Well, travel, computer troubles and an assortment of unforeseen circumstances brought my entries to a halt, unfortunately. I'd hoped to do a more reflective and ceremonial ending to my time in Morocco...but instead I've just started up a new blog, here, that will be in part about my readjustment process to the States and my attempts to import what I learned and the ways I changed into my American life. It's mostly recipes and photos, but also some thoughts and reflections and, in large part, a sort of love song to my Moroccan way of life (wherein spending five hours on a meal is an everyday thing and time is nothing if not elastic).

Thanks so much for reading these two-plus years! Hope you continue to visit me at http://imiksimik.wordpress.com.

Llah Yarham Lwalidayn!!

N.B. My computer has lapsed into a deep, deep sleep (probably due to two years of heavy use in a dusty village), so blog entries will present a challenge from here on out. My official close of service date is a week from tomorrow; my last day in my village is Monday. The volunteer who's coming to take my place arrives Sunday. The past week has been a whirlwind of packing, shipping, cleaning, crying, tea, couscous, biking, talking, and planning. Leaving a place is never fun, but here, the idea of leaving a place "for good" just isn't something people are used to. "When will you return?" and "But how long will you BE in America?" are the most frequently asked questions of me these days, and it's hard to respond because I don't have the answers yet.

I feel like I'm moving too fast right now to really ponder and reflect on what these two years have meant, and it might be a while before I really realize their full impact. At this point the most I can do is try to get as much done and see as many people as possible before leaving...and then deal with next steps, with reflections, with processing it all later.

Three weeks to COS!

I'm in the process of uploading a last album of photos - highlights from the past 10 months or so - if anyone wants to browse (my picasa albums are on the right hand side of the blog). It should cover all kinds of exciting stuff, from trainings and exchanges between my association and at least three others, my parents' visit last spring, camps (though be warned, there are just a few...for lots of camp photos check out the YouTube videos I linked to here), hiking Lake Ifni, several photos of my house, photos from the ceremony in which the weavers were presented their very first profits, a business training I helped out with in a friend's site, our epic bike trip over the Tiz n Test pass, a trip to the magical Portuguese cistern at Al Jadida, a moussem in Taroudant at which hundreds of camels were slaughtered (yeah I know), Easter eggs decorated with henna, my ladies' first trips out of their region, to Fes and the Taznakht area, and a bunch of random photos of my site on those days that made everything look particularly gorgeous. I'll do my best to caption them...enjoy!

...title from the title of a Sufjan Stevens song that sort of captures my mood at the moment. My life looks like the routine of the past two years, if you can call it a routine, but recently the patterns have been subtly shifting and everything is louder and more complicated and better in a lot of ways. Time is just flying! But a few thoughts:

For some time I've been toying with the idea of starting some kind of blog or website that highlights interesting, clearly written articles, podcasts or essays about the Islamic world for the average American nonspecialist reader. So much of the information out there about Islam and the Middle East is biased or full of jargon or overly complicated, and while I am definitely not an authority capable of explaining it all or understanding the subtleties of every bias, I think an online community might be a place to start. I think a huge huge HUGE problem our country faces is simply a lack of information about the populations and countries of our world that doesn't typically get a whole lot of coverage in high school history classes, particularly the Islamic world (which is as diverse and varied, by the way, as the "Christian world," if you want to think of it that way).

Anyhow. I don't know if I will ever get around to creating such a website, or how it would look if I do, but in the spirit of the idea, I just wanted to share with the brave souls who are still following this rambling epistle two years later a few interesting pieces that have caught my eye/ear lately:

1. The Pew Forum: Mapping the Muslim Population

Did you know there are more Muslims in China than in Syria? Or that one in five Muslims lives in a country where Islam is not the majority religion? Or that not only are not all Muslims Arabs, but that not all Arabs are Muslims?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life just published the findings of a comprehensive study on the world's Muslim population, and it's as good a place as any to start forming an accurate picture of the Muslim world.

2. Afghanistan is confusing and sometimes I wonder how on earth one should even approach its myriad problems. Obviously nobody has all the answers, but lately I've seen and heard many coherently articulated descriptions of the challenges there and how they might be addressed in the New York Times Magazine and on the websites of the inspiring Shuhada Organization and Afghanistan's National Solidarity Programme.

Today I finalized the host family for the volunteer who will replace me - a really lovely, welcoming family with a beautiful home! I'm so excited for my replacement. I should find out who she is on Monday - when, coincidentally, I'll be in Rabat for the last time for a GAD (gender and development) meeting. By the time I get back from the meeting I will have TWO WEEKS left in this place where I have been living now for nearly two years. Sometimes I feel like I know it so well - and sometimes I feel like I've just begun to learn my way around.

The weather is finally turning, and it instantly brings me back to last fall - a time when I felt I was FINALLY finding my footing here and understanding how on earth I could find a way to fit in to the development efforts already happening in this wonderful community I now call home. I recently picked the last fruits off of my pomegranate tree, and already its leaves are turning golden and falling to the floor of my peaceful little courtyard.

On a less sober note, on the list of Things to Do Before I Finish Service is "make pomegranate chutney" - which I finally did!!!! And it is delish. Especially good with chicken salad on a sandwich, or to spice up an otherwise ordinary grilled cheese sandwich. So here are the recipes for THOSE, if you can get your hands on some pomegranates, which you should if you are at all able...

Chicken salad, adapted from my Great Aunt Marguerite's recipe

Combine

2-3 cups of cooked chicken pieces (I usually use 1/2 to 1 kilo of chicken, and my preferred method is to cook in oil, broth, and some herbs and spices and maybe some plain yogurt in a tagine for about an hour)

Pomegranate seeds (1-2 pomegranates)

Grapes, seeded and halved

Walnuts or nuts of your choice

Cilantro and parsely, chopped

Mix with about a cup of plain yogurt, juice of one lemon, salt and pepper, and spices of your choice (I usually use turmeric, curry, and ras al hanout). Chill till ready to serve, and if you wish, serve on a bed of fresh lettuce.

Pomegranate chutney (ever so slightly adapted from my godmother Tona's amazing incredible Peach Chutney recipe)

Remove seeds of two medium to large pomegranates

Place in large saucepan

Add: 1/4 cup vinegar, 1/8 cup lemon juice, 1/2 cup raisins, 1/6 cup chopped onion, about an inch of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped, and dried/ground ginger, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon to taste (I usually do half to a whole small spoonful of each), and a spoonful of salt.

Measure about 2 cups of sugar (or about 2 cups worth of honey and sugar if you want to use less sugar) and set aside.

Mix about an ounce of powdered fruit pectin (half a standard size packet) into the saucepan (which now has everything but the sugars), stir well, and place over high heat.

When a boil is reached, immediately add all the sugar and stir. Keep at a rolling boil and stir constantly for 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and skim off any foam that may have formed on top.

Continue stirring for 5-10 more minutes.

Let cool and store.

...lately I have been eating pomegranate seeds and plain yogurt and just a drizzle of honey all mixed up together, and I can't believe I ever ate anything else for breakfast, lunch, or dessert.

That's all.

I am moving out of my village in 36 days.

New word: Moroccracy (Morocco + bureaucracy)

The weather is still way too warm for mid-October, but I think I can finally safely say that an entire summer has passed with NO SCORPIONS in my house. This has certainly made my life easier, but I'm afraid it's made the blog a little boring with no updates to the scorpion death match column...sorry about that.

According to a handout Peace Corps gave us, I am supposed to be feeling:

"Fright, Confusion, Alienation, Anxiety, Panic, Giddiness, Impatience, Obsession with planning and scheduling"

I can't say honestly I'm feeling much of any of that. I'm sure as departure draws nearer I'll get anxious about how on earth to pack all my stuff into the one suitcase I've promised myself will be my limit. I'm happy and trying to savor my last days in this place, but I'm not sure it borders on giddiness. There's a lot to squeeze in but honestly I have faith that somehow it'll all get done.

I have probably jinxed myself. I'm sure now I'll wake up tomorrow morning fraught with confusion, panic and giddiness...

Happily, I can add one more "indicator" to my list of Visible Changes since I arrived: a large group of weavers is planning to TRAVEL to visit another group of weavers in an adjacent region! (They're going to see the group that generously came to us to conduct a two day training in new techniques and quality control last June.) This is a major change: not only is it unusual for more than two or three weavers to travel somewhere, but the entire idea of the trip came from the women themselves - not from men and not from me! I guess a year ago this would seem like such a small step, but living here for two years has changed my perspective so much: in visual terms (because I'm a visual learner), it's not that my perspective has shifted laterally so much as it's way zoomed in, so that the things I notice and appreciate are very different. The difference between a small step and a big one is really in the eye of the beholder, I think.

So, on the cards for the next few weeks: visiting aforementioned weavers with the ladies, a final jaunt to Rabat for a Gender & Development meeting, and then my FINAL TWO WEEKS in Morocco. It's so weird to be counting the time not in months but in weeks now.

I'm keeping a running list of the things I'll miss. At the top: the kids in my host family, the bread my host mom bakes on an open flame in the traditional clay oven, the city walls of Taroudant, the High Atlas mountains in the afternoon light, the Anti Atlas mountains in the morning light, whitewashed courtyards in the evening light, the sound of old men talking to donkeys, the sounds of women weaving, and the sight of rosy pomegranates outside my window.

Nearly two years ago, after a long journey, I arrived in Fes for my Peace Corps swearing-in ceremony. It was cold and rainy; it was Thanksgiving; though I'd visited my village - my new home - for a week or so as a part of training, I still had no idea what my future in Morocco really held.

Fes is totally unlike the southern province where I'd spent my first three months in Morocco. It's got an enormous, labyrinthine medina, the oldest university in the Arab world (founded by a woman, no less) and a cosmopolitan Ville Nouvelle - a relic of French colonialism - to complement it. It was the last time my entire training group would gather before heading our separate ways. I was simultaneously overcome with all kinds of emotions and questions and excitments and fears - and numb to it all, a bit shocked that we were really about to leave the relative security of the training environment and strike out on our own at last.

I'm in Fes again for the first time since that rainy November and things couldn't look more different. I'm here with two brave young women from the group of weavers I work with who traveled by themselves to Fes - a part of the country they'd never been to, and a 16 hour bus ride away - to participate in a business training and craft fair. They're bringing products improved by exchanges with other weavers and natural dye experts. When I first met them they were reluctant to go to a craft fair just 50 kilometers away, and here they are in Fes - finding their way around, meeting people, and experiencing a wholly new part of their incredible country. I'm so incredibly proud of them, grateful for the opportunity (the event was organized by fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and partially funded by USAID), and relieved they arrived safely.

