4/14/10 Four A.M.

Last night, I checked in with the driver of the crack-o-dawn transit. He said he'd be leaving at "Arrba nishan." 4'o'clock, straight up. O-dark-hundred.

So I set my alarm for 3:30, packed, and said goodnight to my visiting buddy. I left her playing on the internet (not everyone is as lucky as I do, having internet at home) and crashed out. Except that I couldn't sleep. Till almost 2. At 3:30, the alarm went off faithfully. I pulled myself together, assembled my bags (one to bring to Rabat, one with zucchini bread, and two of muraling supplies, for next week's Earth Day fun with Zakaria and Nacima), and trudged out to the road. I got out at about 10 till 4, and saw nothing. No one.

Did the transit leave early? It sometimes does...but the driver knew I wanted to go, and I even told him where I live, so I know he wouldn't have left without honking outside my door.

5 cold minutes go by.

I look up the road. No sign of the transit. No one waiting for the transit.

10 cold minutes.

I wonder if anyone else will drive past that I can hitch a ride with. Seems unlikely.

I hear the wake-up call. It precedes the predawn call-to-prayer by about 15 minutes, giving people time to wake up and clean up before their morning prayers. The caller says things like, "Prayer is better than sleep," and "You will be rewarded for your devotion!"

It occurs to me that the morning transit never leaves before the prayer call. Folks pray, *then* travel.

I stop worrying that I've missed it, and simply wait for it to show.

I hear the morning call to prayer. "Alllllaaaaaaahu akbar! Alllllaaaaaaahu akbar! La illa...." the voice rings out over the dark town.

I see shadows shifting on a nearby building. Where's the light coming from? Both moon and stars are too dim on this overcast morning... I get up, look around, and can't find the source of the light. I sit back down. A moment later, headlights approach over a hill. The transit is here! Alhumdulillah!

I stow my bags on top (with a lot of help from the jumper) and climb on board. 4:23am, my phone claims. So much for 'Arrba nishan', I grump to myself, then settle down to try to sleep. (Unsuccessfully. I can never sleep when sitting up.)

We finally roll at 4:45, rolling eastward towards the approaching sunrise...

Just another morning in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

1/16 Teatalk

So I'd finished bathing in Berberville's public hammam. I came out into the changing area and began toweling off.

"Oh, it's a tarumit..."

"Did you see the tarumit..."

"Have you talked to the tarumit..."

The voices swirled around me. I grinned to myself, too shy to strike up a conversation with one of these curious ladies while still en deshabille.

Until one of them said, "...yes, she understands Tamazight." I looked over and grinned at a friend I hadn't seen in a while - who I hadn't noticed yet because I was focusing only on putting on my many layers of clothes.

Catching my eye, her neighbor asked, "Really? You speak Tam?" and I answered, smiling, "Yes, I do."

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

It surprised me to hear that anyone in town didn't know about me. "About two years," I answered.

"Where are you from? France?"

"No, America." That brought on a new wave of chatter. Ooh, America...

"Where do you live? Rabat? Marrakesh?"

If I lived in a major city, what are the odds I'd speak her dialect? I asked myself wryly. Of course, she's never traveled any more than 200km from her home in her entire life - may well have never even left the village. How would she know how rapidly her unwritten language changes with geography? Or how few cityfolk speak it at all? Aloud, I answered, "No, I live here." I mentioned the name of my landlord and nearest neighbors.

"Do you live alone?" was the immediate follow-up.

"Yes."

"So where's your husband? Back in America?"

With a sideways smile, I replied, "I don't have a husband."

"You're not married?!?!" was the incredulous reply.

"Nope. Not yet. Maybe someday, if God wills," I finished my stock reply.

I finished putting on my clothes and accepted one of the proffered tea invitations, from an older woman who'd been resting on one of the benches in the changing room since I'd walked out of the hammam.

On the way to her house, the interrogation continued. "So you really don't have a husband?"

Do you think the answer will be different because we're in private? Why yes, I do, but I'm keeping him a secret because life is so much easier if people think I'm unprotected and alone. Yeah. "Really. I don't have a husband."

"But you have a boyfriend, right?"

Since the word can also mean friend-who-happens-to-be-a-boy, I want to answer yes, I have lots...but that'll open a whole icky can of worms, so I let it go. "No, no boyfriend."

"You're alone??"

"Yup, I'm alone." The same word is used for alone and lonely, and I've never figured out how to distinguish the two concepts - I'm single but not lonely. I live alone but don't feel isolated. It works easily enough in English, but in Tamazight? The concepts are too closely intertwined. To be alone is to be lonely. These folks, for whom family is the central aspect of identity, home life, life planning, and life in general, have no way of conceiving solitude as anything other than sad isolation.

We get to her house. I step in, scrape the mud off my boots, set down my bucket and bag full of hammam things (soap, loofah, kis scrubby brush, shampoo, etc, in the bucket, and all the layers of clothes I'd taken off, before scrubbing, in the bag). She shows me into the main room. On the wall she's hung pictures. She immediately explains them to me. "This one is my oldest boy. He's living in Grenada. This is my next boy - he lives in Marrakesh. This one died. My youngest is at school in Marrakesh, living with his brother and his brother's wife." I don't see a picture of her husband. Before I can ask, she volunteers, "He died a long time ago. We lived in Marrakesh when we were married, but after he died, I came back to Berberville."

I murmur the condolence phrase, and then ask, "So this is *your* village?" I'm just trying to keep up.

"Yes, this is where I grew up," she clarifies. She looks back at the photographs. "Aren't my boys handsome?"

"Oh, yes, of course, they're very handsome," I quickly say, feeling, as I so often do, that I'm picking my way through a social minefield. If I'd volunteered the statement, unprompted, it might made me look flirtatious and therefore inappropriate. But the fact that she asked for it makes me feel like I was rude in not complimenting her children immediately.

"And my oldest is in Grenada," she repeats. I nod. "He's a good boy," she says, touching his photo briefly. "Is Grenada nice?"

I've never been there, but I say, "Yes, it's very nice."

"You should marry him," she concludes, triumphantly.

My smile freezes. I should have seen this coming.

I so should have seen this coming.

Before I can demur, she jumps back in with, "Well, you want to get married, right?"

Aha - here's my out. "No, actually, I don't. Men suck." [That's the most idiomatic translation of the phrase I used - Ixxan iryzan. It could also be translated as "Men are bad", "Men are ugly", "Men are useless"...it's kind of an all-purpose-insult word, which is what makes it so handy in cases like this, where I don't want to be all that specific.]

She bursts out laughing. "Men suck?"

I nod and say it again. "Yeah, I don't want a man," I continue. "I like my life as it is. And I don't need a man." This has her in gales of laughter. I'm laughing, too, in acknowledgement of how ludicrous such a sentiment must sound.

She stokes the fire, brings out bread and oil and tea, and we continue chatting.

As I always do, I murmur, "Bismillah," before eating anything. It translates as "In the name of God," and it's the phrase that devout Muslims always use before beginning any endeavor, from eating to taking a trip to speaking in public. It implies that whatever action you undertake is done for God, and under the protection of God. I have no theological objections to any of that, so I say it often - more often than many of my not-terribly-devout friends and neighbors.

She hears me, and perks up. "Are you Muslim?" she asks excitedly.

"No," I explain, "I'm Christian." She doesn't understand the word I use - messaHiyan. It's from Classical Arabic, and therefore unknown to most illiterate folks, like this dear little old lady. Women didn't get educated around here until this generation, so women over the age of 30 or so are invariably illiterate; even between the ages of 15 and 30, it's hit and miss.

I try a Berber-ized version of the word: "I'm tamessaHiyanit." I'm a female who's a Christian.

Still getting blank stares.

I pull out the cross I wear around my neck. Today, like usual, it's buried under lots of layers of clothing. She sees it, but has no idea what it means. "I follow Jesus," I try. She recognizes the name of one of Islam's chief prophets, and nods. She probably thinks that Christianity is some Jesus-intensive sect of Islam, but that's fine. I'm just trying to answer her question, not start a theological discussion.

She moves onto more concrete territory. "Do you pray?"

"Yes, I pray."

She beams. Anybody who prays is clearly a good person, regardless of this messaHiyan nonsense. I'm definitely good for her son.

"Do you fast?"

"Yes, I fast during Ramadan, here in Morocco."

She opts not to comment on my slight qualification. (I do fast in Morocco; I didn't fast when I was in the US for part of Ramadan. I'm a terrible liar, so I tell the truth as often as possible. Or maybe I'm a terrible liar because I get so little practice at it - I try to tell the truth, even if I have to "tell it slant", as Emily Dickinson would say.)

Around that time, some other women come in - her sisters, sisters-in-law, and neices, as she later explains - and we go over all of this again. These women, too, find it hiLARious that I don't want to get married immediately. And they love the "men suck" line, and the "I don't want a man/she doesn't want a man" line. They repeat it, I repeat it, they repeat it...and it's always good for a hearty laugh.

One of the sisters-in-law begins telling me about her husband. Her ex-husband, she clarifies. He abandoned her with young children. He's a bad man, she says clearly. All men are bad, she adds.

I've given up on defending men, as I usually do, because for the purposes of this conversation, and avoiding my hostess's marital schemes, I'm sticking to my happy singleton story. "Yes!" I say, guesturing to her emphatically, "This is why I don't want a man."

