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 The volunteer who lived there had since left the country and been replaced by a new one, and several members of his Staging Group were there to greet me when I walked in.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

a Change in Realities

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

~

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

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

~

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

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

~

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

~

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

As always, thanks for reading,

Charlie

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

a Wild Month...

It was cold this evening. This is normal now, here in the Atlas, as winter as arrived after a long and glorious autumn. The poplars on the river are bare and the mountaintops are dusted with a delicate rime of snow. I lay back in my chair on the roof of my house and looked up at the sky. The stars were beginning to show small and cold against the blue darkness of the dusky sky and the half moon was perched, glowing at the very apex of the dome; neither coming nor going.

I lay there and listened to the sounds of the village around me; children playing in the street, dogs barking in the distance, every once and a while the grate and rumble of a vehicle passing my house. As the cold began to permeate my clothing I stood and looked down at my shadow cast by the moonlight. Long and thin, I could make out the folds of my dark cloak, and the peaked hood of the jelaba robe that I have taken to wearing every day. I looked out over the village, at the smoke rising from the chimneys of the mud houses, and the glowing string of street lights strung out along the road where it passed through the sleeping fields. It was so quiet and peaceful, I wished I could stay longer, but the cold forced me inside.

~

This has been a month of many things, some the normal every happenings of life here, and others wild, unexpected, and delightful. L’عid axatar, the great feast of Abraham, occurred mid month and I spent three days with my family and their relatives talking, laughing, and sharing in the holiday spirit. I was able to assist in the ritual sacrifice of a ram in front of the house and the subsequent butchering and consuming of the same animal. It was an excellent few days, though seeing the entire family together reminded of how much I miss being with mine and sharing in the easy camaraderie of kin.

Later in the month, I headed to Rabat the capital city in a wild day of traveling across the country by car and by train. It was good to be back there, and it felt fairly normal to navigate and spend time with my friends there. The committee of which I am a member met with Peace Corps staff in a small room at a hotel in the seaside town of Mehidia. While there we also got to meet the members of the new staging group of Volunteers who were just finishing up their two months of training, just as I had seven months before. Suddenly I realized that I was no longer among the newest volunteers in the country, and that the volunteers ahead of me would be leaving soon and suddenly I would be among the “experienced”. Soon enough I would be breaking in the replacements for my friends on the mountain who will be returning to their lives back in America.

In a moment of time alone, I stood on the beach and looked out over the dark Atlantic as the waves lapped at my toes and the warm sun beat down on my back. I thought of my country out there across the interminable swell, of my mountains, my desert, and the tall lighthouse where I worked all last summer, gazing out toward Morocco. So much has changed since then, and most of the change has been in me. Running back through my experiences of the past nine months, I had difficult thinking about all that had occurred and all of the things that had happened to and around me. So much behind me, and even more ahead, I look forward to it with excitement and caution. I no longer fear the unknown, as it is slowly revealing itself to be yet another chapter in the life of a global citizen.

A few days past that moment on the beach, I sat back in my seat and listened to the train clicking and whirring as it passed through countless small towns between Rabat and the port city of Casablanca. I adjusted my tie and looked out the window at a white minaret silhouetted against the blue sea as we passed. I was nervous, for whatever reason, to meet the people who were to pick me up at the railway station in the city. I was to spend Thanksgiving with an American family who lived in Casablanca and had bought a tie and dress belt for the occasion. I still looked a little rough around the edges, but I was clean at least and was ready for some time in upper echelons of Moroccan society; a direct contrast from my usual day to day experience.

As the family pulled up in their Subaru, the first I had seen since coming to Morocco, they greeted me warmly and helped me with my bags. Thanksgiving dinner was several courses of amazing food and wine served at an English speaking club in Casablanca. Dancing followed and I enjoyed mingling with my fellow Americans; one woman threw her arms around my neck simply because I was in the Peace Corps. Her hug and whispered thank you meant the world to me; I never get hugged anymore.

What followed was a string of four incredible days spent in a beautiful Villa by the sea, eating good food, taking hot showers, and playing tennis with the godson, who was my age, on a clay court behind the house. The godson, my new friend, took me out one night to see Casablanca and I enjoyed having drinks with him at Rick’s Café Americain (movie enthusiasts eat your heart out). We ended the evening on the top floor of a hotel looking out over the lights of the largest city in Morocco and the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque looming against the dark ocean. The next day we walked by the cafes and shops along the waterfront talking, laughing, and enjoying the salt air. The couple hosting me was incredibly kind and generous; they treated me like family and gave me the run of the house, sharing meals with me as well as their time. I learned much from them and I will always be grateful for the sanctuary they gave me from my sometimes harsh reality here. But all things must end I soon found myself back in Errachidia blinking in the Saharan sunlight, steeling myself for the long journey back to my site.

It took time getting back and I was fairly tired and depressed by the time I stepped off the transit at the top of the hill. But I heard a voice say my name behind me and my friend Mostafa threw an arm around my shoulders and shook my hand, demanding to know where I’d been. I smiled realizing that yeah, I was home.

~

So here I am in my little house in the Atlas, I have one last day remaining in my site before I start the long Journey home for a Christmas spent with my family and friends. I can't wait, and the time to leave will be here before I know it.

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

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

The Heart of the Atlas, Part 2:

NOTE:This is part 2! If this is your first visit, scroll down and read part 1 beforehand. Again, I am sorry about the length, I will try to keep my entries more concise from here on out. Enjoy reading and don't forget to comment so I know you were here.

