friends make everything better

My last three journal entries start like this, no lie:


Kate is here!


Kate is here!


Kate is gone. :(



My college-friend Kate could not have visited at a more perfect time.  Cooler weather has finally arrived, and Morocco seems friendlier and more beautiful because of it.  It was the perfect time of year for camel treks, mountain climbing, and souk shopping.  But, more importantly, she came at a time when I really needed a friend.  Morocco has been tougher than I expected in so many ways.  Kate came, she listened, she encouraged, and she helped us see Morocco with new eyes.  For a few weeks, we were able to be tourists exploring new places instead of volunteers hiding from the heat in our home.  She also brought a bag full of American goodies: giant jars of peanut butter, bacon crumbles, candy, Nyquill, and a few adult brownies from Andronico's in Berkeley.  She's the best.

In a handful of photos and stories, here is what our past few weeks looked like:

First, we spent a few days in our little town so Kate could experience first-hand Moroccan hospitality and food.  Our Moroccan friends loved Kate, they couldn't get enough of her.  Her very first night in Morocco, we went on a walk around our town to help her get an idea of where we live.  But, 10 minutes in, we were invited over for tea, for henna, for socializing---- we never made it past the closest neighborhood.

1st night in Morocco.  Henna!

I taught Kate how to make msmen on our roof.  In the dark. With this classy headlamp.

After a few days in town, we headed into Marrakech for the day.  Fueled by mechoui (slow roasted lamb.  worth it.), we explored the Dar Si Said and shopped in the medina.  Fellow PCV Sarah and her friend joined us for dinner in the Jemaa el-Fna.  We went to bed early, though, because the next morning we departed for a weekend trip to the desert.

Dinner in the Jemaa el-Fna

It took two days of driving to reach the sand dunes of Merzouga.  Two days of tourist traps, over-priced food, car-sickness, and a few hours of “will we be able to cross this flooded road, or are we going to have to turn back??”  Two days of road-tripping (with a Moroccan driver and 15 other tourists) through beautiful gorges and valleys.  We made it in time for a sunset camel ride through the Sahara desert.  It was thrilling to finally be doing something that other people who visit Morocco on vacation always seem to do.  My only regret about our trip to the desert is that I wish we could have stayed longer.  By sunrise the next morning, after an evening of tagine and traditional music, we were back on the camels for a two-hour trek to the van.  And a thirteen hour day of driving.

Being tourists in Morocco.

Turbans are a requirement for camel riding.

Yup. Worth the drive.

We hardly had time to recover before Kate and I were off to Essaouira for a quick girl’s trip.  Whenever I ask a friend to name their favorite city in Morocco, whether they are fellow Peace Corps volunteers or local Moroccans, Essaouira is the city most frequently named.  We ate seafood right out of the Atlantic, enjoyed strolling through the old medina, and appreciated some quality girl’s time.  I’m not sure if it is my favorite city, but it’s certainly a contender.

Picking out our lunch.

Next up came the most challenging part of our trip, the long weekend that cemented our friendship and dedication to adventure: climbing Mt. Toubkal.  I had read that September is a great month for hiking North Africa’s highest peak, so I casually mentioned to Kate, “Hey!  Pack some sneakers or hiking shoes!” before she came.  We both read that anyone with reasonable fitness and reasonable determination can manage the hike. Whoever wrote that is a liar.  The mountain showed Kate, Pete, and I that we must be far from reasonably fit.  Somehow, we summoned an unreasonable amount of determination from our inner reservoirs to make it to the top.  It’s possible we were the slowest people on the mountain the day we reached the summit.  But, please, re-read that part: We. Reached. The. SUMMIT.  And, along the way, we were stunned at how beautiful the Atlas Mountains are.

Toubkal summit: 13,671 feet.

Wait, we were up there?

Can you spot us?

After a few more days in our little town to recover, to visit with friends, and to pack up our bags one last time, the three of us took the train for a quick trip to Casablanca.  There, we visited the Hassan II Mosque (stunning), dined at Rick’s Café (so much fancier than we expected!), and enjoyed being anonymous in a big city.

No trip to Morocco is complete without dressing-up in Berber wedding clothes.

Becoming a little more Moroccan (and, clearly, a little more crazy) everyday.

And then, as quickly as she arrived, she was gone.  With tears in my eyes, I waved at Kate in the train and wished that I was going back to America with her.  No doubt, Morocco has shown its best colors to me over the past few weeks.  But the pain of being so far away from the ones I love most is very, very real. 

