Thursday night and I am sitting in my salon, drink in hand, music playing and computer on my lap after a day of painting and working... Today I finished a small project that involved the health sector. A PCV friend who has been working in the health area (she is in the YD program) contacted me a week or so ago about working with her on creating a form for illiterate people who are given medication for such illnesses as diabeties. The doctor when handing out with the meds would include this form so that the patient could know when to take his/her medication. Right now they mark the box with slashes to tell how many pills to take a day. So I took her idea and created icons that represented morning / afternoon / evening and spaces where the doctor could mark the number of pills to take and what time of day. She was very happy with the finished artwork and I hope it is put to use and helps. It was a fun little project Next I moved onto the Art Resource Manual that the PC has asked me to edit and layout... this is a huge undertaking and will take me most of the summer. The original was done in Word so I have cut all the copy out of Word and started to reformat it in InDesign... I look at my list of possible project on my wall and there must be a dozen or so... I like to stay busy, but maybe I am crazy. In between I painted and now have two oils completed and another almost there... I want to try to finish a few paintings a week for the next month of so and get a body of work. Today I painted theMosque out my window, Yesterday I completed the tannery in the Fes Medina and hepainting of the door. Pending News on Morocco: There are rumors protests this weekend around Morocco... it is hard to get a gage if it is just talk or if the movement is picking up again. Because of a few articles I have read and some talks with some locals I have decide to repack my "flight" bag and get some of the things I treasure together in case the worse happens and I need to flee. If that is the case I have talked with my friend here that if I leave some my things with him I may have him ship them to me if needed. I think the chances of any of this happening is very slim... but I have decided to error on the side of caution. That is about it from Morocco...

Happy Birthday Stephen... wish I was there to celebrate.

Day Two...

Fes Medina...

Working on a painting of the Fes Medina and it leather dye area... this section of the medina sits near the bottom of the maze of streets... travel down as if you are decending into hades. I have been told that families have done this work for centuries... passed on from father to son, it is the only way to get work in this place. The painting is moving quickly as I want to capture the massive collection of building and angles on top of each other. I am not looking for too much detail and want to the eye to fill in what is not there. Set in sepia tones with muted colors and milk liquid haze sky. I think in will be done in a few more hours and it is time to tackle another one. Reference image belongs to my friend and fellow PCV Tyler... thanks xyua for capturing a moment.

Cubans and Jamesons

Sunday night in Sefrou so I went up to my roof sparked up my last Cuban (17Dhs or $2) and made myself a Jamesons and Coke and sat down and watched the dusk drap the city while I contemplated life and relationships. The struggle in my head was breached by the bustle below and the mosque across the road. Cigar finished, drink polished and many things unresolved I found myself sitting in the dark with the city illuminated all around me. The day's warm air had acquired the night chill as I picked myself up and walked down the twisting, narrow stairs to my landing... in the dark I fumbled for my key and thought about the next drink as a pushed the door opened with the back of my hand. Life is playing games with me these days and am I up to the task? My heart can be heavy yet my resolve is steady as it ever has been. I have many friends yet I feel isolated and alone.... is it self-imposed or just my lot in life... I find relief only in my work and art, it centers me and shields me from the drudgery of life. The Peace Corps has not given me what I had thought it might... it has given me more, friends for a lifetime, memories and adventure that few can claim to have tasted. I have come to understand I have an anger in me that I have been carrying for close to five years, I have tried to lay it down a few times but I can never seem to ever fully release my grip on it. I know one day I will drop this mantle of inner rage that I keep hidden for the most part... when, I have no idea. I have asked and thought about how or when I will find away to fill the hole that sits in the center of my soul... I was told by a wise friend that I may never and that it is OK... some loses we are never meant to get over nor should we. I think of my best friend and the lose her sister has endured and I how all these years later she still burns with the same dispair, pain and sadness she must have felt when she heard the news... I understand her, what her heart feels... robbed of a life together. The Cuban was wonderful and the Jamesons has helped a swiya... Night is deep upon me now and work beckons me. This entery was for me

Random Thoughts...

Sounds and Fury... The other day while hanging out with a few friends as dusk settled down the call the prayer commenced and as the call went out... "Allah 3ckbHar..." Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Band qued up and the moment became surreal... It you have never heard Hendrix's version it is violent, moving and raw America and layered over the call from the mosque for the final prayer was a moment I will not forget as the clash of two cultures played out around me and I paused to savor the moment. Give me America everytime over any place in the world. Night Moves... As I have mentioned before the warm weather has come to Sefrou and sleeping at night now requires the windows to be wide open and this brings the night sounds into my living space. I live in a very busy intersection and I don't mind the commotion and sounds, but the past few nights I have noticed that life outside my window is very strange after the midnight hour, men gather and talk as if it is the middle of the afternoon, wild dogs roam around and the men cheer and yell as the dogs "hump" and I am repulsed by it to the point of wanting to confront them but lack the language skills to tell them they are mentally sick and people are trying to sleep and just to GO HOME. The other aspect is that I now see women out at that hour and in this culture that can mean only one thing "sex workers" as they are called here. Welcome to the neighborhood. Puberty... I have come to the conclusion that in a nutshell sexual repressed men and women are living in a constant state of puberty here. Because of the isolation of the sexes and taboos or religious dogma most of the population that I have observed are in living in that crazy world of early puberty, hormones raging and the wherewithall to undersand and control thus urges and feeling have not been developed yet and that is my take on it. Just my humble opinion.

