I thought we arrived on September 11, but I guess not

¼ Peace Corps*

*one-quarter finished, if all things go according to schedule... no surprises or hiccups!

Spring is on its way and in another month it will be 100 degrees and up each day. Instead of buried under 4 blankets, I'll be sleeping on the roof each night under the stars.

I arrived here 6 months ago today, which means I've now spent more than half a year in Africa! One of my long term dreams is to spend a year on all 7 continents, and I'm about exactly halfway done with that. Little longer in Europe, visit Asia for the first time, find a job sweeping the floors at the South Pole science station... Though, for the second half of that goal I'll try to do it much more leisurely, that's for sure.

My 1/4 Peace Corps Review

I sat with an Italian man this morning, a guy from una citta piccola vicina a Venezia. I translated for him the night before and saw him talking to a girl online at the cyber cafe. And this morning he said he liked us enough that he'd come back to 'Kob because he found it so extremely peaceful and relaxing. 'E un altre mondo che Marrakesh o Fez'. It's a whole different world than the touristy places in Morocco! But he said also : It's the first time that I seen a town that doesn't have public lighting at night time.

In my mind I thought: but this is the way most of the world is. There are no lights above most homes in the world. So for him, it's good to come here and see such a place. But what I've found is that even if that is the case, the people have cell phones that they shine before them to light the way. And if they all have lights like that on the end of their cell phone, why pay for a public light way above that does the same thing, but less efficiently? (this phenomenon is called the great tech-leap.... in the US we went from VCR's to Laser Discs to DVD's to Blu-Ray while they get their first TV this year and jump directly to the DVD player.

Another example of the great tech-leap in the world is that in many poorer countries there's no infrastructure for telephone lines, and they will never make the infrastructure for phone lines. Why would they? Because they can just put a cellphone tower there instead. Or, electric lines? For thousands of miles? You can build a hospital far from anywhere, and you can just put a solar panel above it instead of having to build anything that crosses the continent for so long just to get there.

Similarly, the incoming culture introduced to a conservative country no through movies and satellites is nowadays many steps further along. They have these bold ideas that are introduced at a blinding rate, much more like a Pandora's Box than when TV came to the US in the '50s. An example is Guadalupe, the Mexican telenovela that is dubbed in Arabic and plays nearly every night. People love this show! But their lives are nothing like what they see reflected in it. In the book I read last week, HALF THE SKY, they said how revolutionary it is to see women on television who do not ask their husbands for permission to leave. “It's less about asking for permission to leave, and now it's more about 'notifying' him that I'm going to go out” one woman in the book said, because she never knew there was any other way, if it hadn't been for watching a lady in a Mexican telenovela act that way. It's less a gradual change like the US experienced over a period of 100 years, and instead it's the most modern of modern things juxtaposed alongside the unchanged lifestyle of 200 years ago.

But to bring it down to the day-to-day, now... Peace Corps!

Writing now, I'm sad because by the time fall comes, I will be the only volunteer in my region that is old. Everyone here now in Zagora is YouthD and their replacements will arrive in September. Though we might get a person in Zagora with this incoming staj... though I don't think we will. There were 65 of us in my group and they put just one of us here!

REBIRTH

I left my house in Tennessee in the early morning with my amazing mother, who took me to the airport on a Monday, September 7th. Can you imagine?

Yeah, Monday's suck. Unless you're in Peace Corps, Mondays don't suck here!

And half a year later, I've yet to see a single person that I knew in my entire life before then. And I'm not sure when exactly I will next! But PC is a person-oriented thing, made for person people, and you're guaranteed to meet someone who'll change your life. Or hundreds of them. So writing now, I'm hoping to join those two worlds of people together, those throw-backs that I miss all the time, and those new ones that I'll miss when the day comes that this ends.

Like I said, in my region Zagora I'm the only one of the 65 that came here that lives here. The others are to the East and to the North, and my goal is to visit all of their homes before I go home. So far I've seen about 8 I think. But since I am only around the 2nd years, who are approaching their final day here ever more quickly, it's interesting to hear them talk about PC with a very definite sense of possession. “My service”. I want to make this happen and have it be a part of my service. That sense of ownership can be trying, since so much seems to be out of your hands—ask my friend Z, who has only gotten one lucky break in the past 4.5 months—but in that spirit I wanted to spend this week leading up to this humble anniversary in order to evaluate and write now, looking at my service and seeing how things have gone until this point.

