Tag Archives: writing

The Weekend at Last

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It hasn’t been an especially long week, but I found myself excessively tired this morning.  After doing our morning with the young kids, I was glad to be on weekend.  Now I get a day and a half off before doing the intense last week of work here at the orphanage.  It’s been a great month for me–full of reflection and work and writing.  I have come up with several ideas for how to utilize my time in the Peace Corps.  Most of it requires wifi for faster internet.  So September is going to be an interesting month for me–looking for a new house and setting up the internet while I start working with the kids.

Today is the third day of The 50-Day Memory Challenge.  I wrote about last summer–reflecting on the massive fire that burned the mountains just outside my town.

Day Three: Watching Colorado Burn

I want your opinion on Oral Histories

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I am currently figuring out what kind of novel I should write while in the Peace Corps.  This will be my fifth one.  The thing is, I found a niche for myself with my previous novel–The Stagner Chronicle.   I am thinking about exploring this realm/genre of oral histories even further.  It worked well with a dystopian novel.  Now I’m starting to wonder–would it work with literary fiction?  How about science fiction?  Comedy?  I have a few ideas up my sleeve, but I want to hear from my readers.  Are you guys interested in reading Oral History-style books like World War Z and Rant?

I’m falling in love with genre.  It allows the story to be a character.  Since the players in the story are the narrators, it pulls you in.  It makes you decide what really happened.  There is no black and white when it comes to an Oral History.  That’s why I love it.  Now I want to do know if you guys feel the same.  If you haven’t read one, feel free to grab a free download of my last novel–The Stagner Chronicle–Here.

The Heat of Summer

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This week-long gap between two camps has been rather weird.  There is so little that I can accomplish in the period of a week.  This week felt like a bit of a waste.  I spent a lot of time thinking–which is why many Peace Corps members fear the Summer.  Too much thinking can make you remember what you are doing here AND what you left back home.  It’s a time where you can figure out what you want to do with your service or pine over the life you left back in The States.  I feel like I’ve gone through both of these at the same time.  I am starting to develop a realistic plan of what I want my service to look like.  At the same time, I see too much of my life back in The States.

On the plus side, I developed a lot of plans during this week.  I worked on my big project–which I hope to start in full force this Fall.  I figured out what kind of books I want to spend my time reading.  I started writing more than I have been.  During the heat of the day, I feel like there is little I can do other than watch a TV show or take a nap.  The think is, the rest of my city does that too.  I guess what I thought was laziness is just cultural integration.  This really is the strangest job I’ve ever had.

Here’s a poem from yesterday.

The Quarry

Getting in the Grove

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The more time that passes living alone, the more I figure it out.  In the first week, I didn’t have a good place to read or write.  Yesterday, I made space.  I ended up reading quite a bit of a fantastic book–The Good Earth–and actually wrote for the first time in a while.  I’m slightly confused about what came out, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.  I always return to poetry when I have pent up emotions I need to ventilate.

The next forty days or so promise to be crazy.  I sat down and wrote out a schedule of events.  I don’t have much free time starting this Wednesday.  There are trainings, festivals, events, and much more.  I like being busy.  At the same time, I am starting to get somewhat of a schedule for work.  What more can I really ask for?  I needed a way to stay busy and I am starting to figure it out.  Now if I could just find a place to buy a desk…

Pacify

 

100 Days Into My Peace Corps Experience

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Fes

100 Days In

100 Days Down.  700 to go.  The past week has changed everything for me.  It started with Spring Camp.  That gave me the first experience of interacting with kids in Bhalil.  Once camp concluded, I got to work on some of the most important aspects of my time here.  First, getting a house of my own.  As of yesterday, I have the key to my very own beautiful apartment.  I will be spending the week ahead furnishing it and moving in.  Secondly, I am filling my schedule with classes.  I already have three English Classes scheduled in the week ahead.  I am likely to get a couple more over the next couple days.  Most of them will be reoccurring.  This will be the core of my service.  All of my projects will branch out from the kids that I teach.

Starting to be successful is changing a lot.  There have also be recent changes back in America.  It has all brought me to a strange understanding.  I now know what I am doing in Morocco.  I now know the full extent of the sacrifice I made by leaving America.  The combination is strange.  On the up side, my feet are planted firmly in Morocco and my service will benefit from that.  On the down side, there is no going back to the way things used to be.  I knew Peace Corps would change my life.  But what surprises me is how it changed me.

The emotional roller coaster that was 100 days of homestay is over.  It made me realize how many emotions can be active at the same time.  There was one point when I almost exhausted my vocabulary for emotions and honestly felt all of them simultaneously.  It is exhausting.  However, considering I was an anxious wreck only six months ago, this is a great change for me.

