From “like home” to the Peace Corps I expected… to “home” in Morocco…

April 26, 2008

I’ve had an incredible week. Just incredible, and very non-Peace Corps.

I had to go up to Rabat for something. Now, I had been to Rabat for three days when we first got in-country, but we didn’t get to see much of the city. Instead, we saw a lot of the conference room of a very nice hotel. In the three days we were there, I think we might have had a total of 4 hours to explore. I remembered walking past a large mosque to get to the medina, but that was about all.

Though I had a legitimate reason to be up there that wasn’t just for vacation, I felt like it was a much-needed break from life in Southern Morocco.

The first day, I only made it as far as Marrakech, over what I call the “pass of death.” It wasn’t nearly as bad as I remembered and I was able to almost enjoy the beautiful views and small picturesque villages. It helped that I was on a large bus, next to a good friend whose parents were flying in that night.

Once there, I had a lot of the afternoon to eat (McDonalds!), wander the souks, find a fantastic riad for my parents and I to stay at during their visit, and load up on bootleg DVDs. At night, I met up with my friend and her parents took me out for dinner and a stroll through the souks and crazy stalls. I loved meeting them and hanging out. All in all, it was a good and much more interesting day than I had anticipated, and I have decided that I like Marrakech a lot more than I thought.

The next morning, I took a train up to Rabat. Speaking Tam helped pave the way to get a youth discount card (my train was at 9 am, but the “discount card” person wouldn’t get in until 11 am… so the guy at the window snuck in the other room and made one up for me because I spoke Tam and he did too) and had an entire compartment to myself for the first 3 hours, up to Casa. It filled up from Casa to Rabat.

When I stepped out of the gare (train station), I was a bit overwhelmed by the urbanity. At first, I had no idea where I was and how to find the hotel, but then it hit me and I realized I had walked by the gare two or three times a year previous. I asked a man for directions and he, too, miraculously, spoke Tam. “If you need anything, come find me. People here aren’t the same way they are in Berber areas, so if you need something, come let me know,” the patisserie man told me, showing me the way to the hotel.

Even the hotel was a nice surprise and better than I had anticipated. But after dropping off my things, another quick meal at McDonalds (for only the third time in over a year), I headed over to PC headquarters.

Another surprise: the office is beautiful. It’s amazing, with gardens, wood-carved ceilings, Western toilets complete with toilet paper and soap, and a Volunteer lounge with internet, books for trading, large ponjs, and free printing. It’s the little things…

I had a lovely visit and even a short tour before heading back to the hotel for awhile. I hadn’t seen anyone else I knew, and I had called the two people I know living in Rabat who I wanted to make up with but hadn’t gotten any positive responses yet, so I resigned myself to eat dinner on my own at a place I had heard about at the German institute in town. Ironically, as soon as I got in the hotel elevator, another PCV stepped in after me and was also planning on going there, alone, for dinner. After a very satisfying half-pizza half-salad meal and profiteroles with coffee for dessert, I thought it would be a good time to go back to the hotel and go to bed.

Until I got a phone call as I left from one of my friends in town: a 19-year old camper from the spring camp who I became close with. I told her we could meet up tomorrow, but she insisted I go to her house that night, so her mother pulled up in their car (!) and picked me up from the hotel, taking me to a swanky coffee shop in Agdal (the ritzy district). Staring at traffic and boutiques, the three of us drank tea or hot chocolate and discussed life in French, our only mutual language. They then took me to their house and insisted I spend the night, after watching the world go by from their roof and meeting the rest of her family. It was a somewhat sleepless night because I was in a new place and in someone’s home, but it was a lot of fun, and after breakfast, the next morning they dropped me off at the hotel to pick up my things to go to a meeting, of sorts.

It was a good meeting, and I left for lunch halfway at the American Club and had some work to do while also overhearing interesting conversation from foreign service officers from the American Embassy. Afterwards, I walked from the embassy area to the center of town, asking for directions along the way in broken Arabic. Finally, I met up, as planned, with the other person I wanted to see in Rabat: a former PC Morocco employee who we all love and miss but who has a fantastic new job as country director for a cultural exchange project. Myself, another volunteer, he, and another former PC LCF (language teacher) sat for 3 or 4 hours and laughed over coffee.

