An update.

I don't know why, but this road just looks like I expected "Peace Corps" morocco to look like.


This is the beautiful window in my room at my host families. I just love the colors :)


This great little Catholic Church in Agadir. It is so beautiful and they offer mass in French (which I dont understand) but last week they had this West African gospel choir and it was AMAZING.


Everyone pitching in to clean up my new home after the painters were done :)


Yes even the littlest girls (Shamea is only 3) are helping me clean :) Sisters hard at work!

So the big news this week is that I am moving into my very own place sometime early this week :) I have been preparing, cleaning, packing and buying lots of stuff for this new house. The painting is all done and it looks pretty! Today i am buying my fridge and hopefully can start cooking/ eating non-moroccan food ASAP :)

Love you all.

Happy Father's Day!

Hello Blog-o-sphere:

I just wanted to wish my Dad a very Happy Father's Day! I am very sorry I cannot be there to celebrate with him so I hope this makes up for it.

For your enjoyment!

My dad and I at Harpos watching a Tiger's football game!


He used to be a farmer.


He can fit lots of stick on earrings on his ear.


His 2nd grade confirmation.


He is the "Fence King".


He likes boating (that is me, by the way.)


Finally, hes a goof ball.


On a related note, I was not nearly as organized during Mother's Day and did not get a post up about my Mom. Sorry Mom. Happy Belated Mother's Day.


My mom at a South Carolina plantation when she came and visited me!


My mom and I at Mom's Weekend.

Make Danielle MTV's FIRST Twitter Jockey!

For those of you who are confused about a "Twitter Jockey", one of my closest friends, fellow Mizzou Alumnus and a co-founder of the President's Club, Danielle Hohmeier, was handpicked as one of only 20 people that will compete to be MTV's FIRST ever Twitter Jockey. Shes addicted to TV, she LOVES social media, Twitter, Facebooking and blogging and shes REALLY great at it. Lets help her win her dream job!

The voting does not start until July 7th (zync.mtv.com), but you can start helping her gain a following by following her @daniellesmyname on Twitter!

I am just so happy that she is getting this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so help her win her DREAM job, a $100,000 salary and a life changing year in NYC!

Yeah Danielle :) I'm so proud of you.


Heres some of her sites/ blogs and articles on her:

http://tj.mtv.com/2010/06/09/tj-bio-danielle
http://twitter.com/daniellesmyname
http://www.facebook.com/daniellehohmeier
http://girlsguidetothegalaxy.com/2010/06/17/danielle-for-mtvtj/
http://daniellesotherblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daniellesmyname/
http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/deb-petersons-breaking-schmooze/uncategorized/2010/06/local-young-lady-among-20-candidates-to-become-mtvs-first-tj-that-would-be-twitter-jockey/
http://daniellestvaddiction.blogspot.com/

A new layout :)

Friends, when I logged onto Blogger today and started exploring my thousands of new options for blog backgrounds and layouts I found a MOROCCAN background. Yes, Blogger has included a Moroccan tradition in the "Travel" section! How exciting.

What you are looking at as my background is known as a Tajine. It is a special Berber dish used to cook a variety of dishes also called Tajines.

I am so excited!

Below are some photos for your viewing pleasure!


A view from the bus. It runs about every hour from my village to Tiznit. It takes twice as long as the cab but you get your OWN seat and it costs 1/2 as much (only 8.5dh or about a dollar).


A view of my new house from the back door of the Zawid. The co-op and my house are the red building. The smaller rock rooms in front are where they cook the bread in these clay ovens. We also have lots of trash, its number one on the list of things to help with once I move in!


My house is the door on the left and the co-op door is on the right. I will live next door to work (aka 2 steps away).


My friend Maria and my new window that will lead from the kitchen into the courtyard.


My new kitchen as its getting built :)


We have not had rain/ fog any day since I moved to post and then this happened before sunset. It was quite cool actually.

Is there "beera" in your water bottle?