Bab...

Just finished my first oil painting (well maybe a swiya more to go)... it is of a typical doorway here is Morocco, ornate tile, beat-up old wooden door that is all of five feet in height. Not sure why I chose my first subject to be a door, at first i had a young boy siting on the stoop with a snarl on his face, but I painted him out with the idea of putting him back in and he never made it back as i liked the composition better without him. The canvas is a little too small for the composition but in general I am pleased . I started another painting the other day of the Fes Medina it is a larger than this and right now it is in the underpainting stage... not sure where it is going at the moment but I am leaning toward an earth tone painting, stark and old looking.

So one down and many more to come ...INSHALLAH!!!

New Time Old Time...

Ok here is my story... As of this past Saturday Morocco changed it time by springing ahead one hour. As full disclosure I hated that we jumped an hour, once I again I am five hours ahead of my beloved family and let me take it one step further, my dearest friend and the person I love the most in this world (outside of family) is even harder to connect with and this causes me to be less than happy most days... so tonight I am hanging with my friend Ali and we are talking about getting together in the morning and we agree to 10:30... not a problem right? Well as I am about to take my leave for the night I remind him of our getting together and he says and I quote "new time or old time" ?????? I say 10:30....10:30 and he wants to know if i am on new time or old time and I say i am on the time I was told the country was on and says no, only the government changes time.... we spend the next 10 minutes with me laughing so hard I was crying...that I don't understand... how can there be two times...are you kidding me or what. So it appears that the people are still living one hour behind and only the government and 260 peace corps volunteers have changed time. How can this be is it pure insanity or pure genius?? I for one want to live in old time as it makes me a little closer to the people I love...so I am changing my clock back one hour. Inshallah... Moroccan time is usually an hour late for everything anyways, so I can beat them at their own game, if I make all my arrangements on new time but show up at old time... maybe I have figured this all out.

Summer comes early

It is very warm here in Sefrou this morning, after waking up to the call to prayer I laid there thinking it is not even 5:00 and it is already warm. I rolled over and stayed in the secure comfort of my sheets and only awoke again as the sun streamed across my face and I leaned over to turn on the laptop and check for email. Coffee, sweeping the floor as there is always a fine dust on everything and back to day two of laundry. Now I am sitting in my salon windows open coffee by my side in my underwear to stay cool and it is not even 9:30AM... beginning to fear what the summer will be like here. The positive is that it is not the bone-chilling cold that i experienced in my room in TimHdite and my clothes dry in record time on the roof.

I am noticing that the course of a day is changing slowly here... the mornings are swiya busy as always and the afternoons are still quiet but now that stillness has been extended an hour or so and the nights are becoming the time for moving around outside. I can only imagine what it will be like once the heat finally settles in for a long period. Last night I was out until 9 and the city was full and once back in my home life outside my window stayed active until after 11. Lucky I like the sound of city noise and the movement of people... I will never be able to settle into the suburbs for any long period of time... it is just not in my soul.

Working on a few small projects for fellow PCVs and one for the PC... trying to figure out what to do in the Sefrou area, but if I spend my full 27 months helping others with their projects then I am ok with that.

Meet a young Moroccan man during a free concert that I attended in Fes, I was sketching the musicians and he came upto me afterwards and it turns out he is a budding artist and we exchanged digits (very moroccan) and inshallah maybe I have found my first pupil. Here are two of my sketches from the concert, almost finished with my first sketch book and started my second oil painting of the Fes Medina... this one will be larger 70cm x 50cm.

Laundry and Artwork

The wind is whipping in Sefrou today, as it has been the last 36 hours... the sun is shrouded and the air is yellow ochre with specs of earth pelting everything. Still after a few weeks of not doing laundry the need for clean underwear next to my body is a desire I can no longer put off, so after the hand washing, scrubbing and wringing I have turned my kusina into a laundry room. I must say I have not missed the washing machine as much as I thought I might... but laundry is no longer a moment in time, it is a chore and eats into my day.

After a week of constant work on the craft fair I have finally got back to a painting I started about 10 days ago... it is a typical "hobbit hole" door in Morocco. Why a bab you ask... shit I don't know, it just felt right, the painting started out with a young boy sitting and scrowling at me but I painted him out and I like where it is going now. I would like to finish it this week and start another in a day or so. there will be no themes or series.... I may do another hobbit hole or I may just paint the wild flowers, the road between Sefrou and Fes is amazing in it greens and wild flower.... as long as I am doing something I will be content.

Inshallah... I need to get to Rabat to buy more supplies.

