A lesson

Sometimes I think of my nearly two years here as nothing but one big lesson.

The lesson is this: Make plans, but recognize that planning is just something to keep you busy, a hobby of sorts. Don't take your plans seriously. (As my housekeeper Hafida would say, "My God has a plan for you." Perhaps this is true, but if so, "her" God isn't letting me in on that plan at all.) Don't get attached (to plans, to friends, to the past or future, or to anything else). The idea that one can have control is an illusion, and attachment to that illusion brings nothing but unhappiness. (Funny that I should come to a Muslim country to learn a seemingly Buddhist lesson.)

This lesson has been driven home in a variety of ways, some of them quite painful, over the last couple of weeks, as if Morocco is afraid I might not "get it" before I head out on June 9--regardless of whether or not I'm coming back.

This morning, for example, T and I are sitting on our couch when we thought we'd be (scratch that--planned to be) halfway to Al Hoceima for a four-day vacation in honor of our June 1 tenth wedding anniversary (and because we have just a few more days together before I leave for at least two months).

Planning this trip has been fairly typical; for example, even yesterday, we were still trying to confirm our car rental. We asked the guy to bring the car to us this morning at 8:30, hoping that meant we'd have it by 10. He called at 8:30 to say the car hadn't yet been returned to him, and we haven't heard from him since. Our residence manager and security officer are trying to help get us a car, but I have accepted that it just might not happen. We'll probably get one by tomorrow, so we might just have to cut our trip short by one day. But it's likely this isn't the last thing that will happen to remind us of The Lesson.

Creepy dolls at the souk

More on the Moroccan desert

What ideas did you have about Morocco before you started reading my blog? If you imagined deserts, sand, camels, and nomads and their tents, you weren't alone.

As I hope my blog has illustrated for you, though, Morocco is a geographically diverse country. I didn't see any camels until I had been here for a few months, and my recent trip to the desert was the first time I saw a landscape that I thought might be described as "stereotypically" Moroccan or North African.

The transition to a desert landscape really begins south of Midelt. The mountains are always close by, but the land slowly becomes dustier, and the vegetation becomes more sparse and scrubby.

There was an unexpected number of hotels along our route from Midelt to Merzouga. Some of them were shockingly (and, we all agreed, too optimistically) grand. As we drove by these hotels, we saw that the vast majority had virtually empty parking lots.

We had originally made reservations at such a hotel (although not nearly as new as the one pictured to the left) in Erfoud. It was such a depressingly outdated and empty place, though, that we quickly ditched it for a smaller and grubbier – yet less deserted and more comfortable  – hotel.

The way people look changes, too, as one approaches the desert. Skin gets darker, and by the time we got to Erfoud, we hardly saw the faces of any women, most of whom were covered from head to toe with abaya-like black garments, some with brightly colored embroidered patterns on them. The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Erfoud gives one "a first, powerful sense of proximity to the desert, with frequent sandblasts ripping through the streets." We arrived in this normally dusty town during a time of unusually strong winds, and the coating of grit that quickly accumulated on my body, along with a  constant sense of impending danger to my eyes, made me immediately understand the benefit of full body coverage.

Ways of looking at things

There are two ways to tell the story of our weekend trip to the desert (Erg Chebbi sand dunes) near Merzouga with our friends Brian and Sara.


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The first goes something like this:

It was a rough week leading up to the trip, and I wasn't feeling very enthusiastic about much of anything. People told us it was going to be horribly hot in the desert, and I wasn't looking forward to the eight (or more) hours in the black, non-air conditioned interior of Brian and Sara's Dacia. The trip got off to a bad start on Friday when we drove at least 20 kilometers in the wrong direction. When we got to Erfoud, where we had planned to spend our first night before heading for the desert, the hotel we had reserved was unacceptable, and we had to wander around town to find another hotel. After checking in to our new hotel, when we hoped to get showered and freshened up, the power went out.

The next day (Saturday), our guide was over two hours late in coming to get us for lunch, and we then discovered that we had to drive back toward Ifrane several kilometers. After lunch, we headed for the desert, which was hardly visible because of the strong windstorm blowing through the area. We were supposed to go spend Saturday night in the desert, but we cancelled that because of the winds.

