Smooth Criminal
Where to begin....
Hey All,
Finally out of the boondocks for a weekend and perhaps more (reasons forthcoming) and I know you have all been waiting with baited breath for my newest addition to the continuing saga that has become (or perhaps always has been) my life. I'm not real sure where to get started.
Most of the month has been dominated by settling in and figuring things out in my village. This has been going, but going slowly and I'm not real sure how to improve on the situation. My host family in Amsouzarte has had voullenteers in the past and thier legacy is going to be incredibly difficult to live up to I suspect. I'm not really even competing in the same league as the villagers are quick to remind me. Jason in his time in morocco managed to found his own NGO, marry a moroccan woman, extend his tour for 4 years, and learn arabic to a fluent level. The only thing that I've got on him is that I'm learing Tashelhiet, the day to day dialect of the village so I can talk to everyone, not just the men.... wait... no I can't because I havn't been aloud to meet a woman over ten years old since I got there.
All that aside... my language improves daily and I find that when I need to get something across I manage just fine. Starting to see the barest gilmmers of project ideas, though my community has been closed mouthed about this as well and I've been trying to insert myself into more day to day conversations just to pick up a new word or two. Generally I'm welcome if for nothing else then the entertainment factor. My host family (the ones I've met anyway) consists of 3 older brothers (including my host father) that are the patriarchs of the town and have considerable sway on our entire 10 town district though they don't hold official positions of power or politics. Between them they have 6 sons, 4 of which are my host brothers. I like 2 of them quite a lot and think that we'll probably manage to become friends at some point. The other 2 are the whispering and pointing type and get too much amusement out of making me say things that I don't quite understand for me to feel entirelycomfortable with them. One might think that they would have grown out of this by the time they were 31 and 27 but then... I guess not. There is also a number of smaller children running around but I don't know who they belong to in my family as they call everyone in my family father and respect pretty much no one else.
The children of my village are the bane of my existance which is a shame because I really do love kids. The problem lies in lack of dicipline, or in the type. The kids have no respect for anyone that won't hit them, and only totally obey people that can make them miserable at home. Everyone else is fair game for tormenting that includes name calling, rock throwing and various other issues. I made the mistake of trying to educate some of the children that birds were good for them in a lot of ways and so they shouldn't kill them unless they have too and the only result was that they now make a point of kiling as many birds as possible and parading them around in front of me. They still treat me like an oddity, or a crazy person and constantly badger me to give them a pen or to run errands for them etc. I'm obviously going to have to work on this and I've been talking with the school principle about doing some environmental education when school starts back up again in the fall.
Pretty much everyone else I meet is very nice and polite to me except for reminding me of my various inadequacies (they do this to each other too, so I'm not really bothered by it). My host father and I have actually started to get a long quite well and we've reached an understanding that if I have to eat 5 meals a day then at least 2 of them can be snack sized and I'll still be quite happy. They whole family works construction and for the area we're pretty well off so I spend some time visiting various worksites and helping out from time to time when I feel up to it. The construction tequniques would make anyone in charge of saftey wince quite often and the quality of materials is whatever is available, not whatever is going to last but the methods that they do have are remarkably efficiant and well practiced and for having to work by hand they get a lot accomplished. This is a good thing because they spend at least half the time resting and telling stories.
The village itself is nestled into a pristine mountain valley at the junction of two rivers and is completely and totaly beautiful as spring loses itself in summer. There are lots of trees and shade and the farm fields are terraced up the mountainside bringing lines of green to otherwise barren and rocky jagged peaks. I'm surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the range and my village is at an altitude of just over a mile high. There are a few less waterfalls now that summer is progressing but this could also be because the farmers are constanly diverting and changing thier flow and how they fall down the cliffsides in order to get water to various out of the way terraces. Main crops include wheat, Tumzine (a wheat varient used mostly for animal fodder but also consumable as a wheat substitue in the poorer areas.... like mine) and corn as well as various tree borne crops such as cherries, apples, apricots, almonds, and walnuts. I can't wait for fresh walnuts which I'm told will be harvested at the same time the leaves fall in september.
