1/11/09 Sending Care Packages - Tips

I've been wary of posting anything like this, because I don't want to seem like I'm saying GIMMEGIMMEGIMME, but enough people have asked me how best to ship care packages to Peace Corps Volunteers that I'm going to go ahead and share some tips.

(1) Use the USPS Flat Rate Boxes. This will keep shipping costs to less than half what they'd otherwise be. International shipping is hideously expensive, but at least the US Postal Service is trying to help. I've had more than one care package whose shipping costs were several times the value of the items inside, and that made me feel really bad for the shipper. (Note: they're only "Flat Rate" up to 20 pounds, for international shipping. That said, it's really hard to fit 20 pounds worth of anything into a package about the size of two shoe boxes, unless you're shipping rock samples or freeweights. So **stuff** these things. You're paying for the volume, not the mass; go nuts! Also, the less free space there is, the less your contents will shift (and risk breaking) during shipping).

(2) You'll need to fill out the package label with my (or your PCV's) name, address, etc, plus there's a space for "Detailed Description of Contents". Yes, fill this in, but if the box has lots of different things, it's OK not to enumerate *all* of them. Don't put more items than there are lines for.

(3) Don't list any individual item as having more than $10 in value, if you don't want your Volunteer to have to pay a customs fee to pick it up. If it's pretty obviously worth more than that, write "used" in the description section ("used sweater", "books, used", whatever) and make sure it's not in any of the original packaging. Also, avoid words that imply value to the unscrupulous, like "camera" or "computer". You want your PCV to receive this, right? I've had at least one package go completely astray, and I've had batteries stolen out of a couple packages.

(4) Check the box that says GIFT. Which is actually true for most care packages, anyway. :) Gifts are assessed fees much less often than anything the customs officials suspect you mail-ordered.

(5) Double-bag anything powdery. Sending hot cocoa packets? Cake mix? Instant coffee? Astronaut ice cream? Add an extra ziplock bag around the item's own packaging. Nearly every time I've received anything like the above, at least one of the packages had been cut into, I assume in order to check for drugs. (Do people actually smuggle cocaine by putting it in a Betty Crocker box?) The customs folks are good about rewrapping and retaping the contents of the box, but if there's no extra ziplock, the cut item will scatter its remaining powdery mess all over the contents of the care package. (Until we figured this out, nearly every care package I got from my parents had cocoa powder sprinkled everywhere.) Besides, ziplock bags are handy; your PCV will appreciate having them. :)

In 22 months of care packages (you know who you are, and THANK YOU!!!), I've only been assessed a shipping fee once, but it was a doozy. The item in question was marked as having a value of $65, and was still in the original packaging. I had to pay the equivalent amount of Moroccan dirhams - over 300Dh, which is 15% of my monthly stipend - just to pick it up. The point of the fees, as far as I can tell, is to deter the practice (formerly common) of folks importing goods and reselling them for a profit. Customs officials calculate that if they can double the price of whatever you're getting - by charging you an import fee equal to the item's value - it will take a huge chunk out of any potential profit margin. But when you're living on $225 a month, it hurts to have to pay for your care packages.

OK, that's all I can think of for now. And on behalf of whoever you're planning to ship to: Thank you so much! :D

1/30 25 Random Things About Berberville, Part II

25 Things, cont...

16. Schools. Berberville has a mdrasa, which contrary to popular belief does NOT mean a fundamentalist training camp, but simply means school. Primary school, more specifically, including grades 1-5. Middle school covers grades 6-9, and is known by the french name college. (An accent grave belongs over the middle e, but I can't get blogspot to put it there, sorry.) High school also goes by the French name, lycee (again, please forgive the missing accent), and covers grades 10-12. At the completion of lycee, students sit for their bac, or baccalaureate exam. Very few rural students ever go to university, so "getting your bac", as they say, brings high accolades and great respect.

17. Pre-school. This exists in Berberville, but has for only a few years now. Folks call it a neddi, rhymes with )heady, which word also describes a women's center. Berberville does not yet have one of those, but if we get one, this might get confusing.

