Some of my favorite moments in Morocco having taken place in the inherently overcrowded vehicles that make up Morocco's public transportation system. Ironically*, it has also been the source of many of my discomforts and frustrations. I guess that's life in a nutshell. But before I recount some of those stories here, I will give you a little bit of background information.

Unless you own your own car (I know a grand total of two people who do), you are forced to rely on the amalgam network of public transportation vehicles:

Petite taxis are used for getting around within cities. They are color-coded by city, and while some charge a flat rate to go anywhere in town, others use a meter. Look out, though, because in Marrakech and some of the other touristy cities, they will try to tell you it is broken and demand an exorbitant price. Always settle on the price before you get in.

Grand taxis are used for getting from one town to the next. They legally cram six passengers into these sedans (four in the backseat and two sharing the front passenger), but I have traveled with as many as 14 in the wagon-style (use your imagination as to how exactly this worked, but I will tell you there was a pubescent boy sitting on the left side of the driver.) Grand taxis generally only cover certain “territories”, so if you want to take a longer trip, you may have to “taxi hop.” This means that you take one taxi to the edge of its territory, and then you catch another one and take it to the edge of its territory and so on until you reach your destination. You catch grand taxis at the taxi stations, and they won't leave until six passengers all wanting to go to the same place have arrived. Depending on the day and time, this can take a while, so I always bring a book.

Transits are large van-like contraptions that are most commonly used to bring people from the more remote mountain villages once a day. Souq (market) days are especially interesting because of the much higher demand, and it isn't unusual for a transit to wait to leave until not only the entire inside is crammed full, but the roof is also swarming with people, vegetables, chickens, sheep, mattresses, and any number of other wares hanging on for dear life. Don't worry, though Mom, I have never ridden up top.

Souq buses are local buses that drive all over the country making stops whenever someone claps their hands to get off or flags them down from a pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere. These generally compete with transits for being the most colorful way to get around, and therefore tend to be my favorite. They are also nice for medium length trips (between 1-4 hours) that cover the territory of several different grand taxi stations because you don't have deal with getting on and off like you would if you were taxi hopping. They are also generally more physically comfortable than grand taxis because you get your own seat, even though you may have to sit next to a kid “sharing” his personal music with everyone around him by blaring it from his cell phone. You might also be surprised to find that the old Berber woman across the aisle is carrying a box full of live pigeons, or that baby chickens are wandering up and down the aisle looking for their mother.

CTM buses offer a more urbane atmosphere and make regular, usually fairly scheduled stops in major cities. Since they are a bit pricier, they tend to be full of tourists and the Moroccan elite. For long trips (more than 4 hours), I usually spring for these because of the savings in time (no random stops) and headache that can result from multiple hours of competing personal stereo systems.

Trains are the nicest and fastest option, if you happen to be in the more developed north and going from one big city to another. Some are older, but the newer ones feature A/C and are quite comfortable. Since I live in the south, though, I rarely get to use them.

Because of the communal and often cramped nature of the business of getting around, I find that humanity is more exaggerated. This includes the good sides and the bad sides, but perhaps because I tend to walk on the sunny side of the street, I think the former is more prevalent. The following events took place some time last summer on souq day in the next town closest to us just after we moved into our own house:

We decided to paint our house. The previous volunteer, bless her soul, painted the salon a pounding fluorescent pink that just had to go. So, we hopped into a taxi to the next town where the nearest hardware store was to pick up some paint and a few other household essentials. We bought a pair of low, round wooden tables that are common here as well as a few vegetables before making the final stop for the paint. As we were selecting the colors, it began to rain. Then, it began to pour. After huddling with other similarly stuck people under the meager awning for several minutes, we decided to make a dash for the taxi stand. We scuttled as fast as we could carrying a 66 lb bucket of paint and two wooden tables before ducking into the back of an already crowded grand taxi. It was steamy with the warmth of our bodies inside and the coolness of the summer storm outside, so the driver kept having to remove the pink towel he had draped over his head to wipe the windshield. The two old women sitting in front of us apparently hadn't finished their shopping yet, so the driver went around to the various places where they had errands and would dash out into the rain with a shopping list before returning to wipe his forehead and the re-steamed windshield. Meanwhile, all the passengers, us included, were chatting merrily. The last stop was the bakery, and when the driver returned with several bags full of freshly baked bread, the women passed chunks of the steaming loaves around to all the passengers, apologizing for the delay they caused. The rain forced us into even more cramped quarters than usual, but it also made everything seem more vibrant—the smell of the bread, the feel of the moisture, and the sound of the water tinkling on the metal roof. It all worked together to make this one of the most human moments I've experienced here in Morocco.

The next story takes place on a winding mountain pass that goes up and over the High Atlas mountains from Marrakech to Ouarzazate. The view it offers is one of the most spectacular you will ever see—that is assuming you are not vomiting your guts out from car sickness. It's no wonder that the pass is called Tishka, which means “difficult.”

Since the Tishka offers enough potential challenges, I usually spring for the plusher CTM bus ticket. However, by no means is the ride comfortable. Although some people have no problem with the 4.5 hour ride, I, unfortunately, am not one of them. On this particular instance, the bus is full, and I am traveling alone. The seat next to me is occupied by a 30ish man dressed in a traditional jellaba and white scull cap indicating that he has taken the religious journey to Mecca required of all Muslims who are able. His mustache-less beard indicates that he is particularly devout. Other than a brief formal greeting, he says nothing to me. As we twist and wind our way through the breathtaking scenery, I close my eyes and try to focus on falling asleep. About 2 hours into the journey, the hairpin turns become even more folded in upon themselves until one can hardly believe that a bus is able to go around them. My nausea is creeping in. People around me begin to vomit into plastic shopping bags. The sound and smell is not helping my efforts to hold myself together. The man next to me also seems to be struggling. He reaches for a red book lettered with elaborate gold Arabic calligraphy and begins to read aloud. Whatever your religious beliefs, an oral recitation of the Q'ran is one of the most beautiful and peaceful things. I am not Muslim, and I don't understand a word (well, I know Allah—God), but it doesn't seem to matter. The effect is almost instantly pacifying. The Q'ran is written in verse, and the cadence of the original Arabic sounds like a song even when it is just spoken. My neighbor reads aloud for almost an hour, by which time my nausea has passed. I am fairly certain that if it weren't for those rhythmic words, I would no longer have had possession of my meager breakfast. At the end of our journey, I quietly thanked the man next to me. He looked down and humbly responded “bla shukran a welajeeb,” which roughly translates to “no thanks are needed because it was my duty.”

This next story takes place in a transit leaving the village where I live. As I mentioned before, they cram as many people into these things as is possible. I mean, things get really cozy. By the time I got in, there were already 19 other people in the van. So, we're riding along, and everyone is laughing and talking. The driver, for some reason, decides that he wants everyone to pay in advance (usually we pay after we arrive). So, since he's driving, he asks this random passenger to collect money from all the other passengers. This is a big ordeal because he first has to figure out how many people there are (not obvious because some people are on laps and on the floors. There are even two guys in the trunk.) Anyway, once everyone settles down and pays up, he asks, “okay, did everyone pay?” There is silence for a couple of seconds, and then out of nowhere, we all hear a loud “baaahaahha”. Apparently, there's been a sheep in the trunk with the two guys the whole time, and he wanted to make sure he was accounted for**.

These stories recount just a few of many adventures I've had using the public transportation system in Morocco. There are countless others—one time a stranger bought me a sandwich because he thought I might be hungry. He didn't know I had already packed one. Another time, a van swerved in front of the souq bus I was riding, forcing the driver to turn sharply and stop to avoid a collision. The van zoomed off, but nearly every male on board immediately got off and ran after the van shaking their fists. It was almost two hours until they all wandered back unsuccessfully and we were able to continue on our journey. Almost every time it rains, there are flash floods that create temporarily impassable rivers across the road. So, everyone piles out, takes pictures with their cell phone cameras, and mills around for however long it takes for the river to subside (usually less than an hour) or the driver decides to turn back. As I mentioned briefly, I feel like the hodgepodge system of modes of transport and forced physical proximity of strangers who happen to be thrown together creates a sort of amplified humanity where anything can happen. Almost every time I go somewhere, there is a feeling of “we're all in this together.” I think this feeling typifies much of life in Morocco, and I feel lucky to be a part of it!