So one of my most prized possesions in Morocco is my lime green Nalgene bottle I have had as my friend and companion for many years now. It is so hot all of the time and life is just much better knowing I will not get dehydrated as long as I have my trusty green Nalgene. I carry this bottle with me everywhere I go and generally try and drink out of it instead of the water pitchers given to me at other people's houses because I know the water in my bottle wont make me sick (my body has gotten used to the well water in my house).

As it turns out this is a somewhat rare occurance in Morocco. I feel like lots of people carry water bottles or cups of something in America, this is just not common practice around here. Turns out that my entire village thinks I am drinking "beeara" or beer/ alcohol out of my bottle. I can understand why they think this weird American that they dont know much about only drinks out of her own special bottle. After all, all of the American movies they watch have people drinking in them, so why wouldnt this American drink too? The problem is that it is very "hshumma" or shameful to be drinking in Morocco, so this is not good PR for me.

I learned about this today when my 87 year old host grandmother asked me why I was drinking beer at lunch time. I was a little confused and laughed it off, but she was serious. I had to explain to her that its just water. (On a side note, it is common practice for everyone to drink out of one cup at the table and frankly I never end up getting my thirst quenched when everyone is drinking all the water out of the cup and I would just rather drink from my own bottle). She still didnt understand. My host sister then went into a whole long story about how I drink lots of water and its just easier if I have my own bottle to drink from. Thats when my host sister told me that lots of people in the village have been asking about what is in my water bottle. I am glad I have her there to stick up for me.

The greatest part of this story is not that my entire village thinks I drink alcohol out of my waterbottle (this is NOT college anymore afterall) but that my grandma thinks I am drinking green water. She kept asking where I was getting green water and why I wanted green water. I even did a little demonstration to show her that the water wasnt green by pouring it into a clear glass, but she didnt understand.

Needless to say this 87 year old woman thinks I am drinking beer and green water. What a crazy day.

I Really Should Pay More Attention!

One of the distinct downfalls of not paying attention to time is that days and weeks sort of jumble together. For the first time since the 1st grade I am living a planner free life (not to-do list free though because that would kill me). I have an occassional note about a birthday or big event on my ICal but for the most part, I dont pay any attention to what day it is. This has not been a problem until the last few days.

This month is a busy month for a couple of reasons, first we had a visit from a PC employee in Rabat, I am moving into my own place, that new place is getting remodeled, we are planning a 4th of July trip to visit our friend Felicie in Marrakech and I have a lot to buy so that my place is move-in ready.

For the last few days I have been running around like a crazy person trying to buy things for my house, checking in to make sure the remodel work is getting done, soliciting my brother and his friends to paint my house for me, ect. I have been making list after list of things I want/ need to get done before I feel like I can move in.

All along I have been under the impression that I had only this week left and I would start moving in next Monday so by next wednesday (what I thought was June 30th) I would be ready to go to Kech for the weekend and be able to come back to a set up house.

Now I realize why everyone keeps looking at me like I am crazy. When I asked my brother to paint he said "yeah, we will do it next week sometime, maybe Wednesday" and I freaked out on him. I was like we have to get it done before I move all my stuff, turns out I was the crazy one. (But he is painting Sunday FYI). I had even planned a trip to Agadir this weekend so I can go to Marjane and pick out some stuff for my new place.

To my suprise the calendar on the wall at the ponge slip cover place told me I had accidentally skipped a week in my timeline. All along I was under the impression that I was days away from moving in, in reality I have almost 2 weeks. This is not good but explains at lot of the crazy looks and reactions i have been getting over the past week.