She blinks at me, clearly at a loss. She'd been arguing with me earlier, and now realizes that she has supported my side of the argument, and she has no idea how to get out of the corner she painted herself into. She's happy to bash men, but still thinks that all women should marry. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, but doesn't say anything.

Fortunately, she's saved by the bell. (Well, by a knock at the door - nobody but the most pretentious have actual doorbells, in this community.)

More women come in; more of the conversation is rehashed; more tea is drunk; more laughter is shared.

Eventually, I say goodbye, promising to return for more tea and bread. And laughter. :)

12/12 Religious Harassment

A friend recently asked (offline) if anyone ever attempts to convert me.

Here's my response:

I get urged to convert to Islam fairly frequently. My friends don't pressure me, though some of my Peace Corps buddies get ongoing pressure from their friends, but strangers often do. It's most commonly taxi drivers, interestingly - possibly because they know I'm trapped in their car, giving them a finite window with which to convert me?

I usually explain that I am Christian, and that's generally enough to stop the efforts. Mohammed required his followers to respect the fellow "People of The Book," the Jews and Christians. (Though the current situation in Israel/Palestine and the centuries of Crusading show that it hasn't always worked out so well.) Some keep going at that point. I explain that I follow the religion of my parents; given the respect-for-elders built into the culture here, that is sometimes enough. (Although once, that got the response, "Well then your parents are going to hell, too." I cut off the dialog at that point.)

I've tried saying, "There are many paths to God," but that usually blows up in my face - I've had people shout, "NO! There is only ONE PATH to Allah!" - so I don't use that one anymore. I'm perfectly willing to discuss religion, but if it gets angry or mean-spirited, I simply end the conversation, whether by walking away, turning away, or pretending not to understand anymore. (After the grand taxi driver told me my parents going to hell, I turned to face the window. The men crowded next to me waited a minute to see what my response would be, then turned to each other and said, "Oh, she doesn't understand Tamazight." I turned back to the man closest to me and said icily, "I understood every word. I'm done with this conversation.")

Technically, it's illegal to prosletyze in Morocco - in any direction - but that's only enforced against Christian missionaries. Also, technically, the Qur'an forbids compelling or coercing any conversion...but that doesn't seem to stop people. I can recite the sura that says, "There is no compulsion in Islam," in Classical Arabic, but that only works on the most educated people, who aren't the ones having this conversation with me. While scholars know that a compelled conversion is meaningless, the common person knows only that converting a nonbeliever wins them a guaranteed ride to heaven.

Sidenote: Even more meaningless is the inadvertent conversion. In order to become a Muslim, you have to recite, three times, in Classical Arabic, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his Prophet." Some uneducated folks believe that if they can simply trick me into saying this sentence three times, they get their ticket to heaven. I've had several people, usually children or teenagers, say, "Hey, repeat this:" expecting me not to know what it means. The first time it happened, I asked them what it meant. "It doesn't matter, just say it," I was told. This strikes me as the moral equivalent of offering someone a Communion wafer as snack food, and then telling them that they're Catholic now.

In Peace Corps, we talk about "religious harassment", in the same conversation with sexual harassment and political harassment ("Was Bush a good president? Do you think it's good to kill Iraqis? Do you support Israel?") Male PCVs tend to get more religious harassment than female PCVs, but we all get it, to varying degrees.

I think it's important to clarify that not all religious conversation is religious harassment. I like talking about religion, as long as it's in a mutually respectful way. Anyone who has had a Jehovah's Witness show up on their doorstep or got ambushed by a Hari Krishna at an airport has had an abrupt and unexpected conversation about religion. Some people hate it; others accept it as part of the human condition. "Harassment" is generally defined as unwelcome attention that makes the recipient uncomfortable. Note that it depends on the attitude of the recipient, not that of the instigator. In my opinion, when the conversation crosses the line to criticizing or belittling me, my faith, or my family, that's when it changes from talk to assault.

11/16/09 Redball Serendipity

A cheezy movie had the tagline, "When destiny has a sense of humor, it's called Serendipity."

That's actually a terrible definition of a great word.

Serendipity is when unexpectedly delightful things happen. When challenges suddenly work themselves out. When you have to laugh and shake your head and say, "Well...um...great!"

Some may attribute serendipitous moments to destiny. Others to God. Others to their own karma. But if it happened due to your own deliberate efforts to make it happen, it doesn't count as serendipity, so regardless of your belief system, it's a thing to be thankful for.

Today, I had a moment of serendipity.

The day didn't start out fabulously. I slept on a friend's floor (not uncommon, here in the Peace Corps) and peeled myself out of my chubby sleeping bag at 4:30am. Several of us were trying to catch an early-morning transit. We expected it to pass at 5:30am, but knew that it didn't adhere to a strict schedule, so we wanted to be on the side of the road at 5am.

We pretty much made it - 5:08am, according to my new phone - and spent the next hour stamping our feet, huddling for warmth, and watching shooting stars. (NB: the Leonids have begun, and are already a *great* show, and they haven't even peaked yet! Tonight should be great, and tomorrow night should be breathtaking, with more great nights throughout the week!)

After 6, our host called the transit driver...who informed him that the transit had rolled at 3am, not 5am.

We grumbled and mumbled and trooped back indoors, some to sleep, others to get coffee and/or breakfast, still others to try to work out another solution.

Nine hours later, we were back on the side of the road. The transit had been spotted heading back, having returned its round-trip into town, and our host had gotten the driver to agree to take another trip, to bring us all down the mountain. The transit had rolled up...but what goes up doesn't necessarily come down *quickly*, so we were, again, waiting. For something like an hour.

As we waited, I tried to decide my route. After getting out of my friend's site, I could either head to SouqTown or go straight up to Berberville. I really, really, really wanted to get home...but I'd promised my host mom that I'd teach her how to make pizza, which requires redball cheese, which is only available in SouqTown.

If we'd gotten off the mountain at 6am, I'd've gone into SouqTown, bought some redball, Skyped anybody awake, run various other errands, and then ridden back up the mountain on the noon or 2:30 transit. But to head into SouqTown *now* would mean having to spend the night there. The earliest I'd be home would be around noon tomorrow.

So I had a dilemma. Not a massive give-into-the-terrorist-demands-or-watch-innocent-people-die kind of dilemma, but still, a tough choice: go straight home and apologize to Ama for delaying our pizza party by another week OR spend yet another night out of site and away from my friends/neighbors/kitties/family.

I owe Ama some quality time, plus my kitties don't have enough food to last till tomorrow, so both options were unpleasant.

And then came the serendipity.

Redball serendipity.

I had found a mediocre solution to my dilemma: go home, but ask one of the friends heading into SouqTown to pick up some redball cheese and send it up on the morning transit. I don't like asking friends for favors, nor do I like exposing myself to public commentary (and "she sent cheese up the mountain on a transit" is definitely interesting to somebody), so I wasn't thrilled with the choice, but it seemed like the best one I had.

And then.

When I asked my buddy for the favor, another friend - adopted name "Mina" - overheard.

Mina clarified, "You want 20dh worth of redball cheese?"

"Yeah," I confirmed.

"I have some in my bag," she announced, as though this were a perfectly ordinary thing. As though cheese is usually tucked in shoulder bags, along with chapstick and a novel for the transit. "Want to buy it off me?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed.

"I picked it up in Marjane," she explained, pulling out the wedge of plastic-sealed gouda. "It was on sale - that's more than the usual 20dh worth."

I nodded my agreement, still grinning. "That's 30dh, maybe even 40dh worth of redball. Sweet!"

I even had exact change in my pocket.

I handed her the 20-dirham note. She handed me the wedge of cheese, which I promptly slid into my own bag, next to the chapstick and the novel.

And just like that, everything was perfect. I'm equipped for some pizza fabulousness with Ama, I'm headed home tonight, and Mina - who had gotten the cheese for the previous weekend, and had no pressing need for it now - is 20 dirhams richer.

Oh, and the transit showed up only a few minutes later.

Luck? Destiny? Karma? Divine Love meeting *every* need? I have my answer; you're welcome to yours. :D

12/24 Christmas Eve

Many PCVs go back to America for the holidays; others go to London or Amsterdam or other European cities. But some set of us - maybe half, I'd guess? - stay in Morocco. We don't get it as a holiday. We get Moroccan holidays, but not American ones.* So I used my vacation time to gather with Christians for Christmas. :)

I've planned for months to go to the nearby Monastery for Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day. As I told people about this, lots expressed interest in joining in. Trying to confirm plans with a group of PCVs is a lot like herding cats; many of us don't have dependable cell phone coverage, let alone internet access, so we're a hard gang to be in communication with.

But I did what I could, and ended up making reservations for the monastery's guesthouse for Christmas Eve dinner, guest rooms, and Christmas Day lunch. I had to guess as to the number who would be coming, but it turned out not to matter; only two one-person rooms were available, so the rest of us would be on the floor anyway. The kind people on the phone spoke Spanish and a bit of French, where I speak English and a bit of French; our languages didn't overlap quite enough to work everything out, but when we showed up - including more than had told me they were coming - they went ahead and opened up a bunkhouse for visiting pilgrims. The guesthouse was mostly filled by a French family. They had planned their entire vacation around being at the monastery for midnight mass. Over dinner, the mom and I discussed the difficulties of transportation in and around Morocco, swapping stories.

