Still in the thick of Ramadan, so the adventures of Colin Gettle are sort of on hold. Unless that is, you think of Ramadan as an adventure unto itself. I thought that it was going to be, and maybe I may look back on it as such, but right now it has already sort of turned into a daily grind. Get up late, laze around my apartment, break fast with someone, hang out at the café until midnight or so, and then back to the apartment to read or watch a movie until my late bedtime. Same thing every day.
Now that I think about it, it’s strange how quickly things become routine and feel stagnant. Ramadan only started two weeks ago and there are less then to weeks to go. I’ve been trying lately to find a way into a mindset of contentment with the moment. I always seem to be living dreading the future or dreamily dwelling on the past, but rarely enjoying the moment. I know that I join pretty much everyone else in that problem. I have read that smoking pot and meditation both help in bringing a person into their present state of being. I have access to both, but I think meditation is probably the better long-term solution. I think my parents and the Moroccