4/26/10 Ice Cream in Morocco

You'd think a desert country would be filled with cold treats.

You'd be wrong.

If you want American-style ice cream, you're limited to the biggest cities. I've been to a Haagen-Daaz in Marrakesh, where I was so bedazzled by the *glass* *dish* and *spoon* and *napkin* and other amenities that I actually snapped a picture:

In the Jm3 al-Fnaa in Marrakesh, you can get ice cream cones that slide down deliciously, but which always make me feel thirsty. (Maybe extra rock salt was used to make the ice cream?) In Essaouira, you can find gelato by the harbor. In Rabat, a gelaterie is located across from the train station. (You can also get a cone or shake at McDonald's, found in every major city, but would you really want to? They taste just as plastic here as in America.)

There are also pseudo-ice cream dispensers in most of the moderate-sized cities, where for 1DH you can get a cone with a swirl of cold squishy stuff that *looks* like ice cream but tastes like dirty water. (COLD dirty water, though, so I've gotten it more than once, on blisteringly hot days.)

And then there are the ice cream bars. Remember ice cream sandwiches, and chocolate-coated ice cream on a popsicle stick (what are those things called again?), and push pops, and nutter butter cones? They all have analogues here in Morocco.

My personal favorite is the Magnum. Usually available (where you can find it!) in Double Chocolate or Double Caramel, this is the brass ring of Moroccan ice cream options. I've spent many an hour wandering a strange city, questing for a Double Caramel Magnum. Mmmmm. Imagine the usual chunk of ice-cream-on-a-stick, dipped in caramel, dipped in a hard-shell chocolate coating, then dipped *again* in caramel, and again shelled in chocolate. Mmmmmmmm.

When Magnums cannot be found (sadness!), I'll settle for a MaxiBon. This half-ice cream bar, half-ice cream sandwich combines my two favorite cold treats into one delicious snack. Tip: eat the bar half first, because it's easier to hold the sandwich half. Especially if it's *really* hot, and the whole thing will melt in something less than five minutes.

Oh, and be prepared to haggle. Smart hanut owners know that Magnums and MaxiBons make the world go 'round, and they charge accordingly. Don't be surprised if they ask for 20dh apiece. Never pay more than 18dh, and do your best to get the price down to 15dh. (I know the difference is less than 50 American cents, but it's the principle of the thing.)

Bon Appetit!

4/20/10 Sprinks' Camp Photos, cont.

And now for the social side of Spring Camp.

When we weren't leading classes or clubs or otherwise responsible for something, the five PCVs could often be found in a cafe or one of our rooms or in the cafeteria, talking and laughing and playing cards. And most of the time, "playing cards" either meant Spoons or else ERS, dubbed "Double Jack Action" by RoRo and "Double Jack Slap" by me. 'Cause the easiest way to win? Slap a pair of jacks. Like this:

Alternatively, we might take a walk into Emerald City's town center, in search of note cards or art supplies or masking tape or ICE CREAM.

Note the remains of the MaxiBons we all got. Mmmm, MaxiBons...

And of course, we also socialized with the kids. Students. Young people attending the camp. Some we got quite close to over the week. On the last day, as they waited for their parents to come drive them home (and what does it tell you about the socioeconomic status of the campers that they all have parents with **cars**), several pulled out notebooks and asked us to write them farewell notes. Which we did, of course:

...So that was Spring Camp. L-mokhiam. English Language Immersion Camp. Call it what you will...I call it my favorite week every March. :)

4/11/10 Lucky's Wedding

Here in the heart of Amazigh culture, weddings haven't changed too much in thousands of years. The clothes have gotten a little fancier, but the music and dancing and feasting feel as old as these hills.

As I've mentioned, my cousin "Lucky" has been engaged for months now. At least half a year; the first time I asked when the wedding would be, I was told, "Probably after Ramadan." Since I wouldn't have asked if Ramadan had already begun, I must have heard about the engagement sometime in July or August.