The monks had set two tables for dinner. Knowing that some brothers spoke French and some Spanish - none spoke much English - we PCVs divided ourselves by those language groups. Fortunately, nearly all of us had studied one or the other, at least a little. The dinner was simple but good, and showcased traditional Moroccan food. In the morning, we discovered that the cook was Berber, and in fact grew up not far from Berberville. :)

Dinner was at 6:45, and lasted probably an hour or so. That left us with a few hours to fill before midnight mass, which actually started at 10:45. Most of us went to visit the memorial to the martyred monks (see my post from August) and then to the church itself. I brought my camera, so that I could take pictures well before the service started. I may be an inveterate shutterbug, but I know better than to disturb a mass! The church is lovely, plus it had a buta heater, so several of us ended up staying in there for the whole time until the service.

The mass was conducted in French, but I found an English missal in the back, and, with help from a Catholic friend who explained what it was, was able to find the directions for the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and therefore follow along throughout the service.

The service began with psalms, sung in plainchant as they have been for a over a millenium. The psalm numbers were posted, and psalmistries distributed to us all. This lasted until midnight, when the Midnight Mass actually began. The designated passages were read by monks, nuns from the nearby convent, and members of the visiting French family.

Of the five permanent residents of the monastery, four are actually priests; only one is technically a brother. The eucharist section of the mass was therefore a rather crowded affair, with four men jointly invoking the holy rituals over the wafers and wine. Only two of the PCVs there were (are) Catholic; the rest of us did not take communion, but were still welcomed.

At one point, the littlest boy in the large French family was given the task of carrying the small wooden figure of Christ child in, and placing him in the gorgeous nativity scene arranged under the alter. I hadn't even noticed his absence when I'd looked at it earlier, but it does make sense that Jesus isn't there before Christmas technically begins, at midnight. :)

The service continued until about 1:15. (I don't think any of us had expected it to run a full two and a half hours!) Afterwards, there were cocoa and pastries for us all, in the small dining room. We finally went to bed around 2:30am Christmas morning.

I've been trying not to editorialize, because I was a guest and not a critic, but I do want to say that the service was lovely, and that I'm very grateful I got to attend. :D

As we walked back to the bunkhouse, more than one of us said, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night!"

* On getting Moroccan holidays instead of American ones: There's actually some discussion starting up within Peace Corps Morocco about that; different Peace Corps countries handle holidays in different ways, and some of us think that it would make more sense to get American holidays off. Most of us choose to spend Moroccan holidays with our host families anyway, so we don't really get them as out-of-site vacation

November 1, 2008 Transportation Angel

I’ve met angels of all shapes and sizes during my stay here in Morocco. Some have really appeared at critical junctures to save the day…others were everyday heroes, stepping up to make my life a slightly sunshinier place. I met one of each today.

I was trying to get up to IST, aka in-service training. It’s the big six-month landmark, announcing that we’ve been Peace Corps Volunteers for half a year. There are training sessions, countless hugs from the PCVs who haven’t seen each other in months, and lots of big fun. (And the fact that ours happened to be five months in, instead of six, I suspect was caused by the confluence of Moroccan and American holidays clogging up the calendar for the next two months.)

Anyway, IST was held in a city quite a ways away from Berberville, and I’d gotten off to a later start than I’d hoped. I got to the tranzit station at 10ish, and discovered that the always-irregular transportation in this direction was, well, virtually nonexistent. Well, not exactly; there were four drivers, all happy to head north. But unless I wanted to buy out a taxi – getting a taxi kursa, as it’s known – I needed to wait for five other passengers. So I waited. And I chatted with the four drivers, all of whom were clustered in the same cab, for socialization and warmth. They mostly wanted to talk about the upcoming election. They tried to speak ill of the current administration; since we’re not supposed to engage in political conversation, I just smiled faintly and said, “He’s my President, and that’s all I have to say about that.” Or words to that effect. (Iga raysinu, safi, I believe I said. Tamazight is nothing if not succinct.) But we chatted about McCain and Obama…I learned the word for “election”…we discussed my work in Berberville and with Peace Corps…it was a good conversation. Oh, funny vocab factoids – in Arabic, “mikayn”, which is also how the Republican candidate’s name is pronounced here, means “nothing”, and “baraka” means “blessed”.

But I digress.

Around noon, we finally left Berberville. We got to the first stop on my route at 2:20. The tranzit from there to my next stop leaves every day at 2:00. So that was a problem.

It was also pouring down a heavy, icy, bone-chilling sleety rain…and I’d left my umbrella behind.

Oh, and the tranzit station is about a kilometer hike uphill from the taxi station.

So when I got to the tranzit station, and discovered that I was not only cold and wet – which I knew – but that I’d missed the only tranzit of the afternoon – which I hadn’t known – I was decidedly unhappy.

I talked to the café owner near the tranzit station, and asked him if there were any taxis heading my way (east). (East-bound taxis left from the same place as east-bound tranzits; the taxi station I’d come from only serviced north-south taxis. Why, I don’t know.) He said no, and that with such wretched weather, it was likely that no one would want to be traveling, so taxis were unlikely to show up.

I trudged back down to the north-south taxi stand. My ultimate goal was northeast…maybe I could go north instead of east. Although the next destination up that road was actually well north-west, and not really on my way at all. (Roads in Morocco make no effort to approximate a nationwide grid, like the American highway system does. They just go from city to city, and the towns are scattered pretty randomly.) So I got to the taxi stand, dropped my heavy pack (filled with books that I was returning to the Peace Corps library and/or returning to PCV friends who had loaned them to me), and ordered tea. A man sitting across the café offered to share his tea with me. Ordinarily, I would politely refuse such a request, as a way to sidestep sexual harassment scenarios, but for some reason I smiled, walked over, and joined him.

He asked me where I was going. “To the [Northwest City],” I answered.

“Well, there aren’t any taxis headed that way right now, but if you sit for a bit, something will come along.”

[Note: this conversation was all in Tam, and his accent was different from the one in Berberville, so the translations are approximate at best.]

I thanked him. The teapot arrived, and he poured me a cup. About that time, the driver from my previous taxi walked in. Who knows where he’d been, but he was now ready to wait for his taxi to fill up for its return trip to Berberville. He asked me what I was doing there. He knew I’d been hoping to go to points east, so…?

I explained that there was no way to get east, so I’d resigned myself to going northwest.

“What if nothing comes along to get you to [Northwest City]?”

“I don’t know,” I said morosely.

“What if you can’t get east, either?”

“I don’t know,” I said, even more plaintively than before.

He asked me both questions a few more times, prodding at me like a kid torturing a cornered kitten. “Are you going to go back to Berberville?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. My voice trembled, and I felt tears pushing behind my eyes.

“Are you going to stay here? There aren’t any hotels, you know.” I did know that, which was one of the reasons for the rising panic in my chest. The café owner up by the tranzit station had advised me to wait till tomorrow morning…but where could I safely stay??

“I don’t know!” I burst out. Maybe getting angry would keep the tears at bay.

“So what are you going to do?” he prodded again.

I started to cry.

“Why are you crying?” he continued relentlessly.

“Because I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO!” I shouted through the tears.

He pointed to my tea host. “He’s the man you want,” he said. Immediately, my shields went up. The man I wanted for what?? Could I stay with him? Should I say with him? Was this one of those scams like had happened to my friend Ryan, whose tourist visit to Morocco had ended with him imprisoned in his “host”’s house, robbed of all belongings, his cash, his watch, even the sneakers off his feet? “He’ll get you east,” he said, confidently.

“You’re going east?” I asked my tea host.

“Not exactly, but I can get you going that way,” he said. (Actually, I later figured out that must have been what he meant. At the time, I understood about two words out of what he’d said, and was **really** confused as to what the heck was going on.)

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked him.

“Because you said you were going to [Northwest City],” he answered reasonably.

“Because I couldn’t get east,” I whined through fresh tears.

He said something I understood none of.

“So when are we leaving?” I asked him.

“As soon as you finish your tea,” he answered.

I swallowed the last sip and stood up. I still didn’t understand what was going on, but as far as I could tell, this guy would get me east. I figured he must own a camio (truck) and was planning to transport some merchandise eastwards. That would make my travel hitchhiking, which Peace Corps strictly forbids, but between the cold, the wet, and my general misery, I really didn’t care. If he could get me out of the rainy town where I’d feared I’d be trapped for the night, he was a hero.

…and he was. But as we walked the kilometer back up the hill, and chatted a bit, I figured out that he wasn’t a camio driver. I reconsidered the scraps of information I’d understood. Maybe he was a fellow traveler, heading eastwards with me.

A few mistaken conclusions later, he put me into an almost-full taxi heading east. (It was around a bend and over a hill from the tranzit station, which is why I hadn’t seen it before.) It had five people, and was waiting for the sixth. Me. I wondered if he was being generous in letting me take the space he wanted…but no. He’s the kurti for that rainy mountain town, which means that all of the taxi transportation falls under his supervision. I couldn’t have fallen into any hands better suited to getting me on my way to IST…and he just happened to be the guy who offered me tea when I was cold and wet.

