One Candle Power

Hey All,Time for another weekly installment in the ever unfolding story of my life. Its been an exciting week and I'm feeling slightly daunted by the task of putting it into words so bear with me, and my spelling. (thanks dad... if I had a spell checker I would use it but the dictionary on these computers is only in french...)So, Let me begin where I left off. I told you that I was headed up into the mountians for a week on a field trip to live and work with another voulenteer in the environment sector and to see what day to day life was like. Over all it was a fabulous time! I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to get out there and see how things actually worked on the ground. I feel like this one week was better than all of the training we've had up till now combined. Maybe it was just better in a different way because its not like the training was useless or anything... Just not always real world applicable. I'm sure that it will all balance out in the end because for this week I got little or no language training as they speak a different dialect in Imichill and we didn't end up doing much related to environment... but I'm getting ahead of myself.The story begins with our first experiance of true Moroccan transportation. Up until this point we've been moved from place to place in safe little groupslike flocks of sheep with a sheperd. Moroccans who work for the peace corps and teach us launguage helping to smooth over any bumps in the road. For this adventure it was just Sumona and I. To get to Imichill is an adventure all in itself as it requires 4 seperate forms of transportation. First we had to take a petit taxi to the bus station to catch a bus at 8 am for Errachidia. A town thats a crossroads of major north south, east west routes.... but otherwise has nothing going for it. The bus ride from Ouarzazate thier takes about 5 hours on a good day in a coach bus thats been retrofitted to hold more people, and has no functioning air conditioning, bathroom, lights, etc. Then add to that about 100 people and temps of about 95 degrees and you have a great morning. From Errachidia we took a grand taxi to rich, up into thefoothills to the north. Grand taxi's are old old mercedes sedans that have seen thousands upon thousands of kilometers of use and into which you cram 7 people and all thier luggage including the driver. Thats 4 people in the back and 2 in the front bucket seat in case you were counting. It makes for a tight fit. It takes about an hour (still 90 degrees and no working windows, with the guy in the front seat smoking) to get to Rich where we meet Jason, a health voulenteer working in the area. I must pause with my transportation story to tell you about him... He deserves his own paragraph.As one of my friends described him trying to use as few words as possible Jason is a one man punk rock roadshow complete with tatoos of a questionable nature proudly displayed in the open meets peace corps heath voulenteer. I'll go further and say that he was quite possibly the last person I would have expected to see come meet me at the taxi stand to hang out with me for the night. Not only did he look the part but he had all kinds of adventures that reinforce it. He never stops talking except to breathe and it dosnt' really matter about what because he changes topics so often its hard to follow. It was amazing, probably one of the more interesting people that I've ever met and great if for no other reason than that if he can make it here for 2 years there isn't a reason for anyone else not to... Needless to say we spent the night in Rich and it was a very interesting time. We ended up watching Independance day on the local movie channel and were met at the hotel by anotherhealth voulenteer named Zach who was the total and complete opposite of Jason with a very zen like calm about him.The next morning we took a tranzit (think 12 passanger van in the states, then add 14 more people and 5 people riding on the roof with the luggage and several sacks of potatos) on a 5 hour ride up and into the mountains, down into the valleys and finally up to ~8000 feet and the town of Imichill. I pretty much loved the place at first sight. Its a quaint little village of about 650 people thats most famous for a berber engagement festival where the whole town partys for 4 days and where the brides to be pick thier husbands. Obviously this in unsual in a generally male dominated society but the town is strongly oriented to thier berber traditions. Enough so that whenever Sumona tried to speak arabic they shushed her and made me say whatever it was she wanted to say in Berber, albeit the wrong dialect. They all understand arabic just fine, at least the men, they just have to much pride to use it at home. Its almost refreshing. The town itself was cold, but not freezing. Apparently the last of the snow had melted about 2 weeks before we arrived. They have no power, except for a group generator which provides power to segments of the town on a rotating pattern so that generally (but not always) people get power every 3rd night. The rest of the time its candle power (I'm still amazed at how much light one candle can put out when there is absolutely no other light) and buta gaz lanterns (like propane lanterns only with no globe to protect the mantle and with butane instead of propane) They have running water only in the loosest sense of the word about 2 hours every morning because there isnt' enough in the gravity powered water tower to provide it to the whole town all day. In the winter the pipes freeze and people just melt snow. They survive the winter by spending all thier waking hours huddled with the woodstove eating bread and potatos. Sounds like fun to me. The voulenteer we were staying with for the week was super. Her name was Jackie and she was the sole voulenteer/anyone, working on eco tourism for the 58000 hectacre eastern high atlas national park. The tourists have already started arriving, the problem is that they have no idea that they are in a national park... I guess they just come because it looks pretty. Jackie is conducting tourist surveys to see what improvements would most benifit the part (visitor center, restrooms, hiking trails etc.) and she is designing a brochure and creating some long trecking trails in the park (120 klicks from one side of the park to the other, a walk that I'm going to do one of these days, maybe when I visit for the wedding festival next summer). Currently the park is a park in name only with zero infastructure to support mass tourism. 