Salamu Wilechem
Hey all,
Whats up back home? I realize that for some of you you're hearing from me now more than you heard from me we managed to communicate in the states but I feel like I have so much to share! You're welcome to ignore me if you want lol. So life's going pretty good in Morocco so far. Still living in a Ourzazate hotel until tuesday when I move in with a family in the small village of Timnit about 48 kilometers from here. I will still be back in Ourzazate on the weekends so I should have decent access to e-mail even then. Timnit itself has running water (kinda) but no power so computers there would be a little much to ask I'm thinking. There are about 73 housholds in the community, with 2 schools and I will be residing there off and on for about 10 weeks as I continue my training before moving to my final site at the end of May. The people of Timnit speak a dialect of Berber Arabic called Tashelhit (with the i pronounced as a long e). There is a lot of strange pronunciations so wish me luck. I can read arabic script now at about the level of a first grader, sounding out each letter in tough words.... My breakthrough came when I was sitting at lunch and was able to read the coca cola sign across the street....I'm holding up well so far health wise, though several people in the group have succomed to montezumas (mohommeds) revenge. I susspect even thouse of us with stronger stomachs will fail when we cease to eat hotel food and start on the local cuisine. Extreem diet change combined with high stress makes for bad digestion... On the subject of food however its really very good. Cuscus is a staple and rice, served cold with tuna is a standard salad. The hotel is trying to appease our western tastes by offereing western salad choices as well but personally I would rather eat local (while I still have a toilet to work with.) Meat dishes range from chicken, pigeon, and sometimes some interesting fish, to lots of lamb and goat dishes which are better most of the time then they look. They eat the fat of the meat (think its the best part in fact) which I may never be able to adjust too... I think its more of a texture thing with me than a taste thing. They also have interesting pots in which they do pot roasts called Tanjines which look very funny and are placed on the table and eaten from in a communal fashion. They look a lot like the clay tray you would set a large flower pot on then covered by a tall conical lid with a steam vent in the top. Food in them is placed into the dish which is set directly on a flame, in layers based on cooking time, then the lids placed on and they just let it sit there till everything's done. I'll write more after I've had a few cooking classes (saturdays).Daily activites are pretty restrained for us. Right at the moment we have 6 hours a day of language and 4 hours a day of techincal, health and saftey, security, and cross cultural training all of which is done either in a large group (there are 24 of us in the environment group) or in smaller groups of 5 or 6. (for example there are 6 of us learning tashelhit and going to timnit). Needless to say this dosn't leave much free time in the day, though we have today (sunday) off for self directed training (e-mail and shopping). My friend Mark (also a redhead) and I and our other roomate ( 3 to a room for us at the moment) braved a taxi to the souk (market) which is held on sunday and walked around. Picture a huge flea market where everything, including the tents and tables are for sale, then mix in vegetables, every spice imagineable, no organization, several hundred various farm animals (finding already dead meat could be interesting) and you have what amounts to a grocery store inOurzazate. Once at our final site placement I'm going to have to make a trip to the next largest city to do my shopping at one of these places... Urilli l-mushkil (no problem). Needless to say it was a good time. People mount loudspeakers on top of thier cars and witchdoctors curse you if you tell them you arn't sick and don't need healing, I guess so you will need them next time. You can aslo get some things in little shops in town, but its usually slightly more expensive (all prices are negotiable). There is a spice shop right next to my window in the hotel that also sells birds, ovens, and numerous other small items and if he dosn't have it there he has a friend that does "one minute" away and one of his children goes scurrying to try and find it for you. I'm trying to soak it all in and act like a local, at least more than the french tourists, who I've seen pay 4 times as much for something in the super marche (super market) than they could have gotten it for at the next door shop had they bothered.
Of course the super marche is the only place to get some things, like toilet paper for example. Most of the toilets around here are of the turkish variety (squat... hope you have good calfs) and toilet paper is scarce to non-existant. We carry it with us wherever we go now to avoid... unpleasantness. The toilets themselves really arn't as bad as they seem at first, just need to do more exersize and it makes my usual habit of reading in the bathroom not really applicable. Also chocolate... I've found that bribing children with small amounts of good chocolate is enough to get them to make all the vendors leave me alone in the market. Also I've learned enough arabic to tell them that I live there, which sometiems works... Most of the time though they are still just annoying. (Tea... come in and have some tea!) The tea here is delicious, flavored with mint most of the time, but VERY sweet.... more sugar than I would have put in several cups of tea.
