What it is….

    Ok, so I have just finished my second Khaled Hosseini novel about a semi-fictionalized war torn Afghanistan, and I think it's about time I waxed poetical on ya. I would first like to say that I am writing this on very little sleep so, be warned, this might very well not make any sense. That said I would like to reflect on the concepts of peace and freedom very briefly from the semi-unique vantage point of an American living in a tiny tiny Berber village on the roof of North Africa.

The first thing everyone reading this should know is that the word the people I live with use to refer to themselves is "Amazigh" which translates roughly as "the man who is free." In the plural, the Amazigh are the free people, and they come by this honestly. They have protected their freedom through force of arms, guile, and diplomatic shenanigans for well over seven thousand years in the high atlas mountains not to mention the rest of North Africa (apparently "Nile" is an Amazigh word). The only foreigners ever to make it to the high pass just past my site, which could rightly be called the beating heart of the Amazigh world, have been tourists. Let me repeat this for posterity, according to almost everyone I have spoken with so far THESE PEOPLE HAVE NEVER BEEN CONQUERED.

In other words, while America has all the pretty words and the slick lyrics about freedom, the Amazigh have ALL the street cred. When it comes to freedom, the people that I live with have an interesting take on things. Seemingly, to them, freedom means that you are free to do whatever it is you want within the strictures of Amazigh social structures. This mostly means that there are three societies. The first is the family, and young children get away with murder here. However, they all know what the consequences are if they get caught, but on the other hand there is no oversight. The tension here is that as long as you stick with people who either have no power or influence over you, other children, or people who will forgive you everything will be fine. The only rule, in a more cynical interpretation is, don't do anything in front of people who will tell on you unless the consequences don't matter to you. The funny thing is watching a dirty, snot nosed, barely clothed six year old run this calculus in their head before they pee in the street or throw a rock at a cat.

The second society is men's society. You enter this society at approximately puberty and are cemented as a member when you marry, but only if you are male. From what I've heard, this is actually the most restrictive of the three societies. This is because women occasionally float through this society as do the gendarmes and religious authorities. However, on the whole, on your average day in the tea shop men will usually talk politics, gossip, cars, music, and/or sex/women. They feel free to say things that have no basis in the rational world and everyone's opinion is weighed, some hold more weight than others, but if you are actually a member of men's society your voice can and will be heard. In the workplace I have seen the full gamut of behavior, from frantic activity that would put an ER nurse to shame to absolutely, no kidding for real, nothing. This suggests to me that one's productivity is largely a matter of personal choice and a testament to the personal freedoms that the Amazigh enjoy. This is, of course, highly dependent on the good graces of your co-workers and family, but the Amazigh push the extremes farther than anything that I have seen in the US.

Women's society, the third, is the one that I have the least direct experience of and the most respect for. This world is a bubble whose existence is hemmed in by, defined by, and occasionally in open defiance of men. It is a world of long days full of hard work, and worst case isolation. However, I personally would not want to live the life of a man who isolates his wife. Hell hath no fury and all that certainly applies. On the flipside women sit in front of their houses for hours talking, they visit each other as often as they can, and they practically run the fields here sometimes. There is certainly ample time to talk about things with each other that would curl your average man's toes and send him running to the mosque. Women's society is all about creating a safe space and utilizing that outlet to do whatever you want without regard to what may or may not be proper. This is, however, hearsay I cannot verify this paragraph directly and will not name names when it comes to who my sources are. Feel free to call this unmitigated BS if that is your preference, but this is what I have heard.

The dialectic tension between freedom and restriction here is very different from anything that I have seen in the states. Yet, despite the aspects of this social structure that chafe and feel smothering to my American sensibilities I am forced to admit that I have never seen people more likely to do absolutely anything at any given moment. This is the essence of freedom right? The ability to look up in the middle of whatever you are doing and decide to do something different whether that be sleeping at work, climbing from the inside of a van going 60 Kph to the roof without waiting for it to stop, to claiming out loud and in public that Allah has blessed you with a premonition that Barack Obama will become a formula one driver or soccer player, or even opening your home to someone you've known for moments for as long as they wish to stay free of charge. I have seen Amazigh people do all of these things without hesitation, and answer, if challenged, that they are "free to do as they wish, and who are you to say otherwise thank you very much; now get out of the way." If that ain't freedom I don't know what is…rock on free people! Till next time ya'll.

Happiness is a warm shower…

    Hygiene is my favorite Peace Corps paradox. We, as volunteers, are supposed to be shining paragons of American virtue. This, of course, includes being clean and presentable the vast majority of the time in our sites and when travelling. The problem is that attitudes toward personal hygiene are reflected in infrastructure. This means that, in a culture like ours, we include amenities in newly constructed houses like showers, hot running water, integrated indoor plumbing, and deep sinks that facilitate our daily hygiene habits. However, in a culture like Morocco's, the hygiene infrastructure included in newly constructed domiciles is much more limited as a reflection of slightly different attitudes towards personal hygiene.

