1/12 Patchy Patchwork

I've talked before about all the renovations being done to the area, as preparation for the king's putative visit. (Which now won't happen before April, rumors agree.) The cement work shows some telltale signs of its haste, though; in one section of the Berberville-SouqTown road, they didn't give it long enough to dry - which is a loooong time when the air is near freezing and snow is common but sunlight is rare - and so now there are deep tiretrack through the pavement. Oops!

In SouqTown proper, the sidewalks and piazza are full of this lovely tiled brick...so when they patched it, they poured cement in and then dragged a stick or a finger through the cement to make a vaguely cross-hatched pattern. All I could do was shake my head and sigh. Do they think the king will be fooled by a slapdash lick-and-a-promise fix like this? Or does it simply give them a scapegoat, in the form of the m3lim (handyman/repair guy) who did the work?

And who are "they," anyway? Who is reponsible for public works in this region? The government has multiple layers of bureaucracy, in both the executive and legislative branches...so where does the buck actually stop? Or does it ever? Is that why nothing is done until the king plans a trip, because everyone has been passing the buck for years?

1/11 Something Snowy This Way Comes

For most of November and December, Berberville got snow about once a week, about six to eight inches per storm. In January, though, we're getting snow almost every night, but never more than an inch. That's not enough to evoke the oooh aaaahs, just enough to keep us in a permanent state of muddiness. :(

Also, after the last cold snap (when I had ice sheets in my front hall and my bathroom floor), the temperature has returned back above freezing. Well, it hovers between 32 and 40 indoors, anyway, and above 40 outdoors when the sun is up. But yesterday another cold snap kicked in. It dropped below freezing, and today it's 29. Yeepers. Good thing I get to head down the mountain to SouqTown for my weekly run! :)

1/10 Second Leaders Meeting

Last night, some other PCVs and I met with the teachers with whom we've organized the Leadership / GGLOW / Environmental Education club. The official name is the "Future Leaders of Berberville" (FLB). We worked out an itinerary for today's meeting and assigned responsibility to various teachers.

Part of the paradigm for FLB is that volunteers will help plan and play a minor supporting role during club meetings, but that teachers from the local college and lycee will lead everything. Not only does this make the club more sustainable, ie more likely to continue after we volunteers have gone, but also it means the club can be held in Darija, which the students all understand. So one teacher welcomed everyone back - it's been almost two months since the last meeting, because of school holidays and the rumors of the king's visit - and then another distributed the collage nametags everyone made last time, then a third led a mapping activity, then a fourth talked about our plans for future clubs, the fifth talked about organizing a tree planting (yay!), and then the first one (again) moderated an election of student leaders to help with the next planning session, then thanked the students and dismissed them.

At least, that was the plan. But somewhere during the mapping activity discussion, the teachers got into the philosophy of maps and mapping, and suddenly they were talking about the existence of Israel. I couldn't follow anything they were saying, since my Arabic is limited to a bare handful of words, but I caught a few key names, like "Palestine" and "Israel" and "Gaza". The other volunteer and I exchanged wide eyes, but fortunately no one asked us our opinion.

The pacing slowed down at the end, and unfortunately there was well over an hour where the kids were sitting silently and adults were talking at them. :( One of our goals for the club is to help the teachers develop more interactive, hands-on lesson plans, but I guess they're still struggling to break away from the lecture model. They did discuss the tree planting, lhumdullah, but I couldn't tell what was being said, so I'll have to check in with that teacher later on. She's the science teacher, so we have that in common. :) Hopefully, she and I will organize a massive tree-planting for March 21, which is Arbor Day!

1/9/09 100 Things for Geologists to Do

As many of you know, I was a geologist in my past life, which is to say up until a few years ago. Now I'm just another amateur geonerd. :) This evening, I stumbled across the world of "geoblogs", and found this at paleochick.blogspot.com:

100 Things You've Done Meme: A Geologist's Version

MJC Rocks over at Geotripper has created a wonderful new meme based on the 100 Things You've Done meme that has been going around. Read about how he came up with/adapted this list here.

Bold the ones you have done and tell us some great stories!

