Er-Rachidia

Another bus trip down the Ziz Gorge to Er-Rachidia. I love it, looking down from the high windows of the Souq bus into the sea of Date Palms along the river. Nothing contrasts so brightly from the colors of the Sahara-side Atlas than that of green palm fronds and dark Oleander. It was sunset as I rode through, the sun was lighting the tops of the cliffs, setting the crumbling French watchtowers aflame with its golden light.

It was dark when the bus trundled into Er-Rachidia and I made the familiar walk through the dusty alleyways to an apartment where I have spent a great deal of time over the course of my service here. The volunteer who lived there had since left the country and been replaced by a new one, and several members of his Staging Group were there to greet me when I walked in.

After an evening spent with them, swapping stories and eating good food, I awoke the next morning to shafting sunlight and made my way out into the city to find breakfast while everyone slept. Not many people were moving this early; Er-Rachidia is never very busy in the daylight. The people here have learned to hide from the sun, a habit that continues even in the milder months of winter here.

I had a layered pastry for breakfast, chased by an avocado smoothie so thick that I had to eat it with a spoon. I was alone at my table on the balcony above the cafe, watching the people below me finish their breakfasts and working on a letter to my brother, who is in school in Seattle. Paying the waiter a few dirhams and offering my thanks, I walked back out into the sunlight. I went back past the market to another Cafe, this once named for my village, and went into the back garden to enjoy the towering green trees and listen to the birds singing unseen among their boughs. A puppy tottered among the tables begging for scraps and another snoozed in the sun beneath a table at the rear of the garden. Cats mewed from the rooftop of the cafe and everywhere was cool breeze and dappled sunlight. I sipped my coffee slowly and waited for my friend arrive, a Moroccan who I had been introduced to some months before by the volunteer now gone.

When I saw him in the doorway, I motioned him back and he sat with me for some time. We discussed our lives, and work, and ideas that we could collaborate on in the future. He is university educated and knows perfect english, and I enjoy spending time with him. After awhile, he left and I waited for another friend to meet me.

~

When she came into the cafe, I waved to her excitedly and she sat down. In the cities, women can sit in most cafes free from suspicion or ridicule. This is not the case in the rural areas like my village where even come female volunteers will not sit in the cafes for fear of attracting negative attention. My friend Malika grew up in Er-rachidia and her family still lives in the city. While in the states, I had picked up a computer power supply from a generous friend of mine to replace Malika’s which had been fried on the powerful electrical current found here. I know this all too well, having toted a pair of speakers all the way to Morocco only to have them sizzle and smoke and then die. It was not a good death.

I handed Malika the power supply and she thanked me and invited me to have tea with her family. I followed her as we walked across the city, across the dry riverbed and past the Muslim and Jewish cemeteries to an area of Er-Rachidia I had never before seen, passing between the cool cement houses, with the hot desert sun beating down on our heads, it was easy to forget the brutal cold of the village and the fact that it was January. We arrived in front of a beautiful home draped with crimson bougainvillea, and Malika ushered me into the cool interior of the house where I met her mother and sister.

Tea was soon served and, I confess, it was some of the best tea that I have yet tasted here in Morocco. It was not overly sugared and was flavored with a winter herb that Malika said was called merd’dduš. Almost all Moroccan tea has a base of black tea and sugar, but it is the herbs added that make them unique, and they change according to the seasons. Now, winter, was the time of merd’dduš and, up on the mountain, shiba which is a spicy green herb said to encourage warmth. In the summer the tea is flavored with cooling nana (mint) and it is this variation that makes Moroccan tea famous. Although I am a fan of flio (peppermint).

Accompanying the tea was a variety of delicious edibles, including mascota a moroccan cake, fresh bread (aġrum), fresh olive oil (ziit-ziitun), and locally rendered date syrup (tahaloute) which proved to be absolutely amazing. After a long time talking and laughing in both Tamazight and English, I got up to leave and Malika walked me to the door, but not before her mother put up a hand and walked into her bedroom, motioning for me to wait. She emerged clutching a small parcel to her chest which she handed to me smiling. I removed the plastic wrappings and found myself holding a small shallow bowl made of fossil-filled dark stone. It was beautiful.

I was speechless, a thousand things to say in English flowed through my head, but nothing came in Tam but a simple thank you. It was impossible to convey that this was likely the most meaningful gift I had received in Morocco. I stammered my thanks, several times, and then Malika led me out into the sunlight.

We parted ways at the main road and I walked along under the sun, retracing my route back across the dry riverbed and toward the part of the city that I knew. I drew plenty of stares as a tall, blond aromi (foreigner) was a bit of an anomaly, but I didn’t notice. After nearly a year in the fishbowl, standing out is just a simple fact of my life here.

~

That night I sat on the roof of the apartment building up among the satellite dishes watching the city come alive as people flooded out onto the streets for their evening shopping and socializing. Meanwhile I watched the sun setting crimson on the desert horizon and watched as scores of white egrets soared in from their daytime haunts along the River Ziz, searching for food among the palms. I sat for a long time and watched the city move and the stars come out. I smiled to myself thinking back over the 11 months I have spent here and realizing how much I love this place.

Thanks again for reading,

Charlie

... 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 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

Transitions

09/06/2010

Four short days from the end of Ramadan, and I am sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee. I allow myself liquids during the day, although by rote I am not supposed to. The agonizing smell of sugar cookies which fills the room is my penance; emanating from the small butane oven under my counter. Outside, rain drips slowly and softly from the roof and afternoon storm clouds rumble above the folded mountain above the village. It is a about an hour until evening call to prayer and lfdur, break-fast, which I will share with my host family tonight, as well as with Allen, another volunteer visiting from a village 2 hours to the north. The cookies are for them.

I spent the last two hours alone on my roof, burning trash and cardboard, much of it remnants left by the previous volunteer who left here in May. As each scrap burns in the rusted woodstove on my roof, I feel another step closer to really being here in the village as the current volunteer; transitioning from the former which has now moved on, to the current and future. Each day I feel a little bit closer to actually living here than having just stepped off the plane in Casablanca. Some days I feel as if I have been here for years, other times I still feel as I just arrived; it is frustrating, but expected.

Looking out from my roof I could see west up the valley, past the old fortress of mysterious origin, to the sun illuminated mountains far away near the Azilal region. Storms moved across the dun-colored landscape then, and their shadows, as well as the shadows beneath the pale, striated cliffs, are dark and shifting. A fresh breeze blows out of the river canyon to the east and bends the poplars like deep green flags. There is a crack of thunder above and I look up to a dark and brooding cloud, roiling around the summit of the folded mountain. Brilliant white, almost glowing against the dark back ground, flew a lone stork; one of the minaret dwellers from atop the mosque. The stork was not moving; soaring in place in the face of the east wind, it was stationary before me. I could make out the details of its powerful orange bill and white plumage, bordered by pinions of deepest black. And then it banked out of sight, gone as suddenly as it had come.

I jabbed at the fire with a stick, flipping over an issue of the Christian Science Monitor and watching the pages curl and contort before finally succumbing to flames. Above the hiss of the wind in poplars, I listened to a program that I had downloaded from BBC: Radio Wales, about farmers and their lives in the Welsh countryside. Strangely comforting, though incongruous, I thought that maybe this was a taste of what Peace Corps used to feel like, back before the technology of mobile phones and internet became readily available to PCVs worldwide.