My daily life has slowed down considerably and I spend a lot of time just sitting and talking, or watching whats going on in town. This change of pace has and I'm sure will continue to be my biggest challenge as someone thats always appriciated being busy and having work to do all the time. I'm never quite sure what to do with myself and visiting construction sites isnt' always an option. I've managed to explore the town pretty thoroughly but havn't yet obtained an explanation of all the buildings or areas yet. I've also started my project to climb all the surrounding peaks before the end of the summer. I managed 2 last week as well as several other hikes and brough my total for the week to about 100 kilometers. I walk at minimum 6 k a day just for exersize and some days as a matter of nessisity as that is the distance to the nearest phone and the weekly marketplace. I also visit mark from time to time 15 ks away. We've been seeing each other at the market each week and hiking coperatively from one of our towns or the other the day after. Its good to have someone around that speaks english with once a week. Otherwise the nearest english speaker is more than 50 k away and I'm having difficutly finding a tutor for that reason. I try also to get the BBC news once a day on the radio and occationaly tune in to some of their more interesting science or news or political programs when the opportunity provides iteslf. Evenings are spent socializing the best I can or watching soccer highlights on the saudi version of ESPN before dinner. I follow dinner by reading a chapter or 2 of whatever is handy and then hit the sack to do it all over again the next day.Probably the biggest event affecting the whole town was a late spring thunderstorm that rolled through town and dropped golfball sized hail on everyone and everything as well as more rain then I have seen in a long time. Apperently it was more rain than they had seen in a long time as well because the rivers each grew in size until they were about 10 times thier daily average and managed to smash many of the carefuly laid out irrigation ditches and completely destroy most of the farmland that was directly on the valley floor. Waterfalls and irrigation ditches on the cliffsides overflowed and became raging torrents for a few moments smashing more fields and a couple of livestock barns. Certianly gives you a new perspective on living in a mud house build 200 years ago and hanging on the side of a cliff. No one was hurt though and though I would never say it to any of the people i live with from a naturalist and scientific point of view I found watching the whole scene facinating. It was an amazing demonstration of the power of nature as large boulders rolled by larger than my house by looking as if they weighed nothing to the force of the rushing water. As a side consequence the road to my village washed out badly enough that I figured it would take them a month to fix it. Not really a problem as I have to walk 6 k to get a ride anywhere anyway usually. However because the road is so important the morrocans demonstrated an efficiancy in manual labor that I have never before seen and must have taken many years to perfect and cleared out the whole road and repaired it in a little over 4 days. Now, almost a month later you can still see the damage but only if you know where to look, and I suspect by next growning season you won't be able to see even that.
I got a visit by the homestay coordinator in my third week so he could pay my family to like me and to feed me and give me a blanket to cuddle with and he got the process started of finding my own house. Turns out my host family owns three so it shouldn't be that difficult. I'm looking forward to moving in sometime around the first of august, though furnishings will take a bit longer. The thing I most want to do is start cooking for myself. I think that after 2 years it will both provide me with something to do that I enjoy and it will take up some previously unused time during my day. Of course during the winter availablity of food could be a problem. As is we usually eat pretty much bread, potatos, and chicken with tomatos or squash thrown in from time to time to liven things up. I'll be able to import some things from supermarkets in Ouarzazate or Marakesh when things get rolling however.
Probably the most interesting story of the month evolves from my continued attemts to get a carte de sejour... or the moroccan eqivalent of a work visa. Mark and I went to do this the week after we got to our sites 6 hours south to the provincal seat and our local police office. They were a little purturbed that we waited until the last week to get this done but otherwise everything wen't smoothly and we got everything all settled. We got the interm paperwork etc and headed home. Made for a long but successful day. About 2 weeks later I got a message from the mayor in my town that I needed to go back and see them. Mark was sick so missed the message and I ended up going alone. When I got there they were upset that Mark hadn't come and told me in some combination of 4 languages that we broke the law and that they needed to find an interpreter and tell me exactly how and what I needed to do about it. So they brought me to an interigation room and locked me in there for threehours while they worked on this... I figured I should probasby call PC but couldn't convince them that was a good idea and my own cell phone was dead as I have no power to charge it in my site. After three hours when they still couldn't find ayone to interpret for me I finally talked them into calling the office and things were quickly straightened out. The police were very appologetic for having detained me and offered me lunch and coffee. I spent the night and headed home. 2 more weeks pass and my program director tells me that the problem has resurfaced and that Mark and I will have to go see them again because there is a small unheard of bylaw that says you have to start paperwork to get your visa 15 days after deciding that you will be in the country for more than the 3 month tourist visa lasts. Since we clearly intended to stay here for 2 years from our arrival we didn't even know where our police station was going to be until about 6 weeks past the deadline creating a logistical catch 22. We'll accept this, pay the fine and move on and the whole process will be cleared up in an hour tops. The PC is going to send the saftey and security coordinator to help with this process. We get there... go to the courthouse and to the procecutors office. He reads our case through and decides that we need to go before a judge to figure out what our fine will be etc. We go before the judge, a very intimidating process as in moroccan courts all the defendends wait thier turn in the courtroom and we were clearly the only non moroccan defendants. He tells us much to pretty much everyones suprise that we are sentanced to a month in jail which he will suspent because of our previously clean record (what record?) and a fine of 3000 dirhams each (a little over 350 bucks). PC was pissed and will probably appeal. I'm stranded in Ouarzazate until they get with the embassy and decide what to do. Since its the weekend of the 4th that means I'll be here till tuesday at least and probably wednesday all on the PC's dime... Sweet.... Only problem is that its about 132 degrees here... redicuous... I think so. As for lasting effects of my newfound criminal status in Morocco... I have no idea. For the time being mark and I can only laugh and shock people with the story. Hopefully that will be the end of it though we may have to be involved in the appeal process somehow. I have to do some soul searching to decide why a country I only want to help is trying to do this to me but my sprits are good and I'm looking to stick it out and continue to have a great time in my village when I get back there.