    This is not to say that Moroccans are dirty. They most certainly are not! However, Moroccans, unlike most Americans, actively evaluate whether or not they are dirty and decide based on this whether or not to bathe on any given day. Americans, on the other hand, bathe according to a preset routine whether we need it or not. In my experience of rural Morocco there are certain hygiene activities which occur on a daily basis. These are the washing of the face and hands, for some this includes washing ones hair as well. These particular activities require very little in the way of constructed infrastructure, a bucket full of water will do nicely. It doesn't even really need to be heated, unless it's below freezing in your house.

    This puts PCVs in an interesting bind. Do we wake up each morning and take the hour or more required to execute a proper bucket shower? Do we forgo this extensive and intensive process and hope no one notices? What about the health ramifications? Boils are not unknown among the volunteers in Morocco. How long is it acceptable to go without a shower; one day, two days, or even a week? The Peace Corps Medical Officers say every two days is necessary, but what if your site only has running water for a few hours a day. You might not even do dishes every two days if that is the case.

    In this I am fairly fortunate. I have "running" water in my house all day every day, although the pressure sometimes leaves something to be desired. My bit l'ama (literally "water room"; read bathroom) is large enough to comfortably bathe standing upright in a bucket of heated water, and I have a kettle up to the task of heating enough water to bathe. As a result I bathe regularly. I know other PCVs who are not as fortunate, some have to hunch down to fit into their bit l'amas, some don't have running water in their houses consistently or even at all, and some still live with their host families. There are at least as many answers to the hygiene question as there are volunteers, and hygiene practices are often season and site specific. If you live in a cold site and don't sweat much or expose very much skin to dirt, then bathing doesn't seem as important. If your site is hot and the only relief you get is a cold water shower then you might take one or more showers every day.

    The take home message is this: do not judge a scruffy volunteer too harshly or quickly. This person may be dealing with circumstances you are unaware of and probably will never have to share. They may be cleaner than they appear under their untidy mane of shaggy hair and stained pants. They might just be getting back from a long trip on hot, dirty, and uncomfortable transportation. You might just look down one day and realize that you are not so clean yourself, so smile and shake hands with the scruffy among us. Jesus might not have lumped the crusty in with the peacemakers and the meek in that famous sermon, but you can be sure that in this particular situation he would have praised their courage and determination, if not their odor.

What A Job…

    The Peace Corps now asks us how far we will go. They used to tell us that this is the hardest job we will ever love. I'm not a hundred percent sold on either of those statements. This job takes you, not as far as you choose to go, but as far as the Peace Corps decides to take you. What if I get to my site and think, I want more… this isn't as far as I can go. There are a couple of volunteers who I think this might be true for. One of them lives in a large city in a nice apartment, he has a steadier gig than I do, far more like a straight job than anything that I have going, but he also lives in a little slice of America. I have to ask myself if he thinks that he could've gone farther, gone without the flat-screen and the six satellite networks he has access to. I have to admit that I wouldn't turn down any of the amenities that he has, but if I were in his situation I would have to say that yes, I can go farther.

I wouldn't say that this is the hardest job that I've ever loved either. I loved tree-climbing which was physically and mentally much harder in certain ways. However, I will say that the Peace Corps is as hard as you make it. I, like any volunteer, could choose to do more. I could plan out my every waking moment and dedicate myself to studying, integrating, doing projects, and communicating Moroccan culture back home more than I currently am. Maybe Peace Corps needs a new motto.

    I think that "choose your challenge" fits pretty well. There aren't a whole lot of things that we actually have control over in the Peace Corps, but our level of challenge is one of them. For every volunteer there is a certain baseline, some of us struggle with language more than others do, some of us take issue with certain aspects of Moroccan culture, some of us have a hard time just being in site, but for all of us there is a baseline which constitutes to degree to which the Peace Corps is a challenge for us every day. For some of us, that is enough; there is no need to go looking for challenges. Given the circumstances, survival presents enough of a struggle. For others there is more wiggle room, these folks have the good fortune of being able to pursue ambitious projects and make lots of Moroccan friends. They get to choose their challenge.

    I personally feel that it's too early in my service to nominate myself for one category or the other despite the fact that I have a big project in the works and several others in the pipeline. I'm not where I need to be in terms of language yet, and I'm integrating more slowly than my sitemate is. On the other hand our sectors are different and they require a different relationship with our community. The truth of the matter is that everyone's service is unique, and you never know what will have a lasting impact and what won't. Every day is different as well, some days it's all that you can do to get out of bed and keep breathing. Some days you end up leading an impromptu sing-a-long about the virtues of recycling in your town square. The one thing that is always true is that you, and only you, choose what kind of day today will be.

So get up, strap on your boots and make your choice. What kind of day will today be? Tomorrow, you can only live with what you've done, and yesterday you couldn't have possibly seen what was going to happen today. Today is different. Today is the day you get to choose your challenge. Today is the day that you get to say yes when life asks if you are up to the task at hand. Today is the day that you get to say I need to take care of me. Today is the day you get to say I have the opportunity and means to make something happen, to make someone smile, to make a cake, or to make a dent in my bed. What is important is that you recognize that tomorrow doesn't exist yet and yesterday is gone forever, but today is yours and yours alone and it's your decision. So what's it gonna be ya'll? Make the call, because it's all on you.