IV:

06/12/2010- Day 105 in Morocco – 692 Days of Service Remaining

In the end, I only got roughly 2 hours of sleep; besides the inordinate amount of tea I had had to drink in lieu of dinner, I was also plagued by fleas which seemed to bite just as I began to drift off. I awake to a grey dawn feeling nervous and unrefreshed. The herds are gone and Hassan is beginning to rouse beside me. Outside, I smell baking bread and the woman soon appears with tea. One of the children gives me bread, with his left hand. This is simply not done, but I know it was not done on purpose, so I smile weakly, and tear off a small piece that had not been touched. As I chew it, the family looks at something outside, and I hastily tuck the rest of the bread into a crevice in hopes that mice will find it before my hosts do. I smile again as they look back at me and refuse the offer of more bread. Next, there is a breakfast soup, called Ahareer; it is one of my favorite Moroccan dishes and I slurp down a couple spoonfuls while it is still scalding hot, hoping that whatever microbes were in the milk have been killed by the heat. Hassan eats the rest and we look at my map.
We gaze at it together for about 10 minutes before I realize that, to Hassan, this map is meaningless brown squiggles on a green and white background, occasionally marred by French names for mountains or towns. I thank him for the help and we go outside where I ask for more specific directions. He tells me that there is a pass about 4 hours distant that leads to the village that is my destination. When I ask where it is, he smiles and points with his whole hand, just like my host father, “Nishan”. I thank my hosts profusely for their generosity and hospitality. Thinking of what I can give them, I reach into my pack and produce what remains of my cheese, about half of my food, and give it to Hassan. Before I walk out of sight, the children have finished it and are playing with the foil wrappers.
The family and their home vanish as I round a curve in the cold, grey canyon. Looking back, I can see no evidence of humanity, just stone and misty cedars. I ponder whether the house in which I slept would even be there if I went back, or whether it was some twist in time deep in this canyon which seems to be a world all of its own. Time seems to stop beneath these ancient trees.
I start my march and immediately the exertion of the previous day and the absence of sleep seem to tear at my body; my pack seems to be a living thing with talons digging deeply into my shoulders and hips. The canyon is narrow and I follow animal sign to find the path of least resistance. Occasionally a rushing, whispering noise will break the tomblike silence and I will look to see a tumbling cascade enter my streambed, waterfall upon waterfall climbing upwards into the dark trees and eventually disappearing into the mist.
The trees drop away and I find I badly eroded trail that goes over a nearby pass; it is too soon, it has scarcely been an hour since I left the house in canyon. I go to the divide and look down into a deep defile with several small houses at the bottom. This valley is nearly as deep as the one I have just clawed my way free of; my mind tells me that this can’t be right, that I missed a turn and am too far north. A shred of mist blows from a nearby promontory and I catch a glimpse of a shepherd boy in a flowing teal Jelaba, he doesn’t see me and I turn around and go back the way I had come, searching for the true route.
I am not lost, merely confused, I tell myself over and over. I feel the dread return, pulsing beneath the fatigue; what if this valley won’t let me go? I am on a small bend in the creek covered with small broken flakes of shale. I stop here and drop my pack. I spread out my topographic map and pull out my GPS, which quickly dies (didn’t I change those damn batteries?!) but not before it can give me a set of coordinates that at least confirms that I am still in the valley. I look at the mass of lines, which is drifting in and out of focus, and try to dig deeper; there must be some trick I haven’t thought of, something I am forgetting. It hits, me and I dig in my pack, going back to basics. I pull out an orienteering compass, a tool I haven’t used since I got my Eagle Scout years ago in the BSA. I place it on the wedge at the bottom of the map and hear my scoutmaster’s gruff voice in my ear, still barking instructions. “By the way, Charlie, did you forget your Scout book again?!” “Uh, yes sir, but I still remember how to orient a map!”
I look down and realize the job is done. Placing my hand on the damp paper, I line up the compass and take a bearing on my destination: the unknown pass. I fold the map and point the compass. I leads back up the canyon I had backtracked, but I walk the wash for a third time, this time with purpose. I gain a spurt of energy and find myself back on the misty saddle before I realize. I am looking back down into the deep valley, the boy is gone but the view is the same; it looks exhausting. Exasperated, I pull out my compass. The bearing unrolls like a glowing thread across the bleak vista, point directly across. There is nowhere to go but down.

V:

