filmed near me in Ourzazate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMpakpQBaxE&feature=related

From the day of the swearing in ceremony, me and Delilah

Life at the Extremes

It's Midnight, aren't all of the best blog posts written at midnight? (that's debatable, I believe)

Talked with my friend Z and Ali tonite, about family, and distance, and our desire to experience other cultures and places. This was a teary conversation, like many of the ones I've had lately. The epiphany came when I saw how the lack of the mundane here made life nearly unbearably. Just like how last week I talked with Serena about how the interesting is not the same as the good, and the good is not the same as the interesting, I see that being here it's unadulterated life. What I mean by that, is just like what Alfred Hitchcock said about drama, how it's life with the boring parts taken away.

Living in a new culture, you put yourself in a situation where nothing can be taken for granted. Or you can take things for granted, but only at your own peril! That's when the biggest burns and faux pas's happen. So it's like the veneer of the usual disappears completely, and so the thing that is left is the sore, tender part of life. And so this allows everything to be felt more strongly, the good and the bad. Everything becomes interesting, the good and the bad. And when we crank up the knob we have on the force of this life, 'our volume goes up to 11', then the most serene moments become nearly intolerably because they are so extremely serene, the most beautiful becomes nearly intolerably because they are so achingly beautiful, the horrible moments are equally intolerable because they are so utterly horrible. A walk down the road to get the mail is not the thirty second exercise I did last year in my pijamas, but it becomes a sojourn onto a planet holding continual surprises. The unknown awaits at every turn, the bizarre behind every palm, new flavors in each bite. And it's too much to take, the best and the worst equally bruising our bodies and damaging our souls, with our only hope residing in the belief that another day or another six months will find us rearranged into a more durable presence, hoping to find a new normal.

My epiphany? Hell, Ironman was a walk in the park compared to this! Doing something like that stretches you thin enough to discover new aspects of your personality, but this is the opposite, and is in fact much tougher: you don't discover new aspects of your personality, but rather you keep pulling until it pulls into several little pieces. And your personality, the person you were now reduced to small grains of sand, suffers the onslaught of the constant winds, until at last a sand dune--composed of the combined experience of you and the many other Americans and Moroccans that guide you through this new land--arises that feels to your feet as if you are running on something as hard as concrete. A sand dune created from the force of the wind blowing in the same pattern for years, that's what you do. But if the wind shifts, like it always does, then the sand is lifted as easily as if it were never glued together to begin with. Because, it wasn't, it never was.

Sitting here now, remembering how I cried yesterday watching the movie CROSSING BORDERS, not when the Americans are there complaining about not feeling life strongly enough, not having enough compassion, but instead I cried when I saw a Moroccan woman calling her mother, asking her mom to 'smH li' forgive her for not having been more thankful for so much opportunity. And I cried because I knew those words and have said them and internalized them already. That affected me the most, hearing and understanding those words, which cut to the quick of me.

Each night the past week I've been happy walking back from the Panorama, buying an egg sandwich from the man across from the hamburger store. It was good because I walked up to the stand, where there is arranged the ingredients for these amazing hobs bid sandwiches, half a dozen little bowls holding rice, potatoes, onion, olives, french fries, ketchup mayo and picante sauce. Egg sandwiches in a round piece of bread, all of that stuffed inside, yum! But it was nice to be there, to talk to the man and feel comfortable being there, down the hill from the mosque, speaking Arabic and hungry for my sandwich. Even better was to use the words " bahl dima" which means "like always", como siempre, comme d'habitude.

Now I'm sitting here, listening as the Moroccan language teachers around me are discussing Twilight, which is Fatima's favorite movie. Last night we taught them to play the role game, Mafia, where you have to find who got the Mafia card, who got the Police and Doctor cards, which townspeople are suspicious and must be killed. It was fun to wake up and at breakfast, to have one of them ask me, "Ben, are you the mafia?" . It was a classic moment in my life.

That's all! Goodnite.

Fear and Loathing in Dernier Lion du Atlas

Tonite I had been weeping while watching the movie UP with my Small Business Friends (those first 10 minutes always tear me apart). But as soon as I felt better, I nearly fell out of my seat when I got a message : "What chick? What movie? About to do the egg contest!"

So I said goodbye to these people, hopped in a taxi and sped down town, describing in Arabic how: 'juj Shabbi dyali, kayn match d akul bid bzzaf' They are having a match to see who can eat the most eggs.