And they never set a date.

The wedding has been "soon" for six months. And then, two days ago, I walked home from the transit stand, past my aunt and uncle's house, and they grabbed me. My 3tti and cousin were sitting on their front stoop, as they often are, and they told me that the wedding would be today, Sunday. So this morning, I brought a cone of sugar and my best Berber clothes over to Ama's house, and prepared to play dress-up. She (gently, graciously) vetoed my choice of dress (tejlabbit) and earrings. I'd brought a dozen pairs of earrings, but didn't have any other fancy-dress clothes, so she dressed me up in one of her takshitas (caftans).

My little sister's dress (takshita) was even fancier, being made out of satin:

(Here, she's reading a comic book I'd brought her from Rabat. And yes, we got her to change out of her red turtleneck into one that matched the purple caftan.) I didn't ask why my little sister was so dressed up, but I must have looked a little puzzled, because Ama explained that the dress had been donated by a neighbor. A closer look revealed that it was a good six inches too long and five inches too wide, but a safety-pin across the back had pulled it tight enough to work. (The one-size-fits-all school of caftan design doesn't apply quite as well to little children, who come in a wider variety of sizes than adults.) She further explained that my little sis will get a custom-made, fitted, dress caftan of her own when her big sister gets married (whether that's me or our other sister, now 19 years old), but that for a cousin's wedding, a borrowed one will do.

The bride wore white, which isn't traditional but is becoming increasingly common, and was unveiled, which floored me:

(The other girl is Lucky's cousin, in her best golden-thread caftan/takshita.) Lucky's hair was pulled back in a gorgeous knot, pinned with flowered clips. Really, she could have worn the dress as a bride at the Plaza, and while it would have been clear she came from a different culture, she would have looked like a bride. (Well, I think so, but then, I've been here for 26 months. If I'm wrong, tell me.)

Note that both girls - like nearly every other female at the wedding - have their eyes rimmed intezolt, or kohl. They'd done their makeup before I got there, and I hadn't thought to talk to them about it in the days before (though in retrospect, I should have).

The feasting and dancing and merrymaking went on for hours...into the wee hours. I snuck out early, just after midnight. It helps that I live next door!

And then, in the morning, the 17-year-old bride and her 18-year-old groom - who she'd met for the first time the day before the wedding, despite having been engaged to him for over a year - were packed off to his town. A PCV buddy of mine lives in that town; I'll ask him to keep an eye out for her.

And inshallah, they'll live happily ever after.

4/17/10 Sprinks' Camp in Photos

I know, I know, I promised you pix from Spring Camp - aka Sprinks' Camp - a month ago. But this is the first time I've pulled the photocard out of my camera in well over a month, so now you get to see them. Enjoy!

As I mentioned, we spent some time locked *into* our room. Sprinks, our fearless leader (left), climbed out the window, around the column she's leaning next to, and over to the landing at the top of the stairs. She went for folks with tools, who began the process of breaking into our room. While they worked, we took a moment to bask in the coastal sun...

Once we got our housing squared away, we turned out attention to work. I was responsible for an English class - I got the Advanced section - and I worked with Zifi to organize an Environment Club.

For our club, Zifi and I arranged a nature walk, with environmental mini-lessons on cards placed throughout a nearby park. Here's one:

Placed near a half-acre of dumped trash, it talks about decomposition rates and asks the kids to think about the future of this mostly-lovely park.

A little farther on, we talked about photosynthesis and the ways by which trees help us. Shortly afterwards, a card asked the students to take a bark rubbing and hug a tree. They did both:

Here, in a non-littered space, you can see just how lovely the park could be, if it were left trash-free. Zifi is talking to the students about observing shades of green. How many different shades do you see?