Needless to say I can't survive without a planner. Its just too bad I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

The Zawid

As I was in the process of writing the last blog post I got a phone call from my counterpart asking me to come to my new house. I hurry over there and turns out she has already started construction. I was really worried about "moroccan time" and whether or not it would be done by the July 1 move in date. Today they made two new windows through the concrete blocks and installed what will soon be the countertop in my kitchen. I was amazed. The added bonus to this whole excursion was that she even asked me what color/ type of tiles I wanted for the kitchen, entry way and bathroom. She told me that it was mine and she wanted me to feel at home. I thought that was great. Next she is asking me about moving the electrical box and I am trying to tell her I dont care where it is, as long as its out of the bathroom. Suprise, in walks her brother from Rabat who is FLUENT in English. I am so happy he was there because during my extensive language tranining we just hadnt quite got to housing lingo. I haven't yet mastered ventilation, sconce, light fixture, electrical box, hazard and tile in Tashlheet. I cant wait to see how the whole place turns out.

After we finish up at the house, we head over to Msaida's house. I have known all along that this place has some religious meaning to the community and that they was a tomb of a very spiritual and good woman (their version of a Saint) in the town and that Msaida and her family were responsible for the care and protection of it. This place is called Zawid. As soon as we get there, I realize that something is going on. This has happened once before, like the first few days I was at post and I didn't know enough people or Tashlheet to really understand what was going on.

What is happening is the beginnings of a celebration for the deceased women in the tomb. There must be 20 women and at least that many men in the compound. I immedately grab a seat next to the ladies that I trust the most and speak the Tash that I understand. Within 5 minutes, two very zween (an arabic word that means pretty, classy, put together, beautiful, ect) women walk up to me and introduce themselves in english. YES! Whenever these people are with me in situations where I am confused I rejoyce that they will be able to explain to me what is going on. These two women live in Rabat and were so excited I was in Ait Erkha, I was American and I spoke English and Tash. (As a side note, the people of the villages call Tashlheet Shilha. Its a strong pride point for them and when foreginers speak their language they become overcome with joy and admiration. Its the guarenteed way to get a good price or a favor in Southern Morocco).

Here is what I learned from the awesome Rabat ladies. The Zawid contains the bodies of three women. They are all related in one way or another. The most recent of them died and was buried at the Zawid on May 3rd (explaining the last party I went to on the 6th of May). They are essentially very holy and spiritual women (a lesser equilivent of a Saint). There are a couple of cool things. First the families of these women are supposidly decendants of the Prophet himself. There are 5 main families in Morocco that are distant descendants of the Prophet (not including the King's family). This particular family has a long Arabic name I cannot remember and dumbly forgot to write down. They are the "family" that rules the Southern part of Morocco and includes the Western Sahara. This family was important to Southern Morocco in fighting off French occupation as well as fighting to maintain control of the Wester Sahara (which is still under conflict today). This family gained a lot of credibility during the early 1900's by being well educated and very spiritual. These three women are just very holy and special women that the people of Southern Morocco hold in high esteem. Thus the Zawid.

I also found out some cool information about my counterpart and her families relation to this power family belonging to the three women buried in the tomb. Apparently the grandmother of my counterpart and her sisters, who live in the Zawid, were "slaves" (I am not sure if that word translated correctly) or servants of this family. The family took this new servant family in as their own and the close family ties began. So my counterpart and her family that live in the Zawid are not blood related to the women in the tombs but instead the close family friends that have been integrated into that family.

All in all I think its a pretty cool story of how these awesome women were so special that they get their own tombs where a couple of times a year their families, friends and members of the community come to worship and pay respects to these women. On another note, I mentioned before that the weather has changed drastically in the last few days. Turns out the three celebrations, including the last burial in May, the weather was nice for the few days before then became cold and overcast during the celebration. A lot of the people in the Zawid found this extremely spiritual and I personally think it is pretty cool. It is another reaffirmation of faith for these believers.

