After a long absence...

My few faithful readers (when encountered on rare occasion) have slyly hinted that "even a paragraph would be nice, you've been on that hiking trip for almost half a year now!" So, I shall write.




I finished Peace Corps December 1. It was bliss to goodbye to Peace Corps forever ;)




This is our group. Those who lasted two full years. Youth Development & Small Business.

Dancing out of Peace Corps

Don't misunderstand me. It was very hard to leave my little village of Agdz. As the time drew near, I became more hesitant and reluctant to walk away. How do you just say goodbye to a town you may never return to, in a little corner of the earth, and a family that has treated you as one of their own for all that time? I wept. My "family" wept. Most others braved goodbyes in stoic smiles. Or maybe I give too much credit to our attachments. And Peace Corps friends: our "Draa Valley Crew" as we called ourselves: April, Aaron, Mona, Jong, and Kate, had become very close. The goodbyes were painful. The happy thought with them, however, was that we both were, in our own time, returning to the other side of the ocean.

Couscous Lunch on the Peace Corps HG lawn with the Staff

There were certainly those (like my landlord, a man whose very face often swelled anger to my cheeks and tightened my fist) who I was glad to be rid of. My poor friend, Frank even got into a yelling match with him over arrangements in the last days.

We arranged for the local Korti (taxi manager) to come to my house and pick me up. As my friends stood around, waiting for me as I (literally) ran to the water office to sign the last set of paperwork, and one casually mentioned that I was on my way out, for good. They said a look of shock took over his face, and he turned to hide welling sadness. This is the goodness of people I was not even a friend to, but from whom I demanded the "two" front seats of every taxi so I didn't get car sick.

Drea was... just a little happy to be done.

Peace Corps was an experience unlike any other. I would have a hard time "doing it again", knowing all there was ahead of me this time. But if for no other reason than to understand some of the frustrations of people in a land much poorer than our own, it was worth it. Now, when I see a veiled woman, I will not be thinking of Al Qaeda, but instead I'll be reminded of my sisters in Morocco and how much I miss them.

So what am I doing now? I am home. Home is Somerset, Kentucky. I live with my parents. Oh what a funny ring that phrase has to it. :) I am the "Sustainability Specialist" at our family's company, Play Mart. I started work three days after arriving home. But don't pity me. I was eager to have a "real job" with a place to go, and a desk of my own, and a team to work with. I also wanted to be able to contribute to a company very much a part of our family's lives.

Our "official" stamping out ceremony.

In the interrum, however, my sister Priscilla (Miss Priss or Prissy), met me in Casablanca and we traveled like hurricanes for eleven days. Casablanca to Rabat, tearful goodbyes with Frank, Bob, Linda, and other friends. Then Fes, Chefchaouan, and Tangier. We ferried across to a little town near Gibraltar.

If you want a dramatic goodbye upon leaving a country, let me recommend the ferry. You walk on board, with all your belongings on your back, turn around and watch a country you have called home for two years slip off into the fog. It felt more tangible than flying away and plopping down at home.

Prissy standing against the Rabat coastline

This is us standing on the ferry with Tangiers behind us.

I'll save photos and stories for another post, but from Gibraltar we went to Granada, onto Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Montpelier, and ended in Paris. Priss's birthday was December 7. We had cocktails in three different cities (Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona) on her birthday. Not that I would recommend that pace of travel...

....to be continued.

Rock Climbing! Todra & Dades Gorges

I brought rock climbing shoes to Morocco. After two years I finally got to use them. If you like nature, I recommend going to both the Todra and Dades Gorges (between Ouarzazate and Errachidia).



Let's go...!

Ropes snaking up the cliff...

And that little white speck? Yes, that's me. Actually the routes I climbed were pretty easy, but it was my first climb in two years so I didn't push too hard... Ah I missed climbing!

Hassan was a great climbing guide. He would even scramble up the faces shoeless.

Majid set the routes and belayed for me ... such a happy fellow

My good friend: the resident nature-lover and camera man.. Frank Sposito.