At 9 pm, we all realized we hadn’t eaten, but he went home while the other volunteer and I went to…TGI Fridays! Yes, there is a TGIF in Rabat. I was surprised, and even moreso at the magician who came and performed at our table, the obvious effort our waitress was making to be as authentic as possible, (even coming and introducing herself, pointing to her nametag, and telling us to let her know if we need anything: a definite first in Morocco for me, and a real effort on her part, as we saw her practicing it under her breath as she walked up to us). The manager, an ex-NFL player who has only been here since the opening in November, came and spent a lot of time at our table, talking to us about his perceptions of Morocco, the process he had hiring waiters and waitresses, his beautiful beachside condo, and how he’s gone from not knowing what continent Morocco was on 6 months ago to not wanting to move back home ever. He also brought us over a large brownie sundae to split at the end of the meal.

I thought we’d never get a taxi back, but we did and the next morning, headed to the office one last time. I wanted to go back to go to the library, which hadn’t been open the two other days, and to check email briefly. The library was another little slice of paradise and I probably spent over an hour looking through all the sections and seeing what resources might be useful over the coming months.

We barely made it to the train station to get back to Marrakech, but we did, and we were able to hit the souks up once more. If you’ve never been to the Marrakech souks, they’re a bit intense and difficult to describe. I’m sure there is a poetic and delightful description in some guidebooks, and some complaints and gripes on some others, but they’re, to put it one way, intense. On one level, you have the harassment and catcalling, the “Hello fish and chips” or “Australia! You Australia? Kangaroo kangaroo, come to my shop!” on another, there’s the whole dodging mopeds as they weave in and out among the pedestrians, the olfactory overload with all the goodies being baked or cooked and the occasional rancid odor or the musk or spices from herb shops, the sights of any sort of souvenir imaginable, the clothes and clothes, the woodcarvings, pottery, jewelry, leather, metalwork… and then on the main square, Jamaa Alfna, there are the requisite snake-charmers, cheap fresh squeezed orange juice (or expensive grapefruit juice you can talk down to half price in Tam!), the snails steaming in large pots, the women trying to pull you over to do henna, the Gnawa dancers, storytellers, water sellers in gaudy frilled hats, and, oh, the tourists!
In any case, after perusing the herbal shops and looking for gazelle horn cookies among the bakers, we eventually found the Chinese restaurant some of my friends had told me about: China Quick. It’s in Gueliz, the new part of town, and isn’t in the least bit touristy: the first 3 taxi drivers had never heard of it and refused to take us there, not even knowing what street it was on. However, we eventually got there and I had a wonderful fish in ginger sauce with bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Three or four people came in while we were there picking up takeout in little white boxes. It felt like home and was really reasonably priced. I definitely plan on going back next time I am in Marrakech. We were able to walk back as well, though it took a good half hour or so.

To top off the night, we went to one of the tea stands on the square. At night, dozens of restaurant stands pop up complete with tables and utensils and sell anything from organ meat and sheep or goat head to a basic tagine, soup, or salads. Some are purely designated for a black, spiced tea that is more intense even than the “normal” mint tea. It was almost like a drug, the stuff is so potent: sweet, hot, and so spicy with cloves and ginsing, ginger, and cinnamon, that it burns as it goes down.

The ride back to site from Marrakech was also much easier than I had anticipated, and I made it to my souk town with enough time to shop, check email, and check my mail before going home in my afternoon transit.

All of this has been such a welcome change from my life in the rural south; it was really difficult for me to go back to site. I fell in love with Rabat and realized if I got a job there after Peace Corps, I feel like I could live there for 2-3 years quite easily and comfortably. It’s a great city full of wonderful people and I love the feel of either the center of town or Agdal.

May 1, 2008

Happy Labor Day! At least it is labor day everywhere in the world except the US. Oh, the remnants of McCarthyism…

In any case, wow. Life is crazy. I can’t believe that a week ago I was in Rabat, living it up at TGI Fridays and Agdal, and now I’ve come from an experience that is what I expected Peace Corps to be like.

Let me back up a bit. A few months ago, I was talking with my nurse about what some of the community needs are, and we discussed me going out to the outer douars and spending some time there. I was really excited about the idea, but never knew if it would actually happen. Most of those communities don’t have regular transportation, no cell phone reception, landlines, or anything like that, so logistically, setting up going there without a car is a nightmare.

