I grow on you slowly, like a fungus

Thursday March 25

Okay, so I have developed a system in which I can make decent updates to my blog. I know for someone as obviously intelligent as I am to have taken this long to create a solution to the problem of my laptop not connecting to the internet and keeping my lovely readers in the loop as to my goings on is astounding. Nevertheless, I have done it. I brought my trusty laptop to my site and am putting my updates onto a jump drive to upload them when I get to the cyber. I am a genius. I will make a photobucket account soon, so pictures will be forthcoming.

I have decided to try to give my blog more of a lessons feel, because the 3^rd goal of the Peace Corps is to help promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans. But before I do that, I must go through some self analysis. Apparently, my laugh is maniacal and my sense of humor is a little twisted. The most recent example that I can think of is that my CBT group (by the by, I am not supposed to use real names, so take that for what you will…) and I are in one of the larger cities having lunch, when the subject of 1990’s memorabilia came up.

“What about those stickers? The rainbow ones with the unicorns and everything that everyone had in elementary school?”

“Which ones?” They asked.

“Oh, I know the name. They were all cutesy and stuff, too.” then I yelled out, “Oh yeah. Anne Frank!”

“I’m quite sure it’s not Anne Frank.”

“Yeah, Anne Frank.” I said matter-of-factly.”

“Anne Frank, the 16 year old diarist who was killed in the concentration camps of Germany?”

“Oh, I guess not, but a name like that.” And then I yelled, “Oh yeah, Lisa Frank. I’m very oblivious. I remember once thinking that Schindler’s List was a movie about a forgetful man who needs to go shopping for groceries.”

So, yeah, I’m funny in my head. They eventually get my sense of humor, though. I like to say that I grow slowly on people like a fungus… you know what? Too much time has passed in this month to write down everything that has been going on. It would take pages upon pages to detail, so I will be brief and then we will start with the lessons.

1.) I am really learning a lot about myself so far. Even after being gone for a month it seems like I am a completely different person. I talk more, I am more outgoing. I know this seems hard, given how I am in large crowds. But I mean I am being more outspoken about my beliefs and what my needs are. This is really building my confidence.

2.) I am too hard on myself. The other volunteers say this to me. People said it at home, but now hearing it here, when all of us are basically infants in regards to understanding the language and culture of where we are. We have two years to do this. We have time. There is always time.

3.) I am actually capable of eating 6 Thanksgiving size meals a day. I kid you not, I am eating the equivalent of a loaf of bread, a chicken (if you combine the types of meat into one animal.) and a small garden of fruits and vegetables.  And yet I am loosing weight; it must be the walking or something.

4.) The most important lesson: it doesn’t matter where I am, the people around me are the same. We all want to seek happiness and avoid suffering. The desires that we have may be complex or simple, they may be as obtainable as making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the day, or they may be the desire to completely understand a language that isn’t even written in a matter of weeks. But we all desire that which brings us happiness and avoid that which brings us suffering.

Lesson 3

Lesson 3: The sounds on our lips and the sounds of our hearts

I grew up Catholic. This means that I went to a Catholic school. Yes, that one: the Catholic school with the nun and everything. Our nun, who was our principal, was named Sister Robert Anne. Although the school was Catholic, there were non-Catholics there, too, but we still had holy days of obligation and there were still prayers.

A madrassa is the same thing, except it is Muslim. They go through a normal day of school and learn language, mathematics, writing, and they even have physical education, where both boys and girls play equally. At the end of the day, they recite passages of the Koran. The sounds are actually quite beautiful. But basically, it is the same thing as a Catholic school. The sounds of the bells of the church are the same as the sound of the L-Ayden, the call to prayer here.

***

I am the resident poet of our group.

I went to a wedding. It was wonderful, they took us all into the house and there were women celebrating. Besides the two men in our group, the only local men there were the groom and the father of the bride. The veils they wore and the dresses they had bought were filled with shimmering material. I didn’t take pictures, unfortunately, because I knew the women were modest, but it reminded me of my sisters dress for her wedding. The music may have been different, but the laughter and clapping and sound of dancing was the same.

