9 Things That Duncan Forgot to Mention about Morocco

In the course of our journey through my service in Morocco, we've talked about a lot of things. We've traveled from one corner of the country to the other, explored the culture of Morocco and the life of a Peace Corps volunteer, and come to understand the meaning of development. Our time, however, has been finite, and I've been busy, or lazy, and I haven't been able to write about everything I needed to. Fortunately, it turns out that there are only nine things that I neglected in all of Morocco. Here they are:

1. There's a book that was spreading around when I first joined called Three Cups of Tea. I never read it, but from what I understand it's about integrating into an Islamic society somewhere in Central Asia (Pakistan, maybe?) and drinking tea. I imagine that the appeal to Morocco volunteers is based on our own being required to drink copious amounts of tea, many times under duress. You, too, probably think that you can only drink two glasses of scaldingly hot tea hypersaturated with sugar at any given sitting, but, let me assure you, when your large Moroccan host mother is standing over you with a look composed of 63% dissapointment, 34% concern for your nutritional safety, and 3% sassy antagonism and refilling your cup in complete disregard to what you're saying, not saying, or say every time the issue comes up, you're going to drink it. Fortunately, there are a handful of varieties to choose from, though, unfortunately, tea is never served individually. Unless you're the world's biggest loser (and not the kind of big loser that's going to get us in trouble with the registered trademark police), you drink your tea from loose leaf form, in a large pot filled with one part boiling water and one part sugar, and everyone else drinks the same. Every family has special tea glasses used strictly for tea (and Coke, on special occasions), and the flavor (of the tea, not the Coke) depends on what time of year it is. The most popular is mint, though few realize that this is a summer (or warm weather) drink only. In the winter, we drink sheeba (wormwood-laced tea), and sit around pretending we're French Romantic-Era homeless people. And pretty much any other green, leafy herb can – and is – made into a special tea, too, though no other is as common. Louiza (lemon verbena) is my personal favorite. There's also z'aater (oregano) to calm your stomach and salmia (sage) to calm your blood. Trendy stalls in the big city souks will market their own blends, which are usually made from just about anything mixed with everything else (usually really good). And if you're really lucky, you might find yourself with a steamy glass of flio (spearmint), which tastes exactly like what you'd expect if you drank a steamy glass of Double Mint Gum, which is to say, awful. On Eid Seghir (end of Ramadan) this year I made a running tally on my arm of how many glasses I drank during my four hours of visiting family and neighbors. I got up to somewhere between hyperglycemic shock and early onset diabetes (twelve glasses). I shortlisted Three Thousand Cups of Tea as one of the possible titles for my Peace Corps memoirs until a friend and I did the math and realized we've had far more than that in our 26months. Then we stopped talking about that and started researching insulin supply companies in Morocco.

2. Islam recognizes Friday as the Sabbath, though in Morocco, that doesn't translate quite like what we do with Sundays in America. Sure, there's a big congregation at the midday prayer, and a lot of people who normally don't do any of their prayers might at least do this one, but in most ways it's just another ordinary day. Kids go to school; government offices are open. It's not even considered the weekend. Some people might close up shop early or in the afternoon, and one person once told me that no one is allowed to work on Friday, but it's basically a day like any other. Except for one thing: lunch. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and Friday lunch is the biggest lunch of the week. The whole family is gathered together (before the kids run back off to school at two and parents go back to work), which calls for something special, and that means couscous. Tagines may be the national dish, lamb and prunes may be the way to impress your guests, and chicken with onions, raisins, and euphoria-inducing amounts of LSD may be what's served at your wedding, but only couscous is good enough for Friday. The couscous making starts around ten in the morning (unless I plan on coming over to learn, in which case it always seems to start earlier), and lasts until around one, or until everyone who's coming home is back home. It's served in a massive bowl-plate called a ksa, and everyone gathers around and digs in the second it touches the table. And it's important to note that couscous is the only dish that is officially sanctioned to be eaten with a utensil (a giant spoon, to be precise, that's about the equivalent of a tablespoon and a half), although the truly hardcore will use their hands. Not bread in their hands, mind you, but go straight for it with their fingers. If you want to blow the socks of your Moroccan friends, the next time you go over for couscous, make a big display of refusing to eat with a spoon (it helps if you take the one offered you and throw it across the room), and plunge your hand (right hand) into the bowl. This works especially well when the couscous is supersaturated with marqa', the liquified butter cream sauce that fell from Heaven, and doesn't work at all when it isn't. Scoop it around for a moment and pull it back out with about a golf ball’s weight of couscous. Sauté this in your hand once or twice and then launch it into your mouth. It really only takes once to prove that you're the baddest couscous eater at the table, though you're welcome to go the whole meal to formally cement your superiority. When you're finished, you can demurely tap your hand clean on the side of the ksa, or you can full-on lick it down. An important safety tip, however: the latter option is not as sexually enticing as it might sound. When you're finished, you can wash it all down with a tall glass of lebin. Lebin is pretty much the same thing as buttermilk, though it translates more closely as “Satan's nightcap,” and drinking this with your couscous isn't so much hardcore as it is an exercise in gastrointestinal hubris. I'd recommend just a simple glass of water, though I wouldn't wait until the end of the meal before quenching my thirst. Don't forget, Morocco has space for individual tea (or soda) glasses, but there's only one cup of water on the table, and it's going to be hard to drink once everyone else's semolina grain backwash is floating in it, no matter how thirsty you are.

3. As in any other society, there are some things you can do in Morocco, and others you can't. For example, you can go to the bathroom, but you can't let anyone hear you (we've talked about this before). And, in those cases when you do something that you shouldn't, you're going to hear people telling you “hashuma.” “Hashuma” basically means “shame.” It also sounds a lot like “shame,” which is convenient for remembering. You can “hashumaed” for just about anything, too, in no small part due to how much fun it is to say. It can mean: “Act right!” as in, “Hashuma, don't eat with your left hand!” “You know better than that!” as in, “Don't grab a girl's butt when she's walking through the souk, hashuma!” “Watch your mouth!” as in “Hashuma, you said 'donkey,' 'toilet,' 'trash,' or one of a long list of other words without asking for pardon.” “This is the end of society as we know it,” as in “You were attacked by hoodlums? Hashuma.” (This one should be followed by “gaa',” which translates most closely as “to an absolute degree, either negative or positive, with great emphasis,” and is my absolute favorite word to say, gaa'.) It can be your response to seeing someone stumbling drunkenly down the street, or a weak attempt to save face when you've been bested in a verbal battle of wits. And you actually don't need to say it at all, as, like all Moroccan communication, it can be conveyed in a simple hand gesture form. It's a lot like our “I'm sad” gesture except instead of tracing a tear away from your eye, you pull the skin down from your eyeball to emphasize that someone is watching. Unfortunately, this can get you (or me) in trouble if you try to tell someone you're sad without saying it. Morocco doesn't have that gesture, and isn't going to get it. Trust me.

4. You might be surprised to know that the vast majority of people don't own cars, though you might also be surprised to know that far fewer have camels that they can use to get around with. No, a good 85% of Morocco lies in between, having only their wits (and the occasional bicycle) to get them to work in the morning. So what do they do? Well, most just walk. This is as true of city folks who walk a matter of blocks as it is of country folks who walk a matter of miles to get to school, usually uphill. But when money is available and time is not, people got with what they know: taxis. Within cities, these are called “little taxis,” which are usually a cute little Fiat and always a pain in the ass. Depending on the city, there's either a set rate to ride or a counter, though in either case you can count on having to argue over the price and probably being ripped off. Between cities you need a “big taxi,” though, and that's where the fun is. Big taxis are all old Mercedeses (Mercedi?) that were run to death in Germany before being sent to scrap, reassembled for Morocco as part of a development outreach, and currently held together by the collective faith of everyone riding on that particular day. And perhaps that's why these [debatably] five-seater vehicles are crammed with seven people: because no one knows just how many more rides are left in it. The front seat includes the driver, a passenger in two thirds of the passenger's seat, and another passenger in what's left plus straddling the stick shift, and the back is crammed with four people and whatever luggage can't fit in the trunk. Again, though, this is a Mercedes, so if you've got four small-to-medium-sized passengers, there's plenty of room to ride comfortably. Unfortunately, though women are more successful, both sexes aspire to huskier sizes, which can make for some tight riding conditions. Usually, one has to lean forward the whole ride, and that's usually the American (who's less comfortable with a lack of personal space). Of course, if you don't like taxis, and trust me, they can be next to unbearable in the summer, you could always take a bus. There are a few national bus lines that cater largely to tourists, but most are local lines or run specific routes, and it's not unheard of for someone to just run their own bus. Similar to big taxis, buses have set passenger limits, though unlike big taxis, this number is equal to the number of seats available in the bus. However, compliance with these set limits is much harder to verify, so what usually happens is that passengers are crammed into the bus until it is physically impossible to add any more, and everyone not sitting in a seat is commanded to hide whenever the bus enters town or passes a well-known traffic stop. Amazingly, though, it's only on the fancy national lines that you ever have any problems with seating. Despite there being as many or more seats than people riding, there's always some neurotic Westerner up in arms about having the seat number that's on their ticket, and you can count on your PCV getting in a fight about how if everyone would just sit down in an open space, we could already be halfway there by now.