However, my nurse found a man who was willing to let me stay with his family in a douar that I’ll call Toughmas (tooth in Tamazight; sounds a lot like the douar itself). I met him once in the sbitar: an old man missing some teeth with a bright yellow sash wrapped around his head. It’s not all that uncommon in my area to see men with a yellow or white scarf wrapped around their heads, almost like a turban. The white ones remind me of Oaxacan cheese. But I digress. I got the number for the transit driver that sometimes goes to Toughmas from my souk town, and thanked him for the invitation. This was probably February.

With being out of site so much, I haven’t had the chance to go until now. I tentatively planned to go there the 28th-1st and asked my nurse to make sure that was okay when he went on Equippe-Mobile.

However, with the Rabat trip, I haven’t seen my nurse since Equippe-Mobile and our phones aren’t working with one anothers for some reason. I emailed him, but never got a response. Tried calling. Nothing. The morning I was supposed to leave, I finally got a hold of him, and he told me he was still in my souk town, but that he had “gave them the message that I’d be there” those days. Then, my phone went dead (out of money) and by the time I recharged, I couldn’t get back in touch with him.

Dilemma: should I stay or should I go? I knew nothing about the family, nothing really about what they had been told, and I knew that if I left on the transit, I’d have to spend the night somewhere no matter what. What if they didn’t know or what if they forgot? Would I be stuck outside somewhere, sleeping on the ground, health books stacked at my feet?

But I bit the bullet. Why not. I waved down the passing transit from the edge of Tamazitinu, and got in, asking to be taken to the house I’d never been to before. People on the transit were friendly, at least. Maybe, worst case scenario, I could stay with them.

We drove through douars I hadn’t visited since last June, including one with a really cool but small domed mosque. I’m not used to those: most mosques here have the tower, not a pointed dome. Eventually we pulled up to Toughmas. “Do you know which house it is?” the driver taunted me. He knew, but he also knew I had no idea and wanted to make fun of me.

When we pulled up, the old man smiled at least, and remembered me, and the rest of the 13 people living in the house welcomed me warmly. Hamdullah. It was a gamble, but I made the right move.

I was shocked at how nice the house was: there’s no running water or electricity in the douar, but they had a “taqa:” a solar panel on the roof. This provided enough electricity to watch 2-3 hours of television a day and have some lights on at night. There was also a faucet that I thought might be from a local water chateau, providing “tap” water to houses, but I later found out it came straight from the “small well” with a motor. When it was all said and done, living there for a few days was no different in regards to amenities than my homestay.

That first day, Monday, I just spent time with the family, went to their fields and tried to help harvesting alfalfa and wheat but just getting in the way, and, at night, we had taam (large plain couscous) with udi and went to bed, sharing floor space with 8 other unmarried girls ranging in age from 5 to 30. The husband had married twice and I could never figure out how many kids he had from each marriage, but met a 1 year old, 3 year old and 12 year old boy, as well as 5, 8, 10, 19, 23, 25, and 30 year old daughters, and a 20-year old daughter in law. That night, I talked to the older women informally about the things I planned on talking about: safe home pregnancies, infant care, pregnancy care, oral rehydration salts, basic hygiene information, and dental hygiene. I also realized that I probably wouldn’t be able to gather all the women together to talk to them about health and would have to play everything by ear.

No problem.

The next morning, they woke me up at 6 and said they’d be in the fields all morning. The kids, however, had a 45-minute walk to school that was mostly uphill and was in the next douar over. I decided to go with them and bring my school toothbrushing lesson. The teachers welcomed me with open arms and a stuffed iguana. Really. They didn’t give me the stuffed iguana but they tried to scare me with it. I was able to do the toothbrushing/dental hygiene lesson with the morning classes, and then a girl came to show me around town and help me meet with the women in that douar.
Unfortunately, I was only really able to talk to 4 women and it was as one of them was weaving a large woolen carpet. They promised to share the information with others in the area, and so I went to meet up with the kids at the madrasa and walk home with them.

We got back at around two, and though all I wanted was to take a nap, Aicha, the oldest daughter, said that it would be the best time to go around to peoples’ houses.

Okay. So, we did. We’d go up to a house, she’d knock on the door and say hello, then we’d go in, talk for about an hour, drink tea and eat bread or dates or cookies or fresh butter and buttermilk, then go to the next one.