I start down an eroded trail straight into the heart of the valley. On the cloud shrouded heights, sheep bleat unseen. I hear I shout and turn to look back. It is the shepherd boy, yelling something I cannot understand in Berber, I wave benignly and keep going down, the boy does not follow. I hope deep ruts that cut across the trail, stumbling on stone, my knees and hamstrings protesting this new abuse. I reach the bottom and see the stream leading into the high basin where the map says there is a way over the mountains to my destination, where I can rest. I step onto a bank and prepare to step gently into the streambed, when a rock gives way beneath my right boot and I fall. I land hard on my side and a sharp pain burns on my forearm and shoots up my humerus, I am on my feet again before I have time to process and I go through the different things I can use in my pack for a sling. A quick assessment shows that there is no lasting damage, just a scrape up my forearm and a bruise. I shake myself and stagger on up the stream. My heart sinks again as I hear barking.
A glance over my shoulder shows an angry shepherd dog standing atop the bank when I fell. Thankfully I am swallowed by a bend in the stream and the dog does not follow. There are several houses here and I keep my head down not wanting to attract the attention of more dogs, or their masters. My efforts are in vain as some children spot me and start chasing me up the streambed. I see an older girl with a baby on her back, she motions for me to go before they catch me. I nod and quicken my pace. It is in vain, however as the children, two boys and a girl, catch up to me and begin demanding things in French.
I am exhausted, my patience is completely gone and has been for some time. I look at my assailants; they are some of the dirtiest children I have seen, one of the boys has a string of green slime flowing from his nose onto his lip and all of them are covered in dirt and offal. They put their hands out demanding the trio of items I have become accustomed to hearing: money, candy, and pens. All demands are made maddeningly in French. In Tam, I say I don’t have any of these things; this is true I have no candy, I have one pen (damn them, it’s my pen), and the smallest amount of money I have is a 100DH note, deep in my pack. I have no intention of giving them anything; a kid begging me for money is maddening on the best of days, in the cities they single me out and badger me mercilessly simply because I have pale skin and eyes. It goes without saying that I am French, and speak French; I have see clean, obviously well-fed, children leave their parents and come up to me demanding a handout. What is infuriating is that tourists often give them what they want. But, as a PCV, I can’t carry around pens and candy all the time. Whatever small money I do have, I need to use for food and lodging. So, wrapping up this tangent, I will give to the blind and the lame, the obviously destitute, but I will not give to kids.
The look at me silently for a minute and the older girl with the baby walks up behind the trio. The demands begin again, still in French, I say firmly that I don’t speak French. They look at me as if I am crazy, and I know my Tam is intelligible, but they just act like they don’t understand it. I want to scream from anger and exhaustion. The older girl yells at the little demons to be quiet and then asks me my name. I tell her who I am and where I am going. She looks at me for a minute and then asks halfheartedly for candy. I say no, but without force, and she leaves it be. I ask her where the piste is that goes over the mountain. The gestures back over my shoulder, looking suddenly wild in her robe and colorful headscarf, “nishan.”, that is all. I turn to go, one of the smaller kids makes to follow me and she calls him back. Soon they too, are swallowed by the canyon.
Clouds still shroud the summits around me but they are higher and paler than they were this morning, the weather shows some sign of getting better rather than worse. The cliffs high above are of a strange red stone I do not know and much of it has tumbled down toward the creekbed, where I am walking, in huge round boulders. The creek grows tighter and steeper and my legs burn as I climb; I have to stop often. I am starving and thirsty and I am drinking water, but it never seems to be enough. I know I need food but I find it difficult to eat the stale bread I have left in my pack. I think about the cheese I gave away a few hours ago and convince myself that it wouldn’t have helped matters anyway.
I am confronted by a small cascade, there is no way past it except going up the steep slope to my left. But this is not a scree slope, it is a solid mass of wildflowers and tall grasses all heavy with the night’s dew not yet gone. I half walk, half crawl through the slippery fragrant mass, making no effort to step carefully. The smell of wet grass and crushed flowers is sweet and offers some small comfort to my pain-fogged mind. I look up as I crest the hill and scan my surroundings. I am in a hanging basin, bounded by mountains, entirely carpeted with waving golden grass. This is no wheat field, it is simply a vision of what once was, here in the Atlas, back when the mighty cedars could be could found in every valley and where all basins were explosions of life and color, following the receding snows in the spring of the year. In this long past era, huge herds of Barbary Sheep could be found browsing the slopes and being hunted in the forests below by hyenas, lions, and even a species of Atlas bear. The forgotten valley of last night and this golden basin are reflections, shadows of a greater past.
I sit down suddenly and slide out of my pack. I half lie, half lean on my pack and squeeze water between my cracked lips. The grass nods around me and I think of Frodo, the hobbit from Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” being pursued by a Shelob the spider, tripping over a stone and suddenly finding himself facedown on the forest floor of Lothlorien, instead of in the terrifying darkness and stench of the spider’s cavern. I feel a similar bewilderment at the sudden peace and perfect tranquility I feel, lying here in the sun, high in the mountains. I can feel myself surrendering to sleep and then the truth comes crashing down; I am not home, I am in Africa, in the middle of dangerous and unknown mountains, still far from my destination, and at the edge of my physical and mental capacities. I am back in the cavern again, but I feel I have somehow been given a gift with this sudden vision of paradise and peace; it is good to know at such times that these things still exist.
I stand up and look back the way I came, able to see all three of the mountain passes I had summited in the last 24 hours, even Tizi-n-Isuwal, scarcely visible in the distance. I feel the vague stirrings of… pride? No, not that, more of a sense of wonder and the knowledge of exactly how far I had come and how much I had seen. Turning to where the compass points I see the faint tracery of a piste, as fine as a distant spider’s web, angling straight up the mountainside, out of the basin and out of sight.
I start trudging toward it, looking at my boots, placing one foot stiffly in front of the other in the manner of a reanimated corpse. I stagger through ankle deep flowers, this time a thick carpet of shining buttercups. I cross the stream for a final time and look up. The piste lies straight above me, perhaps 200 vertical feet. My pace slows to a crawl and I employ a “rest-step” I remember my father teaching me, to use for high mountains, where every step is a small victory. This mountain is scarcely above 11,000 feet or so, but in my exhaustion, each step seems a small victory just the same. It takes me almost a half hour to reach the piste, I collapse and drink more water, also forcing myself to eat some bread; chewing it slowly and fighting back fatigue-induced nausea. I know I cannot let myself get sick, simply because what fluids I have, I want to keep. The sickness passes and I continue the climb; toward the top, at the base of the cliffs, is a snowfield. It is pure, clean, and cool and I drink in its cool crisp smell. It reminds me of home and energizes me in a way similar to the meadow which is now just a golden swath far below.
I stagger, gasping, onto the pass; my vision swims again and I think I am seeing double. Not another one. No. The map didn’t say there were two. But I shake my head and the vision stays with me; the trail drops away into a basin and there, on the other side, is another pass.

