The Revolving Door

In a white plastic lawn chair located at the lonely end of my 40ft long, skinny, adobe room, I sit listening to the strange, drawling, voice of “The Tallest Man in the World”. A musician not born of America, but nonetheless belting sounds forged in Americana folk, he both stokes and mirrors my mild homesickness. I have just tumbled out of the back of a vegetable laden beige taxi, back in my village after having spent the last 24 hours in the provincial capital of Ouarzazate seeing off 5 Peace Corps volunteers who are finishing their service and going out into the world they now know much more thoroughly. Even for me, this was an emotional event. A group of maybe 25 volunteers from near and far managed to attend our scheduled 2 o’clock lunch celebration at the extravagant (for Morocco) restaurant Phoenix, which oh so uniquely offered dishes featuring numerous cheeses, alcohol, and even ham (hashak). In company were the 5 exiting volunteers, 6 from the newest group including Amber and myself, and a smattering of other volunteers in various stages of their service. As the food came and went, emotions slowly mounted. All of us at the table have been sharing with each other, for various lengths of time, an experience that can not easily be understood of replicated. As Josh Marshall put it while toasting the service of his fellow volunteers, “There is something strange about a person who makes a conscious choice to leave their life and home behind and spend two years living with perfect strangers”. While the variety of that group was stunning, we all had this significant trait in common and we will always share this strange and wonderful Moroccan experience. For the new additions to the Moroccan team, we have been awed and succored by these parting individuals who interact with their alien surroundings so seamlessly as to bolster our confidence even while we wonder how it could ever get so effortless. But while our relationships with these wonderful people is just beginning, we also witnessed 6 month, 1 year, and 1 ½ year relationships which seem much older and stronger because of the deep connections that going through this process create. And while I watched the emotional goodbyes I realized, this will be me before long. Over the course of the evening I continued to make friends with the people around me, all of whom, I will have to say goodbye to in 2 years or less. I will also have to say goodbye to the local communities, culture, language, friends, and coworkers that I grow to love. In a year, I will be saying goodbye to another group of amazing people, but I will also be saying hello to a new group of frightened beginners. Thus is the wonderful, if not slightly painful, revolving door of the Peace Corps. In the meantime, I am wowed by the impressive accomplishments and grace of the exiting volunteers, and looking forward to doing my job here well enough that when I leave, I have a community who will miss me and whom I will miss; a second home! Still listening to the poignant drawl of “The Tallest Man in the World” (given to me by one of my new Peace Corps fast friends) I begin to wonder how this globetrotting artist can speak to my American heart with an American voice, and what provokes the sadness hidden in his words? Perhaps his nomadic nature has left pieces of his heart in many places around the world. Maybe each piece he gifts is replaced and he is therefore more heartfelt. Maybe it easier for his to love and communicate and connect. Yes….I think so….I think so!