The weather here in the south of the country has been fabulous... Except for a bit of rain the first day we were here that had the locals dancing in the streets and praising allah. The temperature in the shade today is about 88 degrees F. We also had a couple of days where we were obliged to breathe the sahara, as it blew up from the south and blanketed us. The view from the roof of the hotel on clear days however is amazing, with desert leading up to the jagged peaks of the high atlas in the background to the north west. The sun sets behind the monutians which makes for it getting dark quickly but also for one of the most beautiful sunsets I've yet seen in my travels. The health group, with whom we were quartered since our staging event in philadelphia but who split from us to their own seminar site last week is in the mountains next to an amazing looking waterfall. Their weather is noticable cooler though, around 60 and breezy. Because of the specificness of my dialect ofberber I'll probably be placed somepalce in the high atlas mountains south of Marakesh for those checking on the maps, or someplace in the marachech region. Or on the southern slope of the high atlas with Ouarzazate being the provincial capital.... Sorry if thats a little confusing. I'll know exactly where I'm going on the 23rd of April if everything goes according to schedual.
Regardless, I really appriciate all the responses that I've been getting to my e-mails and I'm sorry that I don't have the time to reply to each of you as I should... Hopefully after the end of the seminar period in three months I'll be posted someplace close to internet and can spend some time on it. I'm also going to be getting a cell phone (probably, as everyone else is and its one of the only ways to communicate within the country) there are some cheap plans to call here and its free for me to recive. I would call all of you but it costs something in teh neighbor hood of 2 bucks a minute and I just can't afford it. Anyway, my hour is almost up at the Cafe and while its not expensive I don't want to pay for another hour just yet. I'll be back and write again next sunday though, if all goes well.. Wish me luck!
Keep me posted on stateside happenings
Bislamha, nshufk minabed
-Andy
Whats up back home? I realize that for some of you you're hearing from me now more than you heard from me we managed to communicate in the states but I feel like I have so much to share! You're welcome to ignore me if you want lol. So life's going pretty good in Morocco so far. Still living in a Ourzazate hotel until tuesday when I move in with a family in the small village of Timnit about 48 kilometers from here. I will still be back in Ourzazate on the weekends so I should have decent access to e-mail even then. Timnit itself has running water (kinda) but no power so computers there would be a little much to ask I'm thinking. There are about 73 housholds in the community, with 2 schools and I will be residing there off and on for about 10 weeks as I continue my training before moving to my final site at the end of May. The people of Timnit speak a dialect of Berber Arabic called Tashelhit (with the i pronounced as a long e). There is a lot of strange pronunciations so wish me luck. I can read arabic script now at about the level of a first grader, sounding out each letter in tough words.... My breakthrough came when I was sitting at lunch and was able to read the coca cola sign across the street....I'm holding up well so far health wise, though several people in the group have succomed to montezumas (mohommeds) revenge. I susspect even thouse of us with stronger stomachs will fail when we cease to eat hotel food and start on the local cuisine. Extreem diet change combined with high stress makes for bad digestion... On the subject of food however its really very good. Cuscus is a staple and rice, served cold with tuna is a standard salad. The hotel is trying to appease our western tastes by offereing western salad choices as well but personally I would rather eat local (while I still have a toilet to work with.) Meat dishes range from chicken, pigeon, and sometimes some interesting fish, to lots of lamb and goat dishes which are better most of the time then they look. They eat the fat of the meat (think its the best part in fact) which I may never be able to adjust too... I think its more of a texture thing with me than a taste thing. They also have interesting pots in which they do pot roasts called Tanjines which look very funny and are placed on the table and eaten from in a communal fashion. They look a lot like the clay tray you would set a large flower pot on then covered by a tall conical lid with a steam vent in the top. Food in them is placed into the dish which is set directly on a flame, in layers based on cooking time, then the lids placed on and they just let it sit there till everything's done. I'll write more after I've had a few cooking classes (saturdays).Daily activites are pretty restrained for us. Right at the moment we have 6 hours a day of language and 4 hours a day of techincal, health and saftey, security, and