The past week.....

29/5/08

So I will be heading in for dinner in just a moment, but there are a couple of little moments from the past 2 days I want to write down before I forget!

1. Yesterday I slept in for the first time since arriving to Morocco.  It was great!  9am!  Then I spent the morning organizing my room, since I just got my luggage from Tiznit on Tuesday.  So I am there, enjoying my music, lost in my own little world, when I hear a car pull up.  Interesting…who could that be.  And then, there is a knock on my door, and open in, and who is standing there but the Chief Gendarme!!!!! !?!?  I about had a heart attack, wondering what the heck I did to warrant the chief gendarme driving 30 miles from his station to my site, then another 3 miles of unpaved road to my house!  Well, after I started breathing again, I realized there couldn’t be anything wrong since he and the other gendarme (they are the rural police) were smiling.  Turns out they wanted to get started on my carte de sejour process, and instead of waiting for the 5 volunteers in their precinct to come to them, they came to us, also wanting to see how we were doing with our families. Still though…..very crazy!  Many people in rural communities are a bit hesitant about the gendarmes, so my host mom and sister wouldn’t even come out to greet them; instead, they made tea which I gave to the gendarmes.  Honestly, they are very nice, I feel lucky to be in a region with such nice gendarmes, but really!  It was the news of the douar, and all day after that I had neighbors asking me what I did wrong that the gendarmes had to come for me.  Ha!
2. Yesterday aftenoon, I was on a bit of a high: I went to see my Khalifa, who answered a million of my questions regarding the community.  There, I found out there were 5 letters, 3 Newsweek magazines, and my monthly mandat waiting for me at the post office!  So I was slowly walking up the hill/mountain to my house, reading my letters one by one, and as I was reading my letter from Nana, the wind picked up a bit, and in the distance, the afternoon prayer call began.  What a peaceful moment.  Now, it may sound a bit corny, but it felt corny!  What a perfect little snapshot of my life.
3. Today I finally did laundry for the first time since arriving in site…..so there I was in the bit l’ma (bathroom), my ipod blasting, scrubbing away, and one of the neighbor girls came in, and started dancing to my music.  Before long, many of the neighborhood women were over, all dancing to my music, laughing, talking, coming over to greet me…..and all the while I have soap all over me, scrubbing my underwear in a bucket. Hehe
4. While I was organizing yesterday, I discovered the Frisbee I brought.  So this evening, on my daily walk around the douar with the girls, I brought it along, and boy was it a hit!  First, my host sister and I were playing with it, and then we ran into the neighborhood schoolboys playing soccer.  Well they just about thought my Frisbee was they coolest thing they had ever seen, and we left them playing with it as we kept on walking.  On the way back to our houses, we picked it up and started playing.  There were about 8 girls, who have never seen a Frisbee before, throwing it like pros.  Before we eventually made it back home, the neighborhood little kids (the too young for school kids) also got a lesson on the Frisbee.  Too cute, watching little 3-year old Habiba toss a Frisbee.  At one point we even had Abullah, my host sisters’ father-in-law, tossing it with us.  Whoever suggested putting a Frisbee on the Peace Corps Morocco packing list is a genius.  

 

30/5/08

Today’s too cute to forget moment:  tonight I branched out and spent the evening with the women of the village (again, which just means they are married, anywhere from 17 on up).  It was a nice change from usually staying solely with the girls.  We had some nice conversations, and then one of the little old ladies of the village came up to me and started talking.  Now, you have got to be able to picture this lady.  She is short, about half my size, has very thick glasses, uses a wooden stick as a cane, has more wrinkles than you could possibly imagine, and is absolutely too cute for words.  She smiles a lot, but definitely had trouble seeing me and noticing how different I look.  After the typical introductions, she asked me something I couldn’t quite make out.  One of the women explained that she wanted to know if I have any grandmothers.  So I told her, yes I do.  She then proceeded to say that I should bring them here to Morocco, and she will make my grandmothers good Moroccan food.  I said thank you, and as she was leaving, she reminded me not to forget to say hello to my grandmothers for her, and to tell them to come visit.  J

PS tonight for dinner I ate cow knee.