The Ups and the Downs- January 8, 2011

One of the first pieces of advice that I received from Peace Corps staff was that blogging can be a great way to implement the third goal of Peace Corps (to share another culture with people in the Unites States) and should be used if possible. However, the advice came with a suggestion. Blog about the good days and journal about the bad ones. I always thought this was wise...often times you write about something negative and when you look back it later, you realize it was more of a venting session. That's why journaling (a private venue to let off some steam and work out feelings) often comes with less risks, however today I will make an exception because it was both good and bad (and that captures the essence of a day in my life).

I began the day groggy, snoozing for an hour and a half later than expecting, therefore missing my 8am-9am study time. I knew the day always starts off better when I have reviewed verb conjugation and have studied some vocab, but I let it slide because it was Saturday (suok day...my favorite day of the week). Saturday mornings are a work day for most of my community. The schools, the communes, and the suok are all open until approximately noon (suok is open until 2pm). With that said, I have the opportunity to start the weekend off with some productivity and some good ol'fashion shopping (farmers market style).

So, I left my house with three goals for the morning:
1.Finally fix the front tire of my Peace Corps issued bike (go to the "bike man" at suok"
2. Buy veggies/fruit for the week
3. Buy a phone card
4. Meet with the principle/moudir (pronounced moo-deer) of the middle school and the teachers who are responsible for the health club to discuss which topics will be discussed in the newly regenerated health club that I will be assisting with.

With an emphasis on the fourth goal (the actual work that I had to get done today), I set off. Oh, I failed to mention that I awoke to a mountain-top wide blackout...well, it was during the day so it wasn't quite a black out, but it meant that I couldn't turn my computer on to review some of the materials for the meeting.

Although my day started off slow (partly because of the lingering cold that I have), I made it to suok in time to buy some fruit and veggies, get my bike fixed (more on that later), and buy my phone card. It seems like I hadn't been to suoq in forever. Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco have two days a week where they can travel and not use vacation time (Saturday and Sunday). It's called vacation travel. Although I don't leave site frequently, when I do leave to head into town for groceries, visit the internet cafe (cyber), or hang out with friends...it usually falls on a weekend. With my recent new years travel, work related trips, and my big trip back to the states...I have not been to Saturday suoq in a while...and I missed it. It was so nice to see so many familiar faces. Suoq is not frequently by many women. Typically, the men of the household will buy any items needed for the household. Usually that man will walk, take a donkey, or use the mountain transport (tranzits) to get to and from suoq (especially if they have heavy sacks of food). However, the middle school is within walking distance to suoq so you see alot of kids at suoq (many of who love to follow me around and attemp to speak to me in French...even though I know nothing more than a typical 11th grader who has taken three years of French and forgotten everything beyond "Je m'apelle Khadija. Como t'apelles tu?" Regardless, they love to follow me around and laugh...I've gotten used to it. It doesn't even bother me on suoq days...its part of the experience (any other day and I may have some harsher words for the kids). So, all this is to say, a 24 year old female is not a typical site in suoq, but somehow I feel really at home there. I love waving to my favorite tranzit drivers, who are always careful not to drive too closely to me as they pass my bicycle on the road. Often times the tranzits are packed to the brim (sometimes people even sitting on top. I love picking out the freshest fruit and occasionally bargaining for a lower price. I also love seeing people that I would never see if I didn't go to suoq. There are over 40 villages on my mountain top...many I have never been to...so, it is wonderful to see people that I have ran into while in town or while squished in a tranzit up/down the mountain. I love when they invite me for tea at their house (a good hours tranzit ride away and even more by bike) and I always reply with the typical response "yen wess, inshallah. Lyr hymm lwalidin" (One day, God willing. God bless your parents). These are the parts of the community I miss the most.

So today, I got alot of my favorite parts of my experience AND I got my bike fixed. The tube in my front tire has been leaking air for a month, but I have been too lazy (and its been too cold) for me to attempt to fix it. So I finally decided I would take it to the bike guy at suoq (similar to the iron guy, who added a bike seat, where I can strap large items and bags onto the back of my bike. I gave him all the supplies I had and (surprisingly) he bumped me to the front of the line to fix my bike (granted it wasn't a difficult task for him). He even let me come into his workshop to watch as his took the tube out of the tire (did you know there was a tube inside your bike tire...I didn't until last year!). He refilled the tube with air and submerged it in a banyu (large basin) of water to try and identify where the hole was. He did this by squeezing the tire and seeing where bubbles emerged. He then dried the tire, applied glue to the are, LIT IT ON FIRE (I did not see that step in the instructions), applied a patch to the tube, hammered it down, put the tube back in the tire, and confidently stated "Baraka, iemmra" (Done, it's filled). After a quick inspection (and after restating all the steps to him...to show I was paying attention) I paid him a whooping 120 ryal (with translates to 6 durhams...roughly 80 cents) for his work...he wanted me not to pay him at all...but he literally saved my life-it's easier to escape wild dogs on a bicycle then by foot. So I paid and left for the school.