2 more voulenteers from our group of trainiess are going to be put in the part to speed the process up some. (I won't be going here though as I would beunable to communicate. At the same time as all that is going on she's teamed up with her site mate, a girl in the small buisness development program named Victoria to do some general health projects in town (which I'll get to in a second) and to build a bridge so car traffic can get to some of the smaller duars (think subburbs of a subburb). Victoria's main project is organizing a weaving cooperative so that the women of the town will actually see some of the money from thier amazing weaving and so that they can get a fair trade label so that tourists will know when they buy things that they are buying an authentic and direct from the source item. I actually got to witness some of the weaving, which is done by hand on a loom that looks like its been around since the stone age (and probably has). It takes about a week to make a 1 meter by 2 meter cloth used to wrap bread. The woman doing the weaving was one of the strongest berber women I've yet met. An unmarried 27 year oldnamed Nyima who was definately giving me the eye the whole time we were there for tea. (Perhaps its not safe for me to come to the wedding festival after all)The first couple of days that we were there we got to help out in a totally hands on way at the local hospital. The handicapp association in the region had teamed up with a german NGO to bring doctors from Marakesh to assess the needs of the regions handicap people in order to make thier lives better, either with physical aids such as new crutches or glasses or through surgical means. For most of the time we were just the 4 token americans... kinda like a good luck charm. We got some sweet food out of the deal which was fine by me. We did end up helping out though because the X-ray machine in the hospital had never been used before. (a combination of lack of power and lack of trained personnel) and the X-ray tech, while competent was having a great deal of trouble with the machine. It was donated from the states and the manual was in english. Victoria and I quickly translated some key sentences into french, the fired up the generator and we were in buisness. The doctorsassessed 120 patients in 2 days. (e aslo had to make some more patient record cards as they only had 100) and then, after some more sweet food, came the music and dancing.The town got crazy in honor of the doctors and put together a Haydus. Its a local music festival and dancing extravaganza and all very much cool. There were real live belly dancer like dancers, along with traditional berber music and dancing that my guide book tells me that the the average tourist will never actually see. It was a proud moment for me. It went on all afternoon and well into the late evening. They even had familiar childrens games like egg and spoon races and potato sack races. (along with some not familiar like smearing each other with yougurt) They even had a piniata like game where they hung clay pots from a wire and had adult men blindfold themselves and take whacks at them with sticks. Even I was startled when a live dove flew out of one of the pots. The other indication that the town was more Berber than arab came later in the evening when people busted out the home fermented fig Shnops. Must have been strong stuff because it didnt' take long before anumber of people were sharing the stage with the dancers. It was pretty much understood that the american females would all be given a lesson in belly dancing and I was to get a lesson in how to play one of the drums properly but the opportunity never materialized as we broke for dinner and were hustled away to eat with the preformers. Dinner was delicious as always only more so whith roasted whole chickens and a delicious pressure cooked rice dish with tomatos and spices. All and all an amazing evening. We elected not to rejoin the festivities after dinner as the men were becoming a little too frisky for the womens taste and saftey and security are paramount but we heard (literally) that it went till 1 am.All this was definately the highlight of the week but there was many other minor triumphs. To give a quick rundown we did get to hike into the park and actually do some environment related stuff... We did 30 kliometers on Thursday to visit 2 gorgeous high altitude lakes named Isli and tislit or groom and bride respectivly. There is a legend behind it that sounds an awful lot like romeo and juliet except that there is a happy ending. Also Sumona and I cooked our first Tajine dish and it came out amazing. It even got the approval of a Berber woman that we invited for dinner, which is rare praise indeed. The same woman offered to teach us to make berber Cuscus in trade and we gladly accepted. I'm still not sure I can remember all the steps of the 3 hour process but if I can everyone better watch out when I come home because its one of the most delicious dishes I've ever had. I also got my hands tatooed with Hena, a temporary dye usually only for women but men in Imichill have aspecific pattern done as well. Should last a couple of weeks. Till then my palms are the same color as my hair in an intricate starburst/flame pattern.Alas even totally satisfying and rewarding fun weeks must come to an end and Sumona and I departed Imichill and returned to Ouarzazate by the reverse of how we arrived. I'll spare you the details because with the exception of Jason its all the same as before. Now I'm back in Ouarzazate, getting ready to head back to Timnit tomorrow. Thanks everyone for the e-mails, its great for my spirits, though with the redsox starting off not so hot and Barcalona losing to real madrid I'm not sure I'm happy with the sports world at the moment. Keep them coming, I love to hear from you all. I'll be back in Ouarzazate sat night/sunday so you'll probably hear from me again then. Take care of yourselves, all of youI love and miss you allCheers!-Andy