Today the party continued with over 200+ people and at least 30 women cooking. I cannot even begin to explain the insanity that was today. Lots and lots of women running around cooking, cleaning, making tea, serving tea, wow. The men were in seperate rooms, as usual and the women were busy running back and forth to bring them tea, bread and other snacks before lunch. The day before I was told to come for "lunch" which basically ranges from noon until 5pm and can happen anytime in that timeframe. I played it on the safe side and headed to the post office before hand around noon, (thanks for the package Aunt Ruth), then headed to the Zawid. About 4:30pm I admitted a little defeat and took a nap amist the insanity. Contrary to what you may think, it takes an enemorous amount of brainpower and energy to try and speak/ understand a new language. About 6pm I woke up and to my suprise, no even everyone had eaten. I headed to see my host mom and counterpart who were in a smaller room buchering the newly killed sheep. I had to leave the room. I have always eaten meet, seen a dead deer or two but I guess I had never been present for the actual dismantling. It was not pleasent only reaffirming my decision to eat as little sheep as possible around here. Then my mom handed me a back full of dead sheep parts (including the head) and asked me to walk it back to the house. I gagged and then my mom presented me with an option, either take the bag of dead sheep parts of stay in the room and help my counterpart take apart the rest of the sheep, I choose the bag. I had to stop twice because I thought I might throw up from the smell but I eventually made it to my house. Needless to say this was not the hilight of my day.

When I got back to the house I just cleaned some dishes, prepared some cous cous plates, help cut up some fruit and was getting ready to head out when someone noticed that I hadnt eaten yet. Darn. Not eating is comporable to a sin around here and its just not an option. I was hoping in the insanity of the day that the women had forgotten about the blue eyed American and I could escape without eating a mound of food, I was wrong. What I did sucessfully do was trade my giant plate of cous cous for some watermelon, melon, bananas and oranges. This way I was "eating" but not eating so much I felt like I would fall over.

The greatest lesson learned during this party was a lesson taught to me by the great James Cameron movie, Titanic. For those of you who remember the movie, Jack is a poor man, he lives in the steerage section of the boat. Rose is wealthy and lives in the "classier" part of the boat. In one scene Jack and Rose leave the classier dinner party for a more fun party below ship. This is when I first realized that life is more fun in "steerage". There are many real world examples of this but two main ones cross my mind during my time in Morocco. The first was the thank you party we had for our training host families. The men wanted to seperate themselves because they didnt want to party and celebrate with the women, this turned out great for us. With the men gone the women were so full of life, joking around, playing games and having the time of their lives. The men on the other hand sat in the room and stared at themselves for an hour. Not fun.

The second time was the party mentioned above! The classier women from Rabat who were direct discendents of the women buried had their own sepearte rooms and I kept getting taken into them. Some of them spoke English which was the only saving grace of the room, but in general they were less celebratory than the rest of the women in the other rooms. Whenever possible I escaped to where the women of the village were, in and near the kitchen. This was where the real party was. All of the women were goofing around, making jokes, being silly and having fun. Life is really more fun in "steerage".

Overall everyone of these cultural events I go to allows me to meet more people and integrate better in the community. I did get two guys who asked me for my phone number (which is a MUCH bigger deal in Morocco than it is in the states) and I kindly avoided the question playing dumb with my Tash (this strategy is only going to work for so much longer, so I have to use it while I can). I do like the chance to get my face out there and get many of the questions people have answered by my counterpart and friends in the village since I am the first volunteer they have ever had. It also reminds me of the great family parties, holiday celebrations, ect that I cannot wait to return home to.

Love ya.

Daylight Savings, Crazy Weather, the "Battle" and A New Home

I have been inspired to write this somewhat random blog post after looking over a fellow volunteers blog (check Jesse out at urbanpeacegirl.blogspot.com) and realizing that these were points worth mentioning in my own blog-o-sphere.

The first is the concept of Daylight Savings time in Morocco. From what I can gather, it is still a new concept. The easiest way to figure this out is the fact that no one in Morocco has any idea what time it is. NO ONE. A couple of weeks ago, Sami and Dave (my "parents" and saviors in Tiznit) called and asked me if I knew anything about a "new" time. Their somewhat eccentric host father, Mafoud, speaks a little bit of English and was trying to tell them about this new distinction between "city" and "country" time. I of course, have no one who speaks English around me, so if there was a more complex concept, such as a time change that they were trying to explain to me, I didn't pick up on it (FYI, this is not uncommon. I miss lots of important things that get lost in translation). I immediately ran downstairs and my family looked at me like I was insane. I then called Sami and Dave back and told them that whatever it is, my village doesn't have any part in it.

