2/23/10 Always-Funny Berber Jokes

One thing that I love about this culture is the … permanence …. of the humor. If something is funny once, it will always be funny. The western idea that a joke is only funny the first time, or at least becomes progressively less funny with each retelling? Totally doesn’t exist here. You’ll get exactly as big a laugh every time you tell a story. It does make it easier for folks learning the language, though – learn one or two funny stories (usually laughing at yourself), and you’re set for two years.

One of my classics:

“Ah, boorgh.” Oh, I’m too old to get married. I’ve missed my chance.

So simple, and yet every time I say it, I get a big laugh. Every time. What? You’re not married? No, I’m too old to get married. Hahahahahahahahaha.

Every. Time.

And then there’s the story of the drunken idiot who kept me waiting 45 minutes - in the cold - for a transit that he knew had left an hour earlier. That’s always good for a laugh.

Or the pun on the word “turkey” – bibi in Tamazight – and how the baby – bebe or mumu – is “A baby, not a chicken!’ which has been funny for about 20 months now…

And now we have the story of how I couldn’t find the house I lived in for three months.

If I return to Morocco in a few years (as I hope and expect to) and visit both my host families again, I fully expect to hear all these stories, surrounded with genuine laughter.

2/22/10 Chillin’ With Host Fam #1

Two years ago (almost exactly!), I came to Morocco. After a week or two of introductory stuff, they sent us to live with our CBT host families. (CBT = Community-Based Training, aka stage, aka Peace Corps with training wheels). Today, two weeks later, I’m back in my CBT village, visiting my first host family.

Journal Entry:

Hanging out with host fam tamzarut [the first]. Plus ca change… Here we all are, sitting around the little round table in the family room, writing stuff down...I'm not doing homework for language class, this time, just journaling, but my little sibs are doing their homework, and it just feels...right. :)

My little brother is now in the 7^th grade (7^th! Little munchkin’s in *middle school*!), but still illiterate in French. My little sister is in sixth grade, ready to head off to collège, and in the same unfortunate boat. They say that the French teacher here just gives them heads-down time during “French class”. She has a vocabulary notebook (“Just like yours!” she pointed out with a grin), full of misspelled words from where she couldn’t read her teacher’s handwriting and wasn’t allowed to ask for clarification. I fixed some of them, and helped her with tonight’s homework, but one evening’s tutorial feels a bit like filling the Marianas trench with a teaspoon. Are there Barney or Sesame Street DVDs for Arabic speakers, teaching French? Maybe a Baby Einstein immersion thing? They have a DVD player, but wouldn’t understand anything English based…

When I arrived in town, we hiked in from the main road, which we never did in stage – one perk of taxis over transits! I knew which direction to go from the path, but still managed to walk right past my house. The next hosue – blue door, white decorations – didn’t look right, though it did look familiar, and neither did the one after that. I finally tapped the Small Boy Network (our gaggle!), and asked for my little siblings by name. That got me to the right place. Turns out I’d been confused because of all the changes. Either from the funds Peace Corps provided in exchange for their hosting me, or from my older brothers’ work in the nearest big city (where one does construction and the other does cabinetry work), the family has done some major renovations. The door is on what was the back. The courtyard is a good 50% larger. The roof is now finished and accessible by stairs. The big empty lean-to room where the ewes went to have their lambs is now a fancy, plastered, wall-sconced room with big ponjs and carpets. From barn to zween entertaining hall in 21 months.

Hahah…Just now, I excused myself to go to the bit l-ma hashek (the bathroom). My little sister, who’d heard the story of how I couldn’t find their house from her brother and three other friends already (gotta love the gossip power of the Small Boy Network) asked, “Do you remember where it is?” I laughed. “That’s still in the same place, right?” (Fortunately for my bewildered sense of direction, plumbing is hard to move, even rudimentary plumbing.) She laughed, and I laughed. Ah, the always-funny Berber jokes. :)

2/28/10 Word of the day: aHandir

As I've said before, "Berberville" gets its sobriquet from its standing as the heart of Berber - Imazighn/Amazigh - culture. Of course, there are many flavors of Amazigh culture, just as there are several dialects of the overall Tamazight language: Tarifit, Tamazight, Tashelheit, Tasusit, and whatever crazy blend they speak in Marmoucha (Tamarmouchit?).