Dublin City - Redux

Dublin City March 14th - 19th - The five of us after bzzf planning escaped into the reality of our past lives. The trip started in my home the night before with laughter, wine, music and dinner from the sandwich shop below. Then the next morning into a grand taxi and hopefully the airport... we entered the taxi and after taking off we started "bantering" with the drive to detour from the route to take us directly to Fés airport... the ride to Fés is a 10Dh taxi ride for each person... the driver insisted on another 120Dhs to take us off the "beaten" track.... Gali BZZZZZF... after 10 minutes of back and forth the price was settled on at 60DHS plus the orginal 60 for a total of 120Dhs.

At the airport as we are about to go through security, they send us back because it is tea time... not just one person the full staff stops working and have tea, even though we are 6 months in country this caught us completely by surprise... I guess we already had left Morocco time behind...but not yet. Security was a breeze once it reopened and within the hour we were air bound to Madrid and freedom.

Madrid Airport - Stamped passport, 2.80Euro beers, cheese and bacon and a deck of cards... we had 5 hours to kill and like children set loose in a toy store we roamed wide-eyed and with smiles from ear-to-ear. Every women looked like Sophia Loren and the three men in the group were amazed at how much we were staring... after 6 months of Moroccan dress were had sensory overload... what a GREAT feeling. Finally we board and head off to Dublin and Guinness.

Dublin City - We arrive in the dead of night, locate our shuttle, check in and drop our bags off and head to the bar in the lobby for food and Guinness. After hours of talking about our day, tomorrow and enjoying each others company we head to our rooms around 2 and fall asleep in a clean, comfortable bed with a hot shower.... mmmmm hot shower!!

Next day after a full breakfast we head into Dublin for sights, food and yes.... GUINNESS. Hoping a Red Tour Bus we see the city and head to the Guinness Brewery (do you see the common thread here...) and a tour and free drink in the 360 degree view bar at the top of the building... seven stories. From there it is back on the bus more sights and finally we stumble onto the Brazen Head Pubs, Est. 1198 (the oldest pub in Ireland) we eat a hardy Irish meal, drink more and relax and smile even more. Back to the hotel for live Irish music... dancing and yes drink. A full day was had and now we are thinking about the parade tomorrow and what it will be like....

The PARADE - it was a beautiful sunny day, not warm but just perfect. We find a viewing area and wait for the parade to pass... great floats, music and entertainment... now it is off to the pub for drink and music and the place we find does not disappoint... we listen to live music and dance and drink until Fun was had (but what happened in Dublin stays in Dublin...wink wink) after hours of drink we must have food... so we five stumble out of the VAT House to locate food, walking arm-in-arm like the crew from the Wizard of Oz... walking around the city at night on St. Paddy's is a sight to see. After a little nourishment we walk some more but finally locate our bus stop and head back to the hotel lobby for wind down, Irish coffee as a night cap and crawl into bed and asleep before the lights are out.

Friday is a day of recovery and quiet... we see more and eat well and drink a lot less. We head back to the hotel stay up all night for our 6:20 flight and get back into Fés around 3 and back to Sefrou around 5.

What a great time with 4 wonderful friends... Thanks Adrienne, Bill, Justin and Lauren... lets do it again next year! Next up is Pisa and Cinque Terre!!

March Madness in Maroc

March... what can I say about March Madness in Morocco. The month started with company staying in my home and ended with people sleeping on the floor and in between we worked hard, got out of the country to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day and held a Marché Maroc Craft Fair in Fès... "Mr Wizard lets turn the wayback machine to early March..." The month started with protest happening around North Africa and it appeared to be spreading into Morocco, Libya splitting into civil war and the world wondering how to stop the mayhem and keep the arab world appeased... WTF just kill the Libyian madman!! But in Morocco the king came out and said a few of the right things and for the moment the people paused and once a movement pauses it takes too much effort to get the movement back. So in my eyes for the near future this country will stay at status quo. Between working on the marketing material for Marché Maroc Fès I was able to escape to the wonderful and beautiful world of Dublin City... the trip started with bzzf beer and pork in the Madrid airport along with hours of gin rummy, then on to Ireland and Guinness after Guinness. It was capped with the parade, Irish music, many pubs and me being mistaken for a local Irishman. The most bizzare thing happened at a pub on St. Paddy's... a beautiful, dark haired, green-eyed lass of all of 30 made move on me and during our conversation I learn her name is Meghan O'Connell... holy shit, I am thinking I have a way with the women of the O'Connell clan... needless to say after a wee talk and a peck on the lips we part ways... an O'Connell what a small world... still brings a smile to my lips. Of course we rallied and made the crazy decision to return to Morocco and back to the madness that carries the name of Marchè Maroc... I will not get into what that was like other than to say I left that kind of work shit back in the states... it was a trip dealing with printers, deadlines and all in a country that has no concept of time and everything is sealed with "Inshallah" or god willing. Now I am alone for the first time in over a month and a half... I look forward to getting my life here back for the next few weeks before I venture out again. It is time for reflection, painting and getting Sefrou back in my blood. Swiya b-swiya