1. See an erupting volcano (in Hawai'i National Park)
2. See a glacier (in Alaska, in Glacier Bay and other places)
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage (I lived on the Mississippi during the Flood of '93 and the Flood of '95. Plus, this fall had massive flooding on every creek and rivulet in the northern half of Morocco.)
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia)
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
8. Explore a subsurface mine.
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw. (The Siq in Petra, Jordan. Remember the final scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when they're approaching the temple with the Holy Grail? Yeah, that slot canyon.)
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland. (Yup, Stillwater. Where I nearly started an avalanche.)
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate
16. A ginkgo tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic.
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones)
18. A field of glacial erratics (in Wyoming and Massachusetts)
19. A caldera (in Hawai'i as well as the Yellowstone Caldera, plus I mapped part of the Olympus Mons caldera on Mars - not in person, though!)
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high (Does mapping them on Mars count?)
21. A fjord (in Alaska)
22. A recently formed fault scarp (In Washington State)
23. A megabreccia
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge (Zion National Park)
26. A large sinkhole
27. A glacial outwash plain
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals
33. Petrified trees
34. Lava tubes (Walked a few miles through one in Hawai'i. Amazing features inside.)
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. (I've only done the rim, sorry!)
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible (Walked all the way around it with my Impact Physics class. Collected samples, too. Yay for profs who pull strings!)
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe.
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing (Isn't Devil's Tower in South Dakota? Anyway, I've seen it twice and hiked through the boulder-y base once.)
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism.
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn".
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone
68. Monument Valley
69. The San Andreas fault (Half my extended family lives on it)
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches) (both!)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil)
85. Find gold, however small the flake
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm (This summer - I think I wrote a blog entry about it!)
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse
91. Witness a tornado firsthand. (Important rules of this game). (The sky turns *green*!)
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights. (Just weakly, from my parents' front yard in Illinois)
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century (Hale-Bopp and Hyukatake)
96. See a lunar eclipse
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane (only the outer edges, lhumdullah, in Houston)
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash (Was in position and watching for it, but didn't see it.)

Looks like I've done 46 out of 100. Clearly, I need to do more traveling. :D

1/8 Conversation Confusion

Walking back from my sitemate's house, I got into a perfectly normal Moroccan street conversation. Where I kinda made an idiot of myself. I'll use [***] to mean "a word Kawtar didn't understand." Watch and enjoy...

Moroccan Girl: Hi!
Kawtar: Hi! How are you?
Moroccan Girl: Good, and you?
Kawtar: Good, thanks be to God.
MG: Thanks be to God. Are you cold?
K: Yes, a little.
MG: Do you understand Tamazight?
K: Yes, a little. I'm learning it.
MG, seeing my handful of snapshots: Do you have photos?
She looks through them, commenting on each one, identifying people she recognizes...
MG: Where is your community?
K: Where am I from?
MG: Yeah.
K: America.
At this point I'm expecting "Is it this cold in America?" or "Do you get snow in America?", which are the two most common questions I've gotten the past few months.
MG: How long [***] America?
K: How long till I return to America? Two years.
MG: No, you didn't understand me.
K: I'm sorry! I'm still learning. Again, please?
MG: How long [***] community?
K: How long have I lived here? Ten months.
MG, laughing: No, no, you're not understanding me.
K: I'm so sorry!
At this point, she tries another three or four times, including using the phrase for "what time is it?", which only confuses me further. Lhumdullah, a mutual friend walks up. I kiss her cheeks and run through the greeting phrases with her. She works a lot with my sitemate, so she's used to Americans and our funny accents and limited vocabulary.
MG, to Friend: I said 'How long [***] America, and she said 10 months! Hahahahaha!"
Friend, to me: She said to you, how long does it take to travel to America?
K: Hahahaha! I'm sorry. To go from Berberville to America?
MG: Yeah.
K: Well, it takes about a day to get to Casablanca, and then you take an airplane for another day to get to America. Two days.
MG: Only two days? Is Casablanca that close to America?
It occurs to me that to this village girl, Casablanca and America are just about equally fantastical and remote. I also realize that she's probably never seen an airplane in her life.
K: In an airplane, it only takes a little time. Airplanes go very fast.
Thinking back on this conversation, it occurs to me that the word for airplane, Ta'a3ra, usually pronounced tyara here, is also the word everyone used when the helicopter came a couple weeks ago. So she's probably imagining me taking a helicopter across the Atlantic - if she even has any idea that there's an ocean between our countries. We move on to more familiar topics.
MG: Are you married?
The word for married, tawl, sounds a lot like the word for photo, tsawl, so I get confused.
K: Sorry, these are all the pictures I have.
MG: Hahahaha. You didn't understand.
K: Sorry.
MG: Are you married? Do you have a man?
The same word is used for "man" and "husband", so I'm not sure whether she's asking if I'm dating. Regardless...
K: Oh, no. I don't have a man.
MG: Really?
K: Nope, not yet.
MG: [***] girl?
K: No, I don't have any children yet. Because I don't have a man.
MG: No, no, ARE you a girl? Or are you a woman?
I realize that she's asking me if I'm a virgin. Not a topic I'd bring up the first time I met a stranger, but...
K: Of course I'm a girl! I don't have a husband!
MG: Like me! I don't have a man, either.
We all smile at each other.
Friend, to me: Aren't you cold?
K: Yes, I'm cold. I'm going home, where I have a buta heater.
MG: OK, then.
K: Goodbye!
MG: Goodbye.