So that was the club. For English class, each day's lesson was organized around the theme of the day. For Environment Day, my students created posters with concept maps linking environmental ideas:

On our last day of classes, we arranged an English Olympiad, with a series of word games so the students could show off their newly acquired language skills. For one, we had the students create thematic acrostic poems around certain key words from the week. This one was my favorite, so I took a picture of it:

So that's the work side of Spring Camp.

But let's not forget about the play side of Spring Camp.... (To be continued)

3/23/10 Environmental Art Contest

Sunday afternoon, kids gathered at SouqTown's Youth Center for an environmental art contest and an environmental presentation on the value of trees (appropriate for Tree Day, no?). My camera battery died before the presentation began, and my backup battery was home charging, since I'd drained it the day before, but I managed to get pictures of the young artists.

They used egg crates to keep their paints separate - an old kindergarten teacher's trick that I'd totally forgotten about till now. :)

This girl is painting leaves on a tree. By the way, this is the third or fourth environmental art contest I've seen/organized/etc, and by far the most successful at getting thematically appropriate art. Every painting I saw - and I spent a good hour walking around, looking at every piece, repeatedly - clearly and vividly demonstrated the kids' appreciation for trees and the environment.

This young lady's painting shows a tree growing out of the Earth:

...while the boy next to her paints an angry face on his Earth - the words he added later make it clear that Earth is fed up with all the pollution we're choking it with.

Artists posing with their creations:

And my favorite of the day: (The text says, "Trees are the lungs of the earth." And see how the tree roots form bronchial tubes? What a clever idea!)

3/22/10 SouqTown Clean-Up

The second activity of Tree Day required rubber gloves, day-glo vests, big woven baskets, and giant smelly truck.

On Sunday, March 21st, the International Day of Trees, a few hundred people got together to plant about 400 trees. But that was only the beginning. After the trees were planted, watered, and protected with rock circles, we moved onto Phase 2: The SouqTown Clean-Up.

Everyone who wanted them was given rubber gloves, and then we began marching through the streets, clearing away trash as we went. Like beneficial locusts, we scoured the landscape, leaving nothing unsightly behind. Here, a boy gathers cigarette butts from the wall in front of a municipal building:

Once we'd gotten the trash off the ground, we dropped it into one of about a dozen baskets, being carried by kids like these:

The kids carried the basket until it got pretty full. Some even stayed excited about lugging litter:

(Those girls kept their huge smiles all day long!) Once a basket filled up, its carriers ran over to the garbage truck, which kept pace with the parade of litter locusts, and emptied it out:

The garbage truck inched through the town surrounded by children, like a cross between a parade float and a robotic Pied Piper. A few bolder kids (and the odd Peace Corps Volunteer) occasionally hopped aboard:

We walked through all the biggest streets of SouqTown, attracting attention and commentary, as well as picking up a few extra litter collectors. :)

When we reached the middle school, it was already an hour or two past lunchtime, so we called a break and everyone dispersed to their homes.

But they reassembled at the Youth Center that afternoon, for Part 3 of Tree Day...

3/21/10 Tree Planting!

For the second year in a row, I helped plant hundreds of trees on the Spring Equinox. :) I think this annual tradition should continue after my return to the US. Who's in?

Again, the International Day of Trees isn't officially related to the Arbor Day Foundation, but it certainly has the Arbor Day spirit. :)

To celebrate it, the SouqTown English Club partnered with the Water and Forestry Department and a few other NGOs and GOs to hold a day-long environmental day. The centerpiece was the planting of several hundred trees. :)

To draw attention and provide a base of operations, they erected a tent on a hillside east of SouqTown.

The banner on the left reads, "Trees = Oxygen = Life". (And I was way more excited than I probably should have been that I managed to (1) sound out the words, Sesame-Street-style, and (2) understand what those sounded-out words actually mean. My Arabic is mostly non-existent, so when it actually works for me, I get ridiculously happy.)

Soon, our fearless leaders appeared:

The man on the left is one of the leaders of the SouqTown English Club. The man on the right is the director of our park, aka my counterpart. Together, they organized the activities of The International Day of Trees.