* I am always nervous to use the word “ironically” because so many people bitch about how everyone else always misuses it. They then give some definition or example of how the concept is misused (the most common is the song “Isn't it ironic?” by Alanis Morisette, which apparently, despite the title, contains no examples of irony whatsoever). I confess that I have heard so many literati give conflicting definitions of irony that I have no idea who is right, and so I usually avoid using it. However, in this blog entry, I believe I am at least close to what some people would consider the correct usage, and I could not think of another conjunction.

** Side note about sheep and goats: they sound exactly like a person trying to sound like a sheep or a goat.

This last May marked the passing of our first year in our village (not including the 2 months of training prior to arriving in site.) In terms of seasons, everything we are now experiencing, we have already experienced once. Since rural Morocco is very much guided by the seasons, that means a lot—we experienced our second wheat and barley harvest, our second end of the school year and mass exodus of teachers, other professionals, and anyone who has enough money to get out of town before the hot summer. A new group of Peace Corps volunteers has arrived and completed training. As I’m experiencing all these things, I can’t help but reflect on what things were like the first time I experienced them. During the barley and wheat harvests, no one sleeps and everyone is extremely busy and tired all the time. Harvest happened to fall during the time when we were living with a Moroccan family, and I remember thinking that they never paid us any attention. Now I can see that they were just exhausted from working so much. I also know that now that we are between the grain and fruit/almond harvests, people sleep a lot during the day, so I can expect to just stay in my house for the better part of the afternoon.

The arrival of the new group of volunteers has also been cause for reflection. I can see so much of my former self in their attitudes and emotions. At the beginning of this month, they all moved into their own houses after a total of 4 months of living with 2 different Moroccan families. Hearing them talk about how good it feels to be able to dress, act, and eat whatever they want in the comfort of their own space makes me remember the immense pleasure I got waking up after spending the first night in my own house.

A lot of my values and ideas about what it means to do development work have changed without me even realizing it. Even though I was logically aware that projects that are started by people from outside the community almost never work in a sustainable or meaningful way, I still believed that I could enlighten and motivate our community to take action to change what I thought were obvious needs. Many failed attempts and a year later, I know that it is not possible (for me at least) to motivate people who don’t want to be motivated. Now I am definitely not saying the Moroccans are not motivated—I have seen some truly inspiring work here—but they are only motivated about the things they believe are worth being motivated about. It just so happens that many of the things that our community is motivated about are not the same things that I initially was motivated about. My job as a development worker is to be open to the needs identified by the community, and help them to do something about meeting those needs. Sometimes, though, it is just a matter of the angle that you approach things. For example, I conducted a series of informal health discussions with women and girls in my neighborhood. The first one was about nutrition. Lots of people were interested because with the influence of Western media and values, the concept of beauty has changed from a nice, fat, well-endowed women to the thinner version that is valued in the Western world. The young women were interested in learning how to be thinner, and they saw nutrition as a means to accomplish that end. As soon as I started talking about how eating good foods can prevent diseases like hypertension and diabetes (both of which are huge problems in this area), the women lost interest, but as soon as I started talking about how to lose weight, they got really interested. The angle I was hoping to push with nutrition was how a healthy lifestyle can help you prevent diseases and not need to depend on the clinic or medicines (which can be unreliable and expensive). However, the conception of prevention doesn’t really exist here, and all they cared about was looking good so they could get a good husband. It took me a long time to accept that even though the motives are different, if the end result is the same, I guess that is good enough for now.

Another thing I have realized about development work is that a lot of money is wasted. Even if it isn’t wasted, people may come to expect it, which defeats the whole purpose of development work. This has been a pretty major attitude change for me because I have always been pretty supportive of social spending. I am still supportive of a lot of social spending, but I think there needs to be a few things that need to be corrected before social spending can be effective. Firstly, you have to eliminate corruption. Corruption exists everywhere, including America, but it is pretty strongly rooted in the Moroccan government. I think the only way to eliminate corruption is to encourage true democratic participation. (I want to clarify that I don’t mean the kind of token democracy that exists in America, but true democracy where citizens are free and able to be critical of and actually make changes in their society.)

The second thing that needs to happen to make social spending effective is also related to democratic participation. Young people need to learn how to be proactive citizens that are both personally and socially responsible. One thing that I love about Moroccan culture—and this is true of other Islamic nations as well—is that they have a strong sense of social responsibility. However, the political structure is set up so that personal responsibility is not as emphasized. Both are crucial for the existence of an effective and just society. The best way I can think of accomplishing this is through educational reform and youth programs. Currently, the system of education is largely based on memorization and other consumerist socialization methods. (By consumerist, I mean that information is absorbed without critical processing.) Additionally, in the past, graduation from university pretty much guaranteed a job with the government. For many reasons, this is no longer true, so people are upset that they don’t have jobs after they graduate. This is an understandable frustration, but the fact of the matter is that their consumerist education has not taught them any marketable skills. Educational reform that focuses on critical thinking blended with the already existing social responsibility would be a great step in the direction of a more just society. Under these conditions, social spending can be most effective in allowing for the continuation of programs that ensure quality education and support for all citizens.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I, as an individual development worker in a foreign country, can be most effective. Unfortunately, I don’t think I am able to do much about corruption directly. I can, however, work with youth to empower them to identify and change what needs to be changed in their own society. I don’t have the power or ability to work on systemic changes, nor should I—I think that kind of change needs to take place from within—but I plan on working with individuals with whom I come into contact. We are planning a peer education program which teaches middle school students leadership and creativity skills, as well as basic information about health and other topics. It is then up to the students to develop effective ways of communicating that information to their peers. I am excited about this program for several reasons. Firstly, it is an area that I have identified where I can personally make a difference. Secondly, I know it is cliché, but the youth are the future, and working with them is the best way to stimulate change from within. And lastly, it is basically free and does not require outside support, thereby reducing dependency on foreign aid.

It’s funny how change and progress sneak up on you. It is easy to get caught up in the day to day worries in life without taking time to reflect on the bigger picture. I am grateful for this opportunity to be living and working abroad and for the opportunities it has provided for me to reflect on my life and my role in the larger society. I hope that I continue to reflect on my experiences and not forget to feel grateful for the opportunities I have and the progress I am making.

I have been to a few weddings since I’ve been here, but this last one definitely takes the cake (there was no cake, actually.) My friend and neighbor, Bedia, was the bride. The groom was someone from Ouarzazate who I didn’t know. Chances are, she didn’t really either. The whole neighborhood was busy day and night making preparations for about a week, but the wedding itself lasted three days. Before I get into the details of this specific wedding, I should give a little background about TashlHeit weddings in general.

Traditionally, weddings last three days. The first two days of the wedding are celebrated separately—one party at the groom’s house and one party at the bride’s house. On the last day, usually around midnight, they come together at one house for the joining of the new couple.

On the first day, they have a dinner for the men. Typically, they serve first a whole chicken with French fries and green olives, and then a stewed beef and prune tagine. Desert is usually some sort of fruit. The second day is the women’s lunch. They serve either couscous, or the same meal as the men. The women’s party is accompanied by constant drumming, singing, and dancing. Even before the actual wedding starts, if they are done with their work for a while, they default into song and dance. On the third day, the real party starts. Men and women are both served, although they are not in the same area. Often, the men will be outside and the women inside, or perhaps they will be in different houses. Depending on how conservative the village and the family, gender segregation is more or less strictly enforced. This doesn’t stop weddings from being the best place to get engaged, though. Everyone dresses up in their finest, glitteriest, and, to the untrained eye, tackiest, clothes. Women go around and spray strong perfume on you when you least expect it, so that you never quite get used to the musky, borderline alcoholic smell of Moroccan perfume.

There are a variety of ceremonies that accompany weddings. In a traditional TashlHeit wedding, the bride wears a red scarf over her face the whole time, as well as an elaborate, dangly headdress. Part of the joining ceremony involves taking off her scarf in the presence of the groom (under a blanket) and showing him her hair. This is significant because the husband and family are supposed to be the only ones who can see a woman’s hair. (A barber here once refused to cut my hair because he knew that I was married and didn’t want my husband to get jealous because he was touching my hair.) Another aspect of TashlHeit weddings, although not a ceremony per se, is parading the bride around for all to see. During the second day, at the women’s lunch, she sits for hours while she gets her hands and feet elaborately tattooed with henna. She spends most of her time throughout the three-day wedding literally sitting on a pedestal having her picture taken.