~

In a program on NPR about a week ago, our former Program Training Officer, Gordie Mengel, who is now stationed in Rwanda, spoke of how technology has changed the face of the Peace Corps. He mentioned how many volunteers can access the internet and call home whenever they wish, the connection with home is never broken; it remains there like a tether.

I am certainly in this category; I have internet in my little house, and I can access services such as Skype or Facebook at any time of day or night. Sometimes the net goes out for several days, but it is to be expected; nearly everything here works about 80% of the time. It’s not a problem; Gordie mentioned that his village in Zaire, now Congo, didn’t even have a post office and letters to months to arrive. Let alone care packages filled with coffee, peanut butter and chocolate that arrive every so often. I remember him telling me how he was without water and power his entire service, both amenities that I am used to here and try hard not to take for granted. Gordie’s argument makes a lot of sense, that having this technology available so readily does not just make the Peace Corps less brutal and challenging than it was in the 60’s, but it actually eliminates the need for community integration at our sites. All of us have social needs and back in America those needs were met by our friends and family. But in Peace Corps, before the advent of lightning-fast communication, those needs were met by your friends that you made in your community. You didn’t just feel obligated to get out there and learn a new language and culture; you had to learn the language and culture, because if you did not, you could (would) go insane. On clear nights you could turn on a shortwave to receive news of the outside world, sometimes weeks old, and learn that the rest of the world is still there and that life is going on without you.

In some ways I crave this sort of disconnect, it’s not that I don’t miss you, my friends and family, but I need to be here in order to be most effective in this place for this short time period I have been given. This will likely be the only time I will ever live on the African continent, or anywhere else abroad, for so long a duration. I need to absorb all I can, and let this experience teach me and shape me as it surely must. I have shelves of books to be read; some left behind, some borrowed, most from care packages. I have pages of material begging to be written, including my work for the Canyon Country Zephyr (the first article will come out early next month), and I have projects to plan, both for the Eastern High Atlas National Park and for the village of Imilchil. Add to this working on my house, preparing for winter, and just surviving day to day in a land of squat toilets and parasites, I have no time to spend holding on to connections and threads that will simply slip from my grasp regardless. If I have learned nothing else from moving five times in the last 3 years, it is that life goes on without you. I hate to let go, but I know that the truly important threads will still be there for me to pick up on my return in two years; it is the way of things.

In think in some ways our version of Peace Corps requires more self-control than the Peace Corps of yesteryear. I think that the “classical” Peace Corps was a gauntlet of mental and physical anguish with shining moments of success and deep wells of failure. But once you stepped off of that plane and rode for hours through the savannah, finally getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere, the things that began to happen to you could not be controlled. The disease, the social barriers, and the lack of amenities were just a few of these things. You didn’t communicate with your family and friends back home, because you couldn't.

But now, a lot of things in my life here in Morocco are still far beyond my control, and there is still plenty of disease and mental and physical hardship. The amenities are all there though, most of the time. Granted, I do miss western toilets and real showers that aren’t from an aluminum teapot. However, I think that having these things, and having the internet readily available, is a slippery slope. To not have these things available to you is one thing, but to have to choose when and how you use them is another. Did my friends and I come to Morocco to live like Americans? I don’t think so, but it is incredibly easy to get sucked into the comforts of your house and the line of communication that is always available there. The outside is still dark and mysterious, the people speak Berber and dress differently from you. They watch you wherever you go and kids laugh at you when you pass, some occasionally throw rocks. It’s uncomfortable and, as Gordie mentioned, if integration is optional thanks to your social needs being filled from that communication lifeline. It’s simply more comfortable to stay home and bury yourself in America. That mystical place where toilets can be sat upon, showers are hot and actually drain, dogs do not want to eat you on sight, and where you can understand everything that is said and everything that happens around you. Some people still dress funny, and some still may throw rocks, but it’s home; a place where life can be summed up multiple times a day in a Facebook status consisting of a song lyric of some kind.

The malaria-riddled and shell-shocked volunteers of Peace Corps’ golden age may have acquired higher pain thresholds by the end of their service, but they never had to choose to let go; they were forced to. It seems I have a choice to make regarding my time here, do I choose to be here in Morocco, mentally and physically? Or do I continue to hold on to my tether as tightly as possible hoping that nobody back home will forget about me?

09/07/2010

I put the internet modem in a box on my shelf two days ago; I’ll bring it out in a week to post blogs and answer emails. I have read a great deal and spent a lot of time out in the community socializing. The day Allen was here, and I spent all that time on my roof burning remnants and watching storks, we enjoyed our l-fdur, break-fast, with my host family and then went to the Café to sit and drink coffee. It was l-ayd al-kadr , the night of power, the night close to end of where the entire Quran is read cover to cover at the mosque and when people are to make their peace with Allah. It is a day of repentance and celebration. Allen and I just sit in the Café with our coffee, my host father sits down nearby, telling me earlier that he does not pray or go to mosque, no matter what Rkia, my host mom, says. I suppose he has been around too many Americans and Europeans. There were many other locals about as well, and all were fascinated by Allen and I, who were playing cribbage and shuffling the cards very fast (this is a skill many Moroccans have not been able to master).

My good friend, Khalid sat down with us and, after Allen butchered me in Cribbage, we played several hands of Gin. The conversation was mostly Tam and I was pleased with my language performance; not simply being able to get things accomplished, but to actually enjoy the conversation is a new level I am not used to. I look forward to more time spent like this.

Allen went to wait for the taxi to his site and I went off to run errands for a while. It was another glorious fall day with a crisp breeze and high clouds above the mountains. Laundry flapped on the lines strung on the rooftops and blankets hung drying from the windows of many of the small hotels. I stopped to talk to several of my friends, snoozing in the shade beside the smoke shop, and realized that my language was excellent today, at least compared to its normal quality. I made my way down to the commune, which is the county government, to ask about the upcoming wedding Festival. For an event so significant, it is amazing how few people actually know when it is. I nailed down dates as well as I could, and then spoke with the men at the commune for about a half-hour, they filled me in on environmental woes in the area, and told me a fascinating story about the tribes that were here before the Ait Haddidou; the people who took away the trees. Leaving that meeting I met up with several more of my friends in the street and spoke with them as well. My errands continued, I made a trip to see the Gendarmes to renew my Cartes de Sejour receipt, since I still don’t have the physical card yet, and that was carried out without a hitch.

That evening, I made a chicken stew from stock I had frozen and fresh chicken. I spiced it more with Rosemary, sage, and salt and sliced fresh carrots, onions, green pepper, and potatoes into it and simmered it for a couple of hours. I also made another batch of sugar cookies and ate a few myself, after call to prayer, and sent the rest home with my neighbor Molly, our mutual friend Naomi, and Molly’s Mom, who is visiting from the states. They stopped through on their way to Molly’s village; I will see them tomorrow as well. The stew turned out amazingly well, and I gulped down three bowls of it. I really love being able to cook, it is a skill I will put to good use after this is all said and done.

