Dreaming of a Sandy Christmas
Hey all,
Hope all your holidays have been happening magnificently and smoothly and that you have all found some warmth (both literally and figuartively) in the season and its spirit. December has been a long and busy month for me with lots of travel, some awesome friends, some time off and has generally speaking been awesome! A great finish to the year. Here’s to hoping that 2006 will continue to provide me with challenges and triumphs.
The month started off with our IST (in service training) conference in Agadir, the tourist resort city on the Atlantic coast that Mark and I had been to once before in July for our court troubles. The charecter of the town was totally different at the begining of December, being the off season. The beach before had been packed with moroccans and Europeans relaxing in the sun but now there was very few people about. This was, in my opinion, a very good thing. The weather was magnificent the whole time we were there. Sunny and warm the whole time. So nice in fact that I couldn’t figure out why there was an off season at all. I didn’t ever go swimming in the ocean (much to the annoyance of some friends of mine I’m sure) but others did and reported that while chilly it was bearable. Almost all of our breaks between and after meetings and sessions were spent out enjoying the weather and the surf in some way.
Meetings and sessions themselves were pretty much as expected. In some cases pretty boring and useless to my particular problems and in others useful. At least they were all held in a 5 star hotel. I’m not sure how PC got set up there but the rumor is that the manager/owner met a PC voulenteer that spoke to him in his native version of berber and he was so impressed either by this simple fact, or by whatever message the PC person conveyed to him that he offered us a discount on all our visits there. Of course its still out of the range of our voulenteer budgets individually but if all our conferences are held there then who am I to complain?
The worst news of the week was the fact that we didn’t get very much money through our usual sources this year and what money we did get has already been spoken for during this physical year. This means that we are all going to have to scramble and fundraise under extreemly difficult circumstances and amidst all our other problems with simply getting projects organized and started in this country until the next physical year begins in October of 2006. I’m not sure if the grant that I submitted for consideration on the first of December to this dryed up funding source will get in under the wire for funding or not. I havn’t heard anything about it yet so I’m assuming the money will not come. Keep your fingers crossed though!
The conference was also supposed to be a time to work with our government counterparts to improve relations and see how we can make things work better in the National Parks. My problem here is that the government restructured the office in charge of my park (Toubkal NP) right as I was becoming an active voulenteer so I still dont’ really have an official counterpart. The lady that came to the conference to fill that capacity for Mark and I on a temporary basis is rare in Morocco for being a woman that dosn’t take crap from anyone and thus is not generally liked by pretty much anyone else. Still, I have to hand it to her for occationally getting things done... provided of course that you can make whatever your priorty is convinincing enough to be one of her priorites. She told me during one of our meetings that my village had already recieved a lot of assistance from the office as far as projects went and so probably wouldn’t be getting any more for a few years. Great... Obviously there are some problems here but at least I have a much better understanding of what they are now. I’ve done ok organizing some projects without any imput or assistance from the government and I’ll probably just keep to that strategy until it proves unworkable.
For me, the best part of the week was definately the friendships. It was absolutely awesome to see everyone that I had made friends with during my original three months of training and to continue to network with those people. Much of my contact with some of them for the last 6 months has been limited to periodic letters or occational phone calls and I was greatful for the opportuinity to grow some of those friendships to new levels. In between and after classes we managed to have a number of adventures. One friend and I got up before the sun one day and went in search of some birds. We didn’t find any but it was a great time... Later in the week we tried again with another friend and found the river estuary and saw and osprey, wild flamingos, lots of herons, cerlews, oystercatchers, and many others. Its cool to be part of a group with interests similar to mine! We also got bogged down in a salt marsh, covered with slime, attacked by crabs, and had our pitures taken with a forest guard who then proceeded to tell us that we couldn’t show them to anyone becuase its illeagal to have pictures of his uniform. Other activities for the week included movie nights, board games, occational drinking, trying out new and different foods... (one indian resuraunt we tried was fantastic) and managing to eat at McDonalds more than was probably good for us. ( Its amazing what too much moroccan food will do to ones previous tastes and avoidances.) It was also great to see what integration strategies have worked for people and have the opportunities to plan projects and visits to other parts of the country. (if we do it for “work” it dosn’t count as vacation!)
Alas, the week had to end eventually however and we all again went to our seperate corners of the country for the next 6 months of service. Mark and I got back home without incident. I spent a few days at my site and a few days at his before he left to go on his christmas vacation to spain. My own Christmas started a few days later in a blinding snow/hail storm that seems to just be my luck whenever I want to leave the mountains! I left on the Wednesday before Christmas just to be sure that I could get out and on Thursday spent the night with some friends of mine from the health sector near Ouarzazate. Friday I left with them on the long bus ride to Merzuga.