5. Morocco's currency is the dirham, which during the course of my service, has fluctuated between eight and nine to the dollar. Of course, being more permanent residents, we don't usually worry too much about the exchange rate. Five dirham is a cup of coffee, one and a half is a wheel of bread, and it goes on from there. And you'll probably be surprised to hear that despite never having to exchange money, we're still constantly worry about conversions. Not between dollars and dirham, but between dirham and rials. I've heard a lot of stories about where rial come from. Some say they are the “old currency;” others that they're “Islamic” (the Saudi Arabian currency is also called the rial). The truth, however, is that they're entirely fictional – a figment of the collective imagination that's taken root in Morocco. A single rial is one twentieth of a dirham, or the equivalent of a Moroccan nickle. Of course, Morocco doesn't have nickles (or five-centime pieces) in its collection of legal tender. (Point of technicality: actualy, there is a five-centime piece, though its use is about as common as that of the two dollar bill in America, which is to say, nonexistent. I found one once, however, so I can prove they do exist, though I can't find it anymore – I certainly didn't spend it on anything – so perhaps it was just a souk-induced hallucination.) No, rials are a way of counting, not a currency. Basically, you take whatever amount of money you're concerned with, and multiply it by twenty (or the number of nickles involved in the transaction), so bread is actually thirty, and a cup of coffee will run you one hundred. At first we thought that people would try to give us prices in rials to take advantage of our gullibility, but in the end we've found it much more likely to meet someone who honestly does not comprehend prices in dirham. My host mother is one, and in the course of selling her my furniture, I had to convert all the prices. Fortunately, two years of practice has made me an expert at the 20s table. Up in the north they call rials “douro,” but they count in centimes instead,which they call “franks.” That means a carton of La Vache Qui Rit cheese will cost you one thousand up in the Rif Mountains or two hundred in Freedonia, but you only have to take ten dirham out of your wallet. But in all this, the thing that doesn't make any sense is what Morocco does with really large quantities of money, specifically for ten and hundred thousands of dirhams. You'd think that 10,000 would be called 200,000, but everyone – not just the north – goes for the pennies on this one and calls it 1,000,000. I recently heard that my dar shebab was going to be getting 16,000,000 this year for improvements, and almost fell out of my chair. 16,000,000 dirham (roughly 2,000,000 dollars) is enough to build a center four or five times the size of what we have now. Forget about cosmetic improvements, let's tear it down and start again from scratch. Of course, it turns out that we aren't getting 16,000,000 dirham, we're getting 16,000,000 franks, which is 160,000 dirham (about 20,000 dollars). That's still a lot of money, but not quite the same, though I suppose I only have myself to blame for getting so excited. My friend didn't say “dirham,” “franks,” or “rial,” he just said “16,000,000.” It makes me wonder though what would happen if we were getting that much in dirham. Would they have to say 1,600,000,000 to avoid confusion? The world may never know.

6. What would you consider a busy day? You get up before the sun so you can get to work or school on time, bust your rump finishing whatever project you need to get done in a few hours less than it's going to take to finish, blitz through all the errands necessary for living, and go spend the quality time with your parents or girlfriend just so that they don't walk out on you, despite being exhausted to the point where you almost wish they would if only just to simplify your life. At the end of it all, you fall asleep still wearing your clothes, which, conveniently turn out to be the pajamas you were wearing the night before and didn't have time to change out of this morning. That probably strikes you as pretty busy. To me, and the majority of Peace Corps volunteers that I know, that's more along the lines of a ludicrous impossibility. A busy day around here (and I should note that I'm speaking for volunteers here) is one when you have to pay your electric bill, buy groceries, and teach an hour and a half of class. Do all that, and you deserve a break. But that's not to say that there's nothing to do as a volunteer, nor I am necessarily calling us all pathologically lazy (though there are a few). The truth is that pretty much everything you have to do is exponentially harder to do hear than it is for all of you back in cushy America. And why is that? In the end, it boils down to culture, or, perhaps, a lack thereof. You have the luxury of buying stamps at the post office in English, and according to culturally enforced rituals that you've been acclimating to all your lives. We, however, have the relatively simple challenge of translating our words into Darijia or some variety of Tamazight and the great challenge of translating our modes of thinking and cultural touchstones into Moroccan before we can even begin to ask the clerk for a book of stamps. Even going over to your parents' house for lunch is exhausting, and that's before they start asking why you never call and what happened with that sweet girl who seemed so nice and why can't you just settle down and start making grandchildren? And that's why I exclude Moroccans from my definition of a busy day, because they, like you, are working in the system to which they were raised. Going to the souk isn't going to be use the day's energy, though I wouldn't be surprised if a Freedonian needed to take a nap after only a one hour expedition to Wal-Mart. So bear that in mind the next time you're feeling wiped from a “long day.” Over here, we're fighting against a lifetime of being indoctrinated into a different way of thinking of just about everything. All you need is a Red Bull.

7. Morocco is know for many things, but television programming is not one of them. Every so often you'll read an article with some Moroccan railing against the two-dimensionality of Moroccan television characters or how they reinforce out-dated gender and cultural stereotypes, or with some American bemoaning how completely asinine – à la “Full House” – they all are. It shouldn't come to you as a surprise, then, that the star of the Moroccan television screen is not Moroccan at all. Turkey stands tall with their hyperdramatic and well-mustachioed soap operas dubbed and transmitted via Syria, who throw in a few struggle-for-independence era dramas while they're at it. South Korea has a historical epic every once in a while, and India usually packs enough tension into a single half hour each day to induce seizures, but none of these can topple the megalith that is the Mexican telenovela. They aren't as frequent as the Middle Eastern shows, but somehow they've learned to capture the Moroccan attention in a way that probably hasn't been done since the first Arabs started showing up talking about Islam. The first reason is probably that these are dubbed into Darijia rather than Standard Arabic (for some reason, the Indian ones are, too), but I would wager that the short skirts and massive cleavage that you don't get from more conservative societies plays their part, too. Whatever the reason, the Mexican soap opera slot has achieved a level of sacredness bordering on a sixth call to prayer. Take “Margarita,” for instance, which isn't even the show's real name but just the name of the main character. This summer the souk featured t-shirts with her face and key chains with everyone else. And now it's “Diablo” – set in New York – that holds Morocco hostage every evening at around seven and preventing any sort of regular dar shebab English schedule from being put in place. And it's convinced us volunteers that if the Peace Corps is a cultural exchange program, then it's wasting its money. Forget about volunteers, our effectiveness could be increased twenty-fold if we just dubbed a cheap plot line into Darijia with lots of hair gel and leather jackets. And cleavage.

8. My grandfather is a man of routine, and he used to go to the same sandwich shop and order the same sandwich so often that they named it after him. The “Coddy special,” it's called (his name is Frederick, but prefers to go by “Coddy,” for his middle name, Codman), and you could go into whatever sandwich restaurant this was in New Orleans and order it off the menu, though it may not be there anymore, as the logical conclusion that it contains codfish (which I can attest it does not) can only have led to confusion. Peace Corps volunteers are similar (to my grandfather, not codfish) in that they too strive to be regulars everywhere they go, and for similar reasons. My grandfather couldn't hear, and was too curmudgeonly to want to talk if he could, and Peace Corps volunteers hate to explain why they're in Morocco. Obviously, a Darijia-speaking foreigner is an oddity around here, and encountering one inevitably leads one to wonder why, where are you from, what are you doing in Morocco, are you married, are you Muslim, do you like Morocco more than America, do you support Bush or Obama, did you know Michael Jackson converted to Islam right before he died, and all I really wanted was to grab a candy bar before going to class and not recite my life story and make empty promises to join your religion just so you'd stop talking to me. Of course, these are all great questions, and I'm happy to answer them, but I've answered them before, and Michael Jackson did not, in fact, convert, he merely produced a cd for Bahrain because they agreed to host him after he was kicked out of America for being an unproven child molester, which he never even delivered on, and I've been here for two years and haven't you all figured out what I'm here for already? And that's why we take every opportunity to be regulars wherever possible. We go to the same corner hanoot, the same cyber, the same cafe, the same barber, the same popcorn guy in the souk, the same phone recharge vendor. Essentially, once you've “broken someone in,” you stick with them, and not the least reason for which is how much effort it takes to get to the point where you no longer have to read an autobiography just to buy a half liter of milk, and that's a beautiful thing. And, for the record, I too have a sandwich named after me. In a little town outside of Sefrou there's a guy named Sandwich Mohammad, and if you go to buy a Sandwich Mohammad sandwich (which I highly recommend as they are the best sandwiches in Morocco), you can ask him for “sandwich Amin,” and he'll know what you're talking about, and you'll know that I know what I'm talking about, too, because sandwich Amin is the best Sandwich Mohammad sandwich.

