Running and Not-Running

Since January 8th I've been training for the Marrakech half marathon (13.1 miles) on the 31st of this month. Due to the close proximity of the race, the trick has been to increase mental and physical endurance to an adequate level within the time frame without injuring myself. So far, so good. Occasionally I am accompanied by my friend Abderrahim, heading out on the long, flat road west of town toward a neighboring village. Early in the morning, running alongside the groves of olive trees and open fields, the air is cool and clean. On the return trip we run facing the mountains as the sun peeks out from behind the long range of snowy summits.

Today was the longest I'd gone yet- eight miles round trip, and I felt like I could have turned around and done it again. Luckily the part of me that desires to maintain functioning lower limbs intervened, though before long I will be making that return trip as, bit by bit, I add the miles.

It's funny how you start to think about it: "Ok, well today I ran eight miles, so if I just double that and then add ten more, I'm already at full marathon distance!!"

I've been thinking a lot about distance. And time-- how malleable it is, how we can adapt to great quantities of it. The time required for PC service and the recent running have had me considering how such blocks of time change-- that the time or distance can always be related to a greater or smaller quantity, and thus can quickly expand or shrink in one's perception. I find myself often thinking of the twenty seven months spent here in relation to the span of an average lifetime or full scope of potential experiences, so as to reduce it into something more mentally manageable. The remaining ten and a half months can seem like such a vast stretch, though one can simply step back and perceive it as almost nothing-- a mere blink. Depends on how you look at it. Completing a time or distance seems more feasible as one successfully endures more and more of it-- those great lengths become easier to conquer as your mentality adapts, and one can continue to push the boundaries. Interesting also how perhaps the amount of personal growth and development within this PC experience is, due to the nature of the circumstances and environment, much more so than what would "normally" unfold, though I suppose that's heavily dependent upon one's attitude. Here I think back to my life before Peace Corps. I can't say that's something I'd care to return to (family, friends, and the beautiful Midwest excluded, of course!), though everything has led me to here, and for that I can't help but appreciate all of it.

Is this getting too sappy?

me, warming up at dawn

 

Alfayn u 3chra

Stephanie came out to spend Christmas and New Year's with me-- her third trip to Amizmiz, the first being when we met last December at Ami's. It was a long-anticipated visit, as I had literally been counting down the days since her departure last May.

It was a nail-biting experience for the both of us as she waited to take her plane from London into Marrakech. Due to snow and bad weather, her initial flight was canceled and it didn't look like she'd be making it in any time soon with the holiday travel rush. It seemed for a bit there that our time would be cut frustratingly short, though just an agonizing day of waiting later, she miraculously made it over.

The visit was thankfully long and leisurely; we spent time cooking at my place, taking walks up the mountain road and the mountain itself, had lunch with TeaMaster and my good buddy Abdel Ali, saw the place where they turn olives into olive oil via horse, grinding stone, and press, a Moroccan cooking lesson, and had some good conversations with my friends and classmates from the neighborhood. Christmas Day evening we spent with Donniell, by the light of my humble fake tree adorned with dental floss strung popcorn, feasting on a holiday meal or our own creation, as well as three (three!) desserts prepared by my sitemate extraordinaire.

Several days after Christmas we left town for Taghazout, a small coastal town I had heard about from several other volunteers-- a supposedly quiet and beautiful place, perfect for a romantic seaside getaway in which to ring in the New Year. After a six-hour trip via bus, taxi, bus, taxi, and another bus, we rolled in to town. Some hasty negotiations for an apartment stay and an exploratory walk around later, we realized we had come to a trashy, smelly tourist trap overrun with surfers. We spent some time searching for those quiet beaches, but only found stretches with garbage literally strewn thickly across the shore. We did find a rocky area near a heavily trafficked and camel-ridden (yes) footpath on which we were able to watch a distant area of beautiful surf:

Over dinner that night at our candlelit table plagued by the subtle-but-pervasive bouquet of rotting fish, scraggly stray animals, and repeated visits by a paint-huffing local, we opted to bail out of town early the next morning in order to spend New Year's Eve at my cozy residence. The travel gods were not looking upon us favorably on the return trek, however, as every step of our journey was a headache. BUT we did make it back safe and sound, even watching the clock of my computer turn to midnight in the seconds before falling asleep. Thusly went our twenty-four hour romantic seaside getaway.