I’m going with angel. J

Oh, and the ordinary hero? The fifth of the five guys already packed into the taxi. My left side was squished into the door, my right side squished against him. I’ve come to accept the squishing endemic in grand taxi transportation, and not always assume malicious intent on the part of the men whose bodies are pressed into mine… But when the Fifth Guy shoved into his buddies in order to create more space for me, I smiled at his thoughtfulness.

A little later, Fifth Guy said something in Arabic. I blinked at him, then said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak any Arabic, just Tamazight.” While I was getting that out (which I say almost daily, so it flows glibly off the tongue), he made a hand motion that clearly meant … something … about the amount of space between us. I’d known that I was getting the full 25% of the backseat that I was entitled to, but which I almost never actually get, so I said, “Kez shwiya?” (“Scootch over a bit?”) and pushed myself harder into the door, twisting up onto one hip like I nearly always do when riding in a grand taxi.

“No, no, I’m saying that *I* should scootch over a bit,” he explained, and was immediately as good as his word, shoving his buddies further over. I thanked him, but explained that there was no need – I already had a generous amount of space. “No, no,” he insisted, “We’re used to being crowded like this, but you’re not.” (And I actually understood every word he was saying! Always a fun feeling. Wllf is the very useful verb that means “to be accustomed to” or “to be used to”.)

“No,” I corrected him, “I’m used to it, too. I’ve lived in Morocco for eight months.”

That surprised him, and he asked me why…which led to another fun Peace Corps conversation.

But in all the dozens of grand taxi rides I’ve taken, I’ve never once had someone offer to make more room for me. And Fifth Guy did. Which makes him both exceptional and as perfectly normally gracious as Moroccan hospitality always is. I’m just not used to hospitality extending to transportation.

So one miraculous intervention, one perfectly ordinarily nice guy… And by nightfall, I was in a friend’s house, within half an hour of the IST city, enjoying good friends and good times.

Just another day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer. :)

9/27 Day of Power

I woke up to the smell of pancakes and the sound of CNN pundits debriefing the debates. I knew I needed to get back up the mountain to Berberville, but since there are 4 tranzits per day, I wasn’t worried. Some friends left on the 8:30 tranzit, but I was still mostly asleep, so I didn’t join them.

The next tranzit was scheduled to pass by between 11:30 and 11:45. I was outside by 11:25, and waited until 12:00, but never saw it. I figured it had gone by earlier, and resolved to catch the next one.

Tranzit #3 should have come by between 1:30 and 2pm. I was outside by 1:15, and was told that it had gone by 10 minutes earlier.

There was only one more tranzit left, so I was getting nervous. I decided to go into SouqTown, about half an hour up the road, to guarantee myself a seat on it. It should have left town at 2:30pm. I got to town at 2:15pm, and was told that it had left an *hour* before. I must have passed it on the road shortly after leaving.

I did, however, finally get an explanation for why the tranzit schedule had gone haywire. (In general, if you understand the uncertainty built into the system, which leads to things running two to twenty minutes late, the tranzits between Berberville and SouqTown are actually extremely punctual.) Because everyone wanted to be SURE to be home before sunset, so that they could spend the entire Night of Power (aka 27) with their families, they’d adjusted the tranzit departure times so that the last one could leave over an hour early and have the others evenly spaced throughout the day. Of course, they never announced that they were doing this; I don’t know if I should have guessed it, knowing how important the Night of Power is, or whether everyone else was as surprised as I was…but long story short, I was stuck in SouqTown with no way to get to my host family, who had been talking about sharing 27 with me for weeks.
I called home, apologized, explained how I’d managed to miss not one but *three* tranzits…and Ama gracious as always, just said she’d see me tomorrow.

So that then opened the question of where to spend the Night of Power. It’s very much a family holiday, so I really didn’t want to pass the night in the hotel. I have four PCV friends who live within half an hour of SouqTown. Of them, three were planning to spend 27 with their families. One of those three immediately invited me to join her, and overrode my dithering with a brusque, "You’re coming with me. Safi."

I bowed to the inevitable, and within the hour we were crammed into her nokl (sounds exactly like "knuckle", and is identical with a tranzit, it’s just called different things in different places). Rain had come to SouqTown while we were waiting to leave, turning the dirt-covered pavement into a muddy stream, and turning the dirt roads into gack* swamps.

The rain let up somewhat while we drove, but apparently it had been raining for hours – maybe days – up the mountain. The nokl splashed through countless puddles, most no deeper than the ones that my sister, dad and I used to jump in after childhood rainstorms (is mud-puddle-jumping a family tradition for other folks, too, or is that just us?). Every so often, though, the road would be covered by water standing (or running) at least a foot deep. The driver would slow down for those, but we’d still throw splashes that reached higher than the nokl windows.
And then we came to the bridge.

On ordinary days, the bridge runs over a rivulet. Today, that rivulet, swollen into a river, ran over the bridge.

I’d never seen anything like it.

I grew up on the Mississippi River, and lived through the Flood of ’93, as well as smaller floods before and after. I’ve seen the Mighty Muddy reach a couple miles across, spreading over farmlands and through basements and even washing around first-floor furniture.
But this was a muddy torrent, foaming and dashing around trees and bridge guard rails. The water looked like chocolate milk, or else café latte poured from Paul Bunyan’s coffeepot. Moment after moment, then hour after hour, the floodwaters gushed downhill from some unseen point in the mountains.

First, we all piled out of the nokl to see the obstruction. Some of us took pictures and video of it. Then we looked at each other to see what we were going to do about it. And finally, we just watched the time tick onwards towards sunset and the Night of Power.

We waited more than two hours, and the surging waters never abated. I’d predicted that after the first thirty seconds, just based on the volume of water and everything I’ve learned about hydrology on the Earth and the even more dramatic floods on Mars. But optimism trumps knowledge more often than not, and especially on nights where the need to Be On The Other Side reigns paramount. This was apparently the Moroccan Muslim equivalent of being held away from your family on Christmas Eve. Regardless of the evidence, you *really* want to believe that something will work out to let you celebrate with your family.

Finally, however, after a few brave souls attempted to cross on their own, but (lhumdullah) thought better of it before going too far into the meter-deep torrent, the driver surrendered, and we turned around and headed back for SouqTown.

Of the three friends who had planned to spend this night with their host families, two lived in a village on the far side of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Floodwaters. We texted the third, "Kareem", and asked if we could join him and his family for the Night of Power.

While waiting to hear back from him, I spent some time thinking seriously about the situation. It seemed egregiously unfair that so many of us were being kept away from our families, and from sharing with them this sacred evening. As I searched for answers, it occurred to me that I was limiting my definition of "family" to our Peace Corps-assigned host families. As much as we love (or don’t) the families in which we’re placed, we also have a wider family, I realized; the family of fellow PCVs that I’d been so delighted to think about just a week or two ago. (See the blog on "Brotherhood.") True, several of us wouldn’t be with our host families…but we would get to be with each other, now, and that wouldn’t have been possible if we’d been in our separate villages and homes.

The nokl by now was most of the way back to SouqTown, but it suddenly pulled off the road and pulled a giant U-turn. I was curious to see what path we’d be taking now. Back to the washed-out (washed-over?) bridge? An alternate route to my friends’ village? Somewhere entirely new?
We stopped at a fork in the road. Three paths stretched away from us: one to my friends’ village, another to Kareem’s village, and the third to SouqTown. The driver said that he was giving us the option of getting out here, where we could take transportation (in the form of flagging down any passing vehicle) anywhere we wanted to go. I called Kareem, who had never responded to my text, and got an invitation for us all to join him and his host family for the night.
We three PCVs decided to try to get rides to Kareem’s village, so we piled out of the nokl, grabbed our bags, and headed to the northbound side of the road. Hitchhiking is strictly forbidden by Peace Corps, but there aren’t a lot of options when you’re abandoned on the side of the road.

Not a *lot* of options…but that doesn’t mean *none.* And sure enough, an empty grand taxi came by only a minute or two later. We’d already flagged down a small car, which stopped for us even though it was crowded with six passengers and an egg-filled trunk, where the generous-hearted driver was urging us to put our heavy packs. Lhumdullah, we didn’t have to crush his eggs or his other passengers (or violate Peace Corps policy); we rented out the grand taxi and had a spacious ride down to Kareem’s village.

As we rode, our driver informed us that there is a back route into my friends’ village. In fact, we soon overtook the nokl—which had driven off while we were piling into the grand taxi—which was headed for this back way. Apparently, *everyone* on the nokl was going to get home tonight, albeit by a circuitous route.

My friends & I discussed whether we wanted to follow the nokl (or flag it down and jump on) or else continue on the road to Kareem’s home. The driver told us that the back way was a piste, the local term for a dirt/gravel road winding up or down the side of a mountain. Given the still-heavy rainfall, we suspected that a dirt road would be a dangerous path, and thanks to the hours we’d spent at flooded bridge, we were already approaching sunset. Peace Corps also forbids traveling in the dark, but we had an even more urgent reason to get to Kareem’s village quickly: the Night of Power begins with the sunset call to prayer, and we wanted to be with Kareem’s family when that call came, plus we wanted to allow our driver to be with his family for it, too.
We decided that, as much as my friend wanted to get to her own village for the Night, there were too many factors making it a bad idea (rain, piste, approaching darkness, the total lack of 4x4 driving ability in this Mercedes Benz sedan or the nokl van, etc), so we pushed past the steep, gravelly piste trailhead and continued down to Kareem’s home.