Later that night, I put on my warm clothes and my Jelaba and walked up the street away from town, climbing the stone fin that the Qaid’s palace sits on. I sat down on the top and looked up at the stars. The Milky Way was a brilliant silver splash crisscrossed with shooting stars and floating wisps of nebulae. Off to my left, another duwar, small village, sat illuminated by a single street light. The village did not have any power and no lights shone in the windows of the mud houses, save for the pale, wavering flicker of the occasional candle flame. The folded mountain loomed above, an inky silhouette against the star flecked sky, untouched by the lights of my village. Behind the fin lay the isolated section of the fields where I had walked a few days before. The river sang softly, unseen behind its screen of poplars and the patchwork of fields was cloaked in the darkness that only comes when there is no moon. As my eyes adjusted, I began to see lights in among the fields, small ones, of a cold, wavering blue almost the color of ice. They pulsed and flickered silently and I knew they could not be fireflies. Then I realized what they were; they were stars. Stars reflected in the still waters that still sat in the fields from yesterday’s storm and the flood that followed. I looked out into the darkness, filled with river-noise, and looked long at the twinkling lights of the fallen stars.

Walking back to my house, I realized again something that I realize at least once every week; how lucky I am to be here, in this deep, mysterious, and ancient place. This place where strange fortresses loom against the sunset sky and storks hover motionless on the winds of coming storms, truly this is a place of beauty and wonder and, while I may not get Malaria or spend months at a time not hearing a word of English, I think the experience will be incredible just the same. I believe that with each passing day this strange place will become more real to me. My paradigms are shifting slowly but I know that one day soon, Morocco will seem more real than the home I left behind. The Southwest will still be there, in the back of my mind, like a wisp of juniper smoke, so faint as to be nearly imperceptible; a dreamlike reminder of a time now passed, and a land far away on the other side of the world.

PPST

08/07/2010

Introduction:

This essay is a tough one to write because I have a huge amount of material to draw from. I have done so much in the last few weeks with my friends in Azrou, that I don’t know where to start from, or what to tell you. I can’t give a step by step account of any kind, because that would just turn into a novel. So I think the best plan is to simply pick four different stories from the course of the week and then write a conclusion. Okay, go!

Getting There

The day after my last blog entry I find myself walking to the center of town, a tattered pack on my back bearing the emblem of the US Peace Corps on its front pocket. Hanging by my side is a sack of books, left by the previous volunteer, which I am bringing to donate to the Peace Corps Library. I caught a ride with one of my favorite transit drivers and settled in to enjoy the now familiar trip down the mountains to the town of Rich. I alternate reading “Cadillac Desert” and listening to music on my iPod player, which really is a lifesaver for transit-related situations, plus I enjoy sharing whatever I am listening to with the Moroccan next to me. Call it “cultural exchange”, not that the strange English lyrics are any more intelligible to them as a Berber “Ahaydus” is to me, at least at this point.
Looking out the transit window, I am always struck by the geology that is laid bare along the way, tilted beds of sandstone and limestone, and dark lines of volcanic dikes. There’s a deposit of metamorphic slates after you emerge from the canyon that are colored a deep purple and streaked with sea green; they have eroded into smooth, low hills that extend colorfully up the valley as far as I can see. In the villages closest to this deposit, the slate is crushed and used as roofing for the mud houses; as rain falls it washes down the earthen walls leaving purple streaks that remain vivid even when dry.
The road curves down to Rich over a distance of 150 km. It crosses high passes and hugs rivers lined with poplars and orchards of tiny apple trees. The wheat has been harvested, but the potatoes are huge and blooming. Under the apple trees, clover and alfalfa is knee deep; the women cut it by hand with small sickles and carry it on their backs to their houses where it will feed their stock during the winter. If there is even a small amount of water, it is used carefully and shared among the clans and families in an ancient water rights system that I do not yet fully understand.
The transit passes through villages, some have volunteers in them, most do not; the volunteers along this route are considered the “mountain” volunteers. Volunteers from the hot lowlands call us “bledies” which is essentially Peace Corps slang playing off of the word “bled” (Berber for “country”); basically, we’re hillbillies. It’s a good group, three of us from the environment sector, four of us from the health sector. The three of us from the new “stage” group, the group that arrived in March, are headed down the mountain to Rich and then to our two week long PPST (Post-Pre-Service Training). Of the three, I am the only environment sector volunteer, so I am headed North to the city of Azrou in the Middle Atlas; my two friends will be making their way south to the city of Ouarzazate, where our original PPST was held. It is strange to have the two sectors separate; many of us have friends on the “other side of the aisle”, and it is sad that we won’t get to spend any time as a full group for another few months.
I arrive in Rich with no problems and catch a taxi to a friend’s site that is just South of Rich. It is so there, but I enjoy his company as we make dinner and eat with his host brother who has fairly good English. We end up having to sleep in the same bed because there is only one fan in his house; it is simply too hot to sleep without it. Even with the fan, I don’t sleep well, and sweat all night. I have breakfast with my friend and catch a bus. It is bound for Azrou and I pay the driver the necessary fee before settling into a seat and zoning out. I spend the next 4 hours reading and listening to music. I have been on this stretch of road before, on my way to Rabat last month, and my ability to ignore it is a testament to how I am getting used to my North African surroundings. I only start watching again when we climb into the Cedars and I know we are getting close to Azrou.
It is a city built into the mountainside and many of pale buildings are roofed with green tiles. The Minaret of a huge mosque dominates the city center, filling my view as a flag down a taxi to take me to the Hotel that Peace Corps had mentioned in their email to me. I was swarmed as soon as I checked in, first by my friend Pete, who hugged me from the front and then my language teacher Haddou who grabbed me from behind and said “Guess who?!” in Moroccan accented English. The rest of the evening was spent in a similar state of happy greetings and after lots of hugs and handshakes, we walked into the city for dinner and coffee, swapping stories all the way.
Being with other Americans, especially friends who are going through the same experience, is therapeutic and I was not surprised to hear my own story echoed by my peers. We all had fascinating pathogens of some sort and some of us even bonded over having the same species of parasites in our intestines. Besides that, there were stories of language barrier and culture shock, host family woes, and social victories; half-baked project ideas sailed around the group like projectiles and I was overwhelmed by the huge amount of English being spoken at me.
We go back to the hotel and talk for hours on the hotel roof while the moon rises over the rooftops of the city. I finally go to bed late, exhausted from socializing and sweat my way through another hot night. Training begins in the morning and the two week clock is ticking.

