I'm So Proud of My President!

So here I am in Morocco, a country who shares with America perhaps the strongest international relationship of any Muslim country in the world despite our current post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq, scenario; which I have to say, has left a bad taste in the mouths of many Moroccans who are suprisingly well informed (probably because of the abudance of satallites) and politically astute (Morocco's ancient desultory political history has developed a healthy interest among its inhabitance). As a result, I have witnessed many conversations (in which I do not participate) regarding the insane actions of the absolved Bush administration and the difficult situation in Israel, particularly the unfortunate treatment of the Palestinians. Luckily these dialogues usually end with a nod to the positive potential of our future now that America has made the decisive choice to turn a political corner. This makes me happy! Especially since I am not able to bend the ears of the people here regarding my personal beliefs. What also makes me happy is Obama's recent address to the Arab world in Cairo. It got a lot of play here (he did, after all, briefly make mention of Morocco) and the people I have talked to about it have unanimously said, "Mzyan" (great)! While I really apprecciated Obama dispelling some of the common myths about Americans, what I loved the most about this speech, as with many other Obama speeches, was his focus on the potential, the power, and the responsibility of people as apposed to government. He is saying to the world what he has been saying domestically for some time, "Yes we can"! And on the eve of a number of imortant international elections including an unprecidented forward-moving, national election here in Morocco this friday, I am proud to have a president who is willing to believe in and be an unabashed cheerleader for the future and success of the world beyond the borders of our country. I can only hope that we the people of the world can have an equal faith in ourselves, so to that end, listed below are some of Obama's affirmations that I found the most inspirational.

"We (America) are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one.""

"For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

"But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek – a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together."

"All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings."

There is a Haunted Castle in Our Village!

I have been remiss to have gone so long without mentioning that our town comes straight out of a 6-year old boys wildest dreams. In addition to having a 700-year old haunted castle (actually a kasbah) which is inhabited by an unknown hovering light, we are also blessed with a gangling, white ghost, and a dinosaur! The dinosaur was discovered in the foothills of the mountains near our village a few years ago, the ghost lives very near the house we will be moving into at the end of this month, and the haunted kasbah peaks its ruins out from between the trees of the village fields, which follow the river down the valley. Check out Amber's account of our recent visit to the kasbah with our language tutor Samira, here: http://moroccanamber.blogspot.com/2009/06/there-is-haunted-castle-in-our-town.html

Discomfort and Education

“Bonjour”. This is the soundtrack of my life. It usually starts with the first person that I see when I leave my house and follows me up the 3 kilometer dirt road to the center of our village like a curious bird chirping at a safe but ever more intrepid distance. Along the way, this bird and I pass through 3 neighborhoods (called duwars) until finally entering the central duwar, which we call “souq” or “lxhmees“. The dual name derives from the fact that this is the location of the weekly souq market occurring every Thursday. In the local Berber language, we call Thursday, “lxhmees”, which comes from the Arabic word for 5 (xhmsa), because Thursday is the fifth day when counting from Sunday (which apparently, the Arabic world does). There are certain times and places along the road where the chirping turns into a chorus of French, which in rare cases borders on taunting. Sometimes, the Berber language is used in lieu of French for these events, but there is no expectation of reciprocation, and these outbursts are often punctuated by chortling. Though I make this same journey back and forth at least once everyday, I am no less a spectacle now than the day I first arrived. At least three days a week, I “work” at the sbitar (health clinic) where hundreds of townspeople have witnessed me talking with and assisting the doctor and nurses; I go to souq every week; I live with a host family who has introduced my to many relatives and friends; I walk around the fields and stop to help the workers; I work with two separate language tutors at least 3 times a week; I go to the post office twice a week to check my mail box; I sit in the outside patio of the cafés like the rest of the town men; I have been to numerous random houses for tea, I am teaching the doctor how to play the guitar; I have visited the schools; and I regularly go to the cyber (internet cafe);but STILL, I am no local. Grown men still sometimes stare at me as I pass with their jaw dropped ignoring my salutations. Not even in middle school did I feel so out of place. I am simultaneously celebrated and ignored; an invisible spectacle. And perhaps because I have never been one to draw attention to myself, this is a particularly trying scenario for me. I constantly find myself in the spotlight being forced to perform with little or no warning; like the other day when I accepted an invitation to the nightly adult Arabic literacy class only to find myself attempting to read Arabic words scribbled on the chalkboard aloud to the class even though I don’t speak Arabic and can’t read script. Or the time that I visited the local middle school and was spontaneously whisked into a classroom of approximately 40 students and 5 or 6 teachers and asked to introduce myself and explain my purpose for being in Morocco using the local language despite the unfortunate fact that I haven’t figured out my purpose for being here in my own language yet (This event was, of course, followed by cake, soda, and a large photo session because all the children wanted to have their pictures taken with the foreigners).

