June 28, 2008
The worst part about traveling is coming back to my community and feeling like I have to re-integrate. Other than an occasional weekend out with friends, I'm going to make a point to stay in site as much as possible for the next few months…
That being said, my voyages up north with the Smurph, visiting my CBT (training homestay) family in Azilal, and the mid-service medical exams in Rabat, then the Delegue meeting in the provincial capital were fun. However, being out of my community for so long really makes me feel terrible and like I have to re-integrate, get to know people, and somehow try to reassure people (including, maybe, myself) that I am really here to get things done and work with the community. I have a lot of energy for potential projects, but it's actually leaving my house in the heat to get them done that is the most difficult thing, and it doesn't help when I feel like every time I leave, I have to make excuses (or when I come back, finding dead mice and camel spiders in my house, or that the electricity was out for two weeks and everything in my fridge had 2 inches of mold on it).
On the job side of things… I have some ideas that I want to get going. The Association (finally!) said they'd meet with me, which is fantastic. I also really want to get some sort of summer program started. I'll do it on my own on a very small scale, but I'd prefer to have some community help or find out what THEY want to do.
I've had some encouragement from unlikely sources: a French development worker told me that she wasn't surprised that I hadn't done any projects in just a year, and that she felt that integration and acceptance was the first step; this, she said, can take a few days. "If you had done a project by now, most likely, it would fail." It's a depressing message, but it made me feel better and slightly validated. I also am in the midst of reading Three Cups of Tea about Greg Mortenson, who has built over 50 schools and womens' centers, bridges, etc. in Pakistan. I can't quite find the quote that was the most comforting to me, but it took him at least 1-2 years to build his first school, and he was constantly having to learn from the people in his community. They came to him. It's not something that's happened for me yet, but I suppose I need to be patient still, and get over the mentality of "get it done now, be productive, have hard, concrete results."
I did have my girls over yesterday though. I was still cleaning the house when they came over an hour earlier than expected, so they helped me clean up, which was a most welcome surprise. We talked about vitamins a little, did art, and danced to Fnaire.
Oh, Fnaire. This is a strange, tragic situation. Fnaire is my favorite Moroccan band. They sing in Arabic, so I don't understand it, but my two favorite songs of theirs are Lalla Manana and Yid el Henna. The former is about treating women right, the latter about how wonderful and unique Morocco is. It's essentially socially conscious Moroccan hip-hop. I love it.
In Fez, with Sarah, we happened to be there during the World Sacred Music Festival. It was a great situation: we randomly found a better place to stay than I had anticipated: a homestay of sorts. One of the brothers, with two Pakistani men and a Canadian who were also staying there, took us to a free concert at 11 pm the first night we were in Fez. The second day, randomly, at an ice cream parlor, Smurphy and I ran into some Fullbright students; we talked some, then they asked if we were going to see Fnaire.
"Fnaire!? Here?! When? How much?"
It ends up, we were a five minute walk and ten minutes away from the start of them, free, live. Awesome. We had to move back from where we were, quite near the front, because some men were being men, but it was great to hear them sing live, even if I didn't understand. They played all my favorites, and I was on a high for the rest of the day.
A few weeks later, at the Delegue meeting, I was talking about it, and someone said, "Oh, one of them died." What?
I went online. We had seen them on the 13th in Fez. Hicham, the DJ, died on the way from Fez back to Marrakech in a car accident on the 16th. He was 23. YouTube has the 2M report (again, in Darija) that showed clips from the concert we were at, then cutting to the place of the accident and the wreckage of the car.
It feels so strange, so tragic… even though I'm not Moroccan, so really can't feel the same pride in their music and their message (especially considering I don't understand most of the words), the fact that a young, hip band was huge here, but with messages about things like HIV/AIDS awareness and Moroccan pride, with music that definitely has elements of uniqueness, that moves you and makes you want to dance… the fact that the difficult roads here killed one member really touches my heart.
…
What else? It's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit already at night, which is miserable, and will only get worse.
The trip was fantastic, though long. My homestay family visit was remarkably smooth; our bus stopped for two hours at our training seminar site, and it was strange to see how it had changed in a year. My hanut man Aziz, the barbershop owner next door to the hotel we took over, and the cyber guy on the other side all remembered me and asked about how life was going. The town got a new beautiful fountain, and it was really interesting to be able to actually talk to people.
In our small homestay village, again, life was comfortable, though they told me, when I described my house, that there were most likely snakes in the rafters, especially since I have mice. Great. I realized that Hayat, my 21-year old host-sister, speaks baby-talk to me sometimes to make things easier and that some of my mistakes in Berber I picked up from trying to imitate her, especially in regards to structure. It was great actually being able to understand and communicate more, and to find out all the town gossip of people I knew before… and of course, skipping stones on that magical lake made me wish I lived there instead of Tamazitinu.
Mid-service medical exams were okay, but they had us running all over town: the x-ray place, the dentists' office, the Peace Corps Office (every day for 3 days, when it was all said and done), hand-delivering a stool sample six or eight blocks in a little Styrofoam container to the laboratory, back to the x-ray place for another diagnostic exam to make sure everything was okay… combine that with eating delicious Pizza/Salad plates at the Goethe institute, falafel, crazy 3-flavor sandwiches, coffee with Mhmmoudi, and picking up Smurphy from the train station (or just outside it) made for a very full three days in Rabat! I really do love that city though.