Photosynthesis in living color

Dades Gorges.. if not high-walled, much more extensive and beautiful. God's works of art.

The little bridge that could..

Passing on the baton..

(Mona - Antoine's Youth Development replacement, Me and Kate)

Kate F. has been chosen as my replacement volunteer. I met her during one of the several sessions I was invited to facilitate at the Stage training site (near Agdz). The sessions gave me the opportunity to talk about my various projects and activities. Kate approached me one afternoon and said that she had a background in IT and marketing. The typing, brochure and Excel classes looked interesting to her. As did finding ways to market our pilot Hammock project. We talked to Tariq, the assistant Program Manager and he said he would consider our request. (Older volunteers often appreciate the opportunity to 'scope out' the new Stages, looking for a potential good match to their work/sites.) Kate and I were blessed: she was assigned to Agdz!

We've spent this week wandering around meeting families, stopping in at the Neddi, dreaming up ideas of how to improve or market the hammock, going to the weekly Souq, or sitting at a cafe and just sharing ideas and my history of work here. It is very good to have a solid week to work together and introduce her to key community members. Instead of her walking in completely ignorant as I did two years ago, with a rather unhelpful (and often inaccurate sheet of paper), she'll already have a number of good conversations (via Raja as translator) with girls whom she'll begin to teach English or Nadia, my host sister, who will become her informal counterpart. Tomorrow's schedule:

9AM: Work with Nadia in redrafting her quarterly reports in Excel (on a new computer)

11:30AM: Introduce Mona and Kate to the the local Caid (like a mayor)

12:30: Break for lunch (so I can do laundry, etc.)

2:30: Go to the douar and meet the Ben Mammas (artisan) family, the bamboo-furniture family, and the Badu family (Antoine's old host family, and whose father happens to be the local Sheikh, also on her list to meet).

4:30: Return to my house for a brochure class with Zahra, one of the eager Neddi girls who started a brochure with me over the summer. Either she or I haven't been around to finish it, and now she has great ideas to make a brochure advertising Agdz as a whole. She is very sharp and creative and I hope Kate, in time, can carry on her training and possibly turn this into some sort of occupation.

My emotions have been running a little high, having to say goodbye to very dear friends such as Frank or April or my host family (yesterday my host mother and I, trying to plan our last few weeks - realizing our days together are dwindling- looked at each other and burst into tears). There are many special families and girls and teachers that I have spent countless hours with over the past two years. I was also hoping to finish my graduate school applications before leaving, but as it is, I do not think time or mental energy will allow before I fly out of Morocco. And Close-of-Service paperwork for Peace Corps. And packing all my things and deciding who gets what, and if I should sell my laptop. And buying my last souvenirs. And picking up the special cut of a particular wood piece for local craftsmen to create spreaders for the hammock.

Over the last weeks a couple of other volunteers have approached me concerning various projects I was involved in. One girl is interested in taking up the shipping survey project, and hopefully lobbying the Ministry for rural shipping services. Another emailed to ask my impression of her site, as I recommended it from the April workshops and helped develop it over the summer with Tariq. She also noticed photos of me at the Zagora craft fair and said her specialty is exhibitions. Maybe she'll plan the next big craft fair in the region.

It is a very refreshing feeling to pass on knowledge capital, regional contacts, projects, and future hopes to new faces; to pour my experience and impressions into them and let them take these and run with them. Kate, at every turn over the past couple days, has exclaimed how much she likes Agdz and is enthusiastic about the projects I have kicked up. She has many creative ideas of her own and a good business head. Hopefully, however, I can continue to assist her and Nadia from the States with marketing hammocks once the prototype is complete. But in a few weeks I will walk away and Agdz will no longer be my little village, but hers.

Figuig at the edge of the world.. (The Algerian Border)

A couple weeks ago I was invited to participate in a survey-tallying and website development project in Figuig. Bob and Linda, the wonderful couple that Frank and I hiked Toubkal with, thought it was an excellent opportunity for a reunion of the foursome.