9. I love teaching English to dar shebab students primarily because of the unmitigated joy it brings to their faces, secondarily because it's really easy for me to do, and tertiarily because it's desperately needed in Morocco. Students are given about four years of English and then expected to pass an exam that's a close second to the TOEFL as a certificate of fluency, which is obviously incredibly hard, but that's not even the real problem. The texts they are forced to use are not only written in British English – it's bad enough imagining that they're going to learn to speak like Hugh Grant – but they're written in incorrect British English. Ask a Moroccan English student their name, and I guarantee you'll hear this, word-for-word: “My name is [Mohammad] and my family name is [ben Mohammad]. I am from Morocco, exactly in [Fes].” It's a travesty that they do this to students who we can assume want nothing less than to sound absolutely ridiculous when they speak English. I mean, it makes sense why this would happen, especially since the Arabic word for “name” is “smiya,” which is uniquely distinct from their word for “last name,” “kinnaea,” but has really no one with any background in English ever read the textbook? The cake-taker, though, is the Moroccan English way of asking how you are. In Darijia, you would usually ask with “la bas?” and answer with “la bas.” Of course, there are other exchanges you could use (such as “bekhair?” and “bekhair”), but they too tend to be the same word just inflected differently. It's not too surprising then that people are going to imagine that English behaves the same way, and thus the birth of “Are you fine?” Myself and almost fifty years of Peace Corps volunteers before me have fought to slay this demon, and I am here to say that we have failed. Rather than admit defeat, however, I propose that we adopt this formally into English, so that we can say that the English spoken by our dar shebab students in fully correct. So do your parts, people, and whenever you see someone, ask them “Fine? Are you fine?” They'll appreciate knowing you care, and I'll appreciate having a little bit of Morocco with me back in America.

9 Ways That Duncan Blows Morocco's Mind

I have a policy that, no matter what else I have going on, the day isn't complete until I blow at least one Moroccan's mind. Of all the goals of the Peace Corps, that's probably the easiest, but if I'm ever having a hard time with it, here are a few I can always count on:

1. It's lonely being in the Peace Corps. You probably suspected as much, but allow me to assure you that it's far more so than you think, and different volunteers deal with it in different ways. Some drink, some give up and go home, some focus their energy into their work. I got a cat. That's not news to you, either, but it definitely came as a shock to Morocco. Which isn't to say that there aren't animals in and around the homes of Moroccans, because there are. There was a cat that lived at my first home stay, a whole pride of them in the garden of my second home stay, and lots of dogs kept by people I know. The difference, though, is the relationship negotiated between the human and animal. Here, a house animal is generally just that, an animal. It isn't a pet. Very few are given names (the first cat's name was Kitten), and most are treated with a combination of tolerance and appeasement. The cats that live with my new family are fed mostly so that they won't bother people with their mewling. Dogs are a lot more common than cats, and they tend to get names, too (90% are either Rocky or Rex), but I've never seen one that wasn't tied to a tree, and that's because these dogs are around for purpose, not companionship. Most people are afraid of dogs (some of cats, too), but that's because the majority of dogs are feral and would bite you if given the chance. That I not only let an animal into my house, but treat it like a member of my family is a constant amusement for my neighbors and family. Little Mehdi who lives next door lives to chase the cat into some unattainable location, and some of my cousins' favorite pastime is to come over and look for her, and then run out of the house when she's found. They love to talk about how she has a name, and that it's a “people's name.” A few people (usually who know girls named Amal) have gotten upset that my cat has the same name, but not many. I thought about it beforehand, though, and made sure that Amal is neither a name of God or the Prophet, so it's not that. It's just the thought of an animal being called the same as you (or being called the same an as animal), that's shocking.

2. The Peace Corps gives us bikes for getting around in our sites (and beyond, provided we have permission, of course), but they come with a few conditions. Obviously, we have to take care of them, and, unless we can trick an incoming volunteer into taking ours from us, we'll have to pay for any damages when we're finished. We're also, for insurance purposes, not allowed to let any non-PCVs use them, which ultimately means that we're forced to be seen as selfish jerks in our significantly-more-communal-than-America communities. That's not going to blow anyone's mind, though. It'll just give them a bad impression of the States. No, the amazement comes from the other condition: that we must, on pain of expulsion from the Peace Corps, at all times wear a bicycle helmet. Now, it's a good idea to wear one no matter what, and I hope that you're doing so back there at home (even if you're not going to lose your job if you don't), but I think you can appreciate how you might feel if you were the only one in town wearing bicycle headgear. Try as we might, there's just no way to put on a helmet that doesn't make you look like a dork, and that's in a society that accepts them as normal. Out here, I can only imagine it's like walking down Main Street, Anytown, in a spacesuit. Back during our staging (before we got on the plane to Morocco) they showed us a propaganda film starring the nerdiest volunteer ever and his plan to turn being a laughingstock into a bicycle safety awareness campaign. The video actually looked like it had been filmed in Morocco, which makes sense because thousands of American films are done here and because the kids he was talking with were obviously actors. In all my life as a Peace Corps volunteer, I've never met a group of drairi who'd rather learn about bicycle helmets than make fun of a foreigner, or who would receive any benefit from such knowledge. Whether we like it or not, bicycle helmets just aren't available in our communities, and this is one sector in which we can't just make a cheap substitute out of cardboard and empty soda bottles at the dar shebab. A few kids have asked me for mine, and I could tell that at least one of them honestly intended to use it. I'd love to leave it behind when I go, too, if only I wasn't going to be fined out of my readjustment allowance for not returning all my equipment.

3. Our pre-staging materials came with a long list of suggested items to bring with us. As a good Boy Scout, I took it reasonably seriously. I didn't bring a Coleman camp shower. I did bring the duct tape, but I disbelieve in its omniusefulness. I've found myself looking for things to do just to get rid of it. I also brought the sticky tack, but the only thing keeping anything on my walls is superglue. And they recommended bringing some bandanas, so I threw in a few of those, too. Aside from an award-winning pirate costume I put together for Halloween every once in a while, I've never been a bandana-wearing kind of guy, but I figure there can't be a better place to start than in the Peace Corps. It turns out that I don't wear them very much in Morocco, either, aside from under my bicycle helmet, when I'm getting dressed up for the World Cup, and if my hair is just so incredibly funky that it would be a crime to inflict it upon people (I take my hats off when I go inside, thank you very much). And it's times like these when I'm usually – hopefully – on my way to the showers, which just happen to be attached to the downstairs of my host grandfather's house, and only a few doors away from basically everyone else in my family, including the house where I stayed, and I'll obviously see my family as well. Let me tell you, they didn't know what to think the first time they saw me put on a bandana. And why not? Because only women wear bandanas, which is funny because to me a bandana is like a turban as much as it is a headscarf, though I'll grant that there is a certain kind of bandanascarf that women wear, too. One of my little cousins even asked if I was a girl, which his mother very happily relayed to me (he didn't know how to speak Arabic yet), though also added that that was why he wasn't shy of me. I'm sure that's what prompted the Peace Corps to recommend packing them: instant youth integration.

4. One of the first things that we do when we arrive in country is begin learning Darija. Almost every other foreigner, however, does not, and thus (as we've discussed), your average Peace Corps volunteer is quite an anomaly in his or her daily conversation. And it's common enough that when you (or I, this is about me, after all) speak Darija, the host country interlocutor is so blown away that they may very well not hear a single word of what you say, or even reply that they're very sorry but don't understand English. Take for example, the case of the Roman ruins of Volubilis. I'm one of the closer volunteers to the ancient city, and so when one of my close friends from the South (of whom, I can assure you, there are many) come to visit, we'll often takea trip over. You may not know this, but I have an uncanny ability to read the guide book and then five minutes later present exactly what it said as the result of decades of my own personal research, and thus I've earned the title of Volubilis's Greatest Tour Guide. And on one occasion as such I was entertaining a group of PCVs with the Curious Case of the Acrobat's House. You see, there is a particular mosaic in the center of town of a naked man sitting facing backwards on a quadruped equine animal of some sort holding up something in his hand. As you can probably imagine, though, the tour guiding business wouldn't last very long peddling this sort of historical accuracy, and thus we have the invention of Theories. Allow me to take a moment and point out that no one – all of us to a man having been nowhere near Volubilis circa 217 AD – can make any great claim to Truth. Nevertheless, our guide book explains that this man is an athlete, engaging in the challenging and dangerous sport of desultor (jumping on and off of a horse in full gallop), and presenting his trophy to a crowd of adoring spectators (not pictured). As I was explaining all of this to my compatriots, a woman enjoying her afternoon in Volubilis decided that the day would be perfect if only she could tell some foreigner that he's wrong and, more importantly, doesn't know how to read the multilingual placard describing the mosaic of a jester riding his donkey backwards for the amusement of all. Well, sweetheart, let me tell you something: there's one thing you don't do, and that's contradict Duncan in front of the youth development volunteers. Forgive me my snobbery, but if your English was really that good, you'd have heard me say just that only moments ago as one of two available theories, but give me a second and I'll go over the whole lecture once more for you, your family, and everyone else who's gathered to enjoy the show. In Darija. Yes, that's right,I do have the linguistic ability to not only read this placard, but also explain the concept of historical debate. I don't know about you, but I'm more inclined to believe that if someone's going to immortalize their naked self in the floor, it would be for being a death-defying stuntman (I certainly plan on it), but far be it from me to judge the sick sense of humor of 3^rd Century Roman colonials. I pause a moment for you to collect your shell-shocked minds, carpet-bombed with Original Duncan's Finest Logic. But it's not applause that I hear. It's some guy who's mind has been blown: “You can speak Arabic? That's adorable!” If he'd been any closer, he would have pinched my cheek. It's probably best that he couldn't. I'd prefer to spare students of international conflict from learning about the Volubilis Incident until after I leave Morocco.

