Fez, Home, and Things I don't Want Crawling On Me

“To do good is noble. To teach others to do good is nobler still, and less trouble."
- Mark Twain


I’m exhausted. Never been happier for a week back in my own house, in spite of the near absence of electricity (still not connected!) and water. If anything, I was even glad for the lack of communications infrastructure, having been massively overexposed to the institution that is Peace Corps Morocco over the previous two weeks.

Anyway, I don’t get my full respite just yet, as I am now back in Rich for a week working on a GGLOW (“Girls and Guys Leading Our World”) camp with some local students. Rich isn’t my favorite town in Morocco, but it is my home-away-from-home once a week, and the communications lifeline for a number of us volunteers who live out in the bled (rural villages) in this region, so a few of us thought we’d try to give a little back. More on that another time…


As I mentioned last time, I didn’t exactly make it straight home from Agadir. So on my way home from Rabat two weekends ago, I made an overnight stop in Fez, mainly to hang out with a friend, but also because I hadn’t yet had the obligatory experience of getting completely lost in its medina. Turns out we did a great job of that, winding our way past numerous shops and interesting architecture until suddenly we were stuck in a maze of almost empty streets! These photos are both not too far from the entryway, before it really gets confusing (I refrained from taking photos as we got buried deeper and deeper, so as not to entice further the groups of little boys who seemed more than willing to extort money in exchange for “guiding” us).

Just from sitting in a café and observing the passers-by, I’d have to say that, in terms of the people, Fez has proven perhaps the most extreme Moroccan city (in my observation) in its mélange of contemporary with conservative – girls in skimpy tank tops followed by women covered in black with only their eyes showing…


So, in spite of my accidental grand tour of Morocco (ok, that’s an exaggeration, as there are still plenty of places left to visit), I’d say that my biggest smile of the month of June occurred last week, as I was finally on my way home, when a cow got into my transit. Good thing I was sitting near a window… It did, in fact, smell like a cow, which is all the more noticeable inside of a hot Mercedes van driving along the winding road that leads to Assoul.

(Aahhh… my beautiful ride home)

I have definitely gotten used to the ubiquitous livestock, although I do blame them (and their excrement) for the swarms of flies that attack me at my nedi and in some of my friends’ houses. My own house isn’t too bad, as I finally chopped up my mosquito net and used it for the more practical and less claustrophobic purpose of covering all the screen-less windows in my house. However, the place is hardly sealed up, and I did have to capture and liberate some sort of 5-inch long insect the other day. I didn’t think it was going to bite me, but in it’s apparent desperation to escape (it kept flinging itself against the white portions of my walls), it was making a ridiculous (and rather aggravating) amount of noise. Besides, I didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to find the thing on my face. I also have to keep replacing the fragile, carbon cloths that are the light source for my buta lamp. They keep disintegrating, thanks to the smaller, kamikaze flies and moths that don’t know better than to try flying directly into a burning ball of gas. But still no scorpions (yet).

As for other supposedly domesticated animals, I still think the donkeys are cute, although much as I used to experience with goats on city streets in Ghana, I still can’t help but laugh out loud at the unbelievably hilarious yet creepy (and earsplitting!) noises they are capable of making. Especially on the morning of souk day (Wednesday), when there is an entire chorus of them not far from my bedroom window. The feral cats that have the run of people’s houses here have done nothing to win me over to their species, while the packs of wild dogs that run around at night are certainly no ambassadors for theirs. I hold them at least partially responsible for my inability ever to get a full night’s sleep anymore, as they usually wake me up (seemingly in the process of killing something) well before the roosters do!


So it is getting pretty hot here. I’ve again given up my running regime. The sun – which had been my only reliable source of heat in the winter – is just way too much to take these days! So on those lucky days when I don’t have to travel, I stay inside my house and read as much as I can. (The problem with being social is that, as a guest in someone’s house, you get served copious amounts of sugary, hot tea, which is especially unpleasant this time of year!). Still, it beats winter. Besides, we still have the occasional wind/dust storm to keep things bearable, even if that means my furniture and floors will never be free of their layer dirt!