Souq Townage…

    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.

Morning in the New House…

    Today I woke up for the second time in my new house. It's an interesting sensation to be able to wake up alone, make coffee without being asked or offered breakfast, and generally pursue my morning at my leisure without regards to anyone else. It's the first time I've been able to do that in almost exactly two years. Talk about a breath of fresh air.

    Now don't get me wrong this is not the best living situation I've ever had. I'd give that honor to a certain house on the campus of Warren-Wilson College. However, right now I have high ceilings in a spacious apartment whose walls are covered in art that I inherited but enjoy. I have no dearth of fresh fruit and vegetables available to me and time to cook good and tasty meals. Aside from the fact that I live in a place where many of the amenities I once enjoyed are the stuff of fantasies for almost everyone in my village this is the best of all worlds. My ally and site-mate lives downstairs from me, and my landlord live catty corner across the road. We, my site-mate and I, have an almost ideal living arrangement.

    So here I sit, with coffee in hand, listening to American music for the first time in months, free to stay in my PJs all day if I really feel the need. Life doesn't get much better than that. That said I plan on going to my commune, cleaning and setting up my house, cooking lunch and dinner, feeding the cat, and preparing for the fourth of July at the lake. Not to mention practicing language for at least an hour. I must admit that typing up my notes for my impending bicycle presentation, and working on my irrigation project need to feature prominently in there somewhere as well. It's not like I have any shortage of things to do, but it's nice to fantasize that I could take a day for myself if I wanted. After all, in a place like this it's those pleasant fantasies that keep us going sometimes…

When business isn’t business…

    Working in Morocco is a strange and unfamiliar proposition. It is characterized mainly by doing things that I wouldn't normally characterize as work. Drinking tea is a fantastic example of this phenomenon. I am almost embarrassed at times to admit how much of my work day is spent drinking tea and shooting the breeze. It's not something that registers from my working life in America. I'm fairly certain that if the Moroccan work force were held to the same time management standards as the American work force is, this ritual alone would render the vast majority of them unemployed.

    This is, of course, a completely unfair characterization for several reasons. First off is that here nothing gets done if there's no tea. Tea is not just tea in Morocco; it is a social barometer and vehicle for countless shades of social nuance. For example, if the tea served to you in a Moroccan home is cold something is wrong. It could be something as serious as the prelude to you being declared persona non grata, or it could simply mean that you were later than you told them you were going to be and now they are expressing their displeasure. It could be that there is a family emergency and the best that could be done under the circumstances is cold tea. Whatever the case may be cold tea is the first indicator that you need to step carefully.

    In a workplace situation finding hot tea waiting for you at a business meeting, such as the ones I've had in the local commune, is a promising sign. It can say a lot of things, but the basic underlying message is that "we have made your visit a top priority in our office; you are being taken seriously and will be listened to." It makes the greetings and handshakes typical of an American business meeting seem crude and obtuse in comparison.

Moving Day reflections….

If there's one thing that I have learned about Morocco it is to expect the unexpected. This holds especially true reflect on the last few days leading up to today. This morning I officially moved into my new house, and have left my second and final home stay behind. I must say that in the days leading up to this momentous occasion I anticipated feeling relieved, liberated and satisfied. What I didn't, and couldn't, anticipate is feeling sad about leaving my host family. They have become my family, and while having my own space after four months in country feels like taking the first breath after being underwater for too long I will miss them. If I'm going to be totally and brutally honest it's not just them in particular…

The truth of the matter is that I haven't lived by myself since the spring of 2007. That was a rough time in my life, but that aside I really enjoyed the experience. Since then I have become used to the noises and little things that indicate a hundred times a day that you are not alone. In my most recent housing arrangement it was the sound of children playing in the hall, the smell of cooking, conversations in Tamazight. Before that it was pots of pea soup left on the stove by my grandparents to simmer for the afternoon, and my Mom's habit of talking semi-unintelligibly as she walked away through the echoing rooms of that giant ranch style monstrosity. Having none of those subtle sensory cues in my new home is going to be strange to say the least, especially considering how much larger it is than my other solo living apartment.

Now, for the first time in a long time it's up to me to carve out a home in a place that is far from my friends, family, and all that has been familiar to me for so many years. It might appear to the casual observer that I am being melancholic or "emo" about this situation, but I'm just trying to state the facts. I think that it's exciting. So far I have been an ambassador for the United States by socializing and working on my project. Which has been rewarding, but I'm ready to do more. Now I get to demonstrate those aspects of the American psyche I find most compelling (determination, resourcefulness, and thrift) by creating a welcoming space that represents me in a place that is both beautiful and unfamiliar on a shoestring budget with "locally available materials."

I'm looking forward to welcoming my new Moroccan friends over for tea. I hope that my house becomes a home that is familiar, not just to me, to many of my friends Moroccan and American. I look forward to sitting on my patio and greeting the people who live on my street as they pass by. I look forward to hosting my fellow PCVs for educational events, group projects and planning sessions. I look forward to experiencing the full cycle of this place in a space that is entirely mine…