Like the Fes of two years ago (which I explored from the same hostel I'm staying in right now - talk about deja vu) - I'm both filled with emotions and slightly stunned by it all. I can't believe how far I've come and how far they've come. Two years ago, one year ago, six months ago, if you'd told me this is where I'd be this sunny October I never would have believed it. It's hard to believe I'll be leaving soon. I'm definitely ready to head back to my American life, but it's hard to wrap my head around wrapping all of this up.

It's always strange to re-visit a place filled with such intense and brief memories, especially when the return is on the cusp of another enormous transition. I like to think that comparing the beginning and end of this experience against the unmoved backdrop of such a magnificent ancient city will provide me with some kind of heretofore undiscovered perspective or deep realization...but for the time being, I'm content to just accept my days in Fes as, at the very least, a beautiful set of bookends to an incredible experience.

Here are the murals created at our camp this past August with the help of local Roudani artist Soufiane Ait Ben Hmad. They were painted on the walls of a local community association and elementary school.

I helped paint this one, which depicts mothers sending their children to school and the importance of education:

These next two were completely designed by campers (there was a contest to come up with designs on environmental themes, and these are from the winning groups):

This mural is about the effect of HIV/AIDS (SIDA, in French) on a society; in Arabic in the corner it says "United Against SIDA":

Another mural about the importance of education:

And, finally, one last mural depicting environmental themes:

Some days I just can’t help but think that this is the greatest job I’ll ever have because it allows me to live such a beautiful life.

In the past week I’ve broken the fast with at least five different families; each one was delicious in a different way, whether because of homemade shebekkia (a traditional Ramadan sweet), an avocado and apple smoothie, amazing harira (traditional Ramadan soup) as well as askif (traditional Berber, country Ramadan soup), or bread baked in a clay oven. I played tennis twice and zipped around my favorite Moroccan city by bicycle. I joined a large extended family as they gathered for one of the biggest holidays of the year, and helped a local community organization pass out Ramadan gifts to local families.

I discussed a friend’s upcoming first-ever trip to Fes, and ran around to various printers for three days until I managed to make a set of business cards for the weavers I work with. I bought new (well, old) shoes (hence the photos...most Moroccans buy new outfits for the end-of-Ramadan holiday, but I'm more than content with a new pair of used shoes) and hung out with friends, old and new, American and Moroccan, in three villages, a town and a city. I watched the sun set over ancient earthen walls and happened to walk past my favorite vegetable stand just in time to buy their last bunch of weekly spinach.

I made plans for the future: for next week, for next month, for what happens after Morocco, and for what happens after that. As much as I can’t wait for all those things to happen, right now I’m just doing my best to savor these lovely days.

new kitten heels = audrey hepburn = holly golightly the film character = holly golightly the recording artist playing in the background of our post-spinach-omelette-photo shoot = one lovely morning

There are a lot of stereotypes out there about Peace Corps and Peace Corps Volunteers, and I am happy to confess that yes, I do make granola, and yes, I do a lot of yoga.

Without yoga, my service - now rapidly drawing to a close - would have been quite different. I taught simple yoga classes to my weavers when I was just getting to know them as a group, and it served all kinds of purposes: discussing good posture and stretches after hours of weaving that put stresses on their bodies, practicing my Tashelheet, getting to know them in a fun, non-work atmosphere, and providing something new and interesting during a crucial few months of transition as their project slowly morphed from a structured educational environment with a regular teacher to a small enterprise model in which the weavers work more independently and earn profits directly related to their work and efforts.

On a personal level, I never would have been able to stay in shape (physically, mentally, or spiritually) without my trusty podcasts from Yoga to the People (you can find their podcasts on iTunes). I started doing yoga back in college, but until I started these classes I didn't realize how amazing it could be. It's like I finally found the perfect class or style or sequence or what-have-you and now I can't imagine life without it! (Ok, I know, I sound like a zealous religious convert, but I'm hoping that will sound out-of-character enough to convince you how great this workout really is.) Doing an hour of this stuff makes any bad day a good day and any good day a great one.

At this point I should pause and say a HUGE thank you to my dear friend Ethan, who tipped me off to Yoga to the People in the first place, and tell everyone to check out the amazing, inspired Umbrella Hat Productions, of which Ethan is a founder and artistic director.

I guess my posts are starting to sound like a long-winded Oscar speech...but as long as I'm here, I just want to say many thanks to all of my yoga teachers, past and present! My life in Morocco just wouldn't be the same without you...

I send more text messages in a week in Morocco than I did in my entire life in America. With volunteers, I use texts to communicate the good, the bad, and the logistical; with Moroccans, texts often require a creative transliteration of Tashelheit and Arabic with the occasional French or Spanish thrown in for good measure. Looking through my phone’s inbox I was tickled by all the memories and struck by how apt a narrative they form all their own, so I thought I’d share a few highlights. Most are anonymous to protect the innocent. Many have comments, but some speak for themselves:

Favorites from Maroc Telecom (phone service provider that texts all of us a little too frequently…there’s nothing like the sinking feeling of reading one of their messages when you think you’ve gotten a beep from a friend or coworker):

Protegeons notre environnement. Maroc Telecom, partenaire de la Fondation Mohammed VI pour la protection de l’environnement

Hmm. That’s nice. I’m…impressed? Nonplussed? Happy to hear it?

Pour un geste de generosite, envoyez vos SMS au n 620 pour contribuer a la sauvegarde de la ville d’Al Qods et au soutien de sa population (10 DH HT)

9 September 2008

I’d be interested to know if similar messages are common throughout the Arab world (Al Qods is the Arabic name for Jerusalem) – I would bet that they are...

From friends:

OH MY GOD POMEGRANATES IN SOUK

31 July 2009

Ahh, the joys of eating seasonally

WOW ur girls are 33/100 of our fair…tbark allah i may have to buy a competitively priced carpet…

6 March 2009

From a fellow PCV, reporting that women from my community had traveled independently to a local craft fair in a regional capital for International Women’s Day

Omg I’m at a Moroccan mtg and one of the things on the schedule is to verify a quorum

21 February 2009

Some things are just too good not to share

oh my god the moon

9 February 2009

The moon really is stunning some days, isn’t it

Just saw an interview w/the dalai lama during which he said abt himself “not best dalai lama. [pause] Not worst dalai lama. Popular! dalai lama. VERY popular dalai lama.” and thn nearly laughed hmslf off his chair. Thght y’all might like that…

21 August 2008

oh man they’re watching titanic upstairs i recognize the strings over slow motion montage of ship filling with water. oh our morocco

25 June 2008

True fact: many Moroccan apartment buildings are constructed with a ventilation shaft ensuring that every sound in each unit is heard in every other unit, including the sounds of Titanic and tea being poured.

True fact: Moroccans love Titanic with a fervor that is eclipsed only by their love for Celine Dion

um race festivities over…awarded certificate unclear what for. stood on pedestal until asked to step down…

26 April 2008

From a friend who was lauded publicly simply for being The Foreigner who participated in a local running race

WHAT?! OH I’M [expletive]. I KNOW I’M NOT CUT OUT FOR SCORPIONS!

7 April 2008

I just had to bail out of a mving taxi b/c it was abt 2 drive straight into a wall. Now, it was going at a crwl but the brakes weren’t rspnding. It was like the Titanic. I shld have known aftr hearing Celine…

3 March 2008

Lovely Qoo I rwcall my most cherished memory

25 January 2008

From a friend, quoting directly from the lettering on her host sister’s pajamas.

my gendarme’s phone plays “tainted love” and he types with an unlit cigarette in his left hand. there has to be a camera somewhere…

5 December 2007

From coworkers:

…it does not matter one hour does not make change…

In response to a text I had sent inquiring whether a particular event was taking place at 5 pm “old time” or “new time” (i.e. with or without regards to Daylight Savings Time, which is very casually observed here)

I had to share the good news, my women just sold their 1st 2 rugs for 1100 d’s to french & I wasn’t even here! They were made out of natural & henna dyed wool

3 April 2009

From a fellow PCV encouraging women in her community to use natural dyes for weaving. One of the best parts about working with Peace Corps is the access it provides to a network of volunteers, many of whom are doing similar work – practically speaking, the PCV who sent me this helped me set up my own natural dye training, and in terms of morale, it always helps to hear encouraging success stories from others.

Wach ghat tji 3andna nhar lhad rah twahchtak

6 November 2008

From one of the weavers I work with, texting me at the end of a long month of travel to tell me that they missed me : )

From family:

Just hang on…the sun will set today…I guarantee it!

From dad, on a particularly trying day

UNC wins! UNC wins!

6 April 2009

From dad, on the day UNC won the NCAA championship (after I’d stayed up all night with a friend searching for the game in vain on every satellite station known to man…how is it that two separate European basketball games were aired at the same time NOBODY was carrying the NCAA championships??)

ANNY!!! READ!!! Got a phone call from an American who saw your luggage in Agadir airport! It’s in “special” back room for “unclaimed luggage.” His emai *some text missing*

19 January 2009

Yes, in case you were wondering, it’s not uncommon to find *some text missing* from what is, more often than not, the most crucial part of an incoming text message. The event referred to is described in more detail here

NC officially goes for Obama!!!

6 November 2008

One of the best moments of my life I think

As my dad said to me once, “Trudge on, McDuff”…

20 August 2008

Sometimes you are very sick and in very low spirits and you just don’t believe you will ever get better. There’s nothing to do but, you know, trudge on.

This is big. Imagine. Now we have to weather all the republican propaganda crap

4 June 2008

Just after Obama won the nomination

However, we DO know that only 23% of white male Catholics who’ve had two years or less of college, live in small towns of less than 10,000 located by a river (unpolluted) and hunt quail, not deer and drink only domestic beer – will vote for Obama…

22 April 2008

Before Obama’s nomination, during the final throes of the battle with Hillary

He is a companion to sooth you to sleep – an Easter mouse!

19 March 2008

Dad trying to make me feel better after I had a little freak out about the mouse in my house. For the record I conquered my fear of the mouse in my house. But the very next day I did go out and buy a Western style bed so I’d no longer be sleeping at mouse level...

OK, did you hear this Buckley quote – “I’d rather be governed by the 1st 2000 people in the phone book than the 2000 people on faculty at Harvard.”

27 February 2008

In memoriam of William F. Buckley, Jr.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference –Frost

5 November 2007

I’ll let Dad have the last word.

I couldn’t have made it this far without these little bits of text to carry me, move me, push me and pull me through it all. Thanks to all the anonymous and unanonymous senders of the above and all the other messages that help me get through the day.

This has without a doubt been one of the most eventful, meaningful, challenging, incredible summers of my life and I'm just now getting around to processing it all. I've just returned from our official Close of Service conference in Rabat - kind of surreal - and it's becoming apparent that the next three months will be even crazier than the last three! So a brief attempt to at least go over some highlights of the summer, with apologies for it all taking so long and promises to include some more thoughtful reflections on all of the following soon:

June: stepped down from the chairmanship of the Peace Corps Morocco Gender & Development Committee. I still have one more meeting to attend with this incredible group of people who have made my service especially meaningful and enjoyable - but now I'm mostly just tying up loose ends with my GAD projects and passing them on to newer members.