We got there almost half an hour before sunset, so there’s a good chance that our driver was back in SouqTown (his hometown) in time for sunset prayers. We also got to be with Kareem’s family from sunset until about midnight, at which point we came back to Kareem’s own house and spent the remainder of the Night hanging out with each other. (It’s 4:55am now; the others fell asleep about an hour ago, shortly before the dawn call to prayer. Now that the new day’s prayers have begun, even though the sun isn’t yet risen, I think we’re free to sleep. Or maybe I’m supposed to wait till sunrise…but I think I’ll go ahead and call it a night. A Night, that is. A Night of Family, Friendship, and Love. Those are powers I’m happy to believe in. :)

* I don’t know if "gack" appears in any dictionary; I learned the term when working in the Florida swamps/estuaries. It refers to the stickiest, goopiest, sludgiest mud that coats your feet and legs when you walk (wade!) through it.

August, 2008 Testament of Dom Christian de Chergé

A Catholic monk, who had devoted his adult life to North Africa, lived in a monastery that was under siege during a period of unrest in Algeria. Some of his brothers chose to flee the massacre they all foresaw. Some chose to stay, and continue their ministry. One, Dom Christian de Chergé, wrote a public letter of forgiveness for his murderer. He published it on December 1st, 1993. He was martyred a few months later. His order was re-established in Morocco; I visited their monastery last month, which is where I learned this story. Here is his letter:

Facing a GOODBYE…

If it should happen one day – and it could be today –
that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf
all the foreigners living in Algera,
I would like my community, my Church and my family
to remember that my life was GIVEN to God and to this country.
I ask them to accept the fact that the One Master of all life
was not a stranger to this brutal departure.
I would ask them to pray for me:
for how could I be found worthy of such an offering?
I ask them to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones
which are forgotten through indifference or anonymity.
My life has no more value than any other.
Nor any less value.
In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood.
I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil
which seems to prevail so terribly in the world,
even in the evil which might blindly strike me down.
I should like, when the time comes, to have a moment of spiritual clarity
which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God
and of my fellow human beings,
and at the same time forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.
I could not desire such a death.
It seems to me important to state this.
I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice
if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder.
It would be too high a price to pay
for what will perhaps be called the “grace of martyrdom”
to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he might be,
especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.
I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on the Algerians indiscriminately.
I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain Islamism fosters.
It is too easy to soothe one’s conscience
by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists.
For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: it is a body and a soul.
I have proclaimed this often enough, I think, in the light of what I have received from it.
I so often find there that true strand of the Gospel
which I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church,
precisely in Algeria, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers.
Obviously, my death will appear to confirm
those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic:
“Let him tell us now what he thinks of his ideals!”
But these persons should know that finally my most avid curiosity will be set free.
This is what I shall be able to do, God willing:
immerse my gaze in that of the Father
to contemplate with him His children of Islam
just as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ,
the fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit
whose secret joy will always be to establish communion
and restore the likeness, playing with the differences.
For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs,
I thank God, who seems to have willed it entirely
for the sake of that JOY in everything and in spite of everything.
In this THANK YOU, which is said for everything in my life from now on,
I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today,
and you, my friends of this place,
along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families,
you are the hundredfold granted as was promised!
And also you, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing:
Yes, I want this THANK YOU and this GOODBYE to be a “GOD BLESS” for you, too,
because in God’s face I see yours.
May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.

AMEN! INCHALLAH!

September 4, 2008 Fasting, Day 3

Day 1 of fasting was pretty easy. I ate a big breakfast before dawn and then spent the rest of the day traveling, so busy bustling from connection to connection that I didn’t really notice I hadn’t eaten. A woman sitting next to me on one of the buses was smuggling food into her mouth, and apologetically explained to me that she was en congé, getting the vacation from fasting that all women get once in the month.* Why Moroccan custom ignores the provision for travelers, I don’t know. Maybe because traveling these days is so much easier than in times past? Riding planes, trains, buses, automobiles, etc burns fewer calories than mastering a camel or horse, let alone walking. But regardless, we were on a bus and she was hiding her food from everyone except me.

When it was time to break the fast, the bus pulled into a town filled with restaurants. We were close to our destination, but apparently letting people eat now was more important than getting us to where we were going. So I ate some of the traditional fast-breaking foods, harira, eggs, and juice, and bought some peaches to enjoy later in the evening.

So Day 1 of fasting was over before I even really much noticed it.

Day 2 of fasting, I slept late, socialized through the morning, kept busy through the afternoon, and cheerfully broke my fast with my host family, munching on fat bread, harira (soup), helawa (cookies), juice, eggs, olives, another bowl of harira, some more bread, zmita, and tea. Coffee is more traditional, but Ama had made both, so I gratefully accepted the tea. (I’m not fond of either, but I *really* dislike coffee.) After I got home, I ate a couple peaches and made popcorn.

Day 3 of fasting is hard. I’ve had less to do today, and the time is inching by. Also, I have more ready access to food today than I did yesterday or the day before, and it’s taunting me. I’ve thought of all sorts of reasons to eat: I’m hungry. I’m not Muslim. I’m not feeling well. Nobody would know.

They all sound as weak to me as they must to you, and have forced me to confront the fact that I tend to be a pretty self-indulgent person. Maybe this is one of the reasons the Prophet Mohammad instigated a month of fasting: self-knowledge. I’m a generally good person, I’ve always thought, and therefore I’m pretty easy-going about indulging myself when I feel like it. I work hard, so why not drop into a movie theater on a Saturday afternoon? I eat healthy, most of the time, so why not finish off a pint of Ben & Jerry’s once in a blue moon?

The rationalizations always make sense, and this is the first time I can think of when I really want something I’m not letting myself have. I don’t tend to want bad things, so my self-indulgence has always seemed quite harmless, but I see now that it has bred within me a sorry lack of self-discipline.

And the minutes continue to drag by.

I ate this morning; Ama warned me last night that I should have breakfast at 3, because there’s no eating after 3:30. I set my alarm so that I wouldn’t sleep through breakfast, but happened to wake up naturally at 2:45, so I ate some bread then, before falling back asleep. Maybe fasting would be easier if I skipped breakfast. I’ve noticed before that I get hungry for lunch on days I eat breakfast, but can otherwise go till dinnertime without eating anything. (This habit of skipping meals effortlessly is one of the reasons I’d thought fasting would be easy.) Or maybe there’s an important difference between missing a meal, ie letting it go past without noticing, like landscape when I’m reading on a bus, and fasting, the deliberate choice to not eat.

But why am I fasting? I’m not Muslim, so why am I subjecting myself to this? Out of respect for my community? They don’t ask me to wear a head scarf, and I’m sure they’d understand if I chose not to fast. Everyone I’ve spoken to has been surprised – happily surprised – to hear that I am fasting. It would be disrespectful to walk through the streets on a hot afternoon while chugging water in front of my fasting neighbors, but eating and drinking in the privacy of my apartment wouldn’t directly upset anyone. Many Peace Corps Volunteers do just that.

But it would change my answer to the question, “Is da-ttazumt?” from a yes to a no. Or else it would make my yes a lie.

And I find that I’m not yet ready to do that. I’m fasting because my community is fasting, and I want to be a part of this community, not just a visitor to it. I’m fasting because I want to better understand the religion of submission, which is what Islam means. I’m fasting because I said I would, and I don’t want to make a liar of myself. (Rationalization kicks in: I did say I’d fast inshallah, which is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. It wasn’t a promise, it was an expressed hope. And then I respond to my inner rationalizer: Oh, shut up.)

* Exceptions to fasting: Children, the dying, the gravely ill, travelers, new mothers (but only for the first 40 days after childbirth), and menstruating women. Some women have referred to the days where they don’t fast as conge, from the French word for vacation; others just pat their lower bellies and say “I have a problem.” All of these exceptions are only temporary; you’re supposed to fast for a solid month, so if you eat on a fasting day, because you fall under one of these exempt categories, you need to make it up sometime later.

September 2, 2008 Ramadan

One of Islam’s 5 pillars is Ramadan, the month of fasting. From the pre-dawn call to prayer (at 3:30am-ish) until the sunset call to prayer (7pm-ish), there can be no eating, drinking, smoking, sexual activity, or gossiping. At the end of the month comes the 3id al-saghir, meaning the Small Festival/Feast. (The Big Festival is the one commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, and takes place 40 days after the Small Festival.) It’s also called the 3id al-Fitr.

Once upon a time, that meant that there was a month of deprivation followed by a ginormous feast. But somewhere along the way, the Breaking of the Fast meal (eaten right after sunset) became a ritualized Big Meal, and “Dinner” began to be eaten at midnight, and “Breakfast” at 3am. So folks are still getting three meals a day, they’ve just become nocturnal.

Also, the meals are elaborate and filled with snacks and goodies. I’ve been told that Moroccans spend more money on food during the month of Ramadan than any other month of the year. I’ve also been told that people gain more weight during Ramadan than any other time of year. (Americans certainly have their own month of gorging – ours goes from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, and there’s no hour of the day when eating is forbidden!)