But Berberville sits deep, deep in the High Atlas mountains, pretty much at the middle of a blank spot in most maps. It's the biggest village (town?) around, and is home to the Ait Hadidou tribe. There's a wonderful story I'll tell sometime, about our tribe's origins, but the short version is that it's a combination of Ait Brahim and Ait Yaza. Ama is Ait Brahim. Baba is Ait Yaza. Many families, like mine, are a hybrid. Generally speaking, girls keep their mothers' tribe, while boys keep their fathers'. The logical implication is that all of Ait Hadidu are probably genetic mutts, despite people continuing to identify by either Ait Brahim or Ait Yaza.

Women show their tribal affiliation/heritage on their faces, with chin and/or forehead tattoos, as well as on their backs, with traditional capes.

These capes are called aHandir (the big H represents a sound like a sharp exhalation; if you say ah! an deer! you'll be pronouncing it reasonably accurately), but cape is only a half-translation, at best. The word aHandir includes the full sense that these are the traditional, striped, capes, made in precisely the same way and following precisely the tribal design. (Each of the half-dozen tribes in the region has their own traditional aHandir design.)

Here are some performers from this year's summer festival:

The two women in the center are wearing the aHandirs of Ait Brahim, but the mostly-hidden woman behind them is in the zebra-striped Ait Yaza cape. Ait Brahim's design features broad swaths of blue and red and black, with some white accents. Ait Yaza's is black and white striped, though a closer look reveals some red as well.

Here's a group of Ait Yaza women, awaiting the long-promised arrival of the king. (For the record, he finally reached us about 5 hours later. But the cheering, singing, and ululating didn't let up. These folks *love* their king.)

As you see, the Ait Yaza aHandir features black and white stripes, with red piping. Two women in the middle of the group aren't wearing their aHandirs, but are instead wrapped in lighter-weight outer garments. The one on the left is a bedsheet, which is common here (since aHandirs, when not being worn, look exactly like blankets to the uneducated eye, I suppose the logical extension is that in warmer weather, you should wear a sheet). The one on the right is wearing the traditional wrap of the southern region. You see them around here from time to time, as increased ease of transportation leads to more and more cultural exchanges. Speaking of cultural exchanges...

These two women, standing across the street from the line of Ait Yaza-dressed women, are wearing taHruyts, which aren't actually an Ait Hadidou tradition at all. These white, decorated capes are traditional to a tribe several mountain ranges away. However, a long time ago - exactly when is lost in the mists of memory - a woman came from that valley to Berberville with her taHruyt, and the women found it so beautiful (and sparkly!) that one copied the design for her own marriage, and then another did too, and now you're more likely to find taHruyts at weddings than aHandirs. Every woman still weaves herself an aHandir, of course - some things go without saying - but she might also make herself a taHruyt or two for her wedding day. Or, more likely, she'll borrow one from each of the two or three cousins that have one, and thus have them on her wedding day. (Property ownership is clear, here in Berberville, but property use is very nearly communal, especially within families.)

2/27/10 Mbruk l'3id Milud!

Today, Muslims around the world are celebrating the birth of the Prophet Mohammed. In Arabic, the name of the holiday is 3id Milud. It translates approximately as Feast of the Birth, and is one of only 3 major religions holidays Muslims celebrate annually. (Morocco has lots of holidays, but most of the rest are secular, and usually nationalistic - ascension of the king to the throne, king's birthday, the day Morocco staked its claim over Western Sahara by marching hundreds of thousands of people in to occupy it/live there...holidays like that.) Most of those holidays are marked on the Western (Gregorian, solar) calendar, so they fall on the same day each year. Islamic holidays, though, are marked on the Islamic (lunar) calendar, so they shift about a week and a half each (solar) year. So last year's 3id Milud was March 5th and 6th (? as I recall), and the year before was I think March 21st(?).

In addition, Islamic holidays are determined by the observed phase of the moon, which builds in some uncertainty. How full the moon looks to astronomers in key places in each country, determines whether or not they celebrate the holiday the following day. So folks don't know until the week of, and sometimes not even till the day of, if it's a holiday. There's probably a point to be made about the impact that has had on the role of uncertainty in the local culture, but I'll let it go.