18. We do have a women's co-op; they weave rugs, handbags, breadcovers, pillowcases, and nearly anything else you can make on a loom, then sell them at festivals and fairs across Morocco. It used to have almost 50 members, but due to recent drama, its numbers have plummeted to about 5. My sitemate "Fatima" works with this co-op.

19. The moussem, our summer festival, includes a gigantic souq. At this market, you can buy everything from silver jewelry to horses and camels to artisanal crafts (like those produced by the women's co-op) to organically farmed honey to...pretty much anything under the sun. There are also informational booths, distributing information about SIDA, the environment, handwashing, anti-smoking, women's rights... Any official jam3a, or NGO, can get a booth (tent space, actually) from which to hawk their message.

20. Berber culture. I dubbed my mountain village "Berberville" both to protect its anonymity and because the name fits: we're the center of Amazigh culture. (There are three groups of Berbers in Morocco, distinguished by their dialects: Tarifit, in the Rif region of the north; Tamazight, the language of the Amazigh - my people; and Tasuseit, spoken in the Suss region down south. All the dialects are collectively referred to as Tashelheit, from the Arabic word Shilha.) Our Amazigh heritage is why we host the moussem. Our deep isolation - even with the recently paved roads, we're hours from the nearest big town or major road, and before that, it was at least a full day's travel to get to any other town - has protected this culture for millenia. You see it especially in the women, who still tattoo their chins with the designating marks for their tribes, and who wear the ahandir capes that they've woven for countless generations.

21. Berber's rapid development creates odd juxtapositions: tattooed women in ahandirs cross paths with men in leather jackets; shepherds lead flocks to pasture while texting on their cell phones; souq sells teapots made in China next to herbs grown 100 meters away. The government paved the road out to SouqTown only 10 years ago; they paved the road to the nearest town North about two years ago; the road to the nearest city South remains a dirt pist, impassable for much of the year thanks spring and autumn flooding and winter snows.

22. We have one of the best legends in Morocco - a real Romeo and Juliet tale - but I'll save that for a future post.

23. Berberville got phones eight or nine years ago, once the Maroc Telecom trucks could make it out on the freshly paved roads. Cell phones trickled in about the same time as they did in the US, leapfrogging over the more-expensive landlines. Interesting note - cell phone contracts are rare here. Everyone buys cards - what we'd call "prepaid calling cards" in the US - to "recharge" their cell phones, then uses the phone until they "run out of minutes". Cell phones can accept calls for up to six months after they've been "recharged", whether or not they have money left, so it's not uncommon for people to use their phones only for incoming calls.

24. As all regular readers of my blog know, Berberville has a post office, known as the bosta. Home delivery of mail doesn't exist in the bled (rural areas). If you want your mail, go to your PO Box and pick it up. Everyone pays for their PO Boxes (boites postales or BP, again from the French) on a calendar-year schedule. Since Health and Environment sector PCVs are on a May - May calendar, not January - December, we traditionally hand boxes down from one PCV to the next. I got mine from "Zahra", the previous Environment volunteer, and didn't pay a dime until a few weeks ago. When I leave, the new Volunteer will get seven free months in her turn.

25. I can't possibly list 25 things about Berberville without talking about the Berberville citizens, my friends and neighbors, some of the most generous people I've ever met. Moroccans are renowned for their friendliness and openness. I've learned a slightly more nuanced reality - invites for tea come readily, but work collaboration requires deeper trust - but the fundamental truth remains the same. I'm honored and grateful to work and live with these wonderful people. :)

Thanks for reading about my fabulous village!

1/23 Homecoming

The early-morning tranzit was on time today (lhumdullah), which meant that I only sat outside my friend's house for 20 minutes to wait for it. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, so I didn't mind a bit. After a beautiful ride (see next post), the tranzit pulled to a stop in front of my house. I don't know why it stopped a block shy of the usual place, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!

