Note: Chronologically, this belongs before "Aziz", but I am just now getting around to publishing it. The original date on this entry was December 2nd, 2011.

It’s the coldest night so far this winter in the High Atlas and the stars themselves seem frozen in place as my friend “Moha” and I walk back to the village center from his family’s house on the hill. The trees along the river are bare and silver by the starlight, and the snow on the mountains seems to glow with an ethereal light. Our breath spreads out before us in clouds as we pass beneath a streetlight, and turn onto the deserted main street. Nearly all the cafés are closed at this hour, save for a few that cast slabs of light out onto the night-dark pavement. I sigh slightly, thinking of the cold (it’s only gonna get colder) and of the five months that remain of my time here. I have been here for twenty-one months. According to the tally in my journal, this is approximately 642 days. As I have said before in this blog, the longest I had lived away from home, prior to Peace Corps, was about seven months when I was working off of the coast in North Carolina. 642 days; this is a long time. I consider my home in the Southwest to be nothing short of paradise (not exaggerating). When I close my eyes I can still see endless ranges of snow-capped peaks festooned with dark forests of evergreen and carpeted with nodding summer wildflowers. Trout leap in the streams and cougars stalk the night-haunted forests. Farther west, canyons brood in perfect red silence, a shining ribbon of water along their bottom the only movements save for the gentle sighing of a few luminously green cottonwood trees. The mountains lavish and fecund with life, the deserts spare and perfectly balanced; beautiful opposites they are yin and yang. The Navajos call it hozho, harmony, and if you sit still long enough in my Southwest, you will feel it seeping into your very bones. Morocco is beautiful as well, stunningly so, but the balance is broken; the scales are tipped. It manifests in my psyche as a vague tiredness, a heaviness. I still find joy in my day-to-day life here, I still love my friends and host family, but when five months is up, I will be ready to go. For now, it’s time to enjoy my last Atlas winter, so I turn my thoughts to something else. I think back on the past hour spent with Moha in his house. Turns out that my friend is one of the only people here in the valley that has internet and I desperately needed to check my email; I had some important stuff coming in. It took awhile as I had to learn to navigate the French keyboard and menus, and the welcome interruption of Moha’s large, exuberant mother (my host-auntie) who came in to fuss over me and ply me with tea and food. Our teeth were chattering by the time we got to my street, and Moha bade me goodnight before for going off to a café. I continued the additional hundred feet to my front door, numb from head to toe, and could barely turn the key in the lock. I tromped coldly up the stairs, trying not to trip over my frozen feet, and made my way into the study. The woodstove I had made for me last year sat sadly in the corner, grey with dust and rust-spotted from a leak near the pipe. That sight was normal to me, but next to it… was wood. Wood is rather difficult to acquire in the Eastern High Atlas, an area that has been deforested for close to three hundred years. It is trucked in from afar, or poached from the National Park; I try not to ask which at this point. A friend of mine in the village, “Mehdi”, had been trying to sell me firewood since the summer, and I finally acquiesced to his frequent requests last month. It had been awhile since then, and neither of us could seem to get a date nailed down to do it. As of this writing, it’s still not entirely done (we’re chainsawing the large pieces down to size tomorrow so they will actually fit up my stairs), but I do have enough wood for tonight. I looked at the stove for a moment before gently lifting off the top panel and easing an entire ifssi (a shrub-like and extremely flammable High Atlas plant) into it. On top of that, I placed a few chunks wood and held a lighter to the bottom of the ifssi. It went up like a firework, and within five minutes I was shedding layer after layer of clothing. After an hour, the room was comfortable and all of my extremities were alive and accounted for. First fire of the year, and based on the huge amount of wood being delivered tomorrow, this will be the first of many. If this is a vision of days to come, I am ready for you winter! Let’s go one more round! Thanks for reading, Charlie

Note: This is just the compressed story, and doesn't include any of what happened after I returned to my site, but enjoy it all the same! This will answer the question that some of you have posed regarding whether or not I actually work... the answer is yes. Read on.

Rain falls softly from a slate grey sky, and drips slowly from the drooping tips of the palm leaves that dominate the view from my hotel window here in Rabat. Birds sing unseen, sheltering from the rain, and people rush across the courtyard beneath my window. The rain today is a slow, gentle fall, almost a mist, and smells of the nearby sea. It’s quiet, for the city, though the call to prayer drifts in on the breeze every few hours. It’s a good day to just sit and write; a good day to read and think. This I do, for a time, but my thoughts seem to turn where they have tended to over the past few months; they turn to a 17 year old boy in my village named Aziz Atmani. ~ I met Aziz in the early spring of last year while I was on a walk from the nearby lake, accompanying Molly’s dad and stepmom back to the village. I remember the day very well, it was clear and cool, and from the top of the volcanic sill above Lake Tislit, we watched as a pale gold of the spring sunlight painted a startling array of swirling colors across the flatlands between the two lakes. Mark and Molly had gone back another way and I agreed to take the parents back; following the road below a neighboring village, and crossing the fields back to my house. It was late in the day by then, and the slanting light cast long shadows on Tissekt Tamda, the mountain that looms over my village. The children were walking home from school in clusters of three or four and greeted me loudly and raucously, laughing at my accent when I replied. All save one. I didn’t see the boy until he was at my side, he said nothing and looked at the ground. He was small and thin, dwarfed by a massive wool coat that was several sizes too big for him; still looking at the ground, he greeted me in a whisper. When I replied, he finally looked up at me. He had the look of the Amazigh that live in the deep mountains; slanting almond eyes, high cheekbones, and brown hair. He said his name was Aziz. I was at a loss as to why he had approached me, most kids just greet me and run off howling with laughter; and yet he lingered. I asked what he wanted, and the resulting string of Tam was even more confusing. One word kept popping up, however; afous, or hand. I looked over at him, belatedly noticing that one sleeve of his overcoat hung dark and empty. He had no left hand, and he was asking me what I could do about it. I flushed and said I didn’t know anything about prosthetics, that I was an environment volunteer and that wasn’t my area of expertise. He looked unsurprised, and slowly walked away. By this time, Molly’s family had walked off ahead and I was left alone in the fading light, watching Aziz’ back retreat down the road, every movement giving off an air of defeat. “Blati!” (wait), I said as I trotted to catch him. I put a hand on his shoulder and looked at him again before saying “I don’t know anything about what you’re asking, but I will research it; that’s all I can promise.” For the first time, he smiled. A few weeks later, I had him into my house to take a couple pictures of him and what was left of his hand; as well as getting a clear view of what had happened that had caused him to lose it. He told me slowly and haltingly, and I had to ask him to repeat much of it before I got an idea of the story: There had been an accident, two years before, when Aziz was just fifteen. Like any fifteen year old boy, he loved playing with fire, regardless of the consequences. I flushed, recalling several close calls I had had with bottle rockets around the same time in my life. Aziz, it transpired, was an avid watcher of NBC action, a channel where they play old, American action movies over and over, without ever once saying that they are fictional (this is important). One day, after watching a movie, Aziz decided to make a pipe-bomb. He took a length of metal tubing and stuffed it with industrial-grade fertilizer (widely available and loosely regulated in a country whose primary natural resource is phosphates). The only problem now, was a fuse… for which he used a match. You can all guess, as I did, what happened next. The makeshift explosive detonated before he could throw it, leaving his hand a charred ruin. What little remained was amputated at the hospital in Er-Rachidia. I could only imagine the pain and horror of that four hour ambulance ride; the smell of burned flesh, the screaming. Yet he told it to me so matter-of-factly, he had had two years to come to terms with what had happened; what had shattered his life forever. He had gone from whole and normal, to broken and outcast in a matter of seconds. A few snapshots and he stood up, we had gone quiet after his story, but he broke the silence and said “shukran” (thank you). Then he took my hand, kissed it once, and ran out the door into the darkness of the street. ~ Four months later, after several meetings and innumerable emails and phone calls, Aziz and I waited side by side for a midday transit. It was mid-July by then, and the leaves of the poplars shivered in the warm breeze. The mountains were lit up by the flat, hot light of the summer afternoon, and people hid from the sun in cafés; beneath awnings or sometimes even an umbrella. A month or so before, Hakim, my contact in Rabat, had put me in touch with a prosthetics specialist who lived and practiced in the Spanish enclave-city of Melilla, on the northern coast. He had taken an interest in Aziz’ case, and was on vacation in our area. Our destination was Merzouga, where we would meet the doctor on the fringe of the Saharan Erg, a dune sea. But first we would spend the night in Er-Rachidia, which Aziz had not returned to since the accident. The transit arrived in short order and we watched as the miles of silent mountainsides and deep canyons slid by our window. A taxi from Er-Rich completed this leg of the journey, and soon we were sitting together at my favorite café, drinking sweet coffee and enjoying the shade provided by the towering eucalyptus trees in the back garden. My friends, Driss and Said, both joined us and Aziz looked back and forth between us as we spoke in English. I explained to him that one of them would be our translator tomorrow, to enable me to speak with the Doctor, who spoke Spanish, French, and Moroccan Arabic—no Tamazight. The entire process hung on what he would tell us the next day, and it would be then when he would tell us whether or not Aziz was even eligible for a new hand. Said agreed to join us the next day and the rest of the evening was spent introducing Aziz to other volunteers who were in the area. He also had the opportunity to try his first pizza, which he thoroughly enjoyed. We went to bed exhausted, and met Said the next morning at the taxi stand. The morning sunlight was already hot on my back as we crammed into the taxi bound for the city of Erfoud, considered by some to be the gateway to the northern Sahara. I ended up buying out the additional seats in another taxi who said he knew where the Auberge was that the doctor had referred us to. Before long we were powering across the Saharan Hamada, rock-plain, and watching as the heat roiled off the scorched landscape of blackened rock in shimmering, viscous waves. Soon, the sparkling sea of dunes rose from the rippling horizon, their gigantic reality seeming a fevered mirage in the midday heat. Merzouga itself was not much of a town, the center being a cluster of one-room shops and small hotels, half-swallowed by the eternally encroaching sands. Sun-darkened men in indigo jelaba robes and a few tired looking camels watched as we drove around trying to find our destination The auberges were scattered along the edge of the erg itself, and the shining red-gold dunes loomed over everything as we searched. After a time, we pulled up to a low, earthen building half-buried by the shifting sands. My throat was dry, and sweat rolled down my back as I stepped out into the sunlight and knocked on the front door. I was greeted by a rather suspicious Moroccan man, who turned out to be the owner, demanding what my business was asking after one of his guests. I looked sideways at Said and asked him to translate for me. “Tell the Spanish doctor that the American is here to see him, and be fast about it.” Shooting me a glare, the proprietor vanished into the dark interior leaving us to stand in the heat, which had climbed to nearly 115°F. After a while, a tall gray-haired man came striding up the hall toward us, with the proprietor trailing behind him sullenly. I had never been more relieved to see anybody in my life. Aziz was measured and evaluated in the doctor’s sweltering hotel room, and a cast was made of his damaged wrist and forearm. Speaking with the doctor through Said, I was told that Aziz was the ideal candidate for a prosthetic hand. There were a variety of options, but all were expensive; even with the doctor being willing to work for free, this would require a grant of some kind. Though the doctor said he was willing to start work right away, I asked him to hold off while I researched the funding possibilities. Aziz was ecstatic on the ride back to Er-Rachidia, but I was more subdued; I knew how much work I had ahead of me, and I knew how easily everything could come crashing down around my ears, sliding away like sand through my fingers. That night, I sat on the front steps of the apartment building where we were staying with my friends Marcus and Dipesh, looking up at the stars. I thought of the impossible responsibility and fragility of the task ahead, and how much was riding on it. I remembered what Aziz’ father had said to me a few weeks before as we sat at a café table back in the village “I know that this may not happen. But if you do this for my son, the whole valley will be happy.” The door opened behind me and Aziz sat down on the steps as well. “Hassan, I know this may not work out, but I want you to know that either way, we’ll still have a party in my village to celebrate.” I sat there in silence, not knowing what to say. ~ Peace Corps grants are tricky. They come in a variety of forms, but all are clear that they should be used only for a “sustainable” project, that benefits the community rather than the individual. What I was trying to do for Aziz, was not a Peace Corps project by the standard definition. It would change only one life, rather than many. In my estimation, this was still entirely worthwhile; I came here with the hope that if I could change one life, help even just one person, my time here in North Africa would have been worth it. But how was I going to do it? I researched on my own for awhile, making phone calls to various Peace Corps staff members trying to work things out. Finally, we found what we were looking for, a much needed loophole; one that could make many small scale projects that don’t fit Peace Corps guidelines a reality. It was so simple, I was at first wary of its legality. Although I wasn’t allowed to raise the money on my own, privately or through grants, there was no reason that an association could not do it on Aziz’ behalf. In essence: If I never touched the money, I wasn’t raising it. I racked my brain, trying to think of a Moroccan association willing to accept donations for a project like this. When I put the question to the Peace Corps staff on the other end of the phone, they replied slowly: “You misunderstood; when I said ‘any association’ I meant any association.” “So, means any non-profit back in the states?” “Yes!” “How about a church?” “Sounds fine to me.” I immediately sent an email to Christ the King Lutheran Church, back home in Durango, Colorado. I told Aziz’ story, and what I had been able to do so far. Their reply was brief, and very positive. The tagline of the email? “Let’s give the boy a hand” ~ Summer crept by, and I watched as my friends back home, faculty from my college (Fort Lewis), and colleagues from my work with the parks donated to Aziz’ cause. Ramadan came and went in a blaze of dehydration and delirium and I soon found my hands full with the Wedding Festival in Imilchil in mid-September. The nights lengthened and grew colder; the days began to be filled with the crisp, golden light of another Atlas Autumn. Finally, I got an email. We had reached, and overshot, our original goal on 9/11, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York which planted the bitter seed of distrust and hatred of Muslims in many Americans. Aziz is muslim, and this fact had been emphasized passionately by my old friend, Kip Stransky, during that service. He explained that on that day, of all days, we should remember to love those who are different from us and to extend our love and goodwill even to those that society tells us we should despise. After all, isn’t that what Jesus would do? ~ The leaves had been swept from the poplars by the river by the bitter winter wind, by the time the doctor informed me he had finished. We set a date for mid-December, and again I found myself sitting with Aziz as we waited for the transit. The morning was pale with frost and the people followed the weak sunlight from café to café as it slowly moved from one side of the street to the other. The first snow of the year glistened on the mountains high above and I was just beginning to warm up when the transit arrived. In the days that followed, Aziz and I made our way to the Northeast corner of Morocco. We stayed with friends of mine the whole way; they were very generous to take us in, and I thank them for it. Errachidia was the first stop, then ten hours by bus across the Saharan plain to Oujda, a rest in the beautifully forested village of Tafelghalt, and finally to Nador, a city perched on the shores of the Mediterranean. It was a journey of firsts for Aziz, and he marveled at things that I too often take for granted. Here are a few highlights: Stoplights exist to regulate traffic, ice can be used to cool drinks, occasionally the water that comes out of the tap is hot, just because the nice man tried to sell you something doesn’t make it legal, and so on and so forth. It was quite an experience for him, and for me as well, as I got a fresh look at my own life (which I long considered to be mundane and rather normal) through the Aziz’ eyes. We stayed in a hotel, for which the doctor had kindly paid the bill, and walked along the seashore for awhile which was another first for Aziz. My friend Socorra, who had been in Morocco as long as I, joined us in Tafelghalt and accompanied us to Nador to help out with translation. She was proving an invaluable source of support to both Aziz and me, as Aziz was not always on his best behavior, so two pairs of eyes were better than one. He started calling us ‘Mom and Dad’ which I found rather appropriate as we always seemed to be hollering at him about various things. In the space of two minutes I had informed him, much to his chagrin, that, no, he couldn’t ride the pony that we passed and Socorra then had to pull him out of traffic. So yes, ‘Mom and Dad’. After our walk, we took him to McDonalds, (yes, there’s one here too) a place I avoided like the plague in the states but rather enjoyed in the Moroccan setting. To Aziz it was a veritable ‘cave of wonders’, with well dressed people forming orderly lines to place their orders, music playing quietly from invisible speakers, and a non-fluctuating room temperature. I can empathize with him of course, as central heating now makes me patently uncomfortable (do people really need their houses so warm!?). Socorra and I chatted in English, blessed English, as Aziz tried to figure out what to do with his cheeseburger and McFlurry. He enjoyed it of course, but not nearly as much as the two rounds of bumper cars I paid for at a traveling carnival on the way back to the hotel. By the time the doctor arrived the next morning, I had few remaining fingernails after biting most of them to the quick. We exchanged our greetings in the hotel lobby and proceeded up to the room. The new hand was a wonder, a delicate sheath of life-like plastic skin fitting over a carbon-fiber frame. Aziz was dumbstruck by how real it looked. He told me he had never seen anything like this; to be honest, neither had I and I told him so. The hand was adjusted to fit right there in the room and, after an hour or so, it was on Aziz wrist and he was running around giving everyone high fives. The doctor was grinning ear to ear, as was Socorra who had been an amazing translator. I smiled cautiously, not believing it was done. But as I looked at Aziz’ face, I saw ecstasy; so different was he from the tired and downcast boy I had met on the road nearly a year before, that I could scarcely believe them the same person. We had done it, he and I, a little project that could have died at anytime was kept alive by a veritable chain of friends and advisors. This wasn’t my doing, as the doctor insisted to Aziz, I just had the pleasure of being the facilitator—a catalyst for change. But after all, isn’t that what Peace Corps is all about? ~ As the rain slowly dies down and daylight begins to fade from the hotel courtyard, I shut off my computer and sit in the dark quiet, listening to the drops of water falling from the drooping leaves of the palms. I think of all that I have seen in the past 22 months here. I think of the four months I have remaining in Morocco, and wonder what challenges and opportunities they hold for me. But most of all, I think of Aziz and smile.