Just after, I traveled to work at a summer camp organized by two of my stagemates for the youth in and around their villages. It was incredible, and you can get a glimpse of what it was like here.

And THEN, moving into July, after the camp we trekked out to Lake Ifni - an absolutely gorgeous alpine lake in the High Atlas:

Inspired by the first youth camp, a friend and I decided to organize our own camp in our region. It came together very, very, very fast and was a whirlwind, learning experience, and totally inspiring event. It deserves about three entries to itself...but in the interest of time, I'll direct you to view yet another awesome video that gives a sense of the activities we organized. Check it out here.

In the meantime I took some much needed vacations to the beautiful beaches of Taghazout and the quiet mountains of Imlil - both are lovely places with good scenery and, even more important, cooler weather than my village. The locals say this summer was even hotter than last summer. I kind of lose track of the temperature once it hits 110 degrees Fahrenheit...

Not long after the second camp ended, two friends and I decided to ride our bikes to Marrakech through the Tiz n Test pass - the highest pass in Morocco at about 2100 meters. I think it may have been the most challenging physical task I've ever undertaken - cycling through the High Atlas makes for a lot of climbs, some that went on for 10 or 20 or more kilometers at a time - but it was beautiful and enthralling and definitely worth it.

And now Ramadan has started once again and our COS conference is behind us! Hard to believe. The weavers I've been working with have been on a break for the summer and are starting up work this week, despite the challenges of working during Ramadan, because they've had numerous commissions come in over the summer, which is great! I'll spend the next several months trying to tie up loose ends in site and prepare for my replacement. Then November 20th I'll leave Morocco (for now) and begin the next step. Still working out exactly what that will be...

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but if not, it's such a great word it deserves a repeat.

"Izuzwa" (ee-zoo-ZWA) means "cooler," as in the weather.

Unsurprisingly, it's almost always used in a comparative sense: "It's hot here, but izuzwa there," or "yesterday was so hot, but today the weather's izuzwa a bit..."

Even if it didn't roll off the tongue, izuzwa is music to my ears...

The only food I can think about these days is cold food.

So as soon as I returned from a few days of much-needed vacation up in the gorgeous mountains of Imlil, I set about filling my fridge with cold, easy dishes to eat for the rest of the week.

My first favorite summer dish is my version of the “Salade Marocaine” that’s more or less ubiquitous in tourist cafes and Moroccan homes alike. The typical Moroccan salad includes diced tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions lightly dressed and mildly spiced – often with parsely, cilantro, or bell peppers thrown in for variety.

My version starts with the same basic idea with the addition of several crucial ingredients that make me feel cool and happy – most importantly, mint and fresh melon.

Summer Salade Maroc-Anny

For the salad, dice the following:

2 tomatoes

1 medium to large onion

1 melon of your choice (I like honeydew)

1-2 sweet bell peppers

1 cucumber

For the dressing:

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

1-2 tablespoons your choice of vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

Juice of one lemon, one lime, and one orange

One inch of ginger, peeled and grated

Mint and coriander to taste, roughly chopped

Salt, pepper, and cumin to taste

Combine, chill, and serve cold.

If you want, you can take a bit of the bite off the raw onion by chopping it first and letting it stew in the dressing while you chop the other veggies and melon.

Easiest Fish Ever (this one is dedicated especially to my fellow volunteers)

When you live far from the ocean in a rural village and are looking for a fun new protein source…my latest kick is simply to get creative with the tinned mackerel that’s in even the most sparsely stocked hanuts out here in the bled.

This recipe is adapted from the book Flavors of Morocco by Ghillie Basan (which is awesome, by the way, and has resulted in my first real attempt and success at cooking any kind of serious meat dish). Call it a poor girls’ (or a poor Peace Corps Volunteer’s) chermoula sauce (a traditional Moroccan sauce served with fish).

To make it:

Place a tin of the nicest canned mackerel your butahanut carries in a bowl.

Add to this:

2 cloves chopped garlic

1 red chile pepper, chopped into small pieces. If you want more of a kick, include the seeds. If you don’t have a fresh red chile ask your local spice guy for whole soudania peppers – they’re a handy substitute

Chopped cilantro to taste (non-negotiable)

Cumin or ras al hanut to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of a lemon or lime

Mix them all together, chill, and enjoy! Also yummy as a sandwich filling.

Three Li’l Pigs Mackerel

You don’t like cilantro? Or you live in America?

Do the same as above, only instead of adding the chermoula sauce, simply add to your mackerel a tablespoon or so of the Jamaican Jerk sauce from the Three Li’l Pigs Barbeque restaurant in southwestern Virginia. It’s not because I am related to the owner or anything like that, it’s just that this sauce is the best way to eat fish in the world.

Jealous? I guess you have to come visit me, because I have plenty of marinade just waiting to be used.

Cold Brewed Coffee: Spiced and Iced

Last year the New York Times ran this article about cold brewing coffee which is one of the most brilliant pieces I have ever read. I promise I am not being facetious…

I adapted their recipe and make it Roudani style (Roudani being the adjective form of Taroudant…). I start with coffee beans finely ground with generous amounts of powdered ginger and cinnamon. Then I mix three parts water to one part coffee and let it sit in the sun for 6-8 hours, then chill it in the fridge overnight. To serve, pour through a fine sieve and add cold milk to taste.

Not fun enough? Blend that with a cup of vanilla yogurt and a handful of ice cubes for a frothy frappy treat…perfect for a summer day.

And my final, super easy (we’re talking 120 degree afternoon, need some cold protein dinner easy) cold dinner dish:

It's-120-Degrees-and-I-Need-a-Refreshing-Dinner-but-Have-No-Energy-for-Anything-Elaborate-Hard Boiled-Eggs:

Hardboil some eggs. Slice them up and top them with a drizzle of olive (or argan) oil, salt, pepper, cumin, and some finely chopped herbs. I like basil and parsely myself…

When people back home ask me my opinion of Peace Corps as an organization, I often tell them that although my service in Morocco has given me a better sense of the very real challenges and problems Peace Corps volunteers and staff face, it’s also deeply strengthened my belief in the importance of all three of the Peace Corps goals – much more so than I imagined when I joined.

For those of you who don't know (and for most of you, well, why would you), Peace Corps has three goals: the first is more development oriented and has to do with providing technical assistance to countries that request it. The second and third goals are more cross-cultural: helping people in other countries understand Americans and American culture, and helping Americans better understand the people and culture of other countries.

I remember sitting through staging in Philadelphia, reading about those goals and telling myself that as nice as goals two and three sounded, my true purpose in joining the Peace Corps really lay in that first goal of technical assistance. I knew I wasn’t going to save the world, and I harbored no illusions about the limitations of my own experiences and abilities – but I truly believed that if I did my best, through that first goal I could make a positive difference in my assigned community, no matter how small.

For most of my first year of service, I lamented the fact that I couldn’t find any artisans, had no “real work,” and didn’t feel like I was doing any technical development at all. I resigned myself to being a “goal two and three” volunteer – essentially a goodwill ambassador from America to my community. Which wasn’t totally uninteresting – I live in a remote village that had never interacted with a foreigner (excepting the Syrian irrigation specialist), let alone a white, single American woman. I believed that building friendships, dispelling stereotypes, and helping people put a face and a personality to our almost impossibly diverse, varied, and sometimes contradictory nation were all good things – I just wasn’t sure I was convinced of how exactly how urgent or even important they were. I was frustrated that Peace Corps threw three goals at us with very little discussion of their relative importance or relevance to one another. In my own mind as well as among many of my fellow volunteers, there was a sense that the first goal of Peace Corps was the real deal, while the others were “fluff” goals – put there for PR, an excuse to keep us out in our villages and discourage us from even thinking about requesting a site change.

My first insights into the potential for Peace Corps’ cross cultural goals emerged through the World Wise Schools program, a project within Peace Corps through which I've been corresponding with students at my former high school about my experience. Over the past two years or so, I've been lucky enough to exchange thoughts and ideas with over 150 different students via email. I spent two full schooldays with them when I went home last Christmas, and we didn’t have nearly enough time for all the conversations we began. Their questions often provoke me to reflect about my service in new ways and their wonder and surprise at so much of what I tell them reinforces the importance of what I’m doing. Many of them have told me that they want to become Peace Corps Volunteers when they finish college. I genuinely believe that this correspondence enables me to share a unique perspective about the Arab and Islamic world in a way that I never could have otherwise.

Writing to these students gave me a sense of purpose on the days when it felt like anything I attempted in my Moroccan community was futile – and gave me the sense that I could at least translate that frustration into a lesson, something productive, to share with my community back home.

I am thrilled to report, by the way, that at some point about halfway through service, that year of integration and “intentional relationship building” started to pay off and I found myself with more Goal One, “technical development” type work than I ever dreamed of those first few months in site.

Even so, over my second year of service I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for the importance of those cross-cultural goals and their inclusion right alongside more straightforward development objectives. Part of it comes from realizing that even the most sincere and conscientious efforts to work towards sustainability provide no guarantee (call it the internalization of a long term sense of “insha’allah”), and wondering what the end result of my efforts will be if continued drought empties out my village’s population or all my weavers get married and move away in the next few years. And part of it, I’m sure, comes from realizing the limitations of my influence as a facilitator and catalyst in my community; as an outsider, I can suggest new ideas and create opportunity, but it’s not my role to step into that opportunity – at some point, it’s up to the men and women I work with to take matters into their own hands.

Despite all these misgivings, though, I’ve come to think of my efforts here not as “bettering” the world, but as broadening it. As the only single white non-Muslim woman there, I am a concrete representation of diversity in my community. It’s made me realize how easy it is to take diversity for granted back home, because it’s more or less one of the organizing principles of American society. “Diversity” has become such a hackneyed catchword in America, but in Morocco I’ve grown to believe that it’s not only a good component of a society but an essential one as well. A broadening experience is necessarily a bettering one, on some level. It’s not always easy or pleasant, but it speaks to a higher purpose than I realized before I came here. That’s why it really hit me when I heard my teenage host brother explain my presence in the village to a group of visitors at a recent wedding. “She’s like our sister, she lives with us and speaks our language,” he explained, “even though she isn’t our sister. She’s our American sister.” When relationships expand to transcend local ties and family bonds and cross nationalities and ethnicities, it creates spaces for new thoughts and ideas – I believe those spaces are where tolerance and peace truly reside. In a country like Morocco, where family ties are so important, what could be more essential?

The scholar Robert Wright has written extensively on a phenomenon within all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) in which religious beliefs and scriptural interpretations have historically become more tolerant and peaceful when those religious communities are participating in a more interconnected and “globalized” world – dating from the expansion of ancient empires and trade routes to globalization trends today. Over time, he argues, a more interconnected world leads humanity to change its interpretation of “God’s will” to be more and more compatible with the principle that all people, everywhere, deserve respect, despite their ethnicity, nationality, or faith.