But even before we stopped, I'd been looking ahead to My House, mi casa, my refuge, HOME. I haven't seen it for a full week, and I've missed it. But what to my wondering eyes should appear? Up on my rooftop was not Santa, but a different jolly old soul come to bring me
joy: my host dad.

Of course, I'd left my house locked and padlocked, so I couldn't figure out how he'd gotten up there. And then Elf 1, aka the older of my two little brothers, poked his head over the meter-high wall around my roof. Elf 2, the littler one, was nowhere to be seen...yet.

I hopped off the tranzit, paid the driver (who insisted on taking less money than I wanted to give him - he finally reminded me that I'd gotten on 30 km outside of SouqTown, and therefore had a cheaper ride than I'm used to), gathered my bags, and headed for My Front Door. My host dad called down greetings, which I returned, but when he tried more elaborate conversation, I called back up, "Wait a second, I'll be right up." (Stawil shwee, ad-alligh dghi.)

I lied.

I popped off the padlock without incident, then attempted the Berberville Triple Lutz, aka balancing all my stuff (so it wouldn't sit in the snowdrifts around my door) while I simultaneously tug my steel door towards me and twist my key to the right. It takes both hands, since the door handle (not a knob, a big bar of a handle) is about a foot from the lock. Tug right, twist left, don't drop anything...and nothing happened. The key wouldn't turn.

I tried a few more futile times before looking around for The Source Of The Problem. Turns out that the meters of snow and hurricane winds had conspired to force snow into my doorframe. I'm not really sure how this is possible, but my solid steel door was bent inwards by about three inches at the bottom corner (away from the hinges).

Snowy, icy slush was keeping my door from closing, which meant I couldn't tug-and-align-the-locks like always. So I knelt down, still balancing my bags, and began digging out my door.

Elf #2 materialized at this point, just over my left shoulder. He saw what the problem was, and immediately crouched down to help me out.
10 minutes of scooping and scraping later, with fingers, gloves, keys, and carabiner, there's a stubborn one-inch layer of ice just at the tip of the corner. "Maybe we need hot water, to melt this," I suggested to my little elf. He promptly trotted off to my nearest neighbor, aka our auntie, in search of the kettle-a-boil that every Berberville matron keeps on hand. While waiting for him, I straightened back up and tried the lock, just for grins. No joy.

Then I reached for the old standby, Brute Force And Ignorance: I kicked the door. Sure enough, that dislodged the last of the ice, and suddenly I could turn the lock. Lhumdullah! I called Elf 2 back from his mission, and in we went.

Inside, I noticed a patch of ice on the floor. My ceiling must have been leaking again, and apparently it's been below freezing in my house while I've been gone. No surprise there, given the blizzard. I drew my brother's attention to the ice, and said, "Watch out, this is dangerous." I don't know what I mispronounced, but somehow he interpreted what I'd said as, "Please stand right here." So he did, very obediently, and watched me from the ice patch while I shucked my bags. Then we trotted up the stairs to my roof.

He was ahead of me, so he drew the slidebolt and opened the door. It opens inwards, lhumdullah, or this story would go a very different direction.

Through the door, we could see Aba and Elf #1, hard at work shoveling the snow off my roof, before it could collapse the ceiling of my house. But at the door, between us and them, was a wall of snow. A pristine, vertical, gravity-defying wall of snow. It reached past my hips, making it just about a meter tall. A meter. Of snow.

And there's been two days of sunshine compacting the snow down into snowman-friendly, heavy, wet snow. So it was at least 50% deeper, and maybe twice as deep, when it first fell. Yowza.

After standing there for a minute, just blinking at the apparition, I took matters - and my little bro - into my own hands. I hefted his little 8-year-old frame upwards and plopped him on top of the snow.

He sank only a couple of inches before climbing downwards. I then took a deep breath and followed in his footsteps - literally.

