goodly portion of that whitewash myself. I don’t know what the whitewash is made of here, but it is super, super corrosive. I have scars on my arms from where some of the whitewash caked and dried and gave me chemical burns. Needless to say, after that I decided to buy some heavy duty rubber gloves so that I could whitewash with my skin intact. Whitewashing has been followed by scrubbing. LOTS and LOTS of scrubbing, to get the drips off of the wall and the floor. I still have some scrubbing to do. The thing is that I’m trying to keep things moving along as far as getting projects going and integrating into the entire community. This keeps me out of the house and away from scrubbing and washing and furniture building that needs to happen. Oh yeah; I’m stealing my friend Dan’s good idea and building myself some furniture. I bought 50 stalks of bamboo and a roll of wire to build myself some risers and shelves for storage. It should be an adventure, I’ve never worked with bamboo before, nor have I ever built furniture! Good thing I have wire-cutters with me. Thanks Dad!
Most creative use of building materials: my host father installed a new lock on my kitchen door using the old top of a sardine can as a backing for the lock… talk about reusing possible trash materials!!! It looks good, too, with its brassy finish. Kudos to him!
Hiking in early october
15 October 2008
Lots of it! I have been hiking all over the Middle Atlas these past few months. They’ve been pretty intense hikes, all done with two second-year volunteers, Sarah and Nate, or with the rais (president) of the herders association I am working with. They’re all fun people. Sarah and Nate are ambitious in their hiking plans, and they like to move quickly! I’ve learned to walk quickly carrying quite a bit, and to find my own trail. When hiking with the rais, we move still more quickly, aided by a mule carrying our bags. My favorite hike so far was one with Sarah and Nate. They planned an ambitious 7-day hike that included summiting Bou Nacer (highest peak in the Middle Atlas, I believe) and then traversing close to 100 km. I decided to cut the hike short and leave at the midway point, because of 1—my kittens, and 2—my need to be in site.
We started with Justin, my closest PCV neighbor, at his site. He walked with us up the mountainside and then returned that same afternoon. We camped in a dry riverbed and prayed for good weather the next day. As it turned out, those three days were the only good weather days for a couple of weeks. A good thing, it was freezing cold on top of Bou Nacer even in the full morning sunlight! The view from the top was great, I could see all the way to High Atlas in one direction and Tezzka in the other. It was an abnormally clear day, gorgeous! We then faced the descent: some 1000m of unmarked, steep scree slope riddled with gullies cut by recent storms and surprise cliffs, some over 100 ft in height. And my boots decided to start to fall apart. Duct tape to the rescue! We made it down after a stop for lunch, and found a herder’s trail to the village we were hoping to stay the night near. It’s always an adventure trying to find water sources, usually you have to ask directions, and this was no different: we asked an old Berber herder, who was most helpful! The good thing is that Sarah and I speak Tamazight and Nate speaks Arabic, so between us we can communicate with everyone in the Middle Atlas. Except for French or German or Dutch tourists, I suppose… anyway, we found the water source at sunset. What a spring! Freezing cold, clear, fast running and high in volume! So constant that grass, grass! is growing all around it. The next morning we set out to find a TaHanut (little store) to resupply in Ait Maqabl, the nearby town. They do not get foreigners very often: we had 30 kids and 12 young men following us by the time we got to the TaHanut! Too funny, it reminded me of Tanzania. They were very helpful, showed us the way and picked up a water bottle that fell out of my pack. I met an incredibly striking Berber women, too. Most women wear semi-Berber-style headwraps or the traditional hijab of Islam, but she was wearing her hair in the super traditional Berber style: Two long braids with fabric woven in and crowned with brightly colored fabric. It’s regal and beautiful. I had never seen it before; more evidence of how isolated that town is! As we left town to find the riverbed we planned to walk down we got a lovely surprise! The riverbed was revealed as a huge, wide canyon! Gorgeous, and very difficult to get in a picture. It took us almost an hour to get from the canyon rim to the canyon floor (not a straight descent, but still!). We then walked down the river, passing the most truly Berber villages, meeting more women in traditional dress and having grapes pressed upon us by a nearly deaf older gentleman. Who watched us eat lunch, kept us company (even though he was fasting for Ramadan!) and then sent us on our way with an invitation to return for fast-break that evening, and went to pray. Sitting there cross-legged, for all the world like a Buddhist meditating, but chanting Allah Ahkbar… We got another surprise later: the canyon narrowed to huge red cliffs on either side of us, the river twisting and turning over the rocky bed. And, still, anywhere open was a tiny Berber dwar. We also found an offshoot, so beautiful… the cliffs were even higher here, some trick of geology left harder rock there, but the back of the offshoot (box canyon??) was a huge, dry waterfall. You could see where the water had carved channels in the nearly vertical rockface and where it lept off of overhangs to fall down and then run over a slope of rock shaped like a wide, curved staircase. We stood there in awe, looking over ferns and moss and beauty… brought Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven” to mind. On our way out we raided a few fig trees of late figs: DELICIOUS!!! I LOVE figs. Especially perfectly dried ones. We hiked out another long day, and made it to Berkine, my drop-off point. Sarah and Nate continued on through rainy weather and unknown territory all the way to Taza. Check it out on a map, that is no small distance!
I have come to love the land here, in its own way, on these hikes. The mountains are endlessly majestic, full of character and sadness. The rock is all that’s left in places, the dirt all eroded off for lack of trees. On one mountain you will find a thriving cedar forest, on another, a cedar graveyard. And one can witness cedar logs being smuggled out… they bring good money for people strapped for cash with few good ways to make more money. So hard to see… these majestic forests disappearing. The healthy cedar forests here rival the Northwest rainforests for majesty. I wish people would come to enjoy them, and pay the Berbers for the privilege!
Lots of it! I have been hiking all over the Middle Atlas these past few months. They’ve been pretty intense hikes, all done with two second-year volunteers, Sarah and Nate, or with the rais (president) of the herders association I am working with. They’re all fun people. Sarah and Nate are ambitious in their hiking plans, and they like to move quickly! I’ve learned to walk quickly carrying quite a bit, and to find my own trail. When hiking with the rais, we move still more quickly, aided by a mule carrying our bags. My favorite hike so far was one with Sarah and Nate. They planned an ambitious 7-day hike that included summiting Bou Nacer (highest peak in the Middle Atlas, I believe) and then traversing close to 100 km. I decided to cut the hike short and leave at the midway point, because of 1—my kittens, and 2—my need to be in site.
We started with Justin, my closest PCV neighbor, at his site. He walked with us up the mountainside and then returned that same afternoon. We camped in a dry riverbed and prayed for good weather the next day. As it turned out, those three days were the only good weather days for a couple of weeks. A good thing, it was freezing cold on top of Bou Nacer even in the full morning sunlight! The view from the top was great, I could see all the way to High Atlas in one direction and Tezzka in the other. It was an abnormally clear day, gorgeous! We then faced the descent: some 1000m of unmarked, steep scree slope riddled with gullies cut by recent storms and surprise cliffs, some over 100 ft in height. And my boots decided to start to fall apart. Duct tape to the rescue! We made it down after a stop for lunch, and found a herder’s trail to the village we were hoping to stay the night near. It’s always an adventure trying to find water sources, usually you have to ask directions, and this was no different: we asked an old Berber herder, who was most helpful! The good thing is that Sarah and I speak Tamazight and Nate speaks Arabic, so between us we can communicate with everyone in the Middle Atlas. Except for French or German or Dutch tourists, I suppose… anyway, we found the water source at sunset. What a spring! Freezing cold, clear, fast running and high in volume! So constant that grass, grass! is growing all around it. The next morning we set out to find a TaHanut (little store) to resupply in Ait Maqabl, the nearby town. They do not get foreigners very often: we had 30 kids and 12 young men following us by the time we got to the TaHanut! Too funny, it reminded me of Tanzania. They were very helpful, showed us the way and picked up a water bottle that fell out of my pack. I met an incredibly striking Berber women, too. Most women wear semi-Berber-style headwraps or the traditional hijab of Islam, but she was wearing her hair in the super traditional Berber style: Two long braids with fabric woven in and crowned with brightly colored fabric. It’s regal and beautiful. I had never seen it before; more evidence of how isolated that town is! As we left town to find the riverbed we planned to walk down we got a lovely surprise! The riverbed was revealed as a huge, wide canyon! Gorgeous, and very difficult to get in a picture. It took us almost an hour to get from the canyon rim to the canyon floor (not a straight descent, but still!). We then walked down the river, passing the most truly Berber villages, meeting more women in traditional dress and having grapes pressed upon us by a nearly deaf older gentleman. Who watched us eat lunch, kept us company (even though he was fasting for Ramadan!) and then sent us on our way with an invitation to return for fast-break that evening, and went to pray. Sitting there cross-legged, for all the world like a Buddhist meditating, but chanting Allah Ahkbar… We got another surprise later: the canyon narrowed to huge red cliffs on either side of us, the river twisting and turning over the rocky bed. And, still, anywhere open was a tiny Berber dwar. We also found an offshoot, so beautiful… the cliffs were even higher here, some trick of geology left harder rock there, but the back of the offshoot (box canyon??) was a huge, dry waterfall. You could see where the water had carved channels in the nearly vertical rockface and where it lept off of overhangs to fall down and then run over a slope of rock shaped like a wide, curved staircase. We stood there in awe, looking over ferns and moss and beauty… brought Led Zepplin’s “Stairway to Heaven” to mind. On our way out we raided a few fig trees of late figs: DELICIOUS!!! I LOVE figs. Especially perfectly dried ones. We hiked out another long day, and made it to Berkine, my drop-off point. Sarah and Nate continued on through rainy weather and unknown territory all the way to Taza. Check it out on a map, that is no small distance!
I have come to love the land here, in its own way, on these hikes. The mountains are endlessly majestic, full of character and sadness. The rock is all that’s left in places, the dirt all eroded off for lack of trees. On one mountain you will find a thriving cedar forest, on another, a cedar graveyard. And one can witness cedar logs being smuggled out… they bring good money for people strapped for cash with few good ways to make more money. So hard to see… these majestic forests disappearing. The healthy cedar forests here rival the Northwest rainforests for majesty. I wish people would come to enjoy them, and pay the Berbers for the privilege!
Kittens-October 1
I have two kittens. They were both gathered from the streets, and they are both sick. I have taken them to the vet, but the doctor wasn’t there and I decided not to stay another day to wait for him. The vet in question is in Fez, and to be legal according to Peace Corps policy, I needed to get back to site post haste. The vet tech saw me, but… well, the jury is still out: we’ll see how they respond. They’ve been half-dewormed (the second half to be administered in about 8 days) and I have medicine, but they are still sick, and it is a PAIN!!! I follow them around with newspaper and wet wipes trying (nearly in vain) to keep my house and blankets free of kitty poo. I’m sure it would be a pretty funny video if you put it on fast forward, actually. On the other hand, they are adorable. Two tiny, skinny kittens who think I’m their mother. One of them has even tried to nurse from my skirt… unsuccessfully… none of my clothing produces milk, as it turns out… ( They like to sleep and cuddle together and tear around like mad things when they’re feelin’ good. They also like to perch on my shoulders, curl in my lap, sneak under the covers, and climb straight up my legs. My fellow inhabitants of Ouled Ali are always asking if I do, in fact like living alone, and I tell them: I don’t live alone, I have two cats! Never fails to get them to laugh… But these boys do keep me company, and definitely keep me busy! Mothering these two little guys is a job! They get cold really easily (and I don’t have central heating… or any heating for that matter), are always hungry but fairly picky about what they’ll eat, have fleas that I’m trying to erradicate and poo accidentally every few hours. I’m glad to have them, though. They are company, no matter what anyone says. And they keep me warmer at night and serve as an excellent alarm clock between 5 am and 7 am. Why pay for a clock when you can raise it?