5. You know what, though, sometimes I take advantage of your ignorance. I tell you how great I am, but don't leave you any options for independent verification, and you're left just taking my word for it. Don't get me wrong, I am awesome, but in the interests of Truth, let me tell you how sometimes I come off a little greater than I really am. For instance, I don't actually know how to speak Tamazight. A retiring volunteer once taught me, though, the secret to speaking Berber languages, which is to not be able to speak them at all. The trick is, whenever someone asks you if you do, just say, “of course, etch agharome [eat bread],” and then go back to speaking Darija. Two or three other words might help put icing on the cake, but nine times out of ten you've already floored your audience. Why? Well, though more than half of Morocco is Amazigh, I'd wager less than half can speak Tamazight (despite minimal preservational effort on the part of the government, it's a dying tradition), and it's a good sight fewer Americans who even bother to try. (A nationalistic aside: far more Americans learn Tamazight than Moroccan Arabs, and those are gross numbers, not percentages.) Nearly two years later, and – I'll admit it – there are those who are starting to doubt my linguistic ability, but I've still got some convinced, and those are the people I eat with. This is because I speak a very unique brand of indigenous language called Lunch Time Tashleuheit. I learned from my host family, who only speak Arabic when they're talking to me, and mostly only talk to me when I'm over to mooch lunch. I score advanced level proficiency on Anything Related to What We're Having for Dinner (with a minor in Elementary Kitchen Smalltalk and Gossip), but aside from a collection of Tashleuheit words that I made up, I failed my courses in Everything Else. It doesn't really matter, though, because no matter what I do in my remaining month and a half, Freedonia will forever remember me as either 100% Berber Duncan or That Foreigner Who Really Loved to Talk about Bread.

6. Whenever I meet someone new, be it at a friend's house, in a taxi, at the corner store, or anywhere else, we tend to have to review the course of my entire service. That doesn't mean that I have to do a community map with them and establish their assets and vulnerabilities, but we start with speaking to me in French, asking if I like it here, and then on to Intro to Morocco 101. Naturally, the chronically proud Moroccan people want to educate their foreign guest about every aspect of their country – which is wonderful – it's just that after two years here, I've got a pretty good handle on Morocco myself. For example, did you know that Morocco was the first country to recognize America's independence? That there are three different families of Amazigh language? Yes, I did know that. I can also tell you about the subgroups of Tamazight and that our two countries first got together to hunt the Salé Rovers and Barbary pirates. This usually makes my Moroccans very happy to hear – though sometimes we get into arguments about the origins of Amazigh New Year (Yenayer) – but almost always catches them off guard. But I'm a teacher, too, and I know the feeling. It's not easy to go to class with a prepared lesson and then find out that your students are actually about seven chapters farther along. And it makes me wonder what kind of an ass I've been talking to foreigners in America. “Hey, Kyong Bo, did you know that Americans love to play baseball in the summer?” Really? No kidding.

7. We take it for granted that a single, 27-year-old guy either lives by himself or is a major loser. Not so in Morocco, but we've talked about that before. It's shocking for its mass potential for inappropriate behavior, but it's mind-blowing for its mere possibility. How could a guy possibly function by himself without the assistance of women? He would have to cook, and clean, and wash his clothes, and these are clearly impossible (undoubtedly the basis for the belief that I do not, in fact, ever wash my clothes, and that I subsist on a complex diet of black magic and photosynthesis – a true challenge in rainy, cold, Freedonia). I spend a lot of time with my family, and, though I love them dearly, a lot of this time I'm bored out of my mind. This is because I'm expected to watch the United Arab Emirates' greatest gift to mediocre cinematography, MBC2. But you can only watch Underworld: Evolution so many times before you need to crush your skull with a meat tenderizer, and so I'm often left desperately looking for something better to do. When I'm smart, I'll bring a book with me. Sometimes, though, I'm not, and so I'm left with no choice but to make conversation with my family, who are usually in the kitchen cooking something or elsewhere in town being hoodlums, and so I go chat with my mom while she makes lunch. And it's times like this when I pick up one or two items hanging around in the sink, and blow my mother's and sisters' minds. “Amin!? Are you washing the dishes?” Sometimes, in moments of frustration, I tend to reply that American guys are just manifestly superior to Moroccans for our comprehension of the Four Fold Mysteries of (1) apply soap to sponge, (2) agitate sponge briskly over dishes, (3) extinguish sudsiness with fresh water, and (4) leave in a warm, airy place to dry. Once, in the course of teaching my women's association girls' English class about food, I brought in the ingredients for pumpkin bread and made it with them. I had never before seen such astoundedry. And it's because of this (and that I only have at best three more classes with them, and that I got bored and took out the pumpkin bread before it was entirely finished – I'm not really a baker), that any further studying is going to be dedicated to a combination of culinary cultural exchange and ruining any chances these girls have of domestic tranquility with their future entitlement-happy husbands.

8. Most of my mind-blowing makes me look awesome (or at the very least, unique), but sometimes it makes me come across as a square. For example, in Freedonia, we have a liquor store, which happens to be right below my apartment, where Freedonians exercise their right to be weak in their flesh. I, however, don't drink, and I don't mean that in the sense of how I live in a society where drinking is the Mark of Shame and just don't want to tell anyone – because I certainly do that with other things. No, I legitimately don't drink. I also don't care if people want to (provided they don't then endanger themselves or others, but this isn't that story). So you can imagine how my friends feel when they really want to go out and get drunk and Amin, the only one in town who's got a really rock-solid justification for drinking, turns out to be a teetotaler. I say that tea is enough for me, which almost never gets a laugh out of my audience, and always hurts me in my soul. (Incidentally, if I hear someone tell me about how tea is “Moroccan whiskey” just one more time, I'll probably murder everyone and their families.) Even more alarming is my complete inability to chase after girls. Morocco, as a Muslim country, wavers between a nominal and concerted effort to separate the genders, particularly the unmarried ones. I, however, get a special Navigate the Gender Divide Free card included in my Outsider Package. I still have to fight to get into a kitchen, of course, but it does allow girls – particularly my students – to talk to me in the street, which in turn allows everyone else in my community to convince themselves that I'm the Mac Daddiest of all time. The other day at the post office I was talking with my friend the security guard when a girl from the dar shebab waved and said hi. As she was sitting a bit off on the entryway steps, I called back a quick “how are you” and looked back to continue the conversation I was already having. My pal, though, quickly pulled me around the corner and wanted to know if this was my girlfriend, what my secret was, and how was I so successful with the ladies. In his defense, it's just about impossible to get a girl to play anything other than hard-to-get, but the truth is I'm really not in to the whole Lolita thing. I just teach English.

9. I don't actually like to wear hats. At our recent Close of Service Conference (CoSCon) I made the same confession to the guys who came into the Peace Corps with me, and I'm fairly convinced that none of them believed me. That's because I've a baseball cap of some sort basically non-stop since September 6^th, 2008 – which was similarly true of me in middle school – though it'd been almost exactly ten years since my first significant girlfriend made it plainly clear that she wasn't into hats (on me). And, like the people of Stockholm, I came to agree with her and soon realized that I too hate hats on me. I experimented in college with fedoras (my head is too skinny to pull it off properly), but ultimately spent a decade perfecting a way of not combing my hair and fooling people into thinking that I did. On the way to Morocco, however, I got this idea that I should go join the Peace Corps and be the token American, and that means a baseball cap. Now, I come from a land where you either wear a Yankees hat, a Red Sox hat, or nothing at all. The first was out of the question; it's all the evil of the Galactic Empire without the awesomeness of a lightsaber. The second, too, is problematic in that though they're the sworn enemies of injustice, I just can't feel like a unique individual wearing the same hat as everyone else. In the end, I went for the old Houston Astros logo because I have nothing against them and they're innocuous enough that enough people might think that I made up the hat's image myself. I put the hat on my head and went to Morocco, and soon learned that everyone here already wears one. But I didn't despair because I have one last resort of uniqueness: I wear mine backwards. This actually derives from my original dislike of hats – I don't want something (particularly a brim) blocking my view of what's going on. Ironically, though, it's precisely that that's gotten me the cross-cultural attention I craved. Crooked hats in Morocco are the badge of an awakening hip hop culture, which makes my hat by far the most street cred-securing article of clothing I've ever worn. Occasionally the youth will comment on my headgear and hit me up for my rhymes, so I bust a few until it's abundantly clear to everyone involved that I know nothing about hip hop music, but the true human interest story is my little cousin, Aziz, who now puts his on backwards. We're working on pounds and other greetings, but, as he doesn't yet really know how to speak Arabic, it's still a work in progress. I asked him to give me five, so he asked his dad for some money.

What's Wrong with the Rough Guide

There are three books in every Moroccan Peace Corps volunteer's house: the most sacred of Peace Corps texts, Where There Is No Doctor; a journal, which only half actually use and only half of those use regularly; and The Rough Guide to Morocco. The Rough Guide is by far the most frequently read book in a PCV's life, but there's never been a volunteer who constantly used it and didn't also constantly complain about it. Of course, there's never been anything that volunteers do that they don't also complain about, but, in this case, they may have a point (beyond the simple nitpicking of grammar and spelling that any schmo with too much time and education can do). The Rough Guide is invaluable, and it is not my intention to pillory the book, but there are a few edits that really need to be made, and who better to make them than me? Here they are:

I would say that the most important aspect of traveling to a foreign culture is language. It's hard to find all the beautiful sights or interact with the interesting people if you can't communicate, and Morocco's language schizophrenia only complicates matters. Most visitors plan on speaking French, and they tend to stay in the parts of Morocco where in some ways it's easier to speak French than Arabic. That's fortunate for them, because if they came armed only with the Rough Guide's Moroccan Arabic glossary, they'd be in for a few surprises.

