UPDATES

In order to help those interested in finding out what’s new on the site I’ve decided to keep up a post with info on my erratic updates.

November 28, 2009

• Added new post: (23/11/2009) “Strokes of luck”.
• Added new post: (28/11/2009) “Mbark l’awayshir!“.  Good culture, but GRAPHIC images! 

November 17, 2009

• Added new post: (13/11/2009) “A little on culture, genders roles and relations”.  Check it out and shoot any comments or questions my way.
• Added new post: (17/11/2009) “A troubling theme”.
• Added new PAGE: “Berber Banjo!” Check it out, over on the top of the menu on the right-hand side.  Hope to update it from time to time!

November 15, 2009

• Added new post: (15/11/2009) “Soucsou by starlight”.
• Added new post: (18/10/2009) “Trans-Atlantic Family Portrait!”.  A must-see!

November 11, 2009

• Added new post: (11/11/2009) “Time to settle back in”.

October 18, 2009

• Added new post: (18/10/2009) “Making a few more rounds”.

October 17, 2009

• Added new post: (17/10/2009) “A little long-awaited village hopping”.
• Added new post: (17/10/2009) “The next step in integration…?”.

Mbark l’awayshir!

November 28, 2009

Not only did I survive my first Eid Imqorn (a.k.a. Eid al-Kabir, both names meaning “big holiday/festival”), but I enjoyed it!  That’s right.  Even the whole sacrificing a sheep (and in the case of my host family, a goat too) and the cooking of organs and the eating of said organs—I survived it all and enjoyed the company that came along with it.  In the true spirit of holidays like l’eid and Thanksgiving, I spent the whole day hanging out with family, friends, and random people around town.

I suppose I should explain the holiday a bit.  Its official name is actually Eid al-Adha, or “festival of the sacrifice”.  This is the most important festival of the year for Muslims.  The idea is to sacrifice a sheep or a goat in remembrance of Ibrahim’s near-sacrifice of his son Ishmael.  (For Jews and Christians, just switch the names to Abraham and Isaac, and you have basically the same story.)  If you’d like more details about the holiday, check it out on Wikipedia here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha .  The local greeting for a holiday like this one is “mbark l’awayshir” or “mbark l’eid“–that is, basically, “blessed holiday/festival”.  A better known Arabic greeting is “eid mabrouk said“–along the lines of “happy blessed holiday”.

WARNING, now, that the rest of the post contains GRAPHIC IMAGES, immediately.

Strokes of luck

November 23, 2009

I’ve had some trouble getting myself out the door to visit new places and try to meet new people, mainly because I’m afraid my still-limited language skills will hold me back from making a good first impression with people.  Even then, those times that I’ve been able to grab ahold of myself and do what I need to do, I’ve had some funny strokes of luck.

The latest came today when I made my first real visit to the primary school here in Izran.  Sure I faced a bit of “Why haven’t you come sooner?” and “Are you going to do a program today?”  No problem, though.  The three teachers were all happy to see me regardless.  What a relief!  They took me on a quick tour of each classroom, showing off their kids and their textbooks, and then I ended up sitting in the back of the 3^rd grade class to watch and see a little of the routine there.

After a bit, I made my way over to the director’s office.  I had just met him yesterday when we had a good chat about all sorts of things, and he encouraged me to come visit the school whenever I wanted.  That was the main motivation for my decision to visit today.  Besides another nice discussion eventually involving tea, the visit turned out to be a great opportunity—the “President of the Office of Health in Schools” happened to be stopping by this morning to do a fly-by talk to the students about hand-washing and general cleanliness and to inspect the restroom facilities.  Even though I’d never heard of this position before, I thought it was a perfect bit of luck to be at the school when something interesting about health was going to happen.  I met the man, who was nice and knew some English, and then accompanied him and the director on yet another whirlwind dash around the classrooms.  I don’t know how effective his little lectures were, but I enjoyed seeing him in action.

The remarkable thing is, just this morning as I was trying to convince myself to take the plunge and walk out the door to go to the school, I thought to myself how things always seemed to work out so much better than expected when I actually went to new places.

