Madame Secretary?

    Two days ago I shook hands with our current Secretary of State a certain Hillary Rodham Clinton. Maybe you've heard for her. You may have even voted for her in the primaries. She visited Morocco during the time that my class was in In Service Training. This was no more than a fortuitous coincidence and I would not flatter myself by saying that she was in any way here on our account, but she still made time for us in her schedule which is nothing to be sneezed at. Mrs. Clinton is in many ways a personal heroine to me and many of my friends.

    Beyond our personal admiration for her she has positively affected all of our services regardless of our personal political beliefs. Allow me to elaborate. Our previous administration also had a female secretary of state, but unfortunately she was serving under a president who ended his tenure so universally maligned (if not outright hated) in Morocco that her position actually hurt people's opinion of her. This time around things are a little different. Our current president's very recent African heritage makes it very easy for people here to identify with him. Occasionally they seem to even take a little too much ownership of his success in my opinion, but I'm not here to judge or pick nits so I will gladly let that slide.

    Hillary's sister is also married to a Moroccan man and her in-laws still live here. When you combine the fact that she is part of an administration headed by a half African man who is actively reaching out to the Muslim world with her role in spearheading that effort and her personal connections to this country you find yourself hard pressed to find a way to make her more beloved here. As a woman in power she has conducted herself in a way that is both assertive and dignified. She is about as good as it gets when it comes to positive female role-models.

    With that in mind you begin to understand what an asset she is to a volunteer trying to open young girls' eyes to the possibilities that await them in a moderate, and actively reforming, muslim country. I have thanked God for her every time my host-sisters have re-opened a book after talking about her. She is the living embodiment of hope for young women who's intelligence and ambitions far outstrip the lives that their mothers live. Without Hillary what would we say to girls who are on the verge of dropping out of school, to girls who see few options other than marrying early and living with their husband's family, or to girls whose villages judge them, not by their brains, but by their bread.

    I would be shocked right out of my socks if Hillary Clinton ever read a single word of my humble blog, but on the off chance that this ever happens I just want to say thank you Hillary for inspiring our girls to shoot for the moon and for being generous enough with your time to shake my hand and ask me how I'm doing. You are truly a blessing to Peace Corps volunteers in this country and many others. Keep up the good work and see if you can't put a dent in the Israel issue while you're at it. Peace out y'all and keep reading. I'll be posting more and more often in the upcoming weeks.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

    My sitemate left our site for the last time today. We moved the majority of her stuff into the scary room in the middle of my house and she left our site to go to America. Home. I feel all kinds of things right now, but mostly I feel like I'm just gonna miss my sitemate. Time to get back in the saddle.

    A little bit about my sitemate first, my sitemate was a unique individual in my life. She grew up in Ohio and a huge fan of the buckeyes. She was a cheerleader for most, if not all, of high school and then left it all for the west coast. She went to a small school in southern California for her undergrad and spent a lot of her time on and around the beaches of orange county.

    One her first major travel experiences, definitely the one that got her interested in travel, was a semester with the Semester at Sea program. Through this program she hopped from port to port around the world for the course of an entire semester while taking courses for college credit. My sitemate saw the world for the first time. At this point she was hooked on travel. I'm not sure whether or not she applied to the Peace Corps during her last year of college or shortly thereafter, but apply she did and was eventually accepted to the program in Morocco as a health volunteer.

    As with most prospective volunteers, she had a little down time between the end of college and the beginning of Peace Corps. She elected to spend this time travelling Central America. Her original plan was to backpack all the way back up to America, but she was offered a job by a young man who runs a hostel in Panama while she was passing through. She and her backpacking buddy elected to stay on as hired help and my sitemate's employer eventually became much more. So it was that she left for the Peace Corps with an amazing experience working in Panama and a wonderful boyfriend.

    All this describes how my sitemate came to be in the Peace Corps, but it doesn't describe her as a person. My sitemate is a bubbly personality; one of those people who never seems to run out of energy. She is relentlessly positive and social which made her a shoe-in for most the most integrated volunteer in our class. In our village she was constantly making the social rounds in a way that I couldn't even if I had been as enthusiastic. Her position as an American woman gave her access to both the private world occupied by women and the public world occupied by men. Her work at the sbitar (health clinic) made her a trusted person in our community.

    With me it was a little different. She was my confidant, friend, and fellow spectator on the Amazigh world. We shared walks out under the stars and discussed our philosophies on life, love, politics and everything else. She is thoughtful, intelligent, and open-minded. We laughed at our foibles and the many aspects of Moroccan life which seem ridiculous and bizarre to American sensibilities. My sitemate was steady and always willing to talk if I needed to. There at the end she was even getting to be a pretty good cook. She is driven, curious, and dogged in her pursuit of new skills and interests.

    This was, and still is, my sitey. Dearest sitey you will be sorely missed. I wish you all the success in the world and feel safe in saying that you will find success in anything you attempt. There aren't enough of your kind in this world and my site is all the poorer for not having you in it. Be good and tell yo' man that I'm insanely jealous of the fact that you will be a part of his life and not mine. It's just not fair. Marhaba any time you want to come back. The fellas down at the commune won't stop talking about how much they miss you and our favorite landlord has almost come to tears a few times talking about it. You are wonderful, unique, and a blessing to those who know and love you. This tribute doesn't come close to doing you justice and I know it, but I also know that you are generous enough to forgive me this and the fact that I didn't say all this to you in person. Bye babe.