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the delay,

-Charlie

Ok, ok. I realize that it has been about 5 months since my last entry. This is unforgivable and I have very few excuses; but here they are. Since my last entry, I have been engrossed in a complicated (and hopefully rewarding) project that will be coming to fruition in the next week... Wait for an update on that! Also, I have had to deal with my second Ramadan (the entire month of August), the Imilchil Wedding Festival (in September), the onset of winter, and winterizing my house. Lots of things to keep me busy.

I have five months left, and expect regular updates from me until my term ends. It's winter now, and there is not much else left for me to do.

For now, I would like to turn your attention to my work in the "Canyon Country Zephyr", a publication out of the red deserts of Southeast Utah, that I write for bi-monthly. It's a wonderful paper, one that I grew up reading (I picked up a copy whenever I was in Moab), and I hope that you will enjoy the Z as much as have! Enjoy the other authors work, and maybe even contribute to the Z! You know how difficult it is for the written word to survive in such dire economic straits, and we are already losing papers and post offices left and right! Ok, getting off my soapbox now, read on.

I may slack on the blog, but I don't slack on the Z! Below, you will find links to all eight of my entries so far, which you can download as a PDF and read at your leisure. If you would like to comment, you can have your say on the Zephyr main page or email my editor, Jim Stiles at cczephyr@gmail.com. Enjoy, and please forgive my blogging lassitude!

Volume 1: Oct/Nov 2010

Volume 2: Dec 2010/Jan 2011

Volume 3: Feb/Mar 2011

Volume 4: Apr/May 2011

Volume 5: Jun/Jul 2011

Volume 6: Aug/Sep 2011

Volume 7: Oct/Nov 2011

Volume 8: Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Expect more entries soon; on Winter, Ramadan, Wedding Festival, and of course my project (once complete).

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

Reading back over several of my older blogs from the same time this last year I have come to realize how much my life here in Morocco has changed. The same things still happen to me every day; I still go to the same stores, run the same errands, and sit in the same cafes. But now it's all normal, it's all easy, I can speak as much Tam as I need to in order to communicate in conversations about, well, anything. I have learned the importance of descriptive terms and how, if you use enough of them, you will eventually arrive at the word that you were searching for. I have friends now, good ones. Guys that walk down the street with me with their arm around my shoulders (a step up from holding hands, which everybody does), an older woman that yells at me whenever I forget to come over for tea, and merchants and cafe owners that try to marry me off to any woman that they happen to know (or see). Everybody knows me now, or at least knows of me. I can't say how many times a person, that I would swear to having never seen before, has walked up to me and struck up a conversation... always having started it by greeting me by my name (Hassan).

The gendarmes and town officials are my friends now as well, and I find them helpful and easy to work with. At fourth of July, they told me I could erect a flag pole on my roof and fly Old Glory proudly and prominently in the center of the village... provided of course that I fly a Moroccan flag above it. They loaned (or at least that was my impression) me a Moroccan Flag to use (full sized ones can be tough to obtain outside the cities), and when I went to return it the next day they refused to take it back. They said it was a gift and that, since I was Moroccan now, I could have it.

This is not the first time anyone has called me a Moroccan; no, I remember the first time very clearly. Seven or eight months ago, I was just emerging in late morning from my little cement house, blinking in the rich, golden sunlight of late fall. Feeling thin and frail, still sporting a headache and mild vertigo from my latest intestinal malady, I carefully fitted my sunglasses over my uncomfortably pale eyes and stared down the street. A boy of about 14 was headed my way, I had seen him often working in the warehouse across the street and he would always nod to me as I passed by. He stopped and appraised me for a second as I stood there swaying slightly. I smiled a little and murmured "Sbah lxir" (Good morning). He smiled back and repeated the phrase and we exchanged morning pleasantries. As I bid him farewell and turned to go to the store to buy the first food I had had in days, he took my hand and placed his other hand on my unusually prominent collarbone (did you know I have collarbones? I didn't before coming here!). He looked at me seriously and said: "Hassan, you are berber." "Hassan, shyin amazighn". Without waiting for a response, he turned and vanished into the warehouse and left me there staring after him dumbfounded and more than a little pleased. I'll always remember that.

This boy was the first, but now it is commonplace for people to call me amazighn or Hassan win Ait Haddidou (the tribe of berbers in the area; the sons of Haddidou). In fact, if an outsider from another village walks up me when I am with my Moroccan friend and refers to me as an aromi (foreigner), my friends will shame him and correct him with "No, Hassan is berber, Hassan is one of us. Hassan belongs in [village]". If I am alone and the same thing happens, inevitably a diminutive, white bearded old man in a jelaba robe and head-wrap will shuffle over to us, shake my hand, and wheeze out the same barrage of chastisements and insults to the outsider before bringing one hand up to the side of his head and shaking it in the motion for "crazy". Apparently, not only am I a member of the tribe now, but everyone and their uncle is expected to know it immediately.

I have also forged deeper connections with select Moroccans here in the village than I thought possible with my limited language. My best friend in the village, I'll call him "Haddou", and I have had hours long conversations on life, love, religion, and girls. He has come to lean on me as a confidante and often tells me many things that I likely didn't need to hear. He lights up whenever he sees me on the street and I spend a few hours with him every day in his brother's cafe where he works. He is the son of my host father's oldest brother, effectively making me his cousin, but he refers to me as his brother. One night when he was upset, (Haddou is 18 and, as I recall, being a teenager sucks) He was just sitting in a chair outside the cafe and staring at the ground. "What's wrong?", I asked. "I hate it here." He replied.

"In [village]?""No, the whole country, all of Morocco!""Oh, well, do you need a break?""Yes!""Well, let's go to America for an hour..."

We spent the next hour or two in my living room looking at pictures of the states on my computer and listening to "The Best of Jimmy Buffett" on my massive speakers. We didn't say much to eachother at first, but by the end his head had cleared and he was smiling and laughing. I stood up and shook his hand as he got up to leave and asked he was still upset. He said no, and thanked me. I told him to come back any time.

No one insults my language anymore. Or rather if they do, they tend to retract the statement later in the conversation. One day I was sitting on a cement sewage cap by the side of the road in a nearby village, waiting for the afternoon transit to come by and take me home. A man in his fifties walked up to me, took my hand and, after we had exchanged pleasantries, he said "You don't know any Tam". Instead of my standby reaction of last year, which was blushing slightly before looking at my toes and agreeing sheepishly, I locked him in a steely gaze, smiled a little, and replied "How would you know? We haven't even talked about anything yet.". The exchange ended after a long talk about the lack of snow last winter, the wheat in the fields, whether I was fasting for Ramadan (yes, I am), and inquiries after our respective families Moroccan and American. He showed me a nasty burn on his hand, and complained about the clinic being closed (a reasonable thing to complain about), and asked me for a light for his cigarette (always carry a lighter). As he turned to go I took his good hand, and asked quietly "Do I know how to speak Tam?", he smiled broadly and smacked me on the shoulder before answering "Yes!".

When it comes to language, I am my own worst critic. I hate my lack of vocabulary and lack of training (I have never had a tutor here in the village). I think I speak like an unusually slow toddler, if was in school here, I would be the tall kid who repeated the third grade... twice. But, to my constant surprise, people continue to understand what I say and even more shocking, I understand what they say. A couple of months ago the second years, the most experienced volunteers in the country, my icons and friends, left. Their service was up, they had finished their 26 months in typical style and panache, and suddenly the people I had grown so used to spending time around and learning from were gone. In their places arrived two starry-eyed new volunteers, fresh out of training and ready to take on the Atlas. Suddenly I had two people that looked to me as I had looked to the second years. I was suddenly an example, an advisor, someone to assist in insurmountable daily obstacles that didn't seem to me like such obstacles anymore. My memories flooded back quickly and I remembered how this place, these people, and this language seemed to me a year ago. The presence of the new volunteers gave me another perspective on the village and their arrival signaled a distinct change in the nature of my service. I was no longer on the uphill scramble. I was no longer trying to fit in and integrate. I was already there, I wasn't Charlie anymore, but Hassan win Ait Haddidou. I had arrived. I was in.

Thanks for reading, sorry for the delay,

-Charlie

P.S. If you are still wondering, "Does Charlie ever work?" The answer is yes I do, and it's going great... but that's all a story for another time.

Before I began my service here in Morocco, I was unaware that an entire village could hibernate. I mean, sure there’s Silverton that gets snowbound every winter and Lake City as well, but for the most part, American cities and towns just change activities. In Durango, kayaks are put away in the fall and swapped for skis and beacons, the climbing harnesses stay out but the medium changes from rock to ice. Or people go to Utah and claw their way up the sun warmed walls at Indian Creek. My village, however, hibernates. I didn’t fully appreciate this until I had the pleasure of watching it begin to stir this past week. Shops are getting new awnings painted and the café owners are renovating to best accommodate the tourist rush that we all hope will come. Today, I went down to my favorite café, run by a host cousin of mine, and brought my hookah with me. We sat upstairs in his newly refurbished seating area and smoked the hookah and talked about various things, such as when I was planning on getting married (a frequent question here, in the marriage capital of the Atlas). As I sat with my tea glass in hand, I looked around at the newly painted walls depicting various scenes from around the region. To my right was the lush shores of Lake Tislit and the sweeping expanse of the Plateau du Lacs; before me was a scene from the annual wedding festival depicting fully decked out amaizighn and Tamazight. The women in the painting were depicted in wedding garb resplendent in tribal cloaks and colorful headscarves, both signifying their belonging the Ait Yaza and Ait Brahim, the two tribes that make up the Ait Haddidou. The men wore white jelabas and head coverings; behind them all loomed a towering Kasbah. The painting that interested me most was that to my immediate right, of a moss shrouded waterfall. Cascade Agouni, the waterfall that I am currently writing grants and proposals to build a permanent trail to; anything to increase tourism. I have not yet seen it, though I will go up to survey it any day now with one of the local guides. I am sure I can find it myself, if you have been reading this regularly you know that I have been in far sticker situations in the wild Atlas, but I would prefer some company even if I have to speak Tamazight the entire day, an activity that wears me out far more than any physical exertion. ~ I went on my first run in a long while early this morning. The sun was not yet up and red dust still hung thick in the air from the recent Saharan sandstorm that howled around my house for three days prior (try sleeping through one of those, it ain’t easy). The snow was almost gone from the mountains and the fields were green with new wheat. I reached the end of my run and encountered a dog who woofed at me halfheartedly; I didn’t want to try him so I turned around. I’ll bring him some bread tomorrow and see how that goes. Dogs, like elected officials, accept bribes. The college (middle school) was free of kids since most of them are on holiday right now; Moroccan spring break and the remainder of the run was quiet except for a few confused farmers that jumped at the aromi (foreigner) that ran by them in sweatpants and a soccer jersey. Just wait till I start wearing shorts next month… The poplars are beginning to leaf out and the willows along the river are drooping with innumerable grey catkins, birds are beginning to return and as I run by the stands of poplars Hoopoes hurl shrill warnings at my back. Sometimes if I am sitting in my study reading, with the windows open to let in the warm spring air, sparrows will perch on the ornate iron bars and chirp at me tentatively as if asking to be let in. Not that this is unheard of, in the house that I lived in down in the Dades Valley, a year ago now, I often shared my afternoon tea with a couple of small birds and several gorgeous calico cats. Looking up at the mountains this afternoon, I realized that the snow is almost gone and suddenly I was back at the point in the seasons that I was first introduced to my high mountain village. I have come full circle and now I know what comes next. The gentle warm of Atlas summer, the glorious golden light of fall, and then once again a harrowing winter; I suppose it’s time for an encore. I have grown to love it here, and am loath to spend much time in my house anymore. If I am not walking in the mountains above the village, I am sitting in a café surrounded by Moroccan men and we talk about, well, everything. Projects are moving along slowly, but at least they exist. I am slated to start teaching at the secondary school next month, and have a few other things going as well. A few days ago, I also got to work in the fields for the first time. I loved it. I accompanied a friend of mine to his fields in the shadow of the rock fin that houses the Qaida and he taught me the finer points of irrigation. We diverted ditches and watched as the water rushed around the tender young wheat shoots. It was a beautiful morning and I went home to lunch thoroughly muddy and satisfied. My friend Ali has told me recently that he would teach me about farming in his fields as well. He has apple orchards and I can’t wait to learn about their upkeep and management, not to mention snag a few apples in the fall to make apple butter with. I am finally reaching the point that I am fully comfortable in my village, and reaching it makes me realize how uncomfortable I was initially. It was incredibly intimidating being here all alone, with barely function language surrounded by people that were different from me in so many ways. It’s hard to describe how one can feel alone surrounded by people, but I assure you it’s possible. ~ A friend of mine recently commented that I was having an easy time over here because all my blog entries are so positive and “uplifting”. I know this is true and the reason behind it was that I didn’t think anybody wanted to hear me complain. So, in attempt to bridge this gap in communication with you all, I will now try to convey some of the difficulties I have experienced throughout my service. This is not complaining, please understand, but a matter of fact reality check. First and foremost, is language. Imagine having communication taken away from you and then having to learn it all over again. Speech, hand gestures, and even etiquette. I was suddenly in a place where I couldn’t use my left hand for much of anything in public, since that is the hand people use to clean up after a visit to the bathroom. I have even been shamed by an old man who saw me writing with my left hand while sitting in a café! The language has been incredibly tough, Tamazight berber is even more difficult than Arabic, and little is actually written town about it. Not to mention it changes every fifty miles or so. The second hurdle vies for dominance with the first and that is illness. Not many people realize that I was sick for the first seven months in Morocco! I wrote about my brush with Typhoid last year, but otherwise I haven’t really mentioned it. Well, I will now: I have had at least 4 intestinal infections and 3 different parasites, I have been or more medications taken in tandem than I have ever before had to consume, and happily, got over it six months ago. I have been well ever since then. The last parasite that I had back in October was never identified, and the Peace Corps medical staff and I simply called it “The Kraken”. It took three days of the pharmaceutical equivalent of a hydrogen bomb to slay it. I can take one more round of that medication this year if need be, but no more than that due to its other damaging effects. Third hurdle: isolation. I have been alone more in the past year than I have ever before. I got a lot of reading done I suppose, and am more in tune with myself than I have ever been. But there were days, sometimes weeks, that went by when I really needed a friend to talk to (in ENGLISH) and had no one to turn to. My neighboring volunteers have been amazing. We really look out for eachother and are willing to drop what we’re doing to go nurse someone that’s sick, or to cook them dinner if they’re in a funk. We are all in this together. So, there are other things as well, and they vary from day to day; even easy days here are more difficult than being back in America. But those are the three big ones, and I hope they clarify for you “why this is the toughest job I’ll ever love” Happy spring, and thanks for reading, Charlie

Here is an entry from my first Peace Corps Journal (I am now on my second). It is from my first week spent with my host family in Ait Gmat on the Dades river. I was getting to know my family and my fellow trainees and had no idea where my site was as of yet. It's a good look back....

03.09.2010 (Day 9)

The wind howled all night last night. I slept very hard though, and awoke without knowing where I was, but my confusion made me smile. I was energized all day and enjoyed myself thoroughly. I felt like we were connecting to the community today, especially on our community walk out into the countryside. Everyone is so very friendly and I spoke to many people.

The countryside is beautiful here, and there are raised paths between fields of wheat and clover. These are bordered by blooming almond and apricot trees and what I swear is aspen. Silvery olive trees are everywhere; in fields and in every courtyard and garden. These fields have been cultivated for more than 1000 years and the crumbling kasbah that we walked through to is testament to the region's violent past. The valleys of the Dades and Draa anre the first actual civilization you hit coming north from the Sahara so the kasbahs defended the local people from Tuareg raids and also served as centers of commerce.

It's all so rich and fascinating and I am devouring every moment; the warm breezes, the rich golden light, and the echoing call to prayer. This country is beautiful and mysterious. I know this euphoria will not last, but taking it one day at a time, I think the two years will fly by in no time at all. Well, now to my host family, to dinner, and tomorrow to Ouarzazate for debriefing.

~

It's strange, in some ways it feels like my life has started over. I am learning even the most fundamental things in life all over again: how to use the toilet, even how to eat. This evening Hayat was having a great time teaching me to eat lentils with my fingers. I felt like an accomplished toddler when I finally figured it out and was lauded by the family.

I look forward to experiencing my site, wherever the heck it is, for two years. The opportunity to watch a village grow and change throughout the seasons will be a joy indeed.