Once I'd conquered that mountain, I was immediately enjoined to drink some tea. Someone - my host mom? my visiting auntie? my host dad himself? - had brought a tea set, complete with teapot, glasses, bread, and olive oil, up onto my roof. They'd brought it up two ladders (the secret of how they'd gotten up there at all - a ladder to my neighbor's roof, then another from that roof to mine) so that they could be, y'know, civilized.

All three guys were hard at work, clearing the snow off my roof. Snow shovels haven't been introduced here, so everyone does the work with balan, spades. The wet snow was holding together so well that all the shovellers had to do was slice downwards once or twice, to delineate some borders, and then lift-and-heft, and a 1-foot cube of snow was removed. While I drank tea and ate bread, I watched their procedure, and once I'd finished, I got Elf #1 to give me his shovel and let me work on my house. He resisted, but I held my ground, so he surrendered his bala. After I'd toted a few shovel-fulls from the rapidly-diminishing snowpack to the edge of the roof, he tried to get it back from me. I was stubborn. "This is my house, so I want to work!" I explained. He went to his dad for advice. His dad was taking a breather also, letting Elf #2 take his shovel while he had a cup of tea. I kept schlepping cubic feet of snow into the alley three stories below (with a very satisfying "WHUMP!", I might add).

Suddenly, Elf #1 reappeared at my elbow, holding out half an orange.
I accepted it, and as soon as I had a hand off the shovel, he snatched it. I looked over at Aba, who had a big grin. Aba speaks a little English, and I thought about asking if he knew the word "conspiracy" - clearly, our dad had given my little bro the orange expressly to get me to stop shoveling - but decided to let it go.

There were two shovels among the four of us. Aba and Elf #1 were definitely doing the lion's share of the work. Elf #2's job was mostly to watch over the front wall and make sure no cars, trucks, bikers, or pedestrians were below in the street, so that Aba could chuck his cubic foot of snow without fear of nailing somebody. Elf #1 and I were throwing our snow out into the alley, where nobody ever walks, which is why we weren't worried about it.

Fast-forward an hour or so. I've shucked all of my outer layers (parka, fleece, sweatshirt) and rolled up my sleeves. I have no idea what the actual temperature is, but under the baking sun, it feels like about 70. It was probably in the high 50s, but who knows? Elf #2, who is lifting each shovel-load over his little shoulders to get it over the wall, has been left with me to do the final touches. We have strict instructions to bring the shovels back to my hos family's house and then stay for lunch. I cheerfully obey.

Fast-forward past a wonderful lunch and chat with the family, including my efforts to figure out their new washing machine. I explained why I'd been away for so long, and got updates on the latest estimate for The Royal Visit: sometime in February.

My favorite exchange:

Ama: Here, Kawtar, have some.
She hands me some Tang-like beverage.
Little Sis: This has so much sugar in it!
Me: Yes, it has tons of sugar.
Ama: If you don't like it, you don't have to drink it. We have water, too.
Me: No, no, I like it a lot! Just like you, I like everything sweet.
Ama: [laughing] It's true, I love cookies and candy!

After leaving, I swing by the post office. I ask the postman if I have any packages. There are a few that were sent from the US a long time ago which I've still never gotten, so I keep checking. "Nope, nothing for you," he answers without looking up. "Hey," he adds, "Where's Jamila?"

"She's traveling," I answer. "Why, does she have a package? I can pick it up for her. And what about Fatima? Does she have any packages?"

"Yes, I have one for each of them. You can sign for them," he adds, pulling out The Package Book. There are two or three of these, depending on how the item was shipped. Why he doesn't log the packages when they arrive I still don't understand, but he always logs them when they're picked up, which means that every care package = hanging out in the post office for 10 or 20 minutes. But they're still TOTALLY worth it, don't get me wrong!!

So he writes for a bit, then hands the package up to me. I look at the label, then do a double-take. "Wait, this is ME!" I exclaim.

He laughs.

"You lied! You're a liar!" I laugh. He keeps chuckling. "Shame on you! You're a bad, bad man!"