Only camels could tolerate being out in that wind!

Instead, we went to the hotel where we had planned to spend Sunday night--Auberge du Sud. We had a delicious dinner there. Unfortunately, though, the next morning, two members of our group had mild food poisoning (either from lunch or dinner on Saturday, we weren't sure). We tried to cancel our trip to the desert, but the hotel manager had already arranged one for us and had no rooms available for that night.

On loss

If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed when my blog deviates from its theme, don't read this entry. If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed by people who treat their pets like people, don't read this entry. If you're at work and you cry extremely easily, don't read this entry.

Okay, you've been warned.

In a nutshell...

...a tiny, oversimplified nutshell.

One month

Yesterday, I officially finished my semester. I hope last night marked the last time ever that I will need to get up at 2:00am to attend a class.

Today I am mopping the apartment floors for what I hope will be the last time.

I'm reorganizing items on the shelves with note cards labelled "sell/give away," "need to sort," and "keep."

I'm going to go through my clothes and try to get rid of at least half of them.

Because one month from today, I'm flying back to the United States, and while right now I don't know exactly how it might be possible, I don't plan to come back to Morocco. (Must...resist...urge...to...quote....John Denver...)

One month.

Local wonders

In 2002, my mom and dad gave me a book. Inside the front cover, my dad wrote:

If you can 'bloom where you are planted,' then even Butler County Nebraska can be a wonder.

May you always love yourself, appreciate what you have, and grow where you are planted.

This was the year that I got married, moved farther away from home than I had ever lived (to New Orleans), and began graduate school in English. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the year that would begin the wanderings that eventually brought me to Ifrane, Morocco. At the time, although I was an adult, my feelings towards the place where I had grown up could be described as "ambivalent" at best. I grew up in a rural part of Nebraska known by locals as "the Bohemian Alps," and Butler County – location of the tiny village that I lived in from the time I was five until I left for college – was largely settled by Czech immigrants. My own lack of Czech heritage was just one of many ways in which I never quite fit into the community. I thought Butler County and the surrounding "Alps" lacked texture – whether of the cultural or geographical kind. When I left for New Orleans, I was sad in the general way in which one is sad when one moves away from friends and family, but I didn't have much of a sense of connection to place.

Therefore, when, in 2002, my parents gave me a book called Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by local Ted Kooser (U.S. poet laureate at the time, as I remember my father proudly telling me), I politely accepted the book and then proceeded to drag it around the world with me for the next 10 years. But I didn't once open the cover.

Whether it was out of a sense of duty or because of a vague feeling that it was symbolic or poetic or meaningful somehow, I dragged the book all the way to Morocco with me. And it was only recently – just a few weeks ago – that I finally picked up the book and read it.

It wasn't what I thought it would be. It's essentially a published collection of short, reflective journal entries Ted Kooser wrote, but they are inspired by and centered around his land, his neighbors, and the culture of Seward County (Butler County's slightly more German next-door neighbor).

Maybe the book was just waiting for the right time to be read. I almost expected to recognize some of the people he wrote about (the community is that small), and while that didn't happen, I did find myself smiling at some of the things he wrote. For example:

People [in Seward County] don't lock the doors to their houses, and the only reason they lock their cars is, in August, to keep neighbors from putting zucchini in the backseat.

Reading the book didn't really change how I felt about Butler County. As an adult, I am much more tolerant and understanding of my parents' love for the place at the same time that I have trouble thinking of it as anything other than a childhood shoe my feet have long been too big to fit into. I admire the ability that Kooser and my parents have, to settle in like trees where they were planted, to slowly extend roots and branches, not afraid of being dug up or blown away by wind, not desiring a change of scenery.

I feel much more like a dandelion seed, and for me "growing where I am planted" means something very different from what it means for my parents. There is no deliberate and permanent planting, but rather I am frequently lifted, blown from one place to another. If I land, I will prepare to put down roots, but I also recognize that the wind may carry me up again before I can do so.

