It is all about relationships...

Today was a full-court press to find a place to live... I will skip my continuing rant about the Peace Corps "lflus" allotment and talk about what I saw tonight. As you know I have been looking for my final "resting" place that will hold me for two years. Up until now it has been at a pace that was making me wonder if I would find a place by January first. Well tonight my friend and I hit the streets with a mission.

People tell me Morocco is all about relationships and tonight I saw that in all it glory... I believe I am one step closer to having my own home soon, but that is the secondary story, how it happens is the real story...

First, we did stop at a few real estate "commissioner" to see what was available and get his take on the going price for rents, but it really happens on the street and with relationships. Every shop we walked into, every fourth or fifth person we passed we stopped and greeted, kissed and greeted again before the question of "do you know of a place for rent" and if they didn't they thought they might know someone who did and the phones come out or a shout across the street and the process was happening. It is amazing to me that when asked the person will stop and start contacting they friends... and so on. A young man leaves his group of friends to walk us to a place that he knows in empty. From there we talk to the tailor a few doors down, he gives us the name of the owner's brother, who my friend knows we go to his shop and call his sister... and tomorrow I am seeing the place. I can not do justice to what I witnessed.

So tomorrow I am seeing two places for sure, with a few more in holding patterns until I find out more about them. 3alaqat xuya...3alaqat!!!

Sunday Morning

"Sunday morning rain is falling...Steal some covers share some skin... Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable... You twist to fit the mold that I am in.." This is my mood on this dreary, windy and rainy Sunday morning. Words by Maroon 5... mood and feelings supplied by me. I could have hugged the covers all day, but laying alone with things to do drove me out of my drowsy comfort and into the morning wind. I remember many a Sunday morning when I would lay in bed with my love, maybe I will live in that world again someday... n-shallah.

Arhhh, yes it is going to be one of those day when I fight for control from sun raise to sunset... it must be the holiday season, distance and time that brings me to these moments. But control I have and things I must do, so I will move out into the day.

Yesterday I saw nice home (kbir swiya) and the best place I have seen so far, the rent is 1300Dhs and unless I (actually my friend Ali) can negotiate the price down or I convince the Peace Corps that the ceiling they set for rent in Sefrou is out-dated and low by about 200Dhs then I will have to continue looking. Want this search to come to an end so I can put my time to better use.

Christmas is less than a week away it seems like it is a thousand years away, but I will be with new friends in a foreign country on the holiday and will rejoice and give thanks.

Down in a hole...

Why we walk on the street versus the sidewalk?

The reason is that the sidewalks have holes that you could lose a small vehicle in...missing manhole covers and large drainage hole that could swallow you whole and nothing telling you about it or anything around it to guard you from falling to your death. That plus the sidewalks are in total disarray or under constructure. So the people are forced onto the streets and chaos looms as vehicle zip by, people walking 6 abreast. Now growing up in Boston I am use to lousy sidewalks and people crossing the street wherever and whenever and cars daring you to cross, but here we are at a whole new level of danger. I still walk like a Bostonian but there is a hint of fear and pending injury like I never had before.

The continuing saga. of finding a home... Well tonight I took a walk to check out one of the neighborhoods I might choose to live in, it is a hike up hill and not many street lights... first the home needs work but it is livableand a good size...but it is a hike as I mentioned so I wanted to see the walk at night and get a feel. It was ok, pretty steep climb but that part was fine, the bad part was on my way down I had a rock the size of a baseball thrown at me... interesting I thought... some a-hole throw a rock at me. So I stopped and I see the punk kid about 100 feet away, so I turn and start walking toward him... he turns jack rabbit so I turn around and leave, too old to chase a kid. Now I have heard stories of PCV getting rocks thrown at them...but baseball size rocks... cmon!!!

Needless to say this area has fallen down on my list of choices to live to say the least. I have a few places to look at next week. The Peace Corps in it's tight fists methods has somehow picked a rental allowance of 900Dh for my area... so far I have not seen a place for under 1000Dhs and most are 1200Dh and up. I have a problem in principle with having to cough up any rent about the going rate... now if I was living in a "villa" with fountains and such then sure I need to kick in the additional money, but to set a ceiling under the average monthly rent means either they have not done the proper do-deligence or they don't care... I haven't decided yet on which side to choose, neither is a positive.

Now I am home after two large meals and thinking about having a movie night...should have stopped at one of the street vendors and picked up some fresh popcorn... Next time.

There is a House in Sefrou...

(cue the Animals "House of the Raising Sun) I have been looking for three weeks now and everyone tells me sure there is a house here or there and yet when I try to see it... Poof... it vanishes. Well now I have three on the hook and nshallah, I will get to see one of them. I am trying to figure out the amount that PC will cover in my city... the window is 600Dhs - 1200Dhs but they wouldn't say how they pick a number. The average rent here sounds like it is around the 1000-1200Dhs range but you can't ask the price at the beginning, you have to wait until you see the place then talk price... sound completely ass-backwards but that is how it is done.

I need to be in my own place, with PC approval of my home by January first, the clock is ticking but I think it will happen. I have started to acquire a few things... glasses, plates, a table and chairs... but will need a lot more... nqta b'nqta kay-kHl lwd.

The weather here has been great, sunny, dry and about 65 degrees, Sefrou doesn't get snow often, but this is usually the rainy season and so far it has only rained a small amount. Compared to TinHdite I am now living in Southern California type weather.

Sidebar: I am not sure if I mentioned this in the past, but if for some reason I don't make it home alive from Morocco it will be because I have been hit by one of the friggin drivers here... since I have been back here in Sefrou I have almost been hit by a car at least a half-dozen times and I have seen two crazy accidents. Firstly there are no traffic lights, nobody obeys a stop sign and crosswalks forget it... walking within the crosswalk will almost certainly bring you within inches of get hit by a petite taxi. They make Boston drives look like saints and to describe it would be like a video game,driving on the wrong side of the road, flying through intersections... really i could go on. Oh nobody uses the side walks... for good reason... that will be my next rant.

