Installation

As of November 20th, 2008, around noon, I am a full-on Peace Corps volunteer. Obviously, this honor comes with certain rights and responsibilities, crap-tons of street cred, and a lot of changes. Although I’ve been in Morocco for almost 3 months now, I’ve only been working at my site for almost 3 days.

Which brings us to the main point of this writing: where is my site? Well, unfortunately, I can’t tell you that. You see, there are certain security precautions that we have to take here in the Peace Corps so that the rest of you (we tend to refer to you as “normies”) can benefit from the peace that we are creating. Now, I don’t want to frighten any of you with delicate sensibilities, it’s not really dangerous; but I would be amiss if I didn’t imply that there’s a hint of peril.

So, how does this affect you? Well, ladies will probably swoon a little bit at the magnitude of my awesomeness, and those who are pregnant, nursing, or have heart conditions should probably not read this without qualified supervision. And anyone who wants to write or visit will have to write me an email to find out where it is that you or your packages should be sent.

But seriously, I can tell you some about my site in general terms that should keep the hypothetical terrorists and Illuminati in enough dark about my whereabouts to last me the next 2 years. First of all, for the purposes of further confusion, let’s call my site Freedonia, in homage to probably the most influential of treatises on international relations of the 20th Century. Second, allow me to confirm suspicions that Freedonia is, in fact, located in Morocco.

Freedonia is a small town in the Middle Atlas of less than 10,000 people, which, if that number is as meaningless to you as it is to me, means that you could easily walk from one side of town to the other in less than 2 hours, but you could never hope to meet all the people in it. It was developed mostly by the French as an escape from the incredible summer heat of the major cities, and so there is a very obvious blending/imperialism of cultures and architectural styles that some people see as “un-Moroccan,” but is usually very welcome to most tourists and expatriates.

The weather is quite cold, which can be difficult to unbearable in the winter, though the envy of Morocco in the summer, when it is – allegedly – paradisiacal. But the icing on the meteorological cake is the air and water. Almost all the big cities of Morocco are in the coastal plain, and, as a result, are smog-tastic, but the fresh mountain air of Freedonia keeps all that in the cities where it belongs. And the water in pretty much every town, city, and village, if it’s potable at all, tastes like a cocktail of chlorine, salt, and desert, and evokes a sensation similar to when eating blowfish sushi – even though you’re assured it’s perfectly safe, there’s still a chance it could kill you. Or worse. Not so in Freedonia. The tap water runs from the same natural mineral springs that feed the bottling companies that bottle the water the rest of Morocco drinks in lieu of playing Russian roulette with their gastro-intestinal systems.

The people are, on the whole, quite friendly and welcoming. There are certain stereotypical forms of harassment that foreigners face here in Morocco: political, religious, sexual, and “daily.” Political harassment is usually related to being associated with President Bush or the Iraq War, but President-Elect Obama has done an incredible job already of minimizing that. Religious harassment usually manifests in two ways, arguments for converting to Islam or discrimination against atheists, adherents of polytheistic religions, and Jews. Sexual harassment can range from chauvinistic bothering to groping to serious sexual assault. Finally, “daily” harassment that foreigners experience usually takes the form of xenophobia or rock-throwing (we’ll probably have a discussion later about rock-throwing, as well as harassment in general, I’m sure). As for xenophobia, all black people are Senegalese and looked down upon, all Asians are Chinese and looked at strangely from a somewhat downward perspective, and all white people are French and looked at with a mixture of envy, resentment, suspicion, and supplication.

Thus far I have experienced none of these – hamdullah – here in Freedonia. Of course, I’ve only been here for a 1-week site visit and 3 days of actual installation, but news spreads around pretty quickly in a small town about the arrival of a new American. I credit this fortune, however, to several places. First of all, the Peace Corps, in my estimation, did an excellent job of preparing us for entry with language and cultural training (mostly through the home stay program and the guidance of phenomenal language and cultural facilitators). Second, my family here is incredibly warm and helpful, and I have to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Baba Mustapha, Mama Mahjouba, my brothers Mohammad, Smail, and Isam, my sister Nora (at school is Fes), and my sister Itou’, who lives in France with her husband and I’ve never met or spoken to before. But finally, I credit the town of Freedonia itself for being very open to cross-cultural communication.

In short, when Peace Corps volunteers talk about the best countries to be placed in, Morocco is always at the top of the list, and when PCVs in Morocco talk about the best sites in the country, the ones who’ve been here for a bit always list Freedonia as number 1.