~

And it still is... There have been many ups and downs, some of which you have read about here on this blog, but ultimately the euphoria did give way to a gentle acceptance and contentment. I am happy to be here, I am happy to stay, and in a year's time, I will be happy to return home with stories and memories to share with you all.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

NOTE: I just dug this up in my freewriting file on my computer. I forgot that I had even written it.The original date is below:

02.27.2011 Last year, at almost precisely this time, I found myself standing in line at the tiny Durango-La Plata County Airport waiting for my tickets to print. Behind me, the La Plata Mountains loomed large and icy, framed by the thick glass of the terminal windows; to my left a stuffed bear in a flyfishing getup stood sentinel by the gift shop. We were pretty quiet, my family and I. Looking back I think we were in shock. Peace Corps had been thrown around our family dinner conversation for almost a year and a half now, but I am not sure if it really hit us until we stood there, next to a flyfishing bear and backed by the familiar mountains that supported our world. I had decided to join the Peace Corps on a whim in the fall of the previous year. I had just finished an idyllic, albeit short, season at Grand Teton National Park; living in a one room cabin, flyfishing every day at twilight, and always with the rugged, glaciated backdrop of the Teton Range framing my every moment. After such a jaw dropping experience, I found myself back home in a strange doldrums of sorts. I like my home and I love my parents, but it didn’t feel right to be back in the role of live-in son. Sleeping in my room and eating for free weighed heavily on my mind. I was no longer who I was and thus home was no longer the place it had long been to me. In the midst of all of this confusion, I grew more and more frustrated by the lack of job offers from the NPS, despite the slew of applications I had fired off to many parks all across the country; I am not picky. No bites. A large part of this, I knew from unfortunate experience, was from the Preferential Hiring points afforded veterans; most of whom deserve it. Many hiring officials never even make it to my application. I was reading a book that fall at home, a creatively titled sequel to Muleady-Mecham’s book “Park Ranger” called “Park Ranger: the Sequel”. It was a good book and shared details about the Ranger’s life that had been too dark to be shared in the first book. But it wasn’t the fatal car crashes or high-angle body recoveries that commanded my attention, it was a brief mention of a ranger who got permanent status through “Peace Corps Preference”. I called some of my NPS friends and researched it. Sure enough, service in the US Peace Corps would qualify me for not just eligibility, but noncompetitive eligibility. Translated, it meant I could be hired without even having to apply for a position. It was a loophole, a magic bullet; hell, I figured, I could put up with anything for two years, so long as it led to that. If I went into the Peace Corps, my career was assured. I began my application that night. A season in Big Bend fell in my lap shortly after my application went through and I handled interviews from SW Texas trying to determine my placement, which had been narrowed down to the entire continent of Africa. Silence for awhile and I began a summer season at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, deliberately turning down interviews for positions in Yosemite and Wrangell-St. Elias so I could be closer to my extended family in the east. I spent the entire summer driving around Appalachia and the Piedmont visiting family and friends that I hadn’t seen in years. It felt so good to reconnect with my forgotten roots; to chase fireflies and walk around barefoot. I reeked of bug-spray and sweated constantly. That said, the serenity offered by the island and the constant boom of the surf gave me amazing peace. I left in the fall, more connected to the place than I had ever been before. I had people to miss and people to miss me, I can’t wait to see my rediscovered family again. A few months after that, I found myself in line at the airport, waiting to go to Morocco. I was bound for Africa. Africa. A name I had associated with mystery, danger, wildness for my entire childhood was to be my home for two years—four times longer than I had ever been away from home. Add to that the fact that I was to live in the midst of an Islamic culture, the enemy according to some. A few of my friends thought that I would be killed on sight, simply for being an American. Even my parents, two of the most broad-minded people I know, were concerned for my safety. Even I had my doubts, we are spoon-fed so much hate by our national media, that it worms its way into our collective unconscious. America, a nation that defines freedom for much of the world, was pointing the finger at an entire religion, billions of people, for an atrocity committed by a few fanatics. Our spin doctors told us who to hate and who to fear, within a decade the very sight of a man in a prayer robe and traditional beard sent our psyches into paroxysms of terror. The moment I stepped off the plane in Casablanca, the first time I met a Moroccan in my training village, and when I was fed, tended-to, and loved by two separate families, I knew I had been lied to. ~ Over the course of the past year, I have learned what defines a culture, I have seen grace, nobility, and love far surpassing my expectations. I have come to legitimately love the people here; even as I struggle speaking their language they are kind, understanding, and amused. I have had to relearn patience in the face of a system that is barely held together. I have relearned how to speak, how to cook, how to bathe, and even how to go to the bathroom. I never realized that culture begins at birth; arriving in Morocco I had to relearn everything. Even now, after so much work, I feel like a precocious 3rd grader. My only real achievement is staying well for the past 5 months—and sick for the first 7. I have also learned to live with myself, I can be alone for long periods of time without growing lonely; I read and write almost every day. I sit in the mornings on the cement expanse of my roof, regarding a vista that I know would have tourists talking for many months after. The unknown has slowly become known, and the unusual is now commonplace. I have watched my friends grow and change with me, many of them are leaving next month. They are finished with their service; they have done what they came to do, and now it is my turn to help new volunteers through the ups and downs of their first year; just as the previous volunteers have helped me. In many respects, the two years lived in the Peace Corps, is like living an entire life Birth to Death. The amount of personal evolution is stunning; and difficult to encapsulate. I found it difficult to talk about with people when I was home for Christmas—was that really two months ago? I am not sure if this evolution is making me a better person, or simply more accepting of my faults. Sometimes I think the former, other times the latter. What is for sure, is that I have made a home in this place that was initially so foreign and unknown. I have grown to love it; to find peace in its chaos, and to see indescribable beauty in each day spent in the high Atlas. Had I known any of this, I would have smiled to myself as I stood in that airport, to the right of the flyfishing bear, between my silent parents. I would have strode confidently toward the gate, ecstatic with the prospect all that was to come. As it was I hugged both my parents, all of us choking back tears, and taking one final look at the mountains through the windows, and at the bear by the door, I boarded the plane and was gone.Thanks for reading,

Charlie

The wind rustles the tall golden grass of the silent graveyard as I pass through it on my way home from lunch with my Moroccan family. It is cold today and a chill mist drifts down from the looming clouds that form a grey and threatening ceiling above my tiny village. Tombstones jut at odd angles from their mounds, poking above the sea of grass as immobile reminders of finality; the long stems sway in the breeze and brush the cold stones. Death surrounded by life. In many ways the entire village is like this right now, with the advent of spring. The willows have begun to bud along with the poplars and the tall walnuts that stand hidden behind the Qaida. Snow remains on the nearly sterile heights, but I know from last year that the thorny ifssi that grows here and there on the mountainsides will soon burst into a riot of bloom and the warming air will be heavy with their scent mixed with the raw, flinty smell of Atlas stone. In front of the post office, I see three of my friends who tell me with no preamble that a tsunami has hit Japan and hundreds of people have been killed. I have a hard time following the fast berber narrative and when they slow down I hear about swamped fields and houses on fire. It seems unreal, to hear of such pain half a world away spoken of in a 3000 year old dialect in the middle of the Atlas Mountains. I end the conversation quickly and I say I will go home to look it up on the internet. Passing through a narrow alleyway winding through the ruined remains of the Kasbah, I note how pale the earthen walls look against the leaden sky. Looking upward I see whisper-thin tendrils of snow beginning to descend the flanks of Tissekt Tamda, the folded mountain that I watch the sunset light up in the evenings. As the snow begins to fall, it seems as though the mountains are being erased, lines are blurred and the whole scene seems to take on an ethereal tone. I reach my door and let myself in with a bang of metal. I turn on my computer and let the modem dial, it takes a few minutes to load CNN. The horror is plastered there on the page for all to see; body counts, videos of sweeping waves and homes ablaze. On one part of the island, firefighters are working to quench an oil refinery that has caught fire, on another a nuclear plant is shut down as radiation leaks out into the surrounding countryside. I close the page down and sit for a minute. Trying to comprehend bad news is always difficult, I try to put myself in the shoes of the victims but never can. It is a level of pain and shock that I can’t even fathom; that I don’t want to fathom. I remember another time, nearly ten years ago, when I sat on the edge of my grandmother’s bed watching the twin towers crumble and collapse in New York. It was September 11th, 2001; I was 14 years old. People were running toward the camera, grey with dust and faces streaked with dark trickles of blood. My family and I sat there, stunned and no one spoke for a couple of hours. Our circuits were fried in the face of the horror that played out before us like a movie. But it wasn’t a movie. Last night, I listened to an NPR program called “This American Life”, they were talking about a 1950s talk show that hosted a survivor from the Hiroshima blast and I listened he told his story in halting, emotional, English. The show ended with a tearful handshake with the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb that fateful day, who was also a guest on the show. The pilot had retired and become a sculptor. His most famous work was a marble mushroom cloud with runnels of blood streaking down its sides. He called it ‘God’s Wind at Hiroshima?’. It is a question he asked himself for the rest of his life. Pain and Disaster. Death and Silence. Some of this we cause, some sweeps ruthlessly down from the universe. A bolt from the blue; an act of God. God’s wind? I can do nothing to help the people in Japan, I can do nothing from here in my village in the Atlas. I simply will sit here, feeling again as though I am on the edge of my grandmother’s bed and numbly watch as disaster unfolds. My thoughts and prayers are with those who are in pain. Peace be with you all. Thanks for reading, Charlie

It seems that yesterday marked one year in this glorious country that I am privileged to call my home. I have seen a full cycle of seasons here, and cannot believe that the time has flown so quickly. Just last March I had arrived here in Morocco and gone to Marrakech for my introduction to training. Today, I would have been busing over the Tizi-n-Tichka pass to Ouarzazate, which was to be my "hub" city for the next two months. I was tired and apprehensive, but overall I felt excited by the unknown adventure that lay ahead of me; a year out, the adventure continues and is made no less wonderful by the passage of time. I think that I will stop here, and let last night's journal entry speak for itself:

"03/03/2011 (-432) Day 365 Today marks a year in Morocco; one year ago today, I arrived at Aeroport Mohammed V and took the bus to Marrakech. I wrote my first journal entry in the football field at the Club CNSS and wondered at the great unknown before me. I have lived in a state of amazement and wonder ever since. I am sitting at a high table [on the roof] of Cafe Clock, near the Bab Boujaloud of the Fes Medina. The sun is setting on the city and the horizon is broken by crumbling minarets and banded by purple and gold. Swallows dart and dive about in the fading light and the soft sound of drums is carried to me on the same breeze that bears them aloft on their evening rounds. An old man in a striped jelaba is pacing on a nearby rooftop, laundry hangs from a nearby window, and somewhere far off children laugh as they play. Soon the call to prayer begins to echo from countless mosques slightly offset from eachother. The reverent cries form a round, a whole and circular sound. God is great, indeed. I spent the morning with [my friends] in their Villa on Anfa Hill that overlooks La Corniche of Casablanca. and the endless swell of the Atlantic. [my friend] and I had a quiet breakfast this morning and later [her husband] took me out into the city in his convertible. As we crusied beneath the fading grandeur of the french art deco architecture. [We spoke for a long time, about many things before he took me back to get my bags and meet the train]. The train took me to Fes and I wrote for most of the journey, sleeping for the rest. After a few hours the soporific swaying of the train and the clicking of the wheels forms an irresistible lullaby. One year has ended; another lies before me. What wonders are ahead for me now? Tomorrow to Midelt, then to Rich, and finally to [...] the little village in the Atlas that is now my home."

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

The day was bitterly cold and I pulled my jebada tighter about me as I walked up the main hill toward the village Post Office. Dark clouds hung heavy over the mountains toward the North and a chill breeze was beginning to blow through the streets, moaning and kicking up dust. Around me, men in jelabas pulled their hoods down against the dust and some of them sat in the cafes looking somberly at the churning sky.

The transit I boarded some time later was quiet; people chose not to speak, conserving what little warmth there was in that metal box. Crossing the pass above Busemoh, it was beginning to snow, stinging particles of ice that lashed sideways against the windows and formed strange shifting whorls on the pavement before us. That afternoon was spent in the village of Outerbate, sitting by a crackling woodstove and enjoying the company of one of my friends and neighbors on the mountain.

Just before sunset, it began. The wind had died and the snow fell thickly in curtains of fat, white flakes that streamed by outside the window and began to collect on the mud walls of the surrounding houses. Unseen in another part of the village, a mule brayed plaintively, but even that was muffled and then swallowed by the silence of the snow. Anyone who has spent time out in the winter snows can attest to the effect it has on sound, even the loudest shout disappears into the icy depths of a winter forest. All that can be consistently heard is a slight hiss, scarcely audible, of snow falling and collecting around me. Flake upon flake, crystals fusing together and crushing downward beneath the weight of their fellows. The sun the next day will melt the top most layer, crystals dissolving into liquid water only to refreeze beneath the light of the winter moon into fantastic spiraling shapes. Sediment will melt the surface layers faster, dust suspended in the atmosphere, borne in from the desert, leaving the face of old snow sun-cupped and agitated, like the ripples in a puddle during a heavy summer storm.

What storms in summer possess in violence and force, the snow makes up for in longevity. Like the dripping of a spring that erodes stone, the silent and steady force of falling snow is both light and heavy all at once. It covers the mountains in its silent blanket and the world is born anew with the coming of the morning sun.

~

A day later, only white streaks remain in the chill shadows of the peaks; beside walls and beneath the barren trees. Only these pale remains testify to the majesty of the winter storm. A rare gift of snow in the Atlas…

Another bus trip down the Ziz Gorge to Er-Rachidia. I love it, looking down from the high windows of the Souq bus into the sea of Date Palms along the river. Nothing contrasts so brightly from the colors of the Sahara-side Atlas than that of green palm fronds and dark Oleander. It was sunset as I rode through, the sun was lighting the tops of the cliffs, setting the crumbling French watchtowers aflame with its golden light. It was dark when the bus trundled into Er-Rachidia and I made the familiar walk through the dusty alleyways to an apartment where I have spent a great deal of time over the course of my service here. The volunteer who lived there had since left the country and been replaced by a new one, and several members of his Staging Group were there to greet me when I walked in. After an evening spent with them, swapping stories and eating good food, I awoke the next morning to shafting sunlight and made my way out into the city to find breakfast while everyone slept. Not many people were moving this early; Er-Rachidia is never very busy in the daylight. The people here have learned to hide from the sun, a habit that continues even in the milder months of winter here. I had a layered pastry for breakfast, chased by an avocado smoothie so thick that I had to eat it with a spoon. I was alone at my table on the balcony above the cafe, watching the people below me finish their breakfasts and working on a letter to my brother, who is in school in Seattle. Paying the waiter a few dirhams and offering my thanks, I walked back out into the sunlight. I went back past the market to another Cafe, this once named for my village, and went into the back garden to enjoy the towering green trees and listen to the birds singing unseen among their boughs. A puppy tottered among the tables begging for scraps and another snoozed in the sun beneath a table at the rear of the garden. Cats mewed from the rooftop of the cafe and everywhere was cool breeze and dappled sunlight. I sipped my coffee slowly and waited for my friend arrive, a Moroccan who I had been introduced to some months before by the volunteer now gone. When I saw him in the doorway, I motioned him back and he sat with me for some time. We discussed our lives, and work, and ideas that we could collaborate on in the future. He is university educated and knows perfect english, and I enjoy spending time with him. After awhile, he left and I waited for another friend to meet me.~ When she came into the cafe, I waved to her excitedly and she sat down. In the cities, women can sit in most cafes free from suspicion or ridicule. This is not the case in the rural areas like my village where even come female volunteers will not sit in the cafes for fear of attracting negative attention. My friend Malika grew up in Er-rachidia and her family still lives in the city. While in the states, I had picked up a computer power supply from a generous friend of mine to replace Malika’s which had been fried on the powerful electrical current found here. I know this all too well, having toted a pair of speakers all the way to Morocco only to have them sizzle and smoke and then die. It was not a good death. I handed Malika the power supply and she thanked me and invited me to have tea with her family. I followed her as we walked across the city, across the dry riverbed and past the Muslim and Jewish cemeteries to an area of Er-Rachidia I had never before seen, passing between the cool cement houses, with the hot desert sun beating down on our heads, it was easy to forget the brutal cold of the village and the fact that it was January. We arrived in front of a beautiful home draped with crimson bougainvillea, and Malika ushered me into the cool interior of the house where I met her mother and sister. Tea was soon served and, I confess, it was some of the best tea that I have yet tasted here in Morocco. It was not overly sugared and was flavored with a winter herb that Malika said was called merd’dduš. Almost all Moroccan tea has a base of black tea and sugar, but it is the herbs added that make them unique, and they change according to the seasons. Now, winter, was the time of merd’dduš and, up on the mountain, shiba which is a spicy green herb said to encourage warmth. In the summer the tea is flavored with cooling nana (mint) and it is this variation that makes Moroccan tea famous. Although I am a fan of flio (peppermint). Accompanying the tea was a variety of delicious edibles, including mascota a moroccan cake, fresh bread (aġrum), fresh olive oil (ziit-ziitun), and locally rendered date syrup (tahaloute) which proved to be absolutely amazing. After a long time talking and laughing in both Tamazight and English, I got up to leave and Malika walked me to the door, but not before her mother put up a hand and walked into her bedroom, motioning for me to wait. She emerged clutching a small parcel to her chest which she handed to me smiling. I removed the plastic wrappings and found myself holding a small shallow bowl made of fossil-filled dark stone. It was beautiful. I was speechless, a thousand things to say in English flowed through my head, but nothing came in Tam but a simple thank you. It was impossible to convey that this was likely the most meaningful gift I had received in Morocco. I stammered my thanks, several times, and then Malika led me out into the sunlight. We parted ways at the main road and I walked along under the sun, retracing my route back across the dry riverbed and toward the part of the city that I knew. I drew plenty of stares as a tall, blond aromi (foreigner) was a bit of an anomaly, but I didn’t notice. After nearly a year in the fishbowl, standing out is just a simple fact of my life here. ~ That night I sat on the roof of the apartment building up among the satellite dishes watching the city come alive as people flooded out onto the streets for their evening shopping and socializing. Meanwhile I watched the sun setting crimson on the desert horizon and watched as scores of white egrets soared in from their daytime haunts along the River Ziz, searching for food among the palms. I sat for a long time and watched the city move and the stars come out. I smiled to myself thinking back over the 11 months I have spent here and realizing how much I love this place. Thanks again for reading,

Charlie

My time in America seems as though it was a dream as I sit here in my village watching the weeks fly by. Already I have been back a month, and it feels as if I was never gone. Life continues to tick by as usual, the same men sit in the same cafes, following the warm sun from one side of the main street to the other. Morning belongs to one set of cafes and afternoon to the other; a time honored system in a land with no central heating. The same group of kids play soccer (football) in the street in front of my house most nights, hollering and carrying on. Sometimes fights break out or a kid knocks at my door asking for me to retrieve the ball he has kicked onto my roof. Souq every weekend with its customary flood of people, and lunch with my Moroccan family on Fridays with the shaking of hands, drinking of tea, and eating of couscous, which is perhaps one of the tastiest foods on the planet. I mention this not to convey boredom, but rather the delightful regularity of life here in the Atlas. Everything moves slowly, and routines change with the seasons. Very few people are transient here, most have lived here all their lives and will continue to do so; in that respect, my village is not so different from small town America.

Everything feels different after my visit home, not only was I happy to be back, but I am still happy to be here. I delight in the culture and the people that I see every day. Interactions that before I would have viewed as negative now only serve to make me smile and laugh; I feel a deep inner peace and satisfaction and feel content to sit back and watch the seasons pass. I am working though, and have several projects on the table. However, as none of them are sure yet, I will not elaborate on what they are, just that they are proceeding and look promising. I hope to meet with the school soon about reinvigorating the defunct Environmental Education Club, so that will be something to do. But mostly I, and really all of the people of the Atlas, simply have to survive the winter cold and await the glorious months of summer. Months that I was unable to fully enjoy last year due to illness and culture shock.