Then he reaches for the other package, which I'll take over to my sitemate, Fatima. He spends a few minutes writing in his little book, then hands over the package...which is also for me. We go through it all again.

Turns out I got three packages. Jamila and Fatima had none. This is buposta's sense of humor. :)

I cart everything home, then plop down, home alone at last.

Home, sweet home.

Berberville, sweet Berberville.

It's good to be home. :)

July 1, 2008 Mail!

After a bone-dry week ( :( ), I received not one, not two, but FOUR packages today. :D Two from Peace Corps, and two from the US.

And two letters, including one of the most gorgeous wedding invitations I’ve ever seen. [Update: Mail two days later included one of the most entertaining wedding invitations I’ve ever seen. I love my friends!]

I’ve been in a happy-skippy mood all afternoon. :)

There was Macaroni and Cheese, there were M&Ms (in two packages, one that I could keep for myself and one that I could share with my host family!), there were books, there were chocolate chips and brown sugar (chocolate chip cookies, here I come!!), there were colored pencils, there were toys, there were letters from loved ones… It was pretty doggoned fantastic, really.

Made my Ama’s day, too; she watched me open the packages (for the second time – I’d opened them for the first time in my apartment, where I squirreled away the M&C and cookie fixings) and it was like watching a kid at Christmas. She was so delighted to see what people had sent me! And she said she felt sorry for my friends and family back in the States, because they don’t get to see me. Awww…

June 17, 2008 Mail tips

I don’t know how many of you are planning on sending me mail (hopefully lots! :D), but here are some more things I’ve learned:

• Nicknames confuse my bubosta. Writing out my full name makes his life simpler.
• Titles (Miss, Ms, etc) confuse him, too. I explained what they mean, but he still looked a little glassy-eyed.
• If you’re sending goodies:
• Don’t send batteries. They show up when the package gets x-rayed, and they have a way of disappearing. Several PCVs have mentioned that batteries shipped from the US somehow never get delivered.
• On chocolate: M&Ms travel well, as do Ghiradelli squares, foil-wrapped chocolate bars, and Hershey’s kisses. The one Lindt truffle I've been sent had melted a bit, though, so obviously I had to eat it immediately. (I mean, really, I had no choice, right?) :D
• On the green international shipping slip, describe the contents as “used” whenever they might be perceived as valuable: (“used clothing,” “used book,” “used camera,” etc).
• If sending something brand-new, take it out of all packaging. If the customs folks can tell it’s brand-new, I’ll have to pay customs fees equal to their assessed value of the item. Even if it’s marked as a gift. :(
• Mark it as a “gift” anyway. It can’t hurt (and besides, it’s true!).
• Round the “value” down. Way down. And never claim it as more than $50. Apparently, that’s a red flag for customs.

June 5, 2008 Sticker Shock

So far, I’m batting 1000. Every time I’ve gone to the post office, there’s been a package for me. I know this can’t last forever, but it sure feels fantastic. :) Today’s, though, came with sticker shock. I know that the Moroccan government has the right to open any package and check the contents, but I don’t think it has happened before now. The packages always looked unopened, anyway. But today’s had been examined in detail, and I got stuck with a hefty customs charge. It was marked “Gift”, both because it was and because I’d been told that you don’t have to pay customs on gifts, and I’d passed that information along to everyone who was thinking about sending me stuff. But I guess that’s more of a guideline than a rule. Anyhow, I had to leave the package there until I could come back with floos (money). It felt a bit like the time that my car was towed for having an expired tag. (It’s my car, parked in my lot, and you are forcing me to pay you to get it back?) Today, the thought was that this is my package, delivered to my mailbox, and I have to provide money before I can get it? :(

Oh, well. The contents were worth waiting for. And even worth forking over a week’s pay for. :) Even without chocolate. ;)

5/29/08 The Berberville Grapevine

After I went to the post office this morning, I stopped by the recently vacated home of Zahra, the departing Volunteer. Her landlord was (is) my host dad, and it’s very likely that I’ll be moving into that house when I finish my homestay. Because of that assumption, she gave me her keys before she left, and also let me leave some things there (notably a huge backpack that I brought with me when I came on site visit, and which I haven’t actually unpacked since it was first packed at the end of February).