Field Trip

I wake up at seven to find my friend Eric standing over me sweating from a run, I roll over hoping it’s just a nightmare; no, it’s not, and it’s time to get up and get moving. I yawn and stretch, sore from a night of tossing and turning in the heat. Pulling on one of my two sets of clothes, I stagger downstairs and grab the typical Moroccan breakfast of bread and jam, chased by sugary coffee. I return to my room to pack a daypack. Today we are headed to a lake deep within Ifrane National Park and there we will do exercises in environmental education and be trained more.
Most of the training up to this point has been lecture based and involved sitting in the same room for hours answering vague questions. It felt like every federal training I have ever been to; hours and hours of jargon with buzzwords thrown in for flavor. So, at least I can be entirely sure that Peace Corps is without a doubt part of the US Federal Government. Needless to say, we were all ready to go outside.
I traveled in a school-bus yellow transit with half of the group, the other half traveling in a white Toyota van behind us. The climb begins on the highway that winds back into the forest, and at the top of the pass we turn onto a smaller road that is soon entirely swallowed by the trees. The cedar forest here is thick and healthy; I had almost forgotten what dappled sunlight looked like. It was great to be going through a forest again after so long in the barren mountains. The road continued to climb and then leveled out as we emerged on an open plain covered with interesting volcanic geological features. I was told that this entire area of the park was resting in an old caldera; I am not sure if this is accurate, but based on the calderas back in the San Juans, they aren’t necessarily obvious (the Rio Grande valley near Creede and South Fork is the rim of one of several overlapping calderas from the formation of the range).
All of the grass has been eaten down to a nub by sheep and goats, the same is true of the lakeshore when our van crunches to a stop in the gravel and we get out to walk around and enjoy the sunshine. It is so cool up by the lake, reminiscent of being back in Imilchil; the coolest place in Morocco. Group photos are taken and we go exploring. The lake is full of frogs and waterfowl indicating ecosystem health, but the lakeshore is utterly devoid of the riparian vegetation I would expect to be here. Everything has been eaten, and the feces that washes into the lake has caused massive algal blooms. I think even of the small lake near my parents’ house in Colorado; of the rushes and cattails, the splashing of muskrat and the whirring of red-winged black birds. I think that we don’t realize how wonderful even the “nature” that we consider mundane in America, is still amazingly healthy; especially in the west. I am continually amazed by how much I learn about my own country by being here; it’s what I signed up for, after all.
After a long lecture on field trips and outdoor environmental education (the best kind) and several demonstrations of this, we had lunch and reluctantly piled back into the vehicles. We stopped at the pass to walk around in the trees. We had requested that we stop in the forest, figuring that we would stop in one of the deep, virgin stretches full of Macaques. Instead we stopped at the pass, one of the most impacted and touristy parts of the road. This became more apparent when three people with saddled horses brought them over to us trying to make them ride them. This is strictly against policy, horses are an unauthorized vehicle, but as the Safety and Security coordinator was busy riding a small donkey, I figured it was ok. So I grabbed a large Bay, swung in to heavily decorated fantasia saddle, and trotted off in to the forest with the horse’s owner running to keep up.
I am not very good with riding horses, but I could handle this one; so I took it to the end of the road, swung it around and trotted back. It only spooked a couple times, pretty good for an Arabian, but I just calmed it down and kept going. I got back on the bus smelling like horse, but having had a good time.

Paradise

During our free weekend midway through training, a friend and fellow volunteer, Steven, took me and a few others to his site in the southern section of Ifrane National Park. It was a long taxi ride to get there and we had to change Taxis once. Soon, however, the taxi was winding its way through a high, forested valley full of fig tree and fields. At the top of the road lay a small village surrounded by trees and all clustered around the pink central spire of the village mosque. What was most striking about the scene is the gigantic travertine plateau rising 400ft above the village. Vines and other vegetation hung off its sides and a massive 200ft waterfall gushed directly above the town, its spray twisting into billowing plumes and comets before crashing into the slope below.
Steven’s house was a palatial construction, two stories high and tiled and ornamented on every surface. It was filled with nice furniture and also had a western toilet. This is Peace Corps? We spent some time cooling off in the house before follow Steven down trail that wound up the canyon. Pines and cedars covered the canyon slopes and fig and poplar trees grew by the river. We made a stop at a berry bush that was bursting with fruit and then headed to the river. The river was full of city Moroccans (holiday weekend) and some were even as white as we were. Eventually we found a pool that we could have to ourselves and slid into the icy mountain water. It was sublime, Steven gets to do this every morning after his run.
I wasn’t really experiencing “site envy” I still love my site in the Atlas, barren though it maybe, and I wouldn’t trade. But a massive waterfall certainly wouldn’t hurt. On our way back along the trail we heard a noise and looked up to see no fewer than 8 Barbary Macaques on the slope opposite us; we watched them and they watched us for awhile before we both moved on. We walked back to Steven’s house cool and content. The taxi came back to pick us up, and we left the valley as the sun set behind the mountains. It is always good to see a glimpse of Paradise.

Conclusion

I wish I could say more about these two weeks, I would talk about the long social evenings we spent out on the town looking for food. I would talk about the hundreds of Egrets that pour in to roost near the Mosque at sunset or maybe talk about the winding streets of the medina. I may say more about my incredible friends and their experiences or perhaps elaborate on the rest of the training. But I simply don’t have the time. It is Ramadan now in my village and I need to focus on that experience; expect a blog on that fairly soon.
To conclude I will say that training went well, it ended well, but it is good to be back in my site where it is cool and relatively quiet. Pictures of Azrou are up on my facebook account and will be up on flickr soon as well. Also, I have a new blogsite for any of you who like my writing enough to actually want to read more of it. It’s a blog that I am posting some of my older work to about my experiences as a Park Ranger as well as just adventures around America. You can find it at www.wind-water-stone.blogspot.com .

As always, thanks for reading,

Charlie

A Long Week Alone

07/17/2010

At this point I have spent about 10 days in my house cooking for myself, cleaning less than I should, reading, writing, and working out enough to prevent utter complacency. Days run together and are divided into two distinct parts: morning (with water) and afternoon (without water). I can do dishes and fill drinking bottles when the water is on from 8-12, but once it’s off that’s it. So an average day looks like this: Up at 8 or 9 and working out until ten; eggs and coffee for breakfast, followed by water related chores. This is then followed by swearing at the half-assed Moroccan, well everything. Be it my dishwater backing up in my shower, along with every single sink in the house leaking, internet not working for any apparent reason, especially aggravating when my phone has full service… from the same tower. Couple that with the drafty windows and a leaking skylight, and I am almost convinced that many things in this country are made by the lowest bidder and this makes me oh so grateful for American building codes.

It’s Souq Day again today and, as I mentioned before, the Souq is two days long and starts up bright and early at 4:30am Saturday morning. So I got the rare “pleasure” of being woken up by barking (occasionally screaming) dogs, large herds of bleating sheep being inexplicably driven through the 4 foot wide alley beside my house. Also, no vehicle in Morocco is required to have a muffler and the truth is that most Moroccans do not know how to drive and the few that do should never ever have been given a horn. Truck drivers honk at least six times and then noisily get out to crunch up my alley and audibly (oh yes) piss beneath my window. On hot nights, of which there are mercifully few, I have to have my window open and enjoy this rousing audio presentation. Granted the windows, also being Moroccan, don’t shut out the sound anyway, but they do enough to make it possible to sleep through it. Those of you who know me, know just how much noise bothers me…

But this is the living situation I have chosen, and I am just venting. After all, a blog that is all wine (or in the case of this country, Grape Juice) and roses is simply not honest and no PCV just sails through their service with absolute ease… I am shooting for relative ease. Psychologically I am a textbook PCV and am gutting my way through the “initial vulnerability” period at a predictable pace. While I am enjoying myself, I am also incredibly homesick. There! I said it! Yes, I am homesick, I want nothing more than to be home in the southwest with my friends and family doing southwestern things like river trips and long perilous hikes in a more familiar, though still howling, wilderness. Now, this is what my heart and reptile brain tell me, with their fierce admonitions to get back into my comfort zone. But if I do that, what will I learn? And who will do my job? My brain acknowledges that the pros outweigh the cons by a huge amount; I have friends here, I have opportunities here, and a (very much) howling wilderness to explore with more caution than what I have previously exhibited thus far.