I knew the day would come when Sam would make good on his claim of being able to eat 21 eggs. This stemmed from him betting his host family that he could do it. Prize? 3 roosters. Soon he told us all about this, and the next thing you know Will and Anna have bet for Sam and against Sam, the value of the bet being whatever it costs to buy bus tickets between the two sites.

Will, against Sam. Anna for Sam. Once this happened, I knew it would happen. And I knew he would do it. But I wanted to be there.

So I ran as fast as possible between the Hotel Panorama and the Dernier Lion. It took 10 minutes of running in my flip flops before I found the taxi. The man was nice, but was anxious to get home. I learned the man had a brother in Ourzazate, a military man, and that soon 'j'arrive' , he will go there.

Inshallah.

I burst into the hotel, scoped out my friends, discovered they were in the kitchen peeling all 42 eggs. Forty-two? Surely Sam didn't double his claim. No, it was Juan, he was getting in on it.

Luckily for Sam and Juan, half of the eggs were scrambled. Otherwise, they would not have been able to eat all of them. If they had all been scrambled, they could have eaten maybe 50% more.

Well, you had to have been there. It was epic. Looking at the plate before they began was grotesque. Just watching I felt light-headed. And we alternated cheering and maligning our friends Juan and Sam as they tarried forth on their quest.

Writing now after it has finished, Seth is across on the other ponj writing up a report to send to Peace Corps Times, to share the story with the 8000 other volunteers. I'll write part 2 and include more pictures, video and the second half of the story the next day or two

other pics from my Azrou PPST trip

I eat this about once a week after my lessons. It's in a cafe in my town, scrambled eggs cooked in olive oil in a tajine. For 1.75 dollars, you get six eggs, with tomato and green olives, plus another plate of black olives, two clementines, delicious fresh white bread rolls and a glass of mint tea!

Examples, really made me miss Bolivia when I'd wait for 6 weeks to buy a jar of Siete Puentes tomato sauce, 'picante' . It was amazing but my last jar burst on the sidewalk when I was with my friend Andrew

Parasites, fun!

I meant to post this a long time ago, an email from my mom before I got better, after 3 weeks of living with my sidekick.

dear ben, so glad to hear from you! from my experience at work it can be very difficult to have positive tests for parasites unless of course you actually have a big worm that emerges from a body orifice, ugh! then diagnosis is fairly easy. but looking for small intestinal parasites can be very difficult to actually find them in a stool specimen. if you have 15 liquid bm's a day actually taking a sample to the dr and looking for a parasite is like looking for a needle in a haystack. so i think the best bet is to just take the medicine and see if you feel better. so if you feel better and look better and have an appetite again then the goal is accomplished even if you don't know what you actually had. but the question is if you had a parasite do you have an idea of where you got it from? so you can avoid getting it again?

good luck with the rest of your medicine, love and kisses, mama

Yes, she's great and a very rich sense of humor.

I haven't heard this yet but it's by my favorite podcast other than the 404

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/25

One hour talking about parasites! There's 3 parts. If you know Radiolab, you know you'll love it.

In Defense of Cheats

Carl Zimmer plays defense lawyer, trying to exonerate parasites for their wrongs, while Jad and Robert argue in defense of the victims. Our producer Lulu Miller comes in to moderate a lightning round of: "Parasites: are they evil, or are they awesome?" The parasites in question are the zombie wasp, the nematode, and the lovey-dovey blood fluke.

A parasitic wasp and its cockroach prey
Ant after parasitic nematode infection
The blood fluke
Parasite Rex, by Carl Zimmer
Photo: flickr/teejaybee

Sculptors of Monumental Narrative

Dickson Despommier tells us the story of how the insatiable millionaire John D. Rockefeller turned an eye to the untapped market of the American South and ended up eradicating the hookworm (and, in the process, a number of other awful afflictions) with an ingenious contraption. Then Patrick Walters introduces us to Jasper Lawrence, a modern-day entrepreneur whose passion for hookworms stems from lifelong battles with allergies and asthma. But unlike Rockefeller, Jasper sees this parasite as friend, not foe.

Photo: flickr/grumpies
A bit of background on Mr. Rockefeller
1920 educational silent film about hookworm

The Scratch

When executive producer Ellen Horne was expecting a baby, she really had no particular intention of becoming a self-made expert on a parasite named Toxoplasma Gondii. Robert Sapolsky explains to us why Ellen had reason to worry when she was scratched by her cat, and he traces the unlikely path that the parasite might follow, right up to the point that it rewires a rat's brain. Fuller Torrey detailsToxoplasma's potential associations with other human disorders, possibly even schizophrenia.

Electron Micrograph Image of Toxoplasma Gondii