This past month I told my Mom in my belief that people are able to do stupid things now that kill past happiness.... i.e., you do something now that leaves such a foul taste that between you and the other person, it is able to alter everything you felt about the good things from before. Times you remember as happy stop being so. You can't imagine them ever having been so. This is what you do not want, you want all of that hard work from before, those happy moments that you stole despite the adversity you faced at the time, you want to keep those experiences that way. It's a tough thing to do—in a way this is the argument for a clean break, over resentful languishing, and should be given a second's thought—but I suppose that taking the time to review and write down my impressions now will allow a little bit more permanence to those happy times and also help diffuse some of the harshness of the past.

I said when getting on the plane to come here that Peace Corps is a galvanizing force. There will be those of us that think it's the greatest thing that can have happen to them, and others who will later wish that they had never heard of Peace Corps ever. I certainly knew people from Bolivia that felt both ways.

The difficulty, too, is that things can go great until that point when everything takes a disastrous turn. So PC being a wonderful force in a person's life is the ideal, and it has that ability but it can be fickle. I hope that for me and my friends we will make it and there'll be nothing more difficult than what we've seen already. If we've made it this far, we can go all the way.

To say it in other words, while I'm feeling great I want to get it all on paper in case it changes!

PHILADELPHIA

It's fun now to look back at the photos that I took during staging in Philadelphia—the 2 days there where we discussed our expectations, did some team-building activities, some impromptu dancing, eagerly bonding with other people in the hopes that with them we'll somehow halfway fill the void of those we are leaving behind—the photos are interesting because when I took them the photos were of strangers but now I've spent hundreds of hours with them and when we see each other we seem to go into a sort-of survivor mode, acting together now as if noone else in the universe can understand each other as well as we can.

Reading RAYUELA by Julio Cortazar, he describes a writer's job as taking the memories we have, which are more like photos, and turning them into a coherent story, like a film.

So, some of my snapshots from this short, inauspicious but gently epic period are : arriving a day early and spending the night cramming to study the Arabic alphabet while eating Vietnamese food for the first time (in case they sort us into groups based on that... they didnt) ; lying amazed while watching my final Netflix movie after exactly 12 months, a Wagner opera staged by Werner Herzog; Brendon arriving to the room late while this is playing, then spending 45 minutes talking to him about Tolstoy and living in Germany. Then, another half hour about music, and impressing him by catching bits from Balkan Girls, Frou Frou, and Julieta Venegas, and throwing out the titles of the songs after just another second. He impressing me by saying how he had a Master's in War Studies.

The next morning : walking around the room, half-asleep and trying to find my second bag. My last night in Tennessee I only slept maybe 2 hours, so when I arrived at the hotel I was damn tired. I felt halfway OK, but apparently I was so tired that I left my second bag, 40 pounds (20 kgs) of things on the sidewalk. Or did I ? Somewhere! But I sure as heck didn't know what happened to it. And as I am good at doing, I capitulated to fate and said goodbye to all of those things. I couldnt even remember what the other bag had,anyway, and all of the most important stuff I saw was in the two other bags I had with me. Luckily fate wasn't so harsh: the day we left for the airport it hadn't come, until I get a phone call in the room, saying that the bag had arrived. It had been left in the back of the airport van, and the man was able to call the telephone number to my Mom's workplace, ask her what hotel I stayed in and then the next day he drove there to drop it off again.

Unlike the first day, where it was an empty hotel and 3 or 4 soon-to-be PCVs roaming around, the next day people began to pour in. If I'm correct, we had two nights sleeping there then the 10th we left for the airport. I sat behind Sam and Z, and was glad when our bus took us through New York one last time. If I had planned ahead, Wilson maybe could have met me there. Z is from Queens, I think, so her mom met her there with some of her luggage. We came from the wrong direction, though, because otherwise we would have driven in front of her house, she said!

