Sunday, February 13, 2011

Fixing up, Sleeping in, Covering up

I woke up startled one morning last week to knocking on my door and easily recognized voice of my landlord yelling "waa HAddou!" (my name is Haddou, here, fyi)

I put on some pants, ran to the door, and opened it up.

"What are you sick?!" my landlord asked me.

"...yes?" I replied.. while wondering what time it was. My mind and body told me it must've been sometime around 7am, but the way the sun came into my courtyard and casted familiar shadows implied otherwise. 12pm. Damn.

I have been on a shameful kick of sleeping in. So, as work was scheduled by my landlord to lay down layers of plastic on my roof and put dirt on top of that, I was determined to show my landlord I am not lazy afterall. It was a two-day job. Monday, I woke before they got here, did my dishes from dinner (as water is turned off at night to avoid pipe bursting) and cracked a bunch of walnuts to serve up as a snack for the workers. I lended a hand where I could, avoiding stepping on anyone's toes. I lifted heavy things to the extreme caution of my landlord, and applied sunscreen to my nose on two occassions. I helped my landlord's wife with lunch, and overrall, I think I impressed.

Enter day two, Tuesday. I woke up at 6am to run to my bathroom. I haven't had the d in a while so I guess I was due. I'm pretty sure it was the milk someone gave me from their homegrown dairy farm. I drank it without fear, which was dumb. I went back to sleep remembering my landlord told me to sleep in since they're gonna come in the afternoon anyway. I heard working around 9, but was exhausted so I went back to sleep. Noon came up all too fast. Now, I was sick at 6, but I felt ok other than embarrassment. I got the look like, c'mon now you lazy American. I reverted to an old trick I played in elementary school and up- playing sick.

"Oh I'm sick I think it was the milk I'm dizzy my stomach hurts."

The trick is to really show the pain and anguish in the eyes/eyebrows. Anyway, I didn't feel like anyone believed me, so I stepped it up a knotch and told them I'm going to the pharmacy to get medicine. That'll show 'em. I put a box of Ibuprofen in my pocket in case I was questioned upon my return. I returned.. no one cared. I climbed up on my roof and just took the baskets of dirt that were hauled up and spread it evenly across my roof. I really like the way they build the houses here. At one point my landlord's wife exclaimed he's (me) healthy now but my landlord said he the sleep was killing him. Oh well. Still got a good bit of work done on the roof, and when they left, I took to putting up shelves, putting some nails in the wall for coat hangers and toilet paper holder.

In other news, to not make myself look so bad, I'll talk about some real work updates. Had some meetings with the teachers this past week and today about Environmental Club activities and Earth Day celebrations. We figured out what kind of trees we want... down to the genus. I hope I can get them. We want 30 trees total for 2 schools, so I think I'll have to do a few trips into Azilal to get them all. We're also going to paint rocks and murals so I got prices on that to write a small proposal for those. A special viewing of Planet Earth in French will be a highlight. We are talking about creating a garden, too, and one teacher suggested threatening the kids to deter them from destroying it. Threatening is also lost and won in the eyes and eyebrows. I hope to get at least 10 trees planted this week with the Environmental Club. Talks of a large-scale trash pickup are being discussed, but we'll see how it goes... there does seem to be a lot more trash than usual here right now, so it would do a lot of good. Might be attributed to the cold.

Water Chateau Project update- waiting for the skilled worker to come back from vacation still. Just need a couple more bits of information from a meeting with him and the proposal for that project will be finished.

Tourism/Travel Guide to my site- working on it!

I wrote too much to spell check it myself, and the spell checker on this website thinks I'm writing in French. Sorry for any grammatical or spelling errers. I hate those.

