Fallout…

Well my dear blog readers it has happened again. I have wasted a perfectly good day or two trying to travel around the king's schedule. The last two weeks have been (and continue to be) something of a perfect storm of fallout for me, by which I mean that I continue to struggle with and work around the secondary and tertiary effects of events completely outside of my control. Let's take things in order. First of all, I'm not sure if everyone (or anyone) back home is aware, but a Volunteer serving in Morocco died recently. This, as you can imagine has sent shockwaves through the volunteer community and particularly the second year small business development and youth development groups. Second, shortly after her death we ran into l'eid kbir (pronounced laid ka-beer), which meant travel restrictions, social obligations, etc… Last but not least, the king came to my province which, while exciting, meant that all of the transportation the usually runs on a schedule abandoned their schedule, ran when they felt like running and left those of us not in the know hanging out to dry.

    This month I have been to Rabat twice. This is extraordinary and extraordinarily expensive. The first time I went to Rabat it was for the memorial service for my Peace Corps sister who, at only 23 years of age, was taken long before her time. It was a beautiful service and I would do absolutely nothing different if I had it to do over again. After all, if volunteers don't come together to support each other in time of need who will? However that basically cost me a week in site. This is a price that is difficult for me to pay right now because I am working on projects that require me to be in site right now.

    After that came L'eid Kbir. L'eid, as we call it, literally translates to the big feast. It is, as you might expect the biggest feast of the Muslim year and such an event that people travel from every part of Morocco to every other part in a rush to be with friends and family. As a result of the extraordinary travel conditions that are part and parcel of this holiday the Peace Corps heavily restricts travel during this time for Volunteers. Basically I yo-yoed from being stuck out of site to being stuck in site. What's more, the familial and social obligations inherent in this holiday mandated that I spend several days straight eating three meals a day with my landlord's family and my host family. It's not that I mind this at all, but this time I had no say in the matter.

The other interesting thing about l'eid is the menu, it's a sheep. Not just sheep meat, a whole sheep, all of it. I mean ALL OF IT. Right down to the eyeballs (which I was forced to tactfully refuse twice). I ate pretty much everything else though, liver, kidneys, intestines, stomach, lungs, heart, the fatty stuff under the skin, and of course brains. It was interesting and I found myself liking a lot of things that I thought that I wouldn't (brains with scrambled eggs isn't that bad). However, once again, the fallout was several days of touch and go intestinal distress.

    Immediately after l'eid the king came to town. I know what you're thinking, Presidential candidates criss-cross the states four or five times during the course of a presidential campaign not to mention the kind of travel they do when serving as President. It should be easy and fairly commonplace for the King of Morocco to hit every province once a year given how small this country really is. You would be wrong. The king makes his rounds on something like a decade rotation for the whole country. He hits each province about once every ten years. However, the south hasn't seen him in longer than that. I have been told that this is because there was an attempt on the last king's life perpetrated by a group of conspirators from somewhere in the southern provinces. As a result the south hasn't been graced by his majesty's presence in quite some time. This made his visit a big event.

When the King rolled into town everything stopped. Everything. His entourage requisitioned government buildings to put up his security detail. The local governmental institutions went nuts. Most importantly, for me anyway, the transportation infrastructure went completely haywire. They moved the bus and taxi stands across town. The Transit vans that I usually ride to and from site changed both times and locations. Some transport simply stopped running, and the population in whatever town the king was in tripled because of his security needs and curious out-of-towners.

The last thing that one need understand about the king visiting is that rumors fly thicker than flies in a pig sty. If it is rumored that the king will be going to some town in the next few days then every single transit, taxi, bus, and pick-up truck going to or from said location will be completely crammed full of people trying to see him. It doesn't matter if he shows up or not, they will still go in droves. It doesn't seem to matter that most of the time these rumors are simply that, rumors. People will still stop everything and go.

It was during this madness that I was called back to Peace Corps central to attend a meeting of the Volunteer Advisory Council. I'm just a back-up rep. for my class, but my lead rep. had a conflict so I was called into play. At this point people from the north who had come south to see family/king were beginning to trickle back north, and everything going north was completely full. For the first time ever I saw a taxi stand run short on taxis. Buses wouldn't even stop at cities between the stand they were leaving from and their final destination because they were crammed to the gills right off the bat. It was completely maddening.

I am more than happy that I am able to represent my fellow volunteers, and grateful that the king would finally roll through the southern provinces. However, combined with l'eid travel insanity and the extraordinary travel demands of this month already layered on me, by the end I was simply begging for mercy and praying for transport. The fallout has been extraordinary this past couple of months and I'll be happy when I can finally dig myself out from underneath all of this and start teaching English in my site. Hold on guys, I'm coming home I promise!