On the drive out to Figuig, we noticed adorably grubby little children, or women strapped with many bundles clapping their hands to get off the bus in the absolute middle-of-nowhere. All we could see was rocks dotting the flat, dry desert floor and mountain ridges lining both our north and south views. And off they wandered. Where were they going??? Occasionally we would catch glimpse of a tent far off in the distance. They were nomads.

Bob said that some men in Figuig are what he likes to call "weekend warriors". They have homes in Figuig and jobs during the week. But on the weekends, they take off across the desert and roam with the nomads.

Figuig is basically a peninsula oasis jutting into Algeria. The borders between Algeria and Figuig are currently closed. Mountains surround the peninsula, but the forbidden neighbor is clearly visible between mountain ranges. One evening Frank and I took a walk to the actual border gate. It was dusk, and being during the month of Ramadan, all the guards were occupied indoors, stuffing their faces after fasting all day. We entertained the idea of making a dash to the other side.

Frank has been working for months on a brilliant website structure that artisan groups can then tailor without using any HTML. I had discussed my shipping services survey project at the In-Service Training (Agadir, June '07) and Bob and Linda were very interested in conducting a similar survey in Figuig. When we arrived, they had already passed out over a hundred surveys with tourists and ex-patriots home on summer vacation. The surveys were geared to determine how interested the Figuig ex-pat community abroad (in France, Spain, etc.) would be in a Figuig Artisana website. It would then give them a solid idea of what features were important for the websites' most likely visitors.

Bob and Linda obviously had done their homework. They had a sizable grant available to the artisana for a complete technology upgrade/website development. We held meetings to discuss responsibilities for establishing a website, to explain to them how to develop a color scheme and structure for the website, etc. Their counterpart is a highly-educated, sharp and motivated man who genuinely seems to want to help the artisans who frequent the center. We tested out a wireless Internet system and showed him Frank's prototype (being developed for his Erfoudi Fossil workers, Manar Marble). The brilliance comes in his efforts to make it easy to upload photos, make product categories or manage personnel in a background database. Once set up, any artisan can quickly be taught how to upload a photo, name it, crop it, and organize it's location without knowing any computer programming languages. (Like my blog site.) The association could instantly make business cards or a contact list from the inherent SQL database. He has been working for months on the project, incorporating seven computer languages into the website.

In between meetings or survey data-entry and analysis, we took bike rides in the palmary. I (to be clear) am very partial to Agdz's palmary, but their intricately woven cobblestone alleyways weaving through mud-walled villages and palm plots was captivating.

Algeria, visible between the mountains

Another day, all four of us went on a bike ride around the seven villages that make up Figuig. We counted 14 mosques from the rock outcrop. At dusk, the valley was filled with overlapping wails: calling men to prayer.

Bob and Linda: a great team and great company

Linda and I

It looked like a giant sandbox with little toy car tracks scraped through the sand

Frank and I

All photos taken by Frank Sposito

Leid Sghir... happy moments

My new site mate, Mona and I spent the first holiday morning of Leid Sghir - celebrating the end of a month of Ramadan fasting (we weren't, they were ;) - by touring the neighbors' houses. If a it's possible to get drunk on mint tea and cookies ... we did. By the end we were groaning and looking at each other with these eyes, "no more, please, no more... ?"

My good friend, M'barak, from the campground ... happy to be home for once and pouring tea to a literal stream of visitors. The entire time we sat in the Bue Omar home, we held a cookie or cup of tea in one hand, and performed various greeting rituals of kissing shoulders, kissing hands, kissing cheeks, tapping our hearts, and gushing "Labas, Bixer, Mabruk Ahawashik, Laya bark fik! Mabruk Leid, Laya Bark fik! Labas? Bixer? Humdullah!" (Translated: I'm well, I'm fine, happy holiday! Happy Leid! Thank you and God bring blessings on you too, you are fine? You are well? Thanks be to God!) to dozens of strangers and acquaintances. Often when we moved on to the next house, we'd find ourselves greeting the same persons again.