Dining With Strangers

In the Peace Corps, the name of the game is “Talk to Strangers”, particularly in the first few months in your site. Lucky for us, Moroccans are renowned for talking to strangers despite the dichotomy of often being shy. One must be careful however, because a simple greeting in Morocco can and will quickly turn into an invitation for tea. Amber and I have been invited for tea numerous times since arriving in Morocco and most of the time we except regardless of how much teeth decaying tea we have already consumed (note: Moroccan tea is so sweet and minty, its like drinking toothpaste. Still though, it can be enjoyable and the coffee w/milk is fantastic with sugar or without). Most of the time, in fact, the invitation will come before or in lieu of a salutation. Amber and I: Hello, how are you today? Moroccan: Come to my house and have tea and bread! Its only once your shoes are off and you are eating their homemade bread that they ask you how you are doing and if you have a name. For a shifty-eyed, standoffish American like myself, this can be a bit hard to get used to. Still though, we have been taking every opportunity to meet our community by excepting these invitations whenever we have the time. Last week, one such invitation caught us off guard when we visited our local post office to open a post office box and were ushered through a magic door into a plush back room. The man doing the ushering was the local post master who actually lives in the house connected to the post office. As a result, the magic door had taken us into his living room, which was complete with mahogany furniture, gold-guilded cups, and a green velvet tablecloth. Waiting for us in the room were the director of the local high school and a teacher who is the president of one of the local Associations. Somehow they all spoke English and were very excited to meet us. Soon tea had arrived accompanied with fancy plates of nuts, cookies, and pastries, and fresh picked mint sprigs to add to our glasses as needed. As we ate, more people arrived; another school director from our duwar, our nurse and counterpart at the hospital, and eventually, one of our new language tutors who works at the cyber owned by two of the men previously mentioned. When the tea was gone, we all got up and started saying our goodbyes, but before we left, the postmaster gave us a tour of the rest of his house (not the post office part). We thanked him again and made our way to the door, but then awkwardly asked, “is it okay if we finish getting our post office box before we leave?“. One of my favorite Moroccan experiences occurred on a walk from Tanant to my training village of Ait Majden. Along the path between the two towns, there is an old building where olive oil is made, hidden in the trees like something out of Hansel and Gretel. One day while walking by, we noticed a man standing outside the hut. We said hi, and he motioned for us to come to him. With a grin, he proceeded to show around the dim shack to each stage of the oil making process. When we had seen the whole process, he grabbed an empty coke bottle from the floor, knelt to the ground and carefully filled the container with fresh, first press oil from a box in the ground where the oil gathers as it is pressed. He handed me the bottle and refused payment. “This is a gift“, he said as he motioned us back onto our path. Not all encounters have been this pleasant however. Last Friday I had one of the strangest experiences yet. Friday in Morocco is a holy day of celebration, which generally means people will be more likely to go to the Mosque for the special Friday prayer, and that they will probably eat a traditional couscous meal. Though my host family is unique in that they do not eat couscous on Friday, they do eat lunch at roughly the same time as other families which falls around 1:30 or 2pm. On this day, I found myself unwittingly walking home alone (Amber was at home feeling under the weather) at around 1:15pm, trying to make it home in time for lunch just as the midday mosque service was getting out. This meant that I looked particularly foreign walking through all the white robes, and that I probably looked like a man without a home in which to be served couscous. Having passed the majority of the group, my thoughts turned else ware until I heard an old man yelling behind me. I assumed at first that he was talking to somebody else until he said “Bonjour”. I turned to see what he wanted and said “Salaam“, to which he gestured for me to walk back to him. When I got near him, he invited me for tea and bread, and though I tried every way I could to tell him I was already running late for lunch, he would not take no for an answer. I literally would have had to have turned my back on the old man with the white robes and pious hat and walk away while he called to me to come back. Instead, I bit the bullet and prepared myself for a glass of toothpaste. His house wasn’t far off the road, and when we entered his eating room, he shooed his wife (or daughter maybe?) into the other room and offered me a seat on the rug at the knee-high table. A few moments passed by with some incoherent utterances, and then his wife/daughter arrived with a huge platter of couscous. This is not tea?! I thought, but it was too late and he pointed to a crusty spoon, which had been on the table when we got there, and said “Eat”. Luckily, his wife reappeared long enough to bring two fresh spoons before disappearing again. The man offered me my choice of spoon and we began our feast. Moroccan couscous is made with a generous bottom layer of the grain, which is then piled with well-cooked vegetables and crowned with meat in the center of the dish. Then juice from the cooked vegetables and meat are drizzled over the top. Traditionally, it is eaten with the hands, but this is a skill that takes years to master, so spoons are used by foreigners and the less adventurous locals. The meat in the middle is saved until everybody is done with the rest of the food and then it is dispersed by the head of the house to the people eating. As I ate the couscous and vegetables (which were excellent), I couldn’t help but notice the unfamiliar shaped hunk of meat sitting in the center of our meal. I still don’t know what it was! When I put my spoon down, the old man collected the meat from the middle, and with a knife, carefully cut equal chunks to disperse between the two of us. It looked like skin, but it was thick and chewy, and had a mild fishy taste. It also reminded me of a foot, but I can’t actually say why. In any event, I ate two chewy bites before offering the rest back to the communal center. I insisted that I was full, which was enough for the old man, but didn’t stop his wife from bringing a plate of sliced melon and banana. The truth was that I wasn’t full, so I enjoyed some fruit and tried without luck to make small talk with my host. When the fruit was done, he asked if I wanted tea, and when I refused, he said “okay, you can go now” and we both stood up. I thanked his wife, said goodbye and the door was soon closed behind me. In all, the encounter took about 30 minutes, and though I was a bit late, I made it home just in time for lunch. Lucky me right!?

