Murphy's law in Morocco

This Blog was written in MAY as you can see I'm a little behind on my postings....


Well I am happy to be starting a new month. Things were a little crazy last month (April). I have put off writing this blog, why I am not exactly sure. Maybe I thought if there was no account of it, it would be as if it never happend. Haha but we can't run from our past can we now? and why in God's name would I want to deprive all of you of a great story? So get comfortable and enjoy the dramatic comedy that is my life...



It was a cooooooooold and rainy April morning and the call to prayer had just gone off at 5:30am. (Actually sorry I lied it wasn't cold or raining but you have to admit it adds a nice dramatic touch, right?) Most days I wake up to the call to prayer because my apartment is directly next to the Mosque but today I was already awake and... was most of the night. By the time I finally took my temperature it was a 105. My head was throbing and nothing was helping it go down. I made a call to our PC doctor and wasn't to happy with how he was handling the situation (I think I may have to leave the details of this out but I will say that a letter of complaint is being written) . I am happy to say people in my city were very helpful with bringing me food and water as I layed in my apartment doing whatever I could to stay cool.



My temp stayed until the next day. Lucky for me there is an American doctor I befriended in my city who was also concerned about my state and came to look at me. He concluded I had pneumonia and would need an X-ray to be completely sure. The next day I was sent to the hospital in my site to get an x-ray. As I walked out of my apartment I was convinced I was haluscinating. I heard people singing and cheering, and for a second I thought I was walking down an alley near Wrigley. As I got closer to the roar I realized I wasn't going to be seeing peanut vendors or clever T-shirts saying Cuck the Fardinals today. No no... today was the day the King of Morocco would come to Midelt.

To avoid the crowd and bypass all the gated side walks I jumped in a cab and we headed to the hospital. After explaining who I was the doctor pulled me to the xray room. As he set me up for my lung x-ray the doctor was multitasking as he lit his cigarette and I did my best not to laugh at the irony of the situation.



After the xray was finished I heard the doctor talking to my PC doctor on the phone. Saying something about how I was fine but he thought I had an ear infection. I was puzzled by his profound statement because no one actually looked in my ear. The doctor did pull on my ear lobe and asked if it hurt, which indeed it did. But let remind you all I had a temperature that could boil water. Touching any part of my head at that point was much less than pleasing.

Even so everyone concluded I had an ear infection....

(this is where we skip the details of me being sick the following 2 days and fast forward to my visit to a private clinic in Rabat)

And we do an Xray... Go figure I dont have an ear infection. Any guesses... Anyone

"Yeah I'll take Pneumonia for 500"
Bronchial Pneumonia to be exact. So I hung out in a clinic in Rabat for 4 days watched some tv, avoided a sponge bath, was violated by a thermometer, and received roses from the President of the Cooperative I work with... All in a days work folks... Alllllll in a days work

I ended up taking the train out of Rabat. As I sat there thinking about how nothing more could go wrong. I saw some little kids near the tracks playing a game of throw the rock at the train passing by. *Shatter* the window of the train door broke....

"well atleast they didn't break a window of the passenger car" i thought to myself

A train passes by and the wind pressure creates a strong force and *phhhhhhhh CRACK Shatter* I guess they did indeed get a little chip of my window.

After jumping up in my seat, I pulled the window curtain down to stop the glass from possibly falling in. And yet I was still happy because my pants were dry and I was given yet another completely unbelieveable story

Cheers

Do these camels go any faster? I forgot my waterbottle...

While many of you were celebrating an Easter weekend finding your Easter baskets and eating marshmellow and chocalate bunny rabits, I was riding camels and climbing endless piles of sand as far as my eyes could see...
It was an experience unlike any other. Sure I have visited the dunes in Michigan and if I remember correctly when I was about 4 or 5 I got to sit on a camel at the zoo... Oh joy... But this recent journey of mine into the Sahara outside of Zagora was something I will never forget. I spent 2 peaceful nights under clear skys lit by a full moon and bright stars. I sat on a mountain of sand looking out over an ocean of the same. It reenergized me to say the least.

