That’s right, I’m really finally leaving. I know, I didn’t believe it either, and I guess I still have a few days to change my mind. Really, who would have to know? I could ditch the Peace Corps training group at JFK and head off to the Cayman Islands for the next couple years, all the while blogging and relating to everyone at home the difficulties of life in rural Morocco, that Casablanca is nothing like the movie and how I can’t stand to eat any more couscous, etc. Yes…. I could do that…. Hmm.
OK, well let’s just assume for a moment that I’m actually going to Morocco next week and that you believe me. You may be interested in some FAQs about my upcoming adventure:
1) Are you ready?
– Probably not, according to most definitions of the term, “ready.” I have a lot of the stuff I am going to bring with me, though not all of it. Psychologically speaking, there’s no way to be “ready” since I’m not quite sure what I am supposed to be ready for. I am reasonably sure where I am going on Monday (Philadelphia) and that I will arrive in Morocco on Wednesday; beyond that, I have a vague idea of the next 2 months and a far more abstract image of the next 2 years. I know how to say “the woman is wearing a brown jacket and there is a cat on her head” in French which should be immensely helpful, especially while I’m fumbling a dialect of Berber in my community. So, in short, I’m “ready” to find out whatever it is I’m getting ready to do and start learning whichever language I’m supposed to do it in, wherever that may be. Oh well… c’est la vie (or more accurately, c’est les corps de la paix?).
2) Where are you going to be?
– For the first two months, I’ll be near the town of Azilal, which I’m told is about 2 hours east of Marrakesh, as the crow flies (I would estimate how long it takes by bus, but if the buses are anything like South American ones, the travel time depends on a complicated equation involving velocity, acceleration, sobriety of the driver, # of large animals on the bus, sobriety of said animals, # of human passengers, agility of said passengers– closely related to sobriety and frequently tested when the driver orders the passengers to “DUCK!” at police checkpoints, and an X factor that one can only assume is the combined sum of lifetime good deeds – sins of everyone on and within a fifty foot radius of the bus).
I will spend the first 2 months learning a dialect of Berber. Of course, I have been told by RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) that the dialect I learn in training may or may not be the dialect that is actually spoken in my town. Sure, that might be frustrating at first, but like I’ve always said, “it’s better to know 2 dialects of Berber than one.”
Following 2 months of training in Azilal, I will most likely be in a Berber community someplace high in the Atlas mountains. Even though I consider myself relatively well-traveled, at present, the mountainous, dusty village in my imagination is made up of a collage of Hollywood stereotypes– check out Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones, Casablanca and the Flight of the Phoenix to get an idea of what I’m envisioning (my imagination is pretty sure Morocco is still in the midst of a World War). Of course, I’ll keep you posted as I learn about what it’s actually like– and I’ll definitely let you know if I run into Ingrid Bergman or the ark of the covenant.
Allow me to wrap up this entry with some basic information that I should have written in the first paragraph. Welcome to my blog! This is your one-stop-shop for my adventures and misadventures during my 2 years as a Peace Corps health education volunteer in a Berber community in rural Morocco. I don’t know exactly what my web-access will be like but I am told that Internet cafes are quite abundant in Morocco, so I hope to update this blog frequently. Feel free to leave comments on my entries– I’d love to hear from you and I’ll do my best to respond!
While I know most of you will immediately make this blog your homepage and spend all day hitting refresh to see if I’ve updated it, for those of you who have other things to do or cubicles in high visibility areas, check out Google Reader or other RSS services that will discretely and automatically keep you updated on new posts. Also, I can’t promise I’m going to use it, but I am on Twitter and will try and send out a “tweet” every time I update my blog, and possibly more frequently if it’s easy from my Moroccan cellphone. If you want to follow me, my Twitter username is donmarco85.
Crazy fact to end on: The next time I update this blog, I will be in Morocco.
Best,
Mark
Really looking forward to following this blog, Don Marco.
I FOUND IT! So, how do I do the RSS thing-a-ma-bobber?
Can’t wait till you get there. When I flew from Boston to Rabat via Paris, my flight into Paris was late and they advised me that although I was there a half hour before the flight to Rabat was due to leave, I couldn’t get on it due to Air France regulations about luggage being on the flight at least an hour before departure. Try arguing about that in French with a French airline bureaucrat. I could either wait for a flight to Rabat the next day, or fly to Casablanca and figure out how to get to Rabat myself. I went for option 2 and I still remember arriving in Casablanca, wandering around the airport until I saw something that looked like a train station, and looking at the train departure schedule in Arabic (i.e. squigglies) thinking, “Which one of these squigglies looks the most informative vis a vis whether there is a train to Rabat, and if so when it departs and what it costs?” The moral of the story is twofold: 1) you will be able to get through whatever travelling snafus are bound to happen, obvi, and 2) the train and bus public transit system in Morocco is lovely, clean, efficient and runs on time … it is several steps above the Chinatown buses of the US eastern seaboard.
Bismillah, go in peace and luck!
Mark! I’m so excited for you! If this first entry is any preview of what your others will be like in terms of intrigue, I’m going to feed it and keep my eye on you.
Te echo de menos, y espero que tu viaje sea excelente… he escuchado que las minas en marruecos son exquisitas!
already hooked…good luck!
Hey love! I can’t tell you how excited I am for you. Your email about this blog made me think back to the days before I left and how excited/nervous I felt about everything. I hope you have an amazing time. Remember, a lot of what Peace Corps tells you in the beginning about what you are going to be doing and where you are going to be living is bull. Chances are, they won’t know until moments before they tell you
And if I can give you one piece of advice, take it one day at a time. Really only live for that single day. If you try and look at the big picture all the time, you will probably drive yourself mad and quit. And most importantly, I hope you fall in love with your country and its people, cause afterall, that is the real reason we are doing this.
Lots of love from another PCV on the opposite side of the continent!!
You’re living the dream, Don Marco.
My only advice: Try to resist the sapo while you’re there – and definitely no sapo frito or ensaladas de sapo.
MWAHAHAHA, welcome to the Peace Corps family. May I suggest that you kick some ass, cause I will be coming to visit you on one of my holidays, maybe not today, but definetly soon. So let me know when and where. Also, i will send you a lovely card from Sevastopol. The city i could have been killed (legally too) for being in not more than 10 years ago. WOOHOO!!!!
Good luck, cuz!
What’s your twitter name? Believe it or not, there are several Mark Feldmans out there. (I’m loonyboi, if you want to just add me).
ditch training and start blogging. we miss hearing from you!
Cool… I will keep you syndicated, Mark.. you’re awesome!!!
I always wanted to know how life is like in rural areas in places like Morocco? it intrigues me…
When I went to France a few years ago I grabbed a small French phrase book off my father’s bookshelf. I was very confused when most of the common phrases were “Where can I find potable drinking water?” “Do you know where I can get a clean shave?”and “Duck and take cover!” The inside cover revealed that the book was published in 1944 by the War Department (currently, the State Department). It will probably help you more than me even though you need to learn some dialect of Berber. Send me your address when you have one.
Hope you continue to blog, Mark. Your writing is terrific, and you talk about really interesting facets of Moroccan culture. Very helpful! I agree with your friends, you should keep blogging (and your photos are great, too. plus you’ve got the best American-in-Morocco blog title ever).
Kate