VI:

Resignedly, I shuffle forward. My phone beeps with its first signal since Tizi-n-Isuwal. I have a message from a neighboring volunteer. “What time are you headed down from your village on the transit?”. I call him briefly, biting back my first words of “Send help!” I speak normally telling him that I am not headed down on a transit today. When questioned why, I say that I decided to walk. “To (village name here)?” “Yeah, and it hasn’t gone great, I’ll tell you tomorrow when I see you.” I say. “If I see you…” He mutters, only half kidding. I hang up and put the phone in my pocket, transfixed by the distant pass as if it were a gun pointed at my head. One step at a time, left foot, right foot; rest and breathe. The air is thin and dry and offers little comfort.
I arrive much more quickly than I predicted and see the pass close before me. I stagger up what this time has to be the final summit. It is, and I am looking down at a village perhaps 2500 feet below. The mountain drops sharply in bands of cliffs and toward the bottom all is a swirling commotion of green and red slate. The village is a few huts surrounded by deep green fields. It seems close enough to touch. I pull out my phone and call the volunteer that I am to stay with at my destination tonight and announce my imminent arrival. “Ah, you may be too late,” he said. “I am pretty sure the last transit has left for the day,” I cut in, “I walked.” There is a pause on the other end and then. “You what? From where, and when?” I tell him, and there is another pause. “Wow, well I guess I’ll see you tonight then. Try to hitch a ride with a truck on the road; you realize it’s 16 more kilometers from the village you see to my village, right?”. What? 16 more?! “Oh,” I say “No, I didn’t, but that’s okay, I’ll see you tonight regardless.” We hang up.
I pick up my pack and start down the faint and treacherous piste that angles down the mountain. I am following the tracks of a woman and a donkey, the shoe pattern is distinct and leaves clear marks on the rock. I descend slowly and carefully, slipping several times despite my caution. The trail grows fainter and fainter and finally fades into nothing, leaving me in the middle of a steep scree slope that I would have been loath to navigate well fed, hydrated, and without a heavy pack. I am not afraid, merely sad and angry, and my feeling is reflected and magnified by a growling wall of black clouds oozing into the valley like a malignant force, trailing thick ropey curtains of rain.

VII:

I dig in with my boots and walking stick and skid downward, hopping from ifssi to ifssi, my legs screaming from each impact. I am almost to the slate layer when I realize that there something wrong with the contour, an inconsistency that I had overlooked when choosing my route. I cannot see it and then I do; there is a horizon line; that means there is a cliff. I skid into a drainage and see a sheep trail, faint but discernable, leading down a crack in the strata. I clamber down it, thankful for the discovery, and look back at the cliff. It is a 60 foot pour-off of solid grey limestone, a shepherds' shelter lies to one side and delicate streamers of flowers and shrubs hang down its blank face. I look back at the wall of cloud and think of how awesome this will be in a few short hours, with water raging off the brink, breaking into comets and streamers of spray and raging on into the river far below.
But I am numb and even this vision of beauty does little to inspire wonder in a mind and body so close to the brink. I descend more, this time on the purple and green slates, hitting a small cliff band each time the color changes. I soon develop an ability to see the cliffs coming based on the color and flow of the rocks ahead. I see a herd of goats trailed by a sheepdog, I quickly scale a low hill and find a route down the opposite side from the dog, which I am sure is less than friendly toward foreigners. I start down a small drainage and am almost immediately cliffed out again. High on the slope opposite me is a house with a dog lying in the sun outside the front door. I pause in the shadow of a gnarled juniper tree and drop my pack. I sit down at the side of the tree opposite the sleeping dog and drink some water, my head leaning on my pack. My vision swims and I fall asleep for a moment, waking with a start. Not yet buddy, you’re almost there.
I get up and find another way around the cliff, the dog still sleeps and I tread carefully. I am at the foot of a small waterfall when the dog wakes up; I scramble unnoticed onto a little used piste at the edge of a wheatfield. I look back to watch the dog. I am upwind of it and it doesn’t seem to notice me. It trots to the base of the waterfall, and sniffs the spray, then wanders up the opposite hill, on an errand of its own choosing. I let out a breath that I hadn’t even realized I had been holding. I follow the piste until it disappears and returned to the creekbed only to be forced to find a way around 3 more waterfalls of 20-30 feet in height. All of them flowing, and all of them beautiful. But I don’t see beauty, only coolness and an invitation to come, drink, rest, and forget. A siren song in flowing water.
I see something ahead; it is a concrete irrigation channel, situated on the canyon wall like an aqueduct. The village I saw has to be nearby! I look back at the pass, now a distant notch high above, and then start to walk, balanced on the aqueduct, confident that it will take me back to people, to safety, to rest. My tongue feels huge in my mouth and my lips are cracked and dry. The sun beats down on my rain-shell, but I am chilled from fatigue; I feel ill, and want to stop, but I force myself to go on.
I soon come to a group of men working on the ditch; I speak to them, my Tam sounding like the rustling of dry leaves. I ask for the road and they point; they are startled by my sudden appearance, but one look into my eyes and they do not ask questions. I run into other people as the fields grow thicker and the ditch broader. Naturally, I also start accumulating children, they ask me for things in French and make like they are going to shoot me with their sling-shots. But they hold back, eyes warily watching my walking stick. One of the older boys, maybe 13, initially torments me but then looking into my eyes he sees the weariness and pain there, and instead guides me to the road. I look in wonder at the mud walls all around me, this village which would have seemed so poor and small less than 48 hours before, now seems decadent and civilized; the children have left me for the moment and I am alone in the streets of the village. I pass through a tunnel and walk through an avenue of trees.
There is a truck on the road with no-one nearby. I collapse in the dust and lean against the wheel, bringing out the last of my water. The children reappear, this time saying nothing, simply sitting or squatting in a semicircle around me, roughly 15 feet away. Just watching. Their eyes shift from me, only when an older berber gentleman in a sport coat comes over to see what the fuss is about. I clamber painfully to my feet , I shake his hand and speak to him in Tam. He keeps my hand in his and places another on my shoulder; a sign of closeness, of kinship. He tells me the truck is not leaving until tomorrow, and that I was welcome to stay with him tonight and drink tea with his family. I thanked him but said, truthfully, that my friend would worry if I didn’t show up tonight. He helped me put on my pack and dispersed the children. He asked again if I would stay and I gave the same reason as before, adding that I must go; with a sinking heart I realize that I have 16 kilometers to walk before nightfall.
I start walking again, each step a new pain, I am hailed by a farmer who runs from his field and speaks to me, he also invites me to his house for the night, once he realizes I can speak Tam. I make my excuses and apologies and keep forging ahead. Off to my right I see a truck next to a group of laborers working on the road. I walk up to them and ask when the truck is leaving. They say tomorrow. I offer a small sum of money, the driver ups it to the point of being ridiculous. I shake my head and sit down to rest. A short rest turns into 1.5 hours and I speak to the workers in Tam about them, me, and the state of things in general. We drink tea together and I get up to leave. The driver motions for me to wait, and tells me he will take me half-way, to shave off 8 kilometers; another of the workers offers me a place in his home for the night. I ask how much the driver intends to charge for the 8 kilometers and he tells me it is a gift because I am tired and speak Tam. I don’t ask questions and crawl into the cab.
The driver takes me 8 kilometers down a winding river gorge and then tells me he will take me all the way to my destination for a fee of 100DH. I get out and walk, after thanking him for the free 8 kilometers of course. I limp down the road against a chill down-canyon wind. My American friend calls and says he is coming to get me with one of the local transit drivers for a very small fee. I walk on, covering about a kilometer more before I hear the sound of a motor. I step to the side and stick out one thumb. I realize must be quite a sight in my dusty red rain shell , and blue backpack. I try to stand a little straighter and even manage a smile; only my eyes belie the pain and exhaustion I feel. The door opens and my friend, a fellow PCV whom I have never met and know only from others’ descriptions, steps out onto the road. I stick out my hand; “Hi, I’m Charlie, it’s great to finally meet you!”

