... and Back Again

My time in America seems as though it was a dream as I sit here in my village watching the weeks fly by. Already I have been back a month, and it feels as if I was never gone. Life continues to tick by as usual, the same men sit in the same cafes, following the warm sun from one side of the main street to the other. Morning belongs to one set of cafes and afternoon to the other; a time honored system in a land with no central heating. The same group of kids play soccer (football) in the street in front of my house most nights, hollering and carrying on. Sometimes fights break out or a kid knocks at my door asking for me to retrieve the ball he has kicked onto my roof. Souq every weekend with its customary flood of people, and lunch with my Moroccan family on Fridays with the shaking of hands, drinking of tea, and eating of couscous, which is perhaps one of the tastiest foods on the planet. I mention this not to convey boredom, but rather the delightful regularity of life here in the Atlas. Everything moves slowly, and routines change with the seasons. Very few people are transient here, most have lived here all their lives and will continue to do so; in that respect, my village is not so different from small town America.

Everything feels different after my visit home, not only was I happy to be back, but I am still happy to be here. I delight in the culture and the people that I see every day. Interactions that before I would have viewed as negative now only serve to make me smile and laugh; I feel a deep inner peace and satisfaction and feel content to sit back and watch the seasons pass. I am working though, and have several projects on the table. However, as none of them are sure yet, I will not elaborate on what they are, just that they are proceeding and look promising. I hope to meet with the school soon about reinvigorating the defunct Environmental Education Club, so that will be something to do. But mostly I, and really all of the people of the Atlas, simply have to survive the winter cold and await the glorious months of summer. Months that I was unable to fully enjoy last year due to illness and culture shock.

A good friend and fellow volunteer told me that after one year, I would begin to feel more content here. She said that after seeing one cycle of seasons, there weren’t too many surprises after that. I tend to believe her, and I do not think it coincidence that this feeling of confidence and contentment comes so close to my one year mark, which falls in early March. This is also a reason, I believe, that many people say that Peace Corps doesn’t really start until the second year. Well, I am ready to begin and look forward to my remaining months here. May they be glorious.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

a Change in Realities

Resting my head against the window of the crowded third class carriage, I could feel the rhythm of the train wheels as they clattered against the rails. I glanced at the other Peace Corps Volunteer dozing quietly in the seat across from me and raised my head to look out at the scenery flashing past. The countryside between Fes and Casablanca was green and lush; olive groves marched up and down hillsides and smooth brown fields stretched to the horizon. The day before, spent in the old city, or medina, of Fes had been cold. But not nearly so cold as my village in the Atlas that I had left behind several days before. I knew I would not see it again for over a month; I was going home.

~

A cold day in Colorado, with the Mercury having plunged into the negatives at night, and climbing into the single digits and teens during the day. Near sunset, I find myself standing on the cold stone of a Park Service overlook high on the Mesa Verde cuesta, above the Mancos River Valley. The scene below is perfect and still, and the land is a patchwork of sun and shadow from the retreating snowstorm. Over the La Plata range, silver banners of snow connect the earth to the sky and everywhere hums with the dormant potential of a winter world. Snow covers all, the conifers stand black against its brightness while the cottonwoods along the frozen river and the aspens on the mountainsides form a grey fog of uncertain shape and color.

This has long been a special place for me; it is a place where I go to think, reflect, and contemplate my life. I came here minutes after being told I had been hired as a Park Ranger at Mesa Verde and returned many times that summer to watch the thunderstorms roil and growl above the mountains. I came here each time I returned home from the many parks that I worked at after that, sometimes when the future was uncertain and other times when I had only a few short days of respite before being again swept along in its tide. This is a time such as this, in the middle of three weeks in America in the midst of my Moroccan experience.

~

After ten months in Africa, the familiar and comforting seems strange. I still know how to function here, I remember how to use hot water straight out of the tap, how to get groceries at the supermarket, even how to drive in the snow. But my brain feels as if it is not fully engaged in the actions of my daily life at home. Going to coffee shops to see friends, spending time home with my family, visiting my grandmother; all of it feels like muscle memory, a remembered routine. Every street corner, storefront, and park holds multiple layers of memories for me; memories of youth, adolescence, now adulthood. There are so many associations with everything in this place that I am tied to it eternally; it is unquestionably home. But how do I reconcile all that I have learned in Africa, all that I have seen and felt in these past ten months, with places and people that have changed little, if at all?

I know cannot allow myself to grow comfortable here, to revert into the person I was before Morocco, to pick up my American life where I left off. I have sixteen months left in my Peace Corps Service and travel after that. Who knows what else will have changed in that year? In many ways, I feel as though I am just getting started in Morocco. So these are the things that I sit and think about while looking down into the Mancos Valley, gazing through the many layers of memory and time; trying to make it all fit.

~

On another day, I find myself driving along the ice-choked San Juan river outside of the town of Bluff, Utah. The snow lies thick upon the ground here also, drifted and swirled by the desert wind; each chamisa or snakeweed surrounded by a berm of pale crystal. The white sandstone cliffs that encircle Bluff rise before me and I know that I am close to my destination. Soon I begin to drive slowly through the town. There is the old trading post, closed and asleep beneath bare cottonwoods, the lodge on my left, the coffeehouse on my right. The town is tiny and quiet, it is also where I ultimately would like to settle down and live quietly with my family, at least in one fogged and distant possible future. The Twin Rocks Cafe is open for business and I pull into the gravel lot at the base of the steps.