A good friend and fellow volunteer told me that after one year, I would begin to feel more content here. She said that after seeing one cycle of seasons, there weren’t too many surprises after that. I tend to believe her, and I do not think it coincidence that this feeling of confidence and contentment comes so close to my one year mark, which falls in early March. This is also a reason, I believe, that many people say that Peace Corps doesn’t really start until the second year. Well, I am ready to begin and look forward to my remaining months here. May they be glorious. Thanks for reading,Charlie

Resting my head against the window of the crowded third class carriage, I could feel the rhythm of the train wheels as they clattered against the rails. I glanced at the other Peace Corps Volunteer dozing quietly in the seat across from me and raised my head to look out at the scenery flashing past. The countryside between Fes and Casablanca was green and lush; olive groves marched up and down hillsides and smooth brown fields stretched to the horizon. The day before, spent in the old city, or medina, of Fes had been cold. But not nearly so cold as my village in the Atlas that I had left behind several days before. I knew I would not see it again for over a month; I was going home. ~ A cold day in Colorado, with the Mercury having plunged into the negatives at night, and climbing into the single digits and teens during the day. Near sunset, I find myself standing on the cold stone of a Park Service overlook high on the Mesa Verde cuesta, above the Mancos River Valley. The scene below is perfect and still, and the land is a patchwork of sun and shadow from the retreating snowstorm. Over the La Plata range, silver banners of snow connect the earth to the sky and everywhere hums with the dormant potential of a winter world. Snow covers all, the conifers stand black against its brightness while the cottonwoods along the frozen river and the aspens on the mountainsides form a grey fog of uncertain shape and color.

This has long been a special place for me; it is a place where I go to think, reflect, and contemplate my life. I came here minutes after being told I had been hired as a Park Ranger at Mesa Verde and returned many times that summer to watch the thunderstorms roil and growl above the mountains. I came here each time I returned home from the many parks that I worked at after that, sometimes when the future was uncertain and other times when I had only a few short days of respite before being again swept along in its tide. This is a time such as this, in the middle of three weeks in America in the midst of my Moroccan experience.

~

After ten months in Africa, the familiar and comforting seems strange. I still know how to function here, I remember how to use hot water straight out of the tap, how to get groceries at the supermarket, even how to drive in the snow. But my brain feels as if it is not fully engaged in the actions of my daily life at home. Going to coffee shops to see friends, spending time home with my family, visiting my grandmother; all of it feels like muscle memory, a remembered routine. Every street corner, storefront, and park holds multiple layers of memories for me; memories of youth, adolescence, now adulthood. There are so many associations with everything in this place that I am tied to it eternally; it is unquestionably home. But how do I reconcile all that I have learned in Africa, all that I have seen and felt in these past ten months, with places and people that have changed little, if at all?

I know cannot allow myself to grow comfortable here, to revert into the person I was before Morocco, to pick up my American life where I left off. I have sixteen months left in my Peace Corps Service and travel after that. Who knows what else will have changed in that year? In many ways, I feel as though I am just getting started in Morocco. So these are the things that I sit and think about while looking down into the Mancos Valley, gazing through the many layers of memory and time; trying to make it all fit. ~

On another day, I find myself driving along the ice-choked San Juan river outside of the town of Bluff, Utah. The snow lies thick upon the ground here also, drifted and swirled by the desert wind; each chamisa or snakeweed surrounded by a berm of pale crystal. The white sandstone cliffs that encircle Bluff rise before me and I know that I am close to my destination. Soon I begin to drive slowly through the town. There is the old trading post, closed and asleep beneath bare cottonwoods, the lodge on my left, the coffeehouse on my right. The town is tiny and quiet, it is also where I ultimately would like to settle down and live quietly with my family, at least in one fogged and distant possible future. The Twin Rocks Cafe is open for business and I pull into the gravel lot at the base of the steps.

Eating in this Cafe has long been one of my favorite pastimes when I am in this part of the world, I like to sit and eat, read the local paper, and listen to the conversations of the locals. Across from me, two older women strike up a conversation in Navajo and I listen to the ebb and flow of their beautiful language. I took a year of Navajo in college, and found the language incredibly difficult, but now after close to a year of speaking Tamazight, Navajo does not sound strange to me anymore; maybe I'll try learning it again. Another possible future.

Later, standing at the base of Comb Ridge next to the wash, I look up along the red and white teeth of the monocline as it stretches away to the north, fading with distance before being abruptly swallowed up but the volcanic laccolith of the Abajo Range. Cedar Mesa rises to the northwest, tiers of red stone stairstepping into the sky cleft to its base by the dark mouths of many canyons. Another place of layered memories, I stay there and look and listen to the desert around me. I look at the tracks of coyote, raven, mouse, and lizard imprinted in the soft dusting of snow at my feet and see where the ice has been broken for them to drink. Everywhere there is life and to me life in the desert is the most beautiful there is. Like a star in the night sky, life here blazes strong in the void and the land's harshness melts away before its vibrancy.

~ My time in the states came to a close after three weeks when, to my surprise I was ready to go back to Morocco. After saying goodbye to most of my family, my brother having left the week before to go back to college, I watched the landscape fade into faceless cloud as the plane to Denver climbed out of the airport and turned northward. My Dad accompanied me to Denver International Airport and we parted ways in at the gate, him to go to Chicago on business, and me to Frankfurt and finally back to Morocco where I would spend the rest of my term. Ten months down, sixteen remaining. The flight across the Atlantic was easy and painless and I landed in Frankfurt at midday with a ten hour layover to enjoy. As my bags were checked, I only had a small backpack with me so I exited through customs to go out into the city. An hour or so later, after a bratwurst and paper cup of Gluwein (hot, mulled wine) sitting on a park bench in the square, I found myself walking along the River Rhine and looking out on the fog shrouded city of Frankfurt. I stopped inside a redstone church on the river bank and sat in a pew for awhile enjoying the warmth and the grey light streaming in through the stained glass windows. I was lost in my own thoughts for awhile and I am not sure how much time passed before I left the church and continued on to a small Beer Garden situated on an out of the way street corner. I enjoyed a tall tankard of German lager in the small cozy interior and talked the hostess into posting a “Bread, not bombs” sticker from a Durango Bakery behind the bar. Looking at it, a little piece of home in the midst of foreign surroundings, it reminded me of myself; only, I am not sure where home is anymore. Is it with my family? They have their own lives now, and my brother is flourishing in Seattle which he seems to view as home now. But where is mine? After the strangeness of the last few weeks I began to realize that home was really wherever I happened to be. The Colorado Plateau will always be my place; I will always belong there. But now, I had reached a point where the concept of home has become more nebulous and abstract. I was surprised to discover, standing later on a bridge staring into the muddy waters of the Rhine, that Morocco now felt more like home than my parents’ house in Colorado; that I was looking forward to being back almost as much as I had anticipated my “homecoming”. I could never have discovered this without taking a trip back to Colorado and the epiphany filled me with an electric anticipation. ~ Seeing the spire of the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca from the airplane window, I knew that I had arrived back in Morocco and the rest of the day passed in a blur of airport activities. I had no trouble with baggage and I again found myself with my head resting against the train window as it rumbled through the foothills of the Rif Mountains toward Fes. Once there, I got a hotel room near the Bab Boujaloud, the tannery gate and main entrance to the Ancient Medina, and I fell into bed for eighteen hours, sleeping straight through the jet lag. Sitting early the next morning in a café by the Bab Boujaloud, I looked around at the scene before me. Men in flowing jelabas leading donkeys or pushing carts bustled back and forth through the gate. Sleepy school children wandered out from their homes deep in the medina and walked out through the gate to school carrying colorful backpacks. As I savored my coffee and harsha (a cornbread-like flatbread that’s great with honey) and looked at the Arabic script on the storefronts and at the towering minaret of the nearby mosque, I felt a sensation of relief come over me. I was back in the familiar, I was back to communicating in shaky Tamazight and broken Arabic, I was back to using Turkish toilets and questionable transportation. I was home, and it felt good. As always, thanks for reading, Charlie P.S. To my friends and family that I have once again left behind, I miss you already. Stay as awesome as only you can be!

It was cold this evening. This is normal now, here in the Atlas, as winter as arrived after a long and glorious autumn. The poplars on the river are bare and the mountaintops are dusted with a delicate rime of snow. I lay back in my chair on the roof of my house and looked up at the sky. The stars were beginning to show small and cold against the blue darkness of the dusky sky and the half moon was perched, glowing at the very apex of the dome; neither coming nor going. I lay there and listened to the sounds of the village around me; children playing in the street, dogs barking in the distance, every once and a while the grate and rumble of a vehicle passing my house. As the cold began to permeate my clothing I stood and looked down at my shadow cast by the moonlight. Long and thin, I could make out the folds of my dark cloak, and the peaked hood of the jelaba robe that I have taken to wearing every day. I looked out over the village, at the smoke rising from the chimneys of the mud houses, and the glowing string of street lights strung out along the road where it passed through the sleeping fields. It was so quiet and peaceful, I wished I could stay longer, but the cold forced me inside.~ This has been a month of many things, some the normal every happenings of life here, and others wild, unexpected, and delightful. L’عid axatar, the great feast of Abraham, occurred mid month and I spent three days with my family and their relatives talking, laughing, and sharing in the holiday spirit. I was able to assist in the ritual sacrifice of a ram in front of the house and the subsequent butchering and consuming of the same animal. It was an excellent few days, though seeing the entire family together reminded of how much I miss being with mine and sharing in the easy camaraderie of kin.

Later in the month, I headed to Rabat the capital city in a wild day of traveling across the country by car and by train. It was good to be back there, and it felt fairly normal to navigate and spend time with my friends there. The committee of which I am a member met with Peace Corps staff in a small room at a hotel in the seaside town of Mehidia. While there we also got to meet the members of the new staging group of Volunteers who were just finishing up their two months of training, just as I had seven months before. Suddenly I realized that I was no longer among the newest volunteers in the country, and that the volunteers ahead of me would be leaving soon and suddenly I would be among the “experienced”. Soon enough I would be breaking in the replacements for my friends on the mountain who will be returning to their lives back in America.

In a moment of time alone, I stood on the beach and looked out over the dark Atlantic as the waves lapped at my toes and the warm sun beat down on my back. I thought of my country out there across the interminable swell, of my mountains, my desert, and the tall lighthouse where I worked all last summer, gazing out toward Morocco. So much has changed since then, and most of the change has been in me. Running back through my experiences of the past nine months, I had difficult thinking about all that had occurred and all of the things that had happened to and around me. So much behind me, and even more ahead, I look forward to it with excitement and caution. I no longer fear the unknown, as it is slowly revealing itself to be yet another chapter in the life of a global citizen.

A few days past that moment on the beach, I sat back in my seat and listened to the train clicking and whirring as it passed through countless small towns between Rabat and the port city of Casablanca. I adjusted my tie and looked out the window at a white minaret silhouetted against the blue sea as we passed. I was nervous, for whatever reason, to meet the people who were to pick me up at the railway station in the city. I was to spend Thanksgiving with an American family who lived in Casablanca and had bought a tie and dress belt for the occasion. I still looked a little rough around the edges, but I was clean at least and was ready for some time in upper echelons of Moroccan society; a direct contrast from my usual day to day experience.

As the family pulled up in their Subaru, the first I had seen since coming to Morocco, they greeted me warmly and helped me with my bags. Thanksgiving dinner was several courses of amazing food and wine served at an English speaking club in Casablanca. Dancing followed and I enjoyed mingling with my fellow Americans; one woman threw her arms around my neck simply because I was in the Peace Corps. Her hug and whispered thank you meant the world to me; I never get hugged anymore.

What followed was a string of four incredible days spent in a beautiful Villa by the sea, eating good food, taking hot showers, and playing tennis with the godson, who was my age, on a clay court behind the house. The godson, my new friend, took me out one night to see Casablanca and I enjoyed having drinks with him at Rick’s Café Americain (movie enthusiasts eat your heart out). We ended the evening on the top floor of a hotel looking out over the lights of the largest city in Morocco and the minaret of the Hassan II Mosque looming against the dark ocean. The next day we walked by the cafes and shops along the waterfront talking, laughing, and enjoying the salt air. The couple hosting me was incredibly kind and generous; they treated me like family and gave me the run of the house, sharing meals with me as well as their time. I learned much from them and I will always be grateful for the sanctuary they gave me from my sometimes harsh reality here. But all things must end I soon found myself back in Errachidia blinking in the Saharan sunlight, steeling myself for the long journey back to my site.

It took time getting back and I was fairly tired and depressed by the time I stepped off the transit at the top of the hill. But I heard a voice say my name behind me and my friend Mostafa threw an arm around my shoulders and shook my hand, demanding to know where I’d been. I smiled realizing that yeah, I was home.~ So here I am in my little house in the Atlas, I have one last day remaining in my site before I start the long Journey home for a Christmas spent with my family and friends. I can't wait, and the time to leave will be here before I know it. Thanks for reading, Charlie

I woke minutes before my alarm went off this morning. As it began its incessant beeping next to my head, I stirred beneath my warm mound of blankets and swore softly. 7:00 am is early, especially here in the High Atlas at the beginning of winter. But knew I had to get up this time; I wanted to run. I remember the last time I really ran, a full year ago, barefoot on the beach in North Carolina as the sun rose sluggishly above the breakers and seabirds wheeled, crying above the surf, searching for breakfast. I ran a couple of times at the beginning of my service here, slowly and painfully between spells of illness. But now I have been well for almost a month and can feel my strength slowly returning. It is time to go again.

~

I pull on an 80s style tracksuit that I bought at the market a few weeks ago, and a baseball cap with the Colorado flag on it, and pound down my front stairs to the street. I open the door slowly to silence and stillness. It is bitterly cold and my breath turns to steam in the air before me. No one is in sight, most everybody is still asleep at this time of morning. I lock the door behind me and walk to the edge of the fields, where I begin to run. Frost covers the ground in a thick blanket of silver, every blade of grass or ploughed furrow of earth made ethereal and ghostlike. The morning sun blazes on the mountain tops above the village, but the valley floor where I stand is still thick with cold and shadow. The only sound in I can hear is the pounding of my feet on the pavement and the rhythm of my breathing.

Across the wide swath of the fields, another small village is perched on a long fin of dark stone. Smoke trails from the stove pipes of several of the mud houses and rolls across the grounds, the cold making it impossible to rise. Everywhere holds the air of sleep and perfect peace. Out across the fields a lone farmer slowly makes his way out to his land. He is a small dark figure against the silver frost and the bone-white trunks of the bare poplars that grow along the River Melloul.

The sun begins to shine over the summit of the folded mountain and I watch as morning and warmth comes slowly to the valley. Later, on my roof, I stretch and drink a cup of coffee. The frost is melting from the fields and color is slowly returning to my village. Down below a group of children chases a pair of Storks, their feet pounding on the bare ground; they laugh as the Storks float upward and away, like great kites against the mountain backdrop. The smoke is rising now, forming neat plumes above the village near the river; spiraling, twisting, and dissipating in the warming air. Soon all is as usual in my village in the Atlas, the sun has come and the light is the even and constant gold of Fall. This was worth waking up for.

10/16/2010

This is a short entry concerning an experience I had today on souq day.

I woke up late to a cold bedroom and dragged myself reluctantly out of bed. I pulled on my clothes and walked into the kitchen, put on some music, and made coffee. As is my custom, I went up onto the roof to drink it. There was the new stovepipe with its fresh collar of cement that my host father/landlord applied only yesterday to prevent any future flooding of my study. I added some water to the cement to keep it from cracking as it dried. Looking out from the house I could see that it was a sunny day with high clouds scudding across the sky. The sunlight held very little heat however and the breeze was cold on my face.

I walked aimlessly into souq and wandered among the tents for awhile. I spoke briefly to merchants that I knew and had tea in a small shop with a man about my age from a nearby village. I just didn’t feel much like talking with people today, I wasn’t really in a bad mood or feeling particularly stressed, just somewhat anti-social. I didn’t buy anything and was on my way home when I ran into Fatima.

Fatima is one of my favorite old Berber ladies in my village. The female culture is very difficult to learn about as a male in this society for many reasons. But Fatima is my main window into the other half of life here and she invites me over for tea occasionally, which is what she proceeded to do as we stood off to the side of the road talking. I promised to come by at four, expecting a pleasant and very formal tea in her little sitting room. This was the case last time I went over for tea; I sat on a hand woven carpet on the floor of the salon and looked around the room at the nice sideboard with its silver teapots and at the rich carpets and plump cushions lining the walls. Salons are often the fanciest room in a Moroccan home, and they are also the only room a guest usually sees. The kitchen is off limits; I am normally entertained and impressed in the salon while being fed lots of tea and various food items such as this year’s almonds or maybe some bread and fresh olive oil.

The bread here, called aġrum in Tam, is a white bread shaped into flat round loaves. Many people here get their bread from the shops on the main street. Where it is stocked fresh every morning, I have often wondered where it comes from. It is one of my favorite things here in Morocco, fresh bread every morning. I am not entirely sure how I’ll go back to eating sandwich bread back in the states. Maybe I won’t, we’ll see. The bread is always perfectly baked and there always seems to be enough to go around, but never so much to leave “day-olds” the next morning.

~

Four o’clock rolls around and I step out of my house onto the deserted street. All of the commotion from Souq is gone and the people have returned to their respective villages with their purchases. Ducking into a small alley, I walk up to Fatima’s small, mud house. The door is ajar but I knock anyway and wait for an answer. I voice inside the house yells something in Arabic and I announce myself. The voice does not belong to Fatima, but I soon hear her sweet, lisping Tam explaining who I was. A young girl, about my age, comes down the stairs and beckons me to follow. She is lovely, and I am mesmerized; I have never seen her before. She leads me upward and I start to turn into the salon as before. She shakes her head and points farther upstairs. I continue climbing and find myself in a large kitchen with a high ceiling. Fatima is there, next to a large flat table covered with about ten rounds of unbaked bread dough. Another woman I didn’t know sits next to her and looks up at me quizzically, but not startled, and Fatima explains that I was invited for tea. I am given a small plastic stool to sit on and tea was put on a small butane burner in to corner. The girl takes her place next to Fatima and explains that she is her daughter, now living in the south near Agadir, she is up here for a visit.