Afterword:

I soon got the rest I needed so badly and spent the next two days recovering and eating in the village I had worked so hard to get to. In the mirror, my eyes still looked tired and my cheeks were still hollowed, but I was safe and whole among friends; with the massive experience to process in my brain.
Three days after I sank into the seat in the back of that transit, I am standing at the window of a top floor apartment in the city of Errachidia. The sun is going down on the desert and the call to prayer echoes through the streets, clashing with the Eagles singing “The Sad Café” on the stereo behind me. The two friends I am staying with are off doing their own thing and I am by myself for a time, deep in my own thoughts. I look out at the city; the neon lights of shops and pharmacies are beginning to flicker into life and a soft breeze rustles the colorful rugs that hang from balconies and windows. People move on the street and I can hear the distant throb of music somewhere out of sight.
I look down at my little black journal, battered and scratched, and scan the entry I have just written:

“My friend, who thought the entire venture was insane and foolish, said that I unbelievably managed to pull it off with no illness, injury, or even real mistakes. I still catch my breath when I realize just what could have happened, what could have so easily gone wrong. But then I realize that it was all handled well… I drew upon skills and resources I didn’t even know I possessed… No false moves, no major mistakes, just fear, doubt, and adrenaline.”

And now? What do I feel now, looking at the darkening city? I feel clarity, humility, and a deep inner quiet. I feel that I gained a new understanding of myself and of the natural world at large. I take no pride in my accomplishment, just a sense of thankfulness, and the knowledge that I did what I set out to do. I searched for the beating heart of the Atlas and found it deep in that shrouded, forgotten valley. In that lost Eden; in that Hall of Giants, it was there and it was strong.

The Heart of the Atlas, Part 1:

NOTE: Due to length, I am splitting this entry into two parts, I will try to publish the second half in the next two days, but certainly by Monday. Email if you have questions, but for now, enjoy.

On the desk before me lies a journal. It is small, roughly the size of a passport and just as thin. Its covers are black and scratched and its pages stained; the ink blurred with water and sweat. I remember it crisp and new only a few months before as my good friend, a Park Ranger in Nevada, pressed it into my hands as a gift. Only five of its pages have been filled so far, but it is the story contained in those five pages that I will attempt to convey in the following account. It is an account of a mere 48 hours in the Atlas Mountains but the events of those 48 hours, I feel, will shape the rest of my service here. So given the personal importance of these events, I feel that it is best to translate them to you in all honesty. I will not make myself out to be a hero, and I will not cut out the fear, pain, and doubt I felt.
These five pages have very little rhyme or reason, no structure at all really. They are simply a bulleted list of a strange shorthand, my shorthand, with words or phrases written to trigger my memories of moments past. Looking through the list I see the points begin neat and legible and end in a more desperate scrawl. Now, I will attempt to recreate the series of events from this list and let the memories flow from the little journal onto this page.

I:

