Rain and Shine

This last week has been tough. One of the tougher of the almost six months that I have been here. Ramadan has, in a sense, trapped me in my own head. A scary thought really. What I thought was unstructured time before this month of fasting started now seems busy in comparison. I truly have very few duties or objectives that I can accomplish as my village, the whole country actually, is on hold until the 10th of September when they can break the final day of fasting. It has become a creative struggle everyday to keep myself going and stay sane.

My biggest challenge has been creating structure and order. Where normally (I say normally meaning the average of my adult life) I would be looking on my calendar for the free time to do whatever I want to do, now I desperately try to think of actual obligations that I have to fulfill so that I can throw it up on the calendar like a little island of scribbled ink hope in a big ocean of blank squares.

I guess, while yes this unstructuring of my life has been and continues to be a huge obstacle, I am increasingly able to see the value of the experience. Not constantly having a barrage of events, obligations, and work to saturate my time, and especially not having English speaking people to be busy with, I have been forced to reduce my speed and enter into the uncomfortable world of reflection, patience, and self discovery. It’s a scary place too! I will tell you that!

In addition to all this wonderful philosophical self-enhancement, I do get to so some other things that are probably good for me. For instance I now read a lot. I cant vouch for the quality of all I’ve read (most of my reading materials are contained on one and a half shelves of my little book case), but its nice to get back into habit that I abandoned along time ago when the calendar started to fill. I’ve tried my hand, to a less successful degree, at painting and yoga as well. Thinking of meditation (perhaps a more fruitful means of introspection than self pity) in the near future. I’m welcome to tips on any of these things as well as suggestions for books to read. Though, if you suggest it with any passion, you might have to send it. I haven’t yet found the Barnes and Noble down the street.

When I think about this new life of undefined time, I imagine that I’m in good company. I probably share this experience of isolation and introspection with prisoners, monks, and the occasional hermit in addition to all the other Peace Corps workers out there. We all know that monks and Peace Corps volunteers generally turn out to be good people, and if Shawshank Redemption has anything to teach us, it’s that prison has its benefits too. I don’t know about hermits, but I’ve met some pretty hermitic volunteers here and they don’t seem worse off for the experience. Maybe a bit more skittish around other foreigners, but not worse off.

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m being to productive though. I still spend plenty of time in empty thought, goofing off or watching Star Trek.


Right. I spend a lot of time in my house by myself finding ways to occupy my time. That’s my life right now. Tafoghalt remains in its Ramadan stupor. One noteworthy thing. It has begun to rain more. This week has seen at least a couple of storms. Fall seems to be on its way. With the rain came a discovery. By discovery, I mean it should have been obvious before, but I never stopped to consider it fully. The discovery was this: when it rains (and if I’m to believe anyone, it rains a lot in the fall and winter), my house floods. Not just a little of it. No, pretty much all of it. The reason is that at some point before I even moved in the wind took part of the roof off. I obviously new that part of my roof was missing; I just never stopped to think of the consequences of it. In my defense there is a drain where the water comes in. It just drains at a rate of molasses. In any case, such is life in Morocco.