The first night we ate our tajine dinner in the food tent and made way into the rolling hills of sand. We stumbled upon some dry brush and the remains of a dead tree. We decided to put it out of it's misery and make a fire. It was GLORIOUS! okay well maybe not glorious but indeed entertaining. We shared good times, sharing stories of our experiences thus far. I hope to make the journey one more time over my next 20 months in Morocco.

Things have been going well for me in Morocco. Sure there is an occasional moment where I miss the good ole US of A but it will be there when I get back. Work is moving along nicely too. I am working with a Cooperative called Toudart Iwsta (translates into Life of Looms) the women hand make rugs. It is quite remarkable how they create the patterns. Right now I am working with the President on creating a business card for them, which will hopefully allow them to create stronger relationships with their clients. Also in hopes of saving them some money I am painting a sign for them to put on the street so people in the city become more aware of the new Cooperative's presence. Later I hope to be able to bring them larger orders internationally or possible funding, but this Cooperative is still new... swiya b swiya (little by little)

Recently, while I was in Rabat, my counterpart (President of the Cooperative) and I met with a company called Mocary. The carpets they had were amazing. They had different styles and patterns from all over the country and my understaning is they sell a large amount internationally. My counterpart and I met with one of the people in charge and things went very well. After a 2 hour meeting over tea, the man from Mocary showed interest in helping the Cooperative. He said he would allow women of the Cooperative to be trained there to make different more complex patterns, as well as possibly giving wool and looms. It was great though I must say. He even had one of his sales people take us out to lunch and drive us back to the bus station. The president of the Cooperative told me on our bus ride back she felt like she was dreaming. Hopefully this relationship with Mocary will continue. I'll keep you updated.

Peace out

MY GREATEST BLOG EVER!!!

Coming soon.....

but here are some pictures to hold you over ;-)

this is me in my new apartment

this is the view from the window in my main room


this is the view from my rooftop of the high atlas mountains





this is me in Sefrou
where I went for a natural dye workshop to learn
how to show the artisans I work with how to dye wool
using things such as onion skins or things that
they have easy access to in Morocco

This is one of my two birthday cakes for the weekend celebration

Hopefully soon I will have wireless internet in my apartment and people will be able to contact me whenever they please via my skype phone... and it may mean I will be able to post to this blog more than once a month

Stay tuned...

some pictures of random things

Most of these pictures are from Fes during the swear in ceremony except for the night time shot of the mosque that is in Rabat. Then there's me with a turkey and me wearing a jalaba with my host dad.

Hope you are all happy and well.

we all make sacrifices in life

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! and if you don't celebrate that then hope you had a wonderful _________!

I celebrated l'Eid Kbir here in Midelt, Morocco. It is a large Muslim holiday celebrated over a 3 day period. Almost all the families sacrificed a lamb the day of l'Eid. You could say I was 'lucky' because my family not only sacrificed the lamb but 3 days earlier sacrificed a goat.

What exactly happens during this sacrifice? If this is a question you are asking then read on, but make sure you have a paper bag near by (I sure wish I did :-) I will tell you that after assisting my host dad with the goat, I randomly disappeared during the lamb sacrifice 3 days later...

It was a cold morning in Midelt and I was laying in my bed staring at the cieling thinking about 7th grade Biology class...
"It can't be that much different", I thought to myself.

"I disected a pig, a frog, a rat, whats a goat?"
"What's a goat!?!"
"A goats frickin huge and it won't be sitting pre-packed in a jar of fermaldyhide"

I began sweating as I paced back and forth in my room trying to decide what I would wear... My host dad said to put on 'old clothes'...

Old clothes? Who packs old clothes when they can only pack 2 bags for 2 years?

I put on some warmups that had a paint stain on them and then I sat on my bed stairing at my shoes... I had white gym shoes, brown timberlands, and sandals. I quickly narrowed it down to the gym shoes and the timberlands. I decided I liked my timberlands too much to risk the blood stains. So I threw on the gym shoes and put on black socks over my shoes. I was ready!?

