First Thoughts

Thursday September 10, 2009

9:44 PM Greenwich Mean Time (currently 7 hours ahead of West Coast Time)

Well, I don’t know when I will connect up to the internet to post this, but I AM IN MOROCCO! It feels like I have been here for three days already, most likely because I have been up for 37 our of the last 37.5 hours. Some quick impressions:

Morocco is really close to America. I have this impression because we were at the west bank of the atlantick (I am leaving this spelled wrong to demonstrate how tired I am) looking east from New York and then later on the same day (I think) we were on the east bank in Morocco looking west.

My first thoughts when seeing Morocco was ‘huh, that looks a lot like America’. I was not the only one to feel that way. And then as the plane banked I got a picture of Paul Bowles famous ‘sheltering sky’

The big thing that strikes is the amount of garbage everywhere. There clearly is no ‘adopt a highway’ program like in the states. Everything seems to be either under construction, being built, or in a state of derelictness. So much earth has been moved, pushed one way or another with mighty land movers. Everyone here is unique, emphasizing that everything I learned about ‘Al Maghribians” before coming here were serious generalizations. 

I need to sleep now I ma going to totally fall to pieces. …

Salam Walaikum,

I have just woken up. It is 5am and lovely. The sky is dark and laden with the same slow moving rain clouds which rained down upon us yesterday. The moon is all but hidden behind them. I am sitting alone in these wee hours up on the roof looking out over a very warm Atlantic Ocean, listening to the crash of the waves and the chirp of many crickets. One sound that I am not hearing which I somewhat expected, the early morning call to prayer. It is after all Ramadan and I think many people awake in their homes having breakfast before going back to bed and attempting to sleep in as late as possible. I understand that it is only a 6 hour work day for everyone (except Peace Corps Morocco Staff) during the holy month.

I am very happy to be here and super excited about all the Peace Corps Trainees that I am here with and I am really looking forward to starting language classes.

Bismilliah,

پرعندان