...which started, naturally enough, with saplings:

These tiny, plastic-wrapped micro-trees will grow (inshallah!) into a towering pine forest. Using only water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide.

Yeah, trees definitely deserve to have their own day. :D

So after some paperwork and other organizational things, we got down to the business of the day:

See that snazzy neon vest? All 11 PCVs, plus most of the Water and Forestry staffers, and several of the more senior members of the SouqTown English Club, were given these dayglow vests to wear. Here, two other PCVs are sporting theirs:

The joy and pride that tree-planting always brings...there's nothing quite like it. :)

So after a few hours of tree-planting (and tree-encircling with rocks, since the tiny saplings are far too easy to step on if they're not marked in obvious ways), we washed up at the water tanker and headed off to the next activity of the day:

This vital beastie holds thousands of liters of water, which were used to water the newly planted saplings. The nearest public water source is half a kilometer away, so if we'd needed to carry buckets of water back and forth, the tiny trees might have been doomed. Thanks to the foresight of the Water and Forestry Department, though, this need, too, was met.

So, our grand total? 400 forestry trees planted on the hillsides east of town. This coming weekend, several hundred more will be planted near the schools (inshallah).

Happy Tree Day!

3/20/10 National Park Presentation

On Saturday, March 20th, on the eve of the International Day of Trees, SouqTown hosted a workshop for community leaders from 100km around (as well as anyone else who wanted to show up), to draw attention to our little-known and under-served National Park. The local youth center hosted the workshop - they have the best auditorium in town - so an unusually large percentage of the attendees were young people.

The workshop was well-attended; according to my headcount, we had 45 boys and young men, 42 girls and young women, 39 men, and four women, for a total of 130 folks.

The third presentation came from the director of our national park, aka my counterpart. He spoke about the history of our park, its role in environmental and ecosystem preservation, the endangered and threatened species that live in the park, etc.

Here he is, next to a map of our park:

The park director was one of two speakers who had prepared a PowerPoint presentation. Here's a slide of his that caught my eye:

It shows the relative prevalence of various species of tree, as well as the total forested ground-cover, by region. The national average is 12.6%, it says (though that seems high to me), unevenly distributed across the country.

After the various presentations, the floor was opened for questions and comments from the audience. I was struck by the openness of the forum. Whereas a comparable American workshop might leave a few minutes for questions and comments (with an emphasis on questions, so that the bulk of the remarks come from the invited speaker(s)), this workshop - and others I've attended - allow anyone to speak for as long as they wish. The invited presenters spoke for about an hour and a half, but the audience comments lasted almost 3 hours.

Here, a professor visiting from "Springfield" is posing pointed questions about the lack of public trash cans in SouqTown and the practice of licensed guides encouraging poaching within the National Park boundaries. (I know this because he was the only person, in the five hours of talking, who spoke in a language I know - French. Everyone else spoke in Arabic. Though 90% of the people in the room are Amazigh, no one spoke Tam. I could rant about the cultural and linguistic causes and implications of this phenomenon, but for now I'll simply leave it at ::sigh::) The man next to him spoke about an hour later. By the time I left, about 8:45, the audience had whittled down to 25 die-hards, virtually all of whom were simply waiting to speak.

Quick note about GAD (Gender And Development): The planners scheduled the workshop for 5pm (ie after business hours, because Saturday is a work day for teachers and many others). It started an hour late, as nearly everything does, so twilight was already descending as the first speakers began their remarks. By 7pm, when the four scheduled speakers had concluded their remarks, only 6.5 females were left in the room out of the original 46 - one adult woman, 5 high school juniors and seniors, and one little girl who was there with her daddy and big brother. (She's the 0.5, and you can see her in the picture above. Cute kid!) The other girls and women had left in drips and clumps over the past hour (10 left in a group, then 2 a few minutes later, then 3 a few minutes after that...), as none wanted to be out after dark. By the time I left, only one young woman (plus the little girl) remained. I mentally grumbled against the poor planning - all by men, of course - that had failed to plan for the cultural requirement that women and girls not be out after dark. I also began planning a Take Back The Night march.