Eating in this Cafe has long been one of my favorite pastimes when I am in this part of the world, I like to sit and eat, read the local paper, and listen to the conversations of the locals. Across from me, two older women strike up a conversation in Navajo and I listen to the ebb and flow of their beautiful language. I took a year of Navajo in college, and found the language incredibly difficult, but now after close to a year of speaking Tamazight, Navajo does not sound strange to me anymore; maybe I'll try learning it again. Another possible future.

Later, standing at the base of Comb Ridge next to the wash, I look up along the red and white teeth of the monocline as it stretches away to the north, fading with distance before being abruptly swallowed up but the volcanic laccolith of the Abajo Range. Cedar Mesa rises to the northwest, tiers of red stone stairstepping into the sky cleft to its base by the dark mouths of many canyons. Another place of layered memories, I stay there and look and listen to the desert around me. I look at the tracks of coyote, raven, mouse, and lizard imprinted in the soft dusting of snow at my feet and see where the ice has been broken for them to drink. Everywhere there is life and to me life in the desert is the most beautiful there is. Like a star in the night sky, life here blazes strong in the void and the land's harshness melts away before its vibrancy.

~

My time in the states came to a close after three weeks when, to my surprise I was ready to go back to Morocco. After saying goodbye to most of my family, my brother having left the week before to go back to college, I watched the landscape fade into faceless cloud as the plane to Denver climbed out of the airport and turned northward. My Dad accompanied me to Denver International Airport and we parted ways in at the gate, him to go to Chicago on business, and me to Frankfurt and finally back to Morocco where I would spend the rest of my term. Ten months down, sixteen remaining. The flight across the Atlantic was easy and painless and I landed in Frankfurt at midday with a ten hour layover to enjoy. As my bags were checked, I only had a small backpack with me so I exited through customs to go out into the city.

An hour or so later, after a bratwurst and paper cup of Gluwein (hot, mulled wine) sitting on a park bench in the square, I found myself walking along the River Rhine and looking out on the fog shrouded city of Frankfurt. I stopped inside a redstone church on the river bank and sat in a pew for awhile enjoying the warmth and the grey light streaming in through the stained glass windows. I was lost in my own thoughts for awhile and I am not sure how much time passed before I left the church and continued on to a small Beer Garden situated on an out of the way street corner. I enjoyed a tall tankard of German lager in the small cozy interior and talked the hostess into posting a “Bread, not bombs” sticker from a Durango Bakery behind the bar.

Looking at it, a little piece of home in the midst of foreign surroundings, it reminded me of myself; only, I am not sure where home is anymore. Is it with my family? They have their own lives now, and my brother is flourishing in Seattle which he seems to view as home now. But where is mine? After the strangeness of the last few weeks I began to realize that home was really wherever I happened to be. The Colorado Plateau will always be my place; I will always belong there. But now, I had reached a point where the concept of home has become more nebulous and abstract. I was surprised to discover, standing later on a bridge staring into the muddy waters of the Rhine, that Morocco now felt more like home than my parents’ house in Colorado; that I was looking forward to being back almost as much as I had anticipated my “homecoming”. I could never have discovered this without taking a trip back to Colorado and the epiphany filled me with an electric anticipation.

~

Seeing the spire of the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca from the airplane window, I knew that I had arrived back in Morocco and the rest of the day passed in a blur of airport activities. I had no trouble with baggage and I again found myself with my head resting against the train window as it rumbled through the foothills of the Rif Mountains toward Fes. Once there, I got a hotel room near the Bab Boujaloud, the tannery gate and main entrance to the Ancient Medina, and I fell into bed for eighteen hours, sleeping straight through the jet lag. Sitting early the next morning in a café by the Bab Boujaloud, I looked around at the scene before me. Men in flowing jelabas leading donkeys or pushing carts bustled back and forth through the gate. Sleepy school children wandered out from their homes deep in the medina and walked out through the gate to school carrying colorful backpacks. As I savored my coffee and harsha (a cornbread-like flatbread that’s great with honey) and looked at the Arabic script on the storefronts and at the towering minaret of the nearby mosque, I felt a sensation of relief come over me. I was back in the familiar, I was back to communicating in shaky Tamazight and broken Arabic, I was back to using Turkish toilets and questionable transportation. I was home, and it felt good.

As always, thanks for reading,

Charlie

P.S. To my friends and family that I have once again left behind, I miss you already. Stay as awesome as only you can be!

A Fireside Chat

Autumn has always been my favorite season; it moves in gently just as I have grown weary of summer’s heat and light. Of a sudden, although I can never recall the first day I notice each year, the colors become richer. The light is the color of honey in the late afternoons, and the west facing mountainsides and earthen walls of the houses across my valley are painted in shining golden hues. All not illuminated at this time of day is hidden by long shadows and, even a robed farmer leading his donkey home from the fields in the evenings, looms large upon earth and stone as he passes. Sometimes I sit with my friend in his café, overlooking the souq market area, which today was abuzz with the weekly buying and selling. Most people know me now, at least enough to correct those who don’t, and café sitting has become a pleasant experience. I usually just order a silver pot of Moroccan tea and two glasses and then invite the first person I see to sit and drink tea with me.