For about the next 2 weeks, I lived happily in my non-confusing world of one time. All of the sudden that world changed. One day I looked at the TV and one of the English movie channels I watch had a clock in the top right corner and it said 2:30 pm, but my phone only said 1:30pm. I was so confused. I started asking my whole family what time it was, some of them had 2:30 on their watches and 1:30 on their phones and for no apparent reason my 17y/o host sister Hafida, had 3:15pm on her phone, so I just discredited her erroneous time. Apparently no one had any idea what time it was and that is the way it has stayed ever since.

This has caused all kinds of crazy issues be it trying to figure out the time difference to my life in the States to what time we are actually eating dinner. The good news is that most of the people in my village operate with no sense of time. None whatsoever. This made the decision to pick up "city" time much easier. The banks, bus, most cab drivers and everything I have to do in Tiznit operates on the new daylight savings time, so that is where my life operates. This means that dinner doesn't happen until between 11:30pm and 12:30am now, but like I said, my family doesn't care about time. They wake up when it gets light outside, take out the sheep in the morning and before dark. They eat lunch after they have worked for a while and are hungry (usually 4:00pm "city" time) and then stop working whenever its dark. After the Diego nighttime showing, the very popular Turkish soap opera that is set in NYC and dubbed in Moroccan Arabic, they cook dinner and sleep after that. It isn't a bad way to do it really, and it allows me to basically ignore time and my phone. I don't even take it with me half the time because the only "time" related things I think about in my village are when the bus comes and when the post office is open. Other than that, I live "time" free.

I have talked about this many times, but its another important thing to mention in this time related post, there is no such thing as a "meeting" time. Its more a time of day meeting suggestion. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have set up "meetings" and arrived early, only to find out that the time was merely a suggestion. In the States, this would get you fired from your job or really aggravate your friends and family. In Morocco, this is common place. I don't even set up "time" specific meetings if I can avoid it, for now its more meeting days. If I want to meet up with my counterpart to just check in, I pick a day of the week and just show up, if shes there great, if not, I just pick another day :)

For now, it is working out okay to operate on "city" time, this way I get to sleep an extra hour at night without my family giving me slack about it (ie I sleep until 9am on "city" time, but its only 8am their time.) Hopefully this time change stays around for a while, I don't if I am prepared for more confusion.


I wanted to just talk about the insane weather patterns that are happening in Southern Morocco right now. Apparently these are not normal either, more signs of global change I fear, but for now my body is just trying to cope. I mentioned in a previous post that the day I left for Essaouria it was so cold in the morning I had to run back to my house grab a sweatshirt and hide in a doorway waiting for the bus because it was so cold. When we got back from Essa (2 days later) it was easily 95+. It only got hotter after that, this is what appeared to be the new "normal" temperature, then out of now where comes the last three days. On Sunday it was HOT, like 100+ hot, on Monday it was a little cooler, by Tuesday we were in the low 60's during the day and in the 50's at night. It was so crazy. Now today it is RAINING, yes raining in the area just north of the largest desert in the world, in June. Everyone in the village is so shocked. Last night we had the "machine" to process the wheat that was just harvested and I gave up shortly after dark because I was shivering. I don't know what to make of this crazy weather. It is getting shockingly more similar to Missouri weather (minus the thunderstorms, which I miss). One day I am in my room directly in front of my fan so I don't feel like i am going to melt and the next day I am digging out my sweatpants out of my suitcase to sleep in. Its insane.