Other things from Philly: met Sam, whose hands seemed to be shaking badly at the back of the line when going to our first meetings. Adrenaline, I'm sure, just like all of us. But a half an hour later and he seemed just fine. We were standing at the back of the line and met Jack and his wife. He was a PCV from Turkey in the 1960s, and he told us his medical questionaire was only a page long! One question on it, saying : Are you healthy?

I was glad to see Bethany (or Brittany?) as one of the 3 PC staff that came to process us before we left for Morocco. She and her husband were one of the sweetest people in Bolivia with me, and I feel as though I saw her when I went to the PC Job fair in Washington in February.

At the airport later, sitting with Cat and Jeff, talking and comparing stories as evacuees. One came from Mauritania and the other from Madagascar. There were enough of us to form a group of evacuees, I feel like nearly 10% of our staj. It shows you how Morocco is the most requested country for applicants, since those that are able to firmly say where they want to go—evacuees--had so many chose to go there.

Unlike me, they all came nearly directly from their first countries, though with Jeff there's a twist. He traveled over land from Madagascar to Morocco, and he stayed with PCVs here in country (some of which are now his neighbors! One in particular, Tim, they stayed several days together during that time, last summer). He even met the staff and so he knew more than most others what awaited us when he got on the plane in Philadelphia to go back there.

Most people's personalities were ultimately different than what those first impressions gave me, and Im sure they'd say the same about me. But those are very unusual circumstances, signing a contract for two years and knowing nearly nothing of what to expect. Many question marks, but also the chance to reinvent yourself. To decide to go by Samuel instead of Sam for the first time in your life, just because there's another Sam in the group.

One great joy is that the last person I saw that I knew before Peace Corps Morocco was one of my closest friends from Peace Corps Bolivia. A Philadelphia girl, Dianne, who took me to eat at the Farmer's Market, and around the city. It was her last week as a professional bicycle activist/promoter and so we each had the same air of new beginnings and nostalgia. She was also able to show me one of her favorite cafe's, and she helped provide me the reassurance and emotional support needed to step on the plane, in the wide-eyed optimistic way that only Dianne can do*.

After all, if I'm blessed by having a person like Dianne in my life only because I was willing to go do Peace Corps Bolivia, who else might I discover by going again that would turn themselves likewise into an indispensable part of my being? (It's similar to going to study abroad at a place named Lille and sitting down for the first time in that enormous room with 40 students from all over, listening to the role call for the first time and noticing the 5 ot 6 who did not speak English with the same accent as the others. And maybe the first week you are so homesick that you want to leave and go back, but by three weeks, you're ready to give them your everything... Just saying, you have to have faith that it'll work out, and it usually does.).

Sam turned out to be such a person. It seems like most of the others, too, by now. And if not some, mainly because I haven't had a lot of contact time with them still. (Unless they complain constantly)

*Not only was Dianne changing jobs, but a few months later would announce her engagement to a man that she dated before PC Bolivia. Congratulations!

IN COUNTRY

Same Royal Air Maroc flight from the same NY airport, same good food, and the same destination Casablanca as back in my 2005 Morocco trip. It was the first time I ever travelled anywhere alone. But this time for a very different reason, a very different Ben. A different length of time, about 60 times longer! And also a different set of expectations and challenges. Trying to give back to the country that had changed me so much in such a short period of time. To live in a home there, rather than running a marathon through the emptiest parts of it.

And, in fact, it was in this group that I heard for the first time what a Peace Corps volunteer was. I dont think I'd ever heard the name, can't be sure of that. But as a twenty year old that had just run 156 miles in seven days—one day running through 25 miles of sand dunes, another running 50 miles through the day and the next night—I happened to go to the buffet, tasting these strange Moroccan salads and then sitting at the banquet dinner across from Pam and Becca. Before long, the conversation between the two turned to Becca asking Pam about applying to Peace Corps. I don't know if she ever signed up or not, but I did! Twice. Of course the application process is so long, and I'm able to retrace my emotional journey back to then, pinching myself now and asking if this is really what it is, strange still that it's really happening, that all of these things around me stem from those moments back then.

Pic of Ben now, ben then

EXPERIENCING TIME

So far the big trend seems to be this: everything changes every two months. Everything.