So now that you have a general idea about how TashlHeit weddings are, I will tell you about the details of Bedia’s wedding. The first thing that was a little different about her wedding was the chronology of events. The men’s dinner was first, as normal, but because some unknown reason, they postponed the women’s lunch until after the joining ceremony that normally takes place on the third day. This was confusing for everyone. Anyway, so my [other] neighbor knocked on my door around 5pm and told me to get my clothes so that we could go over to the wedding house to get ready. When I arrived, it was a cacophony of women rushing around to put pillows in place, finish preparing food, and get dressed. My neighbor ushered me into a back room piled with colorful, glittering dresses and plastic bags full of makeup and jewelry where several women and girls were frantically trying to figure out what they were going to wear. Since I had already done my makeup and I only had one dress choice (the one my neighbor lent me), I was ready pretty quickly.

As more women finished, we started to gather in the courtyard to play drums, sing, and dance while we waited for other guests to arrive. I was glad I got there relatively early because I got a nice place to sit next to a fig tree and as guests arrived, I didn’t have to get up to greet them—they just came to me as they went around and kissed everyone’s hands in the traditional style. Around 9pm, the groom’s party arrived. We all went out to greet them by singing, drumming, and clapping for about an hour. The women in the groom’s party were carrying all kinds of brightly wrapped gifts on trays on their heads, which they impressively balanced while dancing. The men did a traditional AHeydus dance, which involves standing in line and singing and clapping. They had hired a special band to play as well. After a while, we all went inside. Sugary mint tea and cookies were served, and then the bride came out in an elaborate white and silver outfit. She got into a silver glittery coach, which was carried around the courtyard by four boys dressed up in capes and pointy hats. Everyone took lots of pictures. After a while, she went into a back room to rest and change into her next outfit. The women went into the courtyard for more singing and dancing, and the men went outside where the band was and just sat around and talked. Girls came around with a variety of fancy, sugary cookies, mint tea, and almonds every hour or so. We did this for about 7 hours. Every hour or so, the bride came out in a new outfit and posed for more pictures on her elaborate, silver, LED- lit pedestal couch.

Around 2am, they finally served dinner. At 4am, the bride came out in her final outfit—a white, American style wedding dress. The bride and groom fed each other sugary cookies and milk from a fancy goblet. The groom then gave the bride several pieces of jewelry, including a ring. She gave him a ring as well. Then, they tossed small gifts of food and candy to the guests before heading back to their room to consummate the marriage. The rest of the guests rushed outside to cram themselves into cars so that they could drive around the neighborhood honking and yelling. Fortunately for me, I was too slow and all the cars were full by the time I got outside. So, I got to go to bed, just as the dawn call to prayer was being announced.

If this sounds exhausting to you, you’re right. I have just described one night of three, so imagine this whole thing multiplied. If you happen to be a close friend or family member to the bridal couple, you have been doing this for a week. The purpose, as far as I can tell, is to show the community how well you can provide for your family, but also to share with them your wealth. In American weddings, the motivation is a little different—the bride wants to live her fairytale dream—but the result is often just as elaborate. I’m not sure what it is about weddings that make people spend so much time, energy, and money, but they sure make for a good party!

I recently completed the major project of my Peace Corps service thus far. It was a huge collaborative effort by me, Sean, 7 other Peace Corps volunteers, the Ministry of Health, a local development association, a national AIDS awareness association, 42 high school student leaders, and about 20 medical professionals, teachers, and community leaders from the region. It entailed 5 different peer education and professional trainings, many great discussions about values, religion, society, health, and development, lots of traveling and networking, and countless meetings, emails, and text messages spread out over the course of the last 5 months. It culminated in 2 HIV/AIDS and STI education tents—one for men and one for women—from 8am to 9pm every day for the three days of the Rose Festival. Collectively, our peer educators had discussions with a grand total of 2,560 Moroccan men, women, boys, and girls over the course of three days. I mean, they had real, honest, sometimes controversial discussions. 523 people were tested for HIV. Potentially best of all, though is that we empowered 60 people to do sexual health education on their own and in future projects with all the participating associations. In addition, they gained confidence as public speakers and community leaders. Wow. I think we deserve bragging rights for that. When I say it, I can hardly believe these results are ours. Okay, I admit this post is little more than bragging, but sometimes I just need that. I am not above the need to feel that what I do with my life is validated by successes now and again, especially because much of this experience has been small and a trying. It is important to step back from your life from time to time to examine the bigger picture. I hope you all can do that, too. I would love to hear about it!

A common question I get from new volunteers or other people who are not in the Peace Corps is, “What is a typical day like for you?” My answer is usually that there is no typical day in Peace Corps. However, if I had to provide an example of the kind of day that I commonly have when I am not traveling, working on a big project, or doing anything else outside of daily life, yesterday would be a pretty good example. I woke up around 7:30am to the bright sun streaming in through my open window. Summer has already begun. Sean and I made a quick breakfast of homemade yogurt, ground dried figs, bananas, and wheat germ. I had a glass of [unsweetened] gunpowder green tea with lavender while Sean drank an Americano made with his used camp stove espresso maker he bought at souq for less than 3 American dollars and cream made from adding more than the normal amount of powdered milk. While I did the dishes from last night and that morning, Sean did his workout in our “gym” (we converted one of the many empty rooms in our mud house by putting in my yoga mat, a medicine ball made from a pillowcase with small gravel inside, and two empty 5 liter plastic bottles filled with water as weights). While Sean took a bucket bath, I did my morning workout consisting of about 30 minutes of yoga and 30 minutes of weight lifting. By the time we had both showered and dressed, it was about quarter to 10. We biked the mile or so into town to teach our bi-weekly English class for local middle school students. It is a small but dedicated group. No one showed up for the second class, but that was just as well because we had a meeting with our counterpart at the clinic. However, it turns out that he had to take the 4x4 into the outer villages in the mountains at the last minute because the other nurse wasn’t able to, so he wasn’t available to meet with us anyway. After checking our mail and talking with a few people we knew from town, we headed back home to start on lunch. By then it was pretty hot, and we were glad to get home into the coolness of our courtyard. Sean made a lunch of lentils and cold salad while I caught up on some emails I had copied from the cyber. Afterwards, I read and took a short nap while Sean did some things on the computer. Around 4pm, we went back into town to meet with our friend the hygiene technician at the clinic. It is harvest time right now, and everyone is working long hours in the fields cutting barley and alfalfa by hand. We had tea and cookies before walking about 2 miles through the cool fields to help her harvest. After about 2 hours of harvesting, we loaded up the donkey for the trip home. Apparently, we didn’t do a very good job of balancing the load, or the harness wasn’t on properly or something, because a short ways down the path, the whole load tipped over. A brief side note about donkeys: they are very hardworking and very stupid. This one was actually the neighbor’s donkey that we were borrowing, and he has been taking the same path between house and field for so long that he has memorized it. Once you slap him on the ass, he will just go until he arrives at his destination. So, this donkey was still going, even after his load tipped sideways. Luckily, a group of 4 young boys were coming down the path towards us, and they caught the donkey and stopped him. We tried various ways of securing the saddle and the barley, but we kept being interrupted by the donkey just deciding to walk away and continue on his own path. About 20 minutes and several laughs later, we finally managed to secure the load. We said goodbye to the helpful boys and continued our way home. By this time, it was starting to get dark, so we said goodbye and walked the rest of the way home. Sean made delicious Thai food, and we watched an episode of Firefly before heading to bed. Overall, it was a pretty satisfying day.

I think I mentioned before that our site is full of old, crumbling Kasbahs. Other than the one that is supposedly haunted, the Kasbahs have mostly just become a really cool backdrop to our life in Morocco. Gradually, I even stopped really noticing them except for every once in a while when the lighting is really spectacular or something. But then, I happened to discover something pretty amazing about one particular Kasbah.

Sean and I were hanging out in the cyber checking our email when one of the guys who works there called Sean over to show him some picture montages he created. One of the montages was of this especially big and ornate Kasbahs in one of the douars (neighborhoods). Despite its decay, the interior and exterior decorations were pretty impressive. Plaster moldings were painted in a style he told us was from early 20th century. There was even a tiled bathroom complete with a bathtub. The craziest part was the prison in the lower level. Apparently, this was one of the many Glaoui Kasbahs that were all over southern Morocco. The Glaouis were a powerful Berber family of warlords that controlled southern Morocco from the 19th century until independence in 1956. They were infamous for their brutality and commonly tortured, killed, and/or imprisoned anyone who threatened their power. The French supported them financially during the colonial period in exchange for their cooperation. In addition to the money they received from the French, the Glaouis demanded “mandatory gifts” from the people under their control in exchange for “protection”. Of course, if anyone refused, they were put into one of their many prisons or publicly punished.