Monday, September 15, 2008
update
hi all
due to computer problems, there will be a brief pause in posts. by brief i mean 2 to 4 weeks. there are viruses on my jump drive that i dont have the software to fix, so i need to get my computer to a cyber cafe so i can download software onto it to fix the problem. this will probably take some time, as there are many other things that i need to be doing with that time, and some of that time will probably be spent high in the mountains helping to with other projects.
so, a quck update
ramadan is going just fine. fasting isnt that hard but it sure does make you tired!!! i have fasted for 11 days, but not consecutively, since the beginning of september. ramadan is half over now, the full moon was last night, marking the halfway point. i live in my own house, but it is unfinished. slowly i am fixing that. painting, and then washing and scrubbing, and then organizing of stuff, and then building of furniture from bamboo, and then reorganization... its a work in progress! something to take up the time, though, which is nice. i also have two kittens. they are rambunctious and adorable and way too small to be away from their mothers, but there you have it!!
in other news, i have been healthy for a good long strech now (ie. longer than two weeks), and hopefully that will continue!! sending you all my love
due to computer problems, there will be a brief pause in posts. by brief i mean 2 to 4 weeks. there are viruses on my jump drive that i dont have the software to fix, so i need to get my computer to a cyber cafe so i can download software onto it to fix the problem. this will probably take some time, as there are many other things that i need to be doing with that time, and some of that time will probably be spent high in the mountains helping to with other projects.
so, a quck update
ramadan is going just fine. fasting isnt that hard but it sure does make you tired!!! i have fasted for 11 days, but not consecutively, since the beginning of september. ramadan is half over now, the full moon was last night, marking the halfway point. i live in my own house, but it is unfinished. slowly i am fixing that. painting, and then washing and scrubbing, and then organizing of stuff, and then building of furniture from bamboo, and then reorganization... its a work in progress! something to take up the time, though, which is nice. i also have two kittens. they are rambunctious and adorable and way too small to be away from their mothers, but there you have it!!
in other news, i have been healthy for a good long strech now (ie. longer than two weeks), and hopefully that will continue!! sending you all my love
Monday, August 18, 2008
8 August 2008
1st church service in morocco
So I went to my first church service in Morocco the other weekend! I went up to Oujda to celebrate my birthday with some other volunteers, and me and two Catholics went on a search for a church service. We found the church fairly easily (only two or three wrong turnsÉ) but then, how to get in?? We saw some folks in African style clothing who seemed to know where they were going, but lost them. The front door was lockedÉ and someone had thoughtfully piled the garbage from the square right by the door. The mosque was spotless. One way to know when you are in a Muslim countryÉ so we walked around back, trying all the doorsÉ at the very back door, we knockedÉ and the door was opened to us. By a Moroccan gentleman. And thus we found the Saturday evening mass of the chuch of Oujda. Attended by 5 West Africans and two French expatriates. And three Peace Corps Volunteers. Apparently this is usually better attended, but during the summer people leave for the cooler coast and the priest was sick, soÉ it was just us. Singing the mass in French, led in a very sub-Saharan style of call and response. It was beautiful! Very different, but beautiful. I miss that style of singing, how it’s all of a piece with dancing, the call and response, the earnestness. We introduced ourselves eventually, in French, English and Arabic, and were welcomed back. Oh, and I took the body. The bread. I hope that’s OK, seeing as I am still not Catholic. J
So I went to my first church service in Morocco the other weekend! I went up to Oujda to celebrate my birthday with some other volunteers, and me and two Catholics went on a search for a church service. We found the church fairly easily (only two or three wrong turnsÉ) but then, how to get in?? We saw some folks in African style clothing who seemed to know where they were going, but lost them. The front door was lockedÉ and someone had thoughtfully piled the garbage from the square right by the door. The mosque was spotless. One way to know when you are in a Muslim countryÉ so we walked around back, trying all the doorsÉ at the very back door, we knockedÉ and the door was opened to us. By a Moroccan gentleman. And thus we found the Saturday evening mass of the chuch of Oujda. Attended by 5 West Africans and two French expatriates. And three Peace Corps Volunteers. Apparently this is usually better attended, but during the summer people leave for the cooler coast and the priest was sick, soÉ it was just us. Singing the mass in French, led in a very sub-Saharan style of call and response. It was beautiful! Very different, but beautiful. I miss that style of singing, how it’s all of a piece with dancing, the call and response, the earnestness. We introduced ourselves eventually, in French, English and Arabic, and were welcomed back. Oh, and I took the body. The bread. I hope that’s OK, seeing as I am still not Catholic. J
Monday, August 4, 2008
more universal things
"Universal" Things
**this list will grow, too
--Paper, rock, Scissors (used to make decisions the world round)
--Jacks. Only you play with little rocks here instead of jacks and a bouncy ball
--Boys throw rocks at things.
--House flies.
--Barn flies.
--Biting flies.
--Women fix up their hair to go out. Here that means putting on a slightly nicer veil/scarf. For me it means making sure I don’t look like a fool.
--Sugar. In huge volumes.
--Mothers worry.
--Drum circles.
--Dancing. In some places it happens in gender segregated rooms though.
--Grandmothers/older women tell young women to put on more clothes/different clothes.
--People like cold water.
--Homemade popsicles.
Installment 2
--People pick their noses
--Black cats are considered unlucky… poor things
--Little boys pee on things
--Teenage girls are moody
--It’s still amazing what you can build with rocks, water, and dirt. Cement helps, too.
--If you are in a broken down car with more than 5 men looking at it scratching their heads, you’ll be there a while.
--2-year-olds are terrible. Especially when spoiled. They are also adorable and occasionally amazingly sweet.
**this list will grow, too
--Paper, rock, Scissors (used to make decisions the world round)
--Jacks. Only you play with little rocks here instead of jacks and a bouncy ball
--Boys throw rocks at things.
--House flies.
--Barn flies.
--Biting flies.
--Women fix up their hair to go out. Here that means putting on a slightly nicer veil/scarf. For me it means making sure I don’t look like a fool.
--Sugar. In huge volumes.
--Mothers worry.
--Drum circles.
--Dancing. In some places it happens in gender segregated rooms though.
--Grandmothers/older women tell young women to put on more clothes/different clothes.
--People like cold water.
--Homemade popsicles.
Installment 2
--People pick their noses
--Black cats are considered unlucky… poor things
--Little boys pee on things
--Teenage girls are moody
--It’s still amazing what you can build with rocks, water, and dirt. Cement helps, too.
--If you are in a broken down car with more than 5 men looking at it scratching their heads, you’ll be there a while.
--2-year-olds are terrible. Especially when spoiled. They are also adorable and occasionally amazingly sweet.
3 August 2008
3 August 2008
So this is about social mores. And how they are very interesting… for example:
Some things remain the same, like reaching in front of someone at the dinner table. It’s rude, but not inexcusably so in most cases.
On the other hand, if someone started digging into the meal with their hands in most well-bred company in the United States, or Europe for that matter, they would be seen as very strange, possibly retarded or at least in possession of poor manners. Here, though, that is what you are expected to do, and it has become VERY strange for me to see people eating certain dishes with silverware at tourist joints. Why would you use silverware? All you need is bread with some soap and water afterwards… which they provide, by the way. One of the kids or someone feeling nice carries around a little kettle with it’s own name and a basin for people wash their hands and mouths out after a meal. Yes, that’s right, mouths. They spit in the basin. For some reason I find this physically more disgusting than the numerous flies… I have a thing with spit.
And then there’s the whole picking your nose thing. Taboo at home, right? People will "take the mickey out of you" (to use a great British phrase, probably improperly, sorry ya’ll British folk). But the thing of it is, most people do it themselves… that’s why it’s such a satisfying game for kids to count how many people they see picking their noses in other cars on long car trips. One pastor I knew decided that all of this falsehood was ridiculous and freely acknowledged his nose-picking habit… he even had a saying "Pick it, flick it, don’t lick it, and remember to live like Jesus!" Memorable right? I bet his kids were absolutely mortified!! Anyway, here, it’s more or less accepted. Some men even grow out their left pinky fingernails for that specific purpose (it’s taken me three months to figure that one out… I’m still not sure I believe it but that’s what I’m told). And tonight, I witnessed the most open picking of the nose ever: a father picking his 2-year-old son’s nose for him!! I was fascinated. He was so obviously doing this carefully and lovingly and gently but determined to get his son’s nose picked clean…! Who would have thought? Sometimes I think we should adopt the open nose-picking policy… maybe with an accompanying social mores about always washing your hands or having a specific finger that you disinfect frequently?? I mean, I think everyone does, whether with a tissue in hand or not (still counts). Just as long as no one tries to pick my nose… I don’t think I could handle that.
So this is about social mores. And how they are very interesting… for example:
Some things remain the same, like reaching in front of someone at the dinner table. It’s rude, but not inexcusably so in most cases.
On the other hand, if someone started digging into the meal with their hands in most well-bred company in the United States, or Europe for that matter, they would be seen as very strange, possibly retarded or at least in possession of poor manners. Here, though, that is what you are expected to do, and it has become VERY strange for me to see people eating certain dishes with silverware at tourist joints. Why would you use silverware? All you need is bread with some soap and water afterwards… which they provide, by the way. One of the kids or someone feeling nice carries around a little kettle with it’s own name and a basin for people wash their hands and mouths out after a meal. Yes, that’s right, mouths. They spit in the basin. For some reason I find this physically more disgusting than the numerous flies… I have a thing with spit.