To read more about our time together, be sure and check out Kate's blog.  She's included a lot more stories and photos, and it'll give you a better look into just how awesome she is.

Where You Can and Can't Go

Attending a host country national wedding might be the archetypal Peace Corps cross-cultural experience: a distillation of your privileged intimacy with host country nationals, the exotic foreign customs you long to write home about, and the pure joy by which you will transform your entitled, world-weary soul. 

While Britt worked at camp last month, I walked up the dry river bed leading out of town with a few friends, cone of sugar in hand and shirt tucked in (the best I can do on short notice), to a nearby village for my first Moroccan wedding.

We arrived early in the afternoon to the groom's house and immediately split up by sex. I can't speak for the women, but the men ate a mysterious -but not unappealing- plate of organ meat and gravy and afterwards coached me as I made tea for the room. Next, we napped up in preparation for the evening.

Not doing it right, no doubt.

The wedding was described to me as "Meya-F-Meya Amazigh". Loosely that is: a 100% traditional Moroccan mountain village wedding. Not city-fied or not Arabized (in ways that I would never be able to detect). Still,in the singing and dancing and staggered meal service there was some easily-identifiable shared DNA between Moroccan and American weddings.

Can you honestly tell this is wedding is in Morocco and not Austin?

And watch this clip to the end and you'll see that I'm capable of dancing badly at a wedding on any continent.

Then there were some more unusual customs, like the collective pause midway through the wedding to announce the precise amount of each gift, down to the last centime, given by every guest at the wedding. My friends assured me that my cone of sugar would not be announced; real gifts (money) only. If the design is to shame people into generosity, it certainly worked on me: I shelled out at the next wedding.


Halfway through the night I wondered aloud when the bride would arrive. A chorus of drummers and chanters had played the groom in two hours earlier and her entrance was sure to be a show-stopper. Except she wasn't coming. "She's in the house waiting for her husband," my friends told me, "Alone."  Taking the tradition of the bride and groom not seeing each other before the wedding to its logical extreme, the bride doesn't see anyone on the wedding day, until the groom comes back from the party.


The night ended ended with mint tea and a 3am bowl of harira, and we walked back home in the dark. Whatever fun I'd had turned to tired grouchiness on the long slog home, but I decided to stay awake anyway to watch the sun come up from our roof.

Spot the stork!

A week later, Britt was back from camp and we were going to another wedding with our friends. The night promised to be a bit more modern, a bit more urbane. For one thing the bride would be there, and we'd get to see a few of her famed outfit changes throughout the evening.
 

Still, the first thing we did after we met up with our friends was split up; Britt went with the women and I went with the men. We ate dinner on the roof while the women waited downstairs for their turn. Later we sat on plastic chairs set up around a stage, maybe thirty yards apart. Close enough that we could see each other, but not close enough to hear each other over the noise.

Britt and a friend before they were whisked away.

The evening provided a good show -a typically Moroccan too-long-by-half good show- with some very impressive dancers who carried the bride and groom around on a little throne, and a wait staff that somehow incorporated pyrotechnics into serving tea.  

That it turned into an endurance test didn't surprise me; what surprised me was how hard it was to enjoy. I kept thinking of our wedding day -without fear of cliche, I'll call it the most fun I've ever had in my life- and of the bride who had to wait alone in the house, and of how much richer my life has been for the many spaces I'm able share with women. In theory, it's a very intimate thing to attend a stranger's wedding, but in practice you're the stranger. People can invite you anywhere, but you haven't arrived at the place of intimacy until you feel at home. 

Four in the morning. Home at last.

 

Artisan Camp

Confession: several months ago, when fellow PCV Sarah asked me to help her with a camp this August, I was hesitant. And yet, despite our tough experiences with spring camp, she managed to convince me to participate.  "It's all girls!" she explained. "And it's art camp!"  I'm glad she did.  After ten-days in a room with 50 or so campers eager to learn and play and color, I'm pleased to admit that this was my best camp experience yet.

PCVs on kitchen duty.

My friend has a great blog with a great post about this camp that she organized, so I'll just share a few stories from my perspective.  She works with a group of artisans in her site, and it was the local artisans who initially came up with the idea of a camp for girls in the community.  For months, they worked together to put together a summer camp that would, from 9am-5pm, teach girls traditional Moroccan artisan skills: Fesi embroidery, 3la 7sab embroidery, crochet, and basket embellishment.  She also arranged for guest speakers from the community to come lead workshops with the girls about all sorts of things.