Fatiha and Mona

(Mona is my new site mate. If she looks Moroccan, it might have something to do with the fact that she's half Guyanese and half Egyptian. Martin, my other pseudo-site mate is full Guyanese. What are the chances? Poor Mona is often mistaken for a Moroccan, meaning people might shove her around quicker than me and go on about her Arab blood and how she should fast ... but they also might accept her quicker than I.)

Little Hamza.. he's grown up in the two years I've lived here. He was so proud of his fancy new outfit.

Nawal ... she's been a good friend to me. Though if I ever want to visit her, I know I have to head over to her family's kitchen where she will be slaving away preparing every meal for six to a dozen people at any given time. In her spare time she goes to harvest feed in their palm plot for their new cow and donkey, or cleans house. That is her life as the remaining unmarried daughter (in a household of probably twelve children).

Fatiha's father makes us bamboo furniture (shelves, baskets..). She is twenty and still has two or three years left of high school but hopefully plans to finish. And then get married.

We wrapped up with a long, lazy lunch at our host family's house.. it's fun to have another "sister" in the family now.

My wonderful family (except Iman, Ikram and Baba Houssane): L to R: Soumia, Nzha, Me, Si Mohammed (Nadia's husband), Nadia, Mama Kbira (it's her real name and literally means "big"), Nawal (engaged to a French guy now), baby Rahab (Nadia's), and Mona.

Including Mona, Mama Kbira has eight daughters now!

Me with the adorable (albeit spoiled rotten) little munchkin, Rahab. We couldn't get her to smile for photos unless I tickled her tummy.

The Little Princess and her mama's cell phone

There is a reason why..

I fully realize I have not posted in a while, and minimally before that. There is a reason why. Morocco has become my home. I no longer wanted my frustrations bared before an unknown public. It made fantastic the daily life. Fantastic, versus commonplace or normal. My little world in Agdz has become my world. My private world. My angsts of work and friendship, the joys and spills in life: I coveted their ownership. To continue writing seemed to exacerbate the feeling that my existence in this world is akin to watching a fantastical creature flitting about in it until she finds the escape hatch. The things I've dealt with, over time, became more the struggles of a normal life (in my mind), not extraordinary, and thus, I kept them to myself and intimate friends.

Now I walk through the streets - seven weeks from waving goodbye for good - and I have to recognize that I am still a foreigner here. As long as I live here and try to make Agdz my home, I will still be a foreigner. After two years of greeting them in their native tongue, the children on my street still shout "Bonjour, Ca Va!?" to me as I pass. I wonder how many times people still internally groan as I try to explain something in Arabic or inquire how to say another word. I still get exhausted on marathon holiday mornings of tea and cookies (the Muslim world is celebrating Leid Sghir right now, the holiday capping Ramadan, the month of fasting). Close acquaintances still look at me with those cautious eyes: friendly but not fully understanding or trusting, as one gazes at a stranger living in one's community whose habits, though becoming familiar with time, are still not wholly comprehended. I still feel at a loss as to how to explain that traveling about Morocco is also work, that I'm not simply operating on an extended-vacation plan: survey work in Figuig, training new volunteers in Ouarzazate; Warden & Security or Volunteer Advisory Committee meetings in Rabat. And now I have holed myself up to study for the GRE. How do they know I'm not simply sleeping or hiding away? I have three days left to study, before I take off again for more trainings in Ouarzazate, and then End-of-Service Medicals in Rabat, followed by the GRE exam at the end of that week. To locals, I simply travel a lot. I think about projects I'd hoped to pursue much further - such as exporting hammocks, which due to summer, Ramadan and my travel and other work, never matured. So I have to accept the realities. There will always be more I could have accomplished. There will always be things I wished I had done. And I will never completely belong here. That is not to say I may ever completely belong anywhere, but it is a reality here I wanted to deny.