This is how I have come to understand my father's note in the front of the book he gave me. He is a tree, and I'm a dandelion seed. Someday, though, the wind will put me down in a place, and I will be there long enough to put down a small root. It won't be as long or deep or permanent as the roots my parents have put down, but I will try to grow where I am planted, and wherever that place might be, I will try to look at it and its people with an appreciative eye and a full heart.

Just another blog post about how I often don't understand what's going on

My part-time teaching job ended in April, and earlier this week my boss sent me an e-mail saying that she had used MoneyGram (money transfer) to send my pay for April and that I just needed to go to the office, located downtown, to get it.

I think I audibly groaned. While the prospect of dealing with this didn't send me into a panic as it may have a year or year and a half ago, I knew it wasn't going to be as easy as she made it sound. And yet it didn't end up being as hard as I had imagined it could be.

One reason I get apprehensive about these things is that, especially in "office" situations (e.g. the bank, a doctor's office, or the post office), I just don't understand what's going on. There are always lots of people sitting and waiting for something, and a few people standing around waiting for something, and a few people sitting behind the desk or counter, but whereas I would know what to do if I saw this in the United States, I still don't understand the system here in Morocco; I just know that it's different. This is not a "queuing" culture, so I know that even if something looks like a line, my best move isn't always to go stand in it.

Here's where I lucked out, because one of the staff members of the building where I live happened to be in the post office (which is where I went because it was the first place I noticed with a "MoneyGram" sign outside), and he told the woman whose job it is to coordinate the customers what it was that I needed. So I sat and waited for 15 to 20 minutes, which is not so long of a wait in Morocco but long enough to make me wish my boss had just deposited the money in my bank account.

In some way mysterious to me, the woman then decided it was my turn to go up to the counter, and I showed the woman behind the counter the number my boss had given me. It was obvious that this number did not look right, and she conveyed to me that I was in the wrong location and that I needed to go someplace called "Wafa Cash" that was somewhere near Banque Populaire.

I wandered around town a little bit and noticed several other MoneyGram signs but no place that said "Wafa Cash." I called my boss, but she didn't know specifically where I needed to go to get the money, so then I had to text the other teacher she had hired to find out if he knew where I needed to go.

At this point, I think I had spent close to 45 minutes trying to get my money. Luckily, I got good instructions from the other teacher and found the right MoneyGram office. (It had a variety of signs outside, including one that said "MoneyGram" and "EuroSol," but of course there was nothing that said "Wafa Cash." That sort of thing, however, is common in small towns and is not particular to Morocco.) There was no line of people inside the small office, but I still had to wait a good five or 10 minutes while the man behind the counter typed on his computer, filled out forms, and photocopied my national identity card.

In the end, it only took me about an hour to get my pay from April. It could've been a lot worse.

You need to put something on your feet

Yesterday I stepped out to the lobby of our building (which is right outside my apartment door) to exchange my green laundry tokens (purchased on campus) for the silver laundry tokens which are necessary for doing laundry in our building but which can only be obtained a few at a time. I stayed out there to chat for a while with Aziz, one of our favorite downtown staff members.

As we were talking, Driss, a young and very nice security guard who is (justifiably) quite proud of his English, walked by a couple of times. The second time, he looked down at my feet, which were covered only with some fuzzy cream, brown, and pink-striped socks. He said, in a nonthreatening but very sincere and very serious tone, "You need to go put something on your feet. You need to go right now. It's not good for your health to have just socks and have your feet on this floor."

I came back to my apartment, duly chastised. Driss would be disturbed to know that I did not put something more on my feet. But if I get sick, I will know it was no one's fault but mine for letting my feet get so cold.

Things I forgot to say in my previous post

I was in such a rush last night to get pictures of our trip to the Cascades d'Ouzoud up on my blog that only later did I realize I hadn't written about half of the things I had intended to. So here are some of those things, in no particular order:


- Even in places in Morocco where the landscape looks familiar (T and I have, on multiple occasions, been reminded of Wyoming and Montana), there are frequent reminders that I am in a foreign country. No matter how remote a road seems to be, there will always be pedestrians, hitchhikers, and people on donkeys traveling along that road. I often wonder where they're coming from and where they're going.