Over the next two days, we went to 9 houses. It was rather exhausting, but I think it was useful: talking about how to treat their well water, what is needed for the safest home births possible, when to wash hands, and how to make oral rehydration drink. Some houses were much nicer than others: from a two-room mud floored house with a well and nothing else to a house with solar panels, a powered well with a faucet, satellite television, and a bathroom.

The second night there, the three year old named after my nurse screamed and pointed. It was night, but we used a flashlight and saw a huge insect. I got close and stared to it. It was intriguing in its disgustingness and was about the size of my rather large hand. They tried to kill it but it got away and I asked what it was called.

“Brrdilghrm”

Oh, no. A camel spider. Right by the window over where I had slept the previous night. Needless to say I didn’t get too much sleep that night.

The third night, a neighbor came and grabbed me. “The nurse said you could say at our house too and we want you to.” Again, I went with the flow and went over and had a fantastic time with the family. There were three girls (9, 20, 27) (many more children living elsewhere) and the parents, and we had great conversation, they gave me a fantastic dinner (salad, beet salad, bread with sardines, and even Coke!). They fed me so well I thought they had to be rather well off, but when I asked for the bathroom, they told me that everyone just went outside. No bathroom. Wow.

This morning I was off at 5 am and at my house by 6:30 am. I wanted to sleep but couldn’t, so did something for most likely the first time in my life: watched a movie from 6:30 to 8:30 am. It was strange, but rather fun.

Today, I’m off to Kelaa M’Gouna later in the afternoon to do a HIV/AIDS booth at the Rose festival. It should be fun.

May 6, 2008

Kelaa was fantastic! Friday and Saturday we saw over 2000 people in our booth and either taught or gave out information on HIV/AIDS prevention. Saturday morning, ALCS (a HIV/AIDS prevention NGO here) came with free testing, and people were engaged and asking questions. We had a few peer educators (nurses, a high school student, an Association member, etc) helping us out, so we ended up educating in Arabic, Tamazight, Tashelheit, English, and French.

It was great and worthwhile and a lot of fun, especially Saturday night, but I’m really feeling badly for being out of my site so much. After my parents visit, I think I have to “ground” myself and keep in site as much as possible, only leaving for Mid-Service Medicals. It’s great to be busy and have work, but it feels like the year I have left isn’t nearly enough to get done what I want to do.

On a side-note, if any of you are interested in being able to send me free text messages on my phone from the internet, drop me an email and I’ll try to see if it works out! I wouldn’t be able to respond, but it’d be great to hear any news every once in awhile on my cell phone and I think it’s possible through Maroc Telecom.

May 28, 2008

Wow, has it EVER been awhile.

On the 6th, the last day I updated, a friend came to visit for the night, and the next morning, we headed up to a local tourist site: a stunning gorge. We had fun goofing off, my feet freezing in the river, and me doing my best impersonation of a tourist: nalgene bottle in hand, sunglasses on, floppy hat, and camera around my neck. Despite the cliché, we had fun and I even bought a piece of antique jewelry that was typical wedding adornments even 10-15 years ago. In some places, older women still wear them always, in areas like Imilchil in the Atlas Mountains.

From there, it was goodbye to my friend and hello to others in my province as I spent the night near the provincial capital to go to a meeting the next morning about the training of trainers we’re working on for nurses in October. For some reason, the meeting didn’t end up happening, and I spent the next day killing time, waiting for my parents to fly in.

And late Saturday night (the 10th), after me hanging in our fantastic, nice hotel room for a change for a day, I was at the airport at midnight to welcome my tired but excited parents to Morocco.

What a whirlwind two weeks!

The first day, we went to Ouarzazate and had breakfast by the pool, mint tea with someone I work with from Peace Corps, visited a Kasbah (old fort/house), had a delicious French lunch, and went to a small fair that happened to be going on in town. I loved that my parents got to witness the friendliness and integrity of a lot of people here: I lost my wallet and cell phone (it fell out as I got out of a taxi), but when I called my cell phone 4 hours later, the person who found it met me at the Kasbah and gave me everything back untouched. The sad thing was that I wasn’t all that surprised. I’m getting too used to this sort of thing, because I can’t think of another town the size of Ouarzazate where that would happen anywhere in the world.