I’ve received a few invitations to people’s houses for Breaking of the Fast, plus Ama issued me a blanket invitation to come to her house if ever I don’t have someone else’s home to eat in. (I made the mistake of admitting that the one night I stayed home, I ate only popcorn, bread, and a couple peaches all night. I admitted that that wasn’t my best decision, but it just reinforced for Ama that she needs to feed me up.)

I’ve avoided going anywhere for midnight dinner, though, since I really don’t want to walk through the dark streets of Berberville at 1am. (We actually have streetlamps – 10 of them, along the two main streets – but all they do is blind me when I’m trying to pick a path anywhere else in town. After the streetlamps shut off, around 3am, it’s actually easier to see, just by starlight and moonlight.)

This means that I need to make myself midnight dinner…but it feels truly weird to prepare an actual meal in the middle of the night. I’m all about the midnight snack – cereal, ice cream, popcorn – but making, like, stir-fried veggies or pasta primavera at midnight just feels bizarre. I guess it’s that eating in the middle of the night has a long and glorious tradition, but cooking in the middle of the night…less so. But I guess I’ll get over it. I have several more weeks of fasting to go, after all… I said I’d fast all month, inshallah, and I meant it. :)

August 17, 2008 Welcome to the World, Baby Cuz!

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight walk of Auntie Dear…

Here’s the story as recounted in Tamazight and translated back into English. (One of my ongoing challenges for myself is to record stories – more or less blog entries – for my Tamazight tutor. I then read them to her, and she corrects them with me. Since Tam is an oral language, she doesn’t care about my spelling – there are no misspellings in an oral language! – but if there’s an important vocab word missing or if I make a mistake severe enough to impair understanding of the meaning, she’ll show me how to correct it. Little mistakes she gracefully ignores, knowing (or at least hoping) that they’ll work themselves out in time. (Like my pronunciation of the ‘ain, the letter I usually represent with a 3 when I’m typing Tamazight words. I know I say it differently than Moroccans do, which to me means that I’m still saying it wrong. She says that it’s just different, not wrong. When I say it, I sound like I’m being strangled. When she says it, it sounds like her throat is tight with anger. Those are different.)

Anyway, here’s the story. Please forgive the choppy sentence structure and limited vocabulary:

At 2:30am, I heard knocking at my door. “Yes?” I said. “Kawtar!” someone said. I woke up, stood up, and opened the door. It was Ama. “What’s going on?? What happened?” I asked her. “We’re going to the hospital!” she said. I didn’t understand. She said it to me again. “Xalti is giving birth. The baby is going to come. Put on your clothes and let’s go,” she explained.

At 2:40, we found Xalti on the path to the hospital. She was going, she was standing still. She was walking, she was stopping. She was stopping every minute and a half. It was dark, but I could see that she was in labor. There was a full moon – every month, many babies come on the full moon!

We walked to the hospital. When we arrived, it was closed. Of course. With my cell phone, I called the hospital’s phone number and the doctor’s phone number… Nothing. Ama knocked on every door and window of the hospital. Nothing.

At 3:00, everything was the same. Ama was knocking, I was calling the doctor, Xalti was in labor. Then, Nurse Fatima came to the door. LHumdullah! We went to the delivery room, but Ama and I stayed only a little bit before Fatima made us leave. We waited in the big room [the waiting room]. Later, Nurse FaHd came to the hospital, to help. Ama and I waited more. When I closed my eyes, Ama asked me, “Do you want to go back home and go to sleep?” I said to her, “No, I’m praying*.” She didn’t understand. “I’m talking to God. About Xalti,” I explained. She understood.

At a quarter to 5, she called her friend. Her friend came, with her mother. While the three women talked, I prayed a lot. Then, at 5:15, the baby came!** We waited a little more, while Fatima and FaHd cleaned the baby. Then, Ama went to the delivery room in order to help. She gathered everything that had Xalti’s blood on it. I greeted the baby.

Later, Ama and I went to the home of a taxi driver. We woke up his wife, who told us, “He’s not here.” Ama said to me, “That’s a problem!” I asked her, “Why won’t the ambulance take Xalti and the baby to our house?” “Because Berberville is bad!” she answered.

It was cold, so Ama said to me, “Go to the hospital. I’ll come back later.” So, I went to the hospital. I asked Fatima, « Pourquoi on ne peut pas utiliser l’ambulance pour prendre Xalti chez lui? » She said it was possible, if there was no taxi. I wanted to ask, “Why does she need a taxi if there’s an ambulance??” but I didn’t say anything. [Turns out that even though all hospital services are free, you have to pay for the ambulance, and it’s comparable in price to what it is in America, ie well beyond the means of nearly everyone.]

Later, Ama found a man who owns a car; he brought us to our house. When all the children had seen the baby and I knew that everything was fine, I went to my room in order to sleep. The baby is good…the mama is good…lHumdullah!

* I have since learned that there are two different words for praying. The one I used, zal, refers to the five ritualized prayers each day, and means both addressing words to God and standing, kneeling, prostrating, etc. No wonder Ama was confused; I was sitting still. There’s another word, d3u, which means talking to God (or requesting something from God) without going through the physical motions of Muslim prayer. It’s from classical Arabic, though, and when I’ve tried to use it, I haven’t been understood except by highly educated people.

** The word that my family used for this is fgh, which usually means exit or go out. And the baby was definitely exiting the womb, so it makes sense, but it still surprised my tutor when we read through this story together, so maybe it’s just a local usage.

July 27, 2008 Trip to MonkTown

I’d hoped to be helping out with Environment Week, but the President made it clear that he didn’t want my help today, so I took a trip up to “MonkTown”, a medium-sized city north of SouqTown that is the home to a monastery. It’s also the site of a large Souq, so I was able to buy a few things that are hard to find, like soy sauce and Pringles. (I even found rice vermicelli! I don’t even know how to cook it, but I was so excited to see it that I bought some!) I met two PCVs who live and work near MonkTown, both of whom I’d met before, briefly, but who I hadn’t spent a lot of time with.

One works with a co-op; we went to their shop, where I bought a certain something that one of you will be getting soon. :) I asked the Volunteer (“Brahim”) what would be a fair price for it, since I expected to have to haggle. He answered, “You won’t need to bargain; she’ll give you a fair price. And besides, she speaks English.” I looked up at the young woman who I’d thought was just a shopgirl (turns out she’s the President of the Co-op), smiled apologetically, and told her how beautiful I thought her products were.

I dithered for a long time, wanting to pick out the *best* of the beautiful products before me, and finally settled on one. Then I asked her to hold onto it, since my PCV friends and I were going to walk up to the monastery, which is a good 10 minutes away.

When we got there, no one responded to our knock. I wondered if we’d caught them at a prayer time or nap time or in some other condition which precluded answering the door. A little girl was passing by; we asked her how to get in. She looked at us like we’d asked her if the sky was blue. After realizing that we weren’t pulling her leg, we really were that clueless, she walked up to the small box next to the large doors and pushed the buzzer. We Volunteers exchanged sheepish looks, and were soon let in. We were greeted by a young novice who spoke some French, who went off to find the English-speaking monk for us.

While he was away, LaHcen showed us into a small room that had a memorial to seven martyrs, members of this order who had been abducted, held, and eventually killed. That had happened in Algeria; the surviving two brothers had come to Morocco to re-establish their order. The English-speaking monk found us in there, and told us more details of their story. He also gave us copies of a statement written by one of the martyred brothers. He’d anticipated his death, and had written a truly beautiful statement of love and forgiveness for his captors/killers.

While we were talking to him, a lay sister of the monastery came by, and told us (at the Brother’s urging) of her conversion experience, and how it was that she came to be a lay sister of their order. I teared up repeatedly during her story; maybe someday I’ll record it for all of you. The Brother then took us out to see the garden and guesthouse of the monastery; he invited us to come and stay anytime we felt the need for contemplation or reflection. LaHcen said that he had come last Christmas – I guess he wanted to share the holiday with some of the only other Christians in the country – and had a wonderful, peaceful holiday with the brothers.

As we were leaving, the Brother asked us if we were Catholic; each of the three of us answered no, but Christian nonetheless. He eagerly reassured us that we were still welcome at the guesthouse anytime, and that he looked forward to seeing us again.

I found myself remembering how I’d felt as a child, watching the Sound of Music for the first time, wondering why you had to be Catholic in order to be a nun. A life of prayer and reflection sounds pretty wonderful, really, but not if I have to become Catholic first.

I look forward to going back. I might go with Fatima, my PCV sitemate, who actually is Catholic, and who has been looking forward to her first opportunity to attend Mass in 10 months. :)

July 16, 2008 Go West, Young Volunteer, Go West*

Note to new readers: the asterix in the title means that this blog entry is religious in tone and content; if you’d rather not read about prayer or religion, feel free to scroll down to the next one. :)

This weekend I got to take the “back route” out of my mountain village. I usually go east to SouqTown and then venture outwards from there, but since my destination this time (a popular tourist city that I’ll call TouristTown) lay west of me, going out east seemed silly. The western route is less frequently traveled and less well-known to my neighboring Volunteers, mostly because it only got paved a year ago, and prior to that it was a slow and often treacherous route.