Granted, the word “Arabic” itself is about as useful in today's world as the word “computer.” Is it a desktop or laptop? Mac? PC? Other? Is it for work or home or both? We understand the idea, but we also need a good deal more explanation. “Arabic” is obviously the language spoken by Arabs, but is it the U'rdania spoken in Jordanian-dubbed Turkish soap operas or the Misria of inane Egyptian comedies? Is it the Modern Standard Arabic of news reports or the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an? And in Morocco, we've got not only the Modern Standard of the classroom, but also the Darija of the streets.

The Rough Guide tackles this issue straight on from sentence one: “Moroccan Arabic, the country's official language, is substantially different from classical Arabic, or from the modern Arabic spoken in Egypt and the Gulf States.” This is not only incorrect, it's the exact opposite of the truth. Moroccan Arabic (known as Darija, meaning “dialect”) is not the official language of Morocco. In fact, the same modern Arabic (called Fos-ha, meaning “pure”) spoken in the east is used here as the official language (which there, too, is generally not the same language as what you'll hear spoken in the streets), though you aren't going to find it spoken anywhere other than in interviews or street signs. They go on to say that most Moroccans can understand the eastern dialects through media exposure and that they'll adapt their speech if you speak to them with one. The former is absolutely true; the latter is rather doubtful. My only experience observing someone speaking to Moroccans in Jordanian Arabic was met with laughter and the exact opposite of paying her any heed.

Ultimately, however, though this is false information, it's largely forgivable. No one's trip to Morocco is going to be ruined because they thought they could get by with Modern Standard. The real problem is in the pages that follow, wherein they proceed to spread misinformation with it's English-Arabic-French glossary. Now, this was not so malevolently constructed as Monty Python's infamous English-Hungarian Phrasebook, but, with a lack of clear premeditation comes the more critical question of how. How could the editors, who clearly have spent some time in Morocco and (presumably) would have had to use some of these phrases in order to learn them in the first place, have allowed this to happen? Despite their lengthy – albeit misleading – explanations as to the difference between Moroccan Arabic and the Arabics of the east, the glossary is filled with Fos-ha.

I'm not going to go into too great of detail as to the specifics of the inconsistencies between Fos-ha and Darija. Firstly, that would be boring, and second, my good friend and stagemate Mike Turner has already done it. I would, however, like to point out just a few examples. There are major differences between the dialects, and they begin at the beginning: with subject pronouns. I, you (masculine, feminine, and plural), he, and she are all the same. (Being a gendered language, there is no “it” as you or I would conceptualize it.) Both Fos-ha and the Rough Guide will go on offer nehnoo for “we” and hoom for “they.” Unfortunately, Darija prefers hooma (pretty close) for the latter and hna for the former.

My favorite, though, is given for “go away:” imshee. This was one of the words I knew before coming, as it's yelled with great frequency by Salah, Indiana Jones's Egyptian pal, particularly on the many occasions upon which he steals camels from both Nazis and their stooges. How I wished I could yell imshee with the same gusto, but it is not to be, as Moroccans say seer instead. The root of imshee is used for every other conjugation of the word expect for imperative. It's too bad that's the only form the user of this glossary is offered.

And there are more, but they don't need to delved into now (if you have time, and know about these languages, check out the list of numbers). There are also other translations that I can't be sure if they come from Fos-ha or somewhere else. These include, but are not limited to, the following [in the form of “English,” Moroccan Arabic, and (Rough Guide Moroccan Arabic)]: “there,” tma (hinak); “hospital,” sbitar (el mostashfa); “jam,” confitur (marmelad); and “yoghurt,” dannon (rayeb). To be honest, after reading through this glossary, I was convinced that the editorial staff just decided to copy/paste terms from some other Arabic phrasebook of theirs.

That was until I re-read their numbers. When I first came to Morocco, I was a little worried about how I'd only taken two semesters of Arabic in college, and particularly how I hadn't really paid that much attention in either of them. I learned to relax, however, once I learned to count to two. Modern Standard gives us wahhed for one and ithnain for two. Darija is hip to wahhed, but prefers djooj for two. This actually comes from the Arabic word for “couple” (zouwj is “marriage”), and – amazingly – this is accurately documented by the Rough Guide. Moroccan Arabic, however, returns to its Standard roots for nearly every other instance of two (twelve, twenty-two, etc) except for those in which in English we would say “...and two” (such as “one hundred and two”). This means that twelve is tinash (not “entnashar,” which as given by the Rough Guide is Fosh-ha ), and twenty-two is tnain o 'ashreen (Fos-ha would call for ithnain wa 'ashroon, which is pretty close). Our Rough Guide, however, recommends “jooj wa ashreen,” which you would think is really funny, too, if you realized that saying as much is – literally – like walking into your favorite deli and asking for “two and twenty bagels.”

But the Rough Guide is so much more than glossaries. In fact, only eleven pages are given to the entire language section, including one that simply says “Language,” a second that lists the contents of the remaining nine pages, and a final page index other (and presumably better) language resources. No, the meat of the Rough Guide is concerned with what to do and see in Morocco, and, though I haven't seen enough of the country to offer comment on much of the book, I've been to a good deal, and I want to talk about one of the country's most incredible natural sights: the Caves of Hercules.

The caves are located outside of Tangier, and get their name – supposedly – from the legendary founding of the city by Sophax, the son of Hercules, who named it after his mom, Tingis. The Rough Guide is skeptical of this story, and offers a countertheory that tingis is an Amazigh word meaning “marsh,” of which there are many. Believe what you will, the Rough Guide offers some very interesting perspective on the connection between Herculean mythology and Morocco (Lixus is allegedly the site of the Garden of the Hesperides, the home of the Golden Apples and object of one of Hercules's labors). It also makes it abundantly obvious – in a nearly full-page photograph – the caves' main attraction: “their strange sea window, shaped like a map of Africa.” It even includes Madagascar.

The greatest mistake I've made in my service was to completely dismiss the caves the first time I went to Tangier, and, when I finally returned, I nearly made the second greatest mistake of my service: to take a taxi directly there. Fortunately, however, either our driver didn't quite understand us, or he simply knew better, and he deposited us on a beach some four kilometers from the caves. The walk is absolutely breathtaking, and of the caliber of experiences that can literally leave you indifferent – and contentedly so – to any other disappointment. That worked out in our favor, as, upon descending the depths of the caves, we discovered that the sea window is not, in fact, shaped like a map of Africa.

That's perhaps a bit misleading. There is a strong resemblance; however, there is also a very key difference: it's shaped like a backwards map of Africa. I suppose that if you were of the sort with such a powerful imagination that upon seeing this shape your already distorted sense of reality would simply tell you that this is what Africa looks like, you wouldn't have any problems with this. Alternatively, you could simply stand in the ocean after tossing the sun into the caves, thus allowing it to create an accurately Africa-shaped silhouette. Either of these solutions is preferable to the thought that the Rough Guide would peddle such blatant – and so easily debunkable – falsehoods. I mean, you'd expect that they'd simply advise you to enjoy the “strange sea window, shaped like an inverted map of Africa,” or “a map of South America.” It's enough to make you wonder if perhaps Tangier really is the namesake of a mythological queen.

Perhaps the problem stems from there being just so much to do and see in Morocco. The Rough Guide tries to help, though, by offering 35 Things Not to Miss. To date, I've seen 29 of them and in general, I'd say it's a pretty solid list. There are a few, of course, that I don't think were really all that worth it. Windsurfing in Essaouira (number 5), though fun (like windsurfing pretty much anywhere), is really nothing to write home about, and the Bab Oudaia in Rabat (31) is probably one of the least interesting features of that city. Certainly the Shellah – or even the mausoleums of Mohammad V and Hassan II – are both far more attractive and historically significant. There are others that I haven't seen that I'd really love to, and in the case of the Glaoui Kasbah (1) and Tin Mal Mosque (18) I've certainly tried. I'm a little more skeptical of a few others like the big blue painted rocks (6) in the Tafraoute dessert and the skiing at Oukaimeden (10), but in the end, I'll probably just never see those.

All in all, though – like I said – it's a pretty good list, except, perhaps, for one: number 23, Berber transport. It's probably quite racist – definitely Orientalist – but even more, I'm not really sure what to do with this one. I mean, do I have to get in a truck with Berbers? Or see one? Or merely be aware that they're out there? And once in, how important is it that I make sure my co-passengers are Berber? I've seen the transport trucks before (riding in an open air vehicle is “illegal” for Peace Corps volunteers, so clearly I've never done that), and I know that some of the people I've seen in them were Arab. Does that not count? Also, it doesn't specifically say that it has to be a truck. My family is Amazigh, and I once rode in my uncle's car. I think that counts.

To be fair, though, it isn't always the Rough Guide's fault for spreading misinformation,and for this, now turn to Freedonia herself. It's always been a point of pride for me that Freedonia gets a good page and a half – not the most for a volunteer, but more than any of my immediate friends. For obvious reasons, though, I don't really need to read it very often, and so it wasn't until much later that I read this sentence: “A small Monday souk is held just off the central square within the ruined kasbah, location for music and dance events during a Fête des Pommes festival in August.” Freedonia really is famous for her apples, but in my two years, I'd never seen an apple festival, nor heard anyone speaking about it.

