The Pink City

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Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them. -Ann Landers

If Casablanca is the White City and Marrakech is the Red City, then Kelaa is the Pink City. There is a lot of construction here, so many buildings are still cement gray, but the ones that are finished are all a Santa Fe shade of salmony pink.
I generally walk everywhere in town, though the place is big enough to have petit taxis. The Kelaa variety are blue, but they’re still the same little Golfs and Unos that every bigger town has. I usually only take them if I’m carrying something really heavy like a box of books or furniture. It’s 5 dirhams a trip, no matter how far you’re going, except at night when the fare raises to 7. This is well under a dollar, no matter what the exchange rate happens to be. I have actually been watching the exchange rate recently since I still have some US dollars left over. I’ve been hoping around Christmas the rate would rise a bit and I could sell them. The post office has the exchange rates posted and since I’m there a lot I usually check.
The town is laid out like a spider web, with a fountain in the middle that works occasionally and the main four roads leading outwards. The southern road leads to Marrakech, the western to Ben Guerir where Bart lives, the eastern to Beni Milal towards Amanda & John, Rich and several other volunteers, the northern leads to the souk and dead ends there.
Monday is souk day in Kelaa, which is convenient for me since that’s my day off. I finally went a couple weeks ago with Maryam and it was definately a memorable experience. It was hot and dusty and crowded and there was everything you could possible think of there. I wasn't going to buy anything and managed to get away with only a couple stickers of the Moroccan flag, a map of Morocco written in Arabic, a scarf to wrap my wet hair in when I leave the hemmam and a pair of jogging pants to play basketball in on Tuesdays. Maryam bought about 500 pounds of vegetables, at least that's what it felt like since I got to be her mule. The souk isn't that far from her house, but ti's far enough that we stopped to rest a couple times on the way back.
With all my walking around I’ve gotten to know the place fairly well, though it is big enough that I think after two years there will still be streets I haven’t walked down. It really is much bigger than most towns that the Peace Corps placed Youth Development volunteers in, but I don’t mind. The size does give me a lot of things that most towns don’t have. All the province’s government buildings are here, which also lets me see the other volunteers stationed here since we all have to deal with the government officials and their red tape if we want to start anything new here. Starting anything new can include everything from giving classes at the Neddi Neswi (women’s center) to putting on puppet shows at the Dar Chebab or in local schools. the hardest part of any project here seems to be the days spent running from one administrative building to another getting papers signed and stamped. Rubber stamps here are the quintessential sign of anything official. I could hardly believe it at first, but they’re very serious about their stamps here.
I'm sure I will have lots more stories about my new home as I get to know the place more, and inshallah (Allah willing - people here preface any mention of the future with inshallah) I will be able to post photos of it soon. Soon being a very relative term here, but technological help is in the mail at I write.

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