In traditional camp fashion, the days events didn't always follow the written schedule.  Speakers dropped out, but the girls kept crafting.  Lunch was hours late, but the girls kept crafting.  It was impressive to see 10-year olds occupy themselves for hours with a needle and thread.  They barely stopped to drink their tea and eat sweets during breaks, and that is saying something.

Heather, former PCV and founder of Mushmina, came to visit and chat with the girls.

These baskets will be made into handbags.

In the Peace Corps, I find that I'm frequently considered an "expert" on things that I have little experience with.  Case in point: each morning at camp, we had about an hour of exercise class with the campers, and all of us volunteers took turns teaching what we know.  For the first time in my life, I assumed the role of ballet teacher.  This meant a good 20 minutes of stretching to Taylor Swift followed by a basic introduction to ballet barre exercises (without the barre).  After, I showed the campers clips from Swan Lake.  I was sore for days after that first ballet class, but it was super fun to see them try and plie.  It was even more fun to see them watch in wonder the Danse des Petits Cygnes.

Ballet with Britt

While the camp definitely benefited the campers, it was also (selfishly) a huge win for me.  It was a gift to hang out with five other female PCVs for a week and to learn from their experiences.  I had another round of msemen lessons from the ladies in the kitchen.  The artisans gave all of us PCVs lovely necklaces.  I slept on the roof and woke up to a chicken walking across my body (this goes in the win! another cool Peace Corps story! category).  I also picked up Fesi Embroidery, mostly from my 11-year-old teacher-friend.  I now have something productive to do when watching episodes of The West Wing while hiding from the sun during a long summer afternoon.  You are all getting embroidered presents from me for the rest of your life.  Okay? Okay.

This is how I looked when I started to learn how to embroider: frustrated.

Then I got myself a teacher who communicated more on my level: an 11-year-old.

Success!

Super staff!

Guest Post: Mom and Dad in Morocco

After their visit in June, we invited my parents to write something about their trip for the blog. The following comes from my mom, Theresa Luby, a longtime Hospice chaplain, proud member of the Daughters of Abraham and all-around inspiration.

"If enlightenment is not where you are standing, where will you look?"

I thought I might look in Morocco.  Thanks to Pete & Britt, I was able to walk in their shoes ( or at least in the shoes they bought for me in the souk) and  experience some of the wonders of  Morocco, the Moroccan people and a culture of hospitality.

About the shoes.  If you saw their earlier pictures of Dar Luby, you'll understand why there are three different kinds of shoes.  First, there are outdoor shoes (the roads are dirt, unpaved and shared with donkeys, chickens, dogs, & very mangy looking cats etc.)  Those shoes are taken off as you enter the living space, where you slip into traditional Moroccan leather shoes.  Pete & Britt made gifts of these shoes to us when they welcomed  Dan & me to their home.

When it's time to make your "toilet" you slip into something a little more rubber and washable with non-slip soles (the perfect little number for a Turkish toilet).  If the family you are visiting has carpets, you might just go barefoot in their home.

In a recent Sunday Gospel I heard: "Into whatever house you enter, first say: 'Peace to this household.' If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you...Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you..." Life in Morocco is closer to the world of the Bible than to 21st century North America.  Every where we went in Amizmiz, people greeted us: "Salaam Walaikum,"  " Peace be upon you." Every  household we visited offered us food and drink in delicious & splendid abundance. Like Abraham & Sarah who served three guests in the desert or Martha busying herself with hospitality for Jesus and her other guests,  Pete & Britt's friends treated us like honored guests.

Traditional kas-krut (snack time)

A plate of couscous

Their beautiful host mother & her handsome son served us traditional mint tea, which was followed by Moroccan chicken tagine with couscous & vegetables. After the meal they led us to another salon with couches.  They showed us with pride the wedding DVD of a nephew. In a Moroccan wedding, the bride changes her clothes seven times during the event. (Can you imagine? She has to "Say 'Yes' to the Dress" not once, but seven times!)  After all that food and all that wedding video, we were already three hours into our visit when sleep overtook us.  We felt terribly rude falling asleep, but our hosts seemed to take it as a  given that we would rest up for more food and socializing.  With the wedding DVD as inspiration, our hostess gave Britt & me henna hand tattoos. After naps, we were served a delicious coffee, cakes, and cookies.  We rolled out of their gracious, humble home full and happy, six hours later.