Got some great adventures planned for next month including a 5 day hike to summit Toubkal itself, the third highest mountain in africa and a trip to a beautiful high altitude lake all inside the park that is now my domain. Look forward to telling you about it then.
A note about mail... I've been reviving everything up to large padded envelope sized packages at my village but it takes up to 5 or 6 weeks. I just got something two days ago dated from the end of may... I still want them though and have dutifully replied to all that I have so far recived. Let me know if and when you get them... (you know who you are and everyone else better shape up). Stuff to my PO box (the one thing I've revived there) got there in considerably less time but the next time I check will probably be the first weekend in August. I write a lot of letters so if you want to be included in the mail train drop me your address or better yet.. mail it too me... Just don't expect the replies to be instantainons as I suspect it takes mail as long to get out as it does to get in.
A lot else has happened thats not as interesting or that I don't know how best to explain but this is long enough and you get the idea.... I'm safe, well and happy and I wish the same for all of you. Continue in all your endevors to the best of your ablilty and keep in touch!
Love an luck
Cheers
-Andy
Hey All,
Finally out of the boondocks for a weekend and perhaps more (reasons forthcoming) and I know you have all been waiting with baited breath for my newest addition to the continuing saga that has become (or perhaps always has been) my life. I'm not real sure where to get started.
Most of the month has been dominated by settling in and figuring things out in my village. This has been going, but going slowly and I'm not real sure how to improve on the situation. My host family in Amsouzarte has had voullenteers in the past and thier legacy is going to be incredibly difficult to live up to I suspect. I'm not really even competing in the same league as the villagers are quick to remind me. Jason in his time in morocco managed to found his own NGO, marry a moroccan woman, extend his tour for 4 years, and learn arabic to a fluent level. The only thing that I've got on him is that I'm learing Tashelhiet, the day to day dialect of the village so I can talk to everyone, not just the men.... wait... no I can't because I havn't been aloud to meet a woman over ten years old since I got there.
All that aside... my language improves daily and I find that when I need to get something across I manage just fine. Starting to see the barest gilmmers of project ideas, though my community has been closed mouthed about this as well and I've been trying to insert myself into more day to day conversations just to pick up a new word or two. Generally I'm welcome if for nothing else then the entertainment factor. My host family (the ones I've met anyway) consists of 3 older brothers (including my host father) that are the patriarchs of the town and have considerable sway on our entire 10 town district though they don't hold official positions of power or politics. Between them they have 6 sons, 4 of which are my host brothers. I like 2 of them quite a lot and think that we'll probably manage to become friends at some point. The other 2 are the whispering and pointing type and get too much amusement out of making me say things that I don't quite understand for me to feel entirelycomfortable with them. One might think that they would have grown out of this by the time they were 31 and 27 but then... I guess not. There is also a number of smaller children running around but I don't know who they belong to in my family as they call everyone in my family father and respect pretty much no one else.
The children of my village are the bane of my existance which is a shame because I really do love kids. The problem lies in lack of dicipline, or in the type. The kids have no respect for anyone that won't hit them, and only totally obey people that can make them miserable at home. Everyone else is fair game for tormenting that includes name calling, rock throwing and various other issues. I made the mistake of trying to educate some of the children that birds were good for them in a lot of ways and so they shouldn't kill them unless they have too and the only result was that they now make a point of kiling as many birds as possible and parading them around in front of me. They still treat me like an oddity, or a crazy person and constantly badger me to give them a pen or to run errands for them etc. I'm obviously going to have to work on this and I've been talking with the school principle about doing some environmental education when school starts back up again in the fall.