Until recently. There are several topics of conversation that are disproportionately popular in Morocco (whether Morocco or America is best is a big one), and one of those topics in Freedonia is how impossibly corrupt our last mayor was. I learned about this right from the beginning, when I was introduced to the town mascot, a cheetah named “Tiger.” You may not know this, but neither cheetahs nor tigers have much of a history in Morocco, and, as I quickly learned, they don't have much history in Freedonia, either.

The national animal of Morocco is the lion (Atlas lion, to be specific, of which there are no more in Morocco), and – allegedly – we used to have a giant stone lion statue to display our patriotism right in the center of town. The mayor, however, in an obvious appeal to popular sentiment, declared that we could do better, and had the statue removed to make way for the future: a scrawny little fiberglass cheetah, affectionately referred to around here as “the cat,” which only ever gets a new coat of paint when an unnamed concerned citizen goes out and does it himself. That may not sound all that corrupt until you hear what he did with the lion. Certainly, there aren't a lot of ways to dispose of a massive stone statue – and I'm sure he was motivated exclusively by civic pride – and he had no choice but to send the old lion down to live out its days guarding his ranch in the valley.

To be honest, I hadn't heard a story like that since they took Carmen Sandiego off the air, but it turns out that our mayor did more than just steal the town mascot. There's a little pond right near the cat where nowadays kids like to go swimming in the algae, but in the past folks would come and try to catch the fresh mountain fish. The mayor sold them all, and I'd always wondered why so many of our hotels and cafes and restaurants were named “something something trout.”

And as if it wasn't enough to steal the town monument or sell all the fish in the sea, he apparently sold off the festival to another town. Despite the fact that Freedonia is well enough known for its fruit that my programming staff have during visits here spent as much time buying apples as they have in talking to me about my work, the Apple Festival now lives in Midelt, for which it does receive credit in the Rough Guide.

Which brings me to my last issue: the general “roughness” of the guide. I'd always imagined that we were talking along the lines of rough-and-ready, “rude or unpolished in nature, method, or manner but effective in action or use” – what Indiana Jones would turn to if Short Round was on vacation. The more I read it, though, the less I'm convinced it's intended for really that much of an adventurous spirit. Taken in aggregate, it's the tourist track that outbid the road less traveled. The little towns get billed as places with nothing to see, fancy dining trumps street fare, and the Majorelle Gardens got listed as number 3 in the 35 Things Not to Miss. It turns out that it's a lot more Ginger than Mary Ann.

Not that there's necessarily that much economy to be made from marketing to Peace Corps volunteers – who are too cheap to buy anything, anyway – and the people who want to be like them, but if it isn't that kind of rough, just what kind of guide is it?

Fashion Sits Lowest

How many times do you think I can start my writing by telling you how Morocco is a “crossroads between cultures?” You'd be surprised; why don't you go back and count? And it's true, too. Then again, in this era of globalization, pretty much everywhere is a crossroads between cultures, but in Morocco, it's especially true. And, as in every other part of the world, it's a struggle between modernity and traditionalism, and it's literally tearing the country apart. It's the core of every major issue: if I should stay in school or drop out, if I should give my daughters the same freedoms as my sons, and if I should wear pants today.

Moroccan fashion falls squarely into these two categories, and it's usually a good measure for drawing all sorts of other snap judgments. Is this person old or young? Cosmopolitan or country-fried? Angst-ridden or comfortable in their personal awkwardness? Let's now take a little look at Moroccan fashion so that you, too, can tell the difference between modern and traditional as well as I can.

Traditional Moroccan clothing is epitomized in the jellaba. We've already talked about the jellaba's greatest contribution to human history – inspiring the Jedi robe – but there's more to it than that. In case you've been living under a rock these last two years, you know that a jellaba is a robe-like piece of clothing with a signature-style hood. It has two slits on the sides, which aren't pockets but allow for accessing any pockets you might be wearing underneath. Other than that, everything is variable. Fabric can be as simple as thick, monochromatic winter wool or as fantastic as pink and black velvet tiger stripes. Most have some embroidering along the cuffs and down the front made from a special kind of button (which can also be a popular jewelry item in itself), and a few luxury models come with a tassel that, in its spare time, doubles as a decoration for fancy curtain rods.

Jellabas a great for pretty much anything. Moroccan women – those who are more conservative, especially if they're married – won't be seen in the streets without one. My host mom and sister, even if they're just going down the street to the corner store, will either toss on a jellaba or tell one of my brothers to go. It's perfect for a quick run outside, though. It takes a moment to put one on, and it's guaranteed to look better than whatever you have on underneath. If college students ever found out about it, we'd have to call it the Jedi Academy.

And in the winter, a jellaba is big enough that you can always toss it on top of whatever you've already got on. That's particularly useful here in Freedonia, especially now that I've recently learned that I live only about 25 kilometers away from the lowest ever recorded temperature in Africa. Around here, folks like to toss on a second jellaba.

But as cool as a jellaba is, it's not really formal attire. I mean, I've certainly worn one as such, but, to be fair, it's really only business casual at best. When it's time to get dressed up, dudes who know go with jabbadors. A jabbador is pretty much just like what it sounds: an ornate, usually linen, long-sleeved shirt and embroidered pants of the same material. For really special occasions you can toss on a cloak-like outer layer, and some people wear varieties of hats and turbans, though I've been told that's not necessary. The only required accessory is the bilgha (which are worn with jellabas, too).

To be honest, though, formal Moroccan wear is very much like formal American wear, which is to say that the guys tend to get the minimalist end of the stick. Sure, you can tell a fancy jabbador from a bargain basement model, but, at the party, no one's going to notice. Why not? Because, just like at your homecoming semi-formal, the subtle class of your vintage suspenders don't stand a chance in a room full of day-glo taffeta, that's why. I'm talking about kaftans, Morocco's nuclear response to the prom dress.

There's no such thing as a subtle kaftan; they all range from “moderate” to “chiffon explosion” (which usually aren't even kaftans, they're takshetas, also called kaftans plus an extra aura-like layer of elaborate gauze). That's not a really great surprise, though, since they aren't worn except for weddings and other big events. And it's not only the bride who wears one, and hers isn't even necessarily the nicest there. The difference, though, is that she doesn't have to wear only one, and will spend the whole night disappearing into the darkness only to reemerge in a colorful new gown – like a butterfly, with many changes of clothes.

There are other traditional styles of clothing in Morocco, too, generally unique to specific regions. For example, as you go south and deeper into the desert (and Africa) you'll find women wearing the very iconic lizar. “Lizar” means “sheet,” and that's pretty much what it is, a sheet that you wrap yourself in, which serves to both keep you cooler by creating a pocket of air around you, and to completely obscure any shapeliness you may or may not have. And in the northern Rif mountains – if you're lucky – you can find the most incredible hat in the world. It's uncertain whether the Rif hat was first modeled off a lampshade (or vice versa), but this tall, colorful headgear not only protects you from the harsh sun, but it's also an important safety measure, allowing mountain travelers to be seen from great distances. And there's a popular trend in wearing traditional clothes from the Middle East. These include the abaiya, a white gown worn (here) by particularly religious men, and the black robes made popular by Syrian and Saudi soap opera actresses and decorated with the pirated logos of Coco Chanel in metallic silver thread.

None of these, however, are worn by the Shebab, the hip youth of Morocco. To really be down with the youth development, you have to know about the G Star. Before we go any further let me make it absolutely clear just what I mean by “G Star.” In this context it means not only the brand ,but also the lifestyle, which means that you could be – and often are – wearing Diesel, Armani, Versace, or Takeshy Kurosawa (whoever that is) brand clothing, and it would still be “G Star,” provided, of course, that it's raw enough to uphold the G Honor. Furthermore, it's possible to be wearing actual G Star line clothing that isn't actually G Enough. This is particularly true in America, where, I'm told, G Star has become a mainstream brand.

So what is it that makes G Star “G Star,” and everything else just clothes? How do you describe the beauty of a rose, or the awesomeness of rocket blasting into space? Usually, you don't; you take a picture and let that do the talking for you. Fortunately, I've largely done that here, too, and, though it will be impossible for you to appreciate G Star without having a visceral and deeply religious experience with it of your own, but that shouldn't stop us from discussing its glories while you explore.

When you see G Star, the first thing that hits you – literally – is color. G Star is not afraid to declare that hot pink is the new pink, and that pink is the new everything else. Quality G Star should not only keep you hip on a warm summer night, it also should keep you safe when you have to walk home at the end. If it isn't lime green or imperial purple or neon pink (or all of the above), it isn't worth wearing.

But it's so much more than just a creative re-imagining of the color wheel. When we lived in America, we had this idea that pants were just that, pants. But the truth is, pants are a tapestry. You can hide your shame with denim, or you can hide your shame with denim, extraneous buttons and rivets, zippers that don't open onto anything, and the Wrath of Bedazzler. They shouldn't be worn, but painted on, and if you still need a belt, make sure it's big, shiny, and has something on it that spins. The same goes for your shirts. Don't just make a shirt, give it a border of unnecessary thread. Put a picture on it, make it awesome, and then make it velvet. And whatever you need to say, it's always better when you say it with rhinestones.

