Reflections

Hey all,So I'm writing to you as a true voulenteer for the first time. I've sucessfully completed the swearing in process and tomorrow I depart for the site that will be my home for the next two years. I have some mixed feelings about this I must admit. First and formost I'm super excited to be out and about and on my own again after 3 months of very rigorous training. I'm also scared to death and more than a little nervous about lacking a support system and having little or no contact with the outside world except by letters and an occational trip to an internet cafe about once a month. There isn't much I can do about it except adapt and I would like to think that I'm more than capable of doing so. For those that have written, thanks a million for your continued good wishes and support. For now I just want to look back on my training and some of the things that I've learned. There have been many but I'll only touch on a few. I'll probably also get side tracked a lot talking aboutthings that have happened in the last couple of weeks. Bear with me.First and formost, moroccans, and I'm going to generalize, are all very nice people and very warm and weloming. Over the last 6 weeks in Timnit my host family has become more than just people providing a bed and breakfast service while I was working on other things. They have managed to intigrate themselves into my life and make themselves my true substitue family. The fact that we can only understand each other about half the time is irrelavent. I'm still important to them and they are still important to me. My host brothers know what I'm saying before I can finish saying it, (which probably didn't help my learning process much but was still nice) and I managed to understand them. My father and I rarely understood each other at all but that didn't take away from his excitment to share things with me and he actually cried when I had to leave for the last time promising phone calls and visits in the future.Our last week in Timnit was spent working on various reports and a book for the community that they can give to interested NGO's which details all thier available resources. For the 5 of us still around it was eye opening to see just how much we had managed to collect in the way of information. We had gone from seeing Timnit as a backwoods underdeveloped collection of 300 year old mud houses to seeing it as it truely is. A self sustainable isolated community which has survived and pospered and adapted to the times unmolested and for the most part unchanged for longer than the United States has been a country. Obviously they must be doing something right. What they lack in money they make up for in spirit and manpower. What they lack in technology they make up for with community and tradition. They have everything they've ever needed and now more with the addition of power and hopefully soon the return of running water. I actually fear that the times may be catching up withTimnit. More and more people are having to leave to find high paying jobs to support new habits and outside products. Coca Cola, cell phones and Television are going to change Timnit forever.Not all the changes are negative. We've seen positive progress in womans rights and literacy even in the short time we've been here. The king is earning his reputation as the king for the poor. In Timnit womens literacy classes are starting and the new womans rights laws are dinner time discussions with positive outcomes. (for the most part... this is not true in other parts of morocco. At one point there was a demonstration for womans rights on the streets of Casablanca and the next week there was a counterdemonstration where 3 times the number of women showed up. Sometimes radical funamentalism still manages to rear its head even in the most progressive of countries) When I first met my host sister Rita I was suprised and saddened to find her with no educational options despite her obvious desire to continue to learn and her quick wit and intelligence. I'm happy both to see and to say that there is light at the end of the tunnel for her and I hope for the best in her future. As amazing as Timnit is, some people deserve more. My host father actually brought my host mother to Ouarzazate for our swearing in today and I was amazed to discover that it was the first time in her entire life that she had been out of Timnit. Ouarzazate is only an hour away but sometimes you would be suprised how different a world an hour will bring you. Made me glad I had contributed money to pay for a taxi to go and get them even if it meant a few less stamps or american candies for me.I also have a new appriciation for small things. Little things mean so much to the people in the outlying areas here that we take for granted. Little boys playing under a streetlight for the first time and thanking god for bringing them light was something that will stay in my memory for the rest of my life. Working clocks, reliable batteries, cheap reliable communication, family... all these things are a big deal to them. They are important to us to but not in nearly the same way. There are countless others as well and its changed my whole perspective on value. Certian things are more important than others but its all a matter of personal perspective and as your world view changes new windows open and its as if a strong wind blew through and re-arranged the furniture. It makes me wonder how long I will have to be back in the states before things go back the way they were. I don't want to lose the new perspective but who knows if I'll have a choice. We all have to adapt justlike everything else.Not the least of the things I've learned is the language. Here I use the term learned losely. We had our final language tests earlier this week and I'm still here so I must have passed. Actually I did better than I thought... which is probably more a testament to the sympathies of the tester than to my abilities. I'll find out soon enough. I would never have imagined before hand the doors that opened for me once I started using the local dialect to talk to people. It makes me proud to be an american more than perhaps anything else. To go into town and be recognized as peace corps because we are the only ones that bother to learn the berber dialects. People try to talk to me in french and laugh, part in delight and part at my pronunciation, when I reply in berber. If nothing else it gets some smiles and better prices on leather flip-flops.Anyway, I suppose that I should wrap this up with some discussion of current events. As you may have gathered from elsewhere in this letter our training is done. Our swearing in party went well today and was attended by the ambassador from the states and the govenor of the Ouarzazate province as the representative of the king. We were all hoping that Brad Pitt would attend as he is here filming a movie but alas, it was not to be. My host family did attend and wished me well, though they would have much prefered if I wasn't going someplace so far from them. Protectiveness is also a trait here that I find admirable, if a little cumbersome at times. I've repacked my stuff and I'm in the process of running a hundred errands to get ready to go out into the wilds for a month without a taste of civilization. I'm sure I'm going to forget something (like bringing enough toilet paper) but whatever it is I'm just going to have to take it as it comes. The adventure continues.Speaking of errands.. time is waning and I just got a couple more added to my list. Off to get my picture taken for the moroccan equivalent of the green card...Love and luck to allCheers!-AndyP.S. My next e-mail will probably come towards the end of June begining of July. Sorry about that but its the breaks. Until then stay well and I do appricate real mail at any time! I'll check my e-mail tomorrow morning before I go hopefully so if you have last minute messages I MAY get them.Cheers-Andy