I got to see dozens of examples of God’s goodness. The day started when Ama came into my room to tell me that my ride was waiting for me. Aba had gone into the center of town to confirm its departure time, which we’d thought was half an hour away, and the driver was already shouting out the name of the destination, usually the last thing he does before leaving. Ama fed me tea and bread (hospitality is a Code, not a guideline), and rushed me out the door.

What I didn’t know was that unlike the tranzit to SouqTown, or indeed every other tranzit I’ve ever heard of – this tranzit didn’t leave until every seat was full. Basically, it’s an overgrown grand taxi. But in grand taxis, you only need to fill six seats. This bus-van hybrid had seats for at least 15 or 20, and I got to chill (well, it was hot, so maybe that’s the wrong word) until every one was filled. After an hour, I was running short on patience. After an hour and a half, the driver tried to start the engine. It spun and growled for a while, then coughed and gave up. He pulled out a wrench and popped the hood. Eventually, he started the engine, which promptly began smoking. He stepped back out of the tranzit, started smoking himself, and went back to work on it. Watching the plumes of smoke curl under the dashboard into the body of the car, I realized that I’d begun this trip on the wrong note. I had been thinking a rattling, ancient tranzit would carry me safely though the 115 km of steep, winding mountain roads to the village on my route. (To get from Berberville to TouristTown takes four separate journeys, one in a tranzit, two in grands taxis, and one on a bus.)

If I was going to get through a solid day of traveling harmoniously, I was going to need to change my perspective. My safety wasn’t in the engine block, or the quality of the road (paved less than a year), or the skill of the driver. My trip was in God’s hands, not those of the driver or his rattling tranzit.

I thought about walks I’d taken with my Dad when I was small. I almost always ended up riding on his shoulders, since my little legs never lasted as long as his big ones. The mental image of being carried on my Dad’s physical shoulders lent itself to the image of being carried by my Father-Mother Love; just as I’d never worried about my safety when I was with Dad, I knew I didn’t need to worry about my trip with my Father.

Soon afterwards, we started rolling. I watched the countryside and let my mind wander. Less than half a mile down the road, the engine coughed, turned over, and stopped. It occurred to me that maybe I should pray some more.

I decided to look for proofs that God was with me on this voyage. What divinely inspired acts or objects had I seen already? Half an hour after Aba had waved goodbye, he came down to the tranzit stand to make sure that I’d gotten off safely. I was still there, waiting, and so he talked with the driver. He was acting with Principle, diligently fulfilling his role as my guardian. It was also principled of the driver to want to provide transportation for everyone who wanted to go north; even though I’d have preferred that he leave on time, he stayed commited to the people of our village.

Ama had insisted on feeding me breakfast, even while rushing me off to the tranzit. That was her way of expressing God’s love, in how much she cared for me. The goodbye hugs I’d gotten from her and from my little host sisters were an even more tangible reminder of the everlasting arms of Love that were continuing to embrace our tranzit and its still-smoking engine. I saw the strength and beauty of Soul in the mountains we wound throuth. I’d walked the first five kilometers of this route before, to my gorgeous mountain lake, but I’d never seen the following 110 km through the national park, so I was eager to explore it.

As we drove, I continued to look for evidence of all the varied expressions of God, and consciously and deliberately express gratitude for them. By the time I’d finished, we were at a major intersection, a kilometer shy of our destination.

I’d thought I would need to backtrack slightly, since the road I was on went off to the east, and my final destination was far west. But there at the intersection that I’d thought I’d be doubling back to, I saw a grand taxi heading westwards. Our driver stopped, and the two of us who were traveling west hopped out and piled into the grand taxi. (It was already full, so it was rather uncomfortable, but being squished on my side against the door and the woman next to me also meant that I was turned to face everyone in the taxi, which led to conversations with several other passengers.) It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was possible to do something like this. It was just one of the many examples of unexpected harmony that I got to bear witness to that day.

In the crowded grand taxi (seriously, there were 11 people in a station wagon designed for seven), there were several men who were delighted to practice their French and English with me. I was just as happy to practice Tamazight with them, so our conversation took place in a mix of those three languages. When I told them I was headed to TouristTown, they told me that one of them, Moha, was headed there, too. I suddenly regretted my honesty. Riding for another five to eight hours (depending on layovers) with a strange man seemed like a really bad idea.

But Moha turned out to be an angel that I was entertaining unawares. :) He helped me find the right grand taxi at our next city, and then paid for our cab ride across our third stopover town, where the bus station was several miles from the taxi station. He helped me bargain for my bus fare, and even gave me tips for avoiding pickpockets as we approached the tourist-filled city. He also told me that 10 dirhams was a fair price for the cab ride across the city to my hotel, which gave me an ironclad haggling position with a cabbie who thought I was just another clueless tourist. (“Do you go to [this big plaza near the hotel]?” “Yeah.” “How much?” “25 dirhams.” “25 dirhams?!?! Hahahaha. Thanks. Bye.” “No, wait, how much do you want to pay?” “10 dirhams.” “Come on, that’s ridiculous.” “Bye.” “OK, OK, 20 dirhams.” “10.” “15? C’mon, 15 is more than fair.” “Bye.” “OK, OK, get in.” “10 dirhams?” “10 dirhams.”)

Basically, Moha took me under his wing for six hours, with no other motive than kindness. I got to my hotel safely, met some old friends and made new ones, saw dazzling examples of Principled customer service (see July 13 entry), and in all had a glorious weekend.

June 6, 2008 Kawtar*

Zahra, the Volunteer who just left Berberville, left me her English-language copy of the Qur’an, but it was locked in her house, so I haven’t yet taken a look at it. I had to go over there today, though, to check the fit of the bike helmet she’d also left me, so I took the opportunity to begin reading the Qur’an. I started with the Introduction, which took the better part of an hour, and then flipped ahead to the index. I forget what I was planning to look up, because I got distracted by the sight of my name. It was transliterated there as Kauthar. I checked the classical Arabic (which is of course included – you can’t have a copy of the Qur’an without Arabic!) to see the cause of the discrepancy.

I’d taken my spelling from the way Kawtar in my CBT village spelled her name. But in the Qur’an, it does have a “th” instead of a “t” in the middle. In Moroccan Arabic, though, all the “th”s are pronounced as “t”s. (The number 3, for example, is thalatha in standard Arabic, but tlata here in Morocco.) Oh, and the “u” vs “w” thing is a meaningless difference; I’ve seen the Arabic character “wew” transliterated as “o”, “u”, “w”, and “oo”.

Spelling aside, I got to see my name in its original context, and discovered that it means even more than “river in Paradise”, as I’d been told. It actually means “abundance of good”. The verse says (and I’m paraphrasing from memory, but you can look it up in Sura 108:1 to get it perfectly), “I have surely given you an abundance of good.” The following verse (108:2) indicates that the only appropriate response on our part is to pray and sacrifice – give of our time, money, or labor to help others.

Really, I can’t imagine a better name to use here.

Oh, and as for the “river in Paradise” – which seems a significantly different translation than “abundance of good” – the footnote/commentary explained that a key Islamic scholar, when asked if “abundance of good” meant “river in paradise”, answered that of course it means that there will be a river in paradise, along with every other good thing.

June 5, 2008 Angels*

Angels come in every shape and size.

And the Bible never refers to them as bearing giant feathered wings. (Or if it does, I haven’t found it bit yet.) I’ve been looking at some of the places where the Bible refers to angels; the Hebrew word that King James’s team translated as “angel” is mal’ak (not to be confused with the word for king, melek*). But actually, mal’ak means “messenger”. Most of the Bible stories where angels play a big role – like when Jacob saw angels climbing up and down to and from heaven, or when he wrestled with one, or when Lot entertained angels in Sodom, or when Elijah was comforted by one – also use the word to refer to human messengers. Jacob sent a mal’ak to see if Esau was still mad at him. Lot sent a mal’ak to the nearby kings. Elijah received a mal’ak from the king. Etc. Sometimes, the divine messengers are identified specifically as mal’ak Elohim or mal’ak Yehowah – messengers from God – to distinguish them from royal emissaries or other message-bearers. But the whole floating, winged, trumpet-blowing image…maybe that’s from Revelation or another part of the Bible I haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s certainly not universal.

So anyone who brings a message from God – or really, any message from God, however delivered – is an angel, as we commonly use the term.

I’m not really going anywhere with this, yet…but it’s interesting food for thought.

* Interesting sidenote: the Arabic word for king is malik. I don’t know much classical Arabic yet, but some of the few words I do know are very similar to Hebrew words – salaam and shalom for peace, shems and shemsh for sun, etc.

April 30, 2008 Inshallah*

Around here, whenever you talk about the future, you say “Inshallah”. If God wills. It doesn’t matter how likely the event is. “I’m going to the souq in half an hour, inshallah.” “I’ll sprout wings and fly tomorrow afternoon, inshallah.” (OK, maybe they wouldn’t say that one.) It’s also used as a graceful way of avoiding invitations: “I can’t stop in for tea now, but I’ll come by later, inshallah.” It’s mostly cultural, but it was originally religious; the Qur’an teaches that no one knows the precise time of his or her death – the Bible has a similar verse or two – so there’s no way to know if your plans will come to pass, and it is impious and arrogant to claim otherwise. The cultural implications of this mean that appointments and plans are pretty much always tentative. It also reflects a grater humility and expectation of God’s influence in daily life than most Americans or Europeans would acknowledge.

