Headin Up Nawth

In just another day here I'll be making my way up to Rabat for COS Conference. We'll have dental and physical checkups, an exit interview with the Country Director, and a couple days of conferences relating to the transition to life following Peace Corps. Just imagine: as you go about your week, there will be approximately fifty Americans running around the Moroccan capital, home to the King and the 2020 Summer Olympics, each with a small white cup held delicately within an innocuous brown paper bag, on a mission to deliver a sample of his or her own-- well, you know-- to the lab before the time limit expires. 

Been keeping busy here. My sitemate and I realized that, though I will be returning to Amizmiz on Oct. 4th, she will be away until much later this month, giving us precious little time to enjoy each other's company before I head outta here for good, and she gets a newbie to haze. We've been making more effort than usual to cook dinners and watch bad tv together in the past week. Sushi? Chicken nuggets? Green beans and mashed potatoes? American-style hamburgers? Bread pudding? The occasional adult beverage? Mm hm. 

Speaking of the new volunteer-- my replacement-- the only detail we know is that it will be a guy. He is not yet aware, but the plan is for him to take my house as soon as he finishes homestay, thus saving myself and him a huge pain moving all of my crap across town and back. Hopefully he will be in agreement.

I've consolidated things around the house, figuring out what I'll need to ship back, what will go to my sitemate, what will stay for the new volunteer, and what I'll lug to France, Denmark, and eventually Illinois with me. I've ended up needing to take home much less than initially anticipated, which is a relief. I thought I'd be paying a fortune on airline extra baggage fees or shipping to America, but that seems to have mostly been avoided. There is even room for gifts-- any specific requests, by the way? Now is the time!

When I return from Rabat I'll have a few open weeks here, during which I hope to take care of said shopping, wrap things up with the counterpart, and I should probably start saying my goodbyes little by little. I'm anticipating that time to go quickly. The new volunteer arrives on Halloween for site visit-- a period of five days during which we go around and meet the necessary people, register him with the gendarmes, and give him a crash course on Amizmiz. Then he'll head out until to go swear in as a volunteer, and will return on the 25th for good, almost two weeks after my departure.

Also, it seems that over the course of the last few months I have written a little album- a collection of songs, if you will. Thanks to this here geetar and computer, I was able to do so. Not sure how it came to be, but it did! Almost done. Just finishing up the last song, then I'll post a link to the whole thing here if anyone is interested. And no, it does not sound like "Moroccan" music...

Beyond Ramadan

On my way back to site from a day trip into the city on September 9th, I heard whisperings of the next day being l3id sghir, the holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. Sure enough, the following morning white djellaba'd men filled the streets, calls echoed from the mosques, and I found myself at a neighbor's house, wide-eyed and buzzing as glass after glass of tooth dissolvingly sweet tea coursed through my veins.

I had ended my fast several days prior, due to a weird stomach issue and the Peace Corps doctor's recommendation that I resume eating as normal. Oh well-- close enough, right?

Things have returned to normalcy relatively quickly, it seems. School will be starting before long, and the roundabout at the main entrance to town, a popular between-class hangout, is already filled with loitering youth. Cafés are packed with men half-hidden behind a veil of cigarette smoke, and the streets are a-bustling with the drones of motorbikes and groans of transport vans. People have resumed conversing with one another beneath my windows at great length and maximum volume, often from tens of feet apart. Nice to see some life back into everything.

I'm anticipating my friend Abderrahim's return any day now. As I wrote previously, he's been working near Rabat for most of the summer but will return to continue his studies at university in Marrakech. Also attending will be my good buddy and cousin of Abderrahim, Aziz, who passed the ominous "Baccalaureate" exam this past spring. Aziz has only left Amizmiz a handful of times in his entire life, despite being twenty-two. As a result, he has no stomach for vehicular transportation and tends to spend the duration of his rides heaving into plastic bags, much as he did on the two hour, four bus round-trip fun-time excursion to register for classes last week. Poor guy. It's going to be a rough commute every day, but I hope he will adjust quickly. He does, too.

September 9th also happened to mark the two year anniversary of my stage's arrival in country, which is a strange fact to process. People ask whether the time has passed quickly or slowly, to which I can never articulate an answer. The passing of time has been quite the enigma of my Peace Corps experience, tending to expand and contract, accelerate and slow, and in retrospect, often seeming like all simultaneously. Recalling those first days and months, it feels like so long ago, yet I remember it as crisply and vividly as though it were yesterday (erm, perhaps even more so)-- the grand mystique in everything that has since become the mundane. I still glimpse it often, though these days it comes as a passing appreciation rather than sustained awe. Family and places back home have remained familiar as always, but life before Morocco feels truly like another existence entirely.

September 12th marked two months until COS! I'm officially done November 12th and fly out the 13th. I've started to have dreams about it, even. I must be excited. Beginning later this month and continuing into early October we'll have COS conference in Rabat, which involves prepping for departure, wrapping up this and that, and medical/dental checkups. Fingers crossed for two years of remaining parasite free!