The father took us to one of the rooms in the back where we had tea. I had wanted to congratulate the father on the wedding of his daughter, and that he must be very proud. Our teacher translated for us, because we still don’t know the language very well. He replied that one does not wear pride outwardly, because everything good is given by God, which is a good thing to say. I wanted to find a way to toast him, and so I asked if our teacher could translate something for me. I said,

“To you, I wish happiness.

Though the sounds of our lips may be different,

the sounds of our hearts are the same.”

***

I put in both of these stories to express a point. I remember during the last presidential campaign, some attention was paid to the fact that Obama went to a  “madrassa”, to try to paint him as a Manchurian candidate. This is a psychological tool - to use a foreign sounding word or phrase so as to paint somebody as so different than we are that they cannot possibly share the same values that we have.

This is a lie.

This is so important that I can already say with certainty that this is one of the most important lessons that I will learn here. Madrassa. Bible-thumper. L-Ayden, call to prayer. Luminous Mysteries. Sodomite. Godless heathen. So many words that carry within themselves images that have already been created for us. These are all tools that are used to keep us fighting each other so as to distract us from the true problems that we face.

We are human, after all. When you get down to it, we all have the same desires. In general, we wish to be good people. In general, we want those around us to be happy. In general, we want people to be free to find their own happiness. There is a passage in the Koran that even says, “You have your religion, and I have mine.” Another passage in the Koran says that “believers, and also Jews, Sabaeans (those who follow the Sabbath, and Christians will all make it into heaven.”

The issues with literacy and the rise of extremism is for another lesson, but lesson 3 is this: Though we may have different sounds for things, the sounds that they make in our hearts are the same. I must admit that I forget this lesson sometimes, but I want to keep it close to me. Don’t let people tell you what to believe about someone. Look at their actions, look at their hopes. There are so many things we do not know about people that it is foolish to begin with distrust. Look at the actions of another person and try to see it from their perspective.

Now That I got this down, here wr go

First, I am well. I am blogging from a shwiya cafe just outside of my hotel in the province of Ouarzazate, surrounded by the smells of spices piled beneath tents. I am surrounded by colorful clothes lined against the hotel walls. It is almost dark here, and the sounds of the calls to prayer just took place, kulshi zweet, ana xlf, l-Hamdullah. Sometimes, it is difficult to believe that I am on the continent of Africa and not on some movie set - the square that faces the hotel is covered in tiles and little stores line the streets.

Before I left, I had lived my entire life in Pensacola. I grew up starting with the same type of friends, and they became more of the same type of friends, and so on and so on, until, at the age of 25, I was left with the feeling, "Is this really who I am? Or is this the result of me living here and surrounding influences? Here, I don't have to worry about what people would have said if they knew the old me - they don't know the old me, and that's the beauty of it. I have become a butterfly, a chameleon, something which was able to shed its previous skin and emerge, shimmering in the Moroccan sunlight.

I learned a lesson on the second day that I was here. We were driving from Marrakech to the Ouarzazate province, twisting and turning up the mountains, inches away from the edge of the road, when we stopped at a small cafe to rest. I know that the old me would have stayed in the bus, or just stayed in with the group, but I wanted to change that. I walked into the café with Tracy to get some water. I walked up to the Hanut owner.

“Salamu alaykum,” I said. The man looked surprised.

“Salam, salam.” he replied.

“Uhh… smiti… Marcus. Smit… smitha Tracy.”

“Ah, yes, very good, very good.”

“Thanks, I mean, shukran. Uhh… Huh-na Peace Corps… Huh-na… crap, what’s the word for water? Uhh…” I looked at the man. “WATER!”

“The man laughed and pointed behind me. His son goes to get water and I reach into my wallet.

“lla, laa. No, you have. You have.”

“Really? Thanks?”

“You do good.”

So we turn to go and the man takes me by the shoulder and pulls me to the back.

“Come. Come.”