Enough background.

Today we celebrated!

This is the first 3id Milud I've actually gotten to celebrate as such. The one two years ago was during CBT/stage, and though I was with my (first) host family, there was no real celebration. Nobody ran around calling "Mbruk l'3id! Mbruk l'washer!" (Happy Feast! Happy Holiday!) Nobody spent the morning going door-to-door for tea and cookies. Midafternoon, my host mom set everybody in the family down and gave us each a piece of chocolate...and that was it. Safi. Rather anticlimactic. Our LCF (Peace Corps-hired tutor-person) found the whole thing depressing, since she's from a part of the country that makes a much bigger deal of it.

My second 3id Milud in-country, last March, I spent with a group of friends in Essaouira. Since we'd been given 2 vacation days for the holiday, we took a 4-day weekend for fun in the sun. :) Good times, yes, but not exactly a traditional celebration.

Today, I went early to my (2nd and final) host family's house. I would have gone even earlier, but torrential winds rattled my doors and windows, making me unwilling to walk across town. (I'm not a crazy wimp - pebbles were being flung at my windows so hard that when I woke up, I thought it was hailing. Life without paved roads means that there are lots of bits of dirt and pebbles around.) The wind died down mid-morning, so I headed over.

Before that, though, I gathered up the gifts that I've been accumulating for a while, for my host family. Crayons and stickers and books I found in Marjane and cookies from SouqTown and suchlike. Bubbles, complete with wand-in-the-bottle-cap. A handmade wooden rattle for the baby. Etc. I also dressed in a relaxed version of Moroccan-wear: headscarf, turtleneck, slacks under a skirt. I left off the jellaba that I've worn the past few 3ids, because almost no one in town wears them. (They're more common in my CBT region, where I bought two of them.)

Ama was delighted to see me, of course, and promptly served me bread and cake and cookies and tea. She assured me that today is not a feast of meat like 3id al-Adha, to which I responded with a hearty, "Al-humdulillah." A few friends and neighbors came over and shared in the deliciousness, and then Ama and I headed over to one of my aunts' homes. More chatter, more tea, more cake, more hugs... :)

Then back to Ama's house for lunch and some quality hanging-out time (including the distribution of presents). I explained that in America, gifts are traditional at birthday parties (both regular ones and Christmas, which is the closest analog for 3id Milud). I didn't explain that I feel awkward giving just-'cause-I-was-thinking-of-you gifts, and so had been waiting for an opportunity - an excuse? - to give them the presents I've been accumulating.

I've brought gifts for my little brothers and sisters, and occasionally for Ama and Baba, every holiday I've spent with them. They've never given me a present as such, but it never occurred to me to find this odd. They feed me a few times a week, house me whenever I want, and have been a source of love and refuge in a thousand different ways. I respond with cookies and presents (and lots of love!). It seemed perfectly equitable to me, the few times I even thought about it.

But apparently, unbeknownst to me, Baba had been thinking about it, too. Today, while I was watching my little brothers and sister parcel out their stickers (they're sticklers for equity between the siblings, so they tore apart the long coiled strip of stickers to make sure that each one had exactly as many stickers as the others) , Baba (apparently) told Ama that she should give me something. She told me a couple weeks ago that she'd been hoping to weave me a rug or aHandir before I left, but between chasing a newborn and then convalescing from surgery, she didn't think she'd be able to. I'd assured her that it was fine, but that I did want an aHandir from her tribe, both to remember her by and because they're gorgeous, and she'd promised to help me buy one.

(Her help would be key because, though my haggling skills have gotten steadily better over the past two years, I'm still going to be starting from the tarumit - foreigner - price, where Ama will be starting from the tamaghrebit - Moroccan - price. As she explained, and as I already knew, most weavers would simply expect that I'd pay at least 100dh more than they'd think to charge a fellow Moroccan. So she was planning to do the negotiations for me, if I'd just provide the cash. I found this an excellent idea, and felt very grateful that Ama would overcome her severe dislike of the souq to help me.)