Our friend at the cyber offered to give us a tour of the Glaoui Kasbah, which we gladly accepted. It was amazing. We were trying to guess when it was built, but it is hard to say because it has many different additions. The main central section looks ancient, whereas the most recent area has fairly modern plasterwork and painting. We found a date carved into some of the plasterwork on the ceiling to be 1360 in the Islamic calendar, which translates to roughly 1940. It was inhabited up through independence in 1956 and all the way into the 1970s when it became too dangerously decrepit. The most chilling part was by far the prison, which was basically just a dark hole where they threw people. We didn’t get any good pictures of the prison because there were no windows for light. However, we got some amazing shots of some of the plaster work and the view from the top. Check my Picasa account to see them.

When we got back, we got to talking about how crazy it was that there was an old warlord prison in our site. That led to a discussion about all the other secret prisons that existed throughout the history of Morocco. During the reign of King Hassan II (1962-1999), secret prisons were fairly common. Political dissenters were kidnapped and then released into these places with no idea where they were or how they got there. Many were tortured and killed. If they were released, often years later, they usually never found out where they had been kept. One of the most famous of these secret prisons was actually underneath the famous square of D’Jamaa El Fna in Marrakech. Prisoners who were taken there could hear the noise and music from festivities above them and were later able to identify where they were taken. There is also an old secret prison on the road between Klaa and Errachidia. King Hassan II’s son and successor, Mohammed VI, has turned it and many others into memorials for the people who were abducted.

But Moroccans are not the only ones to have created and used secret prisons. There is a CIA blackout site in the middle of nowhere in eastern Morocco near the Algerian border between Outat el Haj and Guercif that was used to harbor suspected terrorists until 2006. Because it was conveniently located off US soil, many human rights laws were ignored. The site has been closed down, but it is scary reminder that the days of secret prisons are not as distant as history might make you think. Having an old secret prison in our own site is an even more insistent reminder of the past.

Even though my official job title is Health Educator, my job description is very vague. Peace Corps and the Ministry of Health in Morocco came up with a project framework that outlines the major health concerns that they want Peace Corps volunteers in general to address, but they don’t expect or even want every volunteer to address every concern. So, it is up to each volunteer to decide (based on a set of loose assessment tools they gave us during training) what the most appropriate and pressing needs are and then figure out how to address them. It is about the most unstructured job I can think of, and it has taken me nearly all the time I have been in site (about 8.5 months, not including the 2 months of training before we got to site) to figure out even what I should be working on.

It’s funny, but I feel like just in the last few weeks all the gradual growth and progress I have been slowly working on without many noticeable changes have all of a sudden exploded into a very noticeable difference. For example, I am getting compliments on my language ability, which is something that I have struggled a lot with here. Not that I am great yet—I still only understand about 80% of what is said to me—but I lately seem to have gotten a lot better all at once. Our Moroccan friendships are starting to feel more like real friendships rather than forced ones, and we have started taking daily 1.5 hikes into the mountains with our host mom. She had a health scare and is taking the doctor’s advice for dealing with her cholesterol pretty seriously. It has been great for our relationship with her as well as our position in the community. Work has also recently gotten a lot more productive. We have been having weekly meetings with our local associations to plan a project design and management workshop for some other not-so-productive associations. We also hosted 16 other volunteers at our house last week for a regional meeting to collaborate on projects and share information. We are planning a huge HIV/AIDS and STD risk awareness campaign for an annual festival in May. We are hoping to put on separate tents for men and women to educate about the risks of infection and transmission. The town where the festival is going to be is notorious for its prostitutes, so we are also hoping to work with an association to do a risk awareness and condom usage education session for the prostitutes a few weeks before the festival. We hosted an HIV/AIDS and STD training for volunteers this week and we got some really productive planning done. We also are working on establishing a women’s association in our douar (neighborhood). It’s hard to say whether or not all this is related, but I almost feel like I have an “open for business” sign on my forehead and things are just coming together all at once for a lot of unrelated projects. It is pretty exhilarating after several months of slow going.

So, right now I am on a high. The timing couldn’t have been better because we were not really doing well for a while and I was pretty stressed out about a lot of things. I guess that is how it goes. They say that Peace Corps just exaggerates the natural highs and lows of life, and so far, it has been pretty true. I am just taking one thing at a time right now, and I am doing what I can to make this trend continue.

I just wanted to post a quick note to let you know that I posted a few pictures from Christmas. There are a few from L3id Kbir, but I didn't get a chance to finish uploading before my battery ran out. Next time, inshallah.

Christmas in Morocco in the Peace Corps is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. The most immediately obvious difference is that we weren’t with our families. However, there were lots of other differences, too. For one, Moroccans, being an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, don’t celebrate Christmas. Some of them are vaguely aware of its existence, but they tend to blend it together with New Years and many of the traditions we take for granted they are simply oblivious to. It has been fun explaining the concept of a Christmas tree, stockings, gift giving, and the nativity story.

Another unexpected and very nice aspect of celebrating Christmas in a country that does not traditionally celebrate Christmas has been the complete lack of commercialism that normally proceeds the actual holiday for several months. I almost forgot that it was the Christmas season until a week or so before when we began making preparations for our Peace Corps volunteer community celebration. Imagine for a moment: no traffic, no commercials, no whiny kids, no incessant Christmas music. What is left when you strip away all this is just pure and simple Christmas.

To celebrate this year, Sean and I and 9 other volunteers gathered at a fellow volunteer’s house near Akka, which is in the far south of Morocco surrounded by sand and date palms. The old part of the village is actually dug out of the side of a mountain and there are several ancient cave painting sites not far away.

We did a simple secret Santa gift exchange under a small, Charlie Brownish Christmas tree. Nicole, who’s house it was, did an admirable job decorating the house with some garland and photos of snowy scenes her family sent her from America. We spent the majority of the time sitting around and cooking various delicious meals and sweet snacks. For Christmas dinner, we had Indian food: daal, vegetable byrani, naan, rice, and a side of camel steak. We also had a steady stream of sweets like shaped honey cookies, cardamom orange biscotti, cinnamon rolls, spiced cider, and hot chocolate with cardamom and chili. Our Christmas Eve dinner was fried chicken, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes and gravy all mixed together in communal tagine platter. It was very messy and fun to crowd around the small low table and eat the dripping feast with a combination of spoons and hands. There was an excess of gravy, and through some combination of dares and Christmas cheer, Sean and a couple of the other guys ended up doing “shots” of gravy, which we all thought was disgusting, but they claim was delicious. We were all just so happy to be together and were having such a good time that we thought the whole thing was just hilarious.

Even though our families were not there, people were constantly dashing off to some quiet room to receive a phone call from home. Some people were even able to arrange conference calls on Skype, so we got to meet each other’s families. As we took turns sharing our family’s Christmas traditions, I felt as if we were somehow mixing them all together along with our experiences here in Morocco to create our own version of Christmas.

Later in the day, we went to the elementary school and helped Nicole with a nutrition education activity, although we certainly hadn’t been following any of our own advice the past few days! The next day we went on a hike through the palmeries and then caught a bus to the beach town of Tiznit. We spent the next few days hanging out with our friends from training. We had calamari on the beach, bought some beautiful silver bangles from the silver souq, and made a birthday pineapple upside-down cake. By the time it was time to go home, we were ready!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Except, in Morocco, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. However, they do have a holiday that is sort of similar and happened to fall on the same weekend as Thanksgiving in America. It’s called Laaid Kbir (literally, “Big Holiday”) and families travel from all over to be together to have a big feast. Sound familiar? Well, it is, sort of, except that instead of eating turkey, each family saves money all year to buy as big of a ram as they can afford. In the week or so before Laaid, you see people walking around with big sheep all over the place. We happened to be traveling through Rabat and Marrakech, so it was pretty funny to see people riding motorcycles with sheep in big, modern cities. We saw them waiting at lights to cross the street with all the normal people, in the trunks of taxis, and on top of transit vans. It was pretty amusing. After all these sheep get to their final destinations, they wait in anticipation for the big day. After the king has killed his sheep on national television, everyone in the neighborhood brings their sheep out into a communal area and proceeds to slit its throat and skin and gut it. Meanwhile, everyone is out and about in their fanciest new clothes greeting, kissing, and talking to each other. It’s pretty festive.

