Lots of travel, by foot, taxi, and DONKEY!!!!

May 29, 2009

It’s been a pretty interesting few weeks. Well, this last week in particular was pretty full of traveling. I’m loving traveling in Morocco, because every experience is different in some new/strange way. I went to a town an hour and a half to the east on Monday to try to find a tiny stamp for my carte sejour, which is the document that foreigners in Morocco must have if they stay in country longer than 3 months straight without leaving. This particular town had the stamp that I needed, but to buy it I would have to buy a stamp that cost 3 times as much. So I then had to travel 45 minutes south from there to a bigger city that I’m becoming more and more familiar with. This city is not in the mountains, and therefore is oppressively hot. This is me talking about the weather in the spring. I’m so very glad that my town is high up in the mountains. My Alaskan pigmentation and constitution can’t handle extreme heat. Anyway, I only stayed in the town for about an hour and then got back in a taxi to head back home. All toll, 5 hours in 4 very hot taxis for a tiny, expensive stamp. That adventure was very tiring, and I vowed to stay in my town for at least a week before traveling again. Well, needless to say, that didn’t happen. On Wednesday Peace Corps practiced the Part of their evacuation plan for the country and told me to head to my consolidation point, which is about 25 km south of the hot city. I was supposed to get a text message on my phone telling me to consolidate at 7:30 in the morning. I, unfortunately, did not receive any notification until around noon. I hurriedly got my bag ready to go and went to inform my host father and the local police where I’d be going. Around 1:30 I finally got on the road, and then realized that I had lost about 10% of my monthly living allowance. Damn my shallow pockets, it must have fallen out when I was getting my phone out of my pocket. That made the first hour and a half taxi ride no fun. 3 total taxi rides and about 3 and a half hours later I made it to the hotel where we’re supposed to meet if we have to evacuate the country. I was the last one of my group to arrive, and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get back to my town before dark. Peace Corps had reserved one room at the very nice 4 star hotel, and I kind of lucked out that I wouldn’t be able to get back home, because I got to stay at said nice hotel. It was a very relaxing evening I’d say. I took full advantage of the wireless connection and was able to talk to a lot of family via skype. I got to swim in a pretty sweet swimming pool, and took not one, but two showers! The next day I made my way back to my town, and made a pit stop in the hot city to find some big sheets of paper for my artist-tutor. I saw an old man carrying a big bladder of water get struck by a car. He stepped out into the road from between two parked cars and the car nailed him. There was water everywhere, and the man looked like he was definitely in shock. I think the water bladder actually did a good job of protecting him from the impact. While struggling to ask people where a certain bookstore was (people in the city speak Moroccan Arabic, not Tamazight), a nice Moroccan guy with a cockney English accent helped me locate the store, which ended up being closed. We had coffee across the street and chatted while we waited for the store to open. It never did, but I really enjoyed talking to my new friend. Every other statement out of his mouth seemed to end with a “F’in Hewll”. He apparently lived and worked in London for 9 years, which explains the accent. I had no problems getting back the rest of the way.
Today some people in town cut down this huge tree in the middle of town that was dropping a lot of cotton-like pollen all over the place. I think this particular tree has been the cause of my allergies. I was kind of sad to see the thing cut down, but also happy that I’ll be able to breathe easily again. After asking about the tree (I wanted to know if it did the same thing every year), I learned that it was planted a long time ago by the French military people who lived and worked in the town.
At dinner my host mother and I watched a camel auction in a middle eastern country (I think it was Saudi Arabia, but neither my host mother and I could understand what the people were saying to confirm where it was held). I have no idea still what makes a good camel. Pardon me for being specist here, but all camels look the same to me. This might be because I might have watched the same two camels being paraded around, but it looked like 4 sales were made, so I’m thinking it was two pairs. Watching this auction reinforced something I’ve noticed about watching tv here. I am enjoying not being able to understand what is said, because it gives me the chance to try to guess what is going on by body language. I tend to think things are funny that shouldn’t be when we watch crappy B Bollywood movies. I also get to make up my own storylines, it’s kind of like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, but only without anyone around to understand my tasteless jokes. That’s all for now.

May 31, 2009

Today was another day of travel, sort of. I hiked with one of my tutors to the town where he is a teacher (about 4 km away). I had been invited by a friend of his to watch his sheep being sheered. He paid a group of professional sheep sheerers to give all of his sheep haircuts for the summer. It was a pretty big event, everyone in the area came to watch. I guess I was sort of a side attraction, and I was able to impress them a little bit with my Tam. I watched a couple hours of the sheering and then was invited inside for lunch. What a feast. Skewers of sheep meat followed by tajine with the most meat I’ve seen stuffed inside a tajine. Pretty delicious, but there was a lot of oil involved, so I feared for my stomach’s safety. I turned down their offer to stay the night and headed back in the afternoon with my tutor. We ended up catching a ride into town with a group of people on mule-back (is that even a correct way to say that, they say horse-back, so why not mule-back?) Well, I got the honor of riding the one donkey up the mountain and down the road back to my town. I tell ya, what a way to travel. It wasn’t time efficient, I probably could have walked faster than my poor little donkey (I named him Eeor). It was the first time I’ve ever ridden for a far distance on an animal. I figured my legs would thank me for not having to hike the whole way back, but I found out that my rear end does not have sufficient padding to comfortably ride 4 km. I guess I can blame my ass for being sore right now (you decide which ass I’m talking about). It was a bumpy ride. Now I am tired, and the people I’ve told about my ride back to town think it is hilarious. If I had a little more money, I think I’d buy a donkey and ride it around town. Pretty fun, and I think my body would get used to it. I’ve loaded some pictures of the day.