In remote locations, one is also likely to encounter people trying to sell things. When we got onto the mountain roads not far from Ouzoud, we started seeing people along the road holding up little bundles of fresh herbs and making a variety of mysterious gestures which we assume meant something like, "Please buy these herbs! I really need money. Don't you feel sorry for me?" And we did; we felt sorry for them.

Many of these people – many more than I would have guessed – were children, often very, very young children. As we drove, we discussed the pros and cons of stopping to buy some of the herb. (I think it was some kind of mountain thyme, but I'm not sure.) I imagine they couldn't have been selling the little bundles for more than one or two dirhams each, and I wonder what could possibly have been the maximum amount of money someone might bring home at the end of a long day of standing by the roadside. Seeing these people was a reminder both of how difficult the job situation is here (it's unimaginably worse than in the U.S., I guarantee) and of how hard people try to come up with ways of having even a tiny income.


- I should have taken the opportunity yesterday to spend a little more time explaining exactly what a riad is. Basically, a riad is a large, multilevel house with a central area that is open to the sky. Most of the riads I have stayed at (many have been converted into somewhat upscale bed and breakfasts) have had some form of covering on the rooftop terrace to provide some protection from the elements to the central patio/garden, but this is not always the case.

In the United States, indoor and outdoor spaces are usually carefully separated from each other; "indoor" and "outdoor" are mutually exclusive categories. This is not true in Morocco, and riads illustrate well the lack of a clear distinction between the two. As I mentioned in my previous post, the riad we stayed at has a full-sized orange tree growing in the middle of it. Above the orange tree, at the level of the rooftop terrace (another characteristic of a riad), a clear plastic tarp has been stretched to provide some protection from the rain (although there are a few inches on all sides that are not protected by the tarp, which means that one can get rained on while standing in certain places on the ground floor). At the center of the tarp is a large plastic tube that goes down to the base of the orange tree, so that when it rains the water follows the tube and waters the orange tree!

This lack of separation between indoor and outdoor means that, when the weather is nice, a riad is a lovely place for hanging out and relaxing. But when the weather is cold, the riad is also cold; many owners go to great lengths (and, I'm sure, expenses) to try to bring their riads up to Western standards of comfort regarding winter temperatures.

Cascades d'Ouzoud

In a typical move, the University announced just last week that it would be canceling classes on Monday, April 30 since Tuesday, May 1 was (and had always been scheduled to be) Labor Day. (This is the sort of thing that I don't think I will ever get used to.) There was a mad scramble to schedule last minute vacations over the four-day weekend, and T and I, never at our best when required to make a decision quickly, were relieved when a friend offered to plan a trip to Beni-Mellal. Unfortunately, that trip centered around skydiving, and when the skydiving wasn't an option, everyone but us backed out.

In the process, though, T and I eventually (after several failed attempts at planning a desert vacation for the weekend) realized that the town of Beni-Mellal is not far from the Cascades d'Ouzoud, which the Rough Guide to Morocco calls "the most spectacular in Morocco." Feeling in desperate need of some time in nature, we booked two nights at a beautiful riad just yards away from the waterfalls, and T arranged to rent a car.


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The Bin el Ouidane reservoir, along the drive

The gorgeous blue river behind me comes from the reservoir.

 We headed out for Ouzoud on Sunday morning. We didn't get as early of a start as we had intended because another last minute decision that had recently been made in Morocco was to enter daylight saving time that day!

After a beautiful and fairly relaxing drive, we arrived in the tiny village of Ouzoud. It was raining hard there the day that we arrived, but Monday was a beautiful day. We spent part of that day exploring the area and another part sitting on the rooftop terrace reading our books.

We got the usual questions about whether or not we wanted to hire a guide, and men at every restaurant that we walked by showed us their lovely tagines and bragged about their great prices, but overall everything was fairly low-key, and people were quite friendly. It seemed like everyone spoke English, so for once, communication wasn't really a problem.

It was a wonderful place to spend a couple of days, and I think you'll agree as you look at the photographs.