cross cultural training all of which is done either in a large group (there are 24 of us in the environment group) or in smaller groups of 5 or 6. (for example there are 6 of us learning tashelhit and going to timnit). Needless to say this dosn't leave much free time in the day, though we have today (sunday) off for self directed training (e-mail and shopping). My friend Mark (also a redhead) and I and our other roomate ( 3 to a room for us at the moment) braved a taxi to the souk (market) which is held on sunday and walked around. Picture a huge flea market where everything, including the tents and tables are for sale, then mix in vegetables, every spice imagineable, no organization, several hundred various farm animals (finding already dead meat could be interesting) and you have what amounts to a grocery store inOurzazate. Once at our final site placement I'm going to have to make a trip to the next largest city to do my shopping at one of these places... Urilli l-mushkil (no problem). Needless to say it was a good time. People mount loudspeakers on top of thier cars and witchdoctors curse you if you tell them you arn't sick and don't need healing, I guess so you will need them next time. You can aslo get some things in little shops in town, but its usually slightly more expensive (all prices are negotiable). There is a spice shop right next to my window in the hotel that also sells birds, ovens, and numerous other small items and if he dosn't have it there he has a friend that does "one minute" away and one of his children goes scurrying to try and find it for you. I'm trying to soak it all in and act like a local, at least more than the french tourists, who I've seen pay 4 times as much for something in the super marche (super market) than they could have gotten it for at the next door shop had they bothered.
Of course the super marche is the only place to get some things, like toilet paper for example. Most of the toilets around here are of the turkish variety (squat... hope you have good calfs) and toilet paper is scarce to non-existant. We carry it with us wherever we go now to avoid... unpleasantness. The toilets themselves really arn't as bad as they seem at first, just need to do more exersize and it makes my usual habit of reading in the bathroom not really applicable. Also chocolate... I've found that bribing children with small amounts of good chocolate is enough to get them to make all the vendors leave me alone in the market. Also I've learned enough arabic to tell them that I live there, which sometiems works... Most of the time though they are still just annoying. (Tea... come in and have some tea!) The tea here is delicious, flavored with mint most of the time, but VERY sweet.... more sugar than I would have put in several cups of tea.
The weather here in the south of the country has been fabulous... Except for a bit of rain the first day we were here that had the locals dancing in the streets and praising allah. The temperature in the shade today is about 88 degrees F. We also had a couple of days where we were obliged to breathe the sahara, as it blew up from the south and blanketed us. The view from the roof of the hotel on clear days however is amazing, with desert leading up to the jagged peaks of the high atlas in the background to the north west. The sun sets behind the monutians which makes for it getting dark quickly but also for one of the most beautiful sunsets I've yet seen in my travels. The health group, with whom we were quartered since our staging event in philadelphia but who split from us to their own seminar site last week is in the mountains next to an amazing looking waterfall. Their weather is noticable cooler though, around 60 and breezy. Because of the specificness of my dialect ofberber I'll probably be placed somepalce in the high atlas mountains south of Marakesh for those checking on the maps, or someplace in the marachech region. Or on the southern slope of the high atlas with Ouarzazate being the provincial capital.... Sorry if thats a little confusing. I'll know exactly where I'm going on the 23rd of April if everything goes according to schedual.
Regardless, I really appriciate all the responses that I've been getting to my e-mails and I'm sorry that I don't have the time to reply to each of you as I should... Hopefully after the end of the seminar period in three months I'll be posted someplace close to internet and can spend some time on it. I'm also going to be getting a cell phone (probably, as everyone else is and its one of the only ways to communicate within the country) there are some cheap plans to call here and its free for me to recive. I would call all of you but it costs something in teh neighbor hood of 2 bucks a minute and I just can't afford it. Anyway, my hour is almost up at the Cafe and while its not expensive I don't want to pay for another hour just yet. I'll be back and write again next sunday though, if all goes well.. Wish me luck!
Keep me posted on stateside happenings
Bislamha, nshufk minabed
-Andy
posted by Andy & Erin | 5:39 PM
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