Blogs from El Kelaa des Sraghna, Tadla-Azilal, Morocco, Africa

Hello Everybody, Salamu alakyum, Travelblog crashed last week and lost my last ten blogs. While I am very disappointed I hope that you all had a chance to see my last ones before they disappeared into cyberspace. I am now back home, having finished with Peace Corps and accepted a job teaching in Boise. This is my last blog and I am now retired from blogging. Yay! Knowing my days were limited in Morocco I tried to fit in as many adventures as I could in the first half of summer. Gnawa, June 21-24: The Gnawa music festival in Essouira is infamous and every year a group of volunteers manages to go. Gnawa is a Sufi brotherhood and the music is designed to inspire and put people in a trance. The rhythms are repetitive, energetic and ... read more

I recently was lucky to recieve a phone call from a classroom I have been corresponding with in Wisconsin. Peace Corps' World Wise Schools program matched me with Mrs. Burge's 2nd grade class in Holmen and we have been corresponding for several months. Last month in celebration of Peace Corps Week and the 46th anniversay of Kennedy's creation, Peace Corps paid for an hour long call between me, some of my English speaking students, and the students at Viking Elementary in Holmen. I promised during the call that I would put my friend Maryam's recipe for couscous on my blog since nobody managed to write it down as fast as she explained it over the phone. Bs-hha u rahha! Maryam’s Couscous serves 7 1 kilo of dry couscous (not instant stuff, real couscous) water olive ... read more

When my parents announced to me that they had bought plane tickets for Morocco and really would be visiting me here I asked them what they wanted to see while they were here. I had grand ideas about trips up to Fez and Sefrou or across the Atlas to the Sahara so they could see Ait Ben Haddou or ride camels across the dunes to spend the night in nomadic Berber tents. When pressed as to whether they would prefer camping in the dunes or hiking in the Atlas my parents replied they really just wanted to see me. Given how my parents have spoiled and doted on me for the past 25 years that answer shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did. I decided I wanted them to see my town, then I ... read more

365 days ago I arrived on the plane from New York in Casablanca. I didn't speak a word of Arabic and had no idea where I would be posted for the coming two years. Everybody says that the Peace Corps experience is a series of highs and lows. Incredible sights and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, followed by boredom and despair. Training was hard, and homestay was so full of new experiences and cultural learning I didn’t have much time to be homesick. Moving into my own house was exhilarating, and I soon started to feel I belonged in my community. I had a bad case of the blues after about six months of service after swearing in. Most people have some sort of low point around that time, but it hit me pretty hard. But I survived until ... read more

This weekend I took my cat back to his mother. She promptly attacked him and he beat her up. It wasn’t a good beginning, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I will be working at the Moroccan Ministry of Youth & Sports summer camps all of August and into the first week of September. There was nobody in my town who would agree to take care of him, no matter how hard I pleaded. Cats are street creatures and even my downstairs neighbors were afraid of the kitten I brought home in April. So, back to the volunteer in Tazert he went. My cat started out life in my home as a kitten named Binti. Bint means girl or daughter in Arabic, and adding an i on the end makes the possessive. Essentially I ... read more