Blogs from Africa - page 3343

Motorhome News from Europe 9. Spain November 2004 Donana National Park, Huelva, Cadiz, Cabo de Trafalgar, Seville, Jerez, Tarifa and Old Tangiers First of all, I have to add a footnote to our last newsletter which omitted one particular birding day when heading south from Monfrague to Aracena, where we spent a whole day driving along potholed narrow back roads, hunting for bustards. We saw numerous red kites, buzzards, black shouldered kites, great grey shrike, hoopoes and EIGHT LITTLE BUSTARDS - yes, they really do exist! More recently here on the south coast of Spain, our bird sightings are of Flamingos, Egrets, Stilts and more Kingfishers. We’ve found wetlands on the border between Portugal and Spain and again in the Donana National Park and around the estuary of the Quadalquivir River between Huelva and Cadiz. Aren’t ... read more

Saba Al Noor (Bright Morning) So I've gone native. I bought a Jalaba yesterday in Sefrou. For those of you who don't know about the Jalaba, its an ankle length robe with a pointed hood that the men wear here in Morocco. I like quite like a Hobbit really and I feel very mysterious when I wear it. The closet thing I can think of is the brown robes worn by those the little sand men in Star Wars with the luminescent eyes. The best thing is that when I walk through the medina, most of the carpet salesmen automaticaly assume that anyone in a jalaba is Moroccan, and rarely take the time to look at my face. If I pull the hood all the way down I can be completely anonymous. I had to learn ... read more

Sabah Al Khar I'm still not sure how it came about exactly, but somehow I ended up giving an interview, in French, on a Moroccan national radio station last night during the election. Apparently the radio station got the name of one of the students at the center, and called looking for francophone Americans to speak live on the air. I ended up speaking for about 5 minutes to the radio station through my friend's cell phone to the whole country. The questions were prety simple but I'm pretty sure I lost in translation most of the nuances of what he asked me. He asked me who I voted for and why, what I thought about Bush's economic policy, how a larger turnout of young voters would effect the election, and who the black and hispanic ... read more

Life is good here in Fez, school is going well, though the task of actually learning Arabic is a daunting one to say the least. EVERYTHING is different in this language: the sounds are strange, the script is strang, and tiny little changs in pronounciation make drastic differences in the meaning of the word. We still haven't gone through the whole alphabet yet, but we've started with some vocabulary. My class is nice, there's an Englishman and an American girl my age, an elderly Swedish woman and An American man who came with his family. I have two teachers, Zaim and Si Mohammed, who alternate two hour sessions. Classss are from 9 am to 1 pm though I think that's going to change after Ramadaan. I moved in with Driss Zocar and his wife Ameena on ... read more

Salaam Alekuem, I'm in Fez, the magical city that completely changed my life last year. This is so far my most favorite place in the world. To be honest, I was a little nervous about whether it would be as exotic as a I remember it: I have not been dissapointed. I started school at the Arabic Language Institute yesterday, we jumped right in and learned all the vowels and 3 consonants. There are 5 people in my class, we have 4 hours of instruction each day and an hour or 2 of homework. Tonight I move out of the hotel and into a Moroccan home for the next three weeks. It should be an incredable experience, since I'll be there for the end of Ramadaan. I'd imagine that every night when the sun sets, we'll ... read more