But then, this afternoon, as I sat in the living room, playing with my siblings, she walked in carrying something. (She, and everyone, routinely come and go from the kitchen, the bathroom, the other room, so I hadn't even noticed her slipping out a few minutes earlier.) Wrapped in shiny paper was a folded, carefully stored, aHandir. Of her tribe.

I blinked. Gasped. Felt my jaw drop.

"Snnit?!" (Really?!)

She explained that Baba had urged her to give me something, but that she'd felt bad because she had nothing to give. Then she remembered that I want an Ait Brahim aHandir, and she realized that, well, she's got two of them.

So she gave me one.

I unfolded it slowly - reverently. I love both the ancient and modern styles of her tribe's cape; the only difference is the brightness of the colors. The "classic" design features organic dyes, as have been used for centuries or millenia. The more modern look uses synthetic dyes, and therefore really "pops". Both look beautiful. This - my! - aHandir featured the organic dyes.

Some women still use them today, though most have switched to the brighter colors, in the ongoing evolution of their very-much-alive-and-dynamic culture.

"Did you make this?" I asked, softly.

"Yes," she answered. "Well, me and Xalti." I immediately imagined the two women sitting at a loom, weaving together, chatting together, spending hours upon hours creating this... But wait, Xalti hasn't lived with us over a year. And Ama's loom hasn't been set up since well before that.

"When?" I asked next. This isn't the kind of project you can work on in secret; the loom fills a good chunk of the family room, and a project of this scale takes weeks or months, depending how many hours per day you spend working.

"We wove it for my wedding to Baba," she said with a smile. "I was twenty."

And then I realized that not only was she giving me a handcrafted work of art, she was giving me her wedding dress. (The cultural equivalent thereof, anyway.) Tears rose to my eyes, and I hugged her again.

I spent the next hour or so fingering the wool - I can still feel the lanolin, thirteen years after it was woven! These things are extraordinary - and then, eventually, it was time to go. I asked Ama to take a picture of me, wrapped up in her - my? our? - aHandir, feeling delightfully Moroccan. Yes, my clothes were actually all western, but I'd chosen ones that don't look out of place here. And most of them were covered by the cape, anyway. All you could see was my scarf-wrapped head, my Imazighn tafuyt earrings, and this glorious cape from my mother's - and therefore my - tribe.

Kauthar tin Ait Brahim.

2/26/10 Double Vision, aka Reverse Culture Shock

Ever since returning from my trip to the US (for my cousin's wedding), I've been meaning to write about this.

My doubled vision.

My duo perspectives.

Or, as I usually refer to it, the Moroccan and American on my shoulders.

These aren't the devils or angels depicted in legend and cartoon. Just voices. Little voices. That talk to me...and disagree.

It's disorienting.

Much like doubled vision, I imagine.

Here's how it works:

• I walked into CostCo. The scale staggered me. My Moroccan-self simply goggled at the unthinkable volume of things for sale, the sheer size of the building. I couldn't see the walls or even much of the ceiling, because the shelves were stacked so high. I grew light-headed and had to hold onto a shopping cart lest I actually fall over.
  But my American-self shrugged and said, "Yeah, it's big. And yeah, I've never liked malls or superstores, but whatever. Deal."
  So there I stood, my decades of experience as an American taunting me while my years in Morocco left me dazed and confused.
  
  
• I found my table at the wedding reception and sat down. My Moroccan-self stared at the mass of tableware. The table was set for eight, or maybe ten, and each place setting had multiple forks, knives, spoons, glasses, dishes, bowls... There wasn't even any food out yet, other than the breadbowl, but the table already groaned under the weight of the amassed dishes.
  My patient, bemused American said, "Yes, this is what tables look like at fancy dinners. You know this. You've gone to lots of them. Nothing here is remotely out of the ordinary. You even know which fork goes with which course, which gives you points over most Americans."
  "Okay," protested my inner Moroccan voice, "but there's just so much stuff! What's it all for?! Who needs this many tools just to eat with?!?"
  The blase American voice reiterated, "This is normal. You've seen this before. Many, many times. Nothing here is weird."
  "OH YES IT IS!" retorted my floundering Moroccan. "This is NUTS!"
  ...and so it went.
  