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

1/8 Recipe: Lentils

I'm not sure I ever had lentils before coming to Morocco. Not as their own dish. I had a lentil soup - called Moroccan Lentil Soup, in fact - nearly every Tuesday at a sandwich shop called Cosi. I'd go to Cosi on Tuesdays just for the soup.

But lentils not in soup? Lentils as a dish? This was unknown to me.

Then I came to Morocco, and looked for Moroccan Lentil Soup...and could not find it. I was sad.

Then I was assigned to Berberville. In SouqTown, there's a little sandwich place that makes l3ds - lentils. I ordered a plate of l3ds nearly every time I visited SouqTown. (...and there was great rejoicing.)

During Ramadan, though, the chef/owner stopped making l3ds. It's not a Ramadan dish. (...and there was great sadness.) So I flipped through the Peace Corps Cookbook and found a lentils recipe. I didn't have all the ingredients it called for, so I improvised some. The result? Amaaaaazing lentils.

After Ramadan, I went back to SouqTown for l3ds, and was startled to discover that, as good as his lentils are, mine are better. :)

I still get a plate of l3ds nearly every trip, because they're cheap and delicious, but every month or so, I turn on the magic in my kitchen, and there is great rejoicing. ;)

NOTE: The vegetables and spices are all optional, really. This is how I make it. If you don't like zucchini, or if you're cooking for someone who doesn't eat tomatoes, or if black pepper makes you sneeze, feel free to adjust at will. Lentils are very forgiving. Also, this makes a ton of lentils. Since I live in a fridge, I leave the pot on the stove and eat out of it for days, reheating whenever I'm hungry. If you're cooking for only one or two, please cut the recipe.

Without further ado:

Kawtar's Spiced Lentils
3 C lentils
2 L water or stock**
generous pinch of salt (~1-2 T)
3-4 T olive oil
3 onions, chopped
1/2 a head of garlic, peeled and minced
3 large carrots, chopped
2 large peppers, chopped
2 zucchini, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
3 T cinnamon
1 T ground cloves
2 T ginger
1 T black pepper
5 bay leaves
1 T cumin
1/2 T minced chili peppers
1 T worchestershire sauce
2 T soy sauce

Put lentils in large pot with water and salt; bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer. While that cooks, heat olive oil in a skillet. Saute the onions and garlic until the onion begins to color. Add carrots, peppers, zucchini, and tomatoes, all chopped to thumbnail size. Add cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, bay leaves, cumin, and chilis. Stir over low heat for 5 minutes. **If you are making this as a dish, not a soup, pour off most of the water at this point. You want enough to cover the lentils and another 1/2 inch or so of water above that.** Stir sauted mixture into lentils. Let it simmer until the lentils are completely soft, about 30 minutes to an hour. Taste-test it. If it's too spicy, add more cinnamon to cut the bite. If it's not spicy enough, add more of everything else. Remove bay leaves and serve.

Because of the spices, this only gets better with waiting. Feel free to make it hours or a day in advance, and just reheat it before serving.