As I was also reading Jesse's blog, she had a great quote in one of her posts that I thought defined my recent experiences. She said "often times the battle is more exhausting than the thing itself". I think this embodies my time here so far. Rarely do I want that 4th cup of tea, or tea at all, for that matter, when its 100+ degrees outside. I hardly ever want to eat 2 lbs of bread at my third tea time of the day. Never do I want to spend time sitting in a room full of men just chatting and most of all I NEVER want to eat a huge meal at 11:30pm. The realization that I have come to is that fighting it is often times harder than just doing it. I feel slightly defeated when I give into something that I am really not feeling but sometimes its just not worth the explanation. It has been almost 6 weeks since i moved in full time with my current host family and they still ask me every night to eat a huge meal before I go to bed. I have just started to take the time to explain the concept of eating a lot and laying down makes my stomach hurt. I am sure if these conversations were in English I could do a much better job of justifying my point, but I don't have the complex language skills needed to explain my point of view and "I am full" is not a valid argument, so I sit and eat. This is all part of adapting I suppose.

This ties directly into my last point, I have a new home. A place where I can eat whenever I want, whatever I want. I am officially a Moroccan renter. I am renting a small house directly next door to the Co-Op I am working with. The home belongs to my counterpart and used to be the home her mother lived in before she passed away. It was not everything I was looking for an more, but I think its going to turn out quite nicely (the other problems is that I have some other volunteers who hit the jackpot housing wise, with hot water and everything and that has made me biased).

My new little place has a central roofed courtyard inside of main door. Right now it has an open skylight type hole in the ceiling, but soon it will have more of a "window" type hole so that I can open it for sunlight and close it when its cold, ect. Off of the main small courtyard type room is a decently sized living room, a room that will soon be the kitchen, a decently sized bedroom and a small bathroom. The house is in decent condition right now, but its about to get a lot better.

My counterpart/ landlord is having a brand new kitchen put in, redoing the bathroom, fixing the hazardous looking electrical firebox in the bathroom, installing some more windows into the courtyard from the kitchen and living room and its getting a shiny new coat of paint. Right now the whole house is painted in a teal blue that reminds me of the color of my scroll bars on my Mac computer. It will soon be some lighter shade, I haven't officially decided yet. Possibly yellow, possibly a creamish color. I am just looking for a brighter feel to open up the space.

The best part of this new place will be the shopping (and cooking my own food). I always liked shopping in America and so far I haven't really had to a reason to in Morocco except for the occasional host family gift. I made a list last night of some bare essentials I need to get going with my initial housing allowance. The other great part is that ALL of the things I need I can buy in town. This means I don't have to have the dreaded conversation with the taxi/ bus driver about how to get my huge fridge, table or ponges (foam coaches) back to my house. I am happy about this.

I am hoping to go this week and get some before pictures so I can show you some before and after pictures of my new place. This Monday will be my first official day of getting stuff for my new home. My host family has even graciously offered to help me pick up the big ticket items so i get a better price :)

On another note, my dad seems to think this problem is hilarious but it did cause me quite a bit of worry, I don't have running water or a donkey. The well for my house is located decently close but still its over a creek bed and its far enough to make me despise water. I am not sure how many people have ever tried to carry a 5 gallon bucket of water, but its extremely heavy. I just didn't know how carrying so much water to my house every day was going to work. Everyone else in my town who uses a well has a donkey to carry the water back, I do not have a donkey. Even if I did, I wouldn't know the first thing about caring for it. It would probably die under my care. The good news is the my landlord is using part of my rent money to hire a "water boy" of sorts to deliver water to me every day. Awesome huh! I don't know who will end up doing it, probably an unemployed woman or man in the village looking to make some extra cash, but frankly it doesn't matter to me. For now this sounds perfect, lets just cross our fingers that it works out. I am cautiously optimistic.

This is going to be a big week :)

In addition there are two shout-outs I want to make.

First, my dear PCV friend Jesse is celebrating her 23rd birthday on June 11th. While she lives too far away to make a weekend visit, we will be epically reunited hopefully soon Inshalla.