In all, the presentations met their goals of increasing the profile of SouqTown and its National Park, educating locals about the role and history of the park, and encouraging people to think environmentally. Plus, the cookies were *delicious*. :)

3/18/10 Atelier de Sculpteur

Note: Revised slightly on 3/23 to correct a few details I'd misunderstood.

Over the river and through the woods from my village - OK, literally, along a river valley and through half a dozen mountain passes from me - is the small village of Agouti. Their nearest biggish town is Ait Bougamez, known to ecotourists as the jumping-off point for Jbel M'Goun, the second tallest peak in Morocco.

Their community faced challenges similar to mine: viciously cold winters, shortage of wood, protected (National Park) land filled with easy-to-poach wood low incomes that made buying wood impossible or nearly so... The local Water and Forestry Department (WFD) representatives were getting increasingly frustrated by the locals' habit of sneaking into the protected areas and poaching (chopping and stealing) the protected trees. On the other side, the mostly-illiterate villagers couldn't understand why they were suddenly being fined and punished for gathering fuelwood to survive the winter, as they've done for thousands of years.

Enter the Atelier de Sculpteur. The "Sculptor's Studio" or "Carver's Workshop" (both translations are equally valid, in Moroccan French) was formed by men who carved tools - spoons, bowls, forks, cups - as they and their fathers and forefathers had done for countless generations. When their road was paved a handful of years ago, bringing in tourists and hikers, they found a new market for their craft.

Recently, some of the Atelier de Sculpteur artisans, with help from a Peace Corps Volunteer, brokered a fairly ingenious solution to their wood-poaching problem. In exchange for official permission to pick up fallen deadwood from these protected and endangered trees, the craftsmen promised to plant more trees and protect the living specimens in their forest from wood poaching by their neighbors. They can carve the chunks of deadwood into gorgeous woodcrafts that they sell to ecotourists and, increasingly, to visitors to their beautifully designed website (which you can check out here, or read about the creation of here - second story down).

Gorgeous!

In 2006, some of the members of the Atelier de Sculpteur formed an NGO named Association Ighrem, to help solve some of the challenges that rapid development and exponentially growing ecotourism had brought to the village. (Ighrem is the Tamazight word for the ancient Amazigh fortresses whose ruins perch above many of our mountain villages.)

Association Ighrem made a further pledge: for every woodcraft purchased from the Atelier de Sculpteur, it would plant a tree of whatever species* the item had been carved from. Buy a boxwood spoon and they'll plant a boxwood tree. Buy a walnut bowl and a walnut tree will soon blossom in the protected forests.

* Unfortunately, this hasn't worked out yet, for logistical reasons. They're hoping to start it next year, but this year, they're planting apple trees - one of the best cash crops in mountainous areas like ours. And just to make the contribution even more powerful, they donated the trees to the poorer families in the village (a disabled man, and a widowed woman with 5 children in school) to help with their financial circumstances. The carvers were so happy with this idea that they may ultimately find a balance between these two solutions in coming years. As of January 29th, Association Ighrem had expected to plant 26 trees in March (March being the optimal planting season for most trees). Thanks to the success of their website and Facebook page, though, they made dozens more sales in the past month and a half, resulting in a planting of 80 trees yesterday, March 17th.

Moreover, 33% of the profits from every sale flow directly into the Association Ighrem coffers, for use in various development projects. They recently held an eye clinic, where 400 villagers received free vision screenings and eye care; they're planting vetiver, a non-invasive erosion-fighting grass that purifies groundwater and strengthens hillsides; they partnered with a student group to provide wheelchairs to residents of Agouti as well as to the Ait Bougamez health clinic; they organized and hosted a grant-writing workshop for their community; the list goes on and on.