With this in mind, in a world that’s borne witness to such deadly clashes between people of different faiths in recent years, the virtues of being even a small part of a movement to continually broaden the experiences of so many at home and abroad feels quite different all of a sudden. Far from “fluff,” footnotes, or afterthoughts, those cross-cultural goals are more vital and pressing than ever before.

Currently appreciating:

The amazing ability of rural taxi drivers to back long distances at great speeds down long earthen alleyways without ever scraping against the wall

How whitewashed earthen walls of the homes here look blue in the early twilight

The usage of "bladi" and "rumi" to indicate (very generally) local and foreign products or ways of doing things.

"Bladi" means "country" in the same way the English word does - it can either mean a particular country, like Morocco and the US, or region, as in "I'm from basketball country," or rural, as in "I live in a village out in the country." "Rumi," believe it or not, dates back to the use of the word "Roman" to indicate outsiders, invaders, or Christians. Its usage is a little less charming when it refers to me ("tarumit" is the female Tashlheet version that kids yell at me sometimes) as opposed to, say, mass-produced chicken eggs (vastly inferior, we're told, to the traditional rural country style bladi eggs) but still tickles me when I hear it.

Lastly, how when I go to chat with my host mom mid morning I'm always offered a snack of her delicious perfect wholesome flatbread straight off the fire...gonna miss that one a lot.

My latest concoction uses date paste, which is glorious even if I'm not wild about dates. My guess is that it's probably readily available at whole foods and health stores in the U.S...but it's great as a non sugar sweetener and a healthy and filling addition to a fruit smoothie.

Blend:

One banana

One cup yogurt

Several frozen strawberries (obviously use fresh ones if they're still in season where you are! They're long gone here. You can also use strawberry yogurt)

Generous spoonful or two of date paste (it's super thick, so it helps to actually add it a little at a time to the blender)

Generous spoonful or two of honey

YUM.

You can also experiment with adding avocado to this mix. That seems really weird at first to Americans, because we're so used to using avocados in savory guac style dishes and not sweet liquid smoothies...but try it!! You definitely need to be sure to add enough sweet ingredients to the mix, but it's absolutely lovely.

Anyone interested in more information about natural dyes or in art & chemistry in general, check out my aunt's blog on chemistry and art here!

I guess on some level I was destined to work with natural dyes at some point. Before organizing our workshop I'd almost totally forgotten my award-winning (well, minor award-winning) sixth-grade science project on natural dyes (not making this up).

I'm in the final evaluation and reporting stage of the grant that helped pay for these two workshops and I'm still pretty happy with the results. The women are almost finished with their first all-natural carpet and I've just commissioned another one. When I explained what colors and designs I wanted for the latter, I told them to use mostly natural dyes but that it'd be ok to use a synthetically dyed black wool for some very small border details. They vehemently told me that was a bad idea and when I was protested they actually demonstrated why the black dye was inferior and could potentially bleed into the natural dyes around it...thoroughly chastised and very proud, it occurred to me that as unquantifiable as that sort of thing may be, the fact of the weavers lecturing me on quality control was a pretty satisfying sign of success in itself.

The next day I went into town to buy them some dyestuff for a black dye they could apply themselves to mordanted wool (ensuring its fastness) and adjust the strength of to their preferences. The next step: encouraging them to go into town to purchase the dye themselves.

This actually isn't as hard as I thought it would be a year ago, but there are still huge geographical, cultural, and logistical factors involved that create barriers to women's freedom of movement. It's not always what you think - as far as I can tell, it's less that women are specifically banned from going into town and more that the cultural atmosphere makes them much more comfortable and less open to questioning or criticism when they stay at home. It's not that going into town to shop is against the rules so much as it's miles outside of their comfort zone. Having dealt with life as a single woman living alone in this culture for over a year and a half now, I can definitely sympathize.

One of my biggest hopes, actually, is that a paved road is scheduled to be constructed leading all the way from town to the village - meaning that regular, cheap transportation (a twice-daily bus, from what I hear) will come with it. This is huge. If I ever doubted the importance of nitty-gritty, physical infrastructure development as an essential counterpart to educational, capacity-building, "people-focused" development efforts, those doubts have definitely been laid to rest. Having cheap and readily available transportation could make a huge difference in my site - not just to our weaving association but to village kids who want to attend middle and high school in town, local businesses, and more.

Just finished up another great workshop with the weavers - this time a two day introduction to some new weaving techniques and design motifs, plus some quality control and general advice, courtesy of a wonderful weaving association near Tazenakht.

Yesterday I stepped outside just after sunset and saw the grey-blue High Atlas mountains silhouetted against a dusty orange sky and it really hit me how soon my time here is going to be over...a really incredible feeling of nostalgia and appreciation that I have to admit is much heightened, and maybe totally owing to, the fact that I'm leaving in just five short months.

As impatient as I am to leave in some ways, the swift passage of time these days helps make good moments even sweeter: yesterday I refilled my big butagaz tank and before I'd even paid, two nearby teenage boys loaded it onto a bicycle and wheeled it home for me. Today I hiked into souq to catch a taxi into town - there are always more passengers than places in these taxis and the result is a mad scramble to pile into a car, with shouts and elbows and bodyblocking all around. But without my even asking, two different men "blocked" for me and made sure I got a seat so I didn't have to throw myself into the fray. Despite the frustrations I've met with here, and the things that still confuse or anger or trouble me, I'm constantly reminded that I've become part of a community that accepts and takes care of me, despite vast differences...which is an incredibly powerful and reassuring thing in this world.

Favorite images of the week: an old fashioned Singer style foot pedal operated sewing machine that says "MADE IN THE USSR;" two men riding their donkeys home from souq with large fleecy sheep poking their heads out of the large woven saddlebags.

Ok, so after many headaches and dead ends and ridiculous looking but ineffective antennas, I have finally arrived at an internet solution...hopefully this means from now on I'll be able to return to some semblance of regular posting on this blog.

It's been a busy time - to follow up on the recent natural dye sessions we're planning another workshop next week, which we're all looking forward to. My parents came to visit for a week, which was wonderful but quite a whirlwind: we visited my own village and weaving association, Taroudant, Tiznit, Meknes, Volubilis, Moulay Driss and Rabat. It's always a treat to travel through this country with people who don't live here - you get to see things with new eyes again and remember how new and exciting and new everything once was.

Speaking of, any foodies out there who end up traveling in Morocco should check out Riad Maryam in Taroudant and Riad Bahia in Meknes, which both serve some of the best food I've eaten anywhere, let alone Morocco.

More updates soon, inshallah. And photos! Soon. Really.

Internet's still down, but I just wanted to share that we had an incredibly successful natural dye workshop. The weavers I work with are even more exciting about natural dyes than I am, if you can believe it, and less than a week after the training have started making and using their own dyes. It's incredibly exciting to watch them take control of their supply line, creative expression, and product quality all at once - it's simultaneous economic and personal and creative empowerment.

Above is a photo of me and the incredible, amazing Amina Yabis, an outstanding Moroccan role model who traveled 15 hours to lead the workshop. In the background you can see some of the new colors the weavers are now using in their work! Hopefully I can post some photos of their new and improved products within a month or two.

We're planning another workshop in a few weeks - an exchange with an established women's weaving cooperative - which will hopefully provide even more ideas for new designs, motifs and techniques, not to mention a sense of what it means to be an independent women's cooperative. Between then and now I'll be traveling with my parents, who are coming to visit next week! There are just about six months left of my service here and I can't believe how quickly the time is slipping by.

Well, not really. Internet's been down for over six weeks now!! And I've just been grabbing whatever minutes I can at the cybercafe here and there, so haven't really had time for a real update. But some exciting news items which will hopefully soon be expanded upon:

1. Work: I got a grant to hold two workshops for my weaving association; they'll cover topics including natural dyeing (so the women can color their own wool and have more artistic/logistical control over their supplies) and new weaving designs and techniques. These start next week with a natural dye workshop and I am really excited about it!!! (Triple bottom line anyone?)

2. Adventure: I celebrated Easter with my dear friend Kate who graced me with her presence for the second time in Morocco, this time for 10 whole days!!! Easter highlights included a massive national transport strike that sent food prices soaring and yogurt supplies dwindling, a service at a local French Catholic church (frequented, in the past, by Jacques Chirac, who sadly made no appearance at this year's Easter Vigil) and a spectacular Easter dinner including Lamb of God crepes (lamb sauteed in rosemary and sage butter wrapped in wheat dinner crepes).

3. Yogurt: Kate brought me a YOGURT MAKER which is possibly the greatest thing in my life right now.

It's been a very fast and crazy spring and things show no sign of slowing down...I expect things to be busy from here on through my official close of service in November. Anyone out there who wants to visit and hasn't gotten around to it yet, you have seven months to make it happen!!! Anyone and everyone is welcome to my little earthen house. Pomegranates off the tree in just a few months!!!

P.S. Apologies for the gratuitous amount of exclamation points herein. The coffee plus the time stress of internet cafes has me a little jumpy!!!

So I've been having some, um, connectivity problems. A few weeks ago the internet stopped working - so when I paid my bill the next day I asked if there was some kind of problem with my account. I was told everything was fine and given a number to call for technical support. A week later, with no change, I found out that in fact my internet was cut off because apparently I have only been paying half my bill for the past six months. (I should explain that my typical bill paying experience is: 1. Walk into internet company office, 2. Ask how much I owe for the month, and 3. Pay what they tell me to.)

But that's ok. Insha'llah it'll get sorted out today. Maybe.

In the meantime I have been hosting lots of folks from around the region, appearing on surprise documentary film interviews (anyone detecting a pattern? Apparently March is my surprise interview month), applying for a grant to organize some workshops for my ladies about natural dyes and some new weaving designs and techniques, and working on this, our brand-new website for selling carpets!

So take a look at our stuff, and forward the link on to any textile-lovers or carpet-importers you may know! Things are getting exciting around here. Last Sunday the weavers took home earnings from their carpets for the first time. It was an incredibly fulfilling moment, one I'm still trying to find the right words for.

But in the meantime, I need to hit the road so I can do some bureaucratic wrestling with my local telecom company...

Also,

GO HEELS!!!

Internet has been down lately so I don't have a lot of time for a full post, but two items of note:

1. I'm pretty sure someone called me "Copenhagen" the other day while I was walking through town.

2. Also while walking through town I came across a plastic food tray (very common element of your typical Moroccan tea service) that said, three times, "Unimpressive" on it in English.

Anything but...