Early on, I stopped trying to explain to people that I don’t speak French because they continue to speak French regardless of what I say. At first this was a perplexing verity, however a few weeks ago, I gained some perspective on the matter. I was walking on the same road I take every day, when a big white SUV came to an abrupt stop beside me. A French tourist sitting in the passenger seat rolled down her window, leaned out, and asked me something in French. My immediate response was “samHiyee, urfHmug Fransawee” which in TashelHite, means “Forgive me, I don’t understand French”. Now why did I respond to a French tourist in a fancy white SUV with my limited mountain Berber language, when it is very possible we both speak English? Because I am accustomed to pulling out TashelHite when I am talking to somebody who doesn’t speak my native tongue. Likewise, the people of Morocco, invariably rely on their French to communicate with people that don’t speak there native tongue. And to be fair, the children here, who are responsible for the majority of the French outbursts that I endure, are probably excited for the opportunity to practice the language that they are so vigorously studying in school. Just last week, the final-year high school students in morocco took an exam to see if they will be given government money to go to college. Education in Morocco is technically free all the way through college, but in order to get free admission to Moroccan college, you must first pass this test (called the Boch), which is continually being made more difficult, one; because sending people through college is expensive, and two; because a growing number of Moroccan college graduates can‘t find work. The odds are against these students. None of the test sections are in there native language. Many of the sections are in Arabic, some in French, and at least one in English. Of course, these are the luck ones who were able, because of intelligence, geographic location and socio-economic situation, to attend school up until this point. My town for example, will not have a high school until 2012 which means students who want to go to high school will have to live in boarding schools in the next town 26 kilometers away. Then there are many children who stop school because their family situation demands that they work in the fields or stay at home and cook. Others, on the other hand, simply aren’t capable of learning in the difficult multi-lingual educational environment that relies heavily on rote memory. Sitting in the small wooden desk at the madrassa (elementary school) trying to learn how to read Arabic script, I was struck by how difficult it was to learn just because of the bad acoustics of the echoing cement-walled building, even in a class of adults with modest attendance, not to mention a large class of boisterous children. So with reverence to these facts, I try hard not to blow my top the fiftieth time I hear “bonjour” each day. Instead I stroll on by, respond warmly in TashelHite, put myself in ridiculous and uncomfortable situations, and try to act like I live here (which by the way I do)!

Beauty Mark

She stares at me with eyes that belie her age, content to let the rest of her body fall how the world around her sees fit. She lives in these eyes and the world she sees is all that matters. I stare back forgetting for a moment, the vast desert and whipping, purple velvet window curtains. A sudden noise draws my attention briefly, but my eyes soon return to their previous resting place, where a beauty mark has revealed itself. Breathtaking! I envy her. I have had many attempted beauty marks; thousands of candidates. They are common here; a dirham a dozen. They offer themselves to me, and each time my instinct is to brush away the opportunity. I, apparently, am not really to bear the burden. Hers is worn with grace and ease. It has changed locations now. It belonged, for a time, to her soft round cheek, but now has found comfort in the slow predictable breezes just below her nose. It rotates, surveying and ringing it arms in speculative thought. These traits are not beautiful. A person, however, capable of accepting these common worldly traits without the slightest change in mood or life trajectory; this is a beautiful person worthy of a distinguishing mark.

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.