Two intense months in training in Sefrou, followed by an equally demanding first two months in 'Kob. Now, finishing the third Two month unit here and beginning the fourth. They all seem completely distinct and different experiences in nearly all ways. This two-month block now is moving even faster than the first three, and appears geared towards the time getting ready for spring camp—and is qualitatively different, too. I'm free to travel for the first time to Istanbul, to Porto, Roma, Warsaw, or Luanda, provided my vacation form arrives in Rabat two weeks ahead of time. This is the two month unit just before summer arrives. In Morocco, summer arrives early and leaves late! So, these are the days I'll look back and miss, when the mercury in the thermometers has long since bursted; true story, this happened to Rachel's medical kit thermometer inside her house.

Then once Summer comes, it's another two months or four month block where it's so unbearable that the staff allows you to travel to the North just because it's so hot! And by then I'll be writing my ½ Peace Corps look-back. The Dar Chebab where I work will close for a month during this time and of course will change things a lot. Then at that one year time, it's just repeating the same things, but more wisely, doing the projects more accurately, the end swiftly approaching. The final two months of my service, then, and I'll be neither here nor there, instead saying goodbye and looking forward to saying hello to many people. How much time does that leave, then?!?

But each unit seems to be distinct from all the others, with its own flavor, its own hopes and loathings, its own markers, sights and smells and memories that transport me back. It's like a roller coaster that, yes, you can look at it from ground-level, but only when you're inverted, one hundred feet above ground and going sixty miles an hour do you appreciate what it is you were looking at from afar.

WORK

Many days here it feels like my biggest accomplishment is that I ate lunch. But sitting here look at everything that has happened in this time, I see that Christa's parents were right when they said : “It seems like living there is : long periods of extreme boredom punctuated with short, fast periods of extreme danger”. That's about the truth!

My biggest crisis coming here was the realization that Morocco is doing just fine without us. Its economy is stronger than ours now, they can't seem to build infrastructure quickly enough and they're doing it already at a blistering pace. English and French and the other international languages are readily available and taught already in the smallest communities. Then you add to that the fact that my program puts people in larger communities, and you start to wonder if you are expendable.

This was the first half of my time here, but I've since come around. There are 3 goals to Peace Corps, as outlined by President Kennedy: sharing technical skills, sharing cultural knowledge about Americans to the other country and sharing knowledge with Americans about other cultures. Now I feel that PC is necessary here, but not so much for the first goal as for the other two. The Muslim culture here is so distorted in our media, and vice versa, that it makes sense this being PC's second biggest post in the world, after Ghana.

And of course, you show up to your town and you have doubts about what you're doing here, but then you meet 10 people that really care about your work and what you can offer. And that number grows each day more and more, people that rely on you to help pass their college entrance exams in English. Or even further, you discover they need you less than you need them! That it's so peaceful that you'd come live here even without the impetus of being part of an organized program. A lot of nights, I go to sleep feeling horrible, to wake up seeing my host family and feeling amazing. Other nights it's the opposite. You start horribly but it changes and you go to sleep peacefully. So if anything, the main difference between the next six months and the one I've already passed is this: the question of feeling capable to fulfilling those needs becomes the mental minefield, more than suffering over whether there's any point to you for being here.

ACCOMPLSHMENTS (?)

“It's the risk that I'm taking, I ain't ever going to shut you out”

I wish PC were a UN-program. They have such a thing, but I mean it more this way: the UN program has very strict demands and qualifications. Peace Corps is more ambiguous and accepts a lot of people that are unqualified but are willing to learn and work hard, to share what they have and to continue growing, even while the country changes them and opens their minds and hearts to the struggles of the wider world. And I wish someone from the D.R. or Bangladesh could sign up and come to Morocco alongside me, get the same training. Since I've known Serena, it was a big realization this year to think that she's been in the same place the entire time I've known her doing the same things. And she'd do as good or better at this than me.

But I've been on the move the whole time. Since leaving my home in Jackson, Tennessee, early in the morning with my mother and then going by myself to Philadelphia, I've studied 2 languages intensively, visited half of the regions in Morocco, met 500-600 people or more (65 of which flew with me here in my staj, then maybe 150 people in my town, 30 staff members, the two PCV's that worked in our training town Jonathan and Clark-- 20 people in the regions next to mine, as well as meeting briefly the entire staj that we replaced when I went to Sou-Youn's memorial service, plus another hundred working here, taxi drivers, restaurant owners, teachers, trash men and a hundred tourists that have come through—one week alone we had 10 people staying at our home, and we had an Italian man from 'una piccola cita near Venizia—the nice family that owns the hotel in Azrou, the 5 host families in Sefrou that hosted us during training, Sam's new host family in his town, Will's friends in Tinjdad, etc. etc.!)