I will miss Agdz. I will miss my adorable girls and my host family. I will miss laughing and groaning about the heat and flies over a cup of mint tea with the Ben Mammas family. I will miss the slow, leisurely days of reading and gazing out at the palm trees. I will miss the undeniable exoticness of living in Morocco. I will miss many volunteers who have become dear friends and more.

Leaving will be bittersweet.

These days my plan is to focus on each week's goal (right now it's studying vocabulary words and taking GRE practice tests), and try to keep my head from swimming in the many things I have to emotionally deal with or accomplish before I fly away home - to savor the moments here and cherish the thought of home and parents, siblings, friends, and a niece and nephew (whom I haven't met yet) awaiting me, and the conveniences of "the promised land", as I've taken to calling it ... America.

I feel I might fly home, wake up in my own bed, and wonder if the last two years was a dream.

Touch of Inspiration

Between travels, a couple girls from the Neddi will come over on the occasional late afternoon to work on a brochure for Mubarak's campground: Zahra, Nafissa and Saida. Zahra has proved most consistent and insightful.

We started by going to Mubarak's campground, and taking photos one evening. The goal was to make an advertising brochure for tourists. I explained the idea to all of them. And pulled out the camera. Each step along the way is a teaching tool: how to hold a camera, position it, using flash, framing a subject, excluding distracting elements. We even rearranged furniture in the Salon and stood on chairs to get a good angle.

She visited the other day and we looked through pictures we had taken and edited on previous occasions. I opened PowerPoint and we began discussing ideas of layout and what photos she might want to use - what she might want to portray in each section of the brochure.

For the cover she envisioned the front door of the campground, opened ... leading one to peer through the open door and catch a glimpse of the campground. We looked through the photos. None equated her vision. I got excited about the fact that she came up with her own idea.

So I suggested we hop on bikes and return to the campground straightaway to get the photo she wanted. "Now!?" She queried? "Yes, why not?" So we did. (She had not ridden a bike in quite some time, so that in itself was yet another "lesson" :) We rode to the campground, greeted Mubarak and friends, asked if we could snap a couple more pictures and adjusted the doors just so.




She stepped back and framed the door from a couple different positions. I took a couple more, and we discussed what we wanted to include in the pictures... stabilizing the camera on my bike for non-flash shots. Her hands were shaking. I realized that all this attention - two men holding doors for her and watching; me instructing and her handling a rather expensive camera - was a bit of pressure. I assured her the photos looked very promising. We laughingly took a posed "Greeting" shot of Mubarak and his friend and headed back home to edit and crop the best of the batch..

We're still a long way from a brochure, but the joy comes in seeing a young girl's mind in action. Allowing her to use her creativity and imagination, and then capture it in some form. Shwiya b shwiya (little by little..).

Celebrating 25,000 Visits

Thank you to all my visitors over the past two years.... all 25,000 of you!

Efficiency on its worst behavior

Yesterday efficiency was on its worst behavior. It put the idea in my head to get up at 6:30 A.M. instead of the standard 10 A.M. I obeyed.

By 10 A.M. I had already gone on an hour run/walk, with the quiet morning air rustling palm leaves and the sun twinkling gently on the river. I haven't been on a run in six months.

I had taken a shower, made breakfast, and done the dishes from the day before. I laid in the hammock in the cool morning air, reading the Bible and praying for a while.

Somewhere in the process 10 A.M. passed. I washed several loads of laundry by hand, hung them on the line, they dried, I took them off and hung more clothes on the line.

My computer refused to works as usual (it turns off at an interval of every 30 seconds most days), but I studied GRE words. When I finished, I'd narrowed down the "500 of the Hardest GRE Words" to 18. I proudly showed April, my friend, who was camped out for the weekend here to take a practice MCAT test. (Yes, I know you wish you could be here. No other house pulsates with so much life.) I resumed the Durant's 700 page tome on the Age of Napoleon ... which compelled me to take a nap. My friend Frank S. called several times throughout the day and I paced the roof chatting as sprinkles moistened my shirt from gray clouds above. I picked up my violin, ran through the scales and rehashed an Etude and technique builders.

