"Hot Today, Hot Yesterday....Gonna Be Hot Tomorrow." "I Reckon."

I have my very own 95 Thesis coming your way on the existence and creation of self outside known cultural contexts (see what happens when I sit down and think for like five minutes?), but I figured for now we might talk shop about other things. Like the weather.

It's June. I'll give you that its mid/late June, but its still only June. And it was 98F in the shade. Twice. It will only get hotter. Much hotter. I take some solace in the fact that everyone here thinks its hot as well - if they never made a comment I'd really feel like a baby. But it goes without saying that when we come in from a walk, I'm the only one sweating profusely and guzzling my nalgene. Though I can tell I'm getting acclimated; the first super hot day we had I was almost non-functional, but the second day, as I came back from a hike around noon thinking it was only kinda warm I looked at the thermometer to see it was almost 100 in the shade...I felt superhuman.

The weather puts a minor crimp in my style, but mostly it dictates my schedule. I know if I want to see anyone outside I have to get up and out the door early or I'll be waiting till the sun starts to go down. During midday people are in their homes. It also means I’ll usually wait to wash my hair or shower until after lunch, when there is no need for me to boil water on the stove because the tap is running hot (I kid you not).

When I first got here I would try and strike up conversation with the old standby, "Wow! It's hot today, yeah?" All I got was a pitying look, "Oh, sweetie. It ain't hot yet." This was when it was in the high 80's. I explained to people that my village in the US is never hot, that we have lots of snow and only a little sun. They laughed. A lot. Now I know - it's not hot yet.

So it’s in this spirit that I've been doing a lot more walking. 'Cuz hey, it's not hot yet. And in August I might be prone on my floor in front of a fan, which will cut down on hiking time. A few days ago I struck out on a road that leads from my village to one further up the mountainside. I wasn't sure exactly how far I'd be walking, but I'd seen a few kids coming along in the other direction, so I knew it couldn't be too far. I was right - about a mile outside of town around the corner and up a hill was the other douar. Its absolutely tiny, but filled exclusively with new homes, which struck me as a little odd. It also has a very small area of irrigated, super green cropland.


As I ran into people I got looks of surprise and a few tentative "bonjour"s. They, naturally, don't know me and thought I was a French tourist. I'd say a few words of greeting back in Tash and they'd smile. As I got back to my town, though, everyone greeted me in Tash (something I generally don't even register - they're just saying hi).

Near my house I passed an old man who lives a few doors down. Since I arrived here last month he has greeted me exclusively in French, even when I initiate in Tash. As we passed one another I gave him a nod. He replied with, "Salaam."

TashlHeet! He spoke to me in TashlHeet! For the first time! Not even at my prompting!

It goes without saying I said hello right back, beamed the rest of the way home, then treated myself to maple sugar candy. Because finally, the old man down the road knows I'm not a wacky tourist.

Did You Know Pomegranates Have Really Pretty Flowers?

Because I just found that out. I may live in the desert, but I gotta say when I walk in the fields I feel like I’m somewhere else entirely. Along with argan (natch), my village grows almonds, pomegranates, apricots, figs, dates, olives, and I’ve seen at least two orange trees and one plum tree. Right now people are also growing corn, just harvested the barley (or possibly wheat? I don’t know cereals – project!), and I’ve spotted somebody with a huge amount of chive in their plot. Not to mention the rather ubiquitous mint.

Let’s take a walk, shall we?

Ah, the argan. Hardy, versatile, and a pain in the ass if you want to crack open the nut (seriously – my fingers are killing me).

These are the fruits, with the nuts hidden away inside. They’ve started falling to the ground, and I’m told in August they’ll be collected in earnest for drying and storage. Suckers are everywhere.

The canopy shades too much for anything to grow beneath the trees in the fields, but in open patches you can find plenty of people taking advantage of the irrigation canals.


You can also see the difference between the irrigated portion and the soil left to its own devices. Guess which is which?

Not a blade of grass grows on the dry side. And with water like this I’m surprised it grows at all.

This water was seeping from a portion of the irrigation canal down through a retaining wall. It’s full of soap, as you can see, as many people do their laundry where the canal opens onto a terrace. Someday I’ll tell you about Tide.

Speaking of irrigation, I wondered why people sectioned off their crops into individual rectangles. It looks very cool, but I highly doubted function followed form. Yesterday as I came upon this plot I found two women I know from the co-op watering their newly sprouted corn. Turns out the rectangles are individual pools the water can be directed to through raising and razing earthen dams. So cool!