But there's only so much deadwood - what happens when they run out?

While wood is a highly renewable resource - especially if new trees are being planted regularly! - the artisans currently craft their products from the deadwood that has accumulated over decades and centuries, and yes, they're using it up faster than the remaining trees are dying. Knowing this, they've deliberately set high pricepoints on their products. In other words, they know they can't do this forever, so they're going to maximize the returns it brings their community. (For reference: I find the prices similar to those of comparable handcrafted items you might find in Ten Thousand Villages, and cheaper than similar items at The Bombay Company, but that does make them expensive by Moroccan standards, with our delightfully low cost of living.) With a degree of foresight rare in third-world villages, Agouti's craftsmen are investing their current windfall into building infrastructure supports and meeting vital community needs.

2/24/10 Adventures with Walnuts

My CBT village is down in the plains, so has a much wider variety of fruit-bearing trees than can survive in Berberville, my mountain aerie. While visiting, we of course had to visit the igran – the fields – and my little brother and sister took me to visit “our” fields. The littlest brother, who I remembered mostly as trailing after his bigger siblings with a finger in his mouth, is now a fearless adventurer, scrambling over rocks and up trees like a goat. (Yes, like a goat. Moroccan goats climb trees.)

I remembered the path – it’s really not hard, just walk towards the giant cliff, then scramble down a goat-path that drops a couple hundred feet in a ridiculously short distance, and voila! you’re in the river-irrigated fields. The valley here is very narrow, unlike the broader, possibly glacially-carved valley of Berberville, so no one wastes valley floor space with housing. Everyone lives on top of the cliffs, and leaves all the land near the river for crops. (In Berberville, the flatlands by the river are irrigated and farmed, but the houses and town buildings are much closer to the fields, on the shallowly sloping valley walls. )

As we descended the steep path, we ran into the host father of my PCV buddy “Mbarka”. He looked delighted to see me again, and eagerly asked if his long-lost daughter was around. When I said that no, she’d had too much work elsewhere, his face fell.

We didn’t have to walk out to the river – it had risen to meet us. It stood higher than I’d ever seen it two years ago, and my little sister showed me the mud everywhere, and explained that just three days before, it had covered nearly all of the fields. (Fortunately, the ground between fields is mounded high, as an irrigation aid, so we had dry ground to walk on.) We stopped at a random patch of grass so my baby bro could … throw rocks at a tree?

It took me a while – much longer than it reasonably should have – to realize that he was trying to knock down The Last Duj (Walnut) from the tree. We all flung rocks at it, but my aim was no better than usual, and my little sibs weren’t having much luck, either. The little lone sphere, dangling there on the tip of a branch, reminded me of the lone bulb on Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Eventually, we gave up on knocking it out of the tree, and my little bro scrambled halfway up the tree to jab at it with a 3-meter bamboo rod. (Bamboo! I miss seeing it around all the time. It grows there in my CBT village, but not up in Berberville.)

He succeeded in knocking it loose…and then came the Quest For The Walnut.

My little bro finally found it:

And then the cracking, between a rock and the wall of the (dramatically improved!) irrigation canals. By that time, the sun was loooow in the sky, so we clambered back up the cliff face and walked home...where a whole plateful of walnuts, harvested a week or two ago, awaited me!

One last picture from our lovely evening walk:

2/25/10 On Toast

Sorry for the long silence - I spent a couple weeks traveling the country. Hopefully, I'll post pictures and stories from that trip in the next few hours/days/weeks.

First, though, a reflection... I've been wandering through old photos, now that my internet connection (though still slow) is dependable enough to post pix to Facebook. I came across a few images that I'd promised to post here, and promptly forgot all about.