I won’t say my life has grown quieter with the advent of Fall, but I do feel that stress is beginning to ebb away. I feel more comfortable outside, although there are still bad language days; I simply have to choose whether or not to let it bother me or not. My health has improved somewhat as well, thanks to a round of anti-parasite meds and some probiotics to aid in the repopulation effort. I don’t feel perfect, but I do feel healthy, so I suppose that is something. I have been here in North Africa for approximately seven and a half months. It has been almost a year to the day, since I left the Outer Banks behind me and drove off of Hatteras Island and headed west toward home. I also can’t believe in four short months I will have been here for a full year. It has been fascinating to watch my mind try and cope with the fact that it lives somewhere as exotic and foreign as North Africa. Only, it’s not so foreign anymore, and as I have said before, some of the things that I thought the most peculiar upon arriving here I now view as normal. I am beginning to realize now why re-entry into the society and culture of the United States, is considered so difficult. I’ll get a taste of it when I return home in December for a three week stay.

I am writing by candlelight in an effort to conserve some of the remaining electricity in my “pay-as-you-go” account. I like doing things by candlelight, it shrinks your world down to whatever you happen to be doing at the moment and everything else fades into darkness around you. I am listening to an Appalachian waltz and enjoying the warmth of my dying fire. I am now the proud owner of 300 kilos of firewood which I helped weigh, load, and stack in my hallway last evening. It should hopefully last me the better part of the winter, but there is much splitting and sawing to be done. The stove is a nice little construction; solid and small, and made from thick metal that holds the heat long after the fire has gone out. My host father helped me to cement the pipe in the roof today and I have to keep the cement moist for a few days so it doesn’t dry too quickly and crack. Apparently the leaks in my roof have been fixed before, but then the cement dried to fast and the roof simply began to leak again. I am working hard to ensure that this house is as warm and snug as possible before the hammer falls and it will soon.

I can see the half moon through my window from the desk, it was a beautiful crescent a few nights ago riding high above the mountain at sunset. The clouds have taken on a peculiar quality of late; they ride low in the sky, pouring over ridgetops like the foam on the crest of a wave and then flowing along the valley floors like a slowly retreating tide. The poplars along the river have become golden candles which, when coupled with the honeyed light, burn brilliantly every evening. The fields are being harvested for the last time and being turned over to slumber beneath the coming snows. Looking out from my rooftop in the early mornings I can see mule teams turning the sod with an old style heavy-plough, all the while being coaxed gently forward by their masters.

The apple crop this year was a good one and fresh cider has begun to flood the little shops in the village. Some volunteers in other more apple-rich areas have reported having many bags of apples being given to them by people they may or may not have ever met. A couple months ago in fact, as the apple crop had begun to ripen, I was sitting on the roadside with a friend of mine in a nearby village. The dusty street was silent and the sun was warm and bright overhead. There was no sign of transportation going our direction, but waiting is no longer tedious for most of us at this point. Looking up the road, I saw a venerable and quite aged Berber woman. She was dressed neatly in a white robe and walked hunched over with the aid of a cane. Her dark headscarf was bound with a pale cord and she shuffled toward us, smiling sweetly. Since I oftentimes am unable to see the mouths of women here, I have begun to appreciate the asked of “smiling with the eyes”; and this ancient woman was positively beaming.

As she drew closer, I noticed that she was carrying a large digging tool on her back and realized that she had probably been working in the fields all morning long. There are no retirement plans here in the Atlas, work is life; it is simply what you do and while I have seen many of the people here tired out from a long day, I have seen very few that are unhappy with this simple existence. When the woman was even with me, I raised a hand and said “lعwn” and she turned and spouted off a stream of Tam that I understood most of. After the formalities of greeting were out of the way, we spoke about the weather and about the Wedding Festival. As she was turning to walk away, she reached a weathered hand into a fold of her robe at her back and drew out two small apples, handing them to my friend and I. She then blessed us and hobbled off into the dust. That is how this culture operates here, these are genuinely kind and loving people. And their religion fosters this warmth and strong sense of family. I am beginning to understand now that I understood nothing before coming here and being immersed in a culture that many people in our country are convinced hates us. And I can tell you now, that it simply isn’t true, it just isn’t! I have had conversations with only a handful of people here that dislike my country; while I have had countless conversations with people back home that despise not just this nation, but an entire race and creed.

Some events in the past few months have given me pause; I occasionally read the news here in Morocco, trying in vain to keep abreast of current events outside my mountain walls. I watched the overblown fiasco of the “mosque” at Ground Zero explode into protests and hate-speech. I saw as Reverend Jones threatened to burn the Qu’ran, which thankfully did not happen. All these people see on the news is that the U.S.A. hates Islam and, while this I am sure has my liberal friends muttering their disapproval, it has many of us PCVs over here in absolute fits. On 9/11, a day where we were meant to unite in reverence and mourning for those who fell when the twin towers were destroyed, I found myself confined to my house; alone and ashamed of my country. On that day of all days, I should not have felt ashamed to be an American, but I was told to stay inside by the agency “just in case” any Anti-American sentiment be expressed. Few Moroccans mentioned the Qu’ran burning to me and those that did expressed confusion and sadness, not anger or hate. I think I was angrier than most of them.