The defining quality, however, as in all movements, is in the message, and G Star is a message from the future. Like the Qur'an, it includes verses that were never meant to be understood by man. Other times, quite the opposite. Consider the following passage from “Freshness:”

The stare or quahty of being tresh. 2.New or clean, 3. Of produce, not from storage 4. Refreshing or cool. 5. Without salt (ospecially of water). 6. Rude, cheeky, cr inappropriate. 7. Very clean, and trendy looking graments, clothes, shoes, accessoires. 8. (Militsry) Rested and ready to engage with the enemy immediately

Whether it be subversive like “For Armani Those about to Rock,” which has a secret message of “dont evver obey” hidden under sequins, or poetic to the tune of “Real Eyes / Real Lies / Real Lize,” there is no G Star that does not evoke a greater understanding of reality. “Cool Wheel Deals Ice Iceberg.” Think about it.

Unfortunately, however, it is in the pursuit of this message that so many would-be G Acolytes fall. The point, though, is not something hipsters would wear ironically to some coffee shop where they talk about their feelings. G Star is something rockstars wear to meet their commander in chief. That should be the guiding rule. “Born to Dance” is not G Star; it's a bumper sticker – unless it's got one hell of an accessorization.

And when in doubt, just remember what G Star told you: “On the waist, fashion sits lowest.”

Something for the Readers

Have you ever sat and thought to yourself, "I love reading Duncan's work so much, I just wish there was a way I could do more." Who hasn't, right?

Well, we have good news for you. It turns out that Duncan has convinced himself that he should go off and study for a PhD in Cultural Anthropology so that one day he can sit in a classroom in some university somewhere and continue spreading his message of nonsense and cross-cultural communication to generations to come. It turns out that to get there, he's going to have to spend a little time filling in applications that ask for things like writing samples and whatall.

And he's going to need your help. If you're really motivated, and can type at least eighty words per minute (send references and writing samples, please), you could do this for him. If you're only moderately interested, or don't have the necessary skills to contribute in more constructive ways, there's still work to be done. Fortunately, he's already written massive amounts of world-changing literature, and all you need to do is pick the one that's affected you the most.

So, what are you waiting for? Get up and reread every post here, and when you're done, vote for your favorite in the handy poll aplet available on the main page. If you feel like recommending something not on the list, I'd really rather that you keep it to yourself, but if you insist, I guess you can post a comment, or use your imaginations.

Thank you.

- The Management

On Development: Part V

Every year we get what's called a "site visit" from our programming staff. To be honest, it's pretty much exactly like what it sounds, in that the bosses come out to where we live to find out how we've been doing. The first year it's largely focused on our goals in site and how well we've integrated, and the second year it's much more concerned with whether or not we've been able to.

My site visit this year was very much like any other. I introduced the program manager to the people I've been working with, talked about the Peace Corps Small Project Assistance grant I was working on with the high school, told him about the English Olympiad the other volunteers and I in the region wanted to hold between our dar shebabs, and let him doublecheck that I was still using my carbon monoxide detector in the house. All ordinary. There was just one thing though that snagged: I answered his question of whether or not I thought I should be replaced with a "no."

Closing a site is always a tricky subject. A lot of sites get closed for bad reasons - there's no one willing to work with the volunteer, volunteers are getting sick, or volunteers are being harassed or worse - so it's no wonder that a recommendation for closure would be met with hesitation, but there's also one really good reason to close: sustainability. My boss didn't seem like he really agreed with me (though I did later get to see the preliminary list of sites for the coming stage, and my town wasn't included), but here, in our last "On Development" segment, I'd like to make the case for closing the file on Freedonia, and for why the world still needs the Peace Corps.

I feel like you should be pretty hip to "sustainability" by now, especially if you've been following along from home, but just in case you've been sleeping all this time, we'll go over the standard parable once more. Let's say that one day not too long from now you meet a guy who's got nothing to eat, and, being the good person that you are, you want to help him out. So, you give him a fish, which we'll assume for the moment you happen to have readily available. Well, it's pretty safe to say this guy's going to eat it, and you'll have fed him for the day (provided it's a big one, a swordfish, maybe?). Good for you. Of course, once he's gotten over his Omega-3 coma, he's bound to get hungry again. Perhaps you've got another, or someone else will come along with some trout, but fish don't grow on trees and eventually he's not going to get anything to eat. How do you feel now, Mr or Ms Philanthropy? Not so well, I'd imagine.

But don't give up yet! Where'd you get that fish? You didn't buy it, of course; no one buys fish anymore. You caught it, obviously, using your spear-fishing skills (or perhaps your bare hands?), so what's to stop you from getting another? A lot of things, most likely. You've probably got a job, a family, books to read, an upcoming Star Trek movie marathon. There's a lot on your plate, and you just don't have the time to go off and get this guy fish. I mean, what's his deal, anyway? Why doesn't he just learn how to do it himself? Bam! [Light bulb!] You could teach him - or, better yet - get him a self-help manual! That way he'll be able to go out on his own time and get the fish he needs, leaving you free to take care of your Civil War reenacting commitments. It's almost like you've fed this dude for his entire life, provided he's happy eating fish forever.

Congratulations, my friend, you've successfully completed sustainable development. Why? Because you're no longer a part of the picture. We didn't join the Peace Corps for the glory; we're doing it for the chicks. And you should be especially proud of yourself because you've done so much more than just take care of this guy's daily nutritional needs. By teaching him, you've also transferred - whether explicitly or by example - the knowledge of how to teach, and turned this ordinary fisherman into the epicenter of fishing education for the whole neighborhood. And, if you're a true rockstar, you've instilled in him the same go-getter attitude that got you where you are today, which will empower him to lead his community through the ensuing fish depletion crisis without any further intervention.

That's how I entered my town almost two years ago. Now I'm about to leave, and, like every other volunteer, I've got to ask myself just what kind of development I've been up to. Freedonia's had two volunteers preceding me as well as God-knows-how-many before them. More importantly, however, it has a handful of strong, active associations – and even more that are moderately involved. Over my two years I've found plenty of ways to keep myself busy. I've done English classes, played sports, and done other activities most days with the kids, and I've put on big shows like the Amateur Film Festival, the English Olympiad, and the Association Training Day. I worked on a grant with the high school to build an electronic library and participated in a few regional and national activities like AIDS education trainings and the Race An-Nasr. And there was always some kind of Peace Corps improvement activity going on; some committee for something or another.

It sounds like a lot – and it was – but I also had plenty of free time. That's important, of course, for all those all parts of being a Peace Corps volunteer like learning about culture, traveling around the country and experiencing its variety, and writing America about it all. And it's useful to make sure that your clothes get washed and do your shopping, but I certainly could have been doing a lot more with myself. I didn't, though. This isn't meant to be an apology; I didn't do more on purpose. We're supposed to put together art clubs, theatre troupes, and hip-hop dance teams so that the kids have something to do other than running around in the streets sniffing glue and being undeveloped, but we're also supposed to give those activities over to our local counterparts. In fact, we're not supposed to start them at all if we don't already have someone we're working with who'll be in charge once we've transferred all the skills we know that they need. My predecessors did a great job in that area, and Freedonia is full of activity experts. I worked at a theatre summer camp for four years and know enough about it to at least fake my way through running a small town club, but there are also at least four guys I can think of from my dar shebab who're just as skilled as I am. It's not just unnecessary for me to put together a club, it's wrong. I'm here to sure up the areas that need assistance; not get in the way.

Think about it. Sure, I could run a really banging theatre club, and I'd even go so far as to say it might even be better than what some of the other guys could put together, but what would I achieve in doing so? I'd steal all the fire from anyone else who might want to work in theatre, and, two years later, peace out. Then, if the town was lucky, they'd pick back up where they'd been before I stepped in, or, if they weren't lucky, anyone who might have been a theatre coach is now disillusioned or has moved on to something else. Either way, the result is either a zero or negative change. It was good for me, but not for my community. It's for the same reason that I'm not an English teacher: this country already has thousands of qualified English speakers without jobs for Peace Corps volunteers to come in and take away even more of them.

That's really the hardest part of life out here: to actively choose to stay home and watch television (or read a book or learn a dialect of Tashleheit), to stay out off in the wings. Not only is it boring, but it can make us doubt our value. Where we come from we measure success through achievement, and so it's easy to look at other volunteers who're running great clubs and bringing hundreds of kids into their dar shebabs and think that we're wasting our time and your money. That's not to say that there aren't some seriously lazy-ass volunteers who're on a two-year vacation, or that every Super Volunteer is crippling the development potential of their site. Every community is different and needs to be treated differently. It's our job to find what's missing and work to fill it. In the case of Freedonia, this was mostly in the areas of association management and fund-raising. In other places it can as basic as attributing community value to youth and the idea of activities directed at their betterment. Either way, the strategy is the same: use your expertise, leave the knowledge, and get out.

And that's where I am. I've done my part and shared my experience with the community, and, like it or not, it's time for me to go home. Could Freedonia benefit from another volunteer? I'm sure they'd think of things to do, and the Peace Corps is as much cultural exchange as it is development assistance, but I think both Morocco and the Peace Corps would be better served if they sent the new volunteers elsewhere. Freedonia's still growing, but it's got what it needs to take care of itself, and it's time for the foreigners to get out the way.

Moroccan Gazetteer: Marrakesh

There is no Moroccan city of which Peace Corps volunteers have a stronger opinion. Whether they love it or hate it, no one is indifferent. It’s also – despite a brief infatuation with Casablanca – the most famous of the kingdom’s cities, so much so that nearly every language other than Arabic uses a derivation of Marrakesh as their word for “Morocco.”

