In Memory of the Turkey

Hey All,


How goes? I’m killing time while I wait for the village shops to open so I can buy eggs to make myself some banana bread for breakfast tomorrow and some rice so I can make my dinner tonight. Having this computer at my house is a great blessing, despite its rather decrepit appearance. One man’s trash… Not that my dad would have ever throw it away. I hope that you all had an excellent Thanksgiving! More on mine later in the e-mail as I try vainly to keep things in chronological order… and a happy upcoming holiday season. I’m sure that I’ll grace your in-box with my presence at least once more before then but you never really know with the way that things have been going.


For those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to check it out yet I culled through the 800+ collective pictures from my parents visit here in October and I put the 15 or so best ones up on my journal page (http://atibbs.blogspot.com) for your viewing pleasure. Some day, when I have unlimited internet time and nothing better to do I may post the other 785 but don’t count on it anytime soon. Since I like having illustrated versions of these letters I’ll try to continue the practice, now that I’ve figured out the best way to post them. Check it out when you can. I’m also going to post some articles that I had published in the latest version of the in country magazine. I figure I won’t subject all of you to 3 multiple page e-mails all at the same time. I actually got some feedback for the Social Malfunction article. Apparently I hit the nail on the head. I’ve been trying to write more now since I expected to have lots of free time… and I do… but I’m still lacking the motivation and I have to spend a lot of time walking back and forth to the next village…


Around the Village…


The reason for that is that I’ve officially signed my life away and taken over financial responsibility for the projects of my former site-mate. He had to go home for medical and personal reasons (and ended up getting diagnosed with diabetes) and left two serious projects in limbo in his wake. I’ve spent the last month and a half catching up with the progress since he left, figuring out the budgets and otherwise picked up and tied off the loose ends. He had gotten them money to dig a new well and run piping to each household, and to re-build a washed out road and put in erosion control barriers. Much to my delight, the village association responsible for the projects really is responsible. This relegates me to the position of collecting and tabulating receipts, taking photos and generating meaningless reports to clutter the desks of my superiors and the donors… Oops… did I say that out loud? Anyway… I generally end up in this other town 2-3 times a week, once I got started. I have to go through it to get to my own town from the road anyway, so its really not that big of a deal.


So… where did I leave off last time. Ah yes… Ramadan and my parents visit. Well, Ramadan finished off with barely a whisper. There is a 2-3 day holiday at the end of the month of fasting which I was keen to observe but practically missed from the lack of excitement. From what I could see strolling through town and from my rooftop vantage point (my roof is a great place to observe the village as I have the highest house up the hillside and look down on almost everyone. Correspondingly my nearest neighbors down the hill have now closed in their courtyard… I honestly hope that this is a coincidence and that they are just closing it in because it makes it warmer in the winter, but one never knows in this culture.) it involved a lot of house to house visiting by the women of the community all dressed up in their holiday finery. For the sisters in my host family this involved matching neon green skirts and tops with hot pink headscarves. Someone call Cosmo magazine! I had a bowl of candy, some banana bread and hot water for tea in case my house was visited but it wasn’t to be. Nor was I invited anywhere else either. I guess that I just haven’t been here long enough… but its no big deal. Even given the snuff I feel much more a part of the community in the new place than I ever did in the old. After it was all said and done I got invited to participate in the “big” holiday at the beginning of January. Count me in!


Been to suq (market) a few more times since I first moved in. I still can’t get over how big and crazy a place it is. It happens on Saturdays and its really the only day that I can be guaranteed transportation to and from town so I try to take advantage of it. Even though it involves riding in a Mercedes van that carries cows and sheep as often as it does humans with 42 other people. You only think I’m joking. Somehow I always miss the memo about when the transit leaves on a given Saturday too and I’m the only one waiting out there for hours in the cold. C’est la vie. We do the 15 kilometers in a bit under an hour with various stops and starts and I’m deposited in a wonderland of beehive-esqe activity where 300+ shopkeepers all try and sell the same 12 things to several thousand other people. I know it doesn’t sound like a sound business principle but somehow it works. My current theory is that all business in Morocco is based on some kind of personal relationships and so, members of each town only go each Saturday to shopkeepers with whom they have done business before. These shopkeepers will extend credit only to members of that town and so… members of another town have to build a relationship with some other guy that sells the same stuff. Or… they could just all be very silly. Who knows? The other interesting factor is that we are so close to the city that there are always tourists flocking to the market on Saturday and its fun to watch them walk around, wide eyed. There is absolutely nothing for sale that any tourist would want… mostly cooking oil, aluminum pots and pans and plastic buckets, but still they come to get a taste of a life less privileged. Little do they know that they are the spectacle. Unfortunately, except for the few shopkeepers that know me, (yes I shop at the same ones as everyone else in the village) I get lumped in with the rest of the odd looking white people despite my much deeper insight. The fact that I speak (sort-of) the language doesn’t count for much.


