Ok ya'll, this is the first time that I've written a post from somewhere other than the living room of my new house. That said, if I come off as snippy or weird it's because my souq town is hot, noisy, and smelly. That's the first thing that hits me when I get to my souq town each week. I exit my nice breezy transit van and I am nearly floored every time by the overwhelming sensory experience that is souq town. We have about 13 volunteers stationed around this particular souq town, and we see each other on a weekly basis, give or take.
Souq day is the day that the weekly market rolls into town. The vendors serve as many towns as they can/want to on a weekly cycle. Therefore there is usually a souq of some sort going on in a village on the mountain every day of the week. My souq town, however, is large enough that I have access, not only to a sizeable souq, but also to cyber cafés, restaurants, a hotel with a western shower, established stores selling everything from veggies, to underwear, to motor oil, to beds, to electronics, and "authentic" Rolexs, tutors, and occasionally one Dirham soft serve. The latter being the holy grail of any souq town trip. Souq is also the only place you are likely to see many of your fellow volunteers at once. We all have the same souq town and souq is the same day for all of us, and ostensibly we are all here for the same reason. Souq is much much more than that though…
The sun here is intense, where it is merely a little aggressive up on the mountain where I live. If the smell of goat dung, earth, and the river is like someone singing softly in the background of the larger song of my little town, then the smell of trash, grease, and humanity in my souq town is like the sweaty muscle-bound lead singer of a metal band growling death and destruction into a mike ratcheted all the way up on the sound board. The flies here are an aggressive sort that seem to stay six inches behind the top of your head and are impossible to disperse or dissuade. The people are really friendly though, and I am slowly building a community of folks who know and like me. For example…
The guy I got my speakers from offered me a complimentary cup of coke today when I bought a USB drive. This is after he had to hoof it to his store room (a ten minute roundtrip) to get one with eight gigs on it because I wanted it and he didn't have it with him. My favorite chicken restaurant is run by two brothers who both know me by name and give me free tea whether I want it or not. The lady at my cyber not only makes eye contact but smiles shyly at me when I come in now. This only took two months to accomplish, Moroccan woman DO NOT interact with men they don't know in public. The guys at my favorite café like to test my, now feeble, Spanish and will sit and play rummy with me when the shop is slow. I could mention a few more but you get the idea…
I don't know what the ideally integrated volunteer is, or if I should be picking places to shop and frequent based on the advice of other volunteers. There is something to be said for a united front after all. However, I do know that I'm creating a group, strike that community, of people who know me and treat me as an individual. It very well may be, that to almost everyone in my souq town I am nothing more than a walking dollar sign with a pasty complexion and strangely colored eyes, but to a very few I am Jamal who speaks a little Tamazight and likes to make silly jokes. That fact, and not much else, makes going to my souq town every week a pleasure that I look forward to. The heat, the smell, the flies, the trash, the greasy food; all these things melt away when I think about going to see my friends. That's what going to souq is all about for me.
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