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!