Just this past Friday I dragged my feet (quite quickly, but the slightest sense of dread was there) to Just Over the Hill where I was supposed to meet the nurse and head on over to my Village-By-The-Sea to talk to the students about influenza and hand-washing.  Things weren’t looking good when I saw that the nurse had left some time before (even though I arrived early for our agreed-upon meeting time).  I made the decision, against my shyer instincts, to hoof it all the way to the next village and go to the school.  Of course I was hoping the nurse would be there chatting away, but I knew that even without him I should try to get my foot in the door sooner rather than later.  The trip was good for some much-needed exercise.  I wasn’t surprised when I made it to see that the nurse was not there and had not come at all, but so much the better—that meant that I had no excuse to be too chicken to talk to the one teacher I found.

The visit turned out to be good overall.  The teacher was very nice and interested in sharing his thoughts and information with me.  This might not have been the case, however, if it wasn’t for the perfect timing of another stroke of luck: the letter giving me permission to work in the school and requesting that the teachers help me in any way they could had just happened to arrive earlier that morning.  Amazing!  A wonderful reward for pushing myself to do something that took me a bit out of my comfort-zone.  Not only did some luck in timing help me out, but it turned out that I didn’t have much to fear about a lack of communication as the teacher spoke clearly and was patient with what I tried to express.

This streak of strokes of luck isn’t from just the past few days.  I get the sense that it’s been helping me out for most of my time here in Izran, now.  I think I started to notice it the most when I made my first forays into my outer villages and I would constantly run into opportunities like women gathering for a local celebration or simple invitations to tea.

There’s no doubt that these windfalls have been helpful in building up my confidence and motivation to take the steps to explore the rest of my surroundings.  I don’t expect things to keep turning up this like, but now it’s quite clear that I just need to get out and see people and places.  Even if I don’t have a particular goal on a certain day, or if I feel a bit directionless for a time, the answer is likely to be to go visit somewhere I’ve never been or somewhere I haven’t been in a while.

And a timely passage.

November 17, 2009

“But alas! my love of battle was sated, for I had seen spilled blood and wounds enough; and I got leave to come back to the woods that I yearned for.  And there I got my hurt; for a man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”

Sador to Turin, in Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin, 41-42

A troubling theme

November 17, 2009

We just received word late last night that one of the Volunteers here in Morocco died yesterday, “unexpectedly after an illness.”  I don’t know details and I doubt many people do, but I’ve heard that she’d been sick for a time leading up to now.

I didn’t really know this girl, who lived in Zagora and worked in a different program than mine.  I did meet her for the first and last time on Halloween at a party attended by around 15 Volunteers.  She made delicious sushi and taught us how to mix a mean dipping sauce (too bad the fresh canned ginger wasn’t fresh anymore, but a great sauce without it, nonetheless).  Though I had trouble remembering exactly how to say her name, we had a couple short conversations together.  The best one was about marching bands in college.  She attended Stanford, where the band was, in certain ways and certain times, effectively banned because of bad behavior and overall craziness.  She described the trials and tribulations of those who desired to become the mascot, the Stanford Tree.  Aspirants have to jump through a number of hoops, the most intriguing of which is that they have to build their own costume.  If the costume gets stolen (which happens from time to time, apparently) they have to build a new one.

That’s all.  I remember watching her enjoy herself absolutely at the party.  It was clear that she was a vivacious, happy person here in Morocco.

I don’t know how to feel.  I didn’t know her too well, grief per se isn’t my natural reaction and I don’t feel like it would quite be appropriate as I didn’t truly know her.  Sadness is there.  Confusion.  Disbelief.  Curiosity.  Concern, and a desire to know more details.  Death is everywhere, and it’s only natural that it would follow Volunteers around the world just as it exists in America.  In my arguments with my Placement Officers before my final assignment to Morocco, I had to counter statements that death is everywhere and I should not expect to have an assignment that would isolate me from it.  I didn’t expect so much of the death that I would deal with would be on the American side of things, and so early.  Three deaths in my first nine months.  My cat, my grandmother, and now a fellow Volunteer.  Such is life.  But where does it leave me now?

Well, my life goes on.  Today I am scheduled to accompany my sitemate and the staff of local clinics to the schools in my area to talk to students about influenza.  I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity for a while.  The weather is still very nice.  I can still hear the ocean from my window, though the haze covers the water today.  Half a Slim Jim and some coffee for breakfast to keep myself heading in a positive direction, even with the emotional flip-flops.  I’m thankful that, even with the low-points that are natural wherever one is, overall I’m still soundly content with where I am and what I’m doing.

But for now, a cloud of sadness hangs over things.