Other than that I’ve just been kickin’ around the town. I’ve had tea in a few houses and met a few people. Had two community meetings where they presented me with a list of village priorities, voted according to need and desire. Basically my whole job handed to me on a silver platter. Unfortunately, due to time and money restrictions (even here the two are pretty much synonymous) and the fact that my boss doesn’t want me to put any effort into it I won’t be able to do much of what’s on the list… well.. nothing that’s only the list exactly. Instead I’ve been delegated as the “Monitoring and Evaluation” guru and I’ll be looking into the success of all the projects that came before me. I’m also running classes on how to write grants, starting with one to improves schools and education. Its 300,000Dhs (divide roughly by 10 for dollars) and the grant is due in by the 29th of December… Wish me luck. Better yet… wish them luck. They are doing great but, as per usual, the grant is held up by some officials someplace waiting for a stamp. At least my villagers are working on it.


As far as personal projects go I’ve been re-painting some trim in my house, my doors and shutters and making homemade curtains. Now if I could only get the place clean!

My new Curtians! Sewed them myself


For a few days at the end of October just after Ramadan I was graced with a visit from a guy that had just finished volunteering in Ghana named Johannes. I helped him make sense of his maps and figure out a short hike a few days up into the mountains. Apparently there aren’t very many of those in Ghana and he was quite impressed by the scene right in my backyard. Alas, the weather was crap and he spent a lot of time in shepherds huts and roadside guesthouses fighting some German tourists for space to dry his socks… but I think he had a good time still. While he was at my house we did a few short day hikes, made some good food and made fun of a lot of dumb PC rules. More of mine than his unfortunately. He gave me some good tips on what to see for my planned visit to Ghana sometime next fall.


In news from the last village… my site mate Mark had to go to court again for all the same stuff that we got arrested for last year. You think SOMEONE would have figured this out by now. Hello? Anyone? I talked to my host dad from the last village on the phone today and things are good with them. He wanted to know when I was visiting. I made some vague promises and actually do hold out some hope that I’ll make it back up there after service or that I’ll manage to complete the Toubkal circuit hike despite PC not allowing us to camp or hike anymore. (Yes… despite the fact that we are environment volunteers and we “work” in the park.)


At large in Morocco…


I’ve also taken a couple of trips outside the village since my parents visit for both work and pleasure. The first weekend in November I took a trip north to meet up with Carly in a town just east of Rabat on the Mediterranean coast called Kenitra. Its an ok city with not a lot going for it in terms of tourist attraction and yet it still manages to do ok for itself. In doing some pre-trip research I could only find one website and it was dedicated to the Kenitra clubbing scene. The purpose of the visit (other than to socialize) was to see some birds at a lake just in-land from the Med called Sidi Boughaba. Getting there was a bit tricky but we managed it and the park was fabulous. I couldn’t believe the infrastructure. There was a visitors center/environmental education center, picnic tables, pathways, even bird blinds. Of course it wasn’t run directly by the Moroccan version of the park service whom we environment volunteers are supposed to be working for, but is instead contracted out to a British NGO, the Society for the Protection of animals and Nature. (SPANA) The guy in charge of the center was super nice and gave us the educational tour and told us a bit about birds on the lake before setting us loose on our own. We saw some neat stuff including flamingos, and a couple of species of ducks that we hadn’t seen yet in Morocco. Despite the great birds I think that the best part of the outing each day was a fabulous picnic lunch with real turkey sandwiches. (a splurge at the “hypermarche”)!
View of the Lake