The girl, whose name is Naima, sits across from Fatima on the floor; each has earthenware dish before her into which she throws premeasured lumps of risen dough, deftly using the dish to pat them out into rounds. This is done with incredible speed and practiced grace; there is a sort of beauty to the whole affair and I find myself caught up in watching them work. We speak in short simple sentences, but most of the time is spent in comfortable silence and I feel as though I am part of something I have not yet experienced. I imagine Fatima teaching Naima how to do bake bread, as her mother had taught her, on the floor of this same kitchen and now here they sit facing eachother, their hands moving in mirrored rhythm, the girl grown up and married to a man on the other side of the country.

I watch as layer upon layer of unbaked rounds is piled upon the table, with clean cloths between them to stop them from sticking together. I am still confused though, why so much bread? I ask and Fatima explains quietly in her soft Tam, that this is the bread for the entire town. I am still confused for a moment, and then it hits me; this is the bread that I buy every morning in the shops on the street. This is the bread that I see the boys running back and forth to the cafés and hotels in the afternoons. I have been eating Fatima’s bread for 5 months and never thought to ask where it came from. When do we ever ask where our food comes from in the states? Usually we don’t really want to know. But here I am able to complete the cycle in my mind. There are no unknowns left the equation. This bread comes from the golden fields of wheat I see caressed by the morning breezes in late summer. This is the wheat that is cut by hand and stacked in sheaves along the road; the same wheat that is then sold in massive sacks at the Souq every week. Then being ground into flour either by hand or by the machine that people wait in line to use down near the square. The flour that Fatima then uses to make her bread that I buy every day. It is so simple and elegant and for the first time I feel a sense of loss, wondering at the

degree of separation between us and our food back in the states.

The water boils for tea and they add peppermint, a rare treat; peppermint tea is my favorite of all of the varieties I have been served here. The room fills with the smell and we continue to talk, the conversation speeding up as I adjust to hearing women speaking Tam instead of the men that I normally talk with. The tea is ready and Naima pours and serves it to us as we all sit around a small round table on our plastic stools. Tiny shortbread cookies are brought in and a plate of zmita, the baked flour I was served a lot during Ramadan, is here as well. But of course, there is fresh bread, and sweet olive oil to dip it in.

When tea is finished, Fatima begins bake the bread in her butane oven, which has two shelves. It is a quick process and most of it is done with a flat wooden spatula and by hand. The smell of fresh bread mixes with the earthy smell of the house and the sharp scent of peppermint tea that still lingers. It creates a magical, indescribable fragrance that I feel is uniquely Moroccan; it is one of many things I will miss when I go. I can sense a bond slowly forming between myself and this place, it is like the bonds I have felt in the past with the parks I have worked at or really any place that I have stood still long enough to know. These bonds are forged over many months, but they are permanent. I firmly believe that I leave a piece of my soul behind in the places that I love and that that piece is what calls me back as the years go by, like a child forgotten on a road trip.

I sit for awhile longer and talk to the women in the kitchen, watching agrum slide in and out of the oven and watching the golden leaves on the poplars outside the window quake and shimmer in the afternoon sun. It has been a wonderful tea, and I hope to come back soon. I thank Fatima and Naima and walk back toward my house, blinking in the sunlight and reflecting on what I had just seen.

~

Later that night, I find myself sitting drinking tea alone in a café, my friends are inside cheering for a football match that I am uninterested in. I watch people on the street for awhile and then get up to go. On my way home, I stop to buy a sandwich at one of the shops. My friend Hamid makes it for me, wraps it up, and hands it to me. As I hold it in my hands, I realize that the bread is still warm from the oven, and finally I am able to understand why.

Another day draws to a close and I feel that I am the better for it…

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

Autumn has always been my favorite season; it moves in gently just as I have grown weary of summer’s heat and light. Of a sudden, although I can never recall the first day I notice each year, the colors become richer. The light is the color of honey in the late afternoons, and the west facing mountainsides and earthen walls of the houses across my valley are painted in shining golden hues. All not illuminated at this time of day is hidden by long shadows and, even a robed farmer leading his donkey home from the fields in the evenings, looms large upon earth and stone as he passes. Sometimes I sit with my friend in his café, overlooking the souq market area, which today was abuzz with the weekly buying and selling. Most people know me now, at least enough to correct those who don’t, and café sitting has become a pleasant experience. I usually just order a silver pot of Moroccan tea and two glasses and then invite the first person I see to sit and drink tea with me.

I won’t say my life has grown quieter with the advent of Fall, but I do feel that stress is beginning to ebb away. I feel more comfortable outside, although there are still bad language days; I simply have to choose whether or not to let it bother me or not. My health has improved somewhat as well, thanks to a round of anti-parasite meds and some probiotics to aid in the repopulation effort. I don’t feel perfect, but I do feel healthy, so I suppose that is something. I have been here in North Africa for approximately seven and a half months. It has been almost a year to the day, since I left the Outer Banks behind me and drove off of Hatteras Island and headed west toward home. I also can’t believe in four short months I will have been here for a full year. It has been fascinating to watch my mind try and cope with the fact that it lives somewhere as exotic and foreign as North Africa. Only, it’s not so foreign anymore, and as I have said before, some of the things that I thought the most peculiar upon arriving here I now view as normal. I am beginning to realize now why re-entry into the society and culture of the United States, is considered so difficult. I’ll get a taste of it when I return home in December for a three week stay.

I am writing by candlelight in an effort to conserve some of the remaining electricity in my “pay-as-you-go” account. I like doing things by candlelight, it shrinks your world down to whatever you happen to be doing at the moment and everything else fades into darkness around you. I am listening to an Appalachian waltz and enjoying the warmth of my dying fire. I am now the proud owner of 300 kilos of firewood which I helped weigh, load, and stack in my hallway last evening. It should hopefully last me the better part of the winter, but there is much splitting and sawing to be done. The stove is a nice little construction; solid and small, and made from thick metal that holds the heat long after the fire has gone out. My host father helped me to cement the pipe in the roof today and I have to keep the cement moist for a few days so it doesn’t dry too quickly and crack. Apparently the leaks in my roof have been fixed before, but then the cement dried to fast and the roof simply began to leak again. I am working hard to ensure that this house is as warm and snug as possible before the hammer falls and it will soon.

I can see the half moon through my window from the desk, it was a beautiful crescent a few nights ago riding high above the mountain at sunset. The clouds have taken on a peculiar quality of late; they ride low in the sky, pouring over ridgetops like the foam on the crest of a wave and then flowing along the valley floors like a slowly retreating tide. The poplars along the river have become golden candles which, when coupled with the honeyed light, burn brilliantly every evening. The fields are being harvested for the last time and being turned over to slumber beneath the coming snows. Looking out from my rooftop in the early mornings I can see mule teams turning the sod with an old style heavy-plough, all the while being coaxed gently forward by their masters.

The apple crop this year was a good one and fresh cider has begun to flood the little shops in the village. Some volunteers in other more apple-rich areas have reported having many bags of apples being given to them by people they may or may not have ever met. A couple months ago in fact, as the apple crop had begun to ripen, I was sitting on the roadside with a friend of mine in a nearby village. The dusty street was silent and the sun was warm and bright overhead. There was no sign of transportation going our direction, but waiting is no longer tedious for most of us at this point. Looking up the road, I saw a venerable and quite aged Berber woman. She was dressed neatly in a white robe and walked hunched over with the aid of a cane. Her dark headscarf was bound with a pale cord and she shuffled toward us, smiling sweetly. Since I oftentimes am unable to see the mouths of women here, I have begun to appreciate the asked of “smiling with the eyes”; and this ancient woman was positively beaming.

As she drew closer, I noticed that she was carrying a large digging tool on her back and realized that she had probably been working in the fields all morning long. There are no retirement plans here in the Atlas, work is life; it is simply what you do and while I have seen many of the people here tired out from a long day, I have seen very few that are unhappy with this simple existence. When the woman was even with me, I raised a hand and said “lعwn” and she turned and spouted off a stream of Tam that I understood most of. After the formalities of greeting were out of the way, we spoke about the weather and about the Wedding Festival. As she was turning to walk away, she reached a weathered hand into a fold of her robe at her back and drew out two small apples, handing them to my friend and I. She then blessed us and hobbled off into the dust. That is how this culture operates here, these are genuinely kind and loving people. And their religion fosters this warmth and strong sense of family. I am beginning to understand now that I understood nothing before coming here and being immersed in a culture that many people in our country are convinced hates us. And I can tell you now, that it simply isn’t true, it just isn’t! I have had conversations with only a handful of people here that dislike my country; while I have had countless conversations with people back home that despise not just this nation, but an entire race and creed.

Some events in the past few months have given me pause; I occasionally read the news here in Morocco, trying in vain to keep abreast of current events outside my mountain walls. I watched the overblown fiasco of the “mosque” at Ground Zero explode into protests and hate-speech. I saw as Reverend Jones threatened to burn the Qu’ran, which thankfully did not happen. All these people see on the news is that the U.S.A. hates Islam and, while this I am sure has my liberal friends muttering their disapproval, it has many of us PCVs over here in absolute fits. On 9/11, a day where we were meant to unite in reverence and mourning for those who fell when the twin towers were destroyed, I found myself confined to my house; alone and ashamed of my country. On that day of all days, I should not have felt ashamed to be an American, but I was told to stay inside by the agency “just in case” any Anti-American sentiment be expressed. Few Moroccans mentioned the Qu’ran burning to me and those that did expressed confusion and sadness, not anger or hate. I think I was angrier than most of them.

This is not to say that I am actually ashamed to be an American, I am just ashamed of what we do sometimes, we are like a belligerent relative at a family reunion that everybody tries to ignore. No, being here in Morocco, I have come to realize that I love my country deeply and I love the principles on which it was founded. But sometimes think we need to consider that there is a world outside our borders filled with humans who are just as kind, decent, and incredible as we are.

~

So why am I going off on this? Well because it’s my job. Here are the three goals of Peace Corps:

Goal 1: To fulfill a community’s need for training and skilled manpower

Strangely this is the only goal that seems to do with the “aid worker” image of the PCV, and as you can see from the next two, the main purpose of a PCV is diplomatic.

Goal 2: To educate residents of the host nation on the culture and traditions of the United States of America.

So we are essentially P.R. agents, preaching a message of “hey look! This is what Americans are really like. We’re not all fat, rich, and arrogant. Most importantly, we don’t hate you, in fact we would like to be your friends.”

And then there’s goal 3, it’s one of the most difficult. Because we will be fulfilling it for years after we return, not just while we are serving here.

Goal 3: To educate residents of the United States of America on the unique cultures and peoples encountered while serving in the Peace Corps.

This, to me, is the most important goal of all. To promote global understanding of one another. This is what JFK had in mind when he created the Peace Corps in the 1960s. His ultimate vision was to have a huge number of future Americans that not only know about other cultures, but that can truly say they can understand another culture. Ultimately, JFK hoped this would lead to better foreign policy on our part.

So this blog, everything I tell you in my correspondence, and the stories I will inevitably tell when I return, are all part of this Third Goal. I hope that by reading this, you feel that you understand Morocco a little better; I certainly do. Because I haven’t just learned about these people, I have learned from them; and many have become my friends along the way. So when I do finally return from my two years, I will see a lot of things differently than I did before and I am not sure what that will be and to what extent. But I do know this, if anyone trashes these good people or their faith in my presence. They will have me to answer to.

Well it’s getting cold and the fire has gone out. I have a lot of work ahead of me for tomorrow and bit by bit I am getting ready for winter. In a couple of weeks I go to Marrakech for a week-long training and after that I have a meeting in the capital. Couple that with possibly teaching at the local Highschool and counting Barbary Sheep (Ammotragus lervia) for the Moroccan Eaux et Forets I have a busy time ahead of me.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

NOTE: I know I have not written about the wedding festival yet, but I am working on it. It will be up soon, for now, here's an update.

I woke up to this morning to sound of rain on the roof. I smiled slightly at this welcome noise, I have always loved listening to the rain from the warmth of my bed. But then I remembered I had about 20 books drying on the roof from my house flooding last week. I hurled myself out of bed and threw on a jelaba, taking the stairs two at a time. After three armloads of books were safely deposited inside, I sat back in the doorway, looking out over the rainy fields, and began to laugh.

Being up early in the morning is rare thing for most Peace Corps Volunteers, especially after Ramadan, but I love it and hope to make it more of a habit in the future. I put a pot of coffee on the stove, no filters or presses (though I have both), just a pot, some water, and a handful of grounds. Cowboy Coffee; it is said that if you put a horseshoe into the pot and it stands on end, it’s done. I sigh and settle back into my chair to write. The rain continues on the roof and I turn on some quiet music in the background.

It’s October 3rd, and I realize that it has been 7 months since I arrived. This makes it officially the longest time I have ever been away from my family, friends, and the Southwest. 7 months ago, I stepped off the plane in Casablanca. It was so early in the morning, and I was exhausted from the transatlantic flight Looking out on the vast green farmlands around me, punctuated by villages with their tiny pale minarets gleaming in the early morning light, I didn’t know what to think or expect of this strange new place. I think so much of those first few weeks were marked with denial. I don’t think “two years” really sank into my brain; instead I felt like a kid standing on the edge of the high dive looking down in the water and yelling down to his friends “I’m thinking”. In some regards I am still there, after all these months spent here, and I have not fully surrendered myself to being here.

Some days I don’t even feel like I am here, I feel more closely connected to home on the Colorado Plateau than with the people I right in front of me that I can see, touch, and speak with. Some days my reality here seems surreal. But then other times, I feel as though I am fully engaged in this reality, and Colorado seems to be only a distant memory. On those days, I feel as though I am touching something greater; the place I need to be. But now I simply slingshot back and forth between two realities and sit back and enjoy watching my psyche do somersaults. There is a name for this, “the Peace Corps Volunteer Cycle of Vulnerability and Adjustment” and I am right on schedule.

I think that I have made no progress here, but then I think back on the first few months and realize how far I have come. Take this recent trip to Er-Rachidia for example:

~

This is only the second time I have seen rain in Rich, my souq-market town. I pours down and cleans the thin patina of dust from the pink-sided buildings, looking toward souq I see throngs of people moving up and down the street, parting briefly to allow a car or moped splash past them, through the puddles that reflect the slate grey sky. Climbing the dark stairs in the beautifully tiled “Hotel Isli” the night before, I was overwhelmed by memories of just 5 months prior. I look at the door of a little room on the third floor, and remember sitting inside on the floor playing cards and laughing with people I barely knew, but who were destined to become my friends and neighbors. I knew nothing about this place and I had not even seen my village yet, it was just a name in my mind. I walked to the roof and looked down the long valley where the Atlas stretched away into the distance and, my village lay behind those grey peaks, shrouded in uncertainty.

Leaving the Isli, I step back out onto the street and wave to Dris, a store owner that has become my friend in recent months, I buy a yogurt from him and remember how intimidating it was when I first arrived trying to make any transaction in any of the stores. Now it’s so commonplace, I feel that I would freak out in an American supermarket. I take my yogurt to the bus station and quickly claim a seat on the departing bus. It’s the best seat on the bus, the one near the back door with lots of leg room.

As we pull out the station and pick up speed, I look at the now familiar buildings of Rich and realize with a start that I will actually miss this place when I go. My bus soon leaves the town behind and we are soon out in the open desert; the rain makes small worm-trails on the window beside me. The first leg of the trip from rich crosses a wide plain ringed with mountains and dotted with small earthen villages and silvery olive groves. Tall cane lines the dry riverbed which the bus is now crossing on a low bridge.

We climb onto a cliffside road high above the river and I look out at the shattered and twisted sediments that seem piled haphazardly here and there. We go through a small tunnel and proceed into a deep gorge, reminiscent of Santa Elena Canyon on the Big Bend of the Rio Grande, back in the states. The bottom of the gorge is palmeries and villages, some with huge crumbling Kasbahs. The palms sway gently in the breeze, heavy with clusters of orange dates, and small fields of tasseled corn are visible in the openings between their segmented trunks. Here and there, men are plowing the fields with a steel blade hooked to a team of mules.

The gorge walls tower high above and it all makes for a lovely sight; but a familiar one. The beauty of the gorge remains, but its strangeness has gone. There is nothing unusual to me here now; this is just another bus trip. Passing the dam above Er-Rachidia, I see a rainbow unfurl across the sky above the city. Beyond it lies a dark curtain of rain. Er-Rachidia is the gateway to the Sahara and the last time I was here for any significant length of time, was shortly after the backpack trip I took through the National Park. That was 4 months ago.

Er-Rachidia feel different as well, and I look around at all the familiar sights as I made my way through the back alleys to my friend’s apartment where I am staying the night. Later that evening, my friends and I sit in the back garden of the Café Imilchil and I think about all the progress I have made so far. I look at my friends, all have been here longer than I. One is coming up on his one year mark, my friend and neighbor Jack is just reaching 18 months, and my friend here in Er-Rachidia has only six months left. Although their experiences are very different from mine, I still look to them as an example of what I will experience in the coming months and suddenly 7 months doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore; after all, I am still a “freshman”.

Thanks for reading,

Charlie Kolb

Today is July 1st and it marks the beginning of my 5th month in North Africa. I can't believe so much time has passed already, but there is plenty of time still ahead, 22 months of time in fact. My end of service date is the 5th of May, 2012, and that means I have almost two summers and two long, hard winters to deal with. We apparently don't have a spring and fall here, just a sudden transition that is characteristic of any high mountains, be they in Colorado or Africa.

~

Talking to home, I hear that the flowers are blooming and the grass is high, my mother is debating whether to let the horse out to graze on the lawn or not, and the dog is so dusty that my parents have to brush him off when he comes in the house. The indoor cat is shedding, and the outdoor cat is still successfully hunting small animals despite his advanced age and senility. My brother is home from his college in Seattle for a few weeks; he is enjoying seeing his friends and mine and just spending time at home and in our hometown.