Second, my roommate and close friend from college, Whitney Schloss is getting married this weekend to her long time love Tony Maus in St. Louis. She will officially be Whitney Schloss-Maus. Actually, while I have been fighting for this new last night for quite some time, she will just be Whitney Maus. I am bummed I am missing this celebration but am so happy for her! Congrats Whitney and Tony!

A New Outlook.

This past week has been stressful, but not in the traditional sense. I have not been overwhelmed with looming deadlines and extensive to-do lists, instead I have been learning to cope with the stress of having little to do. Granted, I do have lots to do, but not in the way you would expect. My current to-do lists consists of much broader things.

Here are some examples:
1. Learn Tashlheet
2. Start looking at my Moroccan Arabic book (so I can travel in Morocco eventually)
3. Look for housing since I have to move out of my host families place on July 1st.
4. Plan something to celebrate 4th of July (and hopefully Felicie's birthday).
5. Start looking for items to fill my new "house".
6. Meet as many people in my village as possible.
7. Practice my Tashlheet again.
8. Clean up my room, wash my clothes.
9. Start checking off PACA goals.
10. Check my mailbox
11. Go to souk and start making a name for myself.
12. Meet with the local english teacher and start setting out some goals for the fall.

As you can see, these are more "big picture" than "looming deadline" goals. This is quite a change of pace from my undergraduate and short post-graduate careers. I have always found that I thrive under pressure and the lack of pressure that I feel, I am learning to adapt.

The most important thing I have learned during my time here is adaptation. The best way I can put it is "adapt or die". Every day we, as volunteers, are adapting to new surroundings, new cultures, new languages, new ways of life and an entirely new way of doing things. This adaptation comes slowly, as expected, but is indeed coming along nicely. I am enjoying learning a lot about myself and my capacities as well as learning how to live in a completely new and exciting way.

As of right now, I think I have found my house. I am looking forward to getting started painting, ect and making it my own. This will shortly jump higher up on my list of to-do's for the month, under learning Tashlheet thought, that has to be priority one.

Love you all.

Fire, fire, fire.

All I can think about recently is the fireish heat that has taken over my area of Morocco in recent days. The day I left for Essaouria it was so cold I had to hide in a doorway in a sweatshirt to escape the frigid wind and in the next three days the temperature jumped 40+F and I felt like I was on fire. It feels a little like Missouri (all Missourians know what I am talking about).

Each day we are topping 95+F. Here are some examples of the heat.

- The entire bucket of water (5 gallon) in my bathroom evaporated in a 5 hour period.
- I washed my clothing this morning and set it out to dry on the clothesline, 2 hours later, the clothes were COMPLETELY dry.
- I walked to the post office and when I got back from my 15 minute round trip, I had to change my clothing because it was drenched and I was dehydrated.

I am constantly being told that I will get used to the heat, and InShalla I will, but for now I spent lots of time in front of my only fan :)

Car Themed Scarves

So I have been meaning to write this post for a while, and its 100+ degrees outside today, so today is the perfect day to write it. The women of my village are pretty conservative as far as behavior and dress, even compared to other villages in Morocco. They generally wear pants, a long skirt over the pants, a couple of long sleeved shirts, covered with a collared shirt or sweater, their heads covered and then a large scarf they use to cover their heads and if needed, their face. Mind you, we are pushing 100 degrees F today, with no air conditioning.

It may seem like an excessive amount of clothing and I couldn’t agree more. Mind you, I am in a tee shirt, sweater, scarf and long pants (the bare minimum) and am on fire 80% of the time, even before this heat wave. The cool thing is that these large scarves they cover the top half of their bodies with are really colorful and beautiful with fringe, ect. One day I decided to look a little more closely at these sweet scarves, turns out they have designs of car company symbols all over them. I couldn’t believe it.

Much like the atomic symbol Jellaba my host mother used to wear all the time, many of the women in the village are wearing large colorful scarves that are decorated with Toyota and Ford symbols. I have no idea where these scarves came from, probably souk in Tiznit, but its just so funny that so many women have them.