No, leaving Morocco early has not even crossed my mind as a consideration, simply because the things the siren song of my homesickness tells me I want will be there, relatively unchanged, when I return! I have a lifetime to enjoy the Southwest, but only a two year window to experience North Africa. Thus does my mental cycle spin round. Besides, I’ve only got 659 days left, and I have been here for 140 days already.

Other things keep me honest, and securely in Morocco for two years, aside from just my reasoning. One is a PCV in Paraguay (you know who you are!) who served as a Ranger with me at Grand Teton two years ago (yep, it’s been two years this month!). She lived with her host family much for much longer than me and had to watch setback after setback as she had her house built. She’s moved in as of now, and much happier for it and we occasionally talk and/or exchange letters across the Atlantic. She works for a rain forest reserve which is about as similar to the Atlas as it is to the surface of Mars. Yet our jobs are similar and we work for our countries’ version of the National Park Service in an Environmental Education capacity. If either of us were to leave, I think we'd let eachother down in some way. The second external factor is an RPCV friend of mine who I worked with during my season at Cape Hatteras and who said simply, and with a smile: “Charlie, if you get all the way to Africa and E.T. (early terminate) for any reason whatsoever, I will hunt you down like a dog and I will kill you.” Ah, yes that is an excellent motivator as well.

I had a question posed to me in a recent email that simply asked what the hell my job actually is. There is a reason I haven’t really detailed this yet, it is because during the “initial adjustment period” I am not allowed to actually “work” (does this mean learning Tamazight is considered “recreation”?). Mainly though, I do know what my job will be and I will post a blog entry all about it in about 3 weeks. I have a crucial meeting with my counterpart in a few days, and two weeks of environment sector technical training in the city of Azerou after that. When I return, I can begin my work in earnest, and then I will tell you the details.

~

I suppose I should write about some good occurrences this week. The first and foremost being the discovery that I am able to cook! Between the Huevos Rancheros stew detailed in last week’s entry, and last night’s achievement: Green Chili Queso Soup, it has been a good week in the food department. I received a large windfall of green chilies in two separate care packages (thanks guys!) and, along with the containers of ground Chimayo Red and Chimayo Green that I brought from home, most of my dishes have a great Southwestern flair to them. There was a Green Chili Cream-cheese Omelet a few mornings ago that I was quite pleased with. So, if nothing else, I can learn how to cook from my time here!

Other good things of course include the books I have been reading (keep track of them on my booklist on the sidebar of this page). Since my last entry, I finished “Teaching a Stone to Talk” by Annie Dillard and “The Milagro Beanfield War” by John Nichols; both were amazing and taught me a great deal in very different ways. My current books are “Cadillac Desert” by Marc Reisner, and “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. A third that I am enjoying as well is a gem that I found in my favorite used book store in Durango, the “Southwest Book Trader”. It is called “The Wilderness Reader” and it cost about 2 dollars; it’s an old book as well from the 1970s and it has been beaten up and dragged around for much of its life. But here’s what makes it special: it’s a compilation of works on the American Wilderness and includes work by: William Byrd, William Bartram, Meriwether Lewis, George Catlin, John James Audubon, John C. Fremont, Francis Parkman, Henry David Thoreau, Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, Clarence Dutton, Verplanck Colvin, Isabella Bird, Plenty Coups, Theodore Roosevelt, John Burroughs, John Muir, Mary Austin, John C. Van Dyke, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Edwin Way Teale, Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, John McPhee, and David Roberts. Pretty amazing stuff.

Other good things from this week are that I am enjoying playing my Mandolin a lot and have also gotten much better with the Penny-whistle (as one PCV described: The ultimate portable instrument). Also, despite the anti-social nature of this week, my language continues to improve.

So, in conclusion, it has been a long week alone. But I am learning more every day and this is as it should be. I have a feeling I will be well into the swing of things by the time Ramadan concludes in late September… my seven month anniversary.