Loss and Hardship…

    A lot of what Peace Corps volunteers talk about is possibility and promise. We tend to be unabashedly positive people. However, recently Peace Corps Morocco was forced to acknowledge the negative possibilities that we walk along side throughout the course of our service. A volunteer from one of the southern provinces died unexpectedly on the afternoon of November 17^th in a hospital in Marrakech. We can't know the details of her passing due to the strictures of the confidentiality agreement we all sign at the beginning of our service. Despite this the volunteers close to her have put the pieces together and have determined a few illuminating things.

    First, we know that she was sick for about a month before being forced to seek medical help. On the morning of the 17^th her illness escalated rapidly, resulting in extreme nausea and a blinding headache. She was then taken to a hospital nearby where they determined that they could do nothing to help her. Afterwards they transferred her to the larger hospital in Marrakech where she died late in the afternoon with a Peace Corps medical officer by her side.

    She was twenty three years old. She was a member of my Peace Corps family, and though I only met her once I feel her loss keenly. We volunteers, especially those of us far from Rabat and the well served Northern provinces; often feel that we are our first and best support network. We are a family. To lose one of our own unexpectedly in this way can be devastating even to those who aren't close.

    Last Saturday, as of the writing of this post, less than a week after her death; her friends, her Peace Corps family, gathered in Rabat to pay homage to her life with us and the loss we all feel. I went, personally, because many of my friends were very close with her and I felt it was important to support them. The memorial service took place in the Peace Corps compound on a beautiful sunny morning. I remember being able to smell the sea that morning as a fresh breeze came in off the Atlantic. As if the earth itself was trying to fill the void we all felt as her body winged toward the other side of the sea.

    Her friends stood in front of us to share the ways that their sister had affected their lives. Her program staff stood up to say a few words about the work she had done and the lives she had touched. The Peace Corps librarian stood up to tell us about his relationship to her, she was a particularly widely read PCV, and during his speech something happened that sticks in my mind. He said, choking through tears, that he was sorry she had to die in his country.

    Now, almost five days later I can't let go of that moment in my mind. She had to die here. Why did he phrase it like that? Africa, the continent that probably birthed humankind has probably drunk more blood than any other place on earth. That is part of why we are here, because so much of that blood has been shed by innocents and bystanders in seemingly unending conflict. Some places are so soaked in human blood that the locals claim it has turned the soil red. Why? To what end have all of these lights been extinguished before their time? Is it really necessary? These are, of course, questions that we are largely unable to answer.

    In this instance I can answer this question, at least partially. My sister, my friend, sold her life dearly. She opened up beautiful possibilities in the lives of both her fellow volunteers and the children she worked with in her site. She was teaching some of the kids in her youth house German. No other volunteer has done, or probably will do, that. She forced the shyest volunteer I know to share her life story in a way that made her want to do it. She brought art and life to people for whom pessimism, cynicism, and perhaps even despair were standard operating procedure. She pushed and pushed and pushed her friends and colleagues to focus on what could be and not what is. She was relentless. I met her once and instantly liked her. Was all this worth her life? Who can say, the knee-jerk reaction is always no to that question. It's inappropriate to react otherwise, especially to the loss of someone who is so young; someone whose life had only just begun.

    However, the cold reality of the situation is this; it's something that all Peace Corps Volunteers have to live with. We are living in a place, no matter what country we get posted to, that could take our life. We have come specifically because there aren't the services and support infrastructure that exist in the states. The odds of something like this happening are fairly low, but it does happen. I've heard that the life expectancy of a PCV is ten years lower than the national average in the US. I don't know if that's statistically accurate or not, but the principle holds for every single PCV I've met. We are people who value the quality of our lives over the number of years we live it. We push ourselves outside of what is comfortable and familiar, some of us do so recklessly. Maybe this is difficult for our loved ones to confront when stated so plainly, but it is an enduring fact. We are here giving it our best despite circumstance every day. We are here living our ideals. We are here for you, for each other, and for the dream that JFK stated so plainly when he sold his bold plan to congress. Look up the speech, it's beautiful. We are here, and here we will stay, each taking his or her turn, until we are no longer needed. We are here until that happy day when the dream of peace and equality for all is realized.

    This is why my sister, my friend, had to die. This is the price of that dream sometimes. So if you share that dream I urge you to pay homage to the loss of a young and bright life by putting your money where your mouth is. Go out and volunteer somewhere. Go give comfort to those who suffer. They are everywhere. If you truly regret her death then help us end the need. Help us make the world a better place for everyone who lives now and even those who do not yet draw breath. It's easy. It's necessary. You can do it now. Don't wait till tomorrow, or until after your hair appointment or until your rent check clears. Don't wait till someone in your life is suffering to see that the need is everywhere. Go. Help. Do it now. Thank you.