I walked down stairs into the back room. There he was all happy and goat like, eating goat food, and getting the sheep all riled up. In that moment it all seemed so peaceful... I had thoughts of becoming a vegetarian... Next thing I know my host dad's got him by the horns and tells me to hold him down while he goes and gets the silver ware. The goat got away from me at first or maybe I let him go... I can't remember :-) Anyways my host dad put him back in his place and then all I remember was seeing blood hit the wall next to me, because I didn't want to watch the initial cut. The legs kicked for a good 5 minutes as I directed the blood down the drain with a sqwegie. The goat was soon hung up on a lader, butcher style. The hair/skin was removed and shortly after every organ was removed and cleaned. Seeing my host dad blow out the intestine was the point where I wished I had the barf bag.... and this is where I will stop telling you about my buthcering experience.

I will say my shoes are still white and lunch was still good. I just never thought I would make eye contact with what I was going to eat before. But there's a first time for everything right..... a first time and a last time!

Fes swearing in

this is me with the ambassador and his wife at swearing in

FES then Midelt then Rabat and finally Midelt again

Hey everyone its been a while. I would apologize but I don't have time to :-P

Seriously things have been pretty busy over here. November 27 was the swear in ceremony and the following day I went to my final site of Midelt. The swear in ceremony was at a beautiful hotel (which of course we didn't stay at because remember this is the Peace Corps people :-). The US ambassador was there who prepared a nice speech making sure to say each one of our names that he had plugged into the story Night Before Christmas which he renamed The Night Before Swearing In (he's a clever one) After a nice 5 days in Fes for swearing in I returned to my final site of Midelt and things are going fairly smoothly but I'll let you in on whats been happening so far...

So I was in my site for about a week and ended up traveling to Rabat. Unfortunately my site mate Linley had a bloody nose for almost all of Thursday (12/6). It wouldn't stop, so the following morning we set off to the PC headquarters in Rabat to meet with the PC doctor. He asked me to accompany Linley in case anything were to happen during the 8 hour bus from our site to Rabat.

Looking back at it now, a week later, it was good I went. When our bus stopped in Meknes (still on the way to Rabat) for some reason we had to change buses about 3 times. It was crazy, we got off one bus got on another and sat in it for about an hour not knowing what was going. Finally the bus took off and we headed to Rabat. I was in deep thought about what I was going to read for the last 3 hours of our trip there, when suddenly the bus stopped right before exiting the bus station. Everyone started getting off the bus and people were arguing about something and among all the commotion Linley's nose started having issues again.

Now keep in mind neither of us are what you would call fluent in arabic, so you should know that neither of us had any idea about what was going on. Luckily I had made a friend on the bus using the moroccan arabic I know. He was nice enough to make sure we got on the right bus heading to Rabat. I thanked him a ton but he still insisted on buying us bananas, I guess we looked hungry who knows... One thing I will say is Moroccans are some of the nicest people I've met. Even in my city every now and then someone will invite me for tea or buy me a coffee. I always try to pay and find out that it has already been paid for most of the time. Anyways back to Rabat.

So we got to Rabat and Linley got some x-rays and blood work and everything is more or less fine. Our first night there we witnessed a moroccan girl fighting another moroccan girl in front of the McDonald's, Linley thought we should try to break it up but my gut was telling me we already had enough bloody noses for one day and I didn't think either of us had the language capacity to explain to any policeman what was going on :-) Returning from Rabat we took a train to Meknes to save some time, and let me say that the trains in this country are fabulous! It was on time and very comfortable. Since we got back on a Saturday I decided to use one of my two vacation weekends to meet some surrounding PCVs and go on a hike in a nearby mountain. We stayed at their house after and enjoyed some good food and we all exchanged stories from our first weeks in our new sites.

Now I am in Midelt and things are going well. Christmas is coming up but the big celebration here is the weekend before Christmas, and is called l'Eid Kbir. My host father informed me that we will be eating lamb and proceeded to show me a room behind his hanut (a small convenient store he owns that is below our house) where the lamb was being fed very well. As I looked at the lamb I tried not to make eye contact because I knew it would making eating him later more difficult. I'm sure I will have much more to write about this later on... beacuse if I understood my host father correctly someone is going to learn how to be a butcher.... uhhhh.... yea so anyways... Merry Christmas everyone!

Enjoy your Ham!