And the pomegranates…


Pretty! And really such a novelty to me. It’s a pomegranate! In a tree! Hee!

And as we exit the fields, we find some other favorite plants of mine…


I love these cacti. Town is full of prickly pear, but these grow on the extra rocky, extra arid hillsides outside the village proper. They look like coral.

And these are some of the terraces where, prior to the drought (see post below), you could actually grow things. Before doing so you would tie an onion to your belt, as was the style at the time. Ahem.

And finally, a quick shout out to the irrigation canal, without which much of this would not be possible. Dandelions grow just beyond this bend in the stream. I visit every few days to pick them for my room.

Dandelions make me happy.

Today’s Tash:
ar iyyi aitejAAbn ijdiggin – I like flowers.

So That's What a Drought Looks Like...

I’ve talked to a lot of PCV’s from my stage who, in their first days at site, wondered just what work they had. They surveyed their community’s well-organized health center, irrigation canals, and active community organizations and doubted whether their village needed them at all. Wasn’t there someplace else they might be more helpful, more of use?

One of my pals, a health volunteer, wasn’t sure she’d have anything to do in her next two years. Her sbitar (health center) seemed well run and everyone she met maintained good health practices – what contribution could she make? We met for coffee last week, and where she first had her doubts, in the past month at her site she’s seen enough to know that there is, in fact, a mountain of work to be done.

She said her moment of revelation came when, ill herself and requesting bread and tea for dinner, her family presented her with misnmn and butter with milk, insisting it would cure her stomach ailments. Oh-ho. (Think of misnmn as a crepe, but deep-fried. It’s usually served with jelly and butter. Absolutely delicious, but the last thing you’d ever want on a weak stomach). After that she took real notice of community health assumptions – like mothers prescribing milk and eggs to treat their children’s diarrhea – and realized just how much she could do.

My moment came a few days ago. We learned in training that Morocco is in the throes of a major drought, one that has had real impact on the way people live. In CBT we interviewed community members who lamented the lack of water, but with running taps and lush fields it was hard to imagine times were really that tough. Here in the south the change in weather patterns over the past decade has been even more pronounced, though without hard data (and rather weak Tash), I had no idea just what sort of impact these changes may have had on my community.

I was at a neighbor’s house drinking tea when she offered to show me her family photo album. I paged through, smiling as I picked out familiar faces and homes. I came to a photo, maybe ten years old, of the family standing on the terrace in front of their house. Only this looked nothing like the terrace I walked that afternoon. It was green. Lush. With grass standing waist high. In the distance the mountainside I see every morning as I walk to the road, barren but for the occasional fruitless argan, was green with short grasses and shrub. I wasn’t smiling anymore.

As I left that evening I looked again at my town. Where I’d initially seen green fields I saw the stark demarcation between irrigated and non-irrigated crops. I saw dusty barren terraces cut into mountainsides. My first day here, thinking it impossible there was ever enough water to grow crops (pashaw, it’s the desert!), I assumed they were meant as a type of erosion or rockslide barrier. Now I knew otherwise. I even looked again at the dry riverbed – just how much water used to flow here? And when? Am I really assuming correctly that there’s a trickle in winter, or am I in for a surprise? I kicked a stone on the terrace outside the house. The breeze blew dust and sand out over the road. What the hell happened?

I still don’t know what I’m going to do here. I have a lot more to learn about my community before I can even think about project proposals. But that photo was my misnmn and milk.

Climate change sucks, yo.

It Rains in the Desert Sometimes!

And I've got the pictures to prove it!

You see that? Rainclouds! In the desert!

This unexpected (and most welcome) thunderstorm brought wind gusts, gorgeous grey clouds, and an evening of temperatures in the mid-60’s. I enjoyed it very much indeed.

So what’s up? Things here are going swimmingly – I got my carte de sejour receipt, which means I’m a legal resident in Morocco (yay!), and I may have a lead on a house to rent once my two months of homestay end in August. I’m meeting lots of neighbors and kids (who school me in soccer on a nightly basis), and I’ve also started teaching a weekly English class at the local women’s center. Yes, things are going quite well indeed.

Some things are certainly tough – the language barrier most of all (see other post) – but by and large, things are moving ahead. So far I've been meeting people on a very informal basis, but in the next few weeks I'm hoping to begin actually 'meeting' with people and local organizations to try and find out more about what they want and what they need (hopefully).

So what do I do, you might ask? I’m so glad you asked!