**To make this a soup, just serve it in bowls. To make it a dish, scoop it with a slotted spoon and serve it on plates. It's fantastic over mashed potatoes.

1/7/09 The King Is Coming....?

Ever since I first visited Berberville last April, I've been told that The King Is Coming. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Definitely before Ramadan. OK, definitely after Ramadan. Absolutely before the end of the year.

The preparations for His Majesty's arrival crescendoed steadily throughout the year. First everybody had to paint their houses red, then the roads were getting repaired, then the schools and post offices and gendarmarie and all other official buildings got a facelift or a major rebuilding, then the street was lined with red and green flags, and then the school canceled all extracurriculars (including the club we have been trying to start) in order to prepare for him.

But on the day he was scheduled to arrive, nothing happened. And then nothing a week later. And now that the situation with Israel and Gaza* ... is what it is ... his attention has turned from our little town to affairs of state.

Some have joked that he learned just how cold Berberville gets in the winter. Others said that he went to France for Christmas. Rumors are rampant, but all anyone knows for certain is that he never came, and that he's too busy to come any time soon. Current speculation says that he may come in April. But honestly, whether or not he ever comes, I'm glad he said he would. The very fact that he announced he would come has meant tremendous improvements for Berberville and the surrounding countryside. The road to SouqTown, one lane since it was first paved 10 years ago, has been widened to two lanes for almost its entire 140 km length. There's room for more students in the schools. Teachers no longer have to share classrooms, thanks to the new school buildings. Hillary Clinton's staff once refered to her as a "One-woman public works project", because so many improvements were made in areas she visited. Our King is similarly bringing good things to communities all across his country. :)

* We've been issued a strict gag order. No discussing it, no theorizing about it, and definitely no attending the protest rallies springing up across the country. So this is me, not talking about it. Not commenting on the Al Jezeera news footage. Not describing the images being beamed into every home and cafe. Nope, not a single word.

12/25 Christmas Day

We woke up in the monastery bunkhouse around 9:30, then went over to have breakfast in the main building. After a continental breakfast, we trooped to the 11am Christmas Morning mass in the same sweet chapel/church we'd left less than 10 hours earlier.

The service was only an hour, and included many hymns and psalms, including a few Christmas carols I recognized. 'O Come All Ye Faithful" was one of the first; I sang it in English instead of French, but I don't think anyone minded. "Go Tell it on the Mountain" was another; I sang the three or four lines I know in English, but read the rest of the lyrics off of the little half-sheet that had been passed out before the service.

The French family, with their phenomenally good singing voices, had left in the early morning, but the little church was still filled by European ex-pats from all over northern Morocco, as well as the same nuns who had joined us last night.

One of the monks had asked us to sing an American carol after the Eucharist. After a little discussion, we had decided on Silent Night. There was a little confusion when we got the nod - were we supposed to go up to the front or stay put? - but we stood up and sang it. It was warmly received, with big smiles and even a few people joining in, in French and German.

Not long afterwards, we exchanged the "kiss of peace". Some said "Peace be with you", some said "Joyeux Noel", some said "Merry Christmas", but everyone was generous and loving. After embracing nearly everyone in the church, I felt a warm glow that made me not only not miss being with my American family, but genuinely grateful to be exactly where I was, surrounded by my Peace Corps family and this loving group of Christians.

After the service was lunch, which was more European than last night's dinner (taharirt and shlatta with mashed potatoes) had been. It featured olives, pickles, pate, baguettes, and several kinds of wine. This is a French order of monks, after all. :)

I sat between the oldest member of the monastery - the last survivor of the Algerian massacre - and a younger monk. Both were fun to talk to. Sharing my table were a few other volunteers and some French women, including one who had lost her husband recently. She was as grateful as I was to have this beautiful community to spend Christmas with.

After lunch, we walked around the grounds a bit, and then we PCVs left to join other friends. We made a chicken and mashed potato Christmas feast, then did a White Elephant - slash - Bad Santa - slash - Yankee Swap gift exchange. I offered up the coffee press I'd inherited from the previous volunteer in my site, and got a Mexican leather change purse.