06/11/2010 – Day 104 in Morocco – 693 Days of Service Remaining
“Nishan”, my host father is speaking to me, his weathered face illuminated by the early morning sun; a cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth. “Nishan”, he says again, “go straight”; he gestures to a hazy mountain pass over my shoulder. The white landrover sits behind him, engine ticking in the cool morning silence. The mountains between us and my village are shadowy and wreathed in fog, their slopes a play of dappled light. I nod solemnly and point at the pass “Nishan, anikkin fhmgh” “Go straight, I understand”. He nods once and waves goodbye before getting back into the Land Rover and vanishing into the fog.
I turn around and look down at a large lake, named for a bridegroom, which shines like a mirror in the slanting light. My pack, not very heavy at 40lbs, already begins to bite into my shoulders and reminds me how much conditioning I have lost from the myriad of illnesses I have played host to in the past 3 months. I grip my stout walking stick, perfect for fighting off third-world dogs, and start to walk. Road underfoot, a barely discernable track, is soft purple soil almost the color of a bruise and contrasts sharply with the shifting turquoise of the lake that I am skirting. All around me clouds pour into the valley leaving the passes and canyons shadowy and mysterious.
I meet two shepherds who look at me curiously and ask me questions which I answer in my halting Tamazight. Next there is a man in a striped Jelaba, he is riding sidesaddle on a gray mule laden with goods; I greet him and move on. I leave the road and follow a route over a series of purple gullies, shallow here but canyon-like near the lake thanks to erosion and over-grazing. A mustard-like plant sways at my feet, I have no idea what it is. Nearby, I hear cascading birdsong and look to my left where I see a killdeer, or what would be a killdeer, except that it is black and white. The same and not the same… I top a rise and a broad valley filled with shifting cloud shadows spreads out before me. Herds of sheep move across the flat surface trailed by robed shepherds and small clouds of dust. Beyond the valley, the mountains tighten and the valley rises to the pass my host father had pointed to which shimmers in the distance.
The valley floor is arid and ravaged by countless decades of overgrazing; all of the plants have been reduced to small patches and much of the ground is simply dirt. I stride forward lost in thought; I think of my hero, John Muir. He spent much of his life walking alone in the mountains with nothing but bread and an unquenchable passion for life and the natural world. While I never hope to be as brilliant or as eloquent as Muir, I find his outlook on life a worthy goal. Passion, childlike wonder, and great love of simplicity are things that I strive for. Maybe I can learn more about this while I am here in Africa. “A man needs naught but bread and beauty…”
A patch of greenery at my feet catches my eye and I look down into a tiny patch of star-like morning glories, blooming from a crushed and unrecognizable be if chewed leaves. It is things like these that show the resilience of nature and give me hope for this fledgling park that I am hiking end-to-end. After all, it is my primary duty while I am here in Morocco to research and draft an Ecological Management plan for the park and its resources; everything I see, I see through that lense.
The sun blazes down on my head but the wind is chill. I am hailed by two dusty shepherds, a father and son named Haddou and Moha, and we speak briefly in Tamazight and they point the way once again to the pass, Tizi-n-Isuwal. I continue on and step into an akka or dry-riverbed filled with round, water-sculpted stones. I quickly enter a canyon and am struck by the silence. The canyon walls are angular and the beds of sedimentary rock are tilted toward the sky. The canyon is deep, narrow, and dry reminding me of “Blue Creek” in Big Bend National Park where I had worked two winters previous. I hear a crunch and look down realize all of the stone I am walking on is perfect fossilized shells and corals. I pick up a tiny cockle and roll it between my fingers, hefting it in my palm. It looks as though it just washed up on the beach, but I know it is millions of years old. It is from a time when this place was beneath the sea; long before the mountains were thrust violently skyward by the grinding collision of continent on continent.
The wind dies and the sun continues to shine without mercy; I shed a layer and continue. My gaze is drawn by what looks like an emerald on the canyon wall. It is tiny seep spring hung with lush, green draperies of flowers and leafy plants out of the range of hungry sheep. It is beautiful and perfect and makes me smile to myself. I round the corner of the canyon and see that the sandstone has met with shale and that water has been forced to the surface. The sudden sound of trickling water startles me and seems deafening in this silent defile. There are hanging draperies on all sides and colorful butterflies flit among the tiny flowers; above my head a pair of doves flush from a hidden nest in a whirl of movement and a rush of wings. This sudden life in the midst of such a barren place reminds me of the “Banta Shut-in”, a remote oasis in Big Bend National Park where the geology forces hidden water to the surface in deep, clear pools.
A pool at my feet is teeming with ephemeral life; insect larvae wriggle across the bottom and water striders scull lazily away from my shadow. Tadpoles swim back and forth; I take one in my hand, thinking of a passage in a Craig Childs book concerning tadpoles. In the passage Childs describes the tadpole as a “raven’s eye” glistening against the dry roughness of his palm. I look at my tadpole and see only what looks like a speck of mud against my hand, with two eyes that are regarding me with reproach. I gently place it back into the water and it swims away to the far end of the pool.
I continue on and the water dwindles to a trickle. I hear buzzing and look down to see the last pool of water alive with bees drinking their fill to take back to a distant hive. It is an echo of another time in Big Bend where I was hiking with my friend Katie in a narrow gorge called the “Devil’s Den”; there it was a blind leap off of a pour-off through a cloud of thirsty bees drawn for miles by the intoxicating scent of water. The canyon climbs on, hot and dry, and I see a rock cairn to my left. My gaze shifts to a small stone enclosure nestled into an overhang in the canyon wall. I go to investigate, expecting a food or water cache of some kind. Instead I am struck by the smell of death. In the stone structure lies not a carcass, but select parts of one. A sheep’s head, feet, and entrails lay strewn in the dust, swollen with heat and decay. The world is flies. I step back and wonder why. I see no evidence of cooking or splashed blood so why is there a carefully marked, carefully constructed stone enclosure full of sheep parts here in the middle of nothing? I realized just how little I know about this culture and these people here in the Atlas. Oh well, this journey will simply bring me one step closer to such understanding.
The canyon forks and I follow the side with the most recent evidence of water. It climbs quickly and I soon scramble up onto a high slope to get a view. The pass lies before me, bounded by high limestone cliffs; an all important horizon, over which lies the extreme unknown. I look down at my feet at a pile of sheep spoor made feathery by dung beetles. There are no beetles in sight now, but I have seen them in the valleys. Rolling balls of offal to unknown destinations, they are nature’s janitors. I think on John Muir again and his tendency to refer to all living things as “people”, a distinction which my scientist side dismisses as anthropomorphism but which my sentimental side enjoys. If dung beetles are indeed people, then they would be content ones at that; happy with their role in the universe that other creatures find disgusting and awful. I think I would like to meet a dung beetle; he would be good company once one got past his smell and general appearance.
Lost in my musings I crest the last rise onto Tizi-n-Isuwal and drop my pack; the view that spreads before me is unlike anything I have ever seen and certainly not what I expected after the ravaged lands I had crossed in the previous hours. The land falls sharply away below me and a rough trail, or “piste” can be seen winding down to the valley floor which is lush with the greenery of carefully cultivated fields and orchards. The village of Tirghist clings to the hillside opposite; it is a series of stair-stepped mud buildings with an incongruous yellow “sbitar” (clinic) on its far edge. Above the village rears a mountain as sharp and sudden as a meat cleaver; according to the map, this is Jebel Fazaz and it runs from west to east in a jagged spine of limestone. I can see other mountains from my perch and they also trend in the same general direction, sometimes for miles. Below, a dusty road winds into the village; my next destination. Before I leave the pass, while eating my lunch of bread and cheese, I receive a call from home. I speak to my father for awhile about what I see and my optimism for the remainder of the trip; we will not speak again until it is over, and that conversation will be far different.