Last Sunday was International Women's Day, or "Eid al Mar'a" - Holiday of the Woman - for short. I celebrated at a craft fair in Taroudant that featured women's products (my weavers actually attended, which was very exciting, as it was the farthest they've traveled for a craft fair so far!), where I listened to some ladies' singing and drumming and had henna done. It was definitely one of those "Peace Corps" moments...an odd but gratifying confluence of a United Nations initiative and a local celebration (speaking of the UN, check out my friend Helen's excellent recounting of our first brush with that bastion of internationalism and bureaucracy...).

But the most surprising part of International Women's Day came before I even got to Taroudant.

This week is also the week of the Prophet's birthday, which isn't as big a deal as Christmas, but is signficant nonetheless. Today and tomorrow are both national holidays and local moussems, or festivals, will be celebrated all over Morocco. Because of this, transportation has been a bit stressful lately (a lesser version of the taxi-related chaos associated with Eid Al Adha, or the Big Feast, which happened in December last year).

After spending a weekend by the sea in Agadir I headed to the taxi stand to catch a ride to Taroudant. But for the first time I can remember there were no Taroudant taxis to be found! My friend Megan had trouble getting a taxi south to Tiznit as well; I guess a lot of drivers just decided to start their vacation a day or two early. As a result, taxis were few and passengers scarce - never a good combination. I'd seen this situation before - it usually involves a free-for-all of elbowing and shoving whenever a taxi finally does appear - and I was not looking forward to it.

After waiting for about fifteen minutes with at least a dozen other passengers and no taxis in sight, a kurti (a taxi stand employee who sort of herds people into cars and handles payment) walked up to me and asked me if I was going to Taroudant. When I replied in the affirmative, he beckoned me to follow him and started walking down the road away from the taxi stand. Suspicious, I followed him (at a cautious distance) until I saw a taxi waiting, its trunk open. The driver said he was going to Taroudant and needed one more passenger. When I peeked inside, I noticed that the other five passengers were all women - something I have never seen south of Marrakech!

As I paid for my seat, the kurti proclaimed "Happy International Women's Day!" (in Arabic, of course) and sent us on our way.

My friend Amy works with a women's association in the High Atlas that harvests saffron, and after buying some from her last year it's quickly become one of my favorite ingredients. Cooking with it makes the whole kitchen smell wonderful.

Tonight I decided to try my hand at saffron rice - the weather has taken a turn towards cold and rainy, and while I appreciate how beautiful it makes the countryside, all I want to do is curl up in bed with a good book and eat some comfort food. A sweet rice dish seemed to fit the bill. I used this recipe as my basis, with a few additions and changes, and the result is very simple but subtle and incredibly satisfying...

Ingredients

1 cup rice

1.5 cups hot water

1/2 tsp saffron threads

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup golden raisins

2 tbsp butter

Instructions

Put a kettle of water on to boil and steep the saffron in 1/2 cup of water (any temperature)

Melt the butter in a saucepan with a lid. Cook the rice in the butter for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

Add the saffron water, 1.5 c hot water, and cover for 10 minutes, cooking on medium low heat.

After about 10 minutes, add the cinnamon, sugar, and raisins. Continue cooking till liquid is absorbed or rice is cooked.

I know what you're thinking. It takes a village to raise a child. Right?

Wrong! What I am actually thinking of is how it takes a village to catch a taxi.

Transport in and out of my village is not especially plentiful; the long and short of it is, if I want to catch a taxi into town, I've got to get up around 6 am, be outside waiting at 6:30, and be prepared to wait up to an hour and a half for a ride. Not my idea of fun, especially when it is cold and/or raining, but at least I've seen some beautiful sunrises.

Moroccan hospitality being what it is, my host family is generally loathe to let me wait outside alone and applies a great deal of pressure to come inside and have some hot coffee (read: fresh from the cow milk steamed with sugar and coffee..yum). It's hard to turn down, especially in the cold, though it makes it less likely I'll hear the honk of the taxi as it careens around our corner on its way into town. The family always insists they can hear the taxi coming from their kitchen, which is decidedly less than true. But their kitchen is so welcoming and toasty, and their coffee so good, that often I find I just can't resist, and I take the risk.

So the other day I was faced with an all-too-familiar situation: I was sipping coffee and making smalltalk and pretending to be relaxed, only to look up suddenly, stop talking, and adopt the same frozen expression as my host mom and brothers: what was that sound? A tractor? Motorbike? Milk truck? I swiftly drained my glass and set it down on the table before rising as we all reached the same, awful conclusion: it was the taxi.

Not only was it the taxi, but it was moving faster than usual that day - and by the time we'd all scrambled to the front door, the taxi had turned the corner and was zooming to the village center. Bravely my host brothers waved their arms and shouted for the driver to stop, come back, but it was too late.

My host dad, who has proven himself time and time again to be one of those reliable guys who speaks mostly through his actions and generally makes it his business to get things done, sprinted off, shouted to the nearest bicycle commuter (who was no doubt on his way out to the fields), asked to borrow his bike, hopped on and began pursuing the taxi before I even realized what was happening.

A bit confused, I gathered my luggage and decided I'd at least walk to the village center, which taxis from other villages sometimes pass through, trawling for customers, later in the morning. The butahanut (village store owner) I passed on my way had already been apprised of my transport situation and told me to sit and be patient.

15 minutes later, just as I'd begun to lose hope, the familiar rumble of the taxi brought me to my feet as it rolled back up the road. My host father had chased it down through at least two villages till he'd caught up with it and urged the driver to return. With a satisfied look on his face, he restored the bicycle to its proper owner and saw me off.

What struck me most about the whole affair was how genuinely happy everyone was to help me catch my taxi - my entire host family, the man with the bicycle, the butahanut, and the driver. So often here it seems to help another person is a source not only of pride, but of joy - done not merely out of obligation, but willingness too. It's refreshing and more than a little touching.

Like I said, it takes a village to catch a taxi.

For about a year now I've been periodically emailing fellow volunteers with interesting or beautiful or thought-provoking pieces and excerpts of literature that deal with women or gender in the Arab world. This subject is what really awakened and focused my commitment to learning about the region, and it continues to inform and color my experience here. Often when I find myself particularly frustrated or angry with some aspect of gender dynamics in Morocco, I'll turn to writings from the women of this and other Arab or Islamic cultures to remind myself in no uncertain terms of their perspectives. Their voices provide the distance I need from my everyday life on the ground here, but are grounded in the cultures that produced them - whereas I will always be something of an outsider, no matter how well I've adapted.

So, I figured it's about time I started sharing some of these wonderful excerpts with my blog readers too...the one below resonates with some of my recent musings on the concept of the gaze. In the poem below, Syrian poet Huda Naamani uses words to challenge and manipulate implied power dynamics:

“I Take You an Orange” by Huda Naamani

Translated from the Arabic by the poet and Miriam Cooke

I take you an orange and I squeeze you holding you to my face

Spring you blossom in my eyes

A peacock's tail you gaze at me in the dark

I wear you gipsy garb I fold you a nomad's cloak

A flute grass and warmth of sheep flow with you

In the arms of mountains you paint the wreaths of heaven

And the pains of a goddess

A frame for me I carve you I gild you and

I fill you with roses

A fish I slaughter you, or a sun

I bake you

A star

Lightning flashes from your ring

Your eyes hang on my face coffee grounds honeycombs

Nigerian songs brush my neck, flocks of geese

Your word is suspended on the back of a door a duck's nose

[From Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. Edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, Indiana University Press. ]

I particularly love the line "A peacock's tail you gaze at me in the dark," which, in a reversal from the poem's first few images, makes the speaker of the poem into an object even as she is describing - in a way, objectifying - the addressee. On reflection though, between the "eyes" of a peacock's ostentatious tail feathers (which, if you'll note, are absent from the eminently more practical peahen (if you have never seen a group of peacocks trying to attract the attention of a group of nonplussed peahens, I highly recommend it as light entertainment)) and the focused attention of the written word, the latter strikes me as the more consequential of the two "gazes."

It reminds me, actually, of a moment I had the other day. The weather was absolutely gorgeous - spring in Morocco is a wonder to behold - and I was cycling into town. As seems to happen so often here, just as I had reached the peak of frustration with something (in this instance, with a particularly steep hill), spontaneously appeared to vaporize my feelings of irritation. This morning it was seven puppies playing in the corner of an alley. But that day, it was a small flock of sheep accompanied by three or four small, spindly-legged, soft-nosed, bleating baby lambs.

I slowed down almost to a stop to watch them go by (it was not unlike my first experience hiking among delicate alpine forget-me-nots in Colorado, which, as one of my companions remarked at the time, was like walking through "minefields of cuteness"). As I slowed and stopped to stare, I realized that the young shepherd was staring, in turn, at me, transfixed, no doubt, by my funny-looking American bicycle helmet, odd clothing and pale skin. Or maybe just by my blatant staring at his flock. We were all caught in a curious triangle of eyelines, me, the boy, and the lambs.

Sometimes the stares bother me. But if there's enough beauty in the day, in the landscape, in my thoughts, or even in a new skirt sent over from home, sometimes that's all it takes to make me feel a particular shade of invincible, oddly indifferent to anyone's gaze. It is not about being merely impervious or stoically detached from reality, but about learning to manipulate reality to find in it what beauty I can.

I borrowed from a bunch of different recipes for chutneys, adapting this for taste and local ingredients...enjoy!

Half a large onion or a small onion, chopped

One hot dried soudania pepper (or your choice of hot chile pepper), chopped, with seeds

One inch fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon of honey (note: if you add these in sequence and use the same spoon, don't wash in between - the oiled spoon lets the honey slide off faster)

Juice of one lemon (other note: use your fingers to squeeze the lemons and catch seeds, and as an added bonus it'll help wash away the smell of garlic from your hands)

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp ras al hanout

and, of course

about 3/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (umm guessed on the amount...for those living in Morocco, use 10 ryals' worth)

Blend together and enjoy!

Variations: use argan oil, add fresh ground coriander seeds, or substitute lime for lemon

I should add that this was a culturally motivated chutney. Yesterday I was buying some veggies in town and wound up with 9 dirhams' worth. Loathe to give me change for my 10 dirham coin, as Moroccan merchants often are, my bu lkhdrt (literally: owner of the greens, or my vegetable guy) started offering me a dirhams' worth of things...I finally caved and accepted a dirham's worth of cilantro - which, as anyone who's ever shopped for food in Morocco knows, is more than one person can use in a month.

Hence the chutney...

Inspired by the amazing smoothies at Juice (aka Top Batido of Rabat) I concocted the following mixture after raiding the back of my freezer for long-forgotten frozen fruit:

Blend:

6 strawberries

A peach's worth of slices

2 clementine oranges

A few inches of fresh ginger, grated

A splash of water

A tablespoon of brown sugar

SO TASTY I can't believe I never made this before. What have I been waiting for? Next time I'm going to add some lemon or lime for zing…

I'm back in the Souss again after another journey to the north - during which, I'm sad to report, I somehow lost my scorpion-smashing Havaianas flip flops. It was a sad day...there is no joy in Mudville (the reference is actually appropriate right now - Morocco has been hit with tons of rain, which makes everything green and beautiful, but also makes for a lot of extra mud and, unfortunately, a number of deaths due to flooding and roof collapses).