Merzuga is the one place where the famous moving ocean of sand that makes up the Algerian part of the Sahara desert touches Moroccan soil. (Other parts of morocco have parts of the desert but not the dunes). Seems like a strange place to spend the christmas holidays but actually it was quite cool. If you can’t go for the white christmas then you might as well try to go for the tan one! We were there for two nights and more or less two full days. I had a great time playing in the worlds largest sandbox and I’ll try to post some pictures of this on my journal page if I get a chance sometime this weekend. I decided that you could definately make “sand” (snow) angels but other snow activities like snowballs and snowmen were diffiuclt. According to our guidebook some of the hotels supplied skies and sleds and stuff to use on the dunes, which would have been awesome but our hotel didn’t and we didn’t se anyone else useing them either.
Walking on the sand is an interesting experiance. Even simple tasks take an amount of effort not really proportional to the distance traveled because for every step you take you slide at least half way back to where you started.... or your foot sinks half way into the sand. My self and one of my more adventureous friends decided to attempt to summit the “great dune” which was more sand in one place than I had ever even thought possible. (the size of the dunes was nothing that I’ve ever been able to picture accurately in my head. They are much much bigger than I gave them credit for) It wasn’t a particuarly tall “mountian” but it was very steep and we finished the last pitch gasping for breath and crawling on our hands and knees. It was well worth it though as we reached the top as the sun was setting and creating a really cool pattern of sun and shadow on the sea of sand around us. The contrast was such that the dunes appear to change colors with different angles of sunlight. Anything from reds to browns and even violet was possible.
The next night we went on a camel trek. Camels are interesting beasts to say the least and are not the most comfortable ride I’ve ever had for sure. Still I think I may have fared the best out of our group because I occationally ride horses or mules from place to place up where I live. The trek was again at sunset and this time I spent the sunset hours using the dunes as a giant gymnastics mat. I did jumps and cartwheels and flips and soon everyone had joined in including our camel guides. There was much laughter and excitement and some really funny moments. The downside is that I’ll be finding sand in places I didn’t even know existed for weeks and weeks. On the ride back we sang christmas carols that echoed across the sandscape.
For christmas dinner we hit up the home of a nearby voulenteer who had graciously agreed to host us. He deep fryed 3 chickens to go with homade stuffing, cranberry sauce and garlic mashed potatos with green beens and gravy. For desert was caremelized banannas and chocolate pudding pie with a delicious grahm cracker crust. I’ve not been so full and satisfied since moving here. Also the company was excellent the decorations were fabulous and his collection of christmas music set the tone for the evening just right. I even got a phone call from the states to say merry christmas! It was a great holiday (definately better than working retail during the last holiday season!) and reminded me that its the people and the message that are important and not all the traditional gimics and goodies. Before I went to sleep I went over in as much of the religious aspect of the christmas story as I could clearly remember in my head and was at peace.
Unfortuantely, I then decided to go back home for the week between christmas and new years and that process turned ugly. I was stuck halfway home for 2 days due to mechanical difficulties and then a snow storm worse than the one that I had left in. It is true to say that the weather in the mountains is unpredictable. Thank goodness I had packed for a week out and had my sleeping bag with me. I was still miserable but I was warm and miserable so it could have been worse. I did eventually make it home and things returned to normal.
Or close to normal anyway. I’m happy to report that I’ve got a halfway decent moroccan friend now! I’m not sure he would look at it the same way but he’s been teaching me the ins and outs of berber plumbing (at least as much destruction as construction as always) and I’ve been making dinner for him while we do lunch at his house. He’s younger than me and I think hangs out with me more for the novelty and the help with his chores as anything but its still progress and its defiantely better than him bugging me about my personal possessions all the time.
The trip down the mountians for New Years was long but uncomplicated by any of my recent travel difficulties. I spent the night celebrating with some of the same people I went to Merzuga with for Christmas. It was a generally quiet celebration but again the food was good (I should know since I helped cook it this time!) and was nice to be with people. Hopefully tonight and tomorrow maybe I’ll be able to talk with some people back home and see how thier holidays went. I miss you all!
Wish I could talk about everything in more detial but this is clearly too long as it is so I’ll wrap it up! Drop me an e-mail line or write! Letters are always appricated in any form!