It was tough to part ways last Monday, and I've had a bit of post-visit blues, though I'm getting back into the swing of things now. There's lots to work on and keep busy with. I'm going to begin building a website for the Amizmiz cultural tourism project. Just as I had resumed attending my English class, we were informed that the landlord needed the garage we use as our classroom, and went to find a big padlock across the door bolt. Our scheduled time normally spent in class each evening has been temporarily replaced by nightly walks around the neighborhood until we acquire a new place.

Lots to look forward to (visit to San Francisco in May, anyone?); I'm excited about the project here, and everything to come this year. Onward...

AIWA Craft Fair & Mid-Service Meds

I spent the first third of this month in Rabat, initially to attend a craft fair I was co-coordinating, followed by dental and medical checkups as well as a few meetings with Peace Corps staff.

Not really too much exciting to report, I'm afraid. The craft fair was held in the gymnasium of the Rabat American School, which is a surreal little bubble of high school Americana, like someone air-lifted a campus right out of the U.S. and deposited it smack-dab in the middle of the capital of Morocco. The idea of the fair itself is that it provides artisans from across the country an opportunity to display and sell their wares as well as make contacts, take orders, etc. I took over the organizational aspects from another volunteer who ended up not being able to attend. Most of my duties ended once we had all arrived and set up; I spend the rest of the day avoiding the delicious bake sale happening in the cafeteria. Imagine a bunch of moms in Santa hats and kitschy Christmas sweaters smiling at you from behind long folding tables loaded with delicious homemade cookies and cakes and pies and so forth-- that's exactly what it was.

The next week was spent traversing between my hotel room, PC Headquarters, various medical-type offices, and spending more money on single meals than I do for a week's worth of vegetables in my site. I'm happy to report that I have no cavities or parasites! Apparently I've lost sixteen pounds since coming to country as well. As there was a lot of down time, I explored the city, revisited the ancient Chellah ruins, took several trips to the beach at night, and caught up with my stage-mates. Oh, the US Ambassador to Morocco, who lives in Rabat, invited us all over to his house for dinner one evening. Very fancy.

It was good to see everyone again-- the last scheduled meeting (as far as I know) for us as a group until our COS (Completion Of Service) interviews and medicals next year. I only have eleven months left. *jaw drops*

Sooooo-- what else? It's gotten chilly here now, to the point where I keep my long johns on pretty much 24/7 and have connected a continuous intravenous drip of hot tea to myself. I have a Christmas tree in my living room. It even has blinking lights. And tomorrow I'm going to the Marrakech airport to pick up a visitor I've been waiting for for what seems like a looooong time...

Thanksgiving & l3id lKbir Round Two

Before getting to the gore, I'd like to briefly recount this past Thursday's Thanksgiving extravaganza, hosted and attended by myself and my fantastic sitemate.

Donniell arrived in the early afternoon, dead-but-still-warm chicken in tow, and wasted no time preparing the feast. Deftly concocting a homemade stuffing, she proceeded to fill the bird's recently vacated cavity and lavished its plucked skin generously with butter and spices.

Six and a half hours later, we removed it from my humble oven, crisp and golden on the outside, juicy within. Garlic mashed potatoes came into existence, as did creamed peas and a bit of gravy. I was quite impressed.

It was all delicious, devoured voraciously yet appreciatively. Second helpings were conquered in a fashion analogous to trudging up a mountainside in knee-high snow with a weighty backpack, but lacking the sense of healthy accomplishment and vitality afterward.

Normally I would not feel compelled to persist in or even attempt such a feat, but such meals as rare-- I'd have to say that Donniell's creation was the most "home"-like of any food yet during the past fifteen months, and even the scent of the cooking itself was enough to induce warm, fuzzy, curl-up-in-front-of-the-fireplace-next-to-the-dog yearnings. And feast or not, I'm lucky to have someone around to spend the day with. Feels like I've been away from home a long time.

Next holiday:

Some of you might recall last year's depiction of l3id lKbir, perhaps Morocco's biggest holiday in terms of food, festivity, and sheep slaughter. Though I'd like to divert the focus away from the gruesome and entertaining aspects of the celebration in favor of the more wholesome and boring ones, I did witness a jaw-dropping moment during the disemboweling of the animal that I cannot resist writing about here. Upon removing the lungs from the inverted and dangling sheep's chest cavity, the friendly man spattered in blood held them up by the still-attached esophagus for all to see. He then blew forcefully into the esophageal opening, causing the lungs to inflate fully-- pink, glistening, and strange in the morning sun. It was so cool.