Pretty much everyone else I meet is very nice and polite to me except for reminding me of my various inadequacies (they do this to each other too, so I'm not really bothered by it). My host father and I have actually started to get a long quite well and we've reached an understanding that if I have to eat 5 meals a day then at least 2 of them can be snack sized and I'll still be quite happy. They whole family works construction and for the area we're pretty well off so I spend some time visiting various worksites and helping out from time to time when I feel up to it. The construction tequniques would make anyone in charge of saftey wince quite often and the quality of materials is whatever is available, not whatever is going to last but the methods that they do have are remarkably efficiant and well practiced and for having to work by hand they get a lot accomplished. This is a good thing because they spend at least half the time resting and telling stories.
The village itself is nestled into a pristine mountain valley at the junction of two rivers and is completely and totaly beautiful as spring loses itself in summer. There are lots of trees and shade and the farm fields are terraced up the mountainside bringing lines of green to otherwise barren and rocky jagged peaks. I'm surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the range and my village is at an altitude of just over a mile high. There are a few less waterfalls now that summer is progressing but this could also be because the farmers are constanly diverting and changing thier flow and how they fall down the cliffsides in order to get water to various out of the way terraces. Main crops include wheat, Tumzine (a wheat varient used mostly for animal fodder but also consumable as a wheat substitue in the poorer areas.... like mine) and corn as well as various tree borne crops such as cherries, apples, apricots, almonds, and walnuts. I can't wait for fresh walnuts which I'm told will be harvested at the same time the leaves fall in september.
My daily life has slowed down considerably and I spend a lot of time just sitting and talking, or watching whats going on in town. This change of pace has and I'm sure will continue to be my biggest challenge as someone thats always appriciated being busy and having work to do all the time. I'm never quite sure what to do with myself and visiting construction sites isnt' always an option. I've managed to explore the town pretty thoroughly but havn't yet obtained an explanation of all the buildings or areas yet. I've also started my project to climb all the surrounding peaks before the end of the summer. I managed 2 last week as well as several other hikes and brough my total for the week to about 100 kilometers. I walk at minimum 6 k a day just for exersize and some days as a matter of nessisity as that is the distance to the nearest phone and the weekly marketplace. I also visit mark from time to time 15 ks away. We've been seeing each other at the market each week and hiking coperatively from one of our towns or the other the day after. Its good to have someone around that speaks english with once a week. Otherwise the nearest english speaker is more than 50 k away and I'm having difficutly finding a tutor for that reason. I try also to get the BBC news once a day on the radio and occationaly tune in to some of their more interesting science or news or political programs when the opportunity provides iteslf. Evenings are spent socializing the best I can or watching soccer highlights on the saudi version of ESPN before dinner. I follow dinner by reading a chapter or 2 of whatever is handy and then hit the sack to do it all over again the next day.Probably the biggest event affecting the whole town was a late spring thunderstorm that rolled through town and dropped golfball sized hail on everyone and everything as well as more rain then I have seen in a long time. Apperently it was more rain than they had seen in a long time as well because the rivers each grew in size until they were about 10 times thier daily average and managed to smash many of the carefuly laid out irrigation ditches and completely destroy most of the farmland that was directly on the valley floor. Waterfalls and irrigation ditches on the cliffsides overflowed and became raging torrents for a few moments smashing more fields and a couple of livestock barns. Certianly gives you a new perspective on living in a mud house build 200 years ago and hanging on the side of a cliff. No one was hurt though and though I would never say it to any of the people i live with from a naturalist and scientific point of view I found watching the whole scene facinating. It was an amazing demonstration of the power of nature as large boulders rolled by larger than my house by looking as if they weighed nothing to the force of the rushing water. As a side consequence the road to my village washed out badly enough that I figured it would take them a month to fix it. Not really a problem as I have to walk 6 k to get a ride anywhere anyway usually. However because the road is so important the morrocans demonstrated an efficiancy in manual labor that I have never before seen and must have taken many years to perfect and cleared out the whole road and repaired it in a little over 4 days. Now, almost a month later you can still see the damage but only if you know where to look, and I suspect by next growning season you won't be able to see even that.