The other aspect is Love.  I have come to realize the true meaning of love here.  In all forms.  I have never truly understood how much I love my family…because I have never had to miss them this much.  It is a great thing to realize.  The same happens for friends.  I coming to realize who I was close to because they were around…and who is honestly a good friend (and how I can be a better friend).  As for romantic love, that is a whole other can of worms.

I am ready for the second 100 days.  I know that I do not know what they hold.  That is clear.  I barely understand what tomorrow holds.  But that is part of the beauty of Morocco and Peace Corps.  You never know what is going to happen…but is usually turns out for the best.

Like being ushered into a random house and given cake, peanuts, and tea.

Morocco is awesome.

How to Buy Meat in Morocco

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Meat hooks at a butcher.

Meat hooks at a butcher. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The local butcher has a shop just down the street.  His tactics for increasing sales are obvious—and appear to be working.  On the outside door to the shop hangs a cow head.  Every day, a cow head will be there.  It’ll look very much alive except for the vacancy in its eyes and the tongue hanging slightly out of its mouth.  This the butcher’s way of telling his customers that this meat is fresh.

The rest of the cow hangs behind the butcher.  You walk into his store and ask for a certain number of kilos.  The butcher will go to the dead cow and cut off a slab for you—nice and fresh.  He’ll weigh it.  Once he has the right amount, he’ll grind the meat up for you right there.  He puts the slab in the top of the grinder.  Out the side comes ground meat.  This cow won’t even be 24 hours dead by the time his meat is in your stomach.

But that is nothing compared to the chicken vender.  I have only gone once.  With my remaining 700 days in Morocco, I have no intention of returning.  For one thing, I don’t like chicken very much.  For another, I prefer not to see my meal slaughtered.  The chicken vender has a simple setup.  You walk up to his window and ask for a certain number of kilos.  He will walk to the back of his store, where ten chickens are in a pen.

These chickens are always hiding in a corner.  They are able to see what happens to the chickens that get “picked.”  They push each other to hide in the furthest corner, not wanting to die.  The chicken vender picks out a chicken for you and brings it up to the window.  He weighs the live chicken right in front of you.  If the weight is correct, he puts the chicken on the ground, holds its head upward, and cuts its throat.  The chickens in the pen huddle closer together.

After that, the chicken is sent through a defeathering machine.  After a few minutes, you have your meat ready.  The one night that I witnessed this, we ate chicken.  It’s strange to think that the meat you are eating was alive just a couple hours ago—trying not to be the winner of some reaping.  But that’s how it works here.

In America, we hide the process of killing.  When we go to buy our meals for the day, we see processed meat, not living animals.  It makes it easier for us to stomach.  As for me, I’m tending towards the side of America.  Once I’m on my own and cooking on my own…I can’t see myself buying meat.  I don’t know how to be a vegetarian…but I may have to figure it out.

It’s that or learn how to be okay with reaping a chicken every few nights.

The Signs That Guide Us

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Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle (Photo credit: agirregabiria)

I believe in signs.  I’m not entirely sure when this started.  The change was gradual.  I used to laugh when people talked about a sign guiding them to their purpose.  Now, those signs are what guide me.  It is this belief in signs that makes me agnostic.  I could never be an atheist.  The more I live, the more I see that chaos is not in the cards.  Although my jump to religion will likely never take place, I take a great comfort in the signs that I decipher from time to time.

Yesterday started off fuzzy.  After almost two weeks in Final Site, I felt useless.  I was making progress on certain things—like finding a house and integrating.  But tangible things were not happening.  I do not have a daily routine that gives all humans a sense of purpose.  So, when I woke up to a text message from a new friend, I jumped at it.  The moment I left the house, someone called my name.  After a five minute conversation, I suddenly had a second place to teach youth in my community.  The sign was a good one.  I was right to get up and do something this morning.

I got in a cab and headed to Sefrou.  For more than an hour, we walked on a website.  The hope is that this website can be a place where youth submit their written work.  But, yesterday, it was something to fill the endless hours in the day. It filled the hole.  In return for the help, my new friend helped me find a cord to my Kindle.  I don’t think he realizes how grateful I am for this cord.  Without the cord, I was down to 3 physical books to read.  With the cord, my Kindle opens a world with more than a thousand books.  I will be able to read to my heart’s content during my time here because of a single cord.

I also got pooped on by a bird.  I’m not sure how to interpret that sign.

By getting an early start to the day, I was ready for anything.  I spent the afternoon at my youth center—starting the process to sign up students for my English Classes.  I signed up five kids and left the signup sheet on the wall.  To be honest, it doesn’t matter how many people sign up.  The sheet has two purposes.  First, it lets me figure when the best time to hold classes is.  Second, it gets students excited about the class.  They will talk to their friends and word of mouth will fill up my classes.  Most of them will not come regularly…but some will.