II

The descent is rugged, but on a defined trail which is more of a comfort than I realize. The piste winds past huts of mud and stone, presumably occupied by shepherds that are out on the mountainsides with flocks right now. I look up at the gathering clouds, they are dark but not yet menacing and the weather is still quite warm. The juniper trees on the slopes are gnarled and wisened by the elements and on the road below I can make out the tiny forms of farmers leading or riding their laden donkeys from the fields back to their homes in the village. It takes about an hour to reach the valley floor where I spend some time speaking with a crew of construction workers in Tamazight, answering their questions with mounting pride in my linguistic prowess. I walked into Tirghist, followed by the usual stream of children who actually were not asking for handouts for once. I heard them whispering to eachother, trying to guess my nationality, finally settling on Arab; after all, what European would ever want to learn Tam? I was quite pleased with myself as I walked through the village and felt the stares rolling off of my back. I walked to the yellow “sbitar” and was invited inside by the doctor and a berber man with a University of Michigan Baseball cap.
The doctor made tea and we all sat and pored over my map; I spoke in Tam to “Michigan” and he in turn translated for me to the doctor who only spoke French and Arabic. Michigan advised me to turn around and take the piste from Tirghist to Tilmi and from there to my destination. I gestured to the (presumably) more direct route I had chosen and he nodded and said he hadn’t tried it but gave me the names of the passes I would be crossing and wished me luck. I finished my tea and threw on my pack, walking out the door I looked down at a dog half delirious with age and disease. It regarded me blearily and its tail thumped once before I move on. I left the village talking to an old berber woman and a young boy of about 13 they asked where I was going and I told them. They looked at me dumbstruck and we soon parted ways.
My road stayed high above the river and its shimmering wheat fields, looking below I saw the boy I had spoken with talking to a group of women on the riverbank who immediately looked in my direction. I wave and they wave back; I smile knowing that my story is being spread and that I am impressing the locals. Pride is so insidious.
The trail drops to the edge of the river and winds through a gorge of red stone streaked with white jags not unlike lightning. The riverbed is a black shale and hard underfoot; easy walking with little or no mud to deal with. Clouds roil overhead but I pay them no mind in the euphoria of the beautiful unknown. It is silent here save for the whisper of water over rock; even the wind has died away. The canyon widens and I see my pass, Tizi-n-Aroush, off to my left. I step out of the canyon onto an outcrop of shale. I pause to drink water and make water as well, looking toward the distant divide underneath the churning sky. There is animal dung on the outcrop and I realize then what will be one of the most vital epiphanies of my journey: where there is shit, there is a way. This means that if I can find the spoor of domestic animals, or even their human masters, it means that this way is used; this way goes. I understand now what Craig Childs meant in his book, the “Way Out” when he spoke of looking for animal sign to find a way out of a canyon or, in my case later, over a mountain.
I continue walking and pass a woman bent low under a load of hay, leading a fully loaded donkey and followed loyally by a black cow that was munching contentedly from an oat bag tied to her muzzle. The woman sees me and asks me for candy. I say I have none, which is true; I offer her water instead and she raises an eyebrow and points at the creek behind me saying “there’s water right there, why would I want yours?”. I flush and murmur an apology; my pride deflating a little at her bent form a the knowledge that she had done something far more strenuous every day of her life than I was doing with my clean blue backpack and designer gear. My peg was taken down a few notches.
I was following a small stream at this point, bounded by hanging gardens of moss and rushing cascades singing down the mountainsides. Massive cushion-like “ifssi” sprouted on all sides and, between them were wildflowers unlike anything I had ever seen. There was a spiny variety of Phlox and peculiar flower that bloomed at ground level looking for all the world like a Bachelor’s Button, but from a thorny “thistle” rosette. Many other beauties demanded attention but the show-stopper was a delicate raceme of scarlet orchids which sprouted from a marshy area near the trail. I stopped to admire them for a second and kept moving as I felt a raindrop splatter on the back of my neck.
I stopped halfway up the pass to rest, eat a bite, and put on my raingear. It was sprinkling but nothing had yet come of the storm and I was still hopeful it would blow over. My legs ached from the abuse of the day and from the wasting of illness; I could feel bruises blossoming on my now prominent hipbones and the shoulder-straps tugged hard at my upper back. I reckoned that I could camp soon and that it would be an easy walk to my destination the next day. I stretched, looking down into a pool of reproachful tadpoles, and wondered for the first time if this venture may have been a bad idea. Ah well, no turning back at this point.
I kept climbing and could see the pass in the near distance, another horizon between me and the unknown. I noticed that some of the ifssi around me had been burned to the earth and I remembered what I had been told concerning ifssi as a berber firestarter. Looking back, I could see plumes of smoke visible on other high slopes marking the location of burning ifssi and where shepherds were huddled around the burning bushes with their flocks, jelaba hoods raised against the coming storm. Grey rain curtains sweep the landscape behind me and I stagger exhausted onto the saddle of Tizi-n-Aroush.