The rest of the day is spent cutting and preparing the meat. I didn’t realize until now how much meat a whole ram can yield. It is a lot. Sean and I and everyone else in Morocco have been eating delicious sheep kebabs for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner for about a week now. There are other less savory parts of the sheep to eat as well. Actually, I say less savory because I don’t find the head and intestines to be very good, but Moroccans consider them the best part. I am developing a taste for organ and gristle kebabs, though. Even after all this, there is still a lot of meat left over. What is left after a week or so is dried and turned into a form of jerky. I haven’t had the pleasure of trying that yet, but from what I’ve heard, it is the best part. Moroccans sure do love their meat!

Laaid Kbir is not just a Moroccan holiday; it is a Muslim holiday. The whole thing with the ram is done in remembrance of when Allah (God) told Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his only son to prove his devotion. At the last minute, Allah told Ibrahim to sacrifice a nearby ram instead. This and many other stories are shared between the Judaic, Christian, and Islamic faiths. It’s pretty interesting, actually. Of course there are definite notable differences, but I am really grateful for the opportunity to understand another culture and another faith so thoroughly, especially one that is so misunderstood by a lot of the Western world.

Okay, so it turns out I kind of suck at keeping up a blog. I don't really have any good excuses, except that I seem to be keeping surprisingly busy at my job. That doesn't mean that I have necessary accomplished anything yet, but I like to think that I am laying a good groundwork. Despite all this, Sean has somehow managed to be pretty good at keeping up his blog. Don’t tell him, but I secretly think that is because he doesn’t do as much work as me. That being said, I am currently holed up in a hotel in the nearest big city with a bit of a cold and two days of wireless internet. I guess that means I have no excuses now.

I just noticed that my last post was in June. Yikes. Well, there really isn't any way that I can catch everyone up on the last five months or so of my life in a foreign country doing a very loosely defined job, so I will take two approaches. The first approach will be to give you all a general idea of the major things that I have been doing. The second will be to tell you about a single day event that happened recently. The last one sort of simulates what a post would look like if I were actually doing a good job of keeping up with this thing. So, just use your imaginations here. Oh, and I also managed to post a bunch of pictures. There are also a few pictures up on my facebook account. And now, with no further ado, updates!

I think technically according to the table they gave us when we swore in, we are supposed to be wrapping up the “integration” phase and getting into the “real work” phase of our service. That just means that while we definitely still spend a lot of time drinking tea and talking about the weather, we are spending a lot more of our time doing things like having meetings with school directors, teachers, association presidents, and random other people who think that we will give them money.

During our first few months here, we have gathered quite a list of problems that need solving and potential ways of doing so, but after running around like silly chickens for a few weeks, we decided to narrow the list. We also discovered, as we suspected all along, that we will be working in slightly different areas. My main projects are probably going to be doing a women’s wellness conference in which women from all over are taught about a variety of issues by local health professionals, association members, and lawyers. This is still very much in the planning stages, but some of the sessions we hope to cover include nutrition, maternal and child health, exercise, mental health, Mudawana rights (the new Muslim Family code in Morocco), HIV/AIDS and other STDs, and family planning. This list will undoubtedly change over time. Another thing that I started working on a few months ago is teaching women’s yoga classes. Believe it or not, this was actually an idea that the women asked me to do, and it was going really well until the holy month of Ramadan kind of put a stop to it because no one had the energy to do anything while fasting. It never really picked up after that because, apparently, Moroccans fast intermittently the whole next month after Ramadan ends in order to get extra heaven points. The plan is to restart those after I get back from another week long training in Marrakech and a vacation with my Mom (Yay, Mom! I am excited to see you!)

Meanwhile, Sean is working on organizing a first aid training of trainers. What that means is that select community members will be trained in basic first aid, and then they will go and spread this information throughout the community. His idea is to train transit and taxi drivers who go out into the remote mountain villages that don’t normally have access to health care so that they can act as a sort of ambulance service. Of course this is sticky because of liability issues, but the idea is to educate them so that they can know when it is important for someone to go to the hospital and then have the means to take them there. They can also provide basic first aid in the case of roadside accidents, of which there are many in Morocco.

We are both also working hard to get into the schools and youth centers to start health clubs. The idea here is to teach lessons about basic health issues--like HIV/AIDs, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, exercise--in the context of what Peace Corps calls the Life Skills Program. The Life Skills Program is a set of activities that teaches a variety of communication, relationship, and decision making skills to youths. Just like in the States, just because people have access to information about how to live healthy lives does not mean that they will actually be healthy people. Currently, we are in the process of working through the red tape and figuring out who our Moroccan allies are in getting these clubs going. We have one at the Dar Shebab (youth center) in the neighboring town, and we were supposed to have our first meeting last week, but even though we had three teachers and 12 students show up, the doors were locked because the director unexpectedly went out of town, even though he knew about the meeting. We are also trying to get clubs going at the local middle school and at a dormitory where kids who live too far up in the mountains to make it to school and back stay during the school year.

So, that’s basically what I am up to as far as work goes. As far as non-work goes, I am trying to do a regular exercise schedule every day. We are issued Trek mountain bikes, and our site is fantastic for mountain biking, so we are trying to get out at least once a week for a big ride. My dream is to take multiple day trips around Morocco on my vacations. I have a few planned out, mostly in the south where I am. I am also doing yoga decently regularly. Let’s see, what else? I am trying to knit a scarf. Nothing fancy, just something to keep warm during the winter. My language is getting a little better. I am able to communicate basic concepts to most people, but when it comes to anything sort of complex, I still struggle. Like anything, there are good days and bad days.

Okay, I think that is a pretty good general idea of how things are going. I promise to try and be a better blogger in the future. I miss you all, and when you get a chance, let me know how things are going!

So, we got a cat. When we first moved to our site we told everyone that we wanted a cat because we thought that it would keep bugs down and would be fun to have around. Some of our friends had a pregnant cat, and they promised us one. We went to their house to pick one out right before we left for training in July, and they said we could pick it up when we got back. When we got back, they said it was “sick” and that it would “make a mess in our house” if we took it now. A month or so went by and we didn’t hear from them. We figured that it had died or run away and that they didn’t have the heart to tell us (Moroccans are pretty indirect communicators). But then, a little while later, after I got back from Volunteer Support Network training, Sean told me that he had a surprise for me. Out crawled a scrawny black kitchen with giant ears and big green eyes from behind our refrigerator. We christened him “Igli” after the big black beatles that awkwardly patrol the paths in the fields. He seemed to like the name, and so we kept it.

However, we soon realized what our friends meant when they said that our cat was sick. He had hopeless diarrhea. I called around and found out that there was a vet somewhere in Ouarzazate, the nearest city an hour and a half and two taxi rides away. I decided to try my luck. So, early one morning, I took Igli wrapped in a towel in my lap to the taxi stand. I got a lot of attention from the people I passed, and as it happened to be souq day, there were a lot of people. Shortly after climbing in the back of the taxi, I discovered that Igli hates taxis. He meowed loudly the entire 30 minute ride to the next town. The other passengers didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I think they were pretty tickled that the American was taking her cat all the way to Ouarzazate to see the cat doctor. Luckily, by the next taxi ride, he had calmed down a little and only meowed about half the time. My story proceeded me, though, because before I could even ask the driver if he knew where the vet was, he and the man sitting in the front were already discussing where the best place to drop me off would be.

At this point, Igli had made a mess of the towel I was carrying him in, so I put him inside a large woven bag that we use to buy vegetables with. His head was poking out, and several passersby did a double take a smiled. I asked for directions a few times before I finally arrived at the farming association. I walked in with my cat in a bag and explained very eloquently in Tashlheit that my cat had diarrhea and that I had come to get some medicine. After looking at me for a second, he said in good English, “Good morning. Please have a seat in the next room while I finish up with this person.” I felt a little silly, but also relieved that I wouldn’t have to risk misinterpreting instructions on how to give medicine to my cat. A little later, he came into the room and examined Igli. He prescribed a medicine for worms and gave me a powdered packet of antibiotics intended for cows. He said that normally a cow gets the whole packet and a sheep gets half, so for a kitten, maybe a tenth. We then had a friendly conversation about the time when they filmed the movie Hidalgo in Ouarzazate and the animal protection agency had offered him a job making sure that the horses were well treated. He said that he loved Americans and that I was welcome anytime. He said that I should come back in a few weeks to get a rabies shot, and that if I wanted to get him fixed, I could do that too. All this was free, except the cost of the worm medicine, which I had to get at the local pharmacy.