This is not to say that I am actually ashamed to be an American, I am just ashamed of what we do sometimes, we are like a belligerent relative at a family reunion that everybody tries to ignore. No, being here in Morocco, I have come to realize that I love my country deeply and I love the principles on which it was founded. But sometimes think we need to consider that there is a world outside our borders filled with humans who are just as kind, decent, and incredible as we are.

~

So why am I going off on this? Well because it’s my job. Here are the three goals of Peace Corps:

Goal 1: To fulfill a community’s need for training and skilled manpower

Strangely this is the only goal that seems to do with the “aid worker” image of the PCV, and as you can see from the next two, the main purpose of a PCV is diplomatic.

Goal 2: To educate residents of the host nation on the culture and traditions of the United States of America.
So we are essentially P.R. agents, preaching a message of “hey look! This is what Americans are really like. We’re not all fat, rich, and arrogant. Most importantly, we don’t hate you, in fact we would like to be your friends.”

And then there’s goal 3, it’s one of the most difficult. Because we will be fulfilling it for years after we return, not just while we are serving here.

Goal 3: To educate residents of the United States of America on the unique cultures and peoples encountered while serving in the Peace Corps.

This, to me, is the most important goal of all. To promote global understanding of one another. This is what JFK had in mind when he created the Peace Corps in the 1960s. His ultimate vision was to have a huge number of future Americans that not only know about other cultures, but that can truly say they can understand another culture. Ultimately, JFK hoped this would lead to better foreign policy on our part.

So this blog, everything I tell you in my correspondence, and the stories I will inevitably tell when I return, are all part of this Third Goal. I hope that by reading this, you feel that you understand Morocco a little better; I certainly do. Because I haven’t just learned about these people, I have learned from them; and many have become my friends along the way. So when I do finally return from my two years, I will see a lot of things differently than I did before and I am not sure what that will be and to what extent. But I do know this, if anyone trashes these good people or their faith in my presence. They will have me to answer to.

Well it’s getting cold and the fire has gone out. I have a lot of work ahead of me for tomorrow and bit by bit I am getting ready for winter. In a couple of weeks I go to Marrakech for a week-long training and after that I have a meeting in the capital. Couple that with possibly teaching at the local Highschool and counting Barbary Sheep (Ammotragus lervia) for the Moroccan Eaux et Forets I have a busy time ahead of me.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

The Seventh Month

I woke up to this morning to sound of rain on the roof. I smiled slightly at this welcome noise, I have always loved listening to the rain from the warmth of my bed. But then I remembered I had about 20 books drying on the roof from my house flooding last week. I hurled myself out of bed and threw on a jelaba, taking the stairs two at a time. After three armloads of books were safely deposited inside, I sat back in the doorway, looking out over the rainy fields, and began to laugh.
Being up early in the morning is rare thing for most Peace Corps Volunteers, especially after Ramadan, but I love it and hope to make it more of a habit in the future. I put a pot of coffee on the stove, no filters or presses (though I have both), just a pot, some water, and a handful of grounds. Cowboy Coffee; it is said that if you put a horseshoe into the pot and it stands on end, it’s done. I sigh and settle back into my chair to write. The rain continues on the roof and I turn on some quiet music in the background.
It’s October 3rd, and I realize that it has been 7 months since I arrived. This makes it officially the longest time I have ever been away from my family, friends, and the Southwest. 7 months ago, I stepped off the plane in Casablanca. It was so early in the morning, and I was exhausted from the transatlantic flight Looking out on the vast green farmlands around me, punctuated by villages with their tiny pale minarets gleaming in the early morning light, I didn’t know what to think or expect of this strange new place. I think so much of those first few weeks were marked with denial. I don’t think “two years” really sank into my brain; instead I felt like a kid standing on the edge of the high dive looking down in the water and yelling down to his friends “I’m thinking”. In some regards I am still there, after all these months spent here, and I have not fully surrendered myself to being here.
Some days I don’t even feel like I am here, I feel more closely connected to home on the Colorado Plateau than with the people I right in front of me that I can see, touch, and speak with. Some days my reality here seems surreal. But then other times, I feel as though I am fully engaged in this reality, and Colorado seems to be only a distant memory. On those days, I feel as though I am touching something greater; the place I need to be. But now I simply slingshot back and forth between two realities and sit back and enjoy watching my psyche do somersaults. There is a name for this, “the Peace Corps Volunteer Cycle of Vulnerability and Adjustment” and I am right on schedule.
I think that I have made no progress here, but then I think back on the first few months and realize how far I have come. Take this recent trip to Er-Rachidia for example:

