Timnit and Beyond

Hey All,How's it going? Lifes good for me over here. I've been busy the last week trying to speak a language that I didn't know... and still don't. I am improving however, I'm getting ahead of myself. I can't really remember everything that I talked about in my last e-mail so I appologize in advance if I repeat myself. I belive I last wrote write before my departure to Timnit, the small berber village where I'll be living and working for the next two months now. This is where I'll begin.Ohh and before that... happy easter. I missed celebrating with all of you. Its pretty easy to forget that these things are happening when you're in a country when the only church in a hundred mile radius is catholic and speaks only french for mass.Lets start on Timnit, Its a small berber village about 48 klicks northeast of Ouarzazate... If you're looking at a map you wont find it but you might fing Sokura which is nearby. Of course we visited Sokura first which is an ugly little town and my hopes for my first homestay experiance were futher dashed when we turned off the paved road and saw absolutely nothing between me and the mountians in the distance but miles and miles of emptyness and nothing and sun blasted rock. However my fears proved to be unfounded when after a 7 kilometer rally race in a taxi of questionable fortitude we crested a hill and looked down into a river valley into an desert oasis in the purest sense of the word. Green palm trees surrounded kasbah (dirt castle) towers and housed boreded on the river bed(dry at this time of year, though I'm assured that in another 10 or 15 days enough snow will melt to fill it... I have my doubts as everything seems to be 10 to 15 days from happening and its entirelypossible that they could equate 10 to 15 days with "eventually") Fields of crops of every nature and variety have been planted in one of the two growing seasons and woman are out gathering feed for farm animals amongst the complex irrigation channels that divert whatever water is available to whereever it is needed most. Of course once my fears of living on a diet of rocks and scorpions for a week had faded I could concentrate fully on the more immediate fear of not being able to comunicate.I was saved the first day where I had to spend 8 hours with my host family because my host father wasn't home. He was in Ouarzazate for a meeting of some kind so I was met at my teachers house by my 19 year old host brother. We fell in pretty well right off the bat and I spent most of the first day out and about in the fields with him learning (and just as quickly forgetting) the names of various tree species etc. Most of the other voulenteers were subjected to sitting across from various memebers of thier host familys and staring uncomfortably at each other so I was happy. The language obviously is still a big issue and probably will be for quite some time but over the 4 days I was quite amazed at the progress that I made in both the language and in my non verbal communication skills... Concepts that would have been difficult for me to expalin without using language before are now a bit easier to figure out. For example anyone can point to a palm tree and say the word for itbut it takes some skill to comunicate more complex ideas, such as fast and slow, alive and dead, politics, opinions etc. I'm rather proud of myself.A little about my host family... I have 3 host siblings, all teen agers, 2 boys and a girl who is by far the smartest person I've managed to talk with so far. The parents are iliterate and the chidren can read and write in two and sometimes 3 languages, which provides a rather interesting dynamic from time to time. It is almost unfortunate that the girl is the smartest because she will have the least opportunity to use it. She does all of the cooking and the cleaning at my house and is seldom allowed to go out with us in walks around the town. This frustrates the females in my language group and probably my sister as well but my family is actually farily open in comparison to some. The fact that I am able to see and talk with my host sister at all is somewhat progressive, especially in rural areas. I wish her the best and I submitted her name to work for the peace corps next time the village is used for training... Its not much but its the only boost I can give her and I knowthat she will find a way to use it to her advantage if she can.My brothers are both inquisitive and understanding of my inablitiy to communicate, though they give up on me too easily and switch to french. Though its nice to be able to communicate easily (more so anyway) I am fearful that if it happens too often french will become my crutch.The town itself is gorgeous. There are about 73 familys living in or around the main part of town.... There arn't 73 houses so sometimes this is interesting. The town was founded by 4 main familys that had all the land and through a process of indentured servitue, inheritance, marriage, and sale over the last 300 years it was divided into its current state. The majority of the land is still owned by the 4 main familys its just subdivided a lot. There also isn't a lot of people that don't have relatives in at least a dozen other familys. There were 4 kasbahs in the town and 2 of them are still standing... I live in one of them and have a whole castle tower pretty much to myself... About half the house is in ruins and the place reminds me a lot of the alamo post santa anna.... I sometimes have visiting chickens in the morning and I have my very own colony of the ubiquitous sparrows along with a few bats who get really annoyed with me for closing my shutters at night. I'm alsovery close to the mosque which means that I get up around 5 am every day. Something else I never really thought of about living in a dirt house is that everything is dirty... all the time... so get used to it. Its truely an amazing house however... it hasn't seen change in 300 years and the climate is just dry enough that all the old carved wood frescos and doorways are still intact... Its a dream come true for me as the castle geek. I wish I could ask questions about it but right now all I can manage to convey is that its beautiful. (someday though!)One other thing that I found interesting is that there is no power and there is only running water in the sense that someone has to run and fecth it when I'm thirsty or want to brush my teeth. (which they do with soap and a finger when they feel the need at all. I'm amazed that anyone in this country still has teeth with all the sugar they drink with their tea... 5 times a day... and many of them don't... the government has started an add campain to get more people to brush but I predict that it will reach timnit in about 300 years....) The no power thing is kinda refreshing because the biorythem of the place is compeltely natural. Things that happen after dark require so much effort that they often don't happen at all, or have to wait till a time of the year when there is as much natural nightime moonlight as possible and they often wake up with the sun. Its a practice that once I manage to adjust too I think I'll enjoy very much. All this is about to change though becauseTimnit has been wired for electricity and is just waiting for someone to flip the switch. Friday night the streetlights came on for the first time and the children actually gathered around the lamposts quite literally singing the praises of allah. I find that this is both a sad and exciting time to be in this small village. There is something emotionally sasisfying in progress that causes grown men to move thier households outside for a night just to bask in the yellow glow of a streetlight, to drink tea and just stare at it. However I fear that when I come back to timnit in a year and a half in prepration to leave Morocco my beloved oasis will be clogged with satilite TV and no one will be up to help me chase the chickens out of my room. I suppose I will reserve judgement until that day and now I will rejoice with the people of the town in their new found freedom. (perhaps the toothpaste adds will get here sooner than I thought)Anyway, the food is amazing and there is too much of it and I still havn't gotten sick (knock on wood lhaamdulah) so I've been very happy. I miss everyone back home and hope that you are all doing well. Keep the suportive e-mails coming and I'll try to write back whenever I can. I head back out tuesday to Timnit until next sunday when I will probably write again, but I'm sure that I'll check my mail one more time monday night...Love you allhappy easter again-Andy