I got a visit by the homestay coordinator in my third week so he could pay my family to like me and to feed me and give me a blanket to cuddle with and he got the process started of finding my own house. Turns out my host family owns three so it shouldn't be that difficult. I'm looking forward to moving in sometime around the first of august, though furnishings will take a bit longer. The thing I most want to do is start cooking for myself. I think that after 2 years it will both provide me with something to do that I enjoy and it will take up some previously unused time during my day. Of course during the winter availablity of food could be a problem. As is we usually eat pretty much bread, potatos, and chicken with tomatos or squash thrown in from time to time to liven things up. I'll be able to import some things from supermarkets in Ouarzazate or Marakesh when things get rolling however.
Probably the most interesting story of the month evolves from my continued attemts to get a carte de sejour... or the moroccan eqivalent of a work visa. Mark and I went to do this the week after we got to our sites 6 hours south to the provincal seat and our local police office. They were a little purturbed that we waited until the last week to get this done but otherwise everything wen't smoothly and we got everything all settled. We got the interm paperwork etc and headed home. Made for a long but successful day. About 2 weeks later I got a message from the mayor in my town that I needed to go back and see them. Mark was sick so missed the message and I ended up going alone. When I got there they were upset that Mark hadn't come and told me in some combination of 4 languages that we broke the law and that they needed to find an interpreter and tell me exactly how and what I needed to do about it. So they brought me to an interigation room and locked me in there for threehours while they worked on this... I figured I should probasby call PC but couldn't convince them that was a good idea and my own cell phone was dead as I have no power to charge it in my site. After three hours when they still couldn't find ayone to interpret for me I finally talked them into calling the office and things were quickly straightened out. The police were very appologetic for having detained me and offered me lunch and coffee. I spent the night and headed home. 2 more weeks pass and my program director tells me that the problem has resurfaced and that Mark and I will have to go see them again because there is a small unheard of bylaw that says you have to start paperwork to get your visa 15 days after deciding that you will be in the country for more than the 3 month tourist visa lasts. Since we clearly intended to stay here for 2 years from our arrival we didn't even know where our police station was going to be until about 6 weeks past the deadline creating a logistical catch 22. We'll accept this, pay the fine and move on and the whole process will be cleared up in an hour tops. The PC is going to send the saftey and security coordinator to help with this process. We get there... go to the courthouse and to the procecutors office. He reads our case through and decides that we need to go before a judge to figure out what our fine will be etc. We go before the judge, a very intimidating process as in moroccan courts all the defendends wait thier turn in the courtroom and we were clearly the only non moroccan defendants. He tells us much to pretty much everyones suprise that we are sentanced to a month in jail which he will suspent because of our previously clean record (what record?) and a fine of 3000 dirhams each (a little over 350 bucks). PC was pissed and will probably appeal. I'm stranded in Ouarzazate until they get with the embassy and decide what to do. Since its the weekend of the 4th that means I'll be here till tuesday at least and probably wednesday all on the PC's dime... Sweet.... Only problem is that its about 132 degrees here... redicuous... I think so. As for lasting effects of my newfound criminal status in Morocco... I have no idea. For the time being mark and I can only laugh and shock people with the story. Hopefully that will be the end of it though we may have to be involved in the appeal process somehow. I have to do some soul searching to decide why a country I only want to help is trying to do this to me but my sprits are good and I'm looking to stick it out and continue to have a great time in my village when I get back there.
Got some great adventures planned for next month including a 5 day hike to summit Toubkal itself, the third highest mountain in africa and a trip to a beautiful high altitude lake all inside the park that is now my domain. Look forward to telling you about it then.
A note about mail... I've been reviving everything up to large padded envelope sized packages at my village but it takes up to 5 or 6 weeks. I just got something two days ago dated from the end of may... I still want them though and have dutifully replied to all that I have so far recived. Let me know if and when you get them... (you know who you are and everyone else better shape up). Stuff to my PO box (the one thing I've revived there) got there in considerably less time but the next time I check will probably be the first weekend in August. I write a lot of letters so if you want to be included in the mail train drop me your address or better yet.. mail it too me... Just don't expect the replies to be instantainons as I suspect it takes mail as long to get out as it does to get in.
A lot else has happened thats not as interesting or that I don't know how best to explain but this is long enough and you get the idea.... I'm safe, well and happy and I wish the same for all of you. Continue in all your endevors to the best of your ablilty and keep in touch!
Love an luck
Cheers
-Andy
posted by Andy & Erin | 5:47 PM
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