Thanks for reading, I’ll try to make it more poetic next time,

Charlie

Rabat

15 hours of travel over the course of two days brought me out of my mountain village to the seaside Capital of Morocco, Rabat. I came here as part of my duties to the "Volunteer Action Committee"(VAC), a position I was elected to at the end of my training in early May. VAC represents the volunteers of Morocco to Peace Corps Staff, and to other people as well, we are the liaisons, in a sense. Dragged me unceremoniously out of my site and into the big city was a two hour meeting; but it made the trip worthwhile.
The director of Peace Corps worldwide, Aaron Williams, was visiting Morocco for the first time in his career and certainly for the first time in his 8 months as director. He was appointed by President Obama late last year. We had the opportunity to meet with him and air our few concerns about Peace Corps in a casual setting (or as casual as it could be, in light of the company). Mr. Williams turned out to be pleasant and down to earth, very easy to talk to, and full of stories about his work in Aid organizations including his start as a PCV in the Dominican Republic.
After the meeting we sat down to a meal of Couscous and I had the opportunity to sit at the Director's table to hear more from him, about his plans for the future of Peace Corps. I stared in consternation at my spoon and realized that I couldn't use my hands to pull apart the meat and eat Berber-style. So, I attempted to look like I had some semblance of etiquette, most of which I have completely lost and forgotten over the course of the last two months. The spoon felt awkward in my right hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to switch over to my left simply because it had become habit to do everything with my right. The Couscous was good, different from what I had been served in my training village of Ait Gmat, or in my site in the mountains. The conversation was stimulating and we spoke of many interesting thing at the table, most of which I can’t post on the public domain as they are unrealized ideas and best kept under wraps.
~
That essentially sums up the meeting, but I ended up spending three days in Rabat getting a full medical evaluation (I have parasites; don’t get worried/excited/envious). I did not mind this extra time, as there was so much to see in the Capital. Plus there was also something to be said for the basic creature comforts I happily experienced on a daily basis. These included hot showers, western toilets, real pillows, and soft beds. The night after the meeting, several other volunteers and I took a Petit Taxi down the winding, narrow streets until we got to a nondescript white wall with a small plaque that read “the American Club”. We flashed our Passports at the security guard, who determined that we were not a threat, and entered through the gate.
It was like stepping into a backyard BBQ. There was a lush green lawn spreading from an outdoor bar and patio; the air smelled like burgers and fries, with a hint of beer, and the only language to be heard was English—American English. There were several families there, drinking and talking with friends while the kids ran around the lawn and the playground that sat in the corner. I sat at a table, slightly dazed, and enjoyed a dinner of a hamburger and chicken wings while in one hand I held a frosty Samuel Adams (Boston Lager). I nearly forgot I was in Morocco until the sunset “call to prayer” spilled in from one of the Mosques outside the walls. We spoke to some of the other Americans, all here for different reasons, but most living in country rather than visiting. A woman from another agency invited us to a beach bonfire, but the taxi ride was too long and we walked back to our hotel instead—in hindsight, I wish I had accepted the invitation.
I got up the next morning and ate breakfast at “Toast” a Café near the hotel. Here their signature breakfast dish is also called “Toast” but it was so much more than that. It was two slices of toast with a slice of cheese and sunnyside-up egg on top; it came with orange juice and coffee. As the typical Berber breakfast consists of bread, olive oil, and coffee, I was understandably excited. The food onslaught continued, reaching its peak with a Royale w/ Cheese from McDonalds: Rabat, an establishment that also offers a burger on Pita Bread called the “McArabia”. Add fries and a coke and it was certainly a meal that made me happy, if not actually a happy meal. I know, I am traitor to everything I believe in—I ate at McDonalds for the first time in many years. But man, that burger was good and somehow, sitting back in my site the Atlas and thinking about the parasites I was told I have (and am currently treating); the guilt is just not coming. Dinner that night was at the German Institute and involved a bruschetta salad, pizza, and some more cold beer. Not losing sleep over that either. Why am I elaborating on food? To stress just how amazing it was to me, and how mind-boggling things I took for granted back home are now that I am deprived of them on a regular basis. To list a few, in no particular order:
- Beef: it’s what’s for dinner, but not here, and I am sorry but mutton is not an adequate replacement.
- Hot water: this is obtainable only with a butane heater, some of which are deadly.
- Pillows: I have mentioned this before but I didn’t realize what a big part of my sleep depended on a nice soft pillow to rest my head on. Hard and often rough couch cushions simply don’t suffice.
- Bacon
- Decent Beer: growing up around some of the best beer in the world has left with the opinion that no beer is better than bad beer, but even bad beer would taste ok when it is cold and socially acceptable.
- Toilets: when you are exhausted and ravaged from Dysentery, you have no idea how nice it would be to have something to sit on so if you pass out… ok enough said.
- Raw vegetables: These aren’t entirely gone, but they are rare and occasionally dangerous.
- English: I just miss not having a headache every time I talk, this will go away and it gets easier every day, but I miss days that didn’t focus entirely on trying to get my point across.
- Real Cheese: I am sorry Morocco, but “Laughing Cow” is closer to “Cheese Whiz” than actual cheese. Why is the cow laughing? Because it’s not f**king cheese, that’s why!
Ok, that’s more than enough, I’ll write an entire entry on things I no longer take for granted later… Eventually. Incha allah.
~
Ok, maybe a little about the city itself; please forgive the “stream-of-consciousness” nature of this entry. It’s written, like most of my entries, in a short time span and is entirely unplanned. So back to Rabat... It is a beautiful city; most of the buildings are white and many of the streets are lined with palm trees whose trunks play host to twining English ivy. Fountains spray and pigeons take flight against the white sky; in many respects, Rabat feels like an average European city. That is, until I see the swirling Arabic script on the store fronts or have the call to prayer carried into my hotel room along with the honking of car horns, and the murmur of conversations on the street; all hard “q’s” and nasal vowels. Walking down the street, the illusion of European normalcy is further shattered by the abrupt appearance of a massive wall of beige stone with yawning archways leading to the medina, or old city.
Inside, merchants hawk everything from traditional Moroccan clothing to Barbie dolls. The streets are narrow and winding; laundry is strung above the crowd and colorful rugs hang from the windows and balconies of the homes of the people who still live in this place. At intersections where the crowds come together, traditionally dressed water-sellers stand shouting the name of a particular spring from which they get their water. The water is dispensed from a goatskin bag slung against their back into one of 3-4 golden cups that hang from a bandolier across their chest. They are dressed in red, green, and blue, with wide brimmed fringed hats.
Sometimes the street passes under a building or a shade covering. One street in particular comes to mind, thronged with people and wares hang or sit on every surface. Silver teapots on gleaming trays, carved wooden camels and intricately enameled furniture beckon from some stalls, while still others contain ornate jewelry and ceremonial daggers from the deserts of the south. Every once in awhile I pass a “spice stall” and look inside at the wizened patron sitting among the baskets piled high with spices of every kind and color, each spice forming a cone above its basket. The smells are intense in this place; from the spice stalls a strong and heady aroma floats on the still air, mingling with the smells of livestock and human sweat. Further on is a smell of cooked food and I purchase a sandwich of spiced ground beef (called Kefta) mixed with scramble egg and sprinkled with even more spices. They are cheap and wonderful; I slip into garden and eat mine underneath the towering palms. I talk to another volunteer who is with me, and listen to an ancient Arab man admiring my watch from a nearby bench (zwina l’magana, zwina l’magana).
The next day, I return to the medina alone and navigate the narrow streets from memory. I know that the medinas in the major cities are the most dangerous parts to be alone and ignorant but they’re not that bad if you keep your head. Rule number one is to watch your valuables; I carry a backpack in the cities, but it goes under one arm if I enter a medina, so I can keep an eye on it. Also, do not express interest in any wares, just admire in passing unless you want a long and frustrating exchange with a merchant; which I could tolerate if anyone here spoke Tamazight. Interestingly enough, a being white kid who, when confused, lapses into an obscure dialect of Berber, in a city that speaks predominately Arabic and French, earned me more brownie points than I expected it would. More often than not, merchants would pull out their rudimentary English simply because I was gutsy enough to try Tam on them. One merchant in particular told me to go get married in the Atlas and bring my new wife to his shop where I could buy her clothing at a discounted price…
On the other side of the medina, after making it through alive, is the sea. The last time I saw the Atlantic was in the rearview mirror as I left Cape Hatteras last fall and suddenly I am faced with the same body of water but on the opposite shore. I walk down the beach for a ways; the social mores of Islamic culture are scarcely discernible here as young men and young women walk this way and that in their bathing suits. It looks like any beach on the east coast except the people are thinner and darker. I see a lighthouse further on and go to it. There is a guard charging a 10DH entrance fee; he speaks English and we talk about lighthouses and I tell him about my lighthouse in North Carolina. After a few minutes of conversation and questions, the guard looks around him and, seeing no one, motions me inside. You do not have to pay, but be quick about it, okay? I walk across the battlements around the lighthouse stand next to a rusted cannon watching the sun glitter like diamonds on the rolling swells. I enjoy the smell of salt spray and listen to the crash of the waves on the sharp rocks below, thinking of other beaches and other times spent on the seashore.
Reluctantly, I walk back into the city and re-enter the medina in search of another sandwich. This sandwich I eat in the dappled sunlight of the Royal Arboretum, filled with tropical trees and plants including a row of box-cut Ficus that are the size of buses. I sit and people watch for awhile as the palms rustle overhead and birds sing. A Moroccan couple in western clothing watches their children run ahead of them, partially covered in Ice Cream, and following them is a woman in a full veil, with only her eyes visible to the rest of the world. Men with long beards walk with their hands clasped behind them, clad in the plain white Jelabas of the devout. Older men pass wearing business suits, the outfit made Moroccan by the addition of a red Fez.
Wandering around the city after the arboretum, I came upon a strange and wonderful thing: a Cathedral. I didn’t expect to find one, but here it was. It appeared to be a modern construction, but with proportions similar to the Cathedral at Canterbury, in England, or the National Cathedral in New York. The door was open and I slipped inside. It was dim, and the only light came from a large stained-glass window depicting the crucifixion of Christ. Here, in the middle of an Islamic Nation, I was faced with this literally shining representation of God made flesh; I looked for a long time, awestruck. Despite the look of suffering in His face, I felt like I was greeting an old friend who I had not seen for awhile, just then realizing how much He was missed.
The next morning, I left Rabat, to return to my site, where I am now. But I feel that that journey, crossing the country alone using every approved mode of public transport, deserves its own essay, which I will post shortly. Until then, as always, thank you for reading.