And why not? Marrakesh was the seat of power for several dynasties in a time before the creation of the nation-state. To say “The King of Marrakesh” was to say the king of basically everything over here, so it might as well come to mean “Morocco.” Aside from when talking with your Persian friends, however, whose vocabulary makes no distinction whatsoever between Marrakesh and Morocco, this is entirely academic. Let’s move to the much more exciting topic of The Peace Corps’s bipolar relationship with Marrakesh, shall we?

I’ve been told that Marrakesh – of all Moroccan cities – has the lowest rate of return visits, and, without performing any quantitative research of any kind, I’m entirely prepared to support that statement. The Red City (named such for the ubiquitous red brickwork, not its political leanings) is a pushy place. The market vendors, fake Tuaregs, desert expeditionists, back-alley drug dealers, taxi drivers, beggars, and wannabe hustlers are merciless, sometimes beyond the capacity to be dived into or shrugged off. Even before I’d ever arrived, I’d heard more horror stories of the hassles of Marrakesh than anywhere else, and it take more than about three minutes for them to be validated.

Having just arrived from Essaouira, we stepped off the bus and needed a taxi to get to the central square – the Djema’ al Fna’ – and I was struck by one of the best ideas I’ve had in the whole two years of my living in Morocco thus far: I should ask a local how much to expect for the taxi fare. After about five minutes of incredibly belabored explanations with the bus counter girl, we finally arrived at it costing somewhere around fifteen dirham to get downtown. Once outside, we were mobbed by would-be chauffeurs, each offering his services. We countered by asking how much? They responded with the reasonable sums of anywhere from sixty to a hundred. We suggested they might enjoy sodomizing themselves. They inquired as to what alternatives we had. We swore to walk, regardless of how long or how far. They laughed.

That’s the problem with Marrakesh. Unlike Fes, which is equally as pushy, the pushers don’t have to acquiesce in the end to your well-stuck to guns. All they have to do is wait a few more minutes an even bigger chump will go walking by with “sucker me” written on his back. I refused to play their game, and they couldn’t have cared less. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t realize just how wrathful a scorned PCV can be. I showed them.

In our case, the “next guy” came along about twenty seconds later – a family of French tourists on their way out of Morocco shortly and back in Marrakesh to see one last sight. I saw them walk up to the same taxi driver that had scoffed at our hard ball only moments earlier, ask the price to the center of town, and reply, “Sixty? Sounds good.” Not on my watch, bucko. In the best French I could muster I called over that he was being had, which he seemed none too pleased about. I offered to get him an honest cabbie who’d actually turn on his meter (a lot less common than you’d expect). I flagged down three or four, sent the majority packing, but finally landed a guy who said he’d take them wherever they wanted to go. We waved goodbye and hoped – for the sake of the Peace Corps – that this guy wasn’t going to turn on one of his expensive presets and take this hapless couple to the Bahia Palace by way of the cleaners. Of course, we still didn’t have a cab of our own, but the fuming indignation of the would-be highway robber was reward enough. I recompensed him with a smile and a quick wink; I’m sure he felt better.

It’s anecdotal, of course, but that pretty much sums up Marrakesh. It’s a concrete jungle. Sink or swim, kill or be killed, fish or cut bait. You have to constantly be on your guard, but, worse still, you’d do best not to expect even a moment’s respite. That’s the image the city’s trying to sell: a whirlwind of exotic flavors, a thousand Arabian nights compacted into one, and the tourists eat that up with a spoon. We, though, the poor Peace Corps volunteers, get tossed in with the rest. In my lifetime, I’ve learned three surefire ways to start a fight: call a Scotsman “English,” call a Persian “Arab,” and call a PCV “tourist.” There is nothing more painful to us than to be reduced to the level of the rest of you – and we’ve got good reason for that. You didn’t have to fight through three months of training, two months of homestay, and the remainder of two years of trying to explain what you’re even doing here in Morocco, so you’ll forgive us for getting on our high horses about Marrakesh.

But Marrakesh does have one redeeming quality: it actually has a lot of cool things to do. The center of it all is also the center of town, Djema’ al Fna’. This is the archetype of central squares, the Cadillac of grand places. By day it’s filled with water sellers, orange juice and date stands, snake charmers and monkey trainers, guys selling traditional medicines, and ladies selling henna. By night they’re still there, plus a small shanty town of quick restaurants, storytellers and their throngs, and this one carnival game that involves a bottle of soda and a fishing pole that I don’t think I’ll ever understand. A lot of detractors like to point out the campiness of it all, and it is touristy – those snake charmers wouldn’t be there if it didn’t fit with someone’s Orientalist vision of Alladin, and ladies certainly wouldn’t be pushing henna like heroin if it wasn’t for the crowds of Europeans who want to feel like they’ve “gone native” – but there’s another side, too. All those stories are in Darija, and even with my two years of language, I have yet to understand anything they’ve been talking about. I’m also pretty sure that those aren’t tourists crowding around the “traditional” dentists, either, to have their teeth pulled out sans insurance, sans board certification, and sans Novocain.

Of course, the northern side of the square is the entrance to the souks, which is not the sort of place that is for locals and tourists alike. This one is an endless labyrinth of carpets, t shirts, and souvenir tagines, and is kryptonite for PCVs for the simple fact that no matter how good our language is, we can’t pretend to be locals – no local would be here who wasn’t just passing through to somewhere else (which is to say, Marrakeshis; there are plenty of Moroccan tourists to be found). If you’re willing to get over yourself for just long enough, though, it can actually be a lot of fun, and haggling with the shopkeepers – even if you don’t actually want to buy anything – is a great way to pass the time and practice for your next language proficiency indicator exam. It was here that I found out for the first time that I’ve got a country boy accent, like someone who, living amongst Imazighen who speak Tamazight first and Darija second, has picked up a Tamazight-accented Arabic with rustic overtones. On that particular occasion it resulted in more discrimination than discount, but I’ve learned to work it since then.

On the other side of the square is the majority of the history, beginning with the iconic minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque that towers over the Djema’ al Fna’. It and the Kasbah Mosque are pretty much the only way that I know of navigating my way around the old city of Marrakesh. And I usually come down this way on the first full of day in the city; there’s a lot to see, mostly palaces, and all pretty much exclusively the domain of tourist herds. I started with the Sa’adian Tombs, which makes sense, considering as how they’re the first thing you’re going to come to (if you come the way I did). It’s not a really big place, but it’s jam-packed with color, intricacy, and the tombs of princes and sultans of the Sa’adian Dynasty (and others). Along with a small garden, it’s a good place to be dead.

It’s around this time that I’ll pass through the Tin-Worker’s Square and go to a real palace, the Badi. It’s actually not a real palace – not anymore, anyway – but it’s big, it’s ancient, and it’s rarely crowded with tourists. The Badi Palace is, as guidebooks describe, more evocative than anything else, mostly because it’s empty. Not only does it command great open spaces and courts, but all but the tiniest stitches of tilework was stripped out of the palace by the Sultan Moulay Smail for his building of Meknes. You can still see the shape of everything, though. Including the pools and sunken gardens, the rooms for courtiers and visiting diplomats, and the dungeonous storage areas. Interestingly, the Sa’adian Tombs were one of the few beauties left unransacked by Smail because he was afraid he’d be cursed if he ripped out the tiles there, though he did seal off all but the tiniest of entrances.

Around this time you’ll probably be getting hungry, so you should stop in the Tin-Worker’s Square again for a reasonably cheap meal. It’ll be even cheaper if you, like me, make friends with some of the merchants there while your visiting friends are shopping who will tell you what to tell the restaurants to give you for a price. Afterwards, finish out the morning in the south district with a stop at the Bahia Palace. It’s a good deal smaller than the Badi, though it’s really more of a mansion than a palace, anyway. It’s by far the most beautiful of all of them, though, so size doesn’t really matter. Full of unmolested tiling, fantastically carved wood, and lush – almost jungle-like – courtyard gardens. It’s a photographer’s paradise as long as the throngs of tourists will get out of your way long enough to take the shot.

There are plenty of other touristy things to do in Marrakesh, but that’s where I usually stop. I will make special note of the Majorelle Gardens. I don’t actually think that they’re overly exceptional; they are gorgeous, of course, but too crowded to be the oasis of peace you’d want them to be. For the most part, other than being the place where I let myself buy my souvenirs and tourguiding folks around the historical sights, I take advantage of Marrakesh as the major city where I can do so many of the things I can’t back in Freedonia. For example, there’s a fantastic vegetarian restaurant near Djema’ al Fna’ and a coffee-shop style café (the only one I’ve seen in Morocco) in the Gueliz neighborhood that reminds me of the sort of places I can find around College Hill in Providence, and that you could find in whatever the bougie area of your home city is called. Both are absurdly overpriced, but you don’t go there for the discount. You go there because it’s like home and you can get away from the madhouse scene of Marrakesh.

I’m probably one of the rare volunteers who likes Marrakesh, then again, I don’t really go there very often. I’ll grant you that it’s exhausting, and I don’t think I could stay more than about three days without getting pretty sick of it, but it’s also taught me more about living in Morocco as a PCV than about anywhere else, too. The number one lesson: don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing. If you want to be treated like a tourist, by all means, act like one. But if you want people to treat you like the local you deserve to be treated like, don’t ask how much the fare is when you get in the taxi and don’t ask if he’ll turn on the meter. Just get in, tell him where you want to go, and give him ten dirham when you get there. A local wouldn’t ask how much, either.