First stop for the Smurph and I after Rabat was Fez; I highly recommend it. The tanneries don't smell as bad as all the literature says, though we never made it to the large ones, as our day was sort of hijacked by a Namibian woman named Rita who, well, didn't really flow with our travel style. I will say that the small tannery we went to was amazing because they let us actually get in and walk right on top of the dye pits, though I was terrified of slipping on the goo (including many liquified animal body parts) and falling in one of the pits. The man who showed us around was helpful, but as he only spoke Arabic, I heard… "This………..color……..shoe……..leather….." I'd explain "This is a dye pit for shoe leather." Then "This…. (mimes washing)…..good…. quality (French)…" So I'd say, "This is where they wash the good quality of leather."
Unfortunately, my being able to piece together maybe 20% of what he was telling us meant our Namibian friend wanted me to translate everything and got mad when I didn't understand. "Why don't you explain it to us?"
After Fez, we headed up north to Al Hoceima in a rather long (8 hour, no AC) bus ride. Smurphy's a trooper. Anyway, it is a beautiful beach town that really didn't feel touristy at all. We went to the two beaches nearby: Playa Quemado and Playa Cala Bonita, and swam in the crystal-clear coves, surrounded by steep cliffs. They were amazing.
It also had such a strange feel up north: Spanish was the second language after Arabic (well, third; there's also Tarifit Berber; I understand more Arabic than Tarifit), and it felt like a strange hybrid of familiar Morocco, a hint of Spain, and a very laid-back feeling. Maybe it was because of all of the kif fields we passed by.
Oh, the kif. First of all, I don't smoke and I didn't smoke, but the Rif mountains in the north of Morocco are the etymology for the term "reefer." And though marijuana is illegal in Morocco, the main road from Ketama to Al Hocema was full of field after field of bright green marijuana plants. It was planted right up to the road in half-acre, acre, two or three acre plots. It was so ubiquitous that I didn't even notice at first because, really, who would expect to see that?
We met up with some of my friends in Al Hoceima who asked how we could have missed it, and so on the way to Chefchaoen, I was stupefied.
When we pulled into Chaoen, after another grueling 6 hour bus ride, I was worried. It just looked like a boring town. I knew the main attraction was the medina, but it just looked boring.
Though it was quite touristy, the medina was beautiful. White and blue walls all over… cheap restaurants with tortilla Espanola, paella, and a delightful shrimp "tagine," fresh goat cheese at every meal, and more winding, blue alleyways to get lost in really made Chaoen stand out as a unique medina, though Pension Mauritania, where we stayed, had bed mattresses about as comfortable as when I slept outside on cobblestones during homestay last summer.
Tangier, on the other hand, was not cute or picturesque at all. In fact, it was gritty, probably the grittiest place I've been in Morocco. It makes me feel even more than I expected that the tourists who come for one day on the ferry from Spain and only see Tangier really know absolutely nothing about Morocco, and, really, it's probably the last place I'd choose for someone to see if they were only going to spend 8 hours in the country.
The American Legation museum was interesting; I think most interesting is how different it feels as soon as you walk inside and see the deck that goes over the alleyway in a sort of pedestrian bridge, and the delightful gardens. I also love some of the old documents, including the one where the consul general wrote a letter saying that they were flying the American flag at half-mast after Lincoln's assassination, or seeing the document from the sultan (?) that was the first time in writing another country recognized the US's sovereignty. The Kasbah museum was also impressive; it had glass bottles from the 1st century, and clay pots from over 1000 BC, and was by far the best presented museum I've seen in Morocco so far.
All good things come to an end, and for us, that happened in Casa, though we stayed long enough in Tangier in the morning to not get to explore town a lot. That's okay; there's NOTHING in Casa except the great mosque, which I will go see someday.
After two nights at home (which I spent sleeping and watching movies; I was exhausted!), I was off to the provincial capital to go to the Delegue meeting, which was a bit of an ordeal, having to crash a training and sit in a sweltering room and translate the entire meeting from French into English with another PCV. It was a productive meeting, though some things made me angry, but I think they were pleased, because they invited us for lunch and we had a 3-course meal at a nice restaurant we'd never been to before.
Plus, we've recently discovered an iced-coffee milkshake place in town, which, combined with the swimming pool at our cheap hotel, going to a tapas bar (well, the free tapas are olives, salad, and little tiny skewers of chicken), then actually clubbing made me feel like I was at home for a night… and my provincial capital is only 4 hours away!
Now, I'm home and have to come up with a game plan for Operation: Survive and Thrive Summer. I say I relish a challenge. This will certainly put that to the test, especially since, barring a friends' birthday party and an overnight camping hiking trip I'm planning to take in a few weeks in a cooler area, I'm forcing myself to stay in my site as much as possible. I need to re-establish credibility. I think that's one of the most frustrating things about being in the Peace Corps: the balance of being in site and out of site.