Witnessing Our Site

We left Beni Mallal for our new site in the Ouarzazate Province (Oz for short) armed with our new official Peace Corps titles. We took a taxi of 5 passengers from Beni to Marrakech, grabbed some fruit and bread from a tahanut and caught another taxi of 5 to the Provincial capitol of Oz. The road from Marrakech to Oz, which traipses over the high atlas mountains, maps out like intestines, which is ironic because that is the part of your body you begin to pay attention to as the driver zooms around endless winding corners with changing elevation like a heart monitor reading. Over the mountains, the road finally flattens out, but now we were on the edge of the Sahara desert and hot gusts from the open windows act like a convection oven. Still, the fresh air was crucial among our cramped seats. When we pulled into Oz around 3pm, we were met by some local currently serving volunteers who stayed with us in the conveniently located Hotel Gazelle and the next morning we caught a taxi our new site.

The road to our site from Oz undulates through vast desert foothills dotted with great worn Kasbahs and unique sand formations. The sandstone mountain walls change color with each ripple of the earth so that warm tones from khaki orange, red to purple can all be seen overlapping themselves along the countryside. Large salt crystals from this area are sold in souqs all over the country, and for a stretch, all the roadside formations are striped bright white, reflecting this abundant commodity. The road then crosses a bridge over a wide empty riverbed green with palm trees. This is where the camels can usually be found grazing. Soon the trees are gone as the desert again takes over. At times, it seems as though nothing could live here in the dunes and sun. The most breathtakingly beautiful thing about this area however, are the oasis. In a sea of sand, a lush, bright green oasis will appear from behind a dune, complete with date palms, towering Kasbahs, and rose gardens. My town is one such oasis. Built snuggly into the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains, along a wide riverbed, emerging from the peaks, our lush, verdant, village fields go on for acres and yet are surrounded by completely sterile sun-baked sand valleys and peaks. From our site, the mountains ascend dramatically, and though it is fairly hot here already (maybe about 85-90 most days), there is a clear view of the snow-capped mountains looming above us. In many ways, the dry, warm weather, desert scenery, and mountains remind me of the places I’ve seen and lived in, in the American Southwest (New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah), but the vastness of this place, and the silence, make it seem unfamiliar and even mysterious. Then of course there is the culture to consider. The Kasbahs, the cramped screaming taxis and busses, the fruit stands, hanging skinned goats and chickens, solo bikers in the desert wearing turbins and pedaling huffy’s, loud Arabic rap music, men praying on personal tote prayer rugs on the sidewalk, donkeys carrying huge decorative metal doors, patient sheepherders crossing busy streets with their full entarage, women wearing richly patterned colorful jallabas (like a really fancy night gown), trash piles in front of tahanuts waiting to be burned nightly, and of course the calls to prayer echoing off the mountain sides. This is not the southwest; but it is fascinating and beautiful beyond words.

Don't Send Me Stuff

Hi everybody. Just a note; since I'm heading to my new site, I will have a new address and the Peace Corps will no longer accept packages for me. Don't send anything until I get my new address and give it to you.

The US Ambassador in Morocco Made Me Swear

Today, Amber, myself, and 59 other excellent Americans were officially “sworn in” as Peace Corps Volunteers by the current US Ambassador in Morocco. Congratulations to all of you! This has been fun, but definitely not easy. Now the real work begins. Tomorrow, we will travel to our provinces and begin meeting our communities. In other exciting news, I ran for and was elected to work on the “PeaceWorks” committee which publishes a quarterly magazine created, written, and edited entirely by Moroccan volunteers. This is our creative outlet in Morocco, and a great way to express ourselves and stay connected. As a result of the job, I will be traveling to Rabat twice a year to work on every other published issue. Sounds like a lot of work and a lot fun too! Wish me luck.