Showers happened at frequent intervals to cool my skin from the pervasive heat.

A miracle happened. My computer turned on. And stayed on. So I edited the By-Laws for our VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee) and sent my suggestions to the committee. I took GRE quizzes. I read emails. Responded to emails. I blogged. I read the news. All these things that intermittent shut-offs of 30 second intervals has not facilitated. I tried to Skype my sister several times to make plans for her trip to join me when I complete my service December 1. No luck.

Frank called again. It was now after 6 P.M. I had now done twice as much as I usually accomplish in two days. And it was only 6 P.M. I had the prospect of a whole evening in front of me and blustery winds to seduce me. But I would not be seduced. I had already courted the palmary for an hour that morning. I whined to Frank that I could not handle this day any longer. It was too long. If I went to visit a girlfriend, we would just sit in her house and stare, and make me feel even more restless. I paced the roof again. I paced my house. I danced to Bon Jovi. I sank to my knees to inspect little leaves pushing up through the soil in one of my pots - a wildflower mix I'm attempting to acclimate to the Saharan Desert weather.

Frank told me about the glorious thunderstorm pounding his house. I leaned out the window, breathing in violent winds, trying to appreciate the odd weather. But my body kept saying: "escape, escape!" With no where to escape to. Technically yesterday and today are Moroccan national holidays. I could have left for a four-day weekend, but I have 5 Dirhams ($0.60) to my name, and I have traveled abundantly. I head to Rabat in a few days for Close Of Service Conference anyways. So traveling was out.

I chided efficiency. He was the fool who had convinced me to wake up at 6:30 A. M. and get so much done. What a shame! That a person would accomplish a such a number of things in the stretch of one day, instead of spreading them out fairly over a week so that no day was exalted, no day left without a piddling bit to check off the list.

I started applications to the five graduate programs that I decided to apply to. I kept it up for a few hours. At 9 P.M. I decided it was time to make quiche. I went out to the corner hanut, my body breathing freedom as I left the doors of my house. The process took a while: rolling a butter crust, slow-sautéing onions and tomatoes, baking. I returned to Napoleon, curled in my hammock while savory smells seeped up the stairs. At 11 P.M. I devoured a real dinner. This always happens. No appetite all afternoon while the heat oppresses body and soul. And then in cool of the night the stomach attacks with a vengeance.

At 12:00 A.M. reveling in the cool air, I could not bid myself to retire. I had downloaded Friends, Season 3, and watched the next episode. And the next. And the next. And then Rachel and Ross were fighting.. I had to see what happened. At 1:30 A.M. my sister Tabi saw me online: "Shouldn't you be in bed..?" I gave her my lame excuse and hurried back to my hot chocolate, popcorn and Friends. By 2:20 A.M. my eyelids gave the clue and I meandered off to bed.

At 5:00 A.M. I woke at the impertinence of mosquitoes who were dining on my flesh and the heat that invaded my rest. I did what any normal person would do, watered my bed with a teapot of "cool" water (tap water in the summers would certainly be sufficient for any recipe calling for "warm water" ... or even "hot water"). I closed the curtains, smirking at the sun that threatened to sneak over the mountain in the next hour, enveloped myself and mattress with with the mosquito-net tent and sunk off into a deep sleep.

At 10:00 A.M. I lazily opened my eyes. And looked at the clock. Ahhh... 10 A.M. already. Four hours of my day already spent in luxurious slumber. Efficiency, you will have my ear no longer, I taunted. And lazily got out of bed. It's already 11:23 A.M. and I'm blogging and drinking tea. Yes, I washed a few dishes. BUT THAT'S ALL. The day promises a short existence - and my host family might even be back from vacation. A visit could equal a full evening's time!

I think I'm beginning to understand the logic of locals, who seem quite fond of their mattresses on a summer's day. No person should be expected to endure the heat and find ways to occupy themselves for twenty hours straight. Not unless they listen to that evil little voice called Efficiency.