On the walk back to the taxi stand, I put Igli inside the bag again. He was pretty tired, so he just laid down at the bottom. Every once in a while, to the surprise of passersby, he would meow. One woman was so surprised and delighted that she followed me on the street for a little while laughing and telling everyone that I had a sick cat in the bag. It was pretty great.

Igli slept pretty much the rest of the way back home. Now, about a month later, he is totally healthy and happy, although he is starting to “come of age”, which means that is he meowing constantly and desperately searching our house for a lady cat. I think I am going to have to pay my cat doctor friend another visit soon to get this little problem “fixed”.

That’s right, I said haunted castle. Well, it’s actually as Kasbah, but still. Allow me to explain.

A few days ago after our tutoring appointment, we were talking with our tutor, Samira, about who knows what when she mentioned that every night after midnight there is a mysterious light that comes out of the middle of the field. No one knows what it is, but it originates from a 700-year-old crumbling Kasbah and rises into the sky over the field. If you are outside when it happens and you look at it, the light will rush towards you. No one has ever been hurt by the light, but everyone knows about it and is terrified.

Apparently, about 40 years ago the old man who was living there was crushed when the ceiling caved in after some heavy rains. No one has explicitly said that the old man is the light, but there are pretty strong superstitious beliefs in gins in the rural parts of Morocco. Whenever we ask any specific questions about the light, they shrug their shoulders and give us vague answers.

A few days later, we met with our tutor to see the haunted Kasbah in the light of day. During the day, it is just like any one of the numerous crumbling Kasbahs that line the river. Teenage boys and the rare brave girl challenge each other to go inside during the day, and until this day, Samira had never had the guts to go inside. However, her fear of looking wimpy in front of us was apparently stronger than her fear of the mysterious light, because she followed Sean and I inside. We found some trash, spider webs, and the bottom half of a Gila monster, but otherwise, it looked pretty normal.

Later on, some of the other young women in our neighborhood found out that we went inside, and they thought we were crazy. I can understand how superstitions like this one exist in relatively rural, isolated areas--they are common in other parts of the world as well. The strange thing is that our tutor, who is college educated and teaches feminist law classes, adamantly believes in the paranormal. And she is not the only one; there are plenty of similarly educated people around the world who have equally strong convictions about the paranormal.

Personally, I am not convinced. I have never had an experience that is remotely paranormal, but there is a growing number of seemingly sane people who claim that they have. My curiosity is piqued, and I plan on having a rooftop sleepover sometime soon. After all, how often to do you run across a haunted castle? I’ll let you know how it goes.

For anyone who doesn‘t already know, learning another language is really difficult. This is especially true if the language is one of the oldest languages still spoken, doesn‘t have a true written component, and is not codified (meaning that there are no grammatical rules and structure and vocabulary differ from one place, even person, to another.) All of these things are true of Tashlheit.

Oh, did I mention that there are at least 5 sounds that do not exist in the English language and are therefore impossible to pronounce? Well, there are. This is especially important if the difference between two of these sounds changes the entire meaning of the word. A comical example: thlgh* with one kind of ’t’ sound is the conjugated verb for “I am married”; thlgh* with another kind of ‘t’ sound is the conjugated verb for “I am tired.” (Note: the gh sound is similar to choking on your tongue and clearing your throat at the same time.) Similarly, tamghart means “wife” and tamgHart means “thief.” The inventors of this language obviously had some strong opinions about marriage.

The upside of all this is that when Sean and I come back, we will have a super cool secret language to speak to each other in that no one except the isolated mountain peoples of Morocco and us will be able to understand. Awesome.

For the last week and a half we have been running around the province meeting various Moroccan officials whose language we do not speak. There is a ton of bureaucracy that we have to go through in order to work here, and you never know how long something is going to take or even if they will have time to meet you for a scheduled meeting. As a result, we’ve spent 4 out of 10 days away from our new home. These are necessary evils, and thankfully, the volunteers who are already here have been extremely helpful in facilitating all these meetings.

There has, however, been some enjoyable time away from home. Last weekend was the Festival of Roses in nearby Klaa L’Magouna. Several of the health volunteers in our province set up an AIDS education booth at the festival, and so Sean and I as well as many of the other new and existing volunteers were able to help out. We actually didn’t really do much in the way of helping because we don’t know the language, but we were able to see first hand how events like these work and to talk to the old volunteers about all the work that goes into putting together an event like this. Next door was a booth the Small Business Development volunteers helped organize to sell products from the cooperatives they worked with. It was a great opportunity to meet and network with volunteers from all over the region.

Of course, we also got a chance to see the festival. The region surrounding Klaa L’Magouna has an abundance of wild roses that grow there. They are famous for their soaps and beauty products, and the whole town smells delicious. Many of the roses had already been harvested for the festival, so we didn’t see many in the fields, but normally there are vast fields of pink for miles. We knew that we were getting near the festival as we began to see kids selling rose necklaces on the sides of the road. There were many other vendors selling everything from soaps and oils to rose candies and heart-shaped rose wreaths--and everything was pink!

In addition to the rose-related festivities, there were also lots of other carnival-like things going on. There was a variety of song and dance performances with people dressed in their tribal garb. The outfits varied from tribe to tribe, but generally, the women wore a variety of brightly colored scarves with bells and sequins and black coal on their eyes. The women from the local tribe wear long black lace tied over one shoulder over their normal clothing. The men wear long white jellabas, white caps or scarves, and yellow pointed slippers. On the first day, they had a marathon, which we saw the tail end of, and on the second day, they had a parade. There was even a Ferris wheel and carousel!

Sean and I left a little early on the second day because we wanted to get back to our site for a language tutoring appointment. We were also pretty exhausted from all the travel and just wanted to relax and settle into our new life. The festival was a great way to get started, though!

A little more than two weeks ago our pleasantly uncrowded grand taxi pulled up to a dusty t‘Hanout (store) at the edge of a quiet, windy town where the rocky, barren High Atlas mountains meet the Saharan Desert. We were greeted by our strikingly tall host father, Ahmed Maghni. The first things I noticed about him were his easy smile and his large, well calloused hands. After the traditional elaborate exchange of greetings, he closed up his store and walked us across the road to his house, where Sean and I will be staying for the first two months of the next two years in our permanent site.

The house is a sprawling and lavish contrast to our last house. Although it is constructed from the traditional mud bricks, the interior walls have been plastered and painted over. There is a central open courtyard with a variety of fruit trees, including pomegranate, apple, and fig. From there, you can enter into any of the 3-4 main wings of the house. The nicest of these is the guest parlor, which features three chandeliers, fancy ponjes (a kind of Moroccan couch low to the ground), and hand-made rugs. This is where Sean and I had our welcome tea and lunch. Nearby is the everyday use room, which is also lined with ponjes and rugs, and has the satellite TV. Most of the eating and hanging out happens in this room. From the entry courtyard you can also go into the “domestic wing” of the house, which has another open-air courtyard used for hanging laundry, and leads to the kitchen, bread-making room, and the attached animal living quarters. The remaining wing of the house leads to a large room with skylights and a raised platform in the center. This whole wing of the house smells like roses because our family gathers and processes them for bath and beauty products. I have never really seen anything happen in this room, but it has several closed rooms attached to it used for sleeping, including the one Sean and I use. All of the rooms are strangely long and skinny. Our bedroom, for example, is probably about 8 feet wide and 40 feet long. The bed is at one end, and the other end has a bunch of chests filled with pillows and blankets. It’s very nice to have a room all to ourselves, and every day after lunch we come in here and read, study, or sleep for an hour or two.