Maybe that number is low, it could be 2 or 3x that many people that I've met. My first day in my town, I didnt' meet everyone but nearly the whole town met me because I went to a three-day wedding, each room of their Casbah filled with 60 people or more, always new ones coming in and out. And the wedding went on each night until 4 in the morning.

I also bought a guitar named Piccolina in Tinjdad and my oud Delilah in Fez. A bicycle named Priskah, after my favorite francophone adult film actress. I taught my first hour long lessons in my life, and expanded classes from English to begin teach French Spanish and International Cuisine. I also worked hard to get an audience to come, then lost nearly all of them after going away for 2 weeks to Azrou for more training.

Most days here I read about 130 or 150 pages, and one day I read twice as much as normal, an entire book 250 pages long HALF THE SKY—directly related to everything I do here—and I read an additional 30 pages in Rayuela after that. In the same day! Last month I finished my second book in Italian ever, and it's among my top 5 that I've ever read, IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER. And as of now, I'm 150 pages into my 3rd one, L'OMBRA DELLO SCORPIONE.

Work accomplishments are more scarce, but I feel pretty well integrated into my community. My most successful things at my Dar Chebab/ Youth House is that I introduced falafel and calzone sandwiches to about 30 women. And the second most interesting and rewarding thing is that I correspond with a 6th grade class in Louisville. I realized how important and interesting this is when I went to the post office today and I got a stack of 70 letters from the entire class at the school. It seemed like 2 letters each, and they sent a red construction paper heart Valentine with each person's name written on it.

I incorporated these letters into my lesson today, telling each girl to read the notes from the students, then flip the paper over to write a letter back to them, introducing themselves. The more complicated letters I gave to my 3 best students, and they will work on a letter for the boy Garrett this week to mail next week. His letter I will post on my blog and I'll post the response they write, too. After I gave them the letter, I could tell they were worked up, and they didnt write anything at all, instead arguing with each other and with what the person said. The topic was : American stereotypes (violent, sexual, obese, etc.), and how do I deal with that? They read the whole thing and the girls when they finished I asked them, “Now, the problem is that many Americans think crazy things about Moroccans, too” So I want them to respond talking in the same way but from their side and the stereotypes they are angry at people having about themselves. But even just reading that 12 year old boy writing that way, maybe it helped cause them to reevaluate what they felt about Americans, regardless if they take the next step down that train of thought, asking if they, too are misrepresented in the media.

This past weekend we had our first-ever English day camp that we did in the desert town Mhmid. It was especially nice, and they gave us all blue turbans as commemorative gifts, a delicious camel tajine, and before teaching English to them for a couple of hours, we had a panel discussion. The way I described the stereotype problem then is like this :

America is this big. (I hold up my hands.)

And Morocco is this big (I keep my hands the same size but I move over to the other side)

The problem though is that television is this small : and in the middle I make a little oval with my hands.

It's like a window, and the window is too small to see the other side. So you just see a little bit, part of a jilaba or part of a pair of pants. But you can't begin to understand the complicated people just by what you see on that small television screen.

Instead, you want to bring them together so that they can completely understand each other.

While the 2 week training in Azrou caused a lot of problems, it helped crystallize my desire to work with Gender and Development almost exclusively. This is basically women's issues and empowering girls. Part of that is including guys in the process. Because if you can get men to treat women fairly, then you're halfway there. But this is a much huger issue than just being treated fairly. Infant mortality, literacy, family finances and so much more depends on this. But for my work, partly it's just this is what interests me, and its these people that I get along with the most. Also, the girls and women in my town are the most dynamic force in the society, with the most new opportunities and they must be supported fully to keep up.