The afternoon consisted of a bottomless glass of sweet tea and delicious grilled skewers of fat-wrapped liver (*drool*) at a friend's house. A group of about thirty American students from an organization called Morocco Exchange was staying in town with host families for a couple of nights, and I spent most of their time here with them as they witnessed the holiday in full maroon splendor.

Yesterday evening after devouring an impressive portion of the biggest and most delicious dish of couscous I've had yet in Morocco, we found ourselves in a corner of the neighborhood, underneath an intoxicatingly-scented night blooming tree, watching a frenzy of drummers and dancers in the night as the glow from a fire reached up the walls of the surrounding houses. One of those moments of awe, wherein the experience is so visceral and surreal-- witnessing the spirit of the celebration in everyone, watching the people I've become such good friends with in their element, realizing just where I'm standing and what I'm seeing. This is a pretty amazing place to be.

This afternoon the kids are parading through the streets. I hear them chanting in droves as they taunt the harrma-- the stick-wielding man dressed in sheepskin who threatens to hit you if you don't fork up a coin or two. Unfortunately for me, I have to make my way across town to visit the host family. It's a long walk and I know they are out, there prowling the alleyways...

Cultural Tourism, Maybe?

Here's a basic framework for the system I'd like to implement:

Concept:
Visiting tourists participate in a variety of cultural activities utilizing local resources. All aspects of coordination and execution will be carried out and sustained by locals.

Goals:
Boost economic opportunity for businesses and individuals in the area, offer new avenues of income to explore and develop. Empower local entrepreneurs, introduce possibility, encourage creative thinking. Integrate local elements. Provide a positive experience for visitors, encouraging return trips and word-of-mouth exposure.

Elements:

• GUIDES: Available for contact info, to facilitate motions between the different activities, translation, and introduction to homestay families

• HOMESTAYS: Local families willing to host visitors

• TREKKING: L___ leads short daytrips through the mountain trails. J___ leads multi-day trips during which groups stay overnight with Berber families in small mountain villages

• COOKING CLASSES: Lessons with willing locals-- perhaps homestay families, couscous co-op?

• POTTERY VISITS: Observe potters at work, visit various stations around the neighborhood, witness preparation, throwing and firing. Possible participation? Opportunity to purchase authentic items

• HOTELS: Maroc Lodge, Le Source Bleu, both on the outskirts of the neighborhood

• ADVERTISING: website, wikitravel, brochures distributed in Marrakech and beyond!

Questions/Needs/Initial steps to take:

Availability:

• Who is available to work as guides during the visits?
• Which families are willing act as homestay hosts?
  
• Which potters are willing to be part of this idea?
• What are the potters willing to offer in terms of demonstration, explanation, or even visitor participation?

Pricing:

• Guides, homestay families, potters, trekking guides, and those hosting cooking classes will need to be compensated for their time, work, and materials. Talk to the community. Figure out and agree upon pricing for each. We need a simple system-- a "menu" of activities and their prices.
• How, when and whom will the visitors pay?
• How will payment be distributed to the appropriate parties?

Advertising:

• Who pays for web hosting?
• Who pays for printing of brochures?
• Where can we have this done? Who will design them?
• Can we obtain funding from outside sources to take care of this initial cost?

Friday Seafood Buffet:

• ....wait, what?

The Good With the Bad

It's been a whirlwind of a week.

Ami, my sitemate extraordinaire and partner in crime here in the High Atlas foothills, screeched off into the sunrise via grand taxi and dust cloud this past Tuesday, having completed her service. Woo hoo!

She's really been a big sister to me,-- helping me out, keeping me involved, and checking in on me, especially during those first few painful months of homestay. I am forever indebted to her for letting me use her hot shower. Oh, and for introducing me to a young lady I've grown pretty fond of in the last year... A true friend, I'm lucky to have shared this experience with her. I really couldn't have asked for anyone better. She did an admirable job here, and it's been great to watch her flourish as a Volunteer, and to see her influence among the community. I've really looked up to her. Now she's off to go to grad school and get married; I'll be seein' her in May when I fly out to San Francisco for the wedding.

I'm thrilled to announce the arrival of my new sitemate, Donniell, who showed up one week ago today! I won't write too much so as not to embarrass her, but I will say that I'm really glad she's here and I'm looking forward to our coming year together. She's got a great attitude and sense of humor about it all, and I think she'll do really well here. She'll be working at the local dar chebab, (basically the Moroccan equivalent of a YMCA) doing Youth Development.

