Guess Who Just Took A Government Oath?

This kid! Which means that, as of May 19, I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. Crazy, no? I mean look at us (those were totally supposed to be Moroccan M’s…we got confused).


I can’t believe they let us swear in either.

But seriously, this is quite the experience – and let it never be said that PC skimps on expenses. We were brought to an über-swanky hotel filled with film props (if you want the picture of me sitting on Ramses II’s chair, just ask) for swearing in, which was a lovely ceremony. The provincial governor, US deputy station chief, and the PC country director all spoke, and the top language learners in each of the three dialects taught gave short speeches.


Following that we all took the oath of service and just like that we were volunteers, with all the honor and responsibility it entails.

Our CBT host families attended the ceremony, which was fabulous. It was great to get a chance to see them one more time and to let them finally meet the people we’ve been talking about for the past two months. I’m fairly certain my host sister thought I was just making up friends who happened to know Arabic and Tamazight.

After lunch (with pizza!), we had free reign of the hotel pool and wireless for the afternoon. I am happy to say I now have a small trove of Gossip Girls to make my way through in the coming days (thank you, wi-fi!). We hung out, ate lots of ice cream, and began to think ahead to life at our sites. We’d be leaving the next day, which gave the evening a different energy. Some (many) of us likely won’t be seeing one another until IST (In Service Training) in another six months, which is hard to imagine after spending two and a half months straight with the same group of, I’ll say it, spectacularly cool people. As one put it, “Why’d they make us like each other so much?”

The consortium will be missed indeed.


We watched X-Files a lot.

Ahem.

The next day we said our goodbyes and were on our way. There was plenty of excitement on the road (who ever heard of a wheel actually coming off a car? I mean seriously), but I made it safe and sound to my site…all my luggage in tow. I’ve got plenty of things to keep me busy the first few weeks – from PC paperwork and applying for a carte de sejour (think green card) to finding a house – but my time now is largely my own, which is exciting and intimidating all at once. So far though everyone has been super friendly and welcoming, and I really can’t wait to see what happens in the next two years.

Home again home again, jiggity jig…


My valley is awesome. Though I may be impaled on a cactus sooner rather than later. Stay tuned, true believers…

Tell Me I'm Funny....

For the purposes of this story, please note the Tashlheit for 'cat' is 'amush', and that 'no problem' is 'mashi mushkil'. Ahem...

So the last evening at my host family's place was going swimmingly - we were chatting and watching tv, talking about the future and the definition of ice hockey when we moved to the main room for dinner. The family cat was especially jumpy this evening, and refused to leave the tagine alone, evading every attempt we made to shoo it away. We dropped our guard after a few moments, and that's when the cat swooped in for the kill...landing square on the main dish.

My host family was horrified, and quickly shooed it away and out the door. The following exchange is verbatim:

Mom: Samhiyyi! Samhiyyi bzzef! (I'm so sorry!)
Me: aMUSH? mashi MUSHkil! (ba dum BUM!)

...and nobody laughed.

I Have A PO Box!

Well, technically it’s a boite postal. But it’s a mailing address.

Yep. I know where I’m going to be living the next two years. And let me just say…its very different from anywhere I’ve ever been before. Not to give it away location-wise, but I’m in the south. Seriously south. There isn’t much in the way of vegetation, but I’m in the anti-atlas mountains surrounded by jagged brown peaks and sandstone cliffs. The sky is ridiculously blue. It’s crazy gorgeous. Its also crazy hot (I’m told up to 130 F in the summer...ha!).

I’m super excited about it, but I’ll admit I freaked out a little bit when I got there for my weeklong visit. It was the first time since we arrived in Morocco that I was without another English speaker more than a few hours, so the three solid days I spent with my new community were definitely a reality check that the summer camp that is PST is coming to a very quick end. Then we are on our own to make this work. Which is intimidating, but thrilling.

My town has a very active Argan co-op (goats in trees? We got ‘em!) and Neddi (women’s center), which is fabulous. I definitely hope to work with them in the future. Plus I’m close to a small tourist burg, so I have easy access to email and cheese, which pleases me greatly.

Would you like pictures? The answer is yes.









That final one is from the beach in Agadir, where I ate silly amounts of ice cream and cheese.

So yes. Site announcements were the major happening the past few weeks. Other than that we’ve been continuing with language and culture sessions, spending time with host families, and acquiring a taste for trashy novels (have you read Prep? Amazing.). I also got sick, which was not great, but that lead me to seeing a camel spider (long story), which was both horrifying and awesome. (Seriously – google it.)

In closing, I’ll leave you with a brief tashlHeet lesson, sure to come in handy on July 25:
Rirh ad amnrh – I want to believe.

Hilarity Ensued

Rebecca and I rolled into the Bab Doukkala bus station just past 6:30 am. We were due on a bus bound for Ouarzazate at 7:00 and had arrived early to buy our luggage tags and snacks (essential). It was already a successful day by any measure; we’d wound our way out of the labyrinthine Marrakesh medina and bargained down our taxi fare with two particularly ornery cabbies (ana mashi tourist, dude). Once on the bus our victory would be complete. We’d have made our way back from field trip without a scratch (and one particularly awesome bottle of olive oil richer).

So it was with an air of confidence that we strolled up to the CTM window and asked in our very best Darija for baggage tags for the 7 am to OZ.

“Sorry, that bus is already gone.”
“Haha, yeah. Seriously, its 2 DH, right?”
“It’s 6:40. The bus left ten minutes ago.”
“…what?”
“The bus is gone.”

Ruh-roh. We pulled out our tickets to prove to him the bus left at 7:00, not 6:30. He said it was a printing mistake, and that he’d told us yesterday that it was 6:30. It was here we began to freak out. We spent the next five minutes speaking in particularly broken Darija and French, trying desperately to convince him (and ourselves) that he was wrong. Waloo. We checked our tickets, we checked our phones, we pointed at bus schedules and repeated what few words we knew that would convey just how much we needed our bus not to be 15 minutes down the road.

Desperation had set it. “Oh my god, does Morocco do daylight savings?” “That’s it. I’m calling Julia. I have no idea what just happened.” Then the CTM man smiled and in perfect English replied, “No, no. Safi. Here are your tags. It’s 7:00 am on platform 10.” He looked at our expressions and laughed again. “No, its ok. Your bus has not gone.”

We had been punked. Our rage was very likely tangible, and had it not been for the pane of glass between us I’m not sure CTM man would have lived to see second breakfast. We silently took our tags, forcing weak smiles. “Thanks.” We turned to leave when he tapped the glass.

“I’m sorry. But you know why I say this? It’s because you were here yesterday, and you were very nice and you spoke to me in Arabic. This is why I said this to you. You are very nice.”

We thanked him with a smile, then made for our bus. Looking back later on, we laughed. Our first exposure to what we’ve since learned is ‘Moroccan humor’ had left us no worse for wear. And we had been pegged not because we were easy target (which, lets face it: yes), but because we’d made a good impression. We were touched.

But we still don’t think its funny.

*Note: This entry written in tandem with my pal and fieldtrip-mate Rebecca for the PST newsletter. That we will be placed 16 hours from one another is but a small hurdle to our one day cornering the Moroccan ice cream/coke light market.