So every time I see a women walking through the village, I have to let out a little chuckle at the Toyota symbols covering her body.

Happy 32rd Birthday to Martin!

So this past weekend was the summation of my month of trip taking. Sami, Dave, Felicie and I decided to take a weekend trip up to Essaouria to visit our training friend Martin for his 32nd birthday!

Essaouria is a beautiful little beach town that is much more touristy than the other beach town, Sidi Ifni, that I visited just a few weeks ago. It is a medina town (walled) and has these great little alley ways inside the medina that remind me a lot of my time in Thailand. The streets are filled with gift shops, patisseries, café’s and other assorted little shops. It wasn’t super busy when we were there, I think we came just before tourist season kicked off, but I can imagine it being extremely chlosterphopic when the medina gets more crowded. The other great part about the city is that it is very used to European tourists. For someone visiting Morocco and wanting a “real” Moroccan experience, these touristy places are not ideal, but for someone looking for a sense of normalcy, it was ideal. Its nice to walk down the street and not seem out of place for a change. Mind you, the people of my village are extremely welcoming and kind to me, but there are still may interested people who can’t help but stare.

Martin coordinated the renting of a great little riad (open in the middle) apartment in the middle of the medina. The place was great with plenty of rooms, beds, a fully stocked kitchen and even a rooftop terrace. It was also extremely cheap when split between the people we had staying there, which was a nice change from some of the more expensive hotels in Agadir.

We spent most of the weekend exploring the medina, walking around the beach and fishing port and just enjoying some time spent together. The 5 of us spent 8+ hours a day together for nearly 2 months, and then we were separated pretty drastically, so it was nice to catch up. We even visited a little co-op festival that was going on, similar to the festival I worked when I was in Sidi Ifni with my local co-op. Of course we bought some more Goat cheese and chowed down on that with our fresh baked bread from the local patisserie.

There was a little English run “Mexican” restaurant, that didn’t serve anything close to Mexican food, that we ate lunch at and it was one of the more delicious meals I have had in Morocco. On Saturday night, some of the other volunteers in the Essa region cooked up some stir fry and it was great. It made me look forward to getting the chance to start cooking on my own. Mind you, having someone cook three meals a day for you is nice, but nice like dorm food. You eat it because its there, but given another option you jump at the opportunity.

It turned out to be a great weekend, despite the hellish road we had to take to get there. As far as mileage goes, Essaouria isn’t too terribly far from were we live, but the roads are TERRIBLE. The ride from my site to Tiznit and then onto Agadir is not bad in the slightlest. Once we got in the cab to head from Agadir to Essa, I knew we were in trouble. First off, our cab driver was trying really hard to commit suicide, I can only assume. We were easly doing 100+km/ hour around these hairpin turns through the mountains next to the ocean. The other thing to remember is that there are 4 people in the back of a normal sized car and its HOT outside. None of which helped my progressing carsickness. About ¾ of the way through the 2.5+hour trip, our driver stopped to get gas and all 4 of us in the back, flew out of the car embracing the cool air and stable ground. The greatest part of this cab ride was the fact that whenever there was a bump or something in the road that would hurt his taxi, he slowed to a crawl to cross it, but anything that involved almost certain death, he sped up for. It was quite a hilarious experience. The ride back was much better, only it was hotter.

When we got back to Agadir, I asked the taxi driver to drop us off at the Marjane, so we made our obligatory stop and picked up some American snacks (ie Doritos, gummy bears, Oreos, cheese and Snicker’s bars) and I even got a pillow! The pillow has made all of the difference. The coolest part was that next to the Marjane is a little café that is remarkably similar to a college cafeteria with pretty good food and FREE WiFi. The WiFi was so fast I couldn’t get over it! After we spent too much time at the Marjane and café, we headed back to Tiznit and back to our villages.

All-in-all it was a great weekend and a nice chance to see a new place and catch up with some friends.

Love you all.