Well, I am so happy to be writing this at the end of what
has been an incredibly adventurous summer. This definitely goes up there with
my study abroad experience in Rome in terms of the amount of fun I have had
along with the number of awesome historical sites I have seen.
Where we last left off in my little narrative here in
country, I had just finished typing a blog post on the roof of a very random
hotel in an even more random city all of you back home in America have probably never
heard of, but is pretty awesome to visit here in Morocco. It certainly was a
very strange place to blog, but Peace Corps is all about new experiences and I
maintain rooftops at nighttime are awesome places to write pretty much anything.
Anyway, the next morning I left from the train station and continued all the way to El Jadida to participate in an English Immersion Camp with high school students from all over Morocco. The volunteers I served with are Emilio, Sarah, Byron, Olivia, Rosana, Bri, Paul, Hans, Matt, Anne, Robert and Julie. As with the two previous camps I have done this summer, this was not only a great experience as a volunteer but also a wonderful opportunity to deepen friendships from within the PC community. I remember having some very genuine conversations with Byron, playing Frisbee with Matt on the beach and attending a Moroccan soccer match with Paul, Hans and Emilio as some of my favorite personal highlights from the trip. As a volunteer, I taught English everyday with an emphasis on entrepreneurial language. We had a little ‘start your own business’ competition with prizes and I am super proud of how my students performed. The entire camp went to the beach every day after morning English classes were over and so I played in the ocean over the course of this English camp more than I ever have before. It was a very peaceful place to spend 12 days and I returned home feeling as if I had been on vacation.
The fellas and I at the Match!
Once home, it was time for planning projects for the fall as
well as attending my first Moroccan wedding. The planning went well and I had
much fun at the wedding with my friends Mustafa and Simo. For those of you who
don’t know, Moroccan weddings are often multiple-night events. The first night
we went together was mostly Quranic recitations followed by a delicious dinner.
We returned to the same wedding two days later, which was a grand party with
probably two to three hundred people there to celebrate with the groom and
bride together. This evening’s
festivities began at around midnight and after much time spent in cheer and jubilation, Mustafa
and I decided to leave early and by the time my head eventually hit the pillow,
it was around five in the morning.
Day 1 Under the Wedding tent!
Only two days after the wedding, I was back on the road…this time to Fes for our regional meeting. I actually enjoyed myself there quite a bit because there were some volunteers I had not had the opportunity to meet until that time and so I learned quite a bit about what my service could look like that I had not thought about before. However, I will not deny that what made Fes special were a couple of really fun nights exploring the city with my friend Alexander. He was patient enough, having visited Fes multiple times before, to walk with me from our hotel to the Old Medina for some unplanned exploring in a medieval urban maze. Having the interest in history that I do, I ate this stuff alive. There is a magic to the medina there that you just feel when walking through the streets and discovering things like the world’s first university across the street from a lamp store with such a diverse collection of bright, floating objects that you can’t help but yield to the temptation of imagining it as magic portal which can take you to any sort of enchanting place you may have dreamed about as a child. The next night, the two of us hit the road again for a slightly different destination, the mall. We decided to contrast our UNICESCO experience of the previous evening with something akin to a Costco run in the states. We did get to visit the local Marjane for shopping of “necessities,” but also decided to see how the other half of Morocco lives and do some window shopping in stores with prices that far exceed what our Peace Corps budget allows us to consider shopping in. We both love media and so had a lot of fun together spending time in a Virgin store with a great selection of books, movies, music and video games. We then accidentally bumped into Amina and Abdelghani, two very kind Peace Corps employees, who were both caught in act of purchasing frozen yogurt in order to have a nice time. Amina gave Alexander and I the warmest greeting she could and offered to buy us some froyo (of which we were obligated not to refuse). I maintain that the warmness with which she greeted us reminds me of a really awesome aunt or mother of a close friend, definitely not our manager. The four of us had a really nice time chatting together while enjoying a luxury we don’t partake in much anymore. All in all, Alexander is an awesome travel companion and we not only saw some great stuff, but did so comfortably and with some real genuine conversations.