Like this one:

When I took the picture, last May, it was to celebrate the extraordinary experience of eating a western-style meal with all the western-style amenities. Lest my American readers are blind to them, lemme tick 'em off for you:

1. My own napkin - folded into a triangle, no less!
2. My own knife, fork, and spoon
3. My own water glass
4. A *tall* water glass
5. A giant glass of orange juice
6. Toasted white bread
7. Sunny-side-up eggs

What makes these items so extraordinary? Lemme 'splain. No, is too complex. Lemme sum up:

My friends and neighbors here in bled Morocco simply don't share Americans' devotion to material culture. Ever since the 1730s, Europeans and Americans have displayed wealth through tableware. Hence the "silver" in silverware, and the fancy dishes for company, etc.

That trend passed Morocco right straight by.

Food here is served communally. There's one dish, in the middle of the table. It's often a tajine, otherwise usually a couscous platter. Everyone eats out of it. If it's couscous, you either roll the semolina into a ball in your hand and pop it into your mouth or you can eat it with a spoon. Tajine is eaten with torn-off chunks of bread that you use to grasp the meat or vegetable, tear/squish off a bite-sized bit, and pop into your mouth.

My host family owns forks, but they only bring them out when my mountain-guide host father is entertaining tourists. Spoons are used for couscous. Otherwise, we simply don't use tableware or flatware. And as for glasses? There's one big plastic cup, capacity about half a liter (about a pine), that sits next to the one big bottle of water. If you want water, you ask whoever's closest to the cup and bottle to pour you some. Then they pass the cup to you, you drink, and you either set it down near you or else pass it back.

One serving platter.

One cup, which is usually off to the side somewhere.

This is how I'm accustomed to seeing tables.

So when I first visited the restaurant known among PCVs as Toast, and ordered Toast (that's why we call it that), I was so bedazzled that I took a picture.

A couple of them, actually. Here's another one.

She has her own tray, identical to mine. Except for the hot beverage. I think she got coffee, where I got hot chocolate. Oh, and her tray has a bottle of olive oil. We each get our own salt and pepper shakers, but there's never more than 2 bottles of olive oil per table.

But she has her own *two* giant glasses of chilled beverages. Giant because here, the only glasses I routinely see are tiny tea glasses. They're about the same volume as shot glasses, but shaped slightly differently.

But the centerpiece of the meal - eggs on toast - is identical. Toast. Toast. Such a routine thing that it's boring, right? I can't even remember the last time I made myself toast, even before Peace Corps. (Of course, I've never owned a toaster, so that's probably a factor...) But after a year of (delicious! chewy and home-made) round flat-loaf bread, simple toasted white bread seems nearly miraculous. Fried eggs - yeah, those I can make for myself. And routinely do, although I've never seen a Moroccan eat eggs any way but scrambled or hard-boiled.

So I went to "Toast" - actually an Italian Pizzaria, but PCVs mostly just go there for breakfast - and ordered Toast, and got my own tray-full of Americana.

...And now, another year later, I'm marveling again. Not at the western amenities, but at how differently I now feel about them.

In the four days I just spent in Rabat, I didn't go to "Toast" once. (Peace Corps put us up in a zween hotel that offered free continental breakfast, but still.) And the western toilets, that a year ago I rhapsodized over? Yeah, Rabat is full of them...but I don't care.

This is the step beyond wllf-ing, beyond becoming accustomed to something. Without really noticing, I've reached a point of placid indifference. I truly don't care whether I use a squat toilet or a western one. It makes no difference whether I eat with bread or with a fork. I share the communal drinking cup, even when I'm just eating with PCVs and we could all get separate glasses if we wanted.

This is my life. And I'm living it - not enduring it, not tolerating it, not accepting it, but just living it - one day at a time.

:)

2/08/10 On Marrakesh

Here's a photo of Marrakesh that I snapped last spring.

Note the contrast between the palm trees and the snowy mountains. (I actually shot pictures of cacti in front of the snowy mountains, but they were out the window of a moving bus, so came out hopelessly blurred.)