According to the local paper, spring runoff is beginning to slacken in the Animas River and the rafters and tubers are out in force, enjoying the two month window of heat that you can actually swim in the river without getting hypothermia. The Farmer's Market is in full swing with local foods, meats, and vegetables, not to mention live music and fresh gossip. The tradition at the Farmer's Market, at least mine, is to get a cookie from my favorite bakery, and a glass of Hibiscus Juice from the tamale cart and then stroll around talking to the farmers that I know and running into friends. When the sun gets too hot, I sit in the shade of one of the trees by the side of the bank building and listen to the live music and watch the kids chase each other around.

My parents and brother are headed to Lake City for Independence Day, it is a small community of 300 high in San Juan Mountains, about 8500ft, and we have a place there that my parents like to spend much of the summer. It is cool and the people are kind, the small size of the community means that everyone know everyone else, and that everybody has a role. They are meeting with a family of our friends from Helena Montana and will stay there for about a week enjoying the company and festivities of the fourth. There will be games, food, and a parade which my family will be in, the dog dressed up in red, white, and blue and loving all of the attention. I will miss being there with them, Lake City is one of my favorite places.

Several years ago, I lived in a three-room guest house there for the better part of a summer, working as a fishing and hiking guide for an Lake City outfitter. I had just graduated from College a month before, and was using it as a time to decompress. I spent three solid months there; two of those entirely in the mountains with my blue heeler, who had never hiked that much before or since. All day was spent in high basins on the edge of sparkling lakes or trekking through dark forests of fragrant pine, spruce, and fir. These days were punctuated by vast fields of nodding wildflowers, and the jags of mountains on every horizon. Thunderstorms came most afternoons in towering blue-grey pillars of cloud. A solid-seeming landscape of swirls and billows, they were often visible for several hours crawling over the lands below, trail curtains of rain illuminated by forks of lightning. When they broke, it was with a beautiful, shattering violence that was both frightening and awe inspiring; only rarely did they last for more than a half hour.

I learned to Flyfish while working with the outfitter and it remains one of my favorite things to do, and is high on the list of things I miss most. Many golden afternoons were spent making cast after cast into streams smaller than the one lane road used to access them. I fell in love with the sport because it was silent and beautiful; it allowed me to be outside for hours at a time watching my line curl and loop over the riffled water's surface and watch the fly land delicately in a quiet hole, suspended there in the still eddy before a fish took it or the current swept it away. Evenings were spent walking in the canyon or sitting at the bar of the saloon named for the Colorado Cannibal, Alferd Packer. As the light died on the peaks, I would sit on my stool nursing a good beer and talking to people around me, who quickly became my friends. On cold days I would light the woodstove and read a book while the exhausted dog snored at my feet. Then Grand Teton National Park hired me on and I was sucked back into the park ranger whirlwind. I wouldn't have it any other way but I still consider my months in Lake City as one of the most peaceful times in my life.

I will always remember the sunny days and quiet evenings of home, in both Durango and Lake City. Memories of place and also of people; memories of friends and family talking, laughing, and sometimes crying, together. These are strong memories of the one place that have been most open to, the most involved in, and the place that has the left the most indelible mark on my soul. It is that piece of a soul, the piece that is affected by place, where you forge connections with a land and its people; intimacy through vulnerability and then understanding through intimacy. It is these connections that create the concept of home and the sense of belonging that comes with it. Some people never feel this, some never open themselves and allow their souls to be touched by the places they reside. But this has always come easily to me, and I have many connections to places that have touched me in some deep way. My parks: Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Big Bend, and Cape Hatteras; those were all home, they all became places that I understood, loved, and now miss. The mountains and the deserts of the Colorado Plateau, as I have said before, are always an unshakable first for the place that I love most deeply, understand the most, and to which I will always return to. These places have all left their mark, and have contributed to who I am as a person, each one in a unique way. From Mesa Verde I learned of time, from Yellowstone I learned of wilderness, from Teton I learned of beauty and serenity, from Big Bend I came to know austerity and balance, and Hatteras I learned of the quiet and deep mysteries found only on the edge of the sea. What do I learn now? As I feel Morocco's mark being etched in slowly beside the others, I wonder what I will take away from this place?

~

I have moved out of homestay after four months spent with a Moroccan family, two in the desert and two in the mountains. Today is my second day independent and alone, and the first full day I have to do whatever I wish. Yesterday I spent with my host father in the Land Rover, we went down to the town of Tinghrir to buy some appliances, like a refrigerator and oven, things that I would have a difficult time obtaining for myself. It was a long day and I crashed hard, falling asleep without dinner or evening ablutions. This morning, I woke up with the sun and took advantage of my two hours of water by filling every water container in the house. Eventually, when I have the water tank and heater installed, I will have water round the clock and hot showers; a thing invaluable in the single coldest site in Morocco. A treat for guest and other volunteers who visit. I made coffee on the butane stove and and sat on my roof with a cup watching the clouds form over the mountains.

I like my house, it's five rooms (including bathroom), and made entirely of various forms of concrete. The central room, my living room is illuminated by a skylight (which currently leaks, but is being fixed next week.)it has two ponjes, which are like Moroccan couches, and will eventually have a central low table for tea and entertaining Moroccan guests. My kitchen is one long counter with a sink and gas stove; a gas oven sits below. There is a chest of drawers for dishes and the refrigerator sits by the door. The stairs to the roof lead up from here as well. My office is off the living room and consists of two windows, my desk, one ponj, and a bookshelf of crates, on the walls are maps of Morocco, a map of Colorado, a poster of Grand Teton, and a poster of the endangered mammals of Morocco. Eventually there will be a woodstove in the corner and this will be my wintertime retreat; the "warm room". My bedroom is simple, a metal shelf of clothes and camping gear, backpacks in the corner, and one large bed in the middle. The whole place is the perfect size with the perfect amount of furnishings; plus it's utterly impregnable when locked.

After my coffee, I went to the post office and picked up a package for a friend, I am waiting on one myself, but it looks like it will come next week. Kids don't badger me as much anymore, I think they are used to seeing me around and there is always someone around who knows me. My Tam gets better every day and I sound less and less like a moronic 1st grader. Now I am sitting at my desk, surrounded by books, with a window that looks out on the mountains. After this entry is finished, I will read or practice my mandolin; maybe I will pick out a soup recipe of some kind for dinner tonight and go buy the ingredients, haggling with the merchant as vegetables are weighed by the kilo on a rusted scale. I may go sit in a Cafe later, write letters, and people-watch. I will clean some more as well and contemplate my place here. I am enjoying the peace and quiet already and, while it is not Lake City, I can see it becoming a home.

Thanks For Reading,

-Charlie

5/28/2010 Souq Day in the village. Walking to my future apartment from my Host Family’s house, I dodge herds of sheep, leathery men in dark jelabas, all between massive brightly colored trucks loaded with vegetables and stock. Weighing of produce and arguments over tent placement erupt all around me, and I enjoy an unusual anonymity; for once everyone is too busy to stare at me. It is like being back in the city, everyone flowing around you, going about your business. Occasionally someone’s eyes focus on me, some recognize me and we exchange a brief greeting in Tamazight; mostly the men, although some women acknowledge my presence if out of view of their husbands. The women are clad in loose-fitting robes with a blanket-like cape covering their shoulders, the striping on the cape denoting the tribe. On their heads are purple scarves, broadly folded, and bound tightly with pink or white cloth in a uniquely Berber fashion. It looks difficult to tie and makes me once again grateful to be a male in Morocco; oh so many reasons. The main street of the village is one long hill descending from the Gendarmarie (Police) and l’bosta (Post Office). It is lined with cafés and small stores and ends at a crossroads. My future apartment is just east of here, on the second floor of a brick building owned by my Host Family. It needs a very good cleaning and some basic decorating (make it a little piece of home), but otherwise it is ready to move into. Unfortunately I cannot move in yet; I am required by Peace Corps to stay with my Host Family for another month. That’s alright, they are wonderful people and very helpful when it comes to my language. But I am still ready to regain some semblance of independence and control; three months is long enough, and four is too long. After a long and complicated trip to Errachidia (again) I sorted out my internet contract and now have a wireless modem installed in my apartment-to-be. So here I sit, catching up on peoples’ lives and reinitiating contact with the life I left behind. This lulls me into a sense of complacency and normalcy, immediately shattered when I walk outside and am once again confronted by the throng of people and livestock, the air full of strange sounds. 5/29/2010 Today is so clear that the edges of the mountains against the deep blue of the sky look as though they could cut glass. The only clouds are wispy mare’s tails; the air is still, the souq people have gone back to their villages and the locals are sleeping off their lunches and long morning of haggling. The storks on top of the mosque seem busy, feeding their young; not sure how many chicks there are. Sheep move lazily on the mountainsides, distracted and scattering as their guardians stop to make tea in gleaming silver pots that hang from their belts when not in use. High up on a mountain in recent weeks I discovered the shattered remains of a lone teacup in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. But then, that could define this place in general, especially now in the lull after lunch. I am back in my apartment-to-be, picking up where I left off. Looking about and seeing what needs to be done, what needs to be moved, cleaned, purchased, or fixed. There is much to do, but too much time to do it; granted this statement seems to sum up the entire Peace Corps experience. Although, I am sure after two years, I will find that my time here has been too short. But on this side of things, looking down the barrel of 706 remaining days, it seems that time in my greatest obstacle. The truth of the matter is, that I love the Southwest, the Colorado Plateau, the Four Corners—All of the peaks and spires, domes of white, canyons of red, interspersed with the high, dark intrusions of volcanic laccoliths. the cascading song of a canyon wren on otherwise silent evening or the sparks popping from a burning juniper limb as the Coyotes wail unseen on the distant mesa. I think that this is irreversibly a part of who I am as a human being; it is my desert, my mountains, my place in this world. It is not that I am homesick, or would even leave Morocco now if given the choice; it is simply that, as I have more time to think and to examine the life I left behind in the Southwest from this great distance. It becomes more and more clear what I want to do with my life and where I want to be. Already, Peace Corps is teaching me things about myself and making me quieter and more focused. Why am I writing this to you, you may wonder? Why is this simply not another account of my doings in Morocco? Because I want to catalog some of my thoughts and decisions here in my village; share my frustrations and give you, the reader, a clearer picture of my experience here... In closing I would like to share a couple of technical things the first is the fact that I was informed by one of you that some people are unable to leave comments due to technical problems on the site. I will try to amend that, but in the meantime, feel free to drop me an email: charlie@incitelearninginc.com . Also, I now have a flickr page, so go to www.flickr.com/charlieofmorocco if you want to have a look at some of the places mentioned here. Also feel free to send requests of things you would like to see or hear about! Thanks for reading, Charlie

5/19/2010 I have been in my site for two weeks now and am beginning to settle in nicely. My service got off to an inauspicious start with a solid week of Dysentery (yes, like Oregon Trail) and went be with very little accomplished by yours truly. I stayed in bed, went to the bathroom every half-hour (which is not easy; squatting is difficult when you’re dehydrated), and watched TV on my computer. A course of hardcore antibiotics cleared me up and I am feeling great now, although I have no false hopes of staying this way for long. But hey, while I am well, I should write a blog entry! So, after my first wasted week of dysentery induced fog, here is a full report on week 2! ~ I started my week with two days of traveling to Errachidia for a two hour meeting with other volunteers concerning our evacuation plan (just in case…). Traveling involved a four and a half hour transit (Mercedes Van) ride from my site to my souq town and then a one hour taxi ride from there. I enjoyed seeing my friends again, especially two of my CBT mates (you know who you are!). We talked and had our meeting, and hung out in the Café Imichil, which has extensive shady gardens and serves chilled banana juice, which is as good as it sounds. I ate a wonderful sandwich from one of the vendors near the bus station; it was fresh bread (a round, cut in half like a pita) and stuffed with eggs, something like sausage, fried potatoes, and spices. This was made even more sublime by the fact that it was the first real food I had eaten after a week of malnourishment! My friends and I stayed with another volunteer in a town south of Errachidia; located in the Sahara just north of Erg Chebbi. Our hostess was (is) an excellent cook and we enjoyed a dinner of made-from-scratch Buffalo Chicken Pizza! It was absolutely incredible and made better by the fact that the only hard cheese available in this part of Morocco is Edam, which is amazing anywhere. The next morning, after an unsuccessful attempt to get my internet renewed (yes, I live in unimaginable hardship…) I was informed I needed a Cartes du Sejour which is a form of identification proving residence in Morocco. These are very difficult to get; more on that later. So, I shrugged off the general frustration of failure and went to breakfast at a high end “French” café and breakfasted with other volunteers from the region on runny (and delightful) eggs, pastries, and juice. Afterward, as I walked down the street toward the bus station I realized that this was the first time I had been completely alone and independent in a third-world city, and that I was actually comfortable with that. The throngs of people didn’t bother me and I enjoyed some urban anonymity for awhile (anonymity in my site is completely impossible; i.e. “fishbowl effect”). Then I saw a familiar face in a Café, it was a man from my village that now lives in my souq town. My predecessor introduced me to him days before and now here he was in Errachidia. I said hello (in Tamazight) and we had a short conversation before I continued on my way; two months and Morocco is already getting smaller. I bought a bus ticket with no problems and rode the hour to my souq town. The bus was nearly empty, which was unusual, and I enjoyed having my window open with no locals around to protest the “bad luck and illness” brought in by the wind. After the bus ride (I will never get over that stretch of road, it’s breathtaking) I arrived just in time to reserve my spot on the last Transit of the day, which is something you have to do about an hour before departure. It’s an honor system, all you have to do is leave a belonging in the seat you wish to claim and nobody will move it until you get back. This can be a book or plastic bag and occasionally a vegetable of some kind. I went to get some yogurt (I am trying to do right by my antibiotic ravaged intestines) and returned just in time to grab my seat. I am glad I arrived early to claim a spot; at one point during the ride I counted 21 people inside the transit, with a few more on top. Needless to say, it was grinding up the hills and, in the Atlas, there are many of those to contend with. I arrived back in my village and realized that, for the first time, I was alone in my site with the added benefit of being well. I went to my future apartment and sat for awhile, taking in the quiet, and then walked up the hill to my family’s house. I enjoyed dinner (mashed potatoes, Ait Hadiddou style) and after some conversation and some tea (which keeps getting better, the conversation, not the tea; that’s always good) I went to bed. I slept late because my shutters were closed and woke up refreshed. I had breakfast of coffee and bread and enjoyed conversing with my host mom. The rest of my day consisted of a trip to the post office and a trip to the Gendarmes where I learned what I needed to acquire my all important Cartes du Sejour. Otherwise I spent the afternoon napping and writing letters; I figure if I can just accomplish one or two things a day, at least at the beginning, I am doing well. The next day, today, was great. I slept not quite so late this time and had breakfast like before. I took a shower after breakfast and spent the morning doing laundry, a chore which was supervised closely by my host mom. After hanging the clothes out to dry, I finished my lengthy letter to my best friend (in response to his equally lengthy work) and walked to the Post office to mail it. Before I left I found, quite unexpectedly, the missing document that was needed to apply for my Cartes du Sejour, a document that I was not supposed to have yet and that I thought I had to go back to Errachidia to obtain! I immediately went to the Gendarmes and after a long wait, one round of tea with the officers, and a few miscellaneous errands , I was all set. After this, I walked down the street toward the center of town, greeting people in my broken Tamazight, until I spotted my host father in a Café on the side road. I sat down with him and one of his friends later joined us. We talked about Imilchil, about the weather, our work, basic guy stuff really. I left after having coffee and went back to the house for dinner. Imichil is looking like it will be a great site and I am eager to settle in and find my place here! Thanks again for reading, Charlie