  
• I climbed into my sister's car to ride out of the airport. She had to remind me to buckle my seatbelt. (Though Peace Corps requires us to wear seatbelts at all times, they simply don't exist in the buses and taxis and transits I ride.) We pulled out onto the highway, and I found myself clutching the "Oh No" grab-bar.
  "Everybody's driving so fast!" Cars wove across the four lanes headed each direction, twisting and swirling around each other like braided hairs or schooling minnows. Outside of Rabat, I never see that many cars at once. Even in Rabat, the highways are smaller and the speed limits lower. In California, folks treat careening around encased in steel like a hobby.
  American: "Babe, you've had a driver's license for a whoooole lotta years. Yes, this is how Americans drive. You know this. They haven't gotten any faster in the past 20 months."
  Moroccan: "Are you sure?! Maybe they have. They didn't really drive this fast before...did they!?"
  I flinched away from the door as a taxi vroomed past at something over 80 mph.
  Moroccan: "Even in taxis, I never get above, oh, 100kph. That's what, like 60 mph?"
  American: "Yeah, about sixty. Take a look at the speedometer. That's what you're doing now. Chill out."
  Moroccan: "But everything's going so FAST!"

Over and over again, I'd find myself looking at situations from two radically different perspectives. One side of me, the side that lives the life where most of my days are spent within a 1-km radius, where I walk to get fresh produce, where I boil all the hot water I get to use, found life in America just incomprehensibly fast and laden with stuff. The American obsession with consumption simply dazed (and kinda revolted) me. But then the other side of me, the side that spent decades in America, that drives with a lead foot and eats out of a microwave most nights and takes hot showers every morning, kept assuring the rest of me that Yes, this is normal.

I'm a country mouse and a city mouse. I'm a Moroccan Tamazight and an American millenial. I'm Kauthar and I'm [my other name].

And sometimes, I forget how these two halves of myself - no, they're not equal, though I couldn't tell you what the actual ratio is - I forget how these two sides of myself fit together. Or even if they even do any more. Or if they ever did.

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.

:)

2/12/10 Riding Afla

The preposition afla means on top of or sometimes just above.

In the Tam-glish blend that we PCVs speak, "riding afla" means riding on top of a transit.

Rriding afla entails sitting on a flatbed, wood and steel, shallow-sided cage, with no safety restraints other than however tightly you're holding on.

It's wildly unsafe, given the poor road conditions and prevalence of traffic accidents - the #1 killer of adults in Morocco* - and therefore forbidden to us Peace Corps Volunteers. It's also illegal, under a paternalistic Moroccan law reminiscent of American seatbelt laws, but it's one of the many laws that exists only on paper. The gendarmes routinely choose not to enforce the laws against riding afla, in exchange for ... let's call it "mutual goodwill."

Theoretically, the shallow-sided cage perched afla the transit is used to transport goods and belongings, like a car or truck roofrack. In practice, it transports goods, belongings, men, women, children, livestock...

What? Livestock?!

Yeah, I'll get back to that in a sec.

Many people prefer riding afla to riding inside the transit, especially in the summertime. The interior is stuffy, overheated, and crammed with sweaty bodies, while the roof has 360 degrees of fresh air, the steady breeze of our forward motion, and room to sprawl, at least until afla gets as crowded as the inside, which doesn't happen that often. On the other hand, there aren't anything like seats up there, so folks just push in between the baggage and the spare tires. Riding 150 km down the mountain on a spring afternoon, surrounded by fields in bloom, sun on your face, a breeze in your hair, and squishy luggage to lean against... It's not a bad way to travel.

...Or so I've heard. Of course, I have no way of knowing myself, what with it being forbidden and all. Yeah.

But get back to the livestock.

Hang on. In addition to luggage and, yes, occasional livestock, the roofracks carry nearly everything that people want transported up and down the mountain. I've seen ponjs, TVs, satellite dishes, tables, musical instruments, heaters... Most of this is available in souq in Berberville or the two other mountaintop towns that host a weekly souq, but you do get a much wider selection down in SouqTown, so some folks prefer to do their shopping down below.

I get it. People ride afla illegally, all sorts of goods ride legally, but what was the thing about animals?! Riding 10 feet off the ground in an unsecured roofrack??