~

This is only the second time I have seen rain in Rich, my souq-market town. I pours down and cleans the thin patina of dust from the pink-sided buildings, looking toward souq I see throngs of people moving up and down the street, parting briefly to allow a car or moped splash past them, through the puddles that reflect the slate grey sky. Climbing the dark stairs in the beautifully tiled “Hotel Isli” the night before, I was overwhelmed by memories of just 5 months prior. I look at the door of a little room on the third floor, and remember sitting inside on the floor playing cards and laughing with people I barely knew, but who were destined to become my friends and neighbors. I knew nothing about this place and I had not even seen my village yet, it was just a name in my mind. I walked to the roof and looked down the long valley where the Atlas stretched away into the distance and, my village lay behind those grey peaks, shrouded in uncertainty.
Leaving the Isli, I step back out onto the street and wave to Dris, a store owner that has become my friend in recent months, I buy a yogurt from him and remember how intimidating it was when I first arrived trying to make any transaction in any of the stores. Now it’s so commonplace, I feel that I would freak out in an American supermarket. I take my yogurt to the bus station and quickly claim a seat on the departing bus. It’s the best seat on the bus, the one near the back door with lots of leg room.
As we pull out the station and pick up speed, I look at the now familiar buildings of Rich and realize with a start that I will actually miss this place when I go. My bus soon leaves the town behind and we are soon out in the open desert; the rain makes small worm-trails on the window beside me. The first leg of the trip from rich crosses a wide plain ringed with mountains and dotted with small earthen villages and silvery olive groves. Tall cane lines the dry riverbed which the bus is now crossing on a low bridge.
We climb onto a cliffside road high above the river and I look out at the shattered and twisted sediments that seem piled haphazardly here and there. We go through a small tunnel and proceed into a deep gorge, reminiscent of Santa Elena Canyon on the Big Bend of the Rio Grande, back in the states. The bottom of the gorge is palmeries and villages, some with huge crumbling Kasbahs. The palms sway gently in the breeze, heavy with clusters of orange dates, and small fields of tasseled corn are visible in the openings between their segmented trunks. Here and there, men are plowing the fields with a steel blade hooked to a team of mules.
The gorge walls tower high above and it all makes for a lovely sight; but a familiar one. The beauty of the gorge remains, but its strangeness has gone. There is nothing unusual to me here now; this is just another bus trip. Passing the dam above Er-Rachidia, I see a rainbow unfurl across the sky above the city. Beyond it lies a dark curtain of rain. Er-Rachidia is the gateway to the Sahara and the last time I was here for any significant length of time, was shortly after the backpack trip I took through the National Park. That was 4 months ago.
Er-Rachidia feels different as well, and I look around at all the familiar sights as I made my way through the back alleys to my friend’s apartment where I am staying the night. Later that evening, my friends and I sit in the back garden of the Café Imilchil and I think about all the progress I have made so far. I look at my friends, all have been here longer than I. One is coming up on his one year mark, my friend and neighbor Jack is just reaching 18 months, and my friend here in Er-Rachidia has only six months left. Although their experiences are very different from mine, I still look to them as an example of what I will experience in the coming months and suddenly 7 months doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore; after all, I am still a “freshman”.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie Kolb

Homes, Here and There

Today is July 1st and it marks the beginning of my 5th month in North Africa. I can't believe so much time has passed already, but there is plenty of time still ahead, 22 months of time in fact. My end of service date is the 5th of May, 2012, and that means I have almost two summers and two long, hard winters to deal with. We apparently don't have a spring and fall here, just a sudden transition that is characteristic of any high mountains, be they in Colorado or Africa.

~

Talking to home, I hear that the flowers are blooming and the grass is high, my mother is debating whether to let the horse out to graze on the lawn or not, and the dog is so dusty that my parents have to brush him off when he comes in the house. The indoor cat is shedding, and the outdoor cat is still successfully hunting small animals despite his advanced age and senility. My brother is home from his college in Seattle for a few weeks; he is enjoying seeing his friends and mine and just spending time at home and in our hometown.

According to the local paper, spring runoff is beginning to slacken in the Animas River and the rafters and tubers are out in force, enjoying the two month window of heat that you can actually swim in the river without getting hypothermia. The Farmer's Market is in full swing with local foods, meats, and vegetables, not to mention live music and fresh gossip. The tradition at the Farmer's Market, at least mine, is to get a cookie from my favorite bakery, and a glass of Hibiscus Juice from the tamale cart and then stroll around talking to the farmers that I know and running into friends. When the sun gets too hot, I sit in the shade of one of the trees by the side of the bank building and listen to the live music and watch the kids chase each other around.

My parents and brother are headed to Lake City for Independence Day, it is a small community of 300 high in San Juan Mountains, about 8500ft, and we have a place there that my parents like to spend much of the summer. It is cool and the people are kind, the small size of the community means that everyone know everyone else, and that everybody has a role. They are meeting with a family of our friends from Helena Montana and will stay there for about a week enjoying the company and festivities of the fourth. There will be games, food, and a parade which my family will be in, the dog dressed up in red, white, and blue and loving all of the attention. I will miss being there with them, Lake City is one of my favorite places.