In the half year here, I also had deep periods of doubt, followed by short moments of ecstasy. Other times I lost faith and felt the worst shame and embarassment in my life for having come here. And I tried hard to share how and why I felt that way, but I suppose this is all so unique that noone can really empathize what is going on inside me. Life has yet to become regularized and I'm not sure if it will, but when it gets bad then I always open my cell phone and look at the message Serena sent on October 12:

“Ben, you are not causing pain, you know that! It's just the distance and the missing part, don't be sad or ashamed please and try to live Morocco at the fullest!we love you no matter what!”

I'm very glad to have that on my phone to look at. A life-line. And am glad for the great people that support me. You don't even know how much!

MISC.

I've been able to stay on top of culture in the US with my Kindle, subscribing to TIME magazine and downloading it once a week. And since you can buy iTunes online, using a US credit card, I went to the cyber anxiously four different times, to download Jay-Z's amazing latest album, other times going for SHE WOLF by Shakira, THE SEA by Corinne Bailey Rae and finally SOLDIER OF LOVE by Sade, plus the Hope for Haiti telethon album and video and THIS IS IT. Knowing that I'm able to do so is reassurance that I'll come through fine the next time a personal crisis might hit.

COMING HERE AGAIN

I felt like I was on a losing streak since about... 2006. Something like that. Mostly because everything before that seemed to work so smoothly that I stopped planning well for all the things after that. But also because of things out of my control like what happened in Bolivia. I came back from there, and it seemed like the economy would only get worse and worse, with jobs being the hardest hit area: I felt fortunate then knowing that I had job security so long as I decided to come here. I would likely have done things much differently if I felt like I had more chance to take risk in a stronger economy. For all I know, I might still be at home looking for a job if I hadn't re-enlisted. Coming here I knew I'd get my student loans delayed, at the least, and I was happy to come here as a Youth Development volunteer, a job that I knew instinctively more than Agriculture like in Bolivia, one related to my career goals as well as the opportunity that I'd be living inside historical Iberia and close to the rest of Europe. Italy, especially.

Of course, way back when Obama inspired me to sign up for P.C. Way back in the first months of his campaign. And the fact that he went to Cairo for his first major foreign speech to talk about Islam and the West? That certainly was a major influence that helped me sign up again, for sure! Now, when talking about his Nobel Prize, it makes a great deal more sense why he got it when you are a person living in a Muslim country. Yeah, the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament is a big deal, and mostly still forthcoming, but the change in atmosphere here is a much more legitimate reason for him to have won it.

I decided partly on Morocco just because I believed it was 40 years of continuous work here, but no, they've evacuated in the past 7 years. Why? The Iraq war. People were so angry, volunteers were threatened and security was too risky for vol's to stay here. And it was that bad despite this being the country that is America's greatest ally in the Middle East/North Africa region, the first country of all of them in the whole world that recognized America at its independence. But since Obama was elected, now the atmosphere is back to the way it was before that, pre-Bush. Or even better since President Obama is demonstrably standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people. Arms open fully again, in a mutual embrace. And that's worth a Nobel Prize, or at least enough to make me want to come live here.

So while there is the less proud benefit that my ass was covered at least for the period of the depression that was imminent.... but I felt it could only be as good or better than the amazing experience I'd had before: I had both more realistic expectations, and I knew the country ahead of time. Yes, I was cocky coming here, to a degree. But of course, I got all the same scars as each other person did during training and cultural integration. You wouldn't think so, after having visited 25 or 30 countries in my life. But it's like working out a muscle that you've never used before, your Morocco muscle. And you don't know after those first workout sessions if you'll ever be able to straighten it out ever again in your life. Now my Morocco muscle still gets sore, and I'm still exhausted at the end of the day, even after the best days. But it's not as sore as much, and I'm able to do the workout more regularly without feeling it too badly.

Now visiting my friends, they tell me how at first it sounded like I was a big hot shot, 8 months in Bolivia! But we are all approaching that point now, and they see more clearly how little that can be. Just enough time to start to relax in your own personality. “If we had to evacuate in May, I'm pretty sure I'd sign up again, and I'd do it somewhere completely different than what we have here” Sam said.

Pretty big words from this guy, compared to when I met him at the back of the line in Philadelphia!