And then there’s the whole picking your nose thing. Taboo at home, right? People will "take the mickey out of you" (to use a great British phrase, probably improperly, sorry ya’ll British folk). But the thing of it is, most people do it themselves… that’s why it’s such a satisfying game for kids to count how many people they see picking their noses in other cars on long car trips. One pastor I knew decided that all of this falsehood was ridiculous and freely acknowledged his nose-picking habit… he even had a saying "Pick it, flick it, don’t lick it, and remember to live like Jesus!" Memorable right? I bet his kids were absolutely mortified!! Anyway, here, it’s more or less accepted. Some men even grow out their left pinky fingernails for that specific purpose (it’s taken me three months to figure that one out… I’m still not sure I believe it but that’s what I’m told). And tonight, I witnessed the most open picking of the nose ever: a father picking his 2-year-old son’s nose for him!! I was fascinated. He was so obviously doing this carefully and lovingly and gently but determined to get his son’s nose picked clean…! Who would have thought? Sometimes I think we should adopt the open nose-picking policy… maybe with an accompanying social mores about always washing your hands or having a specific finger that you disinfect frequently?? I mean, I think everyone does, whether with a tissue in hand or not (still counts). Just as long as no one tries to pick my nose… I don’t think I could handle that.
of birthdays
. Around 31 July 2008
Birthdays abroad are funny. Odd, I mean. Good, fun, different (you never know just what will happen). One of the first things I did in Tanzania was turn 21. It was pretty funny to me (ha-ha funny) actually. One of my favorite memories, actually. The program directors, who barely knew me, gave me a beautiful wooden bowl with a carved elephant on it (I still have it, back home). The other students all pitched in and got me two cakes and a whole bottle of Hakuna Matata. Tanzanian liquor, that’s what that is… The cakes were dry and not particularly flavorful, but we had fun and then when there was plenty left over I wandered around the cafeteria giving away the rest. We went back to the dorm and got ready for our first day of school. Yup, all I had on my 21st was one shot of not particularly burning Hakuna Matata and then I went to bed. J Fitting, right?
Anyway, this birthday passed with very little fanfare: I couldn’t find any eggs so I didn’t even get a cake, instead I bought a bunch of candy and cookies and soda for my family and we celebrated the day after my birthday. The morning of I helped slaughter a sheep. Which is something only men can do… I tried to ask why but was only told it is Haram (absolutely forbidden by the Qu’ran). I bet there’s a reason behind it, maybe something about life-givers not taking life, but I’ll have to figure that out later. Anyway, it was somehow a little frustrating, sad, not as clean as I wanted it to be. For starters they just cut the neck while it’s awake and then leave it to die, fully conscious. Don’t even break the poor thing’s neck… anyway, it was pretty cool to watch it cleaned out, and then to take the amazingly soft meat upstairs and watch it be cooked and then eat it later. It was good, too. Except that I am just about through with dwaz. I want a whole week off of Moroccan food. Well, local Moroccan food, anyway. Or rather, my host family’s cooking. Not bad, but there’s a flavor theme that I’m a bit tired of.
Highlights of the day were definitely when two PCVs (Sarah and Nate from the Eastern Middle Atlas ENV, if you know them) called me to sing me Happy Birthday… and tell me that Nate brought me floss threaders from the United States!!!!!! Hooray no cavities in my front teeth!!!!!!!! But so many others texted me their wishes, and some even called (thanks Jon) to make their wishes, so it was great. And Mom, your box actually came ahead of time. J And then Mom called from Madeline Island to talk, and I got to talk to my cousin’s son, who is sharp as a razor at barely 3 years of age. All in all, a Happy Birthday, but it was funny. What with the sheep slaughtering and everything. :)
Birthdays abroad are funny. Odd, I mean. Good, fun, different (you never know just what will happen). One of the first things I did in Tanzania was turn 21. It was pretty funny to me (ha-ha funny) actually. One of my favorite memories, actually. The program directors, who barely knew me, gave me a beautiful wooden bowl with a carved elephant on it (I still have it, back home). The other students all pitched in and got me two cakes and a whole bottle of Hakuna Matata. Tanzanian liquor, that’s what that is… The cakes were dry and not particularly flavorful, but we had fun and then when there was plenty left over I wandered around the cafeteria giving away the rest. We went back to the dorm and got ready for our first day of school. Yup, all I had on my 21st was one shot of not particularly burning Hakuna Matata and then I went to bed. J Fitting, right?
Anyway, this birthday passed with very little fanfare: I couldn’t find any eggs so I didn’t even get a cake, instead I bought a bunch of candy and cookies and soda for my family and we celebrated the day after my birthday. The morning of I helped slaughter a sheep. Which is something only men can do… I tried to ask why but was only told it is Haram (absolutely forbidden by the Qu’ran). I bet there’s a reason behind it, maybe something about life-givers not taking life, but I’ll have to figure that out later. Anyway, it was somehow a little frustrating, sad, not as clean as I wanted it to be. For starters they just cut the neck while it’s awake and then leave it to die, fully conscious. Don’t even break the poor thing’s neck… anyway, it was pretty cool to watch it cleaned out, and then to take the amazingly soft meat upstairs and watch it be cooked and then eat it later. It was good, too. Except that I am just about through with dwaz. I want a whole week off of Moroccan food. Well, local Moroccan food, anyway. Or rather, my host family’s cooking. Not bad, but there’s a flavor theme that I’m a bit tired of.
Highlights of the day were definitely when two PCVs (Sarah and Nate from the Eastern Middle Atlas ENV, if you know them) called me to sing me Happy Birthday… and tell me that Nate brought me floss threaders from the United States!!!!!! Hooray no cavities in my front teeth!!!!!!!! But so many others texted me their wishes, and some even called (thanks Jon) to make their wishes, so it was great. And Mom, your box actually came ahead of time. J And then Mom called from Madeline Island to talk, and I got to talk to my cousin’s son, who is sharp as a razor at barely 3 years of age. All in all, a Happy Birthday, but it was funny. What with the sheep slaughtering and everything. :)
Monday, July 14, 2008
universal things 1
"Universal" Things
**this list will grow, too
--Paper, rock, Scissors (used to make decisions the world round)
--Jacks. Only you play with little rocks here instead of jacks and a bouncy ball
--Boys throw rocks at things.
--House flies.
--Barn flies.
--Biting flies.
--Women fix up their hair to go out. Here that means putting on a slightly nicer veil/scarf. For me it means making sure I don’t look like a fool.
--Sugar. In huge volumes.
--Mothers worry.
--Drum circles.
--Dancing. In some places it happens in gender segregated rooms though.
--Grandmothers/older women tell young women to put on more clothes/different clothes.
--People like cold water.
--Homemade popsicles.
**this list will grow, too
--Paper, rock, Scissors (used to make decisions the world round)
--Jacks. Only you play with little rocks here instead of jacks and a bouncy ball
--Boys throw rocks at things.
--House flies.
--Barn flies.
--Biting flies.
--Women fix up their hair to go out. Here that means putting on a slightly nicer veil/scarf. For me it means making sure I don’t look like a fool.
--Sugar. In huge volumes.
--Mothers worry.
--Drum circles.
--Dancing. In some places it happens in gender segregated rooms though.
--Grandmothers/older women tell young women to put on more clothes/different clothes.
--People like cold water.
--Homemade popsicles.
favorite quotes 1
9 July 2008
Favorite Quotes:
**this list will grow as time goes on. Underlined things are book titles. I’ll put the author if I know it. Some quotes are from PCVs. Some are literature. Some are funny. Some are serious, and some are there just because the writing is so flippin’ beautiful.
1 "The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground feeding the streams in every kloof. It is well-tended and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too may fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed." -Cry the Beloved Country
2 "Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future." -The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel
3 " ‘So God just leaves? Abandons creation? You’re on your own, apes. Good luck! (speaker 1)’ ‘No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering. (speaker 2)’ ‘Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing about it. (speaker 3)’ ‘But the sparrow still falls. (speaker 2)’" –The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel *I would add to this a bit… ask me if you care to know.
4 "Do you know the word for ‘clipboard’?" "No. What is it?" "Here let me explain it for you. It’s like a board with a clip… err… um…" -the very earnest Logan
5 "And now for something completely different: Morocco." –advertisement seen on the plane to Rabat from New York City.
6 "I went to the Post Office today. It was awesome!" –the unflappable Jake
7 "Why does George Bush not like democracy?" –an earnest question asked by a young man in my village, translated from Tamazight… sweet, sweet irony
8 "Oxford is excavating a Paleolithic settlement at my site, 500 ft. from my house. Ahhhhh!" –text message from Jonathan, who is an archeologist by training
9 "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our sill, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." -Aeschylus
10 "Would you practice what you preach, would you turn the other cheek? Father, Father, Father help us; send some guidance from above. Oh, you know you got me questionin’, where is the love, the love, the love?" --a great song whose title I don’t know
Favorite Quotes:
**this list will grow as time goes on. Underlined things are book titles. I’ll put the author if I know it. Some quotes are from PCVs. Some are literature. Some are funny. Some are serious, and some are there just because the writing is so flippin’ beautiful.
1 "The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground feeding the streams in every kloof. It is well-tended and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too may fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed." -Cry the Beloved Country
2 "Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future." -The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel
3 " ‘So God just leaves? Abandons creation? You’re on your own, apes. Good luck! (speaker 1)’ ‘No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering. (speaker 2)’ ‘Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing about it. (speaker 3)’ ‘But the sparrow still falls. (speaker 2)’" –The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel *I would add to this a bit… ask me if you care to know.
4 "Do you know the word for ‘clipboard’?" "No. What is it?" "Here let me explain it for you. It’s like a board with a clip… err… um…" -the very earnest Logan
5 "And now for something completely different: Morocco." –advertisement seen on the plane to Rabat from New York City.
6 "I went to the Post Office today. It was awesome!" –the unflappable Jake
7 "Why does George Bush not like democracy?" –an earnest question asked by a young man in my village, translated from Tamazight… sweet, sweet irony
8 "Oxford is excavating a Paleolithic settlement at my site, 500 ft. from my house. Ahhhhh!" –text message from Jonathan, who is an archeologist by training
9 "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our sill, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." -Aeschylus
10 "Would you practice what you preach, would you turn the other cheek? Father, Father, Father help us; send some guidance from above. Oh, you know you got me questionin’, where is the love, the love, the love?" --a great song whose title I don’t know
June 25
27 June 2006
Wheat Harvesting Part II
So, I believe I previously wrote about the wheat harvest. Well, that was only part one. The wheat was cut by hand from the fields and carried by hand/mule/donkey to the families designated wheat drying place. Upon closer examination, I noticed that a lot of these wheat drying places are semi-circular flat bits of ground set back into the hillside. I had been seeing these circular bits and other random seeming structures before and wondered about them, but now all is clear. Well, not quite all, but you know what I mean. J
About a week ago, I noticed a strange humming noise, and some odd lights on one side of the village that I hadn’t noticed before. I asked about them but didn’t really understand the answer. But the humming (akin to the noise a snow-machine makes) continued, and the lights moved closer each night, so in a couple of days I had my answer. Three tractors pulling three wheat chopping/threshing/separating machines had come to town. These machines are from Turkey, and they are named Super Istanbul. Each family was being given a 2 or so hour slot of time, and then the entire family turns out to get the wheat into the machine, carry the wheat kernels away in 50 kg bags, and then carry the chaff away in HUGE bags. Depending on the family, some families had to carry their wheat to the machine and chop it on the road with big mats strung up to minimize the amount of chaff blown away. Others simply had the machine driven up to their harvest circle, and the chaff was blown into the high side, and caught by the stonewall there.