5/13/2010This last week and a half has been a blur of training and testing, hellos and goodbyes. Training ended and service began, and that two year clock is ticking… When I began this entry I was sitting in the Bab Sahara Hotel for what was likely the last time for the duration of my service, unless I am asked back to Ouarzazate for anything. Ouarzazate really has treated us (my stagemates and I) well and we have gotten to know it far more than I thought we could. It doesn’t seem strange or foreign anymore, and it’s only that I still can’t speak the language that reminds me that this is not actually my norm. But it was time to move on and that meant moving up to my site. Getting my luggage consolidated was a bear, I have 2 big duffel bags and a suitcase and I had to get on the bus to Errachidia; then another bus from Errachidia to Rich and finally on the 4 hour transit ride to… my site. Oops, almost slipped there… Once I got to my site, I just needed to get my bags to my host family’s house and then, save moving into my house in July, I was done moving for 2 years solid; which will be longest I have ever stayed anywhere at one time since I moved out of my parent’s house in Colorado after college. In the past 3 years I have moved 6-7 times for my job and for Peace Corps. So, in some ways it is a comfort to know that I can go somewhere and not move for awhile. As of now shoulders are still sore from carrying my things all over the country, but I am here and settled in with my host family. The very beauty of this place still makes my heart beat faster. But this entry is not meant describe my initial time in site; that entry is next. No this is about saying goodbye to a family and swearing in as a volunteer. Please allow me to backpedal… ~ My last week in training was somewhat slow, especially after the excitement of site visit, and the relief knowing what I was in for, brought to me. No, my CBT group and I worked our way through some final language lessons and took some final walks through the fields. The fields were in full flower and the wheat was waist high and hissed as the breeze rushed through it from the river. The roses reached above our heads and the almond branches drooped heavy with fruit. I realized that we really had been in our training site for a full season; that trees that had not even leafed out when we arrived here in March were now casting dark pools of shadow upon the path and that the flowering trees were now green and bearing fruit. The river was no longer fast and viscous with silt, but was then flowing cool and clear with no hint of its earlier turbulence. I had a nice introduction to Moroccan humor from a stately Berber woman who, after I was able to adjust to her voice, told me that she liked my Moroccan name (Hassan) and that if I was to change it in anyway, even back in the states, she would then ritually slaughter me… She said this in a sweet, old lady kind of way, so I knew that I was in no danger of being killed in a ritual fashion. I replied in halting Tam that I would inform my parents back in the states that they couldn’t use my given name anymore. She laughed at this and general hilarity ensued. The LPI, or Language Proficiency Interview, took place toward the end of the final week and consisted of speaking with one of the Moroccan Staff (not our LCF) for about 15 minutes on various topics. I scored “Intermediate Low” which was fine, and more than I was expecting. I will be interviewed again at the end of June when I go up to Azerou for technical training and debriefing from my initial experiences in site. After the LPI was over, it was just a matter of waiting for the training to end. We went to Kelaat M’gouna to buy supplies for the party we were throwing for our host families and, after setting everything up and laying it out, our families arrived in varying degrees of lassitude. Soon the house was full of Moroccans and it was essentially a giant tea party. I gave a speech to my family in halting English (I think all of my language is halting nowadays) and my LCF translated for me. I presented them with the certificate of appreciation that Peace Corps had prepared for them and which we had had framed that morning. After my speech was finished, I heard a scraping noise and realized that my host father, who I did not think was going to attend due to difficulty of approaching the house in his wheelchair, had hauled himself up the stairs and into the tea-room. I was quite touched by this, as were most of my CBT mates, and my family and I settled down to listen to rest of the festivities. My host mother and host sister both gave speeches about how nice it was to have me as guest and how I was part of the family now. After a group photo, we all dispersed back to our respective homes for family time. My host sister took us on our final walk where we got tea at two different houses and visited with her friends and family. The cook for our CBT accompanied us on our walk as well and I was glad she did. She has been a great friend to all of us and has spent more time with us as a group than anyone else in the village. She has been patient with our halting attempts at language and many times she and I laughed until we cried when I went to talk to her in the kitchen; granted, this was usually at my expense. After the walk, she cried and hugged us tightly (even the guys) and then ran off in the direction of her house. My final dinner was eaten late that night with my family and all of them promised to be up to see me off the next morning. The final goodbye was oddly formal, but I sensed emotion just under the surface. This suspicion was confirmed when my host sister suddenly burst into tears and hugged me. I assured her that I would be back at least twice, once with my American family when they visit next year, and once in the fall for my host sister’s wedding. My host brother, and a couple of his friends that had stayed over the night before, helped me with my bags and walked me to the taxi which took us away to Ouarzazate. After a week in Ouarzazate we attended the “Swearing In” ceremony which took place in the opulent Ouarzazate Palace of Congress, signaling the end of training and the true beginning of Peace Corps. Both the American Ambassador and the governor of Ouarzazate were in attendance and gave inspiring speeches to us new volunteers. We went to a reception afterward and ate French pastries and drank chilled banana juice. We mingled, shook hands and walked back the hotel in the hot sun. ~ I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer for just over a week now and am thoroughly enjoying my site, although I have been sick off and on. My village is beautiful and, on one of the days when I was feeling up to it, I climbed one of the mountains above the town to get my bearings. The mountain is a near vertical monocline that has eroded to the point that it is climbable. It was covered in fossils of shells and corals and it felt almost like I was beachcombing as I climbed. The mountain topped out at about 9300ft and the view was incredible in all directions. The hike is a vision of what I have to enjoy for the next two years in Morocco, and it was comforting to get out alone and do something familiar… or almost familiar. I packed many of the same things and used the same gear that I have hiked with for years. But this time there was no blue dog following close behind, no friends or family to go home to, no cold beverage waiting in the car; hell, there was not even a car waiting at the trailhead. None of familiar comforts of routine; a routine I hadn’t even known I had. There were other reminders that I wasn’t home anymore, the presence of sheep on adjacent hillsides, the call to prayer echoing from the distant Mosque, far below in the village. No trees on the hillsides, only scrubby, cushiony plants that people gather to use as firestarter. The valleys are fields, wall to wall and the rivers are severely channelized—a consequence of 3000 years of agriculture. At one point as I climbed, I looked over to a nearby ridge and saw an Amazigh man, clad in a black Jelaba (full, hooded robe) and white headscarf, silhouetted against the sky and surrounded by his sheep. I am guessing I could have climbed this mountain anytime in the last three millennia and beheld the same scene. From the summit of the mountain I could see many villages and many other mountains in all directions. I pulled out my GPS and marked a waypoint. Using the device I calculated the distance between my mountaintop and my family’s home in Colorado (also stored as a waypoint, marked with a shower icon): 5524 miles. Well it’s official, I am very far from home. But I love it here and will try to write and entry once a week from here on out, now that I am here for the long run. Thanks for reading, Charlie

It’s been awhile since my last blog entry so let me attempt to catch up. Since my last entry, I got over my bout with Zund Typhoid and have not been sick since (hamdullah!). I left my host family in Ait Gmat for my 10 day site visit, and they said that they would miss their American son. My host mother, Aicha, also informed me that I was to bring my mother to visit when my family comes to Morocco from the States; Aicha said that she and mom would be like sisters and that she wants to meet her give her lots of beautiful henna. Gotta follow up on that one. After a morning of nailbiting in Ouarzazate, waiting for our site assignments, and were finally rewarded for our patience when the head of the Environment Sector, Mohssine, passed out a series of files with our names and the name of our site. Let me go ahead and say I am not allowed to release my specific site, due to safety reasons pertaining to being an American abroad; they do not want us easily located by anyone who cares to look. That said, I will describe my site, my accommodations, and the people I am to work with. If anyone wants my specific site location and my new mailing address (I can get packages now!!) I can email it to you if you email me at: charlie@incitelearninginc.com . The Site First off, I absolutely love my site. It is in the Er-rachidia Province and is a small, but clean, community in the High Atlas Mountains. It is located just within the boundaries of The Eastern High Atlas National Park, which is roughly 55000 hectares of beautiful vistas, incredible geology, and two of the largest natural lakes in Morocco: Lake Isli and Lake Tislit, the Groom and the Bride. All of the mountains have long been deforested and there is no trace of trees left other than the Apples and Poplars in the fields by the “river”. That said, the area has lost none of its beauty and is as austere and rugged as Big Bend National Park and the geology is stunning. Faults, folds, and unconformities abound along with the occasional dark swath of a volcanic dike. Tilted beds and monoclines are everywhere and there seems to be very little rhyme or reason to it all. It is a clear representation of North Africa as a “bumper”: whenever Africa has collided with anything (like Europe, or South America) another range of the Atlas has been formed. My site is said to be the coldest in Morocco and, two winters ago, it apparently got two meters of snow in one storm. Oh boy, sounds like home! Minus the heated house… There are miles of hiking and backpacking, and plenty for me to do in the Eastern High Atlas National Park. I have no worries about crippling boredom; even in winter I will occupied with trying to stay warm. The People My site is essentially the heart of Berber culture in Northern Africa. The people here, while accepting minor changes like running water, electricity, and the Arabs invading their culture a few centuries ago, have essentially remained unchanged for several millennia. The tribe I am living and working with, the Ait Hadidou, is one of the most studied and traditional of all Berber tribes. My site is also the location of what has been called the “Wedding Festival” and “Fiancé Fair”. This is a large gathering of Berbers from the surrounding countryside (or “Bled”) who congregate in my village to find a spouse and buy supplies for the upcoming winter. While this has become a heavily touristed event, it remains very traditional and consists of 4-5 days of dancing, singing, shopping, and people proposing to eachother. This, I am sure, will include plenty of proposals to me, the village’s most eligible (and only) American. I have already been proposed to once, at a wedding dance that I attended. Since I am writing about the people of Ait Hadidou, I suppose I should include an account of this event: The Wedding Dance I had only been in my site for a couple of days and my host mother (Rkia) instructed me to get ready to go out, although she didn’t say for what, or at least I didn’t understand right away. I threw on my Jelaba (a traditional robe that I am becoming more and more fond of…) and a hat and followed her through the darkening streets. She had my host sister in tow and my baby brother strapped to her back. While bundled up against the cold, her colorful headscarf was still very prominent as was the traditional blue tattoo that is visible on the chin of most traditional Berber women, especially those of the Ait Hadidou. As we approached the town center, I began to hear a fast drumbeat. When I rounded the corner I saw a large circle of people in Jelabas and many women watching with the striped capes that indicate their tribes; thin black on white striping for Ait Yaza and thick stripes for Ait Brahim (the melding of these two tribes, according to the legend, created the Ait Hadidou). In the center of the circle where many women, dancers, dressed in fine silks and sparkling jewelry; their wrists and waists decorated with shining silver disks that rattled with their movements. Music was being played by three drummers, holding hand drums and alternating their rhythms, and one wind instrument that had an almost nasal quality like the flutes of snake charmers. The dancing was fast and frenzied and I was surprised to see that the dancers had their hair loose, often in a shimmering fall of black reaching past their waist. As the pace of the songs quicken one woman would step forward and whirl her head around and around, spinning the dark curtain of her hair in a wide circle. Once between songs, the drummers looked in consternation at their drumhead, which had apparently loosened, and one of them left the ring of onlookers. He returned a short while later with a small, mossy shrub; which I had heard was collected as firestarter from the surrounding mountains. This theory was confirmed when the drummer pulled out a lighter and proceeded to light the bush on fire, placing it on the ground in the center of the circle. The flames leapt high, but the brush burned slowly, and the drummers held out their instruments to the flames, allowing the heat to tighten the drumheads. After this spectacle, the bush was stomped out in a spray of sparks and the dancing resumed as fast as before. People pressed in from all sides and I was right in the divide between the men and women (the circle seemed half and half). Though I was traditionally dressed, my hair, eyes, and skin made me stick out like a sore thumb; despite this, I wasn’t the most out of place. That honor was taken by three French tourists on the fringes of the circle. People spoke to me in Tamazight and were thrilled when I answered back in the same tongue, I told many people that I was the new volunteer for the village and that I was learning Tamazight as fast as I could. A girl next to me shouted something at me in with a smile, asking me to dance, and then said something else in a more serious tone. I wasn’t sure what she was saying but it soon translated for me by Ali, a shopkeeper that I had befriended and who spoke a little English. “She is asking you if you would like to get married.” said Ali, with a small smile. I looked at the girl and smiled, saying in Tamazight that I was grateful, but that I wasn’t ready to get married yet. She understood and laughed, and we both turned and continued to watch the dance. ~ I have the feeling that my stay here will be fascinating and enlightening. I have already seen and experienced more new things in four short days than I thought possible; I am excited to live and work and learn. The Host Family I am excited about my host family; they are kind and welcoming and patient with my struggling language skills. My host father, Said, is the lead mountain guide for the region and knows the entire High Atlas like the back of his hand. He has hiked from his home in my village to most of the major gateway cities, including Fez, Marrakech, Kelaat Mgouna, Ouarzazate, and Khenifra. He has climbed Mt. Toubkal over 100 times. He wasn’t bragging, it’s just his life. He is well respected and well connected in the community so I hope he will be an asset to whatever project I take on in the next couple of years. My host mother, Rkia, is the finest cook in the region—no joke. Every meal I have had in my village has been absolutely wonderful and the feces content seems nonexistent, which is exciting. Rkia was initially leery about having a male stay with her; all other PCVs in my village have been female in the past, a trend which I have broken. Rkia told the PCV I am replacing (who was/is wonderful and successful and whose shadow I fully expect to spend at least a year crawling out of…) that she didn’t want a boy to stay because “American boys just come and eat and then leave. Despite this, and also thanks to my predecessor’s encouragement, she seems to like me just fine and says she will teach me to cook (can’t wait). I have 3 host brothers; Rachid (10), Mohamed (13), and Sufiyan (8 months). I also have a host sister, Fatima, who is 8. They seem like nice kids and, thanks to their father’s line of work, are used to being around the occasional foreigner. I look forward to my time with my host family and arrive in Imilchil again one week from today; this time to stay. Cheers, Charlie (Hassan) Ouarzazate Province, Morocco

4/11/2010 I think I will begin by posting a wise proverb that sums up my life right now: “When different people behold a glass of water, the optimist says the glass is half-full; the pessimist says that the glass is half empty. However, the Peace Corps Volunteer says ‘Hey look! A bath!’” Not quite sure where this quote came from or who to credit it to, it’s all over the other Peace Corps Blogs. I like it though. I was thinking about it this morning after I showered with a bucket of cold water, which is one step down from my usual “bucket and warm teapot” routine. It amazes me that things I would never dream of doing (let alone enjoying) back home I do almost every day here in Morocco. Hot showers and comfortable beds (or any beds) seem surreal even though it’s only been a month and a half since I left them all behind. I can’t remember what it’s like to be entirely clean, or healthy for that matter. This last week has been hard, although I knew it would be stressful, since we are in the final countdown before our site assignments—in 4 days. It was supposed to be a week of hard language study before we were introduced to our final sites and host families; if all went according to plan. Ha. While I had a pretty upbeat Easter Sunday, the first one in my entire life when I was unable to attend a church service, and I felt good about my progress in language and life in general, it is the last day I can remember feeling healthy. My week started with a bad reaction to a beesting accompanied by intestinal distress of which I will spare you the details. The sting went away after 3 days of vigorous medicating my the Peace Corps Medical Officer but my gastric ills continued and were soon joined by a low fever and a mind-blowing headache which, after 48 hours, was finally cause enough for me to get picked up and taken back to Ouarzazate in the back of the Peace Corps landcruiser. Riding through the city, feeling sick and looking out over the press of people, vehicles, and livestock, helped me realize just how far from home I really was. The doctor informed me, via translator, that I had a nasty intestinal infection “most like, and related to, Typhoid Fever”. I suddenly felt even farther from home, help, and all things friendly. Typhoid? I mean, I didn’t actually have Typhoid, but the name is legendary enough that it’s still scary to have one its relatives. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was put on another round of drugs, including a focused antibiotic, and am slowly recovering. All that’s left now is a barely discernible pain behind my eyes and a heavy, blanketing fatigue. Today, two years feels like an awfully long time. But I know it’s not and this kind of physical and emotional harrowing is what I signed up for. I also accept that I will likely go through far worse and far nastier before I service is up. But after you have been sick and exhausted for a full week, the voice of reason seems less, well… reasonable. But hey, how about some good things about my week? Despite my illness, I only missed one day of class and I haven’t fallen nearly as far behind as I anticipated I would. While I was sick I finished two books. My host family has been wonderful although I bet they are convinced that Americans never eat after being around me. One night after being asked by my Language Teacher if they could fix me a small bowl of salted white rice for dinner that night, I realized to my dismay that they had prepared the same bland dish for the entire family and nothing else. I felt guilty and ill. Today is my off day and they let me sleep in for most of the morning without disturbing me. I am quite grateful to have them as my caretakers, but am carefully ignoring the fact that one they are also my personal “vectors” as well. If anyone remembers how Typhoid Fever and its relations are transmitted, you will understand what I mean by this. In other good news, my family’s cat had kittens and there are now two little furballs curled up in the storage room off the courtyard. They are adorable, their eyes aren’t even open yet. So, this first low spot as been survived and will help me deal with the next one which I am sure will not be long in coming. Four more days and I find out my final site! I will post it when I find out. Also important: I will be getting my new P.O. Box Next week. If you want to continue writing to me (or start!) then email my father for the new P.O. Box sometime before the end of May. They’ll be returning letters to sender from the Rabat address in June. Until I know more, I hope all is well in the states!