Soucsou by starlight

November 15, 2009

There’s not a whole lot better than turning around a random corner to find a bunch of women working around a tasoucsout or two to whip up a good old-fashioned neighborhood feast, and receiving a hearty call to come over and join the fun.  I’ve been lucky enough to experience this quite a few times over the last few months.  And a few of those times, the call has been just what I needed to make my day.

A little on culture, gender roles and relations

November 13, 2009

A cousin of mine sent me an email recently asking a few questions on my experience with gender topics here in Morocco.  I thought I’d post her questions and my answers for anyone else who might be interested in the discussion.  I’ll say now that I didn’t answer everything as fully and well-written as I’d like.  Also, my experiences are different from those of other people.  Nothing is truly universal.  What I’ve perceived and experienced should not be taken as the rule.

Time to settle back in

November 11, 2009

Just got back to Izran this morning after being away for about a week and a half, and re-adjusting is off to a slow start.  My biggest obstacle at the moment is my reluctance to face the village and all the questions about where I’ve been and why did I disappear.  I think this might actually be the easy focus my less-than-bubbly-positive emotions, rather than a serious issue.  Oh, well.  A little time out and about and hopefully things will return to normal fast.

I’m also a bit overwhelmed by all the crazy happenings since the last week of October.  Things started getting hectic with my pre-trip planning, my birthday, and unfortunately, the death of my grandmother.  With the longish trip tacked onto that, I have a lot of ground to try to recover.  Not too optimistic about fully catching up, but that’s ok.

On a bright note, however, I do believe my anxieties are mainly superficial right now.  The happy evidence I received this morning to back this up came as I was sitting through the bus-ride back home.  All the way from the city I was doing some light brooding about how I didn’t want to face people, and how I wasn’t sure what to eat or where to start working… when the bus finally reached the elevated point where Izran first comes into view, down the road.  Rather than suffering from the minor jolt of anxiety that I half-expected, I actually felt an involuntary twinge of happiness and excitement to almost be home.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Moving back in time to some randomness…  I spent last night at a hotel in the city that just happened to have a book exchange.  Crowded on all sides by French books there was a neat-looking copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions.  I’ve been interested in reading some Vonnegut lately, anyway, and the name is a phrase that I can’t help but use fairly often, so I decided to buy it as a souvenir of my first night in the city and give it a read.  As soon as I got to the bus stop I opened it up… and noticed on Page Six that Vonnegut’s birthday was, of all 365 days (and 366 days in a leap-year), today.  In fact, November 11, 1922.  This book was, apparently, his 50^th birthday present to himself.  How appropriate that I should buy it and start reading it on his birthday!  I took that as a good sign and kept on through to the beginning of Chapter Four.

Stepping back to yesterday afternoon, I played my first round of Moroccan Monopoly with Omar (Sean, of Tarabut Hussein fame) and enjoyed it thoroughly.  Up at the Marjane (Morocco’s sort-of version of Wal-Mart) in Marrakesh last week I saw that they had Monopoly: Maroc Edition—an official version of the game completely done out with the names of Moroccan streets and utilities.  One of the best parts of our game was how I bought ONEP, the water company, and Sean had to pay me just about every other go-around for water.  The irony is that he has running water in his site and I don’t.  Ultimately the game ended with Sean giving me all his money, even though he could have traded or mortgaged some property, because time was getting on and we had a pizza to go order before it was too late.  A good inaugural game, hopefully followed by many more over the next year and a half.

Trans-Atlantic Family Portrait!

October 18, 2009

Having fun with the family on Skype!

Our first trans-Atlantic family portrait!

Making a few more rounds

October 18, 2009

Day Three of my village hopping campaign has gone beautifully!  I left my house at 8:00am and hit the road, aiming for another douar that I’ve never been to before.  This time my direction was off to the east, so I will call this place… East End.  The trip up wasn’t too bad at all.  20 minutes by bike and it would have been faster if it wasn’t for the bit of a hill that I had to go up.  Once I’m in better shape it should (hopefully) be a little faster.

Once I got to where the road to East End began I jumped off my bike and took a quick breather.  I’ve been making all these bike trips in a skirt, meaning I’ve had to strap it up to avoid tangles with my wheels and then let it back down when I reach my destination.  Here I’ll make a plug for my awesome skirt: it’s a Macabi skirt, designed to be quick drying and versatile for adventures, created by an RPCV and sold to PCVs at a nice discount!  Absolutely awesome!  Appropriate for my social surroundings, comfortable, and easy to manage.  I get compliments on it all the time from Moroccans and other PCVs.  Anyway, I recommend it.  Look it up on Google.