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.