It’s just one of the thousands of ways that Moroccan culture is different from American culture. That’s what makes it so fascinating to be here – I never know what I’ll learn next! :)

Walk to SouqTown (through Eden!)

Today, we walked along the river to and from our Souq town. We’d noticed that the same river runs past our village as runs past the souq town, so we asked Ali about it, and he agreed to walk us into town. It was beeyoutiful. At one point, I pulled out my camera (which I was trying not to do too often, because Ali kept a quick pace). I was about to take a picture of a field*, but B**, right behind me, said, “Turn around.”

I did, and said, “Wow.” Rising above the flower-filled field was a towering cliff with a kasbah perched on top. I snapped both pictures – with the castle and without – and commented, “You just can’t take a bad picture in this country.”

B** responded, “It helps that the sky is always blue and the sun is always shining.”

“Yeah, that helps.”


* Not just any field. Well, OK, nearly any field around here looks like this, but it’s pretty doggoned amazing. Rising above the alfalfa are wildflowers – irises, lilies, and dozens of others whose names I don’t know – that just…radiate profligate beauty. They are pink and purple and yellow, they stand out in glorious contrast to the green fields they grow from, and every time I pass one, I reflect on the line, “Consider the lilies of the field.” I can see why these would inspire a sermon. They’re so … unnecessarily beautiful. They aren’t planted, they aren’t cultivated, and no one I’ve asked even knows their names. (When I’ve tried, whichever member of the gaggle I’m talking to will just look at me and say, “Flower,” in this tone of voice that says, “Were you dropped on your head as a child?”) When the grasses are harvested, the flowers are cut down with them, and they’re all dried together and fed to the sheep. They’re effectively invisible, in terms of effort or utility…but when the sunlight shines through them, their translucent radience puts Monet to shame.

(Mis) communication

Late dinner tonight. I think they’re getting progressively later.

So I tried to explain the big news to my family last night. I have no idea why they think I was on the phone for 45 minutes. They would have accepted an answer like “BaHallunu!” (My grandpa from America!), and in retrospect, that’s probably what I should have said. As it was, I didn’t have the vocabulary for magazine or story or submit or edit, let alone editor or publisher, so my story basically went like this:

Last year, I wrote a tiny writing. I sent it to [insert me puffing out my chest and trying to look important. Mma suggests wizier, which means “government minister”, and I went with it]. He read it, and said yes, he will book. I waited and waited and waited. I called wizier. He said, “Wait.” I waited and waited and waited. Month and month and month. Then, I came to Morocco. Tonight, wizier called. He will book! It will book! My writing will book!

Yeah, I wouldn’t have understood it either, and I know what publishing is. I’m not at all sure these folks have ever seen a magazine or a book that’s not a textbook or the Qur’an. So…who knows. I got most of the relevant vocab today from H**, but it’s in Darija (Moroccan Arabic), not Tamazight, so there’s less-than-even odds that my family would even know any of the words. I was going to give it a shot tonight anyway, but the moment seems to have passed. What’s important is that frHn ashku frHgh. They were happy because I was happy. :) That, plus the baby being able to stand on his own, made for a iHla bzzef (awesome) evening.

By comparison, today was pretty chill. School was fine, though there was a mountain of new vocabulary: clothes, mostly, plus the fruits and veggies I forgot to study last night, in all the excitement.

Soooo full. Waving off food is no longer working. Safi (That’s it!), which worked so vigorously the first time I tried it that I was afraid I’d offended them, now won’t even prevent another cup of tea being poured. But before I whine, I need to remember how grateful I was for my hot bath Tuesday morning. Hot water -> clean -> happy. Aman ighran -> nqqagh -> frHgh. What I’m grateful for now is the kids’ willingness to help me with my homework, whether I’m asking them for vocab or they’re fighting for the right to color my flash cards.

Quote of the day: “…moments of uncomplicated faith…”

Home from Souq Day (aka BIG NEWS!!!)

We came back to our little village, gorged on chocolate, and had “independent study time”. I mostly-accidentally slipped into another PCT’s tutoring session, meaning that I got to spend an extra hour with our awesome LCF that included her speaking mostly in Tamazight. Slowly and clearly. It was fabulous. :D At 7, Mma showed up with Little Sis to say Where Have You Been. H** explained, and it was all good. I think. Then, while walking home, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I was tempted to let it go to voicemail…but then I remembered on the third ring that (1) incoming calls are free, and (2) I don’t have voicemail set up in Morocco. Lo and behold…it was the editor of my story!! Forty-five minutes later, I find out that my little story is being expanded to be the feature story! They’re rewriting it to make it THREE TIMES AS LONG!! :D :D :D

It was hard to have the conversation with the editor while walking uphill from school towards our house, but I figured it would be even harder to talk to him over the sounds of the TV (which is always on) and seven people’s conversation, so I paused outside the little house. I set down my notebook and sat outside to talk. As the conversation was winding down, it began to sprinkle rain, and Little Sis – who had been hovering around, entertaining herself, the whole time I was on the phone – began pointing out that we really ought to get inside. I got up to get my notebook and go in…and realized that I was sitting outside someone else’s house. Whoops. The houses are mostly identical, except for the color of the door, and between the gathering twilight and my being distracted with the phone call, I just hadn’t noticed. Eep! Good thing I had Little Sis there to prevent me from knocking on a stranger’s door. :)

Oh – one final good thing from today: the baby is standing on his own! Yeah!

Gratitude*

*Remember, a star in the title means that there’s going to be some religious overtones in here. No heavy God-talk, but definite implications. If you don’t want to hear it, feel free to skip along to the next post. :)

Grateful for…so many things. Mom and Dad, regardless of the distance. My Moroccan family. The infinite flexibility of Mind, which embraces new vocabulary and new family members and whose infinite resources meet all of my needs. For the heart-stopping sunset tonight. For Teen Bro inviting me to participate in the arritshta (dancing) tonight. For Sis-in-Law’s loan of the coin belt. For our gaggle’s collection of creepy-crawlies. For Ali’s and his wife’s willingness – eagerness – to share their knowledge with us. And the reminder that everything, however strange, becomes normal with repetition. Once I clear the first hurdle with my community, anything is possible. For my friends’ confidence that community members – like Ali and the gaggle – will want to help us. For the technical assignments that push us to independence and interdependence. For H**, with her patience and humor and smiles and adaptability and tremendous language abilities. For Mma worrying about me (because “school” ran until 7 instead of 6). For my little siblings, teaching me every random thing I ask them. For the buzzing flies that remind me that I have more than enough to eat. For the roses. Ah, the roses. For coincidence # 67, starting a prepositions list inside the back cover of my language notebook, which I needed today and which will help me organize my thought/notes/studies.

For the imam and quyd and moqaddim and everyone else who is willing to meet with us. For the reminder that, while some volunteers may be in it for the money or the paid vacation or the career perks, the vast majority are in it to help heal the world.

For the infrastructure support that has already been given to my village, in the form of the targua (canal) and the steps down from the cliff-top to the igran (fields), both of which have eased the lives of my friends and neighbors. For Peace Corps giving me yet another support network – my host family – to ease me through the steps towards becoming a successful Morocco PCV. For the Environment Program Director Mo, quietly demanding that the PCVs bless his country. For H**. OK, so I’ll have to wait a little longer to learn Classical Arabic. If I’d been assigned Darija, aka Moroccan Arabic, I wouldn’t have gotten H**. For getting a hot shower this afternoon, in the local hotel!

For realizing that, while the shower was lovely, I could have survived without it. For realizing that familianu (my family) holds dinner until I admit that I’m sleepy, since bedtime immediately follows dinner. For the gaggle bringing us an ant, a larvae, a tree snail, and a front. And for their knowing absolutely nothing about them, meaning that there is LOTS of space for environmental education. For coincidence #23, my friend’s melt-down coinciding with Ali’s wife’s search for plants, meaning that we had the time to comfort her without delaying the progress of the day. For visiting the local hotel, which (1) gave me the western toilet that I love, (2) gave me an idea for when Mom/Dad/Sis/et al come to visit, and (3) made for a nice mid-week break. For solving the mystery of the disappearing sheep*.

So I still haven’t mastered 3in. It’s getting better. And I’m realizing (with Teen Bro’s help) that ing and other sounds are as challenging for Moroccans as 3in is for me. That helps.

* On my first day, I saw Mma and Sis-in-Law with some sheep in the back yard. I went out to hang out with them, and ended up watching the sunset. While we were sitting, the kids shooed (shepherded?) the sheep through the gate towards the house. I wondered if the sheep would be sleeping in the house with us, but not to worry - they just disappeared entirely. They weren't in the courtyard, they weren't in the house...they were disappearing sheep. I referred to them as such from then till now. Turns out there's a small, completely enclosed mini-sheep-pen built into one of the courtyard walls. I'd never noticed it, thinking it was just the courtyard wall. But tonight, my brothers showed me the wulli (sheep) by the light of their glowing cell phone. :)