Several years ago, I lived in a three-room guest house there for the better part of a summer, working as a fishing and hiking guide for an Lake City outfitter. I had just graduated from College a month before, and was using it as a time to decompress. I spent three solid months there; two of those entirely in the mountains with my blue heeler, who had never hiked that much before or since. All day was spent in high basins on the edge of sparkling lakes or trekking through dark forests of fragrant pine, spruce, and fir. These days were punctuated by vast fields of nodding wildflowers, and the jags of mountains on every horizon. Thunderstorms came most afternoons in towering blue-grey pillars of cloud. A solid-seeming landscape of swirls and billows, they were often visible for several hours crawling over the lands below, trail curtains of rain illuminated by forks of lightning. When they broke, it was with a beautiful, shattering violence that was both frightening and awe inspiring; only rarely did they last for more than a half hour.

I learned to Flyfish while working with the outfitter and it remains one of my favorite things to do, and is high on the list of things I miss most. Many golden afternoons were spent making cast after cast into streams smaller than the one lane road used to access them. I fell in love with the sport because it was silent and beautiful; it allowed me to be outside for hours at a time watching my line curl and loop over the riffled water's surface and watch the fly land delicately in a quiet hole, suspended there in the still eddy before a fish took it or the current swept it away. Evenings were spent walking in the canyon or sitting at the bar of the saloon named for the Colorado Cannibal, Alferd Packer. As the light died on the peaks, I would sit on my stool nursing a good beer and talking to people around me, who quickly became my friends. On cold days I would light the woodstove and read a book while the exhausted dog snored at my feet. Then Grand Teton National Park hired me on and I was sucked back into the park ranger whirlwind. I wouldn't have it any other way but I still consider my months in Lake City as one of the most peaceful times in my life.

I will always remember the sunny days and quiet evenings of home, in both Durango and Lake City. Memories of place and also of people; memories of friends and family talking, laughing, and sometimes crying, together. These are strong memories of the one place that have been most open to, the most involved in, and the place that has the left the most indelible mark on my soul. It is that piece of a soul, the piece that is affected by place, where you forge connections with a land and its people; intimacy through vulnerability and then understanding through intimacy. It is these connections that create the concept of home and the sense of belonging that comes with it. Some people never feel this, some never open themselves and allow their souls to be touched by the places they reside. But this has always come easily to me, and I have many connections to places that have touched me in some deep way. My parks: Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Big Bend, and Cape Hatteras; those were all home, they all became places that I understood, loved, and now miss. The mountains and the deserts of the Colorado Plateau, as I have said before, are always an unshakable first for the place that I love most deeply, understand the most, and to which I will always return to. These places have all left their mark, and have contributed to who I am as a person, each one in a unique way. From Mesa Verde I learned of time, from Yellowstone I learned of wilderness, from Teton I learned of beauty and serenity, from Big Bend I came to know austerity and balance, and Hatteras I learned of the quiet and deep mysteries found only on the edge of the sea. What do I learn now? As I feel Morocco's mark being etched in slowly beside the others, I wonder what I will take away from this place?

~

I have moved out of homestay after four months spent with a Moroccan family, two in the desert and two in the mountains. Today is my second day independent and alone, and the first full day I have to do whatever I wish. Yesterday I spent with my host father in the Land Rover, we went down to the town of Tinghrir to buy some appliances, like a refrigerator and oven, things that I would have a difficult time obtaining for myself. It was a long day and I crashed hard, falling asleep without dinner or evening ablutions. This morning, I woke up with the sun and took advantage of my two hours of water by filling every water container in the house. Eventually, when I have the water tank and heater installed, I will have water round the clock and hot showers; a thing invaluable in the single coldest site in Morocco. A treat for guest and other volunteers who visit. I made coffee on the butane stove and and sat on my roof with a cup watching the clouds form over the mountains.

I like my house, it's five rooms (including bathroom), and made entirely of various forms of concrete. The central room, my living room is illuminated by a skylight (which currently leaks, but is being fixed next week.)it has two ponjes, which are like Moroccan couches, and will eventually have a central low table for tea and entertaining Moroccan guests. My kitchen is one long counter with a sink and gas stove; a gas oven sits below. There is a chest of drawers for dishes and the refrigerator sits by the door. The stairs to the roof lead up from here as well. My office is off the living room and consists of two windows, my desk, one ponj, and a bookshelf of crates, on the walls are maps of Morocco, a map of Colorado, a poster of Grand Teton, and a poster of the endangered mammals of Morocco. Eventually there will be a woodstove in the corner and this will be my wintertime retreat; the "warm room". My bedroom is simple, a metal shelf of clothes and camping gear, backpacks in the corner, and one large bed in the middle. The whole place is the perfect size with the perfect amount of furnishings; plus it's utterly impregnable when locked.

After my coffee, I went to the post office and picked up a package for a friend, I am waiting on one myself, but it looks like it will come next week. Kids don't badger me as much anymore, I think they are used to seeing me around and there is always someone around who knows me. My Tam gets better every day and I sound less and less like a moronic 1st grader. Now I am sitting at my desk, surrounded by books, with a window that looks out on the mountains. After this entry is finished, I will read or practice my mandolin; maybe I will pick out a soup recipe of some kind for dinner tonight and go buy the ingredients, haggling with the merchant as vegetables are weighed by the kilo on a rusted scale. I may go sit in a Cafe later, write letters, and people-watch. I will clean some more as well and contemplate my place here. I am enjoying the peace and quiet already and, while it is not Lake City, I can see it becoming a home.