That’s all that matters.

Market day in Sefrou, Maroc

Market day in Sefrou, Maroc (Photo credit: See Wah)

 

 

Cultural Misunderstandings & Moroccan Integration

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English: Extension of Moroccan Arabic (Darija).

English: Extension of Moroccan Arabic (Darija). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I need to talk about yesterday. Out of nowhere, yesterday became my biggest step forward with regards to integration.  At the same time, I made a mistake that will likely come back to bite me.  All in all, the day was busy and worthwhile.  I went to sleep unsure of how to interpret everything…but that is happening more and more here in Morocco.

The day started normal.  I woke up late.  I walked around town.  I read at the park.  That part of my routine is set.  It’s perfect for what I want to accomplish here.  I need to integrate, so walking around daily is a must.  I meet at least one new person a day.  The reading in the park is something that came out of nowhere.  After being told that “I’ve never seen a person in Bhalil read in public,” I decided to do it every day.

When I got back, my family whisked me off to lunch at my mother’s parents’ house.  I’m starting to get to know everyone in the family.  More importantly, my Host Uncle has taken a liking to me.  He tries harder to communicate with me than anyone I have met here in Morocco.  After lunch, he took me to his barbershop.  At first, I thought I was going to be forced to get my hair cut.

Turns out I was wrong.  The barbershop is kind of a local hangout.  A dozen people came and went throughout my three hours there.  I met several friends of the family.  We had conversations about language, indoor heating, money, and clean energy.  It was fantastic.  Later, the English teacher at the local high school dropped by.  We had a long conversation and suddenly I have another counterpart in my work here.  Those three hours at the barbershop integrated me as much as a week’s worth of walking around town.

I headed back to my family’s house.  As we ate, the conversations somehow turned to how long I’m spending in Morocco (two years).  That quickly turned into whether or not I would marry while in Morocco.  This isn’t the first time a conversation has started about me being single.  Back in Bouderham, it was an ongoing joke between the postman and I.  So when the topic came up, I gave an overenthusiastic, “No, no, no, no.”

This is the first time the subject came up with my host family.  They were confused why I was so adamant.  It’s not that I’m adamant against it…it’s more that I can’t see it.  Back in America, I really wanted to have a house and a good job and be more like 30 when I started a family.  If my ideals play into it—religion, writing, etc..—I just don’t see marriage anywhere in the picture during my two years here.

Problem: How do you translate that into a language you’ve been studying for two months?

I missed my opportunity to explain myself.  Instead, my host mother asked me if there was a girl back home.  I said no.   My mother decided my “no” was a little sheepish and interrupted it as a “YES I DO!”  Before I could do anything about it, the conversation flew by me.  I was only asked one more question, “Is she still studying at University in America?”  Unsure of what else to say, I just said yes.

So my host family things I’m halfway to engaged.  This being on the heels of me suddenly feeling single again.  I want to set the record straight with my family…but bringing it up would be inappropriate.  The best I can do is set the record straight if they bring the subject again.  But what am I supposed to say?

Back in America I would explain it eloquently, “We never officially dated, but we were defiantly together.  We never officially broke up, but we are definitely not together anymore.”  In Darija, I will inevitably sound like a bubbling idiot.  I live in a culture where dating is considered inappropriate.  I quickly discovered that it’s not as much of a big deal as I was led to believe.  Still, it is quite a strange situation.

Every day here is unexpected.

I love that.

But it’s exhausting.

Day 56 in Peace Corp Morocco: The End of Training

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I am 7% done with my Peace Corps adventure.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand time here in Morocco.  It’s only been eight weeks since I left the States.  It feels like it’s been a year.  The thing is, my time here feels like it is flying by.  It just doesn’t make any sense.  To add more to the confusion, everyone back home is now an hour closer to me since Morocco doesn’t do Daylight Saving Time.  We found this out by trying to explain to our Language and Cultural Facilitator what DST is.  We confused her and came away with the understanding that there is no DST in Morocco.

Sorry for the sabbatical.  Studying is intense in the first few months of Peace Corps.  The thing is, it works.  I’m holding full conversations with my host family now.  I’m sure it’ll be easier to keep updating once I get to my final site.  Below is my first full piece of writing while in Morocco.  I am still doing a lot of writing–just not anything I can put on here.  I write in my journal on a daily basis.  I’m also doing well on the script I started a few weeks back.  It’ll be a long process, but it is definitely coming together.

Here’s my full Peace Corps Update:

Saying Goodbye to Mom and Dad