Lastly working with my tutor almost daily, I stop by his shop and hangout, each night I write a paragraph or two in darija bring it to him to correct. I feel like I am moving forward in my language skills.

Sharp dressed man...?

Here I am at swearing in, who would have thought that the clothes I packed two months before and which had been sitting in a duffle bag all this time would still be pretty wrinkled free. Just goes to show those five years working in the men's department in Sears as a teenager paid some dividends. It was a beautiful day and I will remember it...always. Even though I have lost 11 lbs, it looks I could stand to drop a few more... nshallah, I will while staying healthy.

Vowels... We don't need no stinkin' vowels

Got a message from my friend Jim commenting on the lack of vowels in the darija words I write... well that is because there are no vowels, we place a few here and there to make it a little easier on anyone who is "latin" based in language. Here are a few example of words: fzg, sffr, rbH, tmmn...the list goes on, WTF you say, (see no vowels there either)...haha. Since the language I am learning was not a written language 50 years ago, it is a transliteration from the spoke word into a latin base so us poor souls can wrap our mind around it... did I actually just write that and understand it, yikes. Of course I will want to learn arabic script once I get a handle on the language. I of course want to badly round off the harsh sounds with my even present "ah" at the end of every word. Boston Darija has a scary yet soothing sound to it.

Sidebar What is the story with the F'en rosters here... I thought these creatures only cock-a-doddle-do'd as the sunrise was approaching. Well not here they make that pain in the arse noise ALL morning, day and sometimes at night. Now I know being from a city the only roster I know is from" Loonie Tunes" FogHorn Leghorn and he never crowed outside of sunrise... WTF it is 1:35 in the afternoon as I write this and a damn roster is cock-a-doddling.... ssshit!

Back to writing and studying my language... oh one last thing, a "q" sounds like a "k" deep from the throat, the "x" sounds like the "ch" in yech but even deeper in the voice box... it is just next to impossible to make these sounds in the flow of a sentence, for me anyways.

Arabrenchlish and Sign Language...

Back in Sefrou after a week in Kech, trying to get all the lose ends tied up so I can get comfortable and start getting to know my artisans and what they want and need and try to make a plan. I visited the police to get my cart se jeus, found my tutor and start today and now have the word out on the street that I need a home by the first of January. This will be the most difficult. To get all this done here I have settled on a combination of arabic/french/english (Arabrenchlish) and sign language to communicate what I need. It is clumsy yet effective and so far I have been able to perform., but that will have to slowly stop as I use my tutor to get my pronouncation of the language down. I had to stop him mid lesson to explain what is up with my dialect of english known world-wide as Bostonian English. he was having difficult comprehending what I meant so I gave him the famous "Park the car in Harvard Yard" or Pahak the cahah in Hah'vahad Yahd... and of ofcourse the words mirror or mir'ha. I think he now understands the monumental tutoring job he has before him... nqta b'nqta kay-hml lwd... nshallah I will improve my prouncation of Arabic. That means "drop-by-drop the river get full... god willing". Will I lose my Boston accent after two years of this... I doubt it very much!

The weather here has been beautiful since my return from Marrakech, I asked around and for the most part there will be almost no snow but bzeef sta (much rain)... that sounds go to me.

Lastly I downloaded about a dozen movies from a PCV while in Marrakech (wish I had taken my portable HD to Kech). For the most part I went with action movies. At Christmas I will bring the HD and get some more (100's) ... watch the first Bourne movie last night, part two this weekend. All I need now is a little popcorn, a couch and someone when to snuggle with... hmmm maybe snuggling and the Bourne series are not a good match... on second thought snuggling goes with ALL movies...period.

Heading out soon to practice my Arabic and find a nice place to draw....miss everyone and can't believe I will not "be home for Christmas..."

They're taking me to Marrakesh...

Traveling the train through clear Moroccan skies... all board the train.
Well it sounds good but for me it was a day after a heavy rain storm, traveling in damp clothes and waiting for the waters to recede so the train can leave from Fez. After an 11 hour train ride, "discussing" religion and western ways with a passenager in the seat next to me for over an hour, we arrived in Kech, exhaust, hungry and needing to pee badly. After getting into a taxi and finding our hotel in the maze within the medina, it was time to get some food. Marrakech is unlike any place in Morocco that I have seen so far, it is a little Rabat, mix in some Fez and throw in lots of tourists... and of course snake charmers, men with monkeys, street eurchins...Bzzef and the smell of urine everywhere.

We stayed in the Place Jemaa El Fina near the mosque, it was packed from the minute we got up until the evening, coming home one night around 2 was the only time I was able to get through without a "fight".

This week was the Marrakech International Film Festival and between see Kneanu Reeves introduce Speed... yeah thats right I said Speed...Whooh!! (Did that for you Steve... had to be there for his speech... speech I give better speeches in Arabic) my friend Jeff yells out during it "San Dimas High School Football Rules... maybe we should youtube the video. A few of us also got passes into the festival to catch some movies. I saw the first showing of Animal Kingdom... a good yet very dark and depressing movie... well at least John Malkovich was in the threater and he liked it... of course he would he is Malkovich, goddamit!

Found a nice hooka bar and sat back with a few friends and smoked some hooka... it was just something you have to do if you are in Marrakech. The room was filledwith men smoking water pipes and playing cards.

I would travel to Kech often if possible but the train ride is much too long an it cost more than a PCV can offer more than once a year. But the vibe is cool, the city is clean and it is Marrakech.