If it’s a day I go into town (let’s say once a week – twice if I have a special errand) I’ll wake up to catch the transit at 8 am. I’ll hit the cyber café (holla!) and the post office, buy a recharge card for my cell phone, visit with other PCV’s who either live in town or are visiting for the weekly market, take care of errands, buy candy (snickers and mars bars), soda (my one soda a week), and tp, and I head back to my village sometime in the afternoon – whenever I can find transit.

If it’s a regular day in my village, I’ll wake up and take a walk in the fields while its still cool, chatting with the women I run into and saying hello to the shopkeepers as they set up their stores for the day. Then I come back home for breakfast/brunch, chill out and study or read, and help around the house with dishes. We have lunch, after which I read/hang out with the kids/do laundry or other chores (basically I don’t go outside…its too hot) and wait for the sun to go down a bit. The rest of town does the same – no one is out on the streets between 12 and 4. It’s eerie. And really hot. Later on I’ll go for a walk or help prepare snack at 5-ish. Afterwards I walk around and chat with people, play soccer with kids outside the community center, and usually meet up at dusk to gab with a group of gals from the women’s center on some rocks overlooking part of town. Then I head home, hang with the family, and read/study. We eat dinner at 10 or 11, then we hit the hay.

You can break up the daily schedule above with visits I make to the women’s center or argan cooperative, which usually end up with me staying for a few hours and chatting/listening/observing how things work.

But yeah – that’s how my days have been going so far. Weather wise its been uneven – highest so far was 106, but that was followed by a day with a high in the 80’s. Plus there was that thunderstorm, which really had no business happening in the first place.

Other Happenings:

“Yeah, there are tons of scorpions here when its hot.”
“Oh? I haven’t seen any…”
“That’s because its not hot yet.”

The Milky Way!
“Maggie, how do you say, ‘Where is my husband?’ in English?”
Wild boar!
Mars Bars!
My growing text-message bill…I think I have a problem.

Today’s Tash lesson:

butHanut urta inkr – The shopkeeper isn’t up yet. (Said in conversation to a woman who pointed out the shop down the way wasn’t open. She burst into hysterical laughter and told me this was not only a perfect sentence, but an utterly Tash thing to say. Score! And…really?)

Things I've Learned in Morocco

There are few things better than a shower, a cold bottle of water, and a clean white shirt. This fact held throughout training, but after three weeks at site I believe it to be a universal constant. (Much like the continued awesomeness of Battlestar Galactica and Gossip Girl).

They call Peace Corps the toughest job you’ll ever love, and throughout training I never understood why. Not the love part, mind you – I had the time of my life during PST – but the tough part. When were things supposed to get tough? The people were fabulous, the food delicious, and even if I felt unmoored in a new environment I knew I had a million and one people, from staff and other PCT’s to the juice guy down the way, that were willing and able to help. Well, I just found the tough part.

Life at site is very different from PST. The people are still fantastic, the food is still delicious (I’ll be damned if my host mom doesn’t make a mean misnmn), and there are still a million people I know I can ask for help. It’s the asking for help part that’s tough. Or asking in general…make that communicating.

Tashlheet is hard, yo.

Strike that – Tash isn’t hard, but its very unlike any other language I’ve studied. And right now it’s the only way for me to express myself on a daily basis. I was amazed how quickly I was able to commit words to memory during training – after all, I was using them almost every day – and even here at site my language skills have grown immensely. Three weeks ago I would trip over myself asking if I could take a walk (rirh ad zigzh, is waxxa?). Now its comes out easily. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve only been speaking Tash for three months, which means there is still quite a bit I can’t say. And a lot I’d like to ask my new friends and neighbors (who, I’ll say it, are absolute saints as they listen to my Tash and wait for me to remember the verb ‘to sell’…its znz) that I just can’t.

My mother called me last week and she couldn’t get a word in edgewise – I was so carried away simply being able to talk that I’m not sure she got out more than a few sentences (hi, mum!).

But I know that the language will come. It just takes time – something I have plenty of. But while I study language, meet neighbors, play soccer, explore my valley, and figure out just where I fit into my new community, I know just what to do if the language barrier and the heat begin to take their toll:

I’ll take a shower, pull my water bottle out of the fridge, and put on a crisp, clean white button down.

PS – I also sometimes buy a snickers.

I Take Walks

I realized the other day just how high in elevation we are here when we got our first clouds in two weeks. I glanced up at the mountains above town and they were hidden behind some lovely cumulus. Later I had to travel two hours to a meeting. My taxi actually went through the clouds as we made our way along the road, coming out the other side into a dust storm kicked up by the wind.

'Twas awesome.