The next day, we went to my site and just relaxed in my house. Thank God there were no mice, scorpions, or really, any nasty looking pests that my parents saw in their two-night stay. They bravely conquered the Turkish toilet, went two days without a shower, and put up with my dragging them all over town for tea and coffee, kids chasing us all the way. I had a great (but exhausting!) time and had fun cooking with them at night.

The next morning, I called a taxi to pick us up instead of the Becker bus—a real luxury for me!—and we were off to my souk town and the gorges. Some of my friends were in town, so they got to meet some fellow volunteers and we had a, well, rather, interesting dinner with a view of, well… it was fun, but definitely not what I had in mind. The restaurant was dangerously close to the prostitute district, and there was a pool hall downstairs in the back that we didn’t see as we came in. Our balcony view was of a nice mud pit that men were using as a bathroom. It was pretty hilarious, to tell the truth.

Then a travel day; I forced my parents to travel about 12 hours in taxis and busses to Taghazoute, a small beach town north of Agadir. The apartment we rented was not to any of our liking (one of my parents nicknamed it a vulgar version of the word “latrine,”) so the next day we went to Agadir for two nights at a much nicer apartment with a view of the “God, Country, King” in lights on the nearby hill and crescent-shaped beach. Agadir was a nice place to just sort of chill out, and it was the little things, like the heavenly deep fried calamari or 5-dirham miniature zoo that made it a nice respite from the more conservative desert of the south.

Next, we went up to Essaouira on a nausea-inducing Supratours bus. Maybe it was the fact that Essa has been built up for me over the past year, but I think we were all disappointed in how touristy the medina was. People described Essa as their favorite place in Morocco, a place where you can sit and chill for 3-4 days without even thinking about it. I loved the harbor and the ramparts, and, of course, the Mexican/British restaurant La Cantina, but all in all, was underwhelmed with the UNESCO World Heritage Site. I feel like if I had gone 4-5 years ago, it would have been different (read: less commercial) and better, but don’t really care if I end up going back.

It was summed up as I was trying to follow directions to the famous La Cantina restaurant (famous among Volunteers and ex-pats, at least) and stood at the top of one of the alleyways, seeing if that’s where I should go. A nice, older British man came up to me, patted my shoulder, and said, “It’s all the same, love.” It cracked me up, but was true.

From Essa we took a taxi through the sprawling Argan tree farms (one of which did have goats in it, though they were planted there for tourists) to the insanity of Marrakech.

I was worried about the whole Riad experience there: it was a long, twisting walk to the riad through Jamaa Alfna (the main square) and we were all tired. However, the walk through the medina’s souks and eventually eating dinner at the famous stalls on the square with the Gnawa dancers, Henna-painting ladies, storytellers, traditional medicine men, and copper tins of steaming spicy tea lifted all our spirits. The next day we went to a palace and some famous gardens and we took a horse-drawn carriage back through the walled city. My parents were gracious enough to let me eat Chinese food there for lunch (as well as Indian food in Agadir, though that was the place with the heavenly calamari, so it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice, I think), and for all the craziness of Marrakech, I think we did really well. The second night of stall-food on the square wasn’t as delicious as anticipated, but it was still a great time.

My parents were flying out of Casa, so we took a train ride up there from Kech and found our hotel, which was disappointing compared to the review in Lonely Planet. I really don’t like Casa, but most people don’t. The medina is a joke (and was a terrible introduction to Morocco for my parents. I was impressed that they maneuvered the trains to get there during their long layover before flying to meet me though), restaurants are expensive and underwhelming, and the people were some of the least friendly I’ve met in Morocco. Well, except for the Berber speakers who were easier to find than I thought, but when most people can speak to me in Berber, they’re immediately friendly and ready to invite me over for tea or to stay over at their houses.

It was interesting seeing Morocco through someone else’s eyes, and fun to see what was the most entertaining to them or the most annoying. I never realized that me bargaining taxis in Tamazight (which happens often) or the kids in my town banging on my window wanting to come in would be funny or endearing, or that a dirty hotel or apartment, Turkish toilets, or unhelpful taxi drivers would be such an annoyance. I was really proud of my parents: the toilets, the transportation, the bargaining and medinas, their success in packing light, their generosity towards me and people in my community, and even just how relatively stress-free it all was, as well as just really happy that I can now talk about things here that they understand more since they’ve seen it and experienced it.

