I’ve been traveling
for the last month and been able to see some amazing new places, have some incredibly
meaning experiences, and spend some much needed time with friends, new and old.
From all of this I have quickly come to realize the emotional roller
coaster I have been riding and will be riding for the next 20 months.
The start of my
journey took me to Agadir where I indulged in some delicious pizza (not 2 words
often used in this country). I continued to spend 3 days in a town just
outside of Agadir for training for the volunteer support network. The VSN is a
group of trained volunteers who are available for other volunteers to call to
help them talk through problems they are having be it in site, at home, with
friends, or anything. The training was a great experience, with great
food, great company, and we all were able to talk about issues we were having
and work through them.
Training ended too
quickly and off Sarah and I were to Marrakech where we were staying for the
night before heading to Ourzazate. Most of that time was spent relaxing
and mentally preparing for our trip over the tishka. The tishka (if you
didn't see on the news) is a quite twisty, winding, steep road that passes
through the mid atlas mountain range dividing the two cities, Merrakesh and Ourzazate.
After some debate and taking into account sensitive stomachs we chose to
take a grand taxi. This means there were 4 people squashed into the back
and 3 in the front (including the driver) though it's not a more comfortable
ride, there is much less chance for car sickness in a car compared to a bus.
This didn't stop me from taking Dramamine, which reminds me I'm out...
The drive was absolutely beautiful! Beyond anything I could have imagined and the
pictures don't do it justice. After a short half an hour break, from what
I can tell something needed to be welded back onto the bottom of the car, and
another 4 and a half hours we arrived in Ourzazate.
Berber IST was held is a hotel right in the public 'garden' or square of Ourzazate. So far Ourzazate has to be one of my favorite cites in Morocco. Though every time I go somewhere here I decide it's my new favorite place. Ourzazate has more of a desert feel than many of the other cities I have visited lately, though that's probably because they were on the beach. The people there were terrific and it didn't hurt that they had delicious fruit smoothies available for 12 dh. Berber IST was a lot of hard work and information in a 6 hours a day for 5 days time period. It was a good basis for getting to understand how the language works and for simple communication in site.
Since there was
only 1 week in between going to real IST in Marrakesh I decided to visit my friend Jared's site with with some friends, Zaana and Jon. He lives about a half an hour past
Zagora which is 3 hours south east of Ourzazate. His site was absolutely
beautiful, it was the first time I had seen an oasis, or palmery, which are
areas of dense palm trees, grass, and sometimes water, usually a river.
Since his site was so far away from a large city and his site was so
rural the stars were incredible. Every night we slept on the roof under
the stars. While we were there we also got to go to pottery co-ops.
The people were so nice, they gave us tea, and we all played drums and
guitar together and talk about morocco and America and Mali, where many of the
people's family's are from in that area. It was a constant reminder of
just how lucky I am and how grateful I am for the opportunities I am given.
With just a few
days left until IST a friend and I stayed in Ourzazate for a few nights and met
with some other PCVs and explore the area. This led us to the discovery
if Fint oasis. We walked 10 km down a half paved, half dirt, half gravel
road with nothing around until we finally arrived at the little oasis.
It's a small Berber town just outside of Ourzazate, it was absolutely
beautiful. Since we decided not to carry a camera we have no evidence of
the running water, turtles, frogs, and fish that were there. The people
there were amazing, giving us water and food for free and allowing us to take a
little nap on their ponj. After we walked back to the road and our
Moroccan escort picked dates fresh off of palms and gave them to us as we waded
to our ankles in the cool water. It was quite a magical day and just
another day that helped me realize how lucky I really am.
This led us into
IST. Joelle, Zanna and I braved the souk bus back over the tishka and
safely arrived in Marrakesh ready to take on IST! Though there were more
rumors than I could keep track of about the hotel we were staying in for IST I
was pleasantly surprised when upon arrival I was hit with COLD air
conditioning, a huge beautiful pool, and apartment sized bungalows for us and
our friends. IST was filled with
workshops about how to make the best of our service and 100 ideas that we could
take into our dar chebabs. What
IST really was though was a great reunion after being separated for 4 month, we
were all ready to be ‘American’ again for the week, and that’s what we
did. We wore t-shirts, shorts, and
bathing suits, we spoke barley any Arabic, and everyone understood our English,
and we spent time hearing each others battle stories gaining the courage to
return to our new homes throughout the country.
After a week of IST
I was staring to feel the effects of traveling for so long and I ready to head
home. But first I took a small
detour to Agadir to stay in a VERY posh hotel for a conference on healthy
community living and how to implement public health classes into our work. This was three days of the most helpful
and useful information I had received to yet. I learned so much about the youth in Morocco and have a
better understand of where I stand in my community. And I can’t complain about the hotel either, hot showers
with real water pressure, ocean view, pools, and amazing food including omelets
with cheese! To bring all my
travels full circle on my last full day in Agadir I devoured a pizza from the
same pizza place my travels started from one-month prior.
On my travels back
to Tafraout I completely forgot that once again Morocco had observed a time
change. With this said I was an
hour ahead of my schedule the whole morning making it much easier to get a cab
from Tiznit back to Tafraout. I
was lucky enough to find on right away and had the pleasure of sharing the
front seat with a woman from Venezuela.
She spoke English well and we were able to talk the whole way home
mostly about religion. She is a
journalist studying religion and has traveled all over the world living in the
culture of many different religions; she had such a new and interesting way to
look at Islam. It made for a very
interesting and exciting taxi ride home, our side view mirror getting taken off
by another car did hurt either, oh Morocco.