I went to go watch and help a little but soon enough it was our turn and I got some first hand experience. Getting the machine up the hill to our circle… obstacle one, made difficult by the fact that the road up to the circle is made up of loose rocks. Then, loading the wheat into the machine… hot wind and sun making the scene veiled in golden dust that magically turns your face black. I noticed some of the sheafs of wheat had mold growing on them… too much rain and not spread out well enough, I guess. It’s a frenetic pace. The machine chops fast so we hurried to keep up on both ends, bagging the wheat kernels and feeding the sheafs in. In an hour or so, the machine is done, and the drivers take it away to the next family. Leaving us to carry away the chaff (la3lun) and the bags of wheat. The cycle of family to family began each day before 6 am and ended around midnight. Families don’t necessarily work alone: friends and neighbors and extended family help out too. Those who help out can expect to have dinner provided for them by the people they helped. I benefited from that the day after my family got their wheat harvest taken care of. I had some of the best couscous I have yet had. Heavy on the black pepper, with turnips and chicken. Simple but delicious!
Also had a fascinating conversation about politics after that meal. It was begun by a trick lighter that actually casts out a color picture of Osama bin Ladin. I couldn’t stop laughing… so ridiculous! I kept thinking, I found Osama! He’s been hiding in a flashlight this whole time! The funny thing is that the brika (lighter) belongs to my sister, but she had no idea the political significance of the thing until a cousin explained it. Which helped her to understand my laughter a bit.
Wheat Harvesting Part II
So, I believe I previously wrote about the wheat harvest. Well, that was only part one. The wheat was cut by hand from the fields and carried by hand/mule/donkey to the families designated wheat drying place. Upon closer examination, I noticed that a lot of these wheat drying places are semi-circular flat bits of ground set back into the hillside. I had been seeing these circular bits and other random seeming structures before and wondered about them, but now all is clear. Well, not quite all, but you know what I mean. J
About a week ago, I noticed a strange humming noise, and some odd lights on one side of the village that I hadn’t noticed before. I asked about them but didn’t really understand the answer. But the humming (akin to the noise a snow-machine makes) continued, and the lights moved closer each night, so in a couple of days I had my answer. Three tractors pulling three wheat chopping/threshing/separating machines had come to town. These machines are from Turkey, and they are named Super Istanbul. Each family was being given a 2 or so hour slot of time, and then the entire family turns out to get the wheat into the machine, carry the wheat kernels away in 50 kg bags, and then carry the chaff away in HUGE bags. Depending on the family, some families had to carry their wheat to the machine and chop it on the road with big mats strung up to minimize the amount of chaff blown away. Others simply had the machine driven up to their harvest circle, and the chaff was blown into the high side, and caught by the stonewall there.
I went to go watch and help a little but soon enough it was our turn and I got some first hand experience. Getting the machine up the hill to our circle… obstacle one, made difficult by the fact that the road up to the circle is made up of loose rocks. Then, loading the wheat into the machine… hot wind and sun making the scene veiled in golden dust that magically turns your face black. I noticed some of the sheafs of wheat had mold growing on them… too much rain and not spread out well enough, I guess. It’s a frenetic pace. The machine chops fast so we hurried to keep up on both ends, bagging the wheat kernels and feeding the sheafs in. In an hour or so, the machine is done, and the drivers take it away to the next family. Leaving us to carry away the chaff (la3lun) and the bags of wheat. The cycle of family to family began each day before 6 am and ended around midnight. Families don’t necessarily work alone: friends and neighbors and extended family help out too. Those who help out can expect to have dinner provided for them by the people they helped. I benefited from that the day after my family got their wheat harvest taken care of. I had some of the best couscous I have yet had. Heavy on the black pepper, with turnips and chicken. Simple but delicious!
Also had a fascinating conversation about politics after that meal. It was begun by a trick lighter that actually casts out a color picture of Osama bin Ladin. I couldn’t stop laughing… so ridiculous! I kept thinking, I found Osama! He’s been hiding in a flashlight this whole time! The funny thing is that the brika (lighter) belongs to my sister, but she had no idea the political significance of the thing until a cousin explained it. Which helped her to understand my laughter a bit.
of stress
3 July 2008
I think it’s time I wrote a little bit about the stress of this whole deal. It’s huge. But it’s tiny all at the same time. "Death by a thousand slices," as my dad says. The funny thing is, I didn’t even realize how stressed I was until the doctor called me on it. Well, she introduced the idea that my seemingly never-ending gastrointestinal issues may be caused by poorly handled stress being internalized. I thought, no way! I mean, I’m a Macalester grad. We thrive on stress. Or maybe that’s just what we thought and we were just fooling ourselves… seemed to work fine then. Anyway, suffice it to say, my stress has never manifested itself in my intestines before. Be that as it may, the thought stuck with me, so I re-evaluated. And discovered that I am, at times, as stressed as I ever have been. Now, before you panic, all my moms, hear me out. J Realizing that you are stressed is a good thing! It means I can take measures against it. Like allowing myself more sleep, more chocolate, and giving myself permission to draw necessary boundaries, and reminding myself of the importance of being disciplined in time management and prayer time.
What exactly is the deal? Well, one big thing is the time change. The Moroccan government decided to put the country on Daylight Savings time. So, for the first time in some 17 or so years, the official Moroccan clock moved an hour ahead. However, since the vast majority of rural Moroccans never worried about official time much in the first place, what happened was that everything happens at the same time it did before, but that clock reads an hour later. So dinner, late for me at 11pm before is now VERY late at 12 am. Give or take a half hour.
Other things are cultural… and health related (having your GI health fluctuate every couple of days is stressful!)… and I do miss all of you at home (although I’ve realized that there is no one place, not even one state in the US, not even one country! where I can be close to everyone I love/care about)… and it is harder being spiritually isolated this time around… because religion is such a huge part of this culture, and I am accustomed to being a part of the religious culture wherever I am. When I was in Tanzania, I found a church home. Except in the field but that was only a month and anyway I had GREAT friends who would talk to me and listen to me talk about religion, faith, etc. (I appreciate you so much more right now Susie and Leigh…). At Mac and at home I had wonderful church/spiritual families (you know who you are!). So between all that…
That’s that deal. Word from the older PCVs is that homestay is the hardest part of service—and I can’t say how much I am looking forward to eating dinner at 9:30 at night (or even earlier… hee hee) again in my own place in about a month—so that’s good to know. I have also recently learned that in many countries, PCVs live with host families for the whole two years. All you out there that do that have my undying respect. It’s not that host families are bad people… no, it’s just that it’s really different. We were independent, Western adults, and now we are feeling like teenagers in a new culture. We push for freedom, we want to control when we eat, sleep and what we do with our days. And our host families want us safe and for us to behave according to their culture. See the conflict? It’s just hard. Period. Even for me, and I have possibly the best host family ever. So I eat chocolate, am learning yoga and pilates, and take naps and pray. Which is actually the thing that helps the most in a tight spot. J
I think it’s time I wrote a little bit about the stress of this whole deal. It’s huge. But it’s tiny all at the same time. "Death by a thousand slices," as my dad says. The funny thing is, I didn’t even realize how stressed I was until the doctor called me on it. Well, she introduced the idea that my seemingly never-ending gastrointestinal issues may be caused by poorly handled stress being internalized. I thought, no way! I mean, I’m a Macalester grad. We thrive on stress. Or maybe that’s just what we thought and we were just fooling ourselves… seemed to work fine then. Anyway, suffice it to say, my stress has never manifested itself in my intestines before. Be that as it may, the thought stuck with me, so I re-evaluated. And discovered that I am, at times, as stressed as I ever have been. Now, before you panic, all my moms, hear me out. J Realizing that you are stressed is a good thing! It means I can take measures against it. Like allowing myself more sleep, more chocolate, and giving myself permission to draw necessary boundaries, and reminding myself of the importance of being disciplined in time management and prayer time.
What exactly is the deal? Well, one big thing is the time change. The Moroccan government decided to put the country on Daylight Savings time. So, for the first time in some 17 or so years, the official Moroccan clock moved an hour ahead. However, since the vast majority of rural Moroccans never worried about official time much in the first place, what happened was that everything happens at the same time it did before, but that clock reads an hour later. So dinner, late for me at 11pm before is now VERY late at 12 am. Give or take a half hour.
Other things are cultural… and health related (having your GI health fluctuate every couple of days is stressful!)… and I do miss all of you at home (although I’ve realized that there is no one place, not even one state in the US, not even one country! where I can be close to everyone I love/care about)… and it is harder being spiritually isolated this time around… because religion is such a huge part of this culture, and I am accustomed to being a part of the religious culture wherever I am. When I was in Tanzania, I found a church home. Except in the field but that was only a month and anyway I had GREAT friends who would talk to me and listen to me talk about religion, faith, etc. (I appreciate you so much more right now Susie and Leigh…). At Mac and at home I had wonderful church/spiritual families (you know who you are!). So between all that…
That’s that deal. Word from the older PCVs is that homestay is the hardest part of service—and I can’t say how much I am looking forward to eating dinner at 9:30 at night (or even earlier… hee hee) again in my own place in about a month—so that’s good to know. I have also recently learned that in many countries, PCVs live with host families for the whole two years. All you out there that do that have my undying respect. It’s not that host families are bad people… no, it’s just that it’s really different. We were independent, Western adults, and now we are feeling like teenagers in a new culture. We push for freedom, we want to control when we eat, sleep and what we do with our days. And our host families want us safe and for us to behave according to their culture. See the conflict? It’s just hard. Period. Even for me, and I have possibly the best host family ever. So I eat chocolate, am learning yoga and pilates, and take naps and pray. Which is actually the thing that helps the most in a tight spot. J
pictures 2
picture of Ouled Ali village
View of the valley from Beni Hassan
Can you find me in the first picture? Look for the obnoxiously orange bandana that I have come to love.
Monday, June 23, 2008
of food
22 June 2008
The taste of plums is in my mouth. Not quite ripe ones, so they are satisfyingly tart, but still delightfully plumy and a little bit sweet. I wasn’t expecting to have good fruit in the mountains, but when it’s the season, the fruit here is nothing short of very, very good. Plums, peaches, figs, grapes, apples, cherries, apricots, and then oranges, bananas, and dates from the plains and Agadir (which is the California of Morocco, that is you can grow anything there all year round). Spoiled as I have been in the past, I still wish for mangoes, passionfruit and fresh avocadoes, but this is not the tropics. It is the Mediterranean.
I thought I would do a little entry about the food. Now that you know about the fruit, you perhaps think that this must be ideal… and it all depends on how much money you have to spend on food. You can eat very, very well indeed here if you want to and have the money to buy the supplies. I get the feeling, though, that there are certain families that do not eat so well at all.
Traditionally the main meals of the day are served in one very large platter: tajine, dwaz and sksu (couscous) are big traditions. And bread. If you run out of bread but have plenty of say, rice on hand, many a Moroccan will say that they NEED bread. One of my teachers was particularly adamant about this. You would have thought he was going to die if he didn’t get his bread! In my region dwaz is the commoner of the first two (which are more or less the same thing just cooked in a different container). I hadn’t had any tajines here at all until my older host siblings came home to visit.