I did, however, pick up some new books, including Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King. It's the tale of a group of Connecticut merchants who are shipwrecked off the coast of the Sahara and captured by nomads. What follows is a tortuous journey north through the desert, the Anti Atlas, the Souss, and Essaouira, where they were finally ransomed. While I was reading it I was heading south towards the same landmarks (under considerably more comfortable conditions...). What was most fascinating was reading about the culture of desert Arabs and Berbers, and seeing how the harshness of the desert environment shaped many of the customs common to modern Moroccans. Hospitality, a point of pride and a sign of generosity here, was a matter of absolute necessity in the desert, where shared resources were necessary to everyone's survival.

The trip was the usual whirlwind that ensues whenever I leave the quiet pace of village life, and included a superbowl party at the Marine House in Rabat, a quirky Portuguese film about Christopher Columbus that left me more puzzled than anything else (film festivals are fun and all but really? A strange silent young woman dressed in 16th century Iberian garb and stiletto heeled boots carrying a large sword in the background of every other scene? I just don't get it), more than my share of five dirham medina sandwiches (they're sooooo good), at least three shwarma wraps (I lost count) and a lot of amazing lemon and ginger juices at Top Batido, my favorite Rabat eaterie.

Coming up: a regional SIDA (AIDS) awareness training, a women's empowerment conference, and a crazy transition period as the weavers I'm working with adjust to working on their own, without an instructor, for the first time. I have just over nine months left in Morocco, and I've never felt so busy. One of my stagemates had everyone write a response to the prompt "Before I leave..." My response:

Before I leave

I have to figure out exactly where the hell Azilal is

I have to read this stack of books

And learn how to write

About these wild and gorgeous mountains.

This, as a fellow volunteer recently commented, is the kind of story that makes people believe in God. Also paisley.

Speaking of God and miracles, did you know that in Islam, Jesus' first miracle was that he was a talking baby? That's right. Full sentences, in the manger. Pretty sweet if you ask me. Ricky Bobby would certainly approve.

But I digress. Coming home from my American Christmas vacation involved a horrible 12 hours in Charles De Gaulle followed by a groggy morning flight to Casablanca that included exactly none of its passengers' luggage. I was promised upon arrival that my luggage, once located, would be sent to the Agadir airport (the closest airline office to my village). They took my Moroccan cell phone information and promised to call me as soon as they knew anything.

After two weeks, though, I hadn't heard a word. According to Air France's online tracking system, my bag was still lost, and all three phone numbers I was given at the luggage desk were out of service. Emails to two different addresses, one in France and one in Morocco, elicited no response.

I'd almost given up on ever seeing my luggage again: no American gifts for my host family, no lemon pepper for my friend Megan, no stationery for pretty letters, no more favorite recipe book, no planner (oh sad day), no more booklet of transcribed traditional Berber songs, no more favorite tshirt with clever Moroccan Arabic pun, no more amazingly thick Smartwool socks that my dad found heaven knows where, no 2009 wall calendars, no clotted cream, no Berber textbook. I packed a lot of good stuff into that suitcase. It was sad. There was a sense of loss.

BUT THEN

Oh just wait.

You will NEVER GUESS what happened.

Seriously, try to guess.

I bet the following is not what you guessed.

I received the following text message from my mother:

ANNY!!! READ!!! Got a phone call from an American who saw your luggage in Agadir airport! It's in "special" back room for "unclaimed luggage"...

It went on, but basically instructed me to email this good Samaritan for directions to the special back room where my luggage lay patiently waiting for me, and get to Agadir as quickly as possible, you know, before they "threw it out or something." It was like a giddy celebrity sighting, only way better.

My schedule was a bit busy that day (that whole inauguration thing...which, by the way, I watched in a gorgeous mountaintop Berber village surrounded by the snowy-misty peaks of the High Atlas) but as soon as I could, I jetted down to the Agadir airport and found the secret luggage room...I walked in, saw my luggage, picked it up, and walked out. Amazing. Incredible. I was on cloud nine.

Turns out at some point someone had gone through my bag, taking only a few chocolate truffles, some hand and face cream, and my new toothbrush. I would like to say here and now, to whomever went through my luggage: all I have to say is, you could have learned some incredible pied noir recipes, or a southern Berber dialect, and you chose scented lotion and dental hygiene?? Please. Lamest thief EVER. Face cream? You could have had CLOTTED CREAM.

Anyhow, the point is, the extraordinary kindness shown by a total stranger who copied down the information on my luggage tag and called my parents has restored my faith in all sorts of things. This whole journey started with stolen luggage - en route to my first Peace Corps orientation, someone rifled through my stuff and took my camera and all my favorite CDs, among other things - and so it's doubly reassuring and fitting and uplifting to have the same story repeat itself but with a much, much happier ending as I returned to Morocco for my final year of service. Many thanks and, as we say, Tbark Allah 3lik (God's blessings upon you...and while He's at it may God protect you from the evil eye) to my luggage-good-Samaritan-guardian angel! I'll never look at a room of forgotten suitcases the same way again.

One final ironic twist: the attention-grabbing luggage tag on my suitcase was a last-minute addition - a gag gift, in fact, from Christmas. It was a pink and black Vera Bradley luggage tag that my mom gave me as a joke stocking stuffer. Because let's face it...I'm not exactly a Vera Bradley kind of girl. My preferred luggage is more along the lines of a Black Diamond backpack, or a Moroccan yellow leather satchel that looks like something Rousseau would tote around, or an classically designed valise that begs to travel by train, and I keep my makeup in a case I bought in a place called the Sleepy Poet Stuff antique mall. Nothing against the stuff, it's just not my (ouch bad pun alert) bag. It's a long-standing joke between my mother and me, dating back to high school days, when I, in some rare moment of needing-to-fit-in-and-have-the-latest-trend weakness, wondered aloud if maybe I should get my own Vera Bradley pattern and start collecting matching luggage. Fortunately, my mom just kept marching me to Sleepy Poet Stuff instead. But now I feel like I have this sort of reluctant, new-found respect for Vera Bradley's hot pink paislies. I guess you can take the girl out of Charlotte, but you can't take the Charlotte out of the girl...

Well, it's not exactly spring, being January and still freezing at night, but the days are very gradually getting longer, and the winter rains have transformed a dusty valley into a vibrant green vale (my host mom remarked happily that spring was on its way just this morning). It's still cold enough that the jagged High Atlas are blanketed with snow whenever it rains down here, but warm enough that Clementines are plentiful and sweet and palm trees are happy and green. I couldn't resist snapping a few shots of my commute to work...the Souss Valley is just so gorgeous right now!

There is simply nothing that rounds out one's sense of place so much as watching the seasons progress through a full year. I'm sure the valley was just as green and beautiful this time last year, but it's only after living through the difficult, dry, and orange-less summer of dust and sleepless nights that I can now rejoice so fully in the beauty of the landscape.

Here are some reflections I wrote in between Thanksgiving - the American "Great Feast" - and Eid el Adha, the Moroccan one...can you tell I am really into this whole lunar calendar thing?

I recently tried to explain Thanksgiving to my Moroccan neighbors. As a Peace Corps volunteer, part of my job is cultural exchange, but I'm afraid my attempts to explain “The American Feast of Thanks” weren't entirely successful (mentioning turkeys didn't help much, since in Morocco if you really want to celebrate, you slaughter a cow or a sheep; poultry is generally reserved for lesser occasions).

While Thanksgiving Day in Morocco lacked both turkey and cranberry sauce, however, it did bring a new moon, meaning that Eid al Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice, would soon be upon us. This week, each family in my village will commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God by slaughtering the biggest ram they could afford, sharing the meat with family and friends, and feasting for days. Here in Morocco, as in the U.S., festivity is in the air as people gather for the biggest family, travel, and commercial holidays of the year.

Although the origins and customs of feast days differ from culture to culture, I've come to understand that in essence, these holidays are strikingly similar. Eid el Adha and Ramadan are not just about sacrifice and fasting (although that is how they are best known in the West), but about celebrating with family and sharing with those who are less fortunate. Tied to the lunar calendar, the major Islamic feasts reflect a beautiful, cyclical symmetry: just as the moon waxes and wanes, these holidays of feasting and fasting, sacrifice and celebration, promise that through struggles and hardship, all will be replenished once again.

This year, that promise is more important than ever, as the world is gripped by the greatest economic challenges witnessed in generations. Thanksgiving offered a moment to pause and reflect on what we can be thankful for; appreciating what we have and reaching out to others have never seemed so important. It may make for a quieter, more sober holiday season, but hopefully it will lead to a more thoughtful one as well. The spirit of giving and sacrifice is more important now than ever - not just within our immediate families, but within the greater family of our communities.

Celebrations amidst hardships of all kinds - from self-imposed fasts to economic recessions - can prove doubly satisfying, as turbulent times clarify our priorities, separating the things that can be lost from those that cannot: family, friendships, and the hope that through compassion and perseverance, all will be renewed once more. As people of all faiths prepare for their next feast, we can only hope that new hardships will bring renewed solidarity and generosity among us all.

Family photo-op, post-slaughter, knife-in-teeth...

More catching up...ironically, the busier my schedule is, the more cooperative my modem and blog are being, but insha'llah, shwiya b'shwiya I'll be able to upload my backlog of brainstormed and semi-edited entries!

Below is an essay I wrote on the last night of Ramadan (I know, I know, that was like four months ago...sorry). I never imagined a religious season so different from anything I'd grown up with would suddenly strike me as so vitally relevant and meaningful to American life.

The moon at the end of Ramadan is stunning.

Last night as the sunset call to prayer sounded, I stared out towards the most prominent features of my village, a red clay hill and a turquoise mosque. They framed an impossibly thin crescent moon glowing orange and low on the horizon.

Though I'm the only non-Muslim in the village, I understood that the moon's beauty was cause for celebration not only because its sighting marked the end of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and prayer. Over the past several weeks, I've witnessed an even deeper beauty in the month's relationship to the waxing and waning of the moon: it represents the promise that at the end of struggle, discipline, and sacrifice, all will be replenished once again. It's a cycle that's repeated daily during Ramadan - a day of fasting, a night of feasting - as well as in the month itself, which is a season of fasting followed by a festive holiday.

Ramadan is a time for practicing patience and self-discipline, but it's also about empathizing with the less fortunate. With an emphasis on sharing and charity, the month is a remarkable expression of solidarity as the world's billion-plus Muslims join together and willingly experience the hunger that so many suffer daily.