When we first arrived in Morocco, Peter & Britt taught us some useful phrases that Dan & I could use to navigate the social situations we would find ourselves in. Little did I realize that those phrases would help me when I got back home in Texas.  I went 5,212 (or so) miles to be able to connect with my next  hospice patient. She is a teacher from Iraq who fell ill while she was visiting her daughter in Texas.  The phrase that she uses most often is: "Hamdu-l' Allah,"  "Thanks be to God."  She is a person of great faith and accepts her illness as the will of God.

When I introduced myself to her daughter, I had to ask her to please repeat her name for me.  Even though we were speaking English, her Mother speaking through the Arabic translator, told me that when her daughter was born she wanted to bless God.  In Morocco, we had heard the phrase, "Bismillah" every time we sat down to eat, or upon beginning any new endeavor.  It is often translated as "In the Name of God."  Her daughter's name, "Basmal" comes from that phrase, "in gratitude for God's gift." 

Being with Britt & Pete is a blessing anywhere, but in Morocco, their graciousness and goodness shine more thoroughly.  It was a wonderful, unique experience. This week a friend shared a poem, given to her by her 94 year old mother-in-law that begins:

"I am the place where God shines through,
 For he and I are one, not two."

May it be so. Bismillah.

Visiting English class

Making msemen

a good year

Yesterday, I googled: should you clean fresh killed bird before storing in fridge or is it okay to refrigerate and clean later.

Sorry, chicken friends.  We had to eat one of you.

Today, I turn 28 years old.  The unclean bird is about to be pulled out of the fridge, cleaned, and used as a bacon substitute (I CRINGE to write those words) in this delicious avocado soup recipe for birthday lunch. 

It has been a crazy year. 

Last August 10, I celebrated both on the Catholic Community Adult Retreat and at home with friends over French 75s.

A month later, we were in Rocky Mountain National Park to visit our good friend.

A river runs through it: Pete's first fly-fishing lesson.

Sometimes when hiking, you have to get in the map.

We celebrated our one-year anniversary at Lost Maples State Park.

As the Peace Corps became a reality, I said goodbye to my job and my fabulous work family.

Luby wedding brought to you by many, many helping hands, including my RSL family.

I went to Miami with these lovely ladies and was grateful for such good college friends.  Can you believe we've known each other for 10 years?

Later that month, my siblings, my grandmother, and I surprised my mom for her birthday.

Before long, it was another magical Thanksgiving at the Renewal Center with good family and friends.

I snuggled with this adorable puppy as much as I could before we had to say goodbye,

And, as you know, we spent much of the winter on a farewell tour of some of our favorite places.

And then, somewhere between the insane stress of packing up our lives into a storage unit, becoming a single (and then zero) car family, selling everything on craigslist, saying goodbye to our little doggie, trying to pick out the highest-quality-without-being-too-expensive-wool clothes to take with us to chilly North Africa, and saying goodbye to everyone we love (thank you to everyone who came to visit us, who helped us move, who loved on us, fed us, saved us), we found our way into two seats on a Casablanca-bound airplane.

We moved in with a Moroccan family who treated us as their own.  They overfed us daily, and it was just the fuel we needed to survive hours of Darija classes in a cold classroom.  We became good friends with our little CBT group, lovingly checking in on each other when we find out someone had “the D.”  We ran through our little town in the early mornings past sheep, chickens, and olive fields with the same stride that carried us through our Fort Worth neighborhood. 

By April, we were in our final site, our home for the next two years.  We found a home and continue to make it our own.  Wifi helps.  New friends help, too.

A new friend: because of this lovely lady, we have a well-stocked house and lots of new friends.

Souk time.  You know you've married the right person for you when you roll up your sleeves at the exact same time as you suffer in the heat and try to remember the Arabic word for that spice you really want.

Pete’s parents visited us, and they gave us an excuse to see Morocco through new eyes.

We fled to Nice to escape the hot summer.

We witnessed our first Ramadan, and my host mom made me a jellaba.  I bought some fabric, handed it to her, and said, "I trust you" in Darija.  She did the rest, and I couldn't be more pleased.

Yesterday, we celebrated L’Eid with many of our new friends.  We ate two lunches, for real.  We had to make up for those few days of fasting, you know.

Breakfast #1.

Nothing about this year has been ordinary, nothing has been expected, nothing easy.  It’s been extreme in all sorts of ways.  And, in return, I feel extreme gratitude. I know I'm leaving out a lot of great stories and great people, and I apologize for that. Thank you so much for your support, love, and birthday cheer.

The wise and adorable NIck Miller proudly says, "I like getting older.  I feel like I'm finally aging into my personality."  I couldn't agree more. 

Apparently, this is what aging into my personality looks like.