Saying Goodbye

It has been a poignant week, which might have been anticipated if I had time to be reflective. The emotional rollercoaster began with the fate-echoing dream described below. That afternoon after my dream, tarabut Hussein and myself took off from school early and followed our mother and sisters up an undiscovered path for our first Muessum (town festival). The path veered up the side of a small mountain and cut through wheat fields, terminating at a small rock and adobe structure overlooking the towns and valleys below. Probably 50 or 60 women and children sat together squeezed under the small shaded patio and a thick line of men rumbled along the side wall of the shack. To the left, in a makeshift kitchen hugging the wheat edging the house, were a few men and women cooks working with huge metal pots and deep heavy buckets of food. A plastic woven rug was unfurled behind the house in the hot sun and my instructor, Ali, invited me to sit. For a moment it was just the two of us, but soon the rest of tarabut Hussein joined the rug, followed by the women of our family and some of the local children. Ali quickly but discretely extricated himself. I stayed until the rug was swarming with about twenty women. Ali asked me if I wanted to go sit with the men near the kitchen and when I got up, he explained that in Morocco it is not acceptable for men to sit with women unless they are family. We made our way to men’s section along the side of the building and I greeted each of the men and boys all the way down the line as I had been taught. They were excited to see me there and started a barrage of questioning before I was even able to seat myself on the ground. Two men asked the majority of questions, but they spoke quickly, overlapped each other, and were supplemented by other curious spectators making up the large crowd which had gathered around. I struggled to interpret each question and respond coherently in the target language for what seemed an eternity. Probably ten minutes in, my brain collapsed from shear exhaustion. My first and only experience like this; I had the distinct sensation that my brain just stopped; exactly like a muscle giving out when you try to do that last impossible pull up. For maybe a solid minute, I could only hear the jabbering men surrounding me as noise. There was no willing myself to think, and when I did snap back, I was exhausted. The men mostly wanted to know about if I was married, if my wife was Moroccan or American, and what types of animals and food we had in the States. I obliged them with the answers I could form, and entertained them with my low functioning language ability. Eventually I insisted that we leave, but we were stopped while walking away and told that if we didn’t stay and eat couscous, it would be “hashuma” (really shameful). Again we went back to the unfurled plastic rug, which had been cleared of its visitors and replaced with a giant disc of couscous. We circled the 3ft diameter feast and ate with our hands. When we fulfilled our couscous consumption quota, my host-sister rinsed our hands by pouring water from an old soda bottle which beaded off the grease layer with ease, and we headed back along the trail to town.
He next day tarabut Hussein spent the whole day preparing for a language test which assesses your language ability for which there is a minimum requirement of “Novice-High” level language proficiency in order to proceed in Morocco. While we all felt fairly confident we were performing at this level or above, needless to say, this was a stressful day. Even more stressful was the following day when we had to wake up early, walk 5km to the next town, take the language test, and prepare all our baggage to be sent to our final sights. Luckily, we were able to get our tests out of the way pretty early and we all passed! Our host-families back home, who all knew about the test, greeted us as victors when we arrived back home having passed the exam. Though they celebrated with shouts of “You know how to speak Tashlite very good!“, I’m not so sure they were as convinced of our language abilities as the testers were.
The following day, we celebrated by watching “Princess Bride”, which Hind was wise enough to have brought with her. The morning was stiflingly hot, and in the afternoon on the walk back home, we witnessed a battle of two weather systems, the eerie result of which, was a stagnant, murky, hot air dotted with unusual thrusting tunnels of wind. When we got home, more oddity ensued. Sitting at home at the tea table, we were surprised by an unknown visitor in a red and gold track suit. Following her were two more strangers. These turned out to be our two host-sisters (Halima and Habiba) who live in Rabat, and Habiba’s husband, who is simply called Hajj because he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Although we had been given no inkling that these guests were coming, it was clear that they were very important and adored by the family. Within moments of their arrival, a special area had been created on the floor with shaggy rugs and pillows. A table was placed in the middle and covered with as much food as there was room to fit. The sisters brought with them bags of expensive meats, bread, vegetables, and hard to find fruit, and soon our host-mother and all the sisters were hard at work preparing tea, coffee, hot milk, rice, bread, and tagine. Meanwhile they munched on fruit and chatted, not forgetting to include us and reiterating that it had been a long, hot day. While we waited for dinner we heard a howl in the distance which could have been mistaken for a far off wind tunnel. A trip to the roof, however, informed us that in fact the Fadma,s host-grandmother had died. People from all over town could be see trekking from various parts of the village to be with the family and mourn. That night we slept in our room alone as usual, all the guests and other family members slept together in the open area outside our room where the welcome reception had been created. In the morning all were up even earlier than usual to start the harvesting of wheat which began the day before. Meanwhile, Tarabut Hussein had a farewell party to execute. By 8:30, we were in our souk town buying the necessary party needs including the 10 liters of fruit juice we had special ordered from our favorite But’hanut. Bags full of party favors, we flagged down one of the taxi men who tried to put us in a taxi whose driver was currently working under the hood. He assured us that it worked fine, but when we got in and observed the taxi man trying to push us into the street with a blind corner, hoping to jump start it in the road, we quickly got out and demanded another cab. The second cab was acquired soon after and with the exception of some of the road being visible through a small whole in the floor, this taxi was A-okay.
The next day (the day of the party), we went to work preparing. Before long we had cleaned the house and created two comfortable and attractive venues. This is of course because we had been informed the previous day that nobody would come to our party unless we separated the men and women. Naturally, the women’s room was huge compared to the men’s both because not many men were expected and because women need room for dancing. Children and teens boys are able to join either room and often bounce back and forth so they can feel manly but also have a good time. The next step was to create graphic health posters which we hung up around the party to impart some last bits of advice to our village. Deemed the most artistically apt, I was put in charge of sketching out the four posters. As I created my masterpieces, I was rudely interrupted by some ruckus in the kitchen followed by the gut wrenching smell of gas. Ironically, we had just been given our gas tank usage safety class the day before, and now we were living one of the major problems. Our cook somehow made the propane tank leak inside the house while she tried to affix the proper accoutrement. Then our LCF brought the leaking tank outside where our cook, our landlord, and her two small children continued to handle the tank as well as a knife which they were using to try to stop the leak. Clearly, as health volunteers, we were disappointed and demanded that the tank be removed from the area and taken back to the store where it was purchased. Meanwhile we suggested that the our landlord and cook not turn on or off lights and not use the stoves or lighters until the gas dissipated from the building. At this point, we were very concerned about the success of the party. Not only was the town suffering from a recent death, but now our party site was filled with flammable awfulness. Luckily, when we got back, the gas was mostly gone, and against our suggestions, our cook had prepared us tea. Also, we found out that the mourning family had given us their blessing to proceed with the party and we were able to finish the posters with full color and even some Arabic text! Soon we had a beautiful assortment of dishes overflowing with dates, various nuts, cookies, real cheese, bread, olives, fruit, and “kashir” (highly processed meat between a hot dog and spam). Once people started arriving, I resigned to the men’s room where we were waited on by the women. This was awkward, but to be fair, I was forced to stay in the small none-dancing room for the whole party so I guess it evens out. Through the wall I could hear the party growing in size. Over the loud music thumping through the wall, women could be heard singing, dancing and stomping out beats with any available means. In total about 40 women came to the party which lasted for hours. In contrast, there were 3 men besides my LCF and myself. This included, the Mqddam (a local official), and two local teachers, all of whom are great and fun. We talked a lot about language and Islam often in English but languages became flexible on occasion. Despite a rocky start, this was a hell of a party! Now we have to go home, finish packing, and spend our last night with our host-families, before heading to PC Swear In.