Much love all around
Stay well
-Andy
p.s. if your interested in a good and very beautiful novel about the problems in South Africa I highly reccommend “Cry, the Beloved Country”
Hope all your holidays have been happening magnificently and smoothly and that you have all found some warmth (both literally and figuartively) in the season and its spirit. December has been a long and busy month for me with lots of travel, some awesome friends, some time off and has generally speaking been awesome! A great finish to the year. Here’s to hoping that 2006 will continue to provide me with challenges and triumphs.
The month started off with our IST (in service training) conference in Agadir, the tourist resort city on the Atlantic coast that Mark and I had been to once before in July for our court troubles. The charecter of the town was totally different at the begining of December, being the off season. The beach before had been packed with moroccans and Europeans relaxing in the sun but now there was very few people about. This was, in my opinion, a very good thing. The weather was magnificent the whole time we were there. Sunny and warm the whole time. So nice in fact that I couldn’t figure out why there was an off season at all. I didn’t ever go swimming in the ocean (much to the annoyance of some friends of mine I’m sure) but others did and reported that while chilly it was bearable. Almost all of our breaks between and after meetings and sessions were spent out enjoying the weather and the surf in some way.
Meetings and sessions themselves were pretty much as expected. In some cases pretty boring and useless to my particular problems and in others useful. At least they were all held in a 5 star hotel. I’m not sure how PC got set up there but the rumor is that the manager/owner met a PC voulenteer that spoke to him in his native version of berber and he was so impressed either by this simple fact, or by whatever message the PC person conveyed to him that he offered us a discount on all our visits there. Of course its still out of the range of our voulenteer budgets individually but if all our conferences are held there then who am I to complain?
The worst news of the week was the fact that we didn’t get very much money through our usual sources this year and what money we did get has already been spoken for during this physical year. This means that we are all going to have to scramble and fundraise under extreemly difficult circumstances and amidst all our other problems with simply getting projects organized and started in this country until the next physical year begins in October of 2006. I’m not sure if the grant that I submitted for consideration on the first of December to this dryed up funding source will get in under the wire for funding or not. I havn’t heard anything about it yet so I’m assuming the money will not come. Keep your fingers crossed though!
The conference was also supposed to be a time to work with our government counterparts to improve relations and see how we can make things work better in the National Parks. My problem here is that the government restructured the office in charge of my park (Toubkal NP) right as I was becoming an active voulenteer so I still dont’ really have an official counterpart. The lady that came to the conference to fill that capacity for Mark and I on a temporary basis is rare in Morocco for being a woman that dosn’t take crap from anyone and thus is not generally liked by pretty much anyone else. Still, I have to hand it to her for occationally getting things done... provided of course that you can make whatever your priorty is convinincing enough to be one of her priorites. She told me during one of our meetings that my village had already recieved a lot of assistance from the office as far as projects went and so probably wouldn’t be getting any more for a few years. Great... Obviously there are some problems here but at least I have a much better understanding of what they are now. I’ve done ok organizing some projects without any imput or assistance from the government and I’ll probably just keep to that strategy until it proves unworkable.
For me, the best part of the week was definately the friendships. It was absolutely awesome to see everyone that I had made friends with during my original three months of training and to continue to network with those people. Much of my contact with some of them for the last 6 months has been limited to periodic letters or occational phone calls and I was greatful for the opportuinity to grow some of those friendships to new levels. In between and after classes we managed to have a number of adventures. One friend and I got up before the sun one day and went in search of some birds. We didn’t find any but it was a great time... Later in the week we tried again with another friend and found the river estuary and saw and osprey, wild flamingos, lots of herons, cerlews, oystercatchers, and many others. Its cool to be part of a group with interests similar to mine! We also got bogged down in a salt marsh, covered with slime, attacked by crabs, and had our pitures taken with a forest guard who then proceeded to tell us that we couldn’t show them to anyone becuase its illeagal to have pictures of his uniform. Other activities for the week included movie nights, board games, occational drinking, trying out new and different foods... (one indian resuraunt we tried was fantastic) and managing to eat at McDonalds more than was probably good for us. ( Its amazing what too much moroccan food will do to ones previous tastes and avoidances.) It was also great to see what integration strategies have worked for people and have the opportunities to plan projects and visits to other parts of the country. (if we do it for “work” it dosn’t count as vacation!)
Alas, the week had to end eventually however and we all again went to our seperate corners of the country for the next 6 months of service. Mark and I got back home without incident. I spent a few days at my site and a few days at his before he left to go on his christmas vacation to spain. My own Christmas started a few days later in a blinding snow/hail storm that seems to just be my luck whenever I want to leave the mountains! I left on the Wednesday before Christmas just to be sure that I could get out and on Thursday spent the night with some friends of mine from the health sector near Ouarzazate. Friday I left with them on the long bus ride to Merzuga.