After Fes, there was a two-day gap until I had to travel to Ouarzazate for Amazigh culture and language training. Accordingly, I had coordinated a weekend visit to Marrakech with Gehad, the “Pharaoh” I mentioned befriending in my last blog post, before he was set to return home to Alexandria. Thomas and Erika, two volunteers I am quite close with, gave me a wonderful surprise by actually covering the cost of a first class ticket on the train ride from Fes to Marrakech so that I could sit with them and our good friend Noa. So the four of us had a very relaxing and comfortable journey to Marrakech together for the weekend. When we arrived, I pledged to introduce them to my good pal Gehad sometime while we were all there together. That first day in Marrakech, Gehad and I just walked aimlessly (as many of you know, my favorite pastime) throughout the city and eventually bumped into everything historically awesome that we had intended on seeing. We really spent most of the time that first afternoon and evening just talking about life and how we were really doing personally. At the Peace Summit, we already knew that we got along really well and developed a good connection, but here we really had a chance to be very sincere with one another about some real vulnerable areas of our lives and just know that the other person was caring. The next day we walked to the Majorelle Garden, nowhere near our hotel (but we really enjoy just walking and talking) and made crucial pit stops to Starbucks and the Marrakech mall on the way. We had so much fun on that walk and really enjoyed the garden together as well. That evening, we joined Thomas, Erika and Noa for dinner at a very fancy restaurant and all had a wonderful time spoiling ourselves with fine dining atop a Marrakech roof while the sun set. The conversation was wonderful and they all got along quite well with one another. I unfortunately woke up very frail that Sunday morning when we had to travel to Ouarzazate and actually had to have Gehad help get me to the train station. God bless him for his patience and servant-minded heart, I would have been really screwed if he were more individualistic. Unfortunately, the time then came for us to part and we hope to meet again in Egypt someday soon.
Now the road from Marrakech to Ouarzazate is famous for two reasons: incredible scenic views of a stunning mountain range and a very narrow road which passes through said mountain range and known for making people so nauseous that the bus companies hand out bags for troubled passengers to vomit in. As someone who does get carsick and already felt sick that day, I spent the bus ride listening to the adrenaline-filled soundtrack to Interstellar with my eyes closed. L’humdullah, I arrived to Ouarzazate feeling healthier than when I had climbed onto that bus.
I spent one entire week in Ouarzazate for the Amazigh
workshop and I unsurprisingly learned it is difficult to learn a new language
in only one week. Nevertheless, I gave it my best and am continuing to study
the language from my notes so as to build a good foundation for conversation
with friends here. I am proud to say that I did get my verb conjugations down
on the last day! The training was a really nice experience for all of us
volunteers and teachers who come from Amazigh communities. There was a lot of bonding
that went on over there and Paul and Katie actually both celebrated their
birthdays over the course of the training.
Also, while in ‘Oz’, many of us went on a field trip during
our free day to Aït Benhaddou and a film studio. Both were used for filming Gladiator and several other well-known
films that dim in comparison.
Some friends and I enjoying ourselves at the film studio.
When the time to leave Ouarzazate, I could not help but feel
a sense of relief to finally return home. As you can tell from my previous blog
posts, I had returned back to site many times during the summer, but each visit had
never exceeded much more than a week in duration. I had not had the opportunity
to live my normal life since I left for our first In Service Training close to
the Fourth of July.
I have been here in site meeting with active citizens to plan my volunteer schedule for the fall throughout this week. We really hit the ground running and so I am so happy the weekend has finally come. Next week is Eid al-Adha, where Muslims around the world celebrate Abraham’s faith in God. You can Google it for the academic information, but I am especially excited to spend time with my host family and eat some bbq’d lamb!
Until next time,
Steven
No comments:
Post a Comment