Around midnight, I tried to call my family, 8 hours and 10,000 miles away in California, but couldn't get through. Apparently, every other American expat on the planet was also trying to call the US, and the circuits were flooded. But I tried again the next morning, and was able to talk to my folks. (It meant waking them up in the middle of the night, but they swore they didn't mind. :) )

Christmas in Morocco, 2008.

...and there was great rejoicing. :D

1/5 Worlds Collide...

Setting: the tranzit into SouqTown yesterday.

The driver (butranzit) doesn't have an assistant today, which means he needs to collect the fares himself. He pulls the tranzit over a mile shy of SouqTown. He climbs down out of the driver's seat and comes around to the back. The side door doesn't work, so everyone boards and exits the tranzit through the back door. He works his way through the aisle, collecting cash from each of us. The guy behind me hands him a 200Dh note for his 20Dh ride. Butranzit makes a face, and tells him he'll need to wait a bit to get his change. I give him a 100Dh note for my 25Dh ride (I live further out), and apologize for not having the correct change. "Makkain mushkil," he reassures me. No problem. He immediately hands my 100Dh to the guy behind me.

While waiting for my own change, I keep watching him. I've never been cheated by a driver, but others have, and I don't mind being attentive for a few minutes. I notice the woman kittykorner back from me. She's holding out a handful of coins which she jingles at butranzit, but he ignores her and moves further forward in the tranzit. The woman is wearing the traditional garb of our region - a white, loose-fitting garment gathered at the shoulders, reminiscent of ancient Rome, overtopped with an aHandir, a black cloak woven with tribe-specific patterns. From the clothes and her wide eyes, I deduce that she leaves her bled village rarely if ever. Many Berber women are moving confidently into the 21st century, but some, like this old Mahallu (granny), are firmly rooted in the last millenium - or maybe one of the ones before that. She lives an agrarian life, growing the food her family eats and cooking it over an open wood fire. Her brown, wrinkled face reminds me of a dried-apple doll I once made for a school project.

After butranzit has collected fares from everyone else, and given all of us our change, he returns his attention to this Mahallu. He looks down at the hand still proffering change. There are coins worth 5Dh and even 10Dh, so I'd initially thought that she was holding some of them. The frustration on his face suggests that the palmful of coins are all worth 1Dh or less. He grumbles a phrase I missed, but whose tone said, "Are you kidding me?" Mahallu waves her other hand down at the plastic bags by her feet. In a staunch voice she announces, "I have vegetables in the bag. Do you want to take some of them?"

And suddenly this tiny vignette is a metaphor for the entire Berberville-SouqTown region. Mahallu, with her shriveled-apple face and bag of vegetables, represents the traditional, agrarian economy, based on agriculture and barter. Butranzit, with his fistful of dirhams, represents the modern, service-oriented, cash-based economy. And there they stood, facing off squarely, separated by millenia while less than a foot apart.

He finally shrugged, mumbled something, and climbed out through the back door. He didn't take the woman's few coins or her vegetables, but instead reminded himself that acts of charity are one of the pillars of Islam, and will weigh against sins on the day of judgment.

1/4 Happy Orbit Day

Today I completed another lap around the sun. :)

There is no tradition of birthday celebrations in Morocco. I'm not sure whether this is a cultural or a religious thing; the phrase "Happy Birthday" does exist (3id Milad Sa3id) but this is in Classical Arabic, which bears the same relationship to Moroccan Arabic as Latin does to English: it's the origin, and really-well-educated or super-religious people will recognize it, but it's foreign to the illiterate women I spend most of my time with.

My PCV friends more than made up for this, though; I was in SouqTown, and I got birthday hugs from Ilham, Brahim, 3dam, Forbes, LaHcen, Sku, and Halima, plus a homemade chocolate cake (with icing and sprinkles!) from Jamila, and a present from RaHma. Only the out-of-town PCVs missed it, and they posted Happy Birthday messages on my Facebook page (where their messages joined those of tons of PCVs from my stage from all across the country, and more from non-Peace Corps friends!). Plus I got Happy Birthday text messages from lots of PCV buds. In fact, today might hold the record for the number of Happy Day wishes I've ever received. :D

And LaHcen, the PCV who lives closest to SouqTown, told everyone that it was my 3id Milad. Imagine my surprise when I picked up a soda from the buHanoot near the hotel and heard a hearty, "3id Milad, Kawtar!"