LP Butz

After writing this I felt I should describe housing construction/renovation out here in the country. Walls are contructed from a mixture of rocks and mud, and are about half of a meter thick. They are built 'brick by brick' but the bricks are piled on and made on top of each other where they stand. The length of each 'brick' is about a meter and its height is about 3/4 of a meter. Two boards of wood are placed parallel to each other with appropiate distance in terms of thickness. The muddy/rocky mixture is piled in, while it is tamped down, more poured in, tamped down more, and repeat until that brick is complete. Once walls are completed, lots of trunks are placed over top to begin constructing the roof. Smaller branches follow these large planks, and smaller brush and shrubs follow these. After that, a layer of plastic sheeting is laid down. On top of the plastic sheeting, fine and moist dirt is laid down evenly across the entire surface. Following the dirt, rocky soil is dumped on top of this until entirely covered. This is the basic and archetypal method of contructing houses where I live. There exists many variations based on what is available in a given community. Please comment if there are any questions or I didn't describe it very well. For what we did to my house mentioned above, we removed all the dirt, relaid new plastic, and put new dirt down again.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

February 1st, yo.

Last night I felt quite proud of myself. I heated up my small shower room with my butane heater which frightens me, shaved in front of it while I heated up my big water kettle, then took a nice, warm, bucketbath. I'm getting quite good at taking them, and feel about 90% as clean as I would be if I took a regular shower. I even washed my hair and washed off my body so well that my beard shavings washed away so no itching today! Then I made my first real dinner here.. after eh.. 9 months in site? I'm not counting tuna and egg sandwiches, or my staple ramen soup dinners. Cut up some onion, washed and cubbed 3 potatos, cooked that up pretty good, then threw an egg on there. So good, I'm going to make that again for dinner. Hell, I might even get fancy and throw two eggs in there but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Food is very cheap here, which is a huge plus. A kilo of potatos cost me 5Dh, an onion cost me 0.5Dh, and the eggs were a gift from my host family. So that hearty meal cost me about 60 cents.

This morning I had to drag myself out of bed for 12 o'clock lunch at Bassu's house (my landlord). I say drag because I've been on a small kick of getting up at 1. Contrast this with getting up at 5 the first two weeks I've been back in Morocco and I think it cancels out. Anywho, it's been snowing and has been fairly cold (around 30F during the day) so when I got to Bassu's, his wife quickly ushered me inside to the stove and got that fired up so I could get warm. We talked for a while, then had delicious tagine with potatos, carrots, beans, onions, and chicken. Oh! and tomato. For dessert we had oranges and tea. Delicious. Best way to start my day. While I was leaving, Bassu and his wife told me (and always do) to stop only coming over to their house when they invite me because 'their house is my house'. I know they mean it, but maybe it's just inherent for me to feel guilty to just drop in. If it gets colder, I may do the drop-in.

On exiting Bassu's house, I began to read a text message I received from my sitemate, Tracy, and I apparently made the mistake of encroaching on one of the most viscious animal's space that lives here- the rooster. I was surprised when something hit my leg with some force, and looked down to see the cock, very angry, and gearing up for another attack. Maybe he thought I was looking at his chicken wife, or he just woke up on the wrong side of the roost, but he was displeased. He flew at me again but I kind of kicked him off me... then I ran away like a little girl. No one saw, thank goodness.

Afterwards I went to the cafe I usually go to and watched the news and protests in Egypt on the television with some friends there. The kids who play pool there convinced me to play, but I had to have a partner, and we lost. Not counting it on my personal billiards record. Anyway, the owner of the cafe speaks some english, and I asked him to help me with a list of all the Auberges and Gites in my site. I got the list from the Ministry of Tourism in our province capitol, but it only lists the owner's names so I needed to know what villages they were in (there at 27 villages in total here). My goal is to create a book and website that lists all the gites/hotels in my site so tourists can see their options when coming here. I want to then expand it to throughout my province as there are many natural wonders here. Any Moroccan I talk about it to seems to really like the idea.

After I got information on the nearly 40 hotels here, I decided to come back home. I feel bad staying inside today but it's cold and snowing. When the sun is out I hate being in my house and would rather be outside talking with people, but today doesn't seem to be an option. Suppose that's all for now. Went on a rant, there, apologies. Here's a picture from my house/porch to where the snow will be coming from in about an hour, I'd say. Melts in the morning though.


LP Butz