So, as joyous as the celebrations have been here, they also serve as a somber reminder of those whose fast is never broken with feasting. For hundreds of millions of people, the moon, so to speak, doesn't fill back up at the end of the month, and the present financial crisis will only make things worse. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported that rising food prices over the past year have already driven an additional 75 million people under the hunger threshold; it now estimates that there are 923 million undernourished people in the world - and by the way, that includes millions of hungry Americans. In 2005, over 35 million people in the U.S. experienced hunger or risk of hunger - 12.6 million of them children. In the coming months, economic stress will likely translate into decreasing food aid from Western governments as well as dwindling charitable donations from individual households everywhere whose incomes are being squeezed.

To an American following the current economic woes from afar, Ramadan's final call to prayer sounded a little like a wake-up call. We've been living on borrowed money, energy, and time, and it's catching up with us. American life as my generation has known it is simply not sustainable. Whether we like it or not, we will have to do some figurative fasting of our own - by cutting energy and increasing its efficiency, spending and consuming responsibly, and making do with less. These changes aren't a matter of giving up an American way of life, however - they're a matter of reclaiming it.

Some of the best American moments have been stories of discipline and sacrifice - stories far more essential to the American idea than three-car garages and four-dollar lattes. From abolitionists to civil rights workers, our history is filled with those who insisted we reject what is comfortable or easy in favor of what is right. Our Greatest Generation was so extraordinary because its men and women fought battles both at home and abroad, making sacrifices in solidarity to fight for a cause that gripped the whole world.

They tell you when you join the Peace Corps that living in another culture is the best way to learn about your own, and it's true in the most unexpected ways; who would have thought that a Moroccan feast day would bring to mind the incredible solidarity my own countrymen are capable of?

Living abroad, I've become newly appreciative of the American belief in individual liberty, which places the responsibility to do what is right on each and every citizen. This sense of freedom, combined with an exceptional capacity for solidarity, is what gives me faith in the resilience of the American way of life - even in the midst of the current turmoil.

I can't imagine completing a month-long fast alone; but here in Morocco, fasting becomes a communal activity, and the burden is lessened because it is shared. We can adapt to ongoing changes with reluctance and a sense of loss, or we can each take on the challenge with patience and compassion, alongside our neighbors at home and abroad. There is no feasting, after all, without a fast.

Moroccan Orange and Olive salad

For one person:

Combine:

A serving of your choice of lettuce/greens

½ cup of good quality, pitted black olives (best bought in bulk and fresh, not in a can)

Small thinly sliced red onion

2 Clementine (or other) oranges, in segments

Dressing:

4 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of one lemon

about 2 tsp ground coriander seeds

dash of rose water

salt and pepper to taste

Combine and enjoy!

I'm back from a whirlwind, exhausting, and refreshing vacation, spent mostly at home in North Carolina. The blogger server seems to be behaving normally again (yay!) so I'm going to try catching up a bit, posting things I've written over the past several months. This is a story of something surprising that happened in Marrakesh last fall...

Marrakesh is a headache.

It is the quintessential Moroccan city - in fact, "Marrakesh" is where the English name "Morocco" comes from. It's a place with an irrepressible energy, filled with snake charmers and merchants and hoteliers and taxi drivers - above all, taxi drivers - hell-bent on hustling every last American dime out of the would-be traveler. Usually when I visit Marrakesh, I'm just passing through - decompressing after a long train ride from the north and bracing for a gut-wrenching taxi ride through the endless switchbacks of the Tiz n Test pass. Unlike the thousands of tourists thronging the city, all I really want out of Marrakesh is a hot shower and a bed. Bargaining for a taxi fare is the last thing I want to do there, but it inevitably becomes part of the routine.

Last week the task looked to be especially difficult. The brand-new Marrakesh train station looks like a high-end American mall, but for all its scintillating decor, its newly designed taxi stand disappointed. I was traveling with two fellow volunteers, and we were all keenly aware that a fair price for a ride to the Jemaa el Fna was 10 dirhams or less. So we were determined to find a taxi driver who'd use his meter to give us a fair price. But our hard-won street smarts backfired as our propensity to negotiate led one taxi driver to ignore us and another to simply drive away. Dejected and angry and tired, and stubborn as ever, we started walking down the boulevard in the hopes of finding a less predatory driver. Little did we know, our very own Marrakeshi angel was about to swoop down on us.

At the corner of Hassan II and Muhammad VI, one of my friends and I set down our luggage to catch our breath as our third companion ran into the adjacent National Theatre to ask about upcoming events. Within minutes, a petit taxi pulled over near us at the side of the busy road (which was starting to fill to rush-hour capacity). We hadn't so much as seen it before it stopped - let alone actually hailed it - and actually ignored it for a few moments, figuring no Kesh cabbie would be willing to wait for a passenger - especially during rush hour, outside a train station awash with Euro- and dollar-bearing tourists.

But a traffic-light-cycle or two later, the driver was still there, waiting, so I ran up to his window and said we were waiting for a friend and she was coming in a minute or two and we wanted to go to Jemaa el Fna and did his meter work?

He smiled and said his meter did work, and it would be no problem to wait a minute or two longer. He proceeded to help us pile on all our luggage as we squeezed ourselves into the small car. I'm notoriously jumpy when it comes to taxi drivers and meters and hurriedly asked our driver to start his, which he did immediately and with a smile. Feeling a bit sheepish, I tried to explain away my over-eagerness, saying that we often encountered drivers who insisted we pay 20 or even as much as 50 dirhams for the short taxi ride.

We eventually fell into a conversation based on the standard questions many city taxi drivers ask of volunteers: Where did you learn Arabic? Why did you learn Arabic? Why don't you know French? Have you been to Marrakesh before? How long have you been in Morocco? Where do you work? What do you do?

The driver, a Marrakesh native, knew no Tashlheet and was surprised to learn that we all lived in small douars where we worked with local women's associations. He asked if we liked Marrakesh. I bit my tongue and replied in the affirmative, explaining that after weeks in a small village it's nice to travel a bit and spend some time in the Big City (the ability to tell selective truths being an essential tool in the skill set of any volunteer).

We wove in and out of busy lanes of traffic until finally the familiar and perfectly-dimensioned minaret of the Koutoubia came into view. As the taxi drew up close to the Jemaa el Fna, I glanced at the meter - just under 10 dirhams - and thumbed through my wallet for a coin. As I tried to hand it to our driver, he put up his palm and refused the money. “It's free for you,” he said.

The cynic in me was sure this was some new scam. Free with a trip to his brother's shop, sure, or to his father-in-law's restaurant. But one look at his face and I saw he was completely in earnest. “It's to say thank you, for coming to my country, to work with women here and bring good ideas to our people,” he insisted. “It's a gift for you. You are welcome here in Morocco.”

Stunned, I asked him to accept at least part of the full fare, but he refused. There was nothing more to do but to thank him profusely (employing about half the God phrases in our collective arsenal, I might add), climb back out of the taxi, pick up our luggage, and walk to our hotel in a happy daze.

In just fifteen minutes, my preconceptions of Marrakesh crumbled; the city was suddenly bathed in a new light. It was a remedy to the built-up cynicism and distrust that breed so quickly whenever one is a stranger in a strange land, and reminded me of how often our human assumptions turn out to be moot. And I was reminded, too, of the simplest, profoundest, and most significant truth I've learned here in Morocco: the restorative and uplifting power of the kindness of strangers.

Morocco's National Theatre, site of our Marrakeshi miracle...

sometimes you need cake

betty crocker box, bundt pan

best friends; chocolate

above: artsy photograph of chickpea tagine

My first tagine recipe! An amalgam of a few different recipes; you don't actually have to cook it in a Moroccan tagine ("tagine" really just means a stew-ish dish)...I cook this (and all my tagines, actually) in a deep saucepan with an improvised lid, and it works fine.

This might be an appropriate time to make a confession:

I know that couscous ("sksu" in Tashlheet, which delights in nothing more than reversing consonants, it seems) is Morocco's national dish; I even subtitled this blog "the quest for the perfect couscous," mentally equating (or at least approximating) an understanding of the couscous with an understanding of Morocco itself.

Problem is, I just can't get that excited about couscous. It's tasty, it's fine, I've had many incredible versions cooked by Moroccan chefs par excellence. But I'm just...not that excited about it. I know. I know. I feel like a terrible Peace Corps volunteer for saying it, but it's the truth, and as a wise man once said, the truth shall set you free. It's not that I dislike couscous...it's more like, well, eh, comme-ci, comme-ca. Anyhow, I'm adjusting my expectations (which, you know, is all part of cultural exchange and growing up and life etc. etc. etc.) and henceforth refocusing my quest to that for the perfect tagine, rather than the perfect couscous.

So, given all that, here is my favorite tagine recipe so far. Chickpeas provide the substance of the dish, along with a bunch of savory ingredients that work well together, but with cinnamon to soften the savoriness and preserved lemon to add a little kick.

Ingredients

1 cup dried chickpeas

About a quart of vegetable stock (substitute vegetable broth, but if you make your own stock it's waaay tastier)

1 onion, diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp argan oil (if you have it)

1 large potato, diced

2 tomatoes, diced

2 zucchinis, diced

A preserved lemon (if you have it, otherwise substitute regular lemon), quartered or maybe even eighthed

Cilantro and parsely, chopped, to taste

Pepper, ras al hanut (if you have it, otherwise substitute cumin), paprika, and cinnamon to taste

Plain yogurt

Harissa (if you wish)

Prep

Soak chickpeas overnight and drain them. Prepare vegetable stock and harissa (recipe here).

Preparation

Cover chickpeas with an inch or two of veggie stock and let simmer at least 45 minutes

Saute onion and garlic in oils and butter till onions are translucent

Add cumin/ras al hanut and pepper to taste, cinnamon in liberal amounts, and a dash of paprika

Add chickpeas, potato, tomato, and not quite enough veggie stock to cover everything; let cook, covered, 30 minutes

Add zucchini, cilantro and parsley, and bits of lemon; adjust seasonings to taste; cook covered for (at least) 20 minutes

Garnish with a bit of fresh cilantro and a sprinkle of pepper; serve with harissa and plain yogurt

Tips

I kind of play the final timing by ear (a lot depends on how hot my temperamental gas burners are feeling). Basically I just try to make sure there's a liberal amount of broth for everything to stew in, but not so much that everything is drowning soupily. There should always be a little liquid at the bottom (which makes the leftovers extra tasty). I use the chickpeas as the real litmus test of whether the dish is done - if they taste cooked and savory, I'm sold.

