On the ride to my new site, I felt like I was riding with Andy Day again on our way to the Grand Canyon (here’s to hoping this Christmas is not spent vomiting in a desert again, though). The way the landscape changes – and drastically, I might add – is unbelievable. One second, you’re […]
This is Morocco
This is Morocco, my friend, the way the dusty wind kicks us til Kingdom Come, and the hours we sit and stare at the children in the street there where an orange is fitting for a ball, there is beauty after all, despite despair, and the aching mixture of love and loss is one.
Morse Code
oh my friend, I have watched you spin your lies and weave a mythology, a story so deep, it is your truth, but I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter all that much to you who is hurt or how when perception is in your favor, it is all there is, a world of nothing more […]
My final site announced!
The news is in, and I am moving pretty much smack in the middle of Morocco, some five hours from where I currently am (Fes) and maybe eight or nine hours from Rabat. I’m guessing on those numbers, by the way. I leave tomorrow morning to visit my new home and meet my host family […]
Friendship, Fate, and Responsibility
Yesterday, Khalil sat down next to me on the couch and handed me a small multi-colored bouncy ball, insisting that we should play soccer with our fingers. After we set up a makeshift field using a remote control, phone, and a few pens, we “kicked” the ball around for about twenty minutes laughing and wrestling […]
A Big Family
There’s probably not much I hate more than being sick, so when I was bent over the Turkish toilet last week heaving up my insides, I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d gotten myself into – you know, running off to a foreign country and eating food that’s in the process of taming my stomach. […]
The Days of Allah are Longer.
This is sort of backtracking a week or so, but it’s a story I wanted to share, because it’s about one of the highlights of my time in Morocco so far. It’s not that it’s exciting or adventurous or anything like that; it’s just one, long, really good day, especially since most days, I just […]
On Being Different, or maybe not so much.
Maybe it just stood out to me for some weird reason, but I seem to remember a time when we were kids and one of the big topics of conversation in school was to celebrate our differences. After all, every single person has a unique set of fingerprints, different colored hair or skin, different ways […]
“This is Morocco.”
Where to start? I had my first experience at the hammam, or public bathhouse. It’s kind of like a large, three-room sauna of sorts, where you literally go to bathe. In one room, there is a small pool of warm and cold water, and you can mix the two in buckets to get the right […]
Fouad to the Restroom
So, this picture, I would think, is fairly self-explanatory, but because it humors me, I’m going to give a rather thorough explanation. Turkish toilets do not have seats. Let’s start there. Some folks in the group have a problem with this, but it has quickly become one of my favorite things here. There’s a wonderful […]