Thanks For Reading,

-Charlie

Deep breath before the plunge...

Philadelphia, PA, USA

Well it finally happened, the looming departure deadline that I had been anticipating/dreading for months has finally arrived and I am sitting on a plane bound for the Peace Corps staging event in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the deep breath before the plunge and, when the 24 hour staging whirlwind has dissipated, I depart for Morocco on the 2^nd.

First I will be boarding a bus to New York, where I will be flying out from JFK airport direct to Casablanca. No stopovers or changes in Europe at all, which is very nice and means my incredible amount of baggage has little chance of getting lost along the way. Once on the ground in Casablanca, I board a bus to the red city of Marrakech and stay the night with my fellow volunteers at a hotel. Marrakech has been called the “Gateway to Atlas” that 13,000+ ft mountain range that the ancient inhabitants of North Africa believed held up the heavens themselves. From there we take another, longer, bus ride across the Atlas to the city of Ouarzazate, which is located between the Atlas and the “Sahel” the fringe country of the Sahara. It is here that my group of volunteers will settle in for our three months or so of Pre-service Training (PST).

I am sure I over-packed, but I can’t narrow it down much more. Will I be in the Atlas Mountains with the cold winters? Or the Sahara with the warm... well, everything. Or maybe the Rif Mountains and the National Park located on the rugged Mediterranean coastline? I have no idea and won’t know anything until over a month into training. I have been told that the Peace Corps selects your site based on your background and aspirations statement, and that the interviews during PST are just a formality. My best guess is work in the Atlas, that’s where a majority of the Moroccan National Parks are located. Plus my background is geared toward work in the mountains, what with growing up in Colorado and working at Yellowstone and Grand Teton for a couple seasons. It is a toss-up though, and I won’t know anything for quite awhile. I will be living with a Moroccan host family for the duration of my training and then stay with a second host family for the first 2 months at post. They will serve (in an ideal scenario, horror stories do exist) as a sounding board for my fledging language skills, be a window into Moroccan culture and family life, and also keep an eye on me during this crucial “break-in period”.

I am optimistic overall, and look forward to seeing the Atlas and the Sahara, learning about an entirely foreign ecology and geography, and being able to use this knowledge to further global understanding of conservation. I look forward to slowing down, getting out of the constant connection of the American grid, and learning. I brought journals and notebooks, art supplies, and plenty of reading materials. Although the initial PST is fast-paced and days are full, the first few months at post are said to be quiet and pass very slowly. I hope to use this time efficiently and learn enough about my village that I can determine how best to be an effective volunteer. I also hope to write plenty of letters or, ideally, answer plenty of letters (hint hint!). If I failed to give you my address before I left, contact my Dad via email at kolb@incitelearninginc.com and he’ll give you my information. I would post it online, but that seems to be one of Peace Corps’ peeves.

The final goodbye to family and friends was difficult, but not nearly the tearful occasion that other PCVs had described to me. I think this was for a couple different reasons, first that I had been gone before with the National Park Service, and also that “long goodbye” phenomenon that I described in my previous entry. I feel that I left no loose ends and that I have no pressing obligations tying me to the states; I feel I can stay out for as many months, years, as see fit. I am 22 years old and single; I have plenty of time. Still, I know I will miss my family and friends, and my home in the American West; although I do feel blessed to have Morocco as my post, it is said to be stunning. To those of you reading this, enjoy your next two years and feel free to write me from time to time (or send me a book, but no packages before May 5^th, as per policy).

Well l made it to Philadelphia and I am posting from my hotel it is full of confused Peace Corps hopefuls like myself. So it begins… I will update when I can, thanks for reading!

-Charlie

a Long Goodbye

Hesperus, Colorado

Well, I am officially in the final phase before my departure to Morocco, although sometimes it feels like I have already left... In fact, I do have people contact me occasionally in confusion, asking how I am enjoying Africa. But the fact is, I am still here in states and it is finally sinking in that I am leaving. Everything I see, and have taken for granted in the past, takes on a different quality. Everything is clearer, I notice things I haven't seen before, nuances of behavior or quality of light; everything I see is emphasized by the thought "this may be the last time I see this for a very long time".

Not that I am unprepared for March 1st; in fact I have spent the past year tying off loose ends and saying goodbye to friends and relatives, some of whom may not be around when I return. Each goodbye is bittersweet but an unforseen result of this intense visiting is that I am closer to my family and my roots than I have ever been in the past. I chose to spend my summer at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, for the simple reason that it would put me within a day's drive of much of my extended family. I put 25000 miles on my truck in that time period, taking advantage of this fact. As a result, I spent time talking, laughing, and bonding with my family and friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Some of them had married, some had children I had never met, and some, I was saddened to see, were beginning to slow down and grow frail.