But he also mentioned how : “I can see how this is supposed to be the most mentally difficult part... (according to a chart that PC gave us) . For the first time, people expect a lot more from you, you have more responsibility and are not quite good enough to comply with your desires and their needs. The honeymoon is over and no there's a difficult period of adjustment to these new pressures.” And you're also at a point where you feel confident enough to get into big trouble! Just enough knowledge to cause major damage, but not enough to avert some of that.

**pic of Sam with my guitar

FOOD

My first two months in site, I ate host family food for half the time then the next two months almost exclusively bowls of milk and cereal, four times a day. I had one set of Moroccan friends the first two months, then nearly all of them left for Spain or Agadir. I lived on expensive food that I bought in the capital Rabat and took with me in a suitcase or 500 miles to my town. The Americans I saw were those that lived West of me, the 2nd year PCVs that live in my province. I went to Ourzazate several times, Marrakesh a couple of times, Rabat more than once.

Work was lacking and I didnt mind. I was sick for exactly half of that period and did little more than drift in and out of consciousness, reading constantly and going to the bathroom or else sleeping 15 hours a day.

The Second two months in site has been totally different in nearly every way. A new room full of my things and my new furniture, not sick like the first time. And Ive seen the Zagora volunteers rarely. The Americans I've seen and the sites Ive visited have all been East of my town, seeing Tazarine several times on the way through to Azrou in the north, visiting Erfoud twice and Errachidia on the way up there. Met Sam's town Aoufouz, Wes's town Tinrirt, and the many places between. Ive seen people more from my staj than from those in their second year here, and Ive been able to see the new (and bare) apartments of those people that arrived here with me. After going to Tinjdad, I saw both Will and Sam, and said to them: “OK, I'm throwing the gauntlet down! Ive visited both your towns and none of you have visited me yet.”

A week later Sam took the 6 hour trip to my town for my birthday. But I didn't know he was there. My host dad woke me up, I was unhappy and tired, class didnt go well. “Addi! Wake up, we have a tourist. I need you to come translate English for me.” So we walked up to the roof overlooking the palmerie, and when I rounded the corner, it was him! And I was especially grateful that he'd be there for my birthday, and gave me a stone chess set that he and Will went in on together, considering that he had to leave at 10 the very next morning, do the whole trip again and be back at his town by 6 in order to teach.

WORK

Work has kept me busy and I have a set schedule of where to be, teaching French and Cuisine on Tuesday afternoon (the first time was falaffel, and next time I will teach Thai peanut noodles), Spanish each morning at noon and again at 730 PM, then English for girls two hours each day and an hour for boys before the Spanish class, 4 days a week.

Food also has been more local, cheaper things, more simple things that I can make a bunch of and save in the refrigerator. I miss eating cereal, but I haven't been to Ourzazate to buy any more in 3 months! I eat host family food only twice a week and always the smaller night meal, soup or noodles. Sometimes the german couple are there, and I'll share a vegetarian tajine with them, my favorite thing of all.

This past 2 months I also spent more time in the town, meeting new people, being invited for tea or going to sit at the cafe while eating my Omelette matisha, going alone and chatting with whoever shows up. I havent been to any major city that had cereal, so Ive not used any of the dehydrated milk that I went through so quickly when I ate all cereal only. This half year that I've been here, I've been proposed for sex by the poorest men (in French... when I figured out what was going on, I turned and walked away as quickly as possible), but I've also been invited to the home of the richest man in town, the President of 'Kob. His sons showed me the photo of him with the King of Morocco.

Here in Morocco, I suppose it is easy enough to get halfway to any goal, but its the obstacles after that moment that make things so much more difficult. In the US, everything is smoother and takes less time.

LANGUAGE

Language learning here is very Platonic. “PST (Training) is when you learn everything very quickly and then forget it all. The 6 months after training is when you start excavating all the things you crammed into your mind in those 9 intense weeks, dusting it off and polishing, making it a part of your routine. You're learning everything again, but PST gives you so much, it's all already in there, you just have to bring it back out on your own, in the conversations you have and the way you maneuver in the culture without anyone there to help you... exactly what Plato thought people did for everything learned in their lifetime, the idea of each person having a kind of primordial knowledge that we are born with, then learning is less finding new things, but rediscovering (or not) the knowledge that you were given before birth.