Looking at the world through the sunset in your eyes

Traveling the train through clear Moroccan skies

-Crosby Stills & Nash

Not long ago I was riding the train from Marrakesh to Rabat (sad to say, to my knowledge there's really no Marrakesh Express...but I like to pretend I'm taking it anyway), watching the world go by from the window of my car when I noticed a woman staring intently at me from across the compartment. This continued for, oh, I don't know, about 3 and a half hours. My discomfort grew as the train crept north and by the time we hit Casablanca I'd engaged her in a full-on staredown in an attempt to make her stop. Eventually she started giggling and told me (with the help of a nice woman to my left, whose Arabic was clearer, slower and more patient...) that she was pregnant and really liked the color of my eyes and was staring at me in the hopes that she would channel my eye color to her unborn baby so that he'd have green-blue eyes too.

She then added that she would appreciate it if I'd please take off my sunglasses (the sun was starting to set right in my eyes) so she could continue taking in my eye color.

I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or completely weirded out. But fortunately the train ride was nearly over and I was off to the next adventure...

This isn't my video - it's much higher quality than the ones I make - but it's hilarious.

Way down here

You need a reason to move

- James Taylor

So, apologies for the lack of entries in the past month or so...I've been writing, I just haven't been to the internet cafe too often to post because it's soooooo hot. Summer in southern Morocco mostly involves drinking lots of cold beverages and trying to keep cool (not biking through miles of open countryside to sit in hot internet cafes...).

Some of the other changes summer brings:

Daylight savings time has been officially reinstated in Morocco for the first time in about a decade…nobody in my village, and only half the people in my internet/post office town have taken notice, though, and I can’t say it’s made a difference.

My favorite days are when it only gets up to about 100 degrees.

I’m constantly told that the intense heat (110+) is GREAT for me and that I should like it. My favorite line: you sweat so much in summer, it’s just like taking a shower!

There are lots, lots, lots more bugs of all kinds in the summertime. The other day I opened my walnuts to find small worms in them. I coolly threw them out and just thought about how lucky I was not to have roaches and flying ants infesting my home like many other volunteers (knock on wood…).

Sadly I have to report that my host family no longer showers me with dozens of the orange-variety-of-the-week – it’s mid-July and I’m sad to say it seems orange season is finally over.

The city of Taroudant is sometimes known as “little Marrakesh;” it’s circled by a set of ancient earthen walls that barely contain winding, cobbled streets, a maze of a souq, and a few beautiful open plazas graced with palm trees and juice stands, courtesy of the dozens of orange groves that surround the city.

The best way to see the place is on one of many horsedrawn carriage taxis, which will take you on a tour of the place for about 25 dirhams or directly to any destination for 10.

For refreshment and a break from the hot southern Moroccan sun, step into one of the city’s many smoothie shops. My favorite is a hole in the wall not far inside the Bab el Kasbah (one of the many large doors in the city walls), down the street from the city hospital. The interior features a curiously tropically themed water feature, live birds and a clock that runs backwards, and the banana-strawberry-peach smoothie is superb.

If at all possible, try and catch a summertime party, which will invariably involve traditional and modern musical performances, dancing, lots of sweets and sweet tea, upstairs neighbors yelling about the noise, and many enthusiastic women playing tug of war over you for photo ops…

I attended such a party last week and was bemused at how many of the women focused their energies not on dancing or watching the performance, but on filming it with their cell phones. When the women started dancing, the president of the association made sure to safeguard their modesty by asking everyone to turn off not their cameras, but their phones (cameras aren’t quite ubiquitous here, but camera phones are!). Which, I think, is emblematic of Taroudant’s charm: it’s modern enough to have women who are willing to dance in public, in front of men, and throw their own parties, but just a little too provincial to broadcast themselves on YouTube using their ultramodern phones…

fun to say...

ashishaw/akiyaw – chicken

butahanut - store owner, shopkeeper. "Bu" indicates the owner or operator of anything, so "butaxi" is taxi driver and "bu aman" or "owner of the water" is plumber. "Tahanut" is the Tash word for store, created by taking the Arabic word for store (hanut) and adding a t onto the beginning. Buuutahanut. Just rolls off the tongue...

dwa – medicine, facewash, lotion, or pesticide, depending on context...underlining the importance of context, lest you coat your face with pesticide

smun – maybe my favorite word in Tash; could mean all manner of things, including organize, pack, gather, save money, or (my favorite connotation) fold your legs like a lady

timinsiwin - (by popular demand) good night. "Iminsi," the word for dinner, is nestled in there, such that technically one could say "timinkliwin" for "good afternoon" or "good lunchtime," which is even better.

tskdubt! – you lie!

zund – like, same; often used in duplicate to indicate indifference to a set of alternatives (“ehh, zund zund”)

I’ve been living in my village for nearly seven months now, which according to Peace Corps places me somewhere between the “Adjustment” and “Mid-Service Crisis” phases of my experience in Morocco.

Sometimes I feel like no time has passed at all; yesterday I was swept along to an enormous 4-course feast in a faraway village where I was interrogated by friendly elderly women who scolded me for not eating enough and doused with perfume and made to feel my Tashlheet language skills were middling to nonexistent (I was doing well for tea and cookies, but by the time they whisked away the tagine and replaced it with a full-on plate of couscous my vocabulary was as scarce as spare room in my tummy).

But then, mrra mrra (from time to time) I look around and realize that as I’ve been slowly piecing together the puzzle of life and culture and work here, I’ve undergone a very gradual but significant series of adaptations (not the least of which is slipping all sorts of Arabic phrases into my everyday parlance, including mrra mrra, waxa, safi, and the ever-present insha’allah, which has kind of become a whole new paradigm for looking at the world…but that’s an entry for another day). The question most frequently asked of me by Moroccans employs two more of my favorite words – “wuluf,” in Arabic, and “myar,” in Tashlheet – both of which mean to adjust, adapt, or get used to something. “kan-wuluf” and “ar tymyargh” – “I’m adjusting” – are still some of my most-used phrases, and as the summer sets in (with a whole new set of challenges) they’re especially apt.

A few of my other adaptations (or “wulufs” as I like to think of them, in a total corruption of the Arabic language…):

Bedding: I now sleep under an elaborately rigged heavy duty mosquito net and improvised canopy to ward off not only mosquitoes and flies but scorpions and all manner of dirt and dust particles that my ceiling routinely rains. I try to think of it as living in a fort.

Shoes: I check them for scorpions without even thinking now!

Theory of relativity: I have come to accept that truth is relative and so is time, and not in any postmodern intellectual Foucaultian way. One of the most useful lessons I’ve learned here is that Moroccans hate saying “I don’t know,” and to many people here, hazarding a guess in response to a question is sincerely more truthful than offering no information at all. Talk is cheap here, and seeing is believing. One day I’m sure I’ll wake up having converted to the cult of empiricism; I try not to believe anything about this place I haven’t personally witnessed. And even so, I’m painfully aware of the Heisenberg principle – that the act of observing an event or phenomenon changes it. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to ascertain how much of what I see is being affected or altered because of my presence – the presence of a white person, an American, a non-Muslim, a development worker.

Neatness: I always neatly fold my bedding and clothes now, because sometimes when you don’t there are mice and scorpions lurking in the rumpled-ness.

Dining: I’ve finally figured out why Moroccans eat so late at night: for those of us in “bled” kitchens (literally, country kitchens, which are more or less open-air), daytime in the summer equals flies (no matter how well you curtain or screen off the door…I have no idea how they do it) and intense heat – such that it’s really not worth doing anything in the kitchen till the sun goes down (about 9 pm these days). The other day I tried cooking something around 6 pm and by the time I was done I was drenched in sweat and trying to kill flies with my chef’s knife.

At our In Service Training (IST). Though synchronized diving was not a formal component of the training agenda, it clearly should have been.

My brother Chip recently visited me for a week, and I asked him to write a guest entry about his experience in Morocco. As usual he exceeded brotherly expectations, though I'm not sure I deserve all of what he says (despite what he says the week had its usual share of cooking snafus - I'm still working out some issues with my fire-in-a-metal-box oven). Without further ado, however, I present his missive from the land of the Tar Heels...

I have fun with my big sis. We watch Christopher Guest movies, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," an occasional non-Christopher Guest movie, and most recently, “The West Wing.” So we cracked our favorite lines and jokes from the above shows and flicks, but I also took two invaluable things from my visit to Morocco that I hadn’t quite grasped yet- the first is learning how to cook, and the second is how AWESOME my sister is.

First of all, cooking was great for me to learn on several levels. For one, Anny is really good at it, so instead of learning how to cook rice like my triumphant college buddies, she taught me how to make a tasty tagine, among other plates you’d otherwise only see on SNL’s “The Delicious Dish- on National Public Radio” (if you don’t know what that is, shame on you.) Secondly, as Anny and I noted, my knowing how to cook a dinner for two is going to be the icing on the cake (enjoy that one) on a pivotal date down the road- how many college guys prepare a tagine for a date? And lastly, seeing that I’m living on my own for most of this summer and probably from time to time throughout college, having meal options beyond cereal and Mac and Cheese is a luxury I will enjoy thoroughly. A big thanks to Anny, for “expanding my food dollar” (quote from Elaine in “Airplane” as she’s visiting the Mulambos) and teaching me a tool that’s sure to impress a girl that’s decent enough to go on a date with me.

As for the second thing, I have always admired Anny for her strong will, her drive, but also for the simple reason of being my big sis. However, watching Anny around locals in her village- whether she was teaching English to teenagers, working with the local weavers, or standing alone in a craaaaazy souq (having a 6-foot tall brother stick out like a sore thumb made her blend quite nicely)- I realized that there are few people that have seemingly no limits to their potential, and my sister is one of them.. At some point we briefly talked about the difference between a person being brave versus having courage- we concluded that the former involves engaging in a situation without knowing the risks, and in the latter, the risks are known, but the person dives in anyway. Anny has shown both qualities since settling in Morocco. I told her last fall when she was still adjusting to the new lifestyle that she is as good of a role model for a younger brother to follow as a college guy could ask for. And although I meant what I said at the time, it wasn’t until I was with her in Morocco and saw first-hand what kind of commitment she has made that I fully appreciated the example she sets in front of me.

All in all, it was a week to remember, and I hope to go back before Anny’s time is up in Morocco. Thank you so much Anny!

-Chipper

...I am sloooowly expanding my recipe repertoire, or as I like to call it, my recitoire, to include traditional North African spices and ingredients.

My latest love: harissa.

Harissa is a North African spicy tomato based sauce. The basic ingredients: one or two cloves of garlic, minced, lemon juice from one lemon, a tablespoon or two of tomato paste, ground caraway, salt, pepper and cumin to taste, and a third to a half cup of olive oil. It's very easy to make - just combine all the ingredients and mix well.

Harissa is usually served with traditional tagines (kind of like a stew), but it's so tasty I think it could stand alone as a bread dip (maybe with some hummus, baba ganoush, which by the way means "hungry daddy," and goat cheese...). I like to toss sliced zucchini in harissa and roast it in the oven till the zucchini is just tender.

I recommend going easy on the caraway at first. It's a very nice spice (hehehe) but has a really strong and distinctive flavor that could overpower your harissa if you add too much.