After I picked up my packages, I took them to Zahra’s place to open them in the privacy of her home, and so that I could pick up the fleece and Tevas that I’d left there after site visit. (It was cold last night, and I found myself missing my fleece. And Tevas are always handy.) Getting into her house was harder than I’d anticipated. For one thing, her key doesn’t work all that well. Plus, the steel crossbar bolting the door shut isn’t aligned perfectly, so pulling it open involves scraping steel on steel—a noisy and awkward proposition. But I finally succeeded in wrestling her door open, climbed the steep stairs to her 2nd story apartment, and there I was! I ate a little chocolate, read the introduction to Innocents Abroad, and then figured it was time to head back to my wonderful host family. Locking up her apartment was about as challenging as unlocking it had been, and the clanging and scraping attracted some attention. Also, as I walked back, I passed some of my Berberville neighbors who wanted to chat. (I’m not a particularly skilled chatter in Tamazight, but I gave it my best shot, and I think we understood each other.) They asked if I’d been in Zahra’s house, and if she was really gone. I answered both questions. I’d originally hoped that no one would notice I’d been there—not because I was doing anything wrong but because I didn’t know how to explain what I was up to in Tamazight—but I figured that that train had long since left, and that I might as well be forthright about it.

As I was talking, it occurred to me to wonder how long it would take to get back to my host parents – aka the owners of the apartment.

It didn’t take long.

About two hours later, my host dad came up to me and asked if I’d been in Zahra’s house. I said yes, and then he said something long and complicated that I didn’t completely understand. I caught the words “key” and “house” and “your clothes” (could also mean “your baggage” – the same word is used for both), so I just kept smiling and nodding. Yes, she had given me the key to the house. Yes, I had left some of my clothes – in my baggage – there. If he said anything else, I probably agreed to that, too. Towards the end, he asked if Zahra had given me the card for the electricity. (It’s shaped like a credit card, and actually works exactly like the laundry card at my last apartment. You put money on it, then use it to transfer money to the electricity meter in your house. As long as you put money on it at least every six months, and keep your balance above zero, you have power!) I said that she had, and showed it to him.

He held it for a minute, seemed to make a decision about something, and then said that I should probably hang onto it. I guess that until then, it had still been an open question for him as to whether I’d take the apartment. (It hasn’t been for Ama. She’s been giving me the hard sell for a while now.)

Satisfied that all was well, he went off about his business.

This afternoon, Ama came up to me and asked if I’d been over to Zahra’s place. (I guess my host dad hadn’t talked with her about it before leaving.) I said that I had, and gave the explanation that I’d figured out how to say in Tamazight: My jacket was there. I was very cold last night. I went to Zahra’s house in order to bring my jacket back here.* (Simple, declarative sentences are my strong suit.) Mama laughed and said, “It’s not Zahra’s house anymore. It’s your house. Kawtar’s house! Zahra is gone to America. She’s an American girl now. She’s—” and here she pantomimed wearing a tank top, wiggling her hips, and generally being Hshuma. “It’s Kawtar’s house now. You’re a Moroccan girl now. Later, you’ll be an American girl,” and again she showed how Hshuma American girls are. As soon as she’d done her American pantomime, I’d started laughing, and by the time she finished the second round, I was busting a gut. She’s not wrong – American girls do wear short sleeves and dance around (though, for the record, I hate tank tops) – but somehow seeing her caricature it was just the most startling and hilarious thing I can remember seeing.

* If you’re curious: Jakitinu illa. Idgam, krfgh bzzef. Digh s tadart n Zahra afad ad-iwidgh jakitinu.

5/29/08 Red Letter Days

Today was a GREAT day at the bosta (post office).