III

My heart sinks into my shoes and become aware of my racing pulse and tunneling vision as I look down at the valley, the unknown. My pride evaporates and sweat appears on my palms; above me the sky opens and the rain pours down. I stare mutely through the driving rain at this vision of hell and look down at my wet map. According to the contour, the general shape of this valley is correct, but its rugged violence is entirely unexpected. Rocky hills and promontories all bounded by cliffs, wreathed by fog, and made grey with sheets of rain. Below me the land drops away suddenly in a chaos of wet scree and ribbed shale. The faint trail I was following vanishes entirely and I feel a sick dread. I shiver with the sudden cold and damp and know that I have to begin my descent.
I am cliffed out several times and lose my footing on the slick stone, saving myself with my stick from dashing my brains out in the narrow creekbed. I keep my ears open for the sound of floodwaters but I am still high enough in the canyon that it is not much of a worry. My mood descends as I do and I am exhausted from the day so far. My watch beeps and I look down at it, wondering why this time is important. I remember and my mood sinks even farther as I realize that, at this moment nearly 6000 miles away, two of my best friends are getting married. I realize how utterly alone I am, that I am in the middle of the Atlas Mountains in Africa, with no friends to help me and no safety net to fall into. All I have to rely on is my wits, my skill, and the mercy of my creator; the realization is terrifying.
I turn my ankle on a wet stone and fall heavily again my stick. I curse myself and my stupid pride, realizing what a wonderful life I left behind in America and how here, in the middle of nowhere, there is actually potential for my story to end unfinished. This is how is happens, I think darkly, this is how good people die, all it takes is one mistake to set off the spiral and that’s it… forever. But I realize that I have not yet made that crucial first mistake and continue on, carefully. I look up at the sharp crags and back at the pass, now high above me. I stop to drink water and raise my bottle grimly in silent tribute to my distant friends; friends that I was unsure I would get to see again. I curse myself again, this time for being a coward, and continue on, praying quietly for some comfort, some sign that I would make it out of this
The rain begins to lessen and then ceases entirely, but night is coming fast; I know I have only one hour to find a place to camp. In my peripheral vision, as silently as ghosts, trees begin to appear out of the mist one by one and then many. They start small and then become massive with huge trunks and weird umbrella-like spreads of dark branches. I know them at once and I stop to stare in awe; I am standing on the fringe of one of the last stands of old-growth “Atlas Cedar” on the planet. This tree is an endangered rarity and I realize with a start that this tortured valley is like an “eden” of sorts, a lost world untouched by time. I close my eyes and murmur my thanks; the giant trees have given me some small peace. But the fear stays, just under the surface, sitting in the back of my throat like bile. My hackles are up and my heart continues to race.
I see no sign of humanity save for a couple abandoned herder’s shacks and evidence of old trails, now fallen into disrepair and forgotten. I reach the confluence at the heart of the valley which is marked by a spire of red stone. I turn and shuffle exhaustedly up the other fork, my eyes scanning the ground for a place to camp. I almost settle on a spot where I could sleep half-inside the trunk of a fallen and burned out cedar, but I keep moving forward mechanically, not know what force is driving my exhausted limbs.
Ahead of me, on a bend of the creek, there is a two room hut of mud and stone. I had passed several like it, it is constructed the same as all berber dwelling have been constructed for millennia. But this one has people. People on the roof, people next to a smoking outdoor oven, kids running to meet the men returning from the mountains; around them a few dogs lay on the ground. One hand tightens on my stick and the fear rises. I set my jaw and raise my other hand, palm open, fingers splayed, toward these unknown people, seemingly the sole occupants of this forgotten place.
Activity ceases and all eyes are fixed on me, this strange European dressed in bright colors; it is as though I have fallen from the sky. One of the men strides toward me and puts out his hand. I take it and smile weakly, my limbs feeling suddenly heavy; I greet him in Tamazight. His has lights up and he looks at me incredulously. This mysterious stranger speaks my language? Albeit badly? He takes me by the arm and introduces me to the family, 7 in all, 5 men and 2 women. His name is Hassan, the same name as the one I was given by my family in the desert. I follow them inside, hoping for good intentions, and lean my pack against the wall of the hut. I am seated on a dusty rug next to a rusted woodstove which glows with a welcome heat. I am brought tea and a crust of bread; my exhaustion threatens to overtake me and I sway slightly. My every movement is apparent to the seven pairs of eyes that are watching me from the opposite side of the room.
The evening passes in a blur, my language is surprisingly passable and Hassan is familiar with the Peace Corps, being from a nearby town with modern conveniences such as… dirt roads. I am able to explain who I was and where I had come from to everyone’s mutual satisfaction and I am soon ushered upstairs to the other room I had seen where dinner would be served. Looking at the state of the cooking area and having been told that there was no bathroom. I knew that any food I took would be a dangerous gamble on my already weakened system and that I may not be able to make it out of this valley if I got sick. I told the family this before dinner was offered they knew I was not going to eat from the steaming pile of sheep organs and vegetables that watched being devoured. I kept taking glasses of tea and apologizing for my bad behavior, trying to appease the woman who expressed her consternation to me from behind her few teeth. I looked remorseful as I could and she accepted my apologies. I am accompanied to the “restroom” by Hassan who protected me from the family dogs who apparently wanted to eat me. I throw down my sleeping bag on the floor of the first room, the rest of the family sleeps in the other, next to the dying woodstove.
I lay awake for many hours listening to the bleats and coughs of the sheep outside and to the skittering of mice in the corners of the room. My mind is racing with the impossibility and surrealistic nature of my situation. Finally, toward morning, I fall into a dreamless and troubled sleep...