The Prescient Dream

In the dream, the mountain was taller. Perhaps one of the towering Moroccan peaks which block the horizon between gaps of lesser peers. At first I see it from very far away like a postcard. A sheer, undulating face, vividly white against a peaceful sky blue. Sharing its air with a few innocent clouds. As I get closer, the blue skies sink upwards out of view and the sun dips behind a cloud dulling the white. I begin to see a colorfully clad man near the top. He is nervous but not afraid. He is steeling himself for the coming moments. In my dream, I don’t know the man and though he wears skis, I am not sure if he know how to wield them. I am still far off and I never see his face, but I know that he now feels prepared. He begins to inch himself forward perpendicular to the mountain slope. As he turns to face his future, it is apparent that he does not possess the technique this mountain demands. Each movement is ill-formed and heavy with regret. Still he is awkwardly maintaining his footing; sometimes through his own fearsome will and sometimes through that of the mountain itself. For a moment he passes behind a cloud and when he reemerges, I sense that he is beginning to get the hang if this. For a moment, I am optimistic, but a sudden fat lip of snow gives way to emptiness and my heart sinks again. At first, a cold rock wall can be seen behind the falling man. Eventually, all that can be seen is sky and clouds. I am moving with him, but he is falling too fast and soon I am well above him looking down. Now in the distance far below us both I can see an icy ocean. I think back to the moment the cliff appeared and remember the calmness of this stranger as the snow below him fell away. Perhaps his most graceful moment. I realize now that his fate was known to all but me. Skis still strapped to his feet, the man now plunges into the water creating a blimp of chaos in a vast silence. My fear for this man is gone, but I ponder his destiny. As I wake from the dream, I witness the man swimming towards the jagged slabs of ice that stretch off into the distance.