(non sequiter… my 11-year-old host brother just stood up and started wiggling his hips around to the music as loose-jointedly as any of the hottest Carribean/Latin dancers you’ve ever seen… this culture will never cease to surprise me…)
If my host mother doesn’t want to go to the trouble of cooking a dwaz, she is likely to put some couscous in a pot with milk and salt and butter and then heat it to a boil. We eat this every few nights it seems. Sometimes small noodles or rice are substituted for the couscous. Homemade couscous, by the way. Not store bought. They are decidedly different animals, store bought and homemade, by the way. There are bunches of ways to eat couscous…
Also there is the homemade butter (adhan) and the homemade buttermilk (aghi) and cheese (jbnn)… the first two of which I like. The adhan tastes like yogurt a little bit, and the buttermilk is drunk alone or mixed with couscous for a snack. The jbnn tastes like I imagine the color white would taste if it had been left out a little bit too long…
There are five meals a day: ldftar, thduayif, imshli, kaskarot and iminsi. People also drink atay (tea) and kahwa (coffee) whenever someone comes over to visit, and usually at meals too. Some people call atay Moroccan whiskey. J Sort of… they certainly are well caffeinated from a very early age. The food is, in short, good, but I am missing all kinds of food… ice cream, frozen custard, cheddar cheese, Colby cheese, swiss cheese, reubens, spinach salads, Afghani food, mangoes, Mexican food, and good chocolate.
The taste of plums is in my mouth. Not quite ripe ones, so they are satisfyingly tart, but still delightfully plumy and a little bit sweet. I wasn’t expecting to have good fruit in the mountains, but when it’s the season, the fruit here is nothing short of very, very good. Plums, peaches, figs, grapes, apples, cherries, apricots, and then oranges, bananas, and dates from the plains and Agadir (which is the California of Morocco, that is you can grow anything there all year round). Spoiled as I have been in the past, I still wish for mangoes, passionfruit and fresh avocadoes, but this is not the tropics. It is the Mediterranean.
I thought I would do a little entry about the food. Now that you know about the fruit, you perhaps think that this must be ideal… and it all depends on how much money you have to spend on food. You can eat very, very well indeed here if you want to and have the money to buy the supplies. I get the feeling, though, that there are certain families that do not eat so well at all.
Traditionally the main meals of the day are served in one very large platter: tajine, dwaz and sksu (couscous) are big traditions. And bread. If you run out of bread but have plenty of say, rice on hand, many a Moroccan will say that they NEED bread. One of my teachers was particularly adamant about this. You would have thought he was going to die if he didn’t get his bread! In my region dwaz is the commoner of the first two (which are more or less the same thing just cooked in a different container). I hadn’t had any tajines here at all until my older host siblings came home to visit.
(non sequiter… my 11-year-old host brother just stood up and started wiggling his hips around to the music as loose-jointedly as any of the hottest Carribean/Latin dancers you’ve ever seen… this culture will never cease to surprise me…)
If my host mother doesn’t want to go to the trouble of cooking a dwaz, she is likely to put some couscous in a pot with milk and salt and butter and then heat it to a boil. We eat this every few nights it seems. Sometimes small noodles or rice are substituted for the couscous. Homemade couscous, by the way. Not store bought. They are decidedly different animals, store bought and homemade, by the way. There are bunches of ways to eat couscous…
Also there is the homemade butter (adhan) and the homemade buttermilk (aghi) and cheese (jbnn)… the first two of which I like. The adhan tastes like yogurt a little bit, and the buttermilk is drunk alone or mixed with couscous for a snack. The jbnn tastes like I imagine the color white would taste if it had been left out a little bit too long…
There are five meals a day: ldftar, thduayif, imshli, kaskarot and iminsi. People also drink atay (tea) and kahwa (coffee) whenever someone comes over to visit, and usually at meals too. Some people call atay Moroccan whiskey. J Sort of… they certainly are well caffeinated from a very early age. The food is, in short, good, but I am missing all kinds of food… ice cream, frozen custard, cheddar cheese, Colby cheese, swiss cheese, reubens, spinach salads, Afghani food, mangoes, Mexican food, and good chocolate.
job description
18 June 2008
My work currently is: Needs Assessment and Personal Integration.
Yes, I know, it sounds terribly interesting and noble.
The thing is, you can’t do development work if you don’t know what is there already. Well, you could (and people have and probably do), but it’s generally not terribly effective or sustainable. So. Assessment it is. Environmental, Social, Financial, and Spiritual. Because it all applies. What does that look like? Me wandering around, and asking as many questions as I can make understood (easier said than done), and asking to meet with people, associations. I am, hopefully, holding my first community meeting next week. Two, actually. One for the men and one for the women. If you are a praying person, PLEASE pray for this… that I would be understood and understand, that I would get a functional seasonal calendar out of it, and also daily activities… we can even do some gender roles assessment if all goes well, but… that relies on lots of things. Like people coming, for one. Like me getting the proper permissions from the proper people. Like me remembering all the words (cheatsheets!!) and grammar structure necessary. Like the chemistry of the whole thing gelling… yes, I am a little intimidated by it all, but here we go!
What about Personal Integration? Well, that’s learning the language, more wandering around and asking questions in the language, and introducing myself and helping people to get to know me and learning the language. I suppose I mentioned language in there somewhere…
So there you go, that’s what it means to be an environmental educator right now. Sounds an awful lot like figuring out what the blue blazes is going on, doesn’t it? :)
My work currently is: Needs Assessment and Personal Integration.
Yes, I know, it sounds terribly interesting and noble.
The thing is, you can’t do development work if you don’t know what is there already. Well, you could (and people have and probably do), but it’s generally not terribly effective or sustainable. So. Assessment it is. Environmental, Social, Financial, and Spiritual. Because it all applies. What does that look like? Me wandering around, and asking as many questions as I can make understood (easier said than done), and asking to meet with people, associations. I am, hopefully, holding my first community meeting next week. Two, actually. One for the men and one for the women. If you are a praying person, PLEASE pray for this… that I would be understood and understand, that I would get a functional seasonal calendar out of it, and also daily activities… we can even do some gender roles assessment if all goes well, but… that relies on lots of things. Like people coming, for one. Like me getting the proper permissions from the proper people. Like me remembering all the words (cheatsheets!!) and grammar structure necessary. Like the chemistry of the whole thing gelling… yes, I am a little intimidated by it all, but here we go!
What about Personal Integration? Well, that’s learning the language, more wandering around and asking questions in the language, and introducing myself and helping people to get to know me and learning the language. I suppose I mentioned language in there somewhere…
So there you go, that’s what it means to be an environmental educator right now. Sounds an awful lot like figuring out what the blue blazes is going on, doesn’t it? :)
thoughts while cutting grass related plants
15 June 2008
I spend a lot of my time harvesting alfalfa. We go out and harvest some for the four cows and 13 or so sheep and goats twice a day most days. We also cut down the weeds of the fields and bring those back. What are you picturing right now? A big, glossy John Deere tractor and hay rake behind it? Perhaps you were more conservative, and thought of an old-fashioned hay-rake behind or horse. Or, closer still, a long handled scythe. All of these are incorrect… we squat on the ground, grab bunches of alfalfa with one hand and fit the small one-handed scythe behind it, cutting it off, bunch by bunch by bunch. Then it is loaded onto the back of a) a mule b) a donkey c) a woman/girl or d) rarely, a man/boy. This is loaded high and wide and cinched down tight with a long rope with a wooden hook or loop on one end of it.
Skills I did not know I would learn… but I’m getting pretty good at it now. It’s not hard, but if you’re not careful you can slice yourself. No, I have not done that… merely abraded one of my fingers slightly…
Speaking of cuts, I also ended up helping out with a large cut on a mule. Now, I’m not a veterinarian, or even a health volunteer, but this was a big gash (4 inches long and pretty wide) and I do know a thing or two about taking care of such things. I am a lifeguard, I have worked with horses for the greater majority of my life, and I have spent long hours following vets around in Wisconsin. Thus, I know that it is quite important to get the wound clean!! And olive oil is OK for little cuts and stuff as far as keeping it clean goes, but you have to wash it thoroughly first… Anyway, we got it flushed out with clean water and ran some good disinfectant through it followed by more water, and attempted to bandage it, but the olive oil put an end to that idea. She seems to be doing OK anyway. Eating and drinking and looks bright-eyed and all that good stuff.
And I wonder once again: is this what I should do with my life? Get my DVM and then find a place to work? Would I want to be a part of the factory farming that is the reality of so much agriculture in the US? I doubt it… sigh. Quandries.
I spend a lot of my time harvesting alfalfa. We go out and harvest some for the four cows and 13 or so sheep and goats twice a day most days. We also cut down the weeds of the fields and bring those back. What are you picturing right now? A big, glossy John Deere tractor and hay rake behind it? Perhaps you were more conservative, and thought of an old-fashioned hay-rake behind or horse. Or, closer still, a long handled scythe. All of these are incorrect… we squat on the ground, grab bunches of alfalfa with one hand and fit the small one-handed scythe behind it, cutting it off, bunch by bunch by bunch. Then it is loaded onto the back of a) a mule b) a donkey c) a woman/girl or d) rarely, a man/boy. This is loaded high and wide and cinched down tight with a long rope with a wooden hook or loop on one end of it.
Skills I did not know I would learn… but I’m getting pretty good at it now. It’s not hard, but if you’re not careful you can slice yourself. No, I have not done that… merely abraded one of my fingers slightly…
Speaking of cuts, I also ended up helping out with a large cut on a mule. Now, I’m not a veterinarian, or even a health volunteer, but this was a big gash (4 inches long and pretty wide) and I do know a thing or two about taking care of such things. I am a lifeguard, I have worked with horses for the greater majority of my life, and I have spent long hours following vets around in Wisconsin. Thus, I know that it is quite important to get the wound clean!! And olive oil is OK for little cuts and stuff as far as keeping it clean goes, but you have to wash it thoroughly first… Anyway, we got it flushed out with clean water and ran some good disinfectant through it followed by more water, and attempted to bandage it, but the olive oil put an end to that idea. She seems to be doing OK anyway. Eating and drinking and looks bright-eyed and all that good stuff.
And I wonder once again: is this what I should do with my life? Get my DVM and then find a place to work? Would I want to be a part of the factory farming that is the reality of so much agriculture in the US? I doubt it… sigh. Quandries.
Monday, June 9, 2008
harvest part 1
08/06/08
It is harvest time here! Yes, I know, it is barely June. But it is still time to harvest the wheat and the rosemary. I have helped some with both of these harvests. It’s fun! In a hard labor, dusty, satisfying sort of way. It had been a while since I had done any real agricultural type work like that, although I used to work on a vegetable farm and then after that worked at a horse farms for years. Lots of hay bales and straw bales got thrown around by rather smallish women over those years at the horse farm… Similarly here: lots of stacks of wheat and sticks get carried around by very small women.
