Today, I left my house, went to the cyber and discovered that the electricity had gone out. News to me! If you don't have electronic things, and you don't use the light because the window is open and you're in bed reading a book, you might go until the nighttime before you realize something's not normal.
Well, can't get online like I planned, so I try to find something else to do instead. Ten minutes later, I'm seated with the baker, he's having caskrut, the afternoon snack, so instead of being a customer, I'm an invited guest, manuevering into the oven room to sit, share tea and shoot the shit with this other Addi, a man with a generous smile, big dark mustache and leathery black skin. Besides us are the giant pile of wood that he needs to make his bread, several empty cigarette wrappers and large bottles of oil. In his dish is a mixture of olive oil and strawberry confiture, ''toot'' in shulhah. ''Toot yatfuut' I say, strawberry is yummy. Yatfuut bzzzaaf, he replies, very tasty!
Two others join us, one of the European Moroccans, a ten year old boy in beach shorts named Mustafa, and an older man that seems mostly blind, potentially senile. They likewise are invited to imbibe and we spend 35 minutes. Halfway through this time, I notice the light has come on again and I can hear once again the refrigerator humming in the corner. I wait some time because I know it'll take that long for the cyber owner to get back and charge everything up again.
In these moments, I brought up how, in summertime, everything's different. The town becomes two or three times larger, with all the families coming back loaded with money from Europe. They arrive in their cars, they fill the cybers and you hear them talking to each other in French. It's Nkob, but it's no longer my Nkob. And I'm no longer a native, they expect me to be a tourist, when really they are the tourists, the interlopers.
You walk outside, and don't recognize a face. But it's not the only change. Even before they came, Nkob stopped being the Nkob that I fell in love with. This makes it easier as I prepare to leave, since in a certain sense, Nkob's already left me. The old lovely things I can't find so readily anymore. Now, it'll take a new person to come and discover its new charms.
Walking back to the cyber, I notice a sign that I'd never seen before, there on main street: ''Bienvenue dans un noveau monde.'' Yes, thank you. Where do I go to find the old one?
Some changes:
--my beloved running trail is gone. It's been the home of construction,( a lengthening of the aqueduct), and now you just see piles of concrete. The path still exists, but is now located higher on the hill and is too steep for my enjoyment. Before, it was the one place that I'd retreat to, a dirt path through the palm trees before exiting onto the major road. When I was marathon-ready, running 30km several times a month, this was the one that saw me on the way out and welcomed me back on the way in.
--the Kasbah isn't the same. The owner (not my dad, he doesn't own the place), said: no more tourists here. Before, I used to go home and be happily surprised to see a Dutch family of 4, or a lone Spanish man, a group of Pollacks or else a German college student. Some of the best times has been with these people, and it helped keep things from getting stale. Now that's no longer the case, and so that's another important aspect, a definitive one of my experience here, that won't be regained before I return home.
--The Gendarmes have nearly all been replaced. I was lucky and got along very well with the old ones and these new ones don't seem as readily given to playfullness as before. My favorite remains in place, though, which I'm glad for.
--Peace Corps itself is radically different // I'm glad to be going home now. The end of an era, when PC did more work in the bled (countryside) and without such a concerted focus on the numbers of people reached.
--Good friends are no longer located in Nkob. Lahcen, the cafe mainstay, a worker at different times in three different cafes while I was here, who I spent several months teaching Spanish to, has now left for a job at a cafe in Ourzazate.
--Other students have graduated the past month and will not be in Nkob when I get back after Ramadan.
--and smaller things, like the fact that I'm now on a tourist visa now and not my official work permit. There's such little time left, there was no need to refill it; how there's no dates this year, since the weather wasn't right for good date-growing conditions in the same way it was last year; how I'll soon turn my bike in to PC, doing it on the way to camp in order to not worry about it later; how I've thrown away all the excess and find all the stuff I want to take home will fit in two boxes, instead of the two suitcases and one carry-on that I brought here with me.
Likewise, there are big changes that haven't necessarily affected the Nkob I once knew. What I mean is, the neverending construction of new houses and hotels has been a great big change in the town, and its been able to retain its basic Nkobien flavor. Five more years of that, though, and it might no longer be able to do so.
The Nkob I knew was a great one. It's no longer around, so I was glad to have come when I did.
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