Hard to believe I'm a second year Volunteer now. One year to go. Everyone says this one flies by before you can blink, and I believe it. In one sense I feel like there's so much to figure out, like I'm always a beginner. Though I can say that I have a foundation now and with that, the confidence that follows familiarity and a learned ability to approach the unknown with enthusiasm rather than a bristle. There's a feeling of momentum-- of finding a stride, and that's invigorating. I think these 2nd year pants will fit just fine.

____________________________

It's with a heavy heart that I write to you of the passing of SoYoun Kim, a Youth Development volunteer from my stage. She died this past Monday in a Marrakech hospital from an unexpected illness.

I recently spent some time with SoYoun, as she was one of the volunteers who hosted the pottery workshop discussed in my previous posting. She was ill when I saw her, though no one at the time imagined it would lead to such an end.

She was such a spirited, bright, creative and giving person. One of those rare individuals that seemed to be truly in love with her experiences-- someone who paid attention and took great joy in the simple moments and interactions that make up our everydays. We'll miss her greatly.

Pottery Apprenticeship Focus Group

I spent the last week of October in a small town near the edge of the Sahara attending a pottery workshop organized by two fellow Volunteers. As the tentative schedule had indicated that we would be learning intricate design and traditional decorative methods, I was initially hesitant to make the trip, thinking that I wouldn't be learning anything applicable to my own group of potters, whose work involves no sort of decoration at all. I quickly reconsidered, however, after considering the potential connections to be made, the opportunity to travel to a new area of the country as well as see some friends, and hey, it just might be fun after all. Having come to a head with my work situation at site and with no clear direction or new ideas to pursue, I bought a bus ticket, and off I went through twisting mountain passes and plateaued Martian expanses to the softly sculpted dunes and wild palmeries of the southeastern country.


The majority of our time was spent at a local pottery cooperative under the guidance of a very talented artisan, practicing a variety of techniques-- from throwing the pottery from raw clay on wooden kick wheels to cleaning and designing our pieces. We did small relief carvings on tiles, henna decorating, cloth bleaching, painting, and glazing. We saw their methods of clay gathering (they dig deep tunnels and mine it from under a dry river bed... I crawled down in one and had a look), preparation, and firing in the kilns. A good week, overall, despite a brief-but-violent mysterious illness during which I could not stand without throwing up, and vivid colors pulsed across my fevered vision. (Perhaps someone slipped some "Saharan Special" into my tea...) And I'll tell you, it's quite a feeling to stare up at the night sky knowing you're at the edge of an ocean of sand so vast it's near impossible to contemplate.


What I had not initially realized was that our group, a collection of PCVs, was in fact a group of guinea pigs-- a test group for a tourism project being implemented at the local pottery co-op. We were given the opportunity to come learn some new methods of the craft while simultaneously going through the motions of the workshop to help work out the kinks for future groups. It was this realization that sparked an idea-- I should do this in my town.

Working to establish such a system would be a matter of connecting the right elements and people, most of which are already present and available in my area. If anything, I could work to build a framework for these kinds of visits to take place in a self-sustaining manner after my departure-- tours of the pottery production as well as connecting tourists with local hotels, trekking guides, the couscous co-op, and any other points of interest I can think to incorporate wherein the community would benefit. There have already been "guinea pigs" for a test run, too: a group of American college-age students came to town about a month a go with a program called Morocco Exchange, and we did an abbreviated version that went really well. My biggest concern would be to develop the tours in such a way that visitors would truly be beneficial to the potters' business, not invasive or burdensome.

I don't know if I've ever explained this before, but as SBD Volunteers we work with the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism, Artisans, and Social Economy via artisans and entrepreneurs on a grassroots level as part of an initiative to "build capacity through skills training and limited logistical support in areas of product quality and service, business planning and management, organizational development, and individual empowerment/community leadership." In this scenario I would not be working literally side-by-side with the potters, as I initially attempted, but would yet be working to boost their economic opportunity as well as that of others. Who knows what kinds of developments, product-wise, business-wise or otherwise, could take place as a result.

Truthfully, it's an idea I am a tad reluctant to mention at such an early stage, but it seems appropriate to record here. The majority of this experience involves figuring things out (or not) as I go, and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I knew what I was doing all along.............HAH