OK. A couple weeks ago, I watched a herd of sheep get lifted, by their bound ankles, up on top of the transit. Ewes, rams, lambs...a herd - a small herd, but still - were hauled up by their fetlocks and lashed to the roof for a few hours of the 4-hour run.

I sat inside, staring open-mouthed at the animals that the jumper (driver's assistant / baggage handler) was pulling up past the window beside me. The jumper could lift two lambs at a time, one in each hand, but needed both hands to lift the sheep. (No surprise there - these sheep are about the size and weight of German Shepherds. Big ones are *big*.)

Now, this is hardly the first time I've shared a ride with livestock. I've taken rides in transits and buses where the chickens rode inside with me, where they fluttered afla, where sheep rode in the baggage cars under buses, even once when a frightened sheep lay bound in the trunk of a taxi.

But I do think this one wins the prize for volume. I didn't get an accurate count - it took me a second to realize what was going on, and another few seconds to believe it - but it was something more than 10 sheep and less than 20, I'd say.

But Kauthar, how else can people transport their livestock?

Trust me, that's not a problem. Transits are the only way for *human passengers* to make the ride from Berberville to Souqtown on *public transportation*. There are lots of other options for livestock. The simplest, of course, is simply walking them. Meets two needs at once - they get to graze and forage and they get to their destination. Most of the time, though, animals are transported in camios or runnls, different kinds of trucks. Some are small, and can fit only 5 or 10 sheep, crowded together onto two levels; others are the size of dump trucks, and can transport several cows or an entire herd of sheep. People routinely ride these, too. A couple will ride in the cab, with the driver, but most will sit back with the animals. (Not us Peace Corps Volunteers, of course - this, too, is unsafe and therefore forbidden.)

* As I said, the #1 cause of death among adult Moroccans is traffic accidents. The #1 cause of death among children? Diarrhea, most commonly from contaminated drinking water. It's entirely preventable and an enormous tragedy for the country.

2/5/10 Peace Corps Partnership Programs

Some of you have asked me, How can I contribute to your community?

Today, that question gets answered. :)

Some of you have asked more generally, How do you fund your work?

That depends.

As a rule, Peace Corps doesn't provide any funding for its Volunteers' projects. What it does do, though, is keep us informed about various NGOs who are interested in funding the kinds of work we do. Peace Corps also provides us access to two sources of funding not available to any other organizations: SPA grants, the Small Project Assistance funds available to Peace Corps Volunteers from USAID, and Peace Corps Partnership Programs (PCPPs).

Peace Corps Partnership Programs are the official way by which YOU, families and friends of Volunteers, get to directly and tangibly contribute to our work. We write up the grant proposals, in partnership with our community members, and once the proposals have been vetted by various PC staff [a breezy phrase glossing over hundreds of hours of work and multiple revisions], they get posted online, for YOU to read and assess. If you think a project looks worthwhile, you get to make a tax-deductible contribution.

So why haven't you hit us up for money before now, Kauthar?

Because the projects that I've done have been funded either in-country or by other PCVs' grants. Also, because I've been focusing on small-scale, sustainable, on-going projects.

But sometimes PCV projects are large-scale, and require outside help.

Like this one, to build an irrigation system for a village about 40km from me. Started by my friend "Brahim", and now finished by "Jamal", this proposal would make it possible for water to be channeled more efficiently into new fields, opening up more apple tree farming - a cash crop that will make an enormous difference in the lives of many local families.

Please read Jamal's eloquent appeal here, and find his official PCPP request here.

And thank you for all the ways you support us! :)

2/11/10 Doonesbury update

In addition to writing here about my appreciation for this week's Doonesbury strips, I sent a short note to the folks at their website. My motives were twofold - one, I wanted to tell them directly how grateful I am for their handling of this topic, and two, it seemed right to let them know that I'd used their copyrighted material. (I'm pretty sure that posting it on a blog with full attribution falls somewhere under "fair use", but it still seemed like the right thing to do.)

To my surprise, I received a personal, gracious response from the webmaster (a couple of them, actually!), plus my note was posted on their comments page. Thanks to that link, several dozen folks have found my blog for the first time. Thanks, Doonesbury, for helping me meet Goal #3! :)

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?