Much has happened since my last posting three weeks ago. I stayed in Ayt Gmat with my CBT group for roughly 12 days before returning to Ouarzazate for more shots (I can no longer get rabies!) and some overall group training. I then returned to Ayt Gmat for 6 days before coming back to Ouarzazate for the same reason as before. Another 12 day stint and I will return again, this time to learn the location of my final site (VERY important) and then spend the next week traveling to the site and staying there solo for a week to check things out; Peace Corps Morocco does not like surprises. After that, there is one more week of training and then a swearing in ceremony on May 3rd, service begins on May 5th. This is when my address will change!! Thanks for all of the letters! They have been a joy to read and I have unfortunately been able to reply to only a few of them so far. Send me a letter whenever you think of it, I enjoy catching up on your lives back in the states. I have been learning as much language as I can hold, although Tamaziġt Berber is still extremely difficult. It’s coming right along though, and I am confident that I can achieve fluency in the first year of service. I have been sick; I knew it would happen and, now that it’s over, I am somewhat relieved that I am past that milestone. Sure it will happen again, but that first time of huddling ill and alone in the middle of the night in a bathroom with no toilet—that at least is over with. Unfortunately, it was on top of a chest cold that was fairly nasty as well. Welcome to Morocco, immune system! I feel that I am learning much more about the culture of Morocco, piece by piece, one experience at a time, and there have been many experiences here’s an example: A walk My host sister Hayat, her best friend Hoodia, my little sister Nouhayla, and Anton a volunteer from a nearby village (who is learning Arabic instead of Tam) are accompanying me on a long walk through the fields to the Kasbah. All of the Peach and Plum trees are in full, fragrant bloom and the Almonds and Figs are just beginning to show small green fruits between their leaves. The air is full of farm smells and birdsong and the sun is bright overhead. The Kasbah looms ahead and I head down the path to pass under it and continue to the river, only to be stopped by my host sister who motions me to follow her through ancient wooden door, which is hidden in the shadows. I duck through the low portal and follow her into the first room where an iron pot is suspended inches above a cold hearth by a great chain, which is fastened securely to the vaulted ceiling. The room is dimly lit by a sunbeam that shafts in from a high window and by its rich golden light I can see over a hundred handprints lining the walls. My companions are quiet and lead me into the second room. Here there are more shafts of light illuminating an earth and cement well in the center of the room a rope leads down into the depths and the pulley creaks as Hayat raises the dripping bucket and drinks deeply of the cool sweet water. Anton and I do not partake, we are still afraid of untreated water, regardless the source. The remaining water is poured out on the floor where it runs into a small drain that leads outside. Hayat returns the bucket to its place and leads me through a third door. This room is full of light; the ceiling is high and coated with cracked, white plaster. This white columns support the roof and are interconnected by graceful arches of stone. Dusty prayer rugs and reed mats lay strewn about, but the place is clean and kept up; it is obviously used. A quick little wave of foreboding rushes through my insides, as I realize that this is likely a holy place and that I, as a white, American Christian, am likely not welcome. At the same time the girls decide it is time to leave and we slip away unnoticed; my heart pounds but I am still excited about the gift I had been given and the piece of history I had been shown. The girls continue to lead me toward the river. Dappled sunlight filters through the Date Palms and the fields grow closer together. The river comes into view, a muddy brown torrent of spring runoff from the Atlas high above. A rudimentary wooden footbridge leads across to another village of earthen houses clustered around the minaret of a central mosque. The women who are doing their laundry in a small waterfall at beside the bridge look up briefly as we pass and a couple wave, they are too far away to exchange a spoken greeting and it is questionable as to whether they would actually speak to me in any case. The gender divide is more apparent in some places than others. Another Kasbah rises to our left, crowned with a gigantic Stork nest atop one of the ruined towers; we make our way over between massive Tamarisk trees and enter through a low door. While massive, almost six stories in places, this Kasbah is in worse shape than the last one and there are no subterranean rooms to explore here. It is also filled with trash of every kind, and I realize with regret that a site like this in the States or Europe would be a protected historic site, as opposed to a landfill. Instead of walking back as I expect us too at this point, the girls keep walking through the woods until we abruptly enter another village. My bewilderment increases even more when I realize I, not only do not know where we are headed, but that I don’t even possess the linguistic prowess to ask where we are going. We stop next to a high concrete building and Hoodia pounds on the door. A woman pokes her head out of one of the windows on the upper floor and asks what we want and, upon seeing Hayat and Hoodia, rushes down the stairs to let us in. We enter and walk up the steps; I note that the building is unfurnished but filled with drying Alfalfa plants on every surface. We end up in a small upper room filled with Berber women sorting through wheat kernels with sieves. Hayat and Hoodia promptly join the women in their task, and Anton and I stand there confused about just about everything. Suddenly two rickety chairs are brought in and we sit to watch. I speak briefly with several of the women about their general well being and exchange the formal greeting. There is lots of hand shaking and stifled laughter at my ill-pronounced Tamaziġt greeting but I feel that I am understood by all. Tea is brought in and served with a mass of dried dates, likely grown within fifty miles of this spot, and we stay for a long while watching the wheat sorting, not daring to take part as a man doing women’s work in this culture invites shame. This is just one of many cultural experiences that I am bombarded with on a constant basis and with even greater frequency as my language continues to improve. I have been on more walks since then, some longer, some shorter, most involving tea somewhere. Speaking of tea, it is amazing here; sweet mint tea seems to be the cure for any ill and is appropriate at any time of day. I have found the coffee to be less than adequate, as it is often weak and milky. Not a fan. But I brought a French Press with me so if can acquire my own coffee, I can prepare it well. I have started running again and enjoy the constant panorama of rugged mountains that glow with an ethereal light in the early mornings; I couldn’t ask for a prettier country to serve in for Peace Corps. Well that’s about it for now. It’s my birthday today and I have received lots of comments and actual mail from a few of you guys, thanks for the good wishes! The other PCTs surprised me with a cake. So, like last year, I was given a mystery dessert by people I just met in a place utterly foreign to me. (Last year it was North Carolina). I’ll post my final assignment as soon as I know more. All I have been told is that they are deciding between the Flyfishing mecca of Ifrane and the remote Eastern High-atlas near Errachidia. I was also told that I need to make sure I have all of my camping gear together because I will be spending the night out as I travel on foot between villages. Incredible, I have no idea what they actually want me to do! Exciting! Until next time, write me some letters, and contact my Dad if you have any questions about my address: kolb@incitelearninginc.com .

Ouarzazate, Morocco

I am back in Ouarzazate; it is evening. The sun is down and the call to prayer echoed from the Mosques all over the city with the appearance of the first star of the night. The Islamic faith seems to place a lot of significance on the sky as the Calendar is lunar and the religious time is based on the stars. This is further exhibited by the necklaces and trinkets sold in the Souk (market) that are reproductions of a device used by Sahara Nomads to navigate by the stars. The Sahara is compared to the ocean and the caravans to ships navigation is similar; both deal with an endless horizon.

I have spent the last four days living with a Tamazigt Berber host family in the tiny village of Ayt Ghamat, a few miles outside of El'Klaa M'gouna, the fabled "city of roses". My host family is wonderful and take good care of me. Their language, the Tamazigt dialect, is completely different than Arabic and is exceptionally strange to my tongue. All of the sounds are made in the back of the throat and the pace is fast... Yet I am learning quickly, I am beginning to understand my family and they me; even after only a few days, I am comfortable around them. I sleep in my on Salon (sitting room) which has been set aside for my use, amenities are few (no running water for instance) but I am so well cared for that it doesn't matter. It's the little things; tea served with bread and olive oil whenever I arrive home, or a tiny steaming teapot of water outside my room in the mornings to wash my face and hands (this morning I used it to shower over the drain in the bathroom). Beautiful tortoiseshell cats join us in the Salon at meal times as we sit on the carpeted floor around a low, round table; chairs are unnecessary.

Strangely I don't miss running water or constant internet, and nothing about this culture has shocked me, although it has shocked some of my fellows. There are a few things that gave me pause, the Turkish toilet for instance, or eating Cous-cous with my hands. The toilet is probably the most foreign aspect for now, mine is a cement hole with two foot platforms to squat on. You always have to use sandals in the bathroom; (trust me, you don't want to wear your chacos) mine are a pair a bartered for in the middle of the Souk, they have Che Guevara on them (I don't know why). Showering with a teapot is somewhat strange too, but refreshing too.

The community is wonderful, it sits up on a hill above the Dades River and is walled in by the High-Atlas on one side and the Jbel Souhara on the other. The lowlands are all fields of wheat shoots bounded by flowering Almond trees and shimmering Olive trees. Aspens too, or at least what I think are Aspens, I have no plant guide and it drives me nuts. These fields have been worked for 2000 years, and the paths have been trodden by countless feet. In the midst of the lowlands rises an ancient Kasbah, a earthen fortress/city. It is ruined now, but some walls still stand at heights of over 6 stories and some rooms are still used by the locals for prayer. A tunnel runs beneath the castle to a pool bounded by Date palms that sway with the breeze that sends almond flowers spinning into the water from a nearby grove. This is an Oasis, a last bastion of green life before the hot, dry Sahara. This country is wonderful and mysterious; I look forward to the next two years, which will be over soon enough.

Marrakech, Morocco

Written on 03/06/2010 The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity and travel. I left Philly on Tuesday night at 7:01 pm eastern time and arrived at 7:40 am Greenwich Mean time, the local time in Casablanca. Thanks to a boost from a sleeping pill, I experienced no jet lag (thanks for the travel advice Dad!). From Casablanca, I boarded a bus to Marrakech with my fellow volunteers and enjoyed a sleepy 3 hour ride across a green and fertile countryside speckled with sheep, patchworked with fields, and punctuated by the sparkling minarets of the village mosques. The fields faded into a line of foothills and behind them loomed the Atlas Mountains. Even growing up in the San Juans and working in the Teton Range in Wyoming, I was taken aback; they were massive. They loom over Marrakech like a breaking wave, a titanic barrier of rock, ice, and snow. Marrakech itself was my first taste of a Morrocan city, albeit a heavily touristed one (yes, there was an ad for “Mc Arabia”); the city is lovely. Every building is a rust color known as “Marrakech hamraa” that comes from the iron sediments in the soils used in the stucco. Our hotel was a complex of small bungalows and villas as well as some primary buildings around a large, still pool. The grounds were very lush with many palm trees and blooming hibiscus flowers. Between the simultaneously informative and overwhelming training classes, we relaxed and socialized together; some of my new friends and I played Frisbee on the football (soccer) field. We left Marrakech early the following morning and drove into the High Atlas, up the Tizi-n-tichka pass, in our buses. The road was serpentine enough that a couple of people in our bus got car-sick; happily, I was not among them. The city gave way to steep valleys dotted with tiny Berber villages which were bordered by terraced fields. The Atlas are quite rugged and their sheer scale and depth was incredible, Colorado prepared me for it somewhat, but was still unexpected. We stopped at the top of the pass for a breather and then continued down increasingly more arid valleys to the city Ouarzazate. I have been in Ouarzazate for the past few days and have learned much about Moroccan culture climate and language, as well as gaining some small understanding of what I may be doing for the next 2 years. The whirlwind of community based training begins soon, and I move in with my host family on Sunday.

Philadelphia, PA, USA Well it finally happened, the looming departure deadline that I had been anticipating/dreading for months has finally arrived and I am sitting on a plane bound for the Peace Corps staging event in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the deep breath before the plunge and, when the 24 hour staging whirlwind has dissipated, I depart for Morocco on the 2nd. First I will be boarding a bus to New York, where I will be flying out from JFK airport direct to Casablanca. No stopovers or changes in Europe at all, which is very nice and means my incredible amount of baggage has little chance of getting lost along the way. Once on the ground in Casablanca, I board a bus to the red city of Marrakech and stay the night with my fellow volunteers at a hotel. Marrakech has been called the “Gateway to Atlas” that 13,000+ ft mountain range that the ancient inhabitants of North Africa believed held up the heavens themselves. From there we take another, longer, bus ride across the Atlas to the city of Ouarzazate, which is located between the Atlas and the “Sahel” the fringe country of the Sahara. It is here that my group of volunteers will settle in for our three months or so of Pre-service Training (PST). I am sure I over-packed, but I can’t narrow it down much more. Will I be in the Atlas Mountains with the cold winters? Or the Sahara with the warm... well, everything. Or maybe the Rif Mountains and the National Park located on the rugged Mediterranean coastline? I have no idea and won’t know anything until over a month into training. I have been told that the Peace Corps selects your site based on your background and aspirations statement, and that the interviews during PST are just a formality. My best guess is work in the Atlas, that’s where a majority of the Moroccan National Parks are located. Plus my background is geared toward work in the mountains, what with growing up in Colorado and working at Yellowstone and Grand Teton for a couple seasons. It is a toss-up though, and I won’t know anything for quite awhile. I will be living with a Moroccan host family for the duration of my training and then stay with a second host family for the first 2 months at post. They will serve (in an ideal scenario, horror stories do exist) as a sounding board for my fledging language skills, be a window into Moroccan culture and family life, and also keep an eye on me during this crucial “break-in period”. I am optimistic overall, and look forward to seeing the Atlas and the Sahara, learning about an entirely foreign ecology and geography, and being able to use this knowledge to further global understanding of conservation. I look forward to slowing down, getting out of the constant connection of the American grid, and learning. I brought journals and notebooks, art supplies, and plenty of reading materials. Although the initial PST is fast-paced and days are full, the first few months at post are said to be quiet and pass very slowly. I hope to use this time efficiently and learn enough about my village that I can determine how best to be an effective volunteer. I also hope to write plenty of letters or, ideally, answer plenty of letters (hint hint!). If I failed to give you my address before I left, contact my Dad via email at kolb@incitelearninginc.com and he’ll give you my information. I would post it online, but that seems to be one of Peace Corps’ peeves. The final goodbye to family and friends was difficult, but not nearly the tearful occasion that other PCVs had described to me. I think this was for a couple different reasons, first that I had been gone before with the National Park Service, and also that “long goodbye” phenomenon that I described in my previous entry. I feel that I left no loose ends and that I have no pressing obligations tying me to the states; I feel I can stay out for as many months, years, as see fit. I am 22 years old and single; I have plenty of time. Still, I know I will miss my family and friends, and my home in the American West; although I do feel blessed to have Morocco as my post, it is said to be stunning. To those of you reading this, enjoy your next two years and feel free to write me from time to time (or send me a book, but no packages before May 5th, as per policy). Well l made it to Philadelphia and I am posting from my hotel it is full of confused Peace Corps hopefuls like myself. So it begins… I will update when I can, thanks for reading! -Charlie

Hesperus, Colorado

Well, I am officially in the final phase before my departure to Morocco, although sometimes it feels like I have already left... In fact, I do have people contact me occasionally in confusion, asking how I am enjoying Africa. But the fact is, I am still here in states and it is finally sinking in that I am leaving. Everything I see, and have taken for granted in the past, takes on a different quality. Everything is clearer, I notice things I haven't seen before, nuances of behavior or quality of light; everything I see is emphasized by the thought "this may be the last time I see this for a very long time".

Not that I am unprepared for March 1st; in fact I have spent the past year tying off loose ends and saying goodbye to friends and relatives, some of whom may not be around when I return. Each goodbye is bittersweet but an unforseen result of this intense visiting is that I am closer to my family and my roots than I have ever been in the past. I chose to spend my summer at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, for the simple reason that it would put me within a day's drive of much of my extended family. I put 25000 miles on my truck in that time period, taking advantage of this fact. As a result, I spent time talking, laughing, and bonding with my family and friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Some of them had married, some had children I had never met, and some, I was saddened to see, were beginning to slow down and grow frail.

Moving to Colorado at such a young age, I was disconnected from the South and had been back only once or twice in the past 15 years. After this summer of goodbyes, I feel like I have a connection again. This could not have been clearer than when I visited my Grandmother's hometown in the North Georgia mountains and stayed with her best friend from childhood. My friend and cousin, Jane, had begun to slow down some, but was still sharp as a tack. She gave me a unique view of grandmother's life, telling me of the 1920s and 1930s deep in the Appalachian Mountains. As we walked through the deep green forests and I smelled the wildflowers, mosses, and green of the place, I began to feel an indescribable resonance. It was as if the mountains were tuned to some part of my soul and as I viewed the mist-shrouded summits around the town, I realized that this was one of the only places on earth I could be tied to by blood, both European and Cherokee.

In October, I said my final round of farewells in the East, and drove across the country to the Colorado mountains, and spent some time at home. Thanksgiving came and went and I began the first of my truly difficult goodbyes: my brother. I picked him up in Seattle at his University and we drove the Oregon and California coast together, we spent days on the beach, both camping and staying in hotels. We saw lighthouses, seals, seastacks, and every little thing in between. Some of our best times were in the quiet green cathedrals of Redwoods or just singing along to inane music in the car. By the time we got back we were finishing eachother's sentences and had so many in-jokes that nobody could figure out what the hell we were saying to eachother. We got home and spent Christmas together as a family, but before long he was gone, back to school, and the last I saw of him was his back disappearing through the airport gate. It is unlikely that I will see him in these next two years, as nursing school will take up much of his life and visiting Morocco can be... time consuming. But I feel that we left on great terms and I look forward to our future adventures (how about rowing across the Atlantic, Will?). The Kolb Brothers are at it again!

This long goodbye is now compounded by the realization that I have to leave the Colorado Plateau, which is quite simply my favorite place on earth. (For an accurate summation this incredible and diverse piece of earth, I recommend the essay "Come on in" by Edward Abbey). This was incredibly apparent yesterday as I drove back from visiting a friend at Great Basin, and drove through Capitol Reef, across Cedar Mesa, down the Moki Dugway, and through the great Comb into Bluff UT. I sat in the Twinrocks Cafe eating a frybread dish and sipping coffee as I looked out over the twisted cottonwoods and dormant fields along the San Juan River; beyond lay the cliffs that mark the northern border of Dinetah, Navajoland. I looked at the pictures of rock art on the walls, and at the faces of Navajos and desert rats at the surrounding tables and sighed. Ya'at'eeh. [it is good] Aoo'. [Yes it is...] I left with reluctance, and headed back to Colorado through McElmo Canyon as the sun set and the world grew dark.

Both people and places, so many loose ends to tie off; so many threads to pick up the on my return. This long goodbye has helped my put my life in perspective, to realize just how many people I will miss and be missed by. Now I rest, at home in the snowy San Juans, woodstove crackling and the cat sprawled out like a furry throw rug at my feet. I have things to do, packing lists to compile, and people to spend time with. The long goodbye continues, but is overshadowed by a sense of contentment and excitement in the face of the unknown. I will post contact information (or at least how to get it) as soon as I can; until then, enjoy your winter.

6 weeks... and counting...

Well, here is my method for staying in touch with those of you in the first world who are interested in what I am doing and/or remember that I still exist!

I will attempt to update this every month or so during my posting when I actually have internet, which is only available in the cities. I will be leaving here on March 1st and, over the next two months, I will update this with information as I learn more about my assignment. Right now I am in the "reading phase" where I am devouring every Morocco book I can get my hands on and I am valiantly attempting to get a head start on learning Arabic... It's interesting.

Here's what I know so far regarding my actual assignment: I am posted to Morocco, which is in the Northwestern corner of the African Continent. Although it is directly across the Mediterranean from Europe, the culture is an overwhelmingly 98.7% Muslim, while the 1.1% Christian and the 0.2% Jewish make up the fringes. It is a country of extremes with the climate ranging from near-arctic winters in the High Atlas Mountains (Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in Morocco, is 13,617 feet high) to scorching desert summers in the Southeast which is dominated by the Sahara. Throw in the rugged coasts, semi-arid plains, and lush, burgeoning river valleys, Morocco is not all that "Casablanca" depicted it to be...

I have been assigned as a volunteer in the Peace Corps Morocco Environmental Education program this could entail many different things but, as a generalization, I will likely be teaching about Biology, Ecology, and Resource Management in a village within, or on the fringes of, a National Park (yes they have them!). I may also get the opportunity to train Park Staff and help organize management plans (things far beyond my American GS-5 pay grade) for the Park where I work. Granted, these are all just ideas, and in reality I have no idea as to where they'll put me. All I know for sure, is that training starts March 1st (stateside), I arrive in Morocco March 3rd (for 3 months of Pre-service training, both language and technical) and officially begin my "project" on May 5th 2010. My ending date will be May 5th 2012, unless I opt to extend, which I don't have to think about for a very long time.

I will posted instructions for letter-writing and other methods of communicating with me in Africa as I discover them.

For those of you reading this in Durango, I've only got 2 months left to hang out! So call me if you want to see me before I skip town. For the rest, I hope that you enjoy your New Year's festivities tonight, as well as the next two years.