-Charlie

Swearing In

5/13/2010

This last week and a half has been a blur of training and testing, hellos and goodbyes. Training ended and service began, and that two year clock is ticking…

When I began this entry I was sitting in the Bab Sahara Hotel for what was likely the last time for the duration of my service, unless I am asked back to Ouarzazate for anything. Ouarzazate really has treated us (my stagemates and I) well and we have gotten to know it far more than I thought we could. It doesn’t seem strange or foreign anymore, and it’s only that I still can’t speak the language that reminds me that this is not actually my norm. But it was time to move on and that meant moving up to my site.

Getting my luggage consolidated was a bear, I have 2 big duffel bags and a suitcase and I had to get on the bus to Errachidia; then another bus from Errachidia to Rich and finally on the 4 hour transit ride to… my site. Oops, almost slipped there… Once I got to my site, I just needed to get my bags to my host family’s house and then, save moving into my house in July, I was done moving for 2 years solid; which will be longest I have ever stayed anywhere at one time since I moved out of my parent’s house in Colorado after college. In the past 3 years I have moved 6-7 times for my job and for Peace Corps. So, in some ways it is a comfort to know that I can go somewhere and not move for awhile.

As of now shoulders are still sore from carrying my things all over the country, but I am here and settled in with my host family. The very beauty of this place still makes my heart beat faster. But this entry is not meant describe my initial time in site; that entry is next. No this is about saying goodbye to a family and swearing in as a volunteer. Please allow me to backpedal…

~

My last week in training was somewhat slow, especially after the excitement of site visit, and the relief knowing what I was in for, brought to me. No, my CBT group and I worked our way through some final language lessons and took some final walks through the fields. The fields were in full flower and the wheat was waist high and hissed as the breeze rushed through it from the river. The roses reached above our heads and the almond branches drooped heavy with fruit. I realized that we really had been in our training site for a full season; that trees that had not even leafed out when we arrived here in March were now casting dark pools of shadow upon the path and that the flowering trees were now green and bearing fruit. The river was no longer fast and viscous with silt, but was then flowing cool and clear with no hint of its earlier turbulence.

I had a nice introduction to Moroccan humor from a stately Berber woman who, after I was able to adjust to her voice, told me that she liked my Moroccan name (Hassan) and that if I was to change it in anyway, even back in the states, she would then ritually slaughter me… She said this in a sweet, old lady kind of way, so I knew that I was in no danger of being killed in a ritual fashion. I replied in halting Tam that I would inform my parents back in the states that they couldn’t use my given name anymore. She laughed at this and general hilarity ensued.

The LPI, or Language Proficiency Interview, took place toward the end of the final week and consisted of speaking with one of the Moroccan Staff (not our LCF) for about 15 minutes on various topics. I scored “Intermediate Low” which was fine, and more than I was expecting. I will be interviewed again at the end of June when I go up to Azerou for technical training and debriefing from my initial experiences in site. After the LPI was over, it was just a matter of waiting for the training to end.

We went to Kelaat M’gouna to buy supplies for the party we were throwing for our host families and, after setting everything up and laying it out, our families arrived in varying degrees of lassitude. Soon the house was full of Moroccans and it was essentially a giant tea party. I gave a speech to my family in halting English (I think all of my language is halting nowadays) and my LCF translated for me. I presented them with the certificate of appreciation that Peace Corps had prepared for them and which we had had framed that morning. After my speech was finished, I heard a scraping noise and realized that my host father, who I did not think was going to attend due to difficulty of approaching the house in his wheelchair, had hauled himself up the stairs and into the tea-room. I was quite touched by this, as were most of my CBT mates, and my family and I settled down to listen to rest of the festivities. My host mother and host sister both gave speeches about how nice it was to have me as guest and how I was part of the family now. After a group photo, we all dispersed back to our respective homes for family time.

My host sister took us on our final walk where we got tea at two different houses and visited with her friends and family. The cook for our CBT accompanied us on our walk as well and I was glad she did. She has been a great friend to all of us and has spent more time with us as a group than anyone else in the village. She has been patient with our halting attempts at language and many times she and I laughed until we cried when I went to talk to her in the kitchen; granted, this was usually at my expense. After the walk, she cried and hugged us tightly (even the guys) and then ran off in the direction of her house. My final dinner was eaten late that night with my family and all of them promised to be up to see me off the next morning.

The final goodbye was oddly formal, but I sensed emotion just under the surface. This suspicion was confirmed when my host sister suddenly burst into tears and hugged me. I assured her that I would be back at least twice, once with my American family when they visit next year, and once in the fall for my host sister’s wedding. My host brother, and a couple of his friends that had stayed over the night before, helped me with my bags and walked me to the taxi which took us away to Ouarzazate.

After a week in Ouarzazate we attended the “Swearing In” ceremony which took place in the opulent Ouarzazate Palace of Congress, signaling the end of training and the true beginning of Peace Corps. Both the American Ambassador and the governor of Ouarzazate were in attendance and gave inspiring speeches to us new volunteers. We went to a reception afterward and ate French pastries and drank chilled banana juice. We mingled, shook hands and walked back the hotel in the hot sun.

~

I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer for just over a week now and am thoroughly enjoying my site, although I have been sick off and on. My village is beautiful and, on one of the days when I was feeling up to it, I climbed one of the mountains above the town to get my bearings. The mountain is a near vertical monocline that has eroded to the point that it is climbable. It was covered in fossils of shells and corals and it felt almost like I was beachcombing as I climbed. The mountain topped out at about 9300ft and the view was incredible in all directions. The hike is a vision of what I have to enjoy for the next two years in Morocco, and it was comforting to get out alone and do something familiar… or almost familiar. I packed many of the same things and used the same gear that I have hiked with for years. But this time there was no blue dog following close behind, no friends or family to go home to, no cold beverage waiting in the car; hell, there was not even a car waiting at the trailhead. None of familiar comforts of routine; a routine I hadn’t even known I had.

There were other reminders that I wasn’t home anymore, the presence of sheep on adjacent hillsides, the call to prayer echoing from the distant Mosque, far below in the village. No trees on the hillsides, only scrubby, cushiony plants that people gather to use as firestarter. The valleys are fields, wall to wall and the rivers are severely channelized—a consequence of 3000 years of agriculture. At one point as I climbed, I looked over to a nearby ridge and saw an Amazigh man, clad in a black Jelaba (full, hooded robe) and white headscarf, silhouetted against the sky and surrounded by his sheep. I am guessing I could have climbed this mountain anytime in the last three millennia and beheld the same scene.

From the summit of the mountain I could see many villages and many other mountains in all directions. I pulled out my GPS and marked a waypoint. Using the device I calculated the distance between my mountaintop and my family’s home in Colorado (also stored as a waypoint, marked with a shower icon): 5524 miles. Well it’s official, I am very far from home. But I love it here and will try to write and entry once a week from here on out, now that I am here for the long run.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

My site in the Atlas...

