I have been in Morocco for a year now and in my current community for 9 months now. I feel like I just got here...
I am currently sitting at a cyber cafe in ouarzazate, the town in which I spent my first three months in morocco. It feels surreal to be back here after not having travelled south in almost a year. The people, architecture, smells, landscape, language and many other things are all so different from where I have been living these past nine months. I was just in Marrakech but I felt as if I was in another country. I think I saw more tourists than moroccans there. The city felt as if it has been modeled after what tourists are looking for when they think of morocco. I liked marrakech but it just didnt feel like the morocco that i have lived in and grown to love. I will be going to germany in a couple of weeks for vacation and i think that being in kech actually helped somewhat prepare me mentally for what i will encounter there.
I am heading to the small town in which I had language training. I havent seen my host family there in a year and cant wait to see them. My mind is all over the place right now. My senses are overwhelmed by the extreme changes that I am facing by just having traveled 10 hours south. I cant even bgin to describe what it feels like to be in a city i knew well but now feel like i dont know at all...
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A note about 'waste'
Before I go into the information implied by the title I want to say that I was having a pretty lousy day this Saturday. All was well until my phone was stolen at Itzer souk. It wouldn't have been so annoying except that I was expecting an important phone call later that day. Oh well.
Anyways, on the bus ride from Itzer to my town, I witnessed something quite amusing but all at once rather humbling. The bus driver and his helper had ten rounds of bread which they cut into quarters. They then proceeded to throw out a quarter to every dog we passed on the beautiful snowy road. At first I thought it was kind of funny, but when I saw the bus driver kiss the bread before he threw it out I began to think about the situation a bit more seriously. I assume the bread was day old bread that no one was going to buy. I think they were throwing it out to the dogs because its harem to let bread (or food) go to waste. Its interesting the lengths they went to so that even those rounds of bread found a way to be ingested.
This made me think about how wasteful we are in America. It also made me think about the waste or trash problem that exists in Morocco. There aren't trash collection services here like in the states, except in large cities. In the bled (countryside) where peace corps volunteers usually live, trash is just dumped outside in alleys or other unsightly places. It looks bad and is quite horrible at times to see alleys, streets or dry riverbeds littered with remnants of snack wrappers, plastic bags and/or vegetable scaps. Many volunteers actually believe trash is one of the biggest problems in this country. While it is an important issue, I don't think it is the most pertinent. Recycling centers don't exist here but I believe the people here are rather resourceful and try to recycle as much as they can. In my community, people save all burnable materials to start fires with in the winter. People even save plastic bottles to refill constantly or at times to make decorative trees for their homes. (But people don't buy bottled water here nearly as often as do people in America) Also food here rarely comes packaged so a lot of waste is avoided in that respect. All this has just made me think about how we can try to be more resourceful in America, especially considering that we have the infrastructure for it. :)
Anyways, on the bus ride from Itzer to my town, I witnessed something quite amusing but all at once rather humbling. The bus driver and his helper had ten rounds of bread which they cut into quarters. They then proceeded to throw out a quarter to every dog we passed on the beautiful snowy road. At first I thought it was kind of funny, but when I saw the bus driver kiss the bread before he threw it out I began to think about the situation a bit more seriously. I assume the bread was day old bread that no one was going to buy. I think they were throwing it out to the dogs because its harem to let bread (or food) go to waste. Its interesting the lengths they went to so that even those rounds of bread found a way to be ingested.
This made me think about how wasteful we are in America. It also made me think about the waste or trash problem that exists in Morocco. There aren't trash collection services here like in the states, except in large cities. In the bled (countryside) where peace corps volunteers usually live, trash is just dumped outside in alleys or other unsightly places. It looks bad and is quite horrible at times to see alleys, streets or dry riverbeds littered with remnants of snack wrappers, plastic bags and/or vegetable scaps. Many volunteers actually believe trash is one of the biggest problems in this country. While it is an important issue, I don't think it is the most pertinent. Recycling centers don't exist here but I believe the people here are rather resourceful and try to recycle as much as they can. In my community, people save all burnable materials to start fires with in the winter. People even save plastic bottles to refill constantly or at times to make decorative trees for their homes. (But people don't buy bottled water here nearly as often as do people in America) Also food here rarely comes packaged so a lot of waste is avoided in that respect. All this has just made me think about how we can try to be more resourceful in America, especially considering that we have the infrastructure for it. :)
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