I was nervous, but decided that after the faux pax from the other day, I decided to simply go with it. Before I knew it, I was in a kitchen with the man and his wife in the back corner, making lunch. He sits me down at the table and puts a bowl of it in front of me, along with salt and some orange spice, and a huge round piece of flatbread. I eat with another man, and try to speak what little I know. It’s surprising to know how much of a conversation you can have with so few words. I finish my meal and hold my stomach.

“Kulshi bixir. Shukran.”

“Lla shukra, illah wagib.” I had said thank you and he had replied that no thanks was necessary, and that it was a duty to do such kindness for strangers. Which brings me to lesson two. People are generally good, want to do good for others, and hope that others want to do good, too.

Think about it, though. If a stranger were to come to a doorstep in America, the person in the house would lock the door and call the police, and that’s if the stranger were lucky enough not to approach a house of a gun owner. I think this says a lot about trust in Morocco. They will keep a door unlocked and show kindness to a stranger. I know that there will be times when I will find exceptions to this, and will experience prejudices, maybe even theft, but that experience just helped me to realize that I have made the right choice in coming here.

In closing, here is a suggestion. The next time you see a stranger in trouble, just be nice. People are good, there is good in people, and people generally want to be good.

Quick update

Hey, just letting everyone know I am doing fine. I am trying to upload pics onto photobucket. I wrote a poem for a wedding, and I cannot wait to upload that. I have a few blogs to upload, so the next time there will be a lot to read.

First Lesson of Cultural Understanding Learned

First off, I will post pictures of Philadelphia, NYC, and the flights onto my Flickr soon. Second off, I am fine, I am in Morocco, the weather is beautiful, the flowers are in bloom, and there is a strange smell in the air - the air of complete freedom. I am a new person here. That being said...

This morning, on the bus ride from Casablanca to Marrakech, we decided to stop by a gas station to rest. We were all exhausted and had to use the restroom. These are our last chances to use the "Western style" toilets before the inevitable. At the gas station, there was a cafe. Being slightly competitive by nature, I decided that I wanted to be the first to actually get a dirham and order some food actually made in Morocco.

Let me go back for a moment. Remember, my dear followers, that I am about 6 hours ahead of you all. And I didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane rides, so my biological clock is a bit out of whack. surprise, surprise. I go up to the counter and notice that under pizzas, there is a type that says RIANE. My French is not very good, but I do know that "rian" is French for "nothing". I go up to the counter and ask the man if riane pizza is plain pizza, aka., cheese pizza. I wanted to try a Moroccan pizza with Moroccan cheeses.

The man looks up and says, "No."
I look back, "Okay, so what is it?"
The man repeats, "No."

I look around the cafe, surrounded by fellow volunteers. I point to the sign and begin the traditional American foreign speaking by saying the exact same thing, only louder.

"Pizza! I want pizza! Cheese pizza!"

The manager walks up to me and asks, "What is the problem?"
I explain that I just want cheese pizza, and he looks at me and says, "I'm sorry, the pizza isn't ready yet. It's 10:00AM."

So, my first thought is wow, my biological clock is so out of whack. "I'm sorry," I said, "I just flew in and didn't realize." But inside, I was thinking I WANT PIZZA! PIZZA IS A BREAKFAST FOOD. i HAD IT EVERY DAY IN AMERICA.

As we left the gas station, I began to feel guilty. I am here in a foreign land, trying to get a grasp of a culture about which I know nothing. And here I am, perpetuating the stereotype of the arrogant and aggressive American who acts like an ass.

So here is my first lesson; a lesson which can apply to everyone. Just because someone gives you an answer you do not like does not mean that they did not understand you. Communication, I now realize, requires a level of trust. This matters whether or not you speak the same language. You need to trust that the other person is speaking truthfully to you to know for certain that you are communicating properly to each other. If you cannot trust the person to whom you are speaking, then communication is impossible. I will make a vow to trust the answers that I am given, both here in Morocco, and when I get back to the states. In the meantime, I WANT PIZZA!