Merzuga is the one place where the famous moving ocean of sand that makes up the Algerian part of the Sahara desert touches Moroccan soil. (Other parts of morocco have parts of the desert but not the dunes). Seems like a strange place to spend the christmas holidays but actually it was quite cool. If you can’t go for the white christmas then you might as well try to go for the tan one! We were there for two nights and more or less two full days. I had a great time playing in the worlds largest sandbox and I’ll try to post some pictures of this on my journal page if I get a chance sometime this weekend. I decided that you could definately make “sand” (snow) angels but other snow activities like snowballs and snowmen were diffiuclt. According to our guidebook some of the hotels supplied skies and sleds and stuff to use on the dunes, which would have been awesome but our hotel didn’t and we didn’t se anyone else useing them either.
Walking on the sand is an interesting experiance. Even simple tasks take an amount of effort not really proportional to the distance traveled because for every step you take you slide at least half way back to where you started.... or your foot sinks half way into the sand. My self and one of my more adventureous friends decided to attempt to summit the “great dune” which was more sand in one place than I had ever even thought possible. (the size of the dunes was nothing that I’ve ever been able to picture accurately in my head. They are much much bigger than I gave them credit for) It wasn’t a particuarly tall “mountian” but it was very steep and we finished the last pitch gasping for breath and crawling on our hands and knees. It was well worth it though as we reached the top as the sun was setting and creating a really cool pattern of sun and shadow on the sea of sand around us. The contrast was such that the dunes appear to change colors with different angles of sunlight. Anything from reds to browns and even violet was possible.
The next night we went on a camel trek. Camels are interesting beasts to say the least and are not the most comfortable ride I’ve ever had for sure. Still I think I may have fared the best out of our group because I occationally ride horses or mules from place to place up where I live. The trek was again at sunset and this time I spent the sunset hours using the dunes as a giant gymnastics mat. I did jumps and cartwheels and flips and soon everyone had joined in including our camel guides. There was much laughter and excitement and some really funny moments. The downside is that I’ll be finding sand in places I didn’t even know existed for weeks and weeks. On the ride back we sang christmas carols that echoed across the sandscape.
For christmas dinner we hit up the home of a nearby voulenteer who had graciously agreed to host us. He deep fryed 3 chickens to go with homade stuffing, cranberry sauce and garlic mashed potatos with green beens and gravy. For desert was caremelized banannas and chocolate pudding pie with a delicious grahm cracker crust. I’ve not been so full and satisfied since moving here. Also the company was excellent the decorations were fabulous and his collection of christmas music set the tone for the evening just right. I even got a phone call from the states to say merry christmas! It was a great holiday (definately better than working retail during the last holiday season!) and reminded me that its the people and the message that are important and not all the traditional gimics and goodies. Before I went to sleep I went over in as much of the religious aspect of the christmas story as I could clearly remember in my head and was at peace.
Unfortuantely, I then decided to go back home for the week between christmas and new years and that process turned ugly. I was stuck halfway home for 2 days due to mechanical difficulties and then a snow storm worse than the one that I had left in. It is true to say that the weather in the mountains is unpredictable. Thank goodness I had packed for a week out and had my sleeping bag with me. I was still miserable but I was warm and miserable so it could have been worse. I did eventually make it home and things returned to normal.
Or close to normal anyway. I’m happy to report that I’ve got a halfway decent moroccan friend now! I’m not sure he would look at it the same way but he’s been teaching me the ins and outs of berber plumbing (at least as much destruction as construction as always) and I’ve been making dinner for him while we do lunch at his house. He’s younger than me and I think hangs out with me more for the novelty and the help with his chores as anything but its still progress and its defiantely better than him bugging me about my personal possessions all the time.
The trip down the mountians for New Years was long but uncomplicated by any of my recent travel difficulties. I spent the night celebrating with some of the same people I went to Merzuga with for Christmas. It was a generally quiet celebration but again the food was good (I should know since I helped cook it this time!) and was nice to be with people. Hopefully tonight and tomorrow maybe I’ll be able to talk with some people back home and see how thier holidays went. I miss you all!
Wish I could talk about everything in more detial but this is clearly too long as it is so I’ll wrap it up! Drop me an e-mail line or write! Letters are always appricated in any form!
Much love all around
Stay well
-Andy
p.s. if your interested in a good and very beautiful novel about the problems in South Africa I highly reccommend “Cry, the Beloved Country”
posted by Andy & Erin | 11:46 PM
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