At the school, everyone was there to meet. We had a brief (30 minutes) meeting about the topics we would discuss in the health club and set another meeting time for when we would arrange the agenda and put up the sign up sheets. We discussed some of the topics I felt were most important and some topics they mentioned before (HIV/STDs, water treatment, first aid, dental hygiene, waste management, environmental issues, etc.) and then planned to meet after the examine period and tests...which unfortunately isn't until early February. However, the school was closing and all the kids had left. So I said my goodbyes (after arranging a ride down the mountain with my moudeer).

On the walk/ride back home, I ran into a group of girls who usually can be pretty sassy, but insisted I walk with them (instead of the much quicker option of riding)...but I had a feeling that they were sincere and so we walked together. We talked about the States, about by I went home for two weeks, about the difference between recent presidents (Obama and Bush), about the work that I use to do in the Unites States with federal food programs, and why I wasn't married at the old age of 24. When one of the girls asked me to bring her tons of clothes back from the U.S., I told her I was working on a pretty tight budget these days and I had to save for things. At this point she insisted I was rich...and I busted out the "money doesn't grow on trees" line that my parents use to give to me. I was pretty impressed at how well it went over. I told the girls that of course I would buy them anything th to do was to go to the douar over and go to the money tree and bring me the money that grew on it. They looked at me weird at first...but then I explained it and we all shared a good laugh. I was laughing because it reminded me of my family ...they laughed because I was laughing oddly and at my own joke.

Once we got to my house, we parted ways and I went to pack for my day in town. I was originally going to town the next day to discuss an upcoming HIV/STD outreach project at a festival in May, but I figure...if I could get a ride...why not go sooner. It beats getting up at 5am, walking a km in the dark to wait for a tranzit to pass the main road.

As I waited around for my ride to come (and watched my cats go crazy in the courtyard) my mood began to change. It was 2 o'clock, 2:30, 3 o'clock...and what had I done with the day? I felt so lazy. I hadn't study (which is what I really need to be focusing on these days, and I was leaving site. Shouldn't I be staying in site. Why was I heading for the hills...just because the electricity was out...this was Peace Corps after all...suck it up and light some candles. My thoughts were interrupted by a call from the moudir telling me he was on his way to pick me up at the main road. So I left, had a great ride down the mountain in a private vehicle. I even had my own seat belt (a rare occurrence in rural Moroccan transportation). We talked about the differences in language in culture between my mountain top and the town that is only 1/1.5 hrs away. We discussed how different words can show varying degrees of respect, and we discussed how he recently climbed the second highest mountain in Morocco, Jbel Imgoun (Mountain Imgoun). It is only a a6 hour hike from my site...however I had been called the wrong mountain Jbel Imgoun for the past eight months. Apparently, the real Jbel Imgoun cannot be seen from my site...you have to walk past the snow capped mountains you can see in my site and then climb the Massif Imgoun. My moudir did it in a day...i would love to attempt it too, but would need to go with some PCVs and proabably with one of the men in my site that knows the way.

Once we got to town, we parted ways (with my moudir headed on a few kms east to his home) and me heading to the cyber cafe to do a first round of checking mail. As I began to walk around town, trying to get some errands done...it set in again. I started to feel unproductive and uneasy. It helped that I ran into a fellow PCV in the cyber cafe and was headed to a PCVs site to spend the night...but the weather (cold, damp, and getting dark) did not contribute to my mood. When I got to the PCVs apartment, I realized that my plans for the meeting tomorrow were not as thought out as I would have liked. the meeting overlapped with a training event that I would have like to have gone to, but didn't know about. I was cold (much colder than I would have been if I was snuggled up in my house with my two cats as feet warmers (one of their many jobs) and I was starting to question how productive my meeting with the teachers really was. We couldn't do anything until February...that was a whole month wasted...what was I supposed to do until then? So I sat there...cold, tired, and wanted to hear a familiar voice from home...but not wanting to spend 100 durhams for a 10 minutes call. So I wallowed...luckily, my friend came home after working in the dar chabab t(the youth center that most youth development peace corps volunteers work at) and we had one of those talks...you know, the "you're not in this along...Peace Corps is tough culturally, physically, but most importantly mentally tough" talks and she helped me realize that's what so great and bad about the Peace Corps. You are pulled and stretched in so many ways, you experience so many feelings within one day, and you have tons and tons of time to think about all of these accomplishments, failures, lessons learned, opportunities missed....that one minute you're laughing and the next you want to cry and go home because "it's not worth being here". This is the time when I am most thankful for the PCVs in my area...because they help ground me and remind me I'm not crazy...I'm just a Peace Corps Volunteer, which is synonymous with being bipolar (believe it or not) and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

So..at the end of all this...was today a good day or a bad day. It was both...it was a typical day. Despite the regrets of not doing things sooner, not being able to communicate everything I wanted to say to the girls (especially when we were talking about the workings of US politics), and not being able to talk to my family at a drop of a dime....I remember my favorite vegetable guy, and the thrill that the bike repair man got when he lit my bike tube on fire and I jolted back, or when my moudir told me that "you may not speak Tashlaheit fluently, but your effort will take you a long way". it's the ups and the downs that make the experience. It makes me really happy (and a little scared) to know that I'll go through this another 540 more days (not that I'm counting)...but, hey, that's Peace Corps.