It’s been awhile since my last blog entry so let me attempt to catch up. Since my last entry, I got over my bout with Zund Typhoid and have not been sick since (hamdullah!). I left my host family in Ait Gmat for my 10 day site visit, and they said that they would miss their American son. My host mother, Aicha, also informed me that I was to bring my mother to visit when my family comes to Morocco from the States; Aicha said that she and mom would be like sisters and that she wants to meet her give her lots of beautiful henna. Gotta follow up on that one.

After a morning of nailbiting in Ouarzazate, waiting for our site assignments, and were finally rewarded for our patience when the head of the Environment Sector, Mohssine, passed out a series of files with our names and the name of our site. Let me go ahead and say I am not allowed to release my specific site, due to safety reasons pertaining to being an American abroad; they do not want us easily located by anyone who cares to look. That said, I will describe my site, my accommodations, and the people I am to work with. If anyone wants my specific site location and my new mailing address (I can get packages now!!) I can email it to you if you email me at: charlie@incitelearninginc.com .

The Site

First off, I absolutely love my site. It is in the Er-rachidia Province and is a small, but clean, community in the High Atlas Mountains. It is located just within the boundaries of The Eastern High Atlas National Park, which is roughly 55000 hectares of beautiful vistas, incredible geology, and two of the largest natural lakes in Morocco: Lake Isli and Lake Tislit, the Groom and the Bride. All of the mountains have long been deforested and there is no trace of trees left other than the Apples and Poplars in the fields by the “river”. That said, the area has lost none of its beauty and is as austere and rugged as Big Bend National Park and the geology is stunning. Faults, folds, and unconformities abound along with the occasional dark swath of a volcanic dike. Tilted beds and monoclines are everywhere and there seems to be very little rhyme or reason to it all. It is a clear representation of North Africa as a “bumper”: whenever Africa has collided with anything (like Europe, or South America) another range of the Atlas has been formed. My site is said to be the coldest in Morocco and, two winters ago, it apparently got two meters of snow in one storm. Oh boy, sounds like home! Minus the heated house… There are miles of hiking and backpacking, and plenty for me to do in the Eastern High Atlas National Park. I have no worries about crippling boredom; even in winter I will occupied with trying to stay warm.

The People

My site is essentially the heart of Berber culture in Northern Africa. The people here, while accepting minor changes like running water, electricity, and the Arabs invading their culture a few centuries ago, have essentially remained unchanged for several millennia. The tribe I am living and working with, the Ait Hadidou, is one of the most studied and traditional of all Berber tribes. My site is also the location of what has been called the “Wedding Festival” and “Fiancé Fair”. This is a large gathering of Berbers from the surrounding countryside (or “Bled”) who congregate in my village to find a spouse and buy supplies for the upcoming winter. While this has become a heavily touristed event, it remains very traditional and consists of 4-5 days of dancing, singing, shopping, and people proposing to eachother. This, I am sure, will include plenty of proposals to me, the village’s most eligible (and only) American. I have already been proposed to once, at a wedding dance that I attended. Since I am writing about the people of Ait Hadidou, I suppose I should include an account of this event:

The Wedding Dance

I had only been in my site for a couple of days and my host mother (Rkia) instructed me to get ready to go out, although she didn’t say for what, or at least I didn’t understand right away. I threw on my Jelaba (a traditional robe that I am becoming more and more fond of…) and a hat and followed her through the darkening streets. She had my host sister in tow and my baby brother strapped to her back. While bundled up against the cold, her colorful headscarf was still very prominent as was the traditional blue tattoo that is visible on the chin of most traditional Berber women, especially those of the Ait Hadidou.

As we approached the town center, I began to hear a fast drumbeat. When I rounded the corner I saw a large circle of people in Jelabas and many women watching with the striped capes that indicate their tribes; thin black on white striping for Ait Yaza and thick stripes for Ait Brahim (the melding of these two tribes, according to the legend, created the Ait Hadidou). In the center of the circle where many women, dancers, dressed in fine silks and sparkling jewelry; their wrists and waists decorated with shining silver disks that rattled with their movements. Music was being played by three drummers, holding hand drums and alternating their rhythms, and one wind instrument that had an almost nasal quality like the flutes of snake charmers. The dancing was fast and frenzied and I was surprised to see that the dancers had their hair loose, often in a shimmering fall of black reaching past their waist. As the pace of the songs quicken one woman would step forward and whirl her head around and around, spinning the dark curtain of her hair in a wide circle.

Once between songs, the drummers looked in consternation at their drumhead, which had apparently loosened, and one of them left the ring of onlookers. He returned a short while later with a small, mossy shrub; which I had heard was collected as firestarter from the surrounding mountains. This theory was confirmed when the drummer pulled out a lighter and proceeded to light the bush on fire, placing it on the ground in the center of the circle. The flames leapt high, but the brush burned slowly, and the drummers held out their instruments to the flames, allowing the heat to tighten the drumheads. After this spectacle, the bush was stomped out in a spray of sparks and the dancing resumed as fast as before.

People pressed in from all sides and I was right in the divide between the men and women (the circle seemed half and half). Though I was traditionally dressed, my hair, eyes, and skin made me stick out like a sore thumb; despite this, I wasn’t the most out of place. That honor was taken by three French tourists on the fringes of the circle. People spoke to me in Tamazight and were thrilled when I answered back in the same tongue, I told many people that I was the new volunteer for the village and that I was learning Tamazight as fast as I could. A girl next to me shouted something at me in with a smile, asking me to dance, and then said something else in a more serious tone. I wasn’t sure what she was saying but it soon translated for me by Ali, a shopkeeper that I had befriended and who spoke a little English. “She is asking you if you would like to get married.” said Ali, with a small smile. I looked at the girl and smiled, saying in Tamazight that I was grateful, but that I wasn’t ready to get married yet. She understood and laughed, and we both turned and continued to watch the dance.

~

I have the feeling that my stay here will be fascinating and enlightening. I have already seen and experienced more new things in four short days than I thought possible; I am excited to live and work and learn.

The Host Family

I am excited about my host family; they are kind and welcoming and patient with my struggling language skills. My host father, Said, is the lead mountain guide for the region and knows the entire High Atlas like the back of his hand. He has hiked from his home in my village to most of the major gateway cities, including Fez, Marrakech, Kelaat Mgouna, Ouarzazate, and Khenifra. He has climbed Mt. Toubkal over 100 times. He wasn’t bragging, it’s just his life. He is well respected and well connected in the community so I hope he will be an asset to whatever project I take on in the next couple of years.

My host mother, Rkia, is the finest cook in the region—no joke. Every meal I have had in my village has been absolutely wonderful and the feces content seems nonexistent, which is exciting. Rkia was initially leery about having a male stay with her; all other PCVs in my village have been female in the past, a trend which I have broken. Rkia told the PCV I am replacing (who was/is wonderful and successful and whose shadow I fully expect to spend at least a year crawling out of…) that she didn’t want a boy to stay because “American boys just come and eat and then leave. Despite this, and also thanks to my predecessor’s encouragement, she seems to like me just fine and says she will teach me to cook (can’t wait).

I have 3 host brothers; Rachid (10), Mohamed (13), and Sufiyan (8 months). I also have a host sister, Fatima, who is 8. They seem like nice kids and, thanks to their father’s line of work, are used to being around the occasional foreigner. I look forward to my time with my host family and arrive in Imilchil again one week from today; this time to stay.

Cheers,

Charlie (Hassan)

Ouarzazate Province, Morocco