Moving to Colorado at such a young age, I was disconnected from the South and had been back only once or twice in the past 15 years. After this summer of goodbyes, I feel like I have a connection again. This could not have been clearer than when I visited my Grandmother's hometown in the North Georgia mountains and stayed with her best friend from childhood. My friend and cousin, Jane, had begun to slow down some, but was still sharp as a tack. She gave me a unique view of grandmother's life, telling me of the 1920s and 1930s deep in the Appalachian Mountains. As we walked through the deep green forests and I smelled the wildflowers, mosses, and green of the place, I began to feel an indescribable resonance. It was as if the mountains were tuned to some part of my soul and as I viewed the mist-shrouded summits around the town, I realized that this was one of the only places on earth I could be tied to by blood, both European and Cherokee.

In October, I said my final round of farewells in the East, and drove across the country to the Colorado mountains, and spent some time at home. Thanksgiving came and went and I began the first of my truly difficult goodbyes: my brother. I picked him up in Seattle at his University and we drove the Oregon and California coast together, we spent days on the beach, both camping and staying in hotels. We saw lighthouses, seals, seastacks, and every little thing in between. Some of our best times were in the quiet green cathedrals of Redwoods or just singing along to inane music in the car. By the time we got back we were finishing eachother's sentences and had so many in-jokes that nobody could figure out what the hell we were saying to eachother. We got home and spent Christmas together as a family, but before long he was gone, back to school, and the last I saw of him was his back disappearing through the airport gate. It is unlikely that I will see him in these next two years, as nursing school will take up much of his life and visiting Morocco can be... time consuming. But I feel that we left on great terms and I look forward to our future adventures (how about rowing across the Atlantic, Will?). The Kolb Brothers are at it again!

This long goodbye is now compounded by the realization that I have to leave the Colorado Plateau, which is quite simply my favorite place on earth. (For an accurate summation this incredible and diverse piece of earth, I recommend the essay "Come on in" by Edward Abbey). This was incredibly apparent yesterday as I drove back from visiting a friend at Great Basin, and drove through Capitol Reef, across Cedar Mesa, down the Moki Dugway, and through the great Comb into Bluff UT. I sat in the Twinrocks Cafe eating a frybread dish and sipping coffee as I looked out over the twisted cottonwoods and dormant fields along the San Juan River; beyond lay the cliffs that mark the northern border of Dinetah, Navajoland. I looked at the pictures of rock art on the walls, and at the faces of Navajos and desert rats at the surrounding tables and sighed. Ya'at'eeh. [it is good] Aoo'. [Yes it is...] I left with reluctance, and headed back to Colorado through McElmo Canyon as the sun set and the world grew dark.

Both people and places, so many loose ends to tie off; so many threads to pick up the on my return. This long goodbye has helped my put my life in perspective, to realize just how many people I will miss and be missed by. Now I rest, at home in the snowy San Juans, woodstove crackling and the cat sprawled out like a furry throw rug at my feet. I have things to do, packing lists to compile, and people to spend time with. The long goodbye continues, but is overshadowed by a sense of contentment and excitement in the face of the unknown. I will post contact information (or at least how to get it) as soon as I can; until then, enjoy your winter.

6 weeks... and counting...

Pre-departure

Well, here is my method for staying in touch with those of you in the first world who are interested in what I am doing and/or remember that I still exist!

I will attempt to update this every month or so during my posting when I actually have internet, which is only available in the cities. I will be leaving here on March 1st and, over the next two months, I will update this with information as I learn more about my assignment. Right now I am in the "reading phase" where I am devouring every Morocco book I can get my hands on and I am valiantly attempting to get a head start on learning Arabic... It's interesting.

Here's what I know so far regarding my actual assignment: I am posted to Morocco, which is in the Northwestern corner of the African Continent. Although it is directly across the Mediterranean from Europe, the culture is an overwhelmingly 98.7% Muslim, while the 1.1% Christian and the 0.2% Jewish make up the fringes. It is a country of extremes with the climate ranging from near-arctic winters in the High Atlas Mountains (Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in Morocco, is 13,617 feet high) to scorching desert summers in the Southeast which is dominated by the Sahara. Throw in the rugged coasts, semi-arid plains, and lush, burgeoning river valleys, Morocco is not all that "Casablanca" depicted it to be...

I have been assigned as a volunteer in the Peace Corps Morocco Environmental Education program this could entail many different things but, as a generalization, I will likely be teaching about Biology, Ecology, and Resource Management in a village within, or on the fringes of, a National Park (yes they have them!). I may also get the opportunity to train Park Staff and help organize management plans (things far beyond my American GS-5 pay grade) for the Park where I work. Granted, these are all just ideas, and in reality I have no idea as to where they'll put me. All I know for sure, is that training starts March 1st (stateside), I arrive in Morocco March 3rd (for 3 months of Pre-service training, both language and technical) and officially begin my "project" on May 5th 2010. My ending date will be May 5th 2012, unless I opt to extend, which I don't have to think about for a very long time.

I will posted instructions for letter-writing and other methods of communicating with me in Africa as I discover them.

For those of you reading this in Durango, I've only got 2 months left to hang out! So call me if you want to see me before I skip town. For the rest, I hope that you enjoy your New Year's festivities tonight, as well as the next two years.