Overall, the house is very quiet, and even when there are people inside working, it is easy to escape into a quiet corner and go unnoticed. This is very different than our last house where our bedroom was the main sitting room during the day and everyone in our village was very excited to see what we were doing all the time. Our current town has had Peace Corps volunteers fairly regularly for the last 15 or so years, and so they are used to having an odd American around. In some ways, this is nice because we don’t have to do things like explain the concept of volunteerism or awkwardly explain that we don’t want to drink from the communal water cup. However, it also means that we don’t have tons of people wanting to tote us around and introduce us to everyone and everything within a 25 km radius. This doesn’t mean that our family isn’t helpful when we engage them, or that we don’t regularly receive invitations from strangers to drink sweet mint tea and aghrom (bread), it just means that we are on our own a little bit more. That is probably a good thing ultimately, but it requires a little bit more effort than before.

As I mentioned, our host father, Ahmed is a tall and kind man. He owns a store and telebotique across the street as well as several of the other buildings in our neighborhood. He works very hard from about 6am until 9pm or later every day of the week. He does, however, come home for tea breaks and meals about 5 times a day. Our host mother, Kultuma is equally hard working. She is small, gentle, and has a sandal with a squeak that follows her around the house as she does her various chores. Our host parents have a total of 8 children, but Sufian, aged 12, is the only one who still lives here. The rest have married and moved out. Three of the sons live and work abroad and have families here in Morocco. At least two of the daughters live in our town, and one, Jamilla is often in the house with her two young daughters, Sukayna (5) and Miriam (4). There are three other young women who are often in the house helping Kultuma with household activities. I’m not exactly sure how they are related, but I think they might be wives of the sons who work abroad. When the women are not in the house, they are in the fields that run along the riverbed in the center of town cutting down seemingly impossibly large loads of tuga (weed grass) from the fields to carry to the animals. The river is mostly dry because its contents are diverted to form a lush and shady network of fields, orchards, and gardens. I have yet to explore these fields extensively, but they seem to be a haven for the women who spend much of their time there. It is starting to get hot here, so they wake up at 3am and work by the light of the moon until around 11am when it gets too hot. Then they come home and make lunch, clean, and go back out around 4pm until about 7 or 8. I haven’t been able to rouse myself this early yet to join them, but I would like to so that I can see what it’s like to weed fields at night with a bunch of women.

The people here are generally more reserved than the people in the small mountain village where we completed our training. If the people we knew before were exuberant songbirds, the people here are gentle and kind doves. There is a comforting calm here that may come from the vast openness of the desert and mountains. The scenery is remarkably similar to home, except that there are ancient Kasbahs in various states of deterioration that dot the landscape. Perhaps it is just me, but I feel that the warm and dusty wind carries a subtle but certain sense of calm, adventure, and potential.

Oh, and don't send me anything at the address I gave you in Rabat anymore. I'll let you know what my new local address will be as soon as I set up a P.O. box in my new site. Thanks!

A lot has happened since the last time I posted. For the past seven weeks, Sean and I and three other volunteers have been living with host families in a village of about 13,000 in the foothills of the High Atlas mountains. Every day except Sunday we go to madrasa (school) from 8am to approximately 5:30pm and learn language and a little bit of culture from our Moroccan teacher. The instruction has been pretty good overall, although we definitely experienced some really rough spots with our teacher. Fortunately, Peace Corps staff has been excellent in handling everything and we have made it through successfully. We all met the language requirements to move on to our final sites! More on those in a bit.

Firstly, a bit about my training group. Other than Sean and I, we have Marjorie, Nicole, and Jess. Marj (Moroccan name Hinde) is from North Carolina and is an absurdly and loveably dedicated Carolina basketball and football fan. She is really interested in international politics and studied classical Arabic for three years before coming to Morocco, which has been really helpful for the rest of us. Nicole (Moroccan name Hssna) also studied classical Arabic as well as linguistics and Islamic studies. She is from Detroit and is super nice. Another interesting thing about Nicole is that she is looking into converting to Islam and wears the hijab (head scarf). She also drove a 40 ft bus in the States. The final member of the group is Jess (Moroccan name Fadma, which is hilarious because Fadma is an old woman’s name). Jess is from Indianapolis originally but went to school in North Carolina and lives there now. She’s really funny and uses a lot of white-out. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Sean and I have Moroccan names, too, which the kids in our neighborhood gave us when we were playing cards in the first week. Mine is Khadija and Sean’s is Omar. Everyone loves that Sean is named Omar, and after the afirmli (male nurse) gave him his Moroccan hat, everyone calls him “Hajj Omar” (Hajj is a title of respect given to someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca). Our group is really close, which has been invaluable in making up some of the language we missed in class. We often go to each other’s houses for tea, studying, and hanging out with each other and our host families.

Speaking of host families, ours has been great. I have been amazed at how quickly and easily I became comfortable cuddling in a big pile with the women in my family and neighborhood. Our whole family really looks out for us, and Fadma especially tries to help us learn about Moroccan culture. Whenever she buys something, she shows it to us and tells us how much she paid for it and how she bargained. She tells us whatever information she can think of that may be useful for us. We planned a big party before we left for our families and community members, and she helped us figure out what we needed and how to get it. She’s been great.

The family dynamic relating to gender roles in Morocco have been really interesting. Our particular neighborhood seems to be mostly women and children, or at least that’s who we interact with the most because the men are usually out in the fields or socializing in cafés. The usual scene consists of the women sitting or walking around talking and with their sing-song voices, gesturing enthusiastically and laughing a lot. If there are men around, they usually sit in the corner and watch while the women make fun of them affectionately. It appears that the women are in control of everything, but if there is something important to be decided--for example, whether or not a daughter will attend school or anything to do with money--the men make unopposed decisions. Our family has hosted four other volunteers before us, all women, but this time they requested a married couple. For a while, they didn’t understand why we did certain things, but they watched everything we did and began to make some pretty enlightening observations. For example, for the first few weeks, whenever we went to souq or to another city, they would ask Sean why he didn’t buy me anything. This really bothered Sean for a while, but after having a discussion with Fadma, we managed to get across with our limited language skills that in America, we both work and that we share our money and buy things together. She mentioned that because she does not have a husband, she has to make her own money and buy her own things, so she understands. After that, she didn’t bother Sean anymore. Later on, during a discussion with Peace Corps Staff and our host families, Fadma mentioned that she liked that we shared our money, and that she loved that when we were eating or drinking tea, Sean never ate anything until after I sat down. We weren’t even aware that we were doing it, but by simply being ourselves and showing respect for each other, we were able to communicate our values to our families.

I am now back at the hotel where we spent the first few days in country preparing for the official swearing-in ceremony. Returning to the same place after having such an intense period of growth has made obvious the changes that have taken place in my perception of Morocco and of people in general. The little bit of language that I have gives me great confidence and power, and many of the things I found to be strange at first are now relatively normal (for example, there are donkeys everywhere and when you enter a group of people, you automatically shake their hand and then put it to your heart). Tomorrow, we will travel on our own to our permanent work site, which is in a completely different part of the country. This is going to be challenging of course, but at least I have a taste for things now.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention where I’m going! Sean and I are going to be spending the next two years in the Ouarzazate province. Our site is on the southern edge of the High Atlas mountains where they meet the Sahara desert. Our town is relatively large and has 11,000 people and 30 douars (sort of like neighborhoods). For those of you who have seen the movie Gladiator, most of it was filmed about an hour away. After our 10+ hour journey tomorrow, I’ll have more to say about that. For now, I'm going to rest and spend the last few hours of my time with my fellow volunteers. I think I'm going to head into town now to get an avocado/apple/banana smoothie--they're to die for!

This is copied from an email I sent on March 15th, 2009.

Since my last update, lots has happened! We just completed our first week (of 8) with our Host Families. I cannot emphasize enough how wonderful they are! But let me start from the beginning:

Sean and I are in a small village in the foothills of the High Atlas mountains (the exact location is secret because Peace Corps doesn't want us to spread the word about our exact locations for security reasons). It is so unbelievably beautiful here! As I mentioned, it has been an especially wet winter, so everything is green. This provides a spectacular contrast to the red earth (similar to Sedona). We discovered that the green fields everywhere are wheat fields, although they look more like impossibly verdant meadows. There are steep narrow paths crisscrossing the mountains in the foreground, and when you look up, you are astonished to find looming, completely snow-capped mountians. And then there are the poppies! Oh, my the gorgeous, red-orange poppies! Ahh! I'll have to figure out how to post photos soon!