Overlooking the Estuary

Carly and I at the Lake


I was supposed to meet the new director of PC on his first official visit to a post the next weekend in Marrakech, but it wasn’t to be. The scheduling got messed up someplace and the Marrakech part of the trip got axed. Carly did get to meet with him though and I guess that her visit was a huge success. She says he’s a nice guy. PC officialdom here in Morocco played paranoid and only people who had been officially sanctioned and briefed and warned not to make any cheese jokes. (the guys last name is pronounced “chedder”) You can check out info from the visit in a not-very-well-written press release on the peace corps website (http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1164)


Instead, I ended up getting tapped to go to a conference in the capitol on the usage of biological and bio-mechanical erosion control techniques put on by an NGO promoting the use of Vetiver grass. (http://www.vetiver.org). Its non-native to Morocco and therefore not exactly 100% desirable in every aspect but there is no question that its good at what it does. It’s got an incredible root system that stabilizes roadway embankments and run-off ditches among other things. It acts as its own biological control and is non-invasive in the technical sense of the word. Its grazable, renewable, can be used as thatch on roofs, fuel for cooking, arts and crafts, purifies water, detoxifies old mine sites and quarries and any number of other potential benefits including being the base ingredient in many perfumes and colognes. Too good to be true? Probably… But I’m grateful for the opportunity to exercise the scientific aspect of my brain a bit. I’ve taken some plant samples home to start a nursery because my colleagues projects call for the grass’s use and USAID who is funding the project really wants to see it happen. The conference itself was a really interesting mix of Moroccan government and NGO participants and I spent most of the time trying to translate for the other to PCVs into English from the French. The organizers and presenters all spoke English and were either from Australia or the States though so that helped. We asked a lot of questions during breaks and after the fact and received a lot of promises of support.


Vetiver Grass


About a week after I finished with that it was time to take off for Thanksgiving celebrations being held this year at Carly’s house in Dayet Aoua, a village in the center of Morocco, just south of Fes. Carly had bought us a turkey and it was running around her yard when I arrived. Her host family was fattening it up for us with a bit of corn each day. I had volunteered to kill the bird this year since I hadn’t managed to participate at all last Thanksgiving. We celebrated on Saturday because it was easiest in terms of getting all the participants there and using a minimal amount of vacation time. 4 other volunteers managed to come. The big day rolled around and Carly’s host dad “helped” me do the deed… Ok… Well, actually he did the deed but allowed me to hold the neck and give it a last ceremonial chop. I’m not real sure the way that they kill animals is the most humane. We made sure that we were properly facing Mecca and he prayed first but in the end it took the turkey the better part of 20 minutes to fully bleed out, stop walking/thrashing around and kick the bucket. Carly and I plucked the bird and then her host mom helped us remove the innards. I prepped the bird to go into the tiny sheet-metal oven… We used a stuffing of oranges, onions and herbs and basted with apple juice and broth. Mmm… Fruity… I must say that given the conditions and seeing that it was my first attempt to cook a turkey under any circumstances that it came out fabulous!


Me Holding the Bird

This was the hardest part

Carly and I... Almost there!

The part where everyone else starts

Little Butter, Little spices... Little gross


Not much clearance in the oven but smells delicious!

Carving the Bird


We also managed to use the same oven and a two burner stove to crank out the other necessities of thanksgiving including apple sauce, apple pie, pumpkin pie, sesame green beans, garlic/rosemary mashed potatoes, creamed corn casserole, stuffing, turkey gravy, chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, and salad w/dressing. All completely from scratch. We even had home made liquor! Ha! Definitely a PC thanksgiving but I couldn’t have asked for better and everything tasted wonderful, just like it would have at home. The only problem is that it made me want to see all my friends.

The Full Spread

Pie, Sweet Pie

Our Thanksgiving Family


Hmm… well I guess that’s about it for me for this edition of my life. I hope to hear from all of you soon. I’ve got a touch of holiday homesickness and PC and Morocco are still managing to get on my nerves quite regularly. Six months left… Got some interesting stuff coming up including a visit from some of my best friends and (hopefully) a ski trip over Christmas. Please (!) write me and let me know how things are. Regular mail or e-mail are both fine!


Till Next time… Stay well
Much love and Luck in Everything
Cheers!
-Andy