Mail only comes into town three times a week – Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and only after the post office is closed for the day. So the days to check mail are Mondays (for Friday’s arrivals), Tuesdays (for Monday’s), and Thursdays (for Wednesday’s). Since I was in SouqTown on Monday – and will be for most Mondays – that means that Tuesdays are especially exciting, because there’s twice the likelihood of getting mail.

So Tuesday, when K** dropped me off at the bosta, I was eager to see what I’d find. I got a card from a friend in the States (thanks!!) and scored two packages of books from the Peace Corps librarian (my new best friend), which included some technical materials on environmental education in the schools as well as some fiction (since I’d told him I’m a fan). I got The Jane Austen Book Club, which I’ve read before but enjoyed, Northanger Abbey, which I’ve never read but wanted to, and Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi, which I’m pretty sure is on my Amazon.com wishlist. I heard about Fatima Mernissi just before getting to Morocco, and wished I’d had time to read her books. She writes about women in Islam, women in Morocco, Islam and Morocco, etc. Pretty fabulous, really. In the 40-ish hours since I got it, I’ve read 211 pages of this 242 page book, and that’s with me limiting myself to only reading when it’s bedtime. (The goal of the first three months of service is to integrate into the community, not to hole up reading good books.) The harem life that Mernissi describes, from her childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, is different from the life I see Berber women living today, but many of core issues – the separation of men and women, the role of the veil, etc – are still vital in today’s Morocco. It’s also fun to see the Darija words that she drops into the text. Some are identical to words I know, and some are different. (She lived in Fez, which is well north of me; the local Berber dialect is different – it’s called Tarifite – and that means that the Darija, aka the Moroccan blend of French, Spanish, Arabic, and Berber, is slightly different as well.)

So that was Tuesday.

Today, Thursday, I went back to the bosta to check my box and to mail some paperwork to Peace Corps HQ in Rabat.

What’s fun about knowing nothing is that every moment is a chance to learn. :)

What I learned this morning: most in-country letters cost 3.25 dirhams to mail, but only if you stay under 20 grams. I had enough documents to hit 26 grams, so I had to pay double postage – 6.5 Ds. I think postage rules are the same in the States; 0.1 ounce up to … some limit … is a regular stamp, but once you push past that, even by an smidgen, it jumps up to two stamps. (Right?)

There was also a long-awaited letter in my box. OK, 9-day-awaited. It was the 60D stamp that I need for my carte de sejour (Green Card-like document). I’m only allowed to be in the country for 3 months without a carte de sejour, and that three months elapses next week. Eep. Of course, getting the carte is a several-month process, but as long as I have the stamped receipt showing that I’ve applied for it, I’m still law-abiding. :) [Update: I went to the gendarmerie, spoke French, English, Tamazight, and my most useful phrase of Darija: “I don’t understand Arabic”, and emerged (six hours later) with the stamped receipt. I’m good to go!]

But I still haven’t gotten to the best part of my trip to the bosta. Sorry for the rambling.

In addition to the 60D stamp in my mailbox, the bubosta (postman) had not one but TWO packages for me from loved ones in the States!! Lhumdullah!! They were sent a week apart, but arrived on the same day. (I’ve started tracking shipping times; so far, the average time for a letter or card to get here is 10 days, and the average time for a package is 21 days.) I got a card, a book, burnable CDs, pens, pencils, and some seriously good Philadelphia-made chocolate. Mmmm. Thank you thank you thank you!! I also got a copy of Innocents Abroad; now I can read my blog’s namesake and decide if the literary allusion was a good idea or not. :)

When I got home with my armful of postal goodies, my host mother was curious. I showed her the packages from my xalti (maternal aunt), my sadiq (a way of saying “my friend” that is gender neutral, since it was in fact from a guy friend and I didn’t want to run into the “boyfriend” issue), and from the hayat salaam (Peace Corps). I added a big lhumdullah and she smiled, saying Kawtar ghors familia ixatr iHla. Lizzy has a good, big family. :D And I do. (Friends are, of course, part of my family.) Lhumdullah!