And I haven't even mentioned our host family! Our host-mom is named Fatima, and she is shy and laughs a lot. Our host-dad is named L'Houssein, and he looks ancient, although I'm discovering that people age quickly in Morocco. He is a farmer, so he isn't around much during the day, but when he comes home in the evening, he always seems to be in a good mood. He sits with his arms folded across his chest, smiling, and nodding, and occasionally saying something that everyone is the house finds very funny (although I usually don't understand, which of course, everyone thinks is even funnier.) We have two host sisters, Fadma, who is from L,Houssein,s first marriage and seems to be near the age of Fatima, and Houda, who is 12. Fadma is very outgoing and is always laughing and trying to get me to understand what's going on. Houda is simultaniously spunky and shy, and also very smart. She helps us out a lot with the language and pronunciation. Actually, the whole family is very smart, and they are all very close and affectionate. Moroccans in general seem to be very affectionate and friendly. The traditonal greeting are very long and involve asking about each other's family as well as repeating "How are you?" in several different forms as well as the same form over and over again. Imagine:

Amber: Peace be upon you.

Fadma: Peace be upon you, too.

Amber: Are you fine?

Fadma: I am fine, thanks be to God. Everything is good. I am good, thanks be to God. Are you fine?

Amber: I am fine, thanks be to God. I am good, thanks be to God. Are you good?

Fadma: I am well, thanks be to God. I am good. Everything is good. How is your family? (Usually they ask about each member individually and the whole process repeats itself).

The whole process is accompanied by lots of smiles, laughing, nodding, and a combination of handshakes, hugs, and kisses. It's great!

Everyone is very neighborly, and greets everyone else on the street, or from the roof (Moroccan roofs are like American front porches). Also, there are donkeys and sheep everywhere. It's very funny, actually. So, on our host family description, it said "no pets", but when we arrived, we were greeted by 2 rabbits, a cat, 3 turkeys, a donkey, at least 8 chickens, 3 ducks, and 7-8 sheep. No pets! Hah! It's great, though. They live mostly in our small front yard and in the courtyard. Oh, our house is the most beautiful house I've ever seen! It is made of adobe mud brick, but it has an open roof in the center. There is a stairway that goes up to the roof from the center courtyard. There is also an entry courtyard (where the animals stay) separated by a huge ornately carved wooden door. There are several rooms that branch off from the central courtyard, including our bedroom, a traditional kitchen, a modern kitchen, a sitting room, and a few other rooms. The Turkish toilet is in it's own little chamber in the entry courtyard. We also have our own private Hammam (steam sauna/shower) in the backyard, which I had the delicious privilege of using for the first time yesterday. Very nice!

Oh, there's so much to talk about! Let's see, the food is great, although I did get mildly sick a few days ago. My family was very sweet and considerate and prepared special food for me to recover, and I'm perfectly fine now. We live right next door to three other volunteers, who each have their own families. Most of the families are related, so we visit each other often. The kids are great, and we play a lot of cards and they help us with the language. Mostly, there's a lot of laughing and they make fun of us a lot because we don't know how to do anything (speak, wash our clothes, eat properly (with your hands), use the bathroom, etc.) but it's very fun. During the day we go to madrasa (school) and learn language for the first 4 hours or so, then cultural/practical stuff in the afternoon. We have the evenings with our families to practice and hang out. Today was our first day off, so the volunteers in our village made a trip to Ouzoud Cascades, which are the largest in the country. They are amazing! Now, we,re all in the cyber catching up on emails and buying a few things at the hanout (store).

Kulshi Bixr (Everything is good!)

This is copied from a mass email I sent on March 9th, 2009.

I am in Morocco, and it is late, and we meet our host family tomorrow, so I should be in bed. However, I feel like I should take advantage of the internet while I have it. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get Google Blogger out of French, so I don't know how to edit my blog. Hence, the mass email. In the future, those of you who want to, can check our status on my blog. Fir those who would like to see how Sean and I are doing in the Peace Corps in Morocco via mass email, please let me know and I'll keep you in this group. My first official Moroccan entry is as follows:

Well, firstly, I should probably announce that after a supernaturally long day made possible only by international travel and extravagant changes in time zones, Sean and I have made it safely to Morocco!

We landed in a surprisingly lush Casablanca for an immediate bus departure to our Pre-Service Training site in a medium sized town in the Azilal province at the base of the High Atlas mountains. The 3.5 hour ride out of Casablanca and through the countryside was both surprising and breathtaking. This winter has been the coldest and wettest in Morocco in several decades--a welcome relief from many years of drought. As a result, the dry, brown landscape I’ve been imagining has been transformed into a palette of bright, new green interspersed with brilliant patches of yellow and orange. Occasionally, we would pass an entirely orange square in an otherwise almost exclusively green field, which of course incited excited tugs at Sean’s sleeve.

In fact, excited tugs and pokes have been a decidedly common occurrence in the first few hours and days of our stay in this spectacular country. Along with the verdant landscape, we saw several shepherds with their flocks of goats, sheep, and herds of cattle. Donkeys seem to be everywhere, be it pulling a cart full of fresh local oranges, carrots, or beets, being led by a smiling, weathered old man, or just grazing alongside the road, in a field, or behind some hanuut (store).

Also dotting the landscape are mud or cement block houses. Sometimes solitary, sometimes in somewhat large, high-rise clusters, they all seemed to have laundry or gorgeous, colorful rugs hanging from the walls or strewn in the nearby densely packed prickly pear corrals.

Once we arrived at our hotel and checked in, we had a fantastic lunch with all of the Peace Corps Host Country National staff. The food, even more than we expected, has been consistently stellar--amazing fresh produce, notably the famous Moroccan oranges, which line the streets here, and strawberries, which are in season now. There have been a variety of fresh salads, my favorite being the beets, as well as cooked vegetables, meat and fish dishes, and of course, the national dish--cous cous.

Everyone, volunteers and Peace Corps (PC) staff alike, is sincerely great--interesting, friendly, and intelligent. Our days have been jam packed with Darija (Moroccan Arabic) language classes, policy review, logistics, and a crash course in cross-cultural training. I can hardly believe that it has been only 4.5 days in country! I have already learned so much, and I feel surprisingly comfortable (of course, not too comfortable!) We have ventured out several times to the souk, and I’ve been able to get pretty much everything I want with a combination of gestures and my limited Darija. The locals have been incredibly friendly, helpful, and curious about us. They make an effort to teach us Darija, French, or whatever they think will be useful for us. Today we took taxis to the top of one of the hills at the base of the mountains to see some waterfalls and an ancient casbah. Very nice! Since the weather has been so nice the last two days, we decided to walk back (about 4 miles), through town. On the way back, we stopped at a coffee shop for Moroccan mint tea and French pastries.

Tomorrow, we head out to our host families for our more intimate Community Based Training (CBT). We will be staying with host families for the next 2 months and spending our days with our Language and Cultural Facilitator (LCF) in daily 8 hour intensive language classes. Sean and I will be learning Tashelheit, which is one of two major Berber dialects, spoken primarily in the more remote southern part of the country, although it is widely understood and there is actually a movement to make it the exclusive national language of Morocco. We will spend our evenings at home with the host families, practicing our language skills more and getting to know the cultural customs and etiquette. After that, we’ll swear in and be sent to our final sites. More on that to come! For now, everything is fantastic, and I’m super stoked about the present and future! Hooray!

So, for the first 11 weeks (in-country training)* I will be receiving mail at the following address:

Amber Shiel, Trainee

s/c Corps de la Paix

2, rue Abou Marouane Essaadi

Agdal, Rabat 10100, MOROCCO

It normally takes 10-12 days for an airmail letter to arrive from the United States. Surface mail takes from 1-4 months. Mail that goes through the Moroccan post office is subject to customs inspection, censorship, and currency control. If you decide to send me packages (very much appreciated, I'm sure!), brown padded envelopes work well. Make sure that they are marked with a green customs stamp and are labeled as gifts, which should prevent the imposition of fees. Mail delivery is sporadic, so don't worry if my letters to you don't get there in a timely or consistent matter. Which reminds me, I'm now accepting mailing addresses from anyone who wants to get letters! I look forward to yours!**

*After training, I will have a local address at my as of yet to be determined project site. I'll keep you posted.

**Since it could take a while to get your letters, it might be nice if you sent some before I left, so that I could have them when I get there.

So, I haven't left yet, but I wanted to set this up before I left. ETD: March 4th (how symbolic--March forth!)