The rosemary harvest has been going on for some weeks now. Rosemary grows wild all over the mountains here… it smells quite beautiful when it rains. Taking advantage of this, some of the people in my village have formed a Medicinal Plants Cooperative. They go out and cut lots and lots of the rosemary, and then pile it in long lines to dry in the sun. Rosemary is a small bush, so what they are cutting off is essentially lots of sticks with pine-needle-like leaves all over them. Once it is deemed dry enough, people take small piles of it and beat it with a stick to knock all of the leaves off. The branches and sticks get set aside and then carried away to be used as firewood. It seems that it is mostly women who do this. I have seen some men working on it or at least overseeing it but for the most it is the women who did the gathering and beating, and only women who carry the wood back to the village.
It’s ingenious, really. They stack the sticks probably 5 feet high, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, tie rope around it, put a burlap bag on their back to keep from getting scratched and lash the whole thing to their backs with the end of the same rope, as though it were a hug, bulky, scratchy backpack. They do the same with alfalfa, wheat, big tree branches, and bags of flour. All of these loads range between 20 and 50 pounds, I would estimate. Keep in mind only a few of these women are over 5’5" and many are a good deal shorter.
The wheat harvest was somewhat different. The men did most of the cutting and binding into sheaves (with a break for tea), and then the women come and haul it all back to the drying and threshing grounds (also with a break for tea). There it stays for a while, all piles of gold. You can hear groups of men working in one part of the valley or another, because they sing when they are harvesting. The women I worked with weren’t singing, though. We also used donkeys and mules to help carry the wheat. It amazes me how much weight they carry too.
I helped with the beating of the rosemary and the carrying of the wheat. Little enough, actually, because sometimes people seem to think I am not strong enough to help. Which I am, right now. But I will not be if I don’t get to do my part carrying heavy loads. I guess that is just a matter of stubbornly offering my help and hopefully it will be accepted. :)
It is harvest time here! Yes, I know, it is barely June. But it is still time to harvest the wheat and the rosemary. I have helped some with both of these harvests. It’s fun! In a hard labor, dusty, satisfying sort of way. It had been a while since I had done any real agricultural type work like that, although I used to work on a vegetable farm and then after that worked at a horse farms for years. Lots of hay bales and straw bales got thrown around by rather smallish women over those years at the horse farm… Similarly here: lots of stacks of wheat and sticks get carried around by very small women.
The rosemary harvest has been going on for some weeks now. Rosemary grows wild all over the mountains here… it smells quite beautiful when it rains. Taking advantage of this, some of the people in my village have formed a Medicinal Plants Cooperative. They go out and cut lots and lots of the rosemary, and then pile it in long lines to dry in the sun. Rosemary is a small bush, so what they are cutting off is essentially lots of sticks with pine-needle-like leaves all over them. Once it is deemed dry enough, people take small piles of it and beat it with a stick to knock all of the leaves off. The branches and sticks get set aside and then carried away to be used as firewood. It seems that it is mostly women who do this. I have seen some men working on it or at least overseeing it but for the most it is the women who did the gathering and beating, and only women who carry the wood back to the village.
It’s ingenious, really. They stack the sticks probably 5 feet high, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, tie rope around it, put a burlap bag on their back to keep from getting scratched and lash the whole thing to their backs with the end of the same rope, as though it were a hug, bulky, scratchy backpack. They do the same with alfalfa, wheat, big tree branches, and bags of flour. All of these loads range between 20 and 50 pounds, I would estimate. Keep in mind only a few of these women are over 5’5" and many are a good deal shorter.
The wheat harvest was somewhat different. The men did most of the cutting and binding into sheaves (with a break for tea), and then the women come and haul it all back to the drying and threshing grounds (also with a break for tea). There it stays for a while, all piles of gold. You can hear groups of men working in one part of the valley or another, because they sing when they are harvesting. The women I worked with weren’t singing, though. We also used donkeys and mules to help carry the wheat. It amazes me how much weight they carry too.
I helped with the beating of the rosemary and the carrying of the wheat. Little enough, actually, because sometimes people seem to think I am not strong enough to help. Which I am, right now. But I will not be if I don’t get to do my part carrying heavy loads. I guess that is just a matter of stubbornly offering my help and hopefully it will be accepted. :)
laughing the hailing rain
07.06.08
Today I went for a hike! I had planned to go with my 12-year-old host brother, but I couldn’t find him right away, so I called one of the neighbor girls over and we went. Her name is Fatima, a pretty common name. As it turns out she is scrappy and curious and loves to laugh. We found my host brother, who proceeded to tag along behind us the whole time.
For weeks I have been eyeing the rock quarry halfway up one of the mountains on one side of the valley. You can see it from well over 50km away as you drive up to my souk town. It is visible as a white gash in the side of the mountain. So we set off, at first up the road and then up a dirt and rock path, scrambling a bit to short cut past several of the switch backs. It is really steep! Up the side of the mountain there is a large expanse of area that is thoroughly grazed by sheep-herders. The only things that grow in abundance are two aromatic herbs: rosemary (azier) and zushin (whose English name I do not know). Everything else is scrappy bits of grass and flowers that have managed to claim a root-holdm but not much of it. Most of the land is packed dirt and/or loose scree and rocks. There are rocky outcroppings all over the place; it is starkly beautiful and in amazing contrast to the lush green of the river floodplain and farm fields.
So we come up over the first long scramble to a long slope upward along the floor of a huge bowl in the mountains. Cutting across the switchbacks we found a bunch of cool bugs! Insects, I should say. Fatima was really helpful with giving me the names of things, which I have dutifully written down and will hopefully commit to memory over time.
Then my host brother decided that we should cut off the next bunch of switch backs by climbing straight up a rockfall in between two rocky outcroppings. Which turned out to be difficult but a lot of fun! I love rock climbing. We met a man from the village up there, where apparently he lives, guarding the entrance to the quarry. He hiked out on the rocks to us, and my host brother stayed and chatted with him. Up and up and up and then along the road a bit and we were there. Big cliffs of white calcite type rock, carved out by the quarrying. It is as if someone took a knife and decided to cut slices out of the mountainside. Very, very impressive to walk into, a little intimidating, too, as I reminded myself that this is a seismically active region. J
About then we heard the first rolls of thunder. The fluffy clouds overhead were morphing… in the ten minutes we were at the top the thunder went from random to consistent and then constant. We started walking down as the first raindrops fell. We met my host brother and started jogging… the smell of rain in dry dust rose up. The drops were startlingly cold to feel as they fell, and then began to pelt down. We passed up an offer to wait out the storm, and kept booking it down the mountain. And then the hail started falling. Lots of it! Somehow it really surprised me. No wonder the rain was so cold! The biggest one we saw was well over a quarter-size in diameter. It was so beautiful, though! Rain is precious here, and we were loving the wet and cold of it after the hot climb up. And the thunder in the air was wonderful. The view of the other side of the valley kept changing as the sun peeked out from behind one cloud or another, lighting up this rock out cropping, that peak, or encrusting a flat plain in light. We kept running and walking alternately, laughing at the hail and our increasing soaked clothes, loving it all! By the time we got back down to the village, we were soaking wet. I took the opportunity to jump in a couple of puddles. You know, seeing as I was already soaked and dirty. Totally worth it, too!!! As we walked down the village road, saying hi to people and laughing at how absurdly wet we were; I chanced to look back. There was a rainbow arching delicately over the exact place we had just ascended and descended.
Today I went for a hike! I had planned to go with my 12-year-old host brother, but I couldn’t find him right away, so I called one of the neighbor girls over and we went. Her name is Fatima, a pretty common name. As it turns out she is scrappy and curious and loves to laugh. We found my host brother, who proceeded to tag along behind us the whole time.
For weeks I have been eyeing the rock quarry halfway up one of the mountains on one side of the valley. You can see it from well over 50km away as you drive up to my souk town. It is visible as a white gash in the side of the mountain. So we set off, at first up the road and then up a dirt and rock path, scrambling a bit to short cut past several of the switch backs. It is really steep! Up the side of the mountain there is a large expanse of area that is thoroughly grazed by sheep-herders. The only things that grow in abundance are two aromatic herbs: rosemary (azier) and zushin (whose English name I do not know). Everything else is scrappy bits of grass and flowers that have managed to claim a root-holdm but not much of it. Most of the land is packed dirt and/or loose scree and rocks. There are rocky outcroppings all over the place; it is starkly beautiful and in amazing contrast to the lush green of the river floodplain and farm fields.
So we come up over the first long scramble to a long slope upward along the floor of a huge bowl in the mountains. Cutting across the switchbacks we found a bunch of cool bugs! Insects, I should say. Fatima was really helpful with giving me the names of things, which I have dutifully written down and will hopefully commit to memory over time.
Then my host brother decided that we should cut off the next bunch of switch backs by climbing straight up a rockfall in between two rocky outcroppings. Which turned out to be difficult but a lot of fun! I love rock climbing. We met a man from the village up there, where apparently he lives, guarding the entrance to the quarry. He hiked out on the rocks to us, and my host brother stayed and chatted with him. Up and up and up and then along the road a bit and we were there. Big cliffs of white calcite type rock, carved out by the quarrying. It is as if someone took a knife and decided to cut slices out of the mountainside. Very, very impressive to walk into, a little intimidating, too, as I reminded myself that this is a seismically active region. J
About then we heard the first rolls of thunder. The fluffy clouds overhead were morphing… in the ten minutes we were at the top the thunder went from random to consistent and then constant. We started walking down as the first raindrops fell. We met my host brother and started jogging… the smell of rain in dry dust rose up. The drops were startlingly cold to feel as they fell, and then began to pelt down. We passed up an offer to wait out the storm, and kept booking it down the mountain. And then the hail started falling. Lots of it! Somehow it really surprised me. No wonder the rain was so cold! The biggest one we saw was well over a quarter-size in diameter. It was so beautiful, though! Rain is precious here, and we were loving the wet and cold of it after the hot climb up. And the thunder in the air was wonderful. The view of the other side of the valley kept changing as the sun peeked out from behind one cloud or another, lighting up this rock out cropping, that peak, or encrusting a flat plain in light. We kept running and walking alternately, laughing at the hail and our increasing soaked clothes, loving it all! By the time we got back down to the village, we were soaking wet. I took the opportunity to jump in a couple of puddles. You know, seeing as I was already soaked and dirty. Totally worth it, too!!! As we walked down the village road, saying hi to people and laughing at how absurdly wet we were; I chanced to look back. There was a rainbow arching delicately over the exact place we had just ascended and descended.
there are many good insects in the world...
01/06/08
New most despised insect: fleas.
That’s right, I have fleas. This kind of disgusts me. I am not certain where I picked them up or if they are just endemic to my host family’s house. I could have picked them up at the wedding I went to. We slept overnight on the floor there. Or it could have been the adorable puppy that I petted (although I washed my hands immediately afterwards and didn’t pick him up. I wanted to but after feeling lots of little bumps on his head I investigated and found the worst tick infestation I have ever seen. The little guy literally had 15 ticks at least per square inch…). Or it could be the huge rug my host family insists I lay my sleeping pad on. Or it could have been the cows. Or something else… anyway, I don’t know. What I do know is that fleas are really irritating. I am learning what they feel like, and have managed to catch six on me. All of them have been summarily torn in two or thrown out the window. I also am learning where they like to hide in garments. In the seams. If you unfold the seams and move quickly (REALLY quickly) you can catch them before the little buggers jump off and disappear into the carpet. And then you can rip them in two. Which is every bit as satisfying as ripping ticks in two. Who used to be my most despised insect-type-thing.