But note, too, the grassy foreground, behind the brick and iron barricade.

This is one of Marrakesh's fancier hotels. (Not this one, but sadly, Marrakesh has several.) Where rich tourists spend several thousand dirhams per night (ie, several hundred Euros) to be pampered and coddled and to feel at home.

But you're not at home, silly tourists. You're in Morocco. A desert country, where the vast majority of the precipitation falls as snow in the Atlas mountains or else in disastrous, flash-flood inducing fall downpours. Morocco needs all the water it gets. In order to maintain these lovely grassy fields, sprinklers run for hours each morning. Thousands upon thousands of gallons of water are wasted every day, so tourists can forget that they're visiting a desert land, and imagine that they're sipping their morning coffee in their own backyards.

This waste is simply one of the dozens of reasons I don't like going to Marrakesh - the overcharging, sexual harassment, touristy schtick, and dishonest cab drivers are on the list, too - but it's one of the most readily visible.

It's beautiful, no question.

But at what cost?

2/09/10 On Essaouira

One of my favorite Moroccan cities - a favorite with lots of PCVs - is Essaouira.

Essa (in the universal Peace Corps shorthand) sits just two hours away from the overpriced, overtouristed, and usually overheated city of Marrakesh, so therefore often serves as an escape valve for unhappy visitors to that overhyped city.

Essa doesn't seem to offer much, at first glance. It's just a quiet beachfront city.

But that's the point.

Essaouira provides a calm, quiet, relaxing place to hang out, shop for souvenirs, walk on the beach, and generally just chill. The souvenir shopping is some of the best in Morocco, with some of the least aggressive shopkeepers I've found. (In fairness, though, they're still more aggressive than most Americans will be used to, but if you grade on the Moroccan curve, they're positively laid-back.) You can stroll through the shops, wander in and out of cafes, meander along the beach... Essa feels amazingly peaceful, especially in contrast to the energy of most of Morocco's big cities.

(Caveat: I visited in the off-season. Essa may turn into a touristy mess in the summers...I wouldn't know. But it was fabulous in March.)

Here's a typical Essa day:

Wake up in the apartment you've rented for the weekend. Though Essa has hotels, most PCVs prefer to rent apartments in the medina; they're available by the day, and have kitchens and living rooms and other amenities.

Go out to a cafe for breakfast and a pastry:

This is a custard-filled, fruit-topped, puff-pastry tart. And it cost 4 dirhams. In France, you can get the same thing for 4 Euros - ten times the price. Did I mention that Essa is cheap?

After you've munched and people-watched in the cafe, wander down to the shops. Nearly everything handcrafted in Morocco is available here: leather goods (especially bags, but also shoes and coats), jewelry (notably silver, which southern Morocco is famous for, but also handcarved wooden bracelets), woodcrafts of every variety (tables, chess sets, puzzle boxes, desk organizers, kitchen utensils, jewelry, etc), and most famously scarves.

Here's my friend modeling an Essaouira scarf I'd purchased moments before. The vibrant colors (this is actually a muted one, since that's my taste) and high-quality fabrics are typical of Essa scarves.

Isn't my friend beautiful? And so's the scarf, of course. :)

Once you've satisfied your inner shopaholic, it's time to hit the beach.

Here, my buddies and I are playing beach frisbee underneath a full moon. (The frisbee is barely visible, but it's there - look for the red streak that Rachid is reaching for.)

Wait a little longer, and you get to see something amazing:

It's strange for Americans to think about, but yes, here in Morocco, you get to watch the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. (Think about it for a sec.)

Note the ruins silhouetted on the right - those are remnants of Essa's defensive fortress.

And after a long day of shopping, beachcombing, and eating, it's time for some more quality chillaxing with the buds:

Essaouira doesn't get much mention in the guidebooks, other than in reference to their annual music festival in June, but if you're looking for a beautiful, relaxing, low-key but high-quality time, it's absolutely worth a visit.