Now, I wish I could just stay in my site and not leave for the next three months, however, this isn’t meant to be. I have more meetings for joint projects, medical appointments out of town, and, excitingly enough, another friend from home coming to visit in June! I don’t think I’m going to have enough vacation time for everyone to come visit who I’d like; if you don’t have tickets and are thinking about coming, the best time would be after I end my service next June! I just don’t have the time off, unless you want to fly in and travel to my site one weekend, spend all week at my site, and fly out the next weekend and do no other traveling around with me!

Wow. Life is good but frustrating and tiring right now. I want to focus on my site but really don’t have the time to between all these other things going on, which makes me sad. I love that people are coming to visit, seeing people at medicals, and that there are projects involving other volunteers, but, really, I don’t think I’ll be able to do everything I want to here in Tamazitinu. We’ll see. I’m going to meet with the Commune tomorrow, hopefully to discuss the possibility of another project- building bathrooms in some schools which have nothing right now. Literally, the children just leave and go around the corner behind the classrooms. This is a project that, if it does happen, we’ll most likely write a grant to get contributions from people in the U.S. in a few months, so stay tuned!


As an aside, I’m quite glad that my parents didn’t experience any beasties in my site. However, I wish I could say the same for me!

The day I came back after two full weeks of traveling, I was sitting on one of my ponjs and a bit of mud from the roof fell onto my other ponj. It’s a mud house. I don’t think much about the walls falling in a little.
However, right after this, I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. I screamed.

It was a camel spider.

Now, I’ve seen them before, a few weeks ago, when I was in Toughmas, and it was big and ugly, but only the size of my hand.

This one was huge. I’m not one to exaggerate for a good story, but I promise, including all its legs, from one side to the other was at least as long as my forearm. What’s that, over a foot? It was huge. Its body has a glistening orange part that just looks horrendous, and they BITE. I was terrified, I’m not going to lie. Spiders don’t scare me, nor do little scorpions, but when poisonous insects get large, I freak out. So I screamed and it moved FAST behind my ponjs before I could kill it. I poked around with my broom and squeegee but couldn’t summon enough courage to move my ponjs to get it. So it may still be there, I don’t know, but I did sleep with the lights on for the next two days. I wish I had killed it and then gotten a picture. It’s a monster. You know how kids at home are afraid of monsters in the closet or under the bed? If they lived here, I don’t think it would be due to an overactive imagination. I was terrified. And it could still be in the same room I’m sitting in.






Language Note:

I haven’t done one of these lately, but it’s time. I learned a cool thing the other day:

Ait lqbilt.

I’ve always heard “Ait lqbilt” as people living down a certain road to the south and then the west of Tamazitinu. When transits pass by and I ask where they’re going, people will say, “Ait lqbilt,” or someone living in one of a few towns in that general area will say, “I’m from Ait lqbilt, in such-and-such town.”

The area seemed like a distinct small region to me, so that was my assumption: Ait lqbilt means “the people of a geographic area with xyz as the borders.”

Until I had a conversation with someone in my souk town.

Her: “Where are you from?”

Me: “Tamazitinu.”

“Oh, Ait lqbilt.”

“What? Ait lqbilt? But I thought XXXX, XXX, and XXX were Ait lqbilt.”

“They are too. But we also call Tamazitinu Ait lqbilt.”

“But… should I call Tamazitinu Ait lqbilt?”

“Not if you’re there.”

I looked up the words for south and west (not words I use a lot in Tam, apparently). Nope.

So I finally asked a friend’s ex-tutor.

“Oh! Good question.” Apparently, “qbilt” means “in the direction of Mecca” or “in the path of from where I am currently to Mecca.” From Tamazitinu, the towns down that specific road are in the pathway to Mecca, as are places in other countries and Saudi Arabia. From parts of the US, Morocco would be Ait lqbilt. From Beijing, China, for example, if a Berber speaker (though “qbilt” might exist in Arabic as well) talked about Ait lqbilt, it’d include parts of India, Pakistan, Iran, Quatar, and parts of Saudi Arabia.

Fascinating, and even more fascinating that it’d be a part of every day conversation in regards to communities down a road from us when it also refers to millions of people in other countries, thousands of miles away.