Methods used in my flea control: 1—Catch an kill, as previously described. 2—Spray self and bedding down with bug spray every night. 3—Put sprigs of rosemary all over my room and in all of my clean clothes (it is supposed to discourage insects). 4—Take bedding outside and leave it in the sun for a day. Or two. 5—Put nasty chemicals underneath the blanket that goes under the rug that goes under my sleeping pad. My next plan is to research fleas online and learn more killing methods. If you know any, dish! OK? I need back up plans.
I think the score is Fleas: 30+ Jeannie: 16 or so. But I am staging a comeback.
New most despised insect: fleas.
That’s right, I have fleas. This kind of disgusts me. I am not certain where I picked them up or if they are just endemic to my host family’s house. I could have picked them up at the wedding I went to. We slept overnight on the floor there. Or it could have been the adorable puppy that I petted (although I washed my hands immediately afterwards and didn’t pick him up. I wanted to but after feeling lots of little bumps on his head I investigated and found the worst tick infestation I have ever seen. The little guy literally had 15 ticks at least per square inch…). Or it could be the huge rug my host family insists I lay my sleeping pad on. Or it could have been the cows. Or something else… anyway, I don’t know. What I do know is that fleas are really irritating. I am learning what they feel like, and have managed to catch six on me. All of them have been summarily torn in two or thrown out the window. I also am learning where they like to hide in garments. In the seams. If you unfold the seams and move quickly (REALLY quickly) you can catch them before the little buggers jump off and disappear into the carpet. And then you can rip them in two. Which is every bit as satisfying as ripping ticks in two. Who used to be my most despised insect-type-thing.
Methods used in my flea control: 1—Catch an kill, as previously described. 2—Spray self and bedding down with bug spray every night. 3—Put sprigs of rosemary all over my room and in all of my clean clothes (it is supposed to discourage insects). 4—Take bedding outside and leave it in the sun for a day. Or two. 5—Put nasty chemicals underneath the blanket that goes under the rug that goes under my sleeping pad. My next plan is to research fleas online and learn more killing methods. If you know any, dish! OK? I need back up plans.
I think the score is Fleas: 30+ Jeannie: 16 or so. But I am staging a comeback.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
28 may 2008
I’m not quite sure just what to write about… so much has happened! I have moved into my new host family’s home at my site. It’s a mud house, but a huge one. My host father is one of the Shixh in the village. A shixh is a person of authority, kind of like a governor, only usually a little more personal. So, closer to a mayor, I suppose. There are several local levels of command. The moqadem, then shixh, and then qaid. And after that there are more that I don’t know about. J Anyway… we have two cows, two calves, 11 sheep and lambs, one ram, two goats, one donkey, one mule and three chickens. And one cat who is usually hiding. My family spends a lot of time going to gather alfalfa for the animals. They harvest a new small patch of field everyday (by hand), and pack it all onto the donkey’s back to get it back to the house. Sometimes the sheep go out to graze, but I’m not sure the cows ever do. It is good we have cows, though, because that means we have milk! Hooray!! I won’t become lactose intolerant from under exposure after all. I might become intolerant anyway, though, who can fathom the ways of the intestines?? Certainly not me!
Some things that have happened, since I can’t decide what to write about:
--I had a meeting with a bunch of volunteers from the Eastern High Atlas region: lots of fun, some good ideas and hopefully some hiking buddies later!
--Tried to show my host mother that I can milk a cow, but she is afraid it will kick me, and I don’t know how to tell her I’ve been kicked by a cow before, so it’s OK, it won’t kill me (probably).
--Went to a Berber wedding: fascinating ceremony, involving a mule and lots of dancing, I’ll put a separate entry up about weddings sometime. On a side note, I don’t know if I mentioned that I got married a few weeks ago? Just kidding!! We had a mock wedding at training, and two "couples" got married. Somehow I ended up being one of the brides, and was completely decked out in Arabic finery. Pictures will follow at some point… The other girl was dressed like a Berber bride. The big plus from this is that if I need to claim to be married in the future, I won’t exactly be lying!!
--Biked 40 km to my souk town: a gorgeous ride, very remote, so I carried all sorts of tools just in case my bike got a flat or something truly irritating like that.
--Helped my host brother take our sheep out to graze. Fairly entertaining... the goats are sneaky.
--Made friends with our donkey. She’s very shy.
--The highlight of today is when I broke the tap in our kitchen. I am not at all sure how it happened, I was just turning it on to get some water when the whole handle just came off! With water flying everywhere as I frantically tried to screw it back in, I was thinking, "how come there is water pressure only when I don’t need it???" I almost got it back in, but then it came off totally with a spectacular shooting of water into the air and I realized that the sink drain was clogged… perfect… I tried to plunge it with the handy-dandy sink plunger nearby on the counter but no go… so now not only is water flying everywhere but the sink is a mere minute or two from overflowing, no end in sight… I try yelling for help but no one is in earshot and I cannot seem to stop the flowing fountain… so I put a big clay dish under the tap (think massive 2 ft. across and 4 in. deep clay dish) and sprint down the dark, unevenly huge spiral stairs to find someone, anyone… run out the front door and find my host father chumming around with some friends, I am yelling and telling him to (follows a rough translation of what I said) "Come! Now! Tap, kitchen, water, everywhere!!! Lets go! Now! Come ON lets go!! Now!!!!" Finally he understands my urgency (or maybe it was my soaking wet clothing) and comes up, screws the stupid thing in and the water stops. None too soon, either, as my makeshift water-catcher is filled to the brim. We sweep the water into the drain, and I go change and then go to meet the Qaid. Did I mention I was trying to hurry to a meeting the whole time? I have resolved never to use that tap again. Which leaves only one question: how on earth did I break it in the first place???
--My host father wants me to become a Muslim. Fortunately, I just learned the word for Christianity, so now he really wants me to become a Muslim. I predict many conversations about this… perhaps at some point I will succeed in convincing him that I do, in fact, greatly enjoy my choice of spirituality and that it’s great! Really! All without giving the appearance of proselytizing… a bit of a tightrope walk.
--I hope and pray each day that somehow the lightning fast conversations will magically begin to make real sense instead of bits and pieces here and there, but I know that it will instead require steady practice… I seem to be improving, anyway, which is encouraging.
--They have something like chapatti here! (Shout out to all you who know and love chapatti…) It’s called misms in Arabic and rrumtfos in Tashellhit/Tamazight. And it’s at least twice as big as Tanzanian chapatti. Usually served with more butter than I care for but I got one without any today! Delicious!!
Peace and joy to you all. In Jesus’ name… because I can say it here. J
Some things that have happened, since I can’t decide what to write about:
--I had a meeting with a bunch of volunteers from the Eastern High Atlas region: lots of fun, some good ideas and hopefully some hiking buddies later!
--Tried to show my host mother that I can milk a cow, but she is afraid it will kick me, and I don’t know how to tell her I’ve been kicked by a cow before, so it’s OK, it won’t kill me (probably).
--Went to a Berber wedding: fascinating ceremony, involving a mule and lots of dancing, I’ll put a separate entry up about weddings sometime. On a side note, I don’t know if I mentioned that I got married a few weeks ago? Just kidding!! We had a mock wedding at training, and two "couples" got married. Somehow I ended up being one of the brides, and was completely decked out in Arabic finery. Pictures will follow at some point… The other girl was dressed like a Berber bride. The big plus from this is that if I need to claim to be married in the future, I won’t exactly be lying!!
--Biked 40 km to my souk town: a gorgeous ride, very remote, so I carried all sorts of tools just in case my bike got a flat or something truly irritating like that.
--Helped my host brother take our sheep out to graze. Fairly entertaining... the goats are sneaky.
--Made friends with our donkey. She’s very shy.
--The highlight of today is when I broke the tap in our kitchen. I am not at all sure how it happened, I was just turning it on to get some water when the whole handle just came off! With water flying everywhere as I frantically tried to screw it back in, I was thinking, "how come there is water pressure only when I don’t need it???" I almost got it back in, but then it came off totally with a spectacular shooting of water into the air and I realized that the sink drain was clogged… perfect… I tried to plunge it with the handy-dandy sink plunger nearby on the counter but no go… so now not only is water flying everywhere but the sink is a mere minute or two from overflowing, no end in sight… I try yelling for help but no one is in earshot and I cannot seem to stop the flowing fountain… so I put a big clay dish under the tap (think massive 2 ft. across and 4 in. deep clay dish) and sprint down the dark, unevenly huge spiral stairs to find someone, anyone… run out the front door and find my host father chumming around with some friends, I am yelling and telling him to (follows a rough translation of what I said) "Come! Now! Tap, kitchen, water, everywhere!!! Lets go! Now! Come ON lets go!! Now!!!!" Finally he understands my urgency (or maybe it was my soaking wet clothing) and comes up, screws the stupid thing in and the water stops. None too soon, either, as my makeshift water-catcher is filled to the brim. We sweep the water into the drain, and I go change and then go to meet the Qaid. Did I mention I was trying to hurry to a meeting the whole time? I have resolved never to use that tap again. Which leaves only one question: how on earth did I break it in the first place???
--My host father wants me to become a Muslim. Fortunately, I just learned the word for Christianity, so now he really wants me to become a Muslim. I predict many conversations about this… perhaps at some point I will succeed in convincing him that I do, in fact, greatly enjoy my choice of spirituality and that it’s great! Really! All without giving the appearance of proselytizing… a bit of a tightrope walk.
--I hope and pray each day that somehow the lightning fast conversations will magically begin to make real sense instead of bits and pieces here and there, but I know that it will instead require steady practice… I seem to be improving, anyway, which is encouraging.
--They have something like chapatti here! (Shout out to all you who know and love chapatti…) It’s called misms in Arabic and rrumtfos in Tashellhit/Tamazight. And it’s at least twice as big as Tanzanian chapatti. Usually served with more butter than I care for but I got one without any today! Delicious!!
Peace and joy to you all. In Jesus’ name… because I can say it here. J
Thursday, May 15, 2008
May 12, 2008
We presented our final project today! This the first actual project that I have done with Moroccans, and really the first formal environmental education project that I have completed. It is also likely to be the only one for quite a while. My site is a new one to Peace Corps, and so is unlikely to be ready for a project in the first few months of my service. Instead I will be relearning Tamazight…
But back to the project! I am very excited about it, mostly because we actually managed to pull it off. I had my doubts, mostly in technology coming through for us. And while it was quite stressful, we were able to actually pull it off. So, the project!
We decided to work with the local school in my training site. We needed to do an environmental education project, and we needed to do it in about two weeks time. My language teacher has experience in making films for educational purposes, and had the necessary editing software with him. With his ideas and some group brainstorming, we came up with a good storyline for a movie. Then, we planned out some in-class environmental education to go along with it. The movie and the in-class EE were both targeted to increase awareness about trash management and water conservation, and to get the kids excited about actually doing so.
The storyline is as follows:
The students are sitting in class, where the teacher is teaching them a passage from the Haddith about the importance of conserving trees. As one student is reciting the Haddith, crying interrupts the class. No child is crying, so the whole class leaves to search for who it is. They search the classroom, and then go outside to search the grounds. Finally, they find a small tree who is crying. Why are you crying they ask, and the trees answers: because there is trash on the ground all around me, and it makes me sad. Can you help me, it asks. Yes! The children reply and pick up the trash. We then go through this scene another time, only this time the tree is crying because there is no water in the ground and it is thirsty. So, then the children go and turn off the tap that they had left running.
The best part of this all was a tie between two things. Firstly, when we came back after shooting it and showed them the movie, they were very excited about it, especially to see themselves on the screne! Secondly, when we were shooting, it was so much fun to watch the kids gain in confidence over time. They all started out very shy, but eventually they became more confident, actually acting the parts and even having fun with it. One boy in particular set the mood for the whole film with how convincingly he delivered his one small line. We also tried to have just as many girls as boys involved, so we split up the speaking parts between people.
So now we have only to get them a copy of the the film. Hopefully they will find a way to watch it again, becuase we are givng them a CD/DVD, which isnùt the most appropriate of technologies, but it is the best that we can do.
In any event, it was a lot of fun, and hopefully the kids learned something, or found some enthusiasm for actively preserving their resources. Hooray!
We presented our final project today! This the first actual project that I have done with Moroccans, and really the first formal environmental education project that I have completed. It is also likely to be the only one for quite a while. My site is a new one to Peace Corps, and so is unlikely to be ready for a project in the first few months of my service. Instead I will be relearning Tamazight…
But back to the project! I am very excited about it, mostly because we actually managed to pull it off. I had my doubts, mostly in technology coming through for us. And while it was quite stressful, we were able to actually pull it off. So, the project!
We decided to work with the local school in my training site. We needed to do an environmental education project, and we needed to do it in about two weeks time. My language teacher has experience in making films for educational purposes, and had the necessary editing software with him. With his ideas and some group brainstorming, we came up with a good storyline for a movie. Then, we planned out some in-class environmental education to go along with it. The movie and the in-class EE were both targeted to increase awareness about trash management and water conservation, and to get the kids excited about actually doing so.
The storyline is as follows:
The students are sitting in class, where the teacher is teaching them a passage from the Haddith about the importance of conserving trees. As one student is reciting the Haddith, crying interrupts the class. No child is crying, so the whole class leaves to search for who it is. They search the classroom, and then go outside to search the grounds. Finally, they find a small tree who is crying. Why are you crying they ask, and the trees answers: because there is trash on the ground all around me, and it makes me sad. Can you help me, it asks. Yes! The children reply and pick up the trash. We then go through this scene another time, only this time the tree is crying because there is no water in the ground and it is thirsty. So, then the children go and turn off the tap that they had left running.
The best part of this all was a tie between two things. Firstly, when we came back after shooting it and showed them the movie, they were very excited about it, especially to see themselves on the screne! Secondly, when we were shooting, it was so much fun to watch the kids gain in confidence over time. They all started out very shy, but eventually they became more confident, actually acting the parts and even having fun with it. One boy in particular set the mood for the whole film with how convincingly he delivered his one small line. We also tried to have just as many girls as boys involved, so we split up the speaking parts between people.
So now we have only to get them a copy of the the film. Hopefully they will find a way to watch it again, becuase we are givng them a CD/DVD, which isnùt the most appropriate of technologies, but it is the best that we can do.
In any event, it was a lot of fun, and hopefully the kids learned something, or found some enthusiasm for actively preserving their resources. Hooray!
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Dialects
So, about dialects.
Dialects are a thing of evil, created specifically to cause weeping and gnashing of teeth in the hearts of all Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco. Well, not quite. I actually think it’s cool how language changes and evolves when distance, mountains or whathaveyou separate people from each other. Be that as it may, the language that people speak in my site is quite different from the language that I have been spending the last 2 months trying to learn. Hence my initial frustration.
However, I have since realized that it’s not as different as I originally thought. Also, there are good things about the dialects, too. They’re beautiful. Just listen to anyone from Glasgow or the Deep South speak English. It’s beautiful. I suppose once I speak these well enough I might find a deeper appreciation for the beauty of the dialects in Tamazight as well.
The thing with language in Morocco is its fluidity. It’s REALLY different from place to place. Moroccan Arabic is pretty consistent throughout, but that in and of itself is a dialect of Arabic. Classical Arabic is also spoken in certain situations. French is also widely spoken. And then there are the Berber languages/dialects. They are called dilects, but are (as far as I can tell) completely different from each other. People speaking one cannot communicate to people speaking in another. Instead they resort to Moroccan Arabic (Darija). The dialects are three: Tashelhit, Tamazight, and Tarafit. Within each of those there are MANY dialects. Further, some who technically speak Tam claim to speak Tash. So, it’s all rather confusing.
Interestingly, these dialects survived quite a few years in Morocco even when they were technically illegal to speak. The Arabs had control of the country, and made it a law that everyone should speak Arabic. They were trying to get the Berber out of the Berbers, for many reasons, some religious in nature, while others were more for reasons of political control. However, Berber survived in the remote mountains. Certain aspects have mostly disappeared, though. Their number system is all but gone, and the written script has been largely forgotten. This is changing though, as "Berber Pride" has become more and more popular. They use the last symbol of the Berber alphabet as their symbol. And all Berber children now have a least some exposure to Tifinagh, the script, in school. This is one of the many things that have changed in recent years in Morocco. I am really glad to find that people are embracing their old culture… it’s encouraging! In an era of globalization, you have to be really intentional about preserving cultural heritage, or it just fades away.
So, really, I am happy that I have to learn an obscure, difficult dialect of a language spoken by very few people… it’s just that right now I the lazy part of me wishes it were a little bit easier. J
Dialects are a thing of evil, created specifically to cause weeping and gnashing of teeth in the hearts of all Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco. Well, not quite. I actually think it’s cool how language changes and evolves when distance, mountains or whathaveyou separate people from each other. Be that as it may, the language that people speak in my site is quite different from the language that I have been spending the last 2 months trying to learn. Hence my initial frustration.
However, I have since realized that it’s not as different as I originally thought. Also, there are good things about the dialects, too. They’re beautiful. Just listen to anyone from Glasgow or the Deep South speak English. It’s beautiful. I suppose once I speak these well enough I might find a deeper appreciation for the beauty of the dialects in Tamazight as well.
The thing with language in Morocco is its fluidity. It’s REALLY different from place to place. Moroccan Arabic is pretty consistent throughout, but that in and of itself is a dialect of Arabic. Classical Arabic is also spoken in certain situations. French is also widely spoken. And then there are the Berber languages/dialects. They are called dilects, but are (as far as I can tell) completely different from each other. People speaking one cannot communicate to people speaking in another. Instead they resort to Moroccan Arabic (Darija). The dialects are three: Tashelhit, Tamazight, and Tarafit. Within each of those there are MANY dialects. Further, some who technically speak Tam claim to speak Tash. So, it’s all rather confusing.
Interestingly, these dialects survived quite a few years in Morocco even when they were technically illegal to speak. The Arabs had control of the country, and made it a law that everyone should speak Arabic. They were trying to get the Berber out of the Berbers, for many reasons, some religious in nature, while others were more for reasons of political control. However, Berber survived in the remote mountains. Certain aspects have mostly disappeared, though. Their number system is all but gone, and the written script has been largely forgotten. This is changing though, as "Berber Pride" has become more and more popular. They use the last symbol of the Berber alphabet as their symbol. And all Berber children now have a least some exposure to Tifinagh, the script, in school. This is one of the many things that have changed in recent years in Morocco. I am really glad to find that people are embracing their old culture… it’s encouraging! In an era of globalization, you have to be really intentional about preserving cultural heritage, or it just fades away.
So, really, I am happy that I have to learn an obscure, difficult dialect of a language spoken by very few people… it’s just that right now I the lazy part of me wishes it were a little bit easier. J
Site Visit
Site Visit!
I have actually been to the site where I will be staying for the next 2 years, Inshallah. Hooray!!! It was very exciting to actually be on a bus on the way. It is very far away from our training site. It took two very full days of travel to get there. If we were allowed to travel at night, it would have been shorter, but it is not very safe at night, and to Peace Corps doesn’t allow that… For good reason, really, since the incidence of car accidents goes up a lot at night, and Morocco has some of the most dangerous roads to be found on the planet. Or so it seems… I haven’t actually looked at any statistics, but even Moroccans I’ve talked to will say the same.
As we drove up to my site, the landscape went from hilly, gully filled desert to flat, arid plains that are almost desert, almost grassland… the mountains on my left hand as we drove north. We went over mountains, and then back to the plain. Wide open and dry and hazy from all the dust in the air. I admit that a few times a thought drifted across my mind: wow I hope there’s more greenery in my actual site. Arriving in my souk-town, 40 k from my actual village it was still flat plains, dry and dusty and already quite hot. And it wasn’t even May yet. And then waited for the transit to go… we waited for a couple hours. I was traveling with a Moroccan woman, very sweet person, who was being my translator for the introduction to my host family. We got into the transit, and then went up, and up and over, and up and up and over and then finally, around one more foothill, and we were between the mountains of the Middle Atlas, and there is my little village, tucked between huge peaks of stone and scrub. Along a river, mud houses (think adobe) and well-established fields in by the river. Green! Huge mountains!! I am so lucky.
I have actually been to the site where I will be staying for the next 2 years, Inshallah. Hooray!!! It was very exciting to actually be on a bus on the way. It is very far away from our training site. It took two very full days of travel to get there. If we were allowed to travel at night, it would have been shorter, but it is not very safe at night, and to Peace Corps doesn’t allow that… For good reason, really, since the incidence of car accidents goes up a lot at night, and Morocco has some of the most dangerous roads to be found on the planet. Or so it seems… I haven’t actually looked at any statistics, but even Moroccans I’ve talked to will say the same.
As we drove up to my site, the landscape went from hilly, gully filled desert to flat, arid plains that are almost desert, almost grassland… the mountains on my left hand as we drove north. We went over mountains, and then back to the plain. Wide open and dry and hazy from all the dust in the air. I admit that a few times a thought drifted across my mind: wow I hope there’s more greenery in my actual site. Arriving in my souk-town, 40 k from my actual village it was still flat plains, dry and dusty and already quite hot. And it wasn’t even May yet. And then waited for the transit to go… we waited for a couple hours. I was traveling with a Moroccan woman, very sweet person, who was being my translator for the introduction to my host family. We got into the transit, and then went up, and up and over, and up and up and over and then finally, around one more foothill, and we were between the mountains of the Middle Atlas, and there is my little village, tucked between huge peaks of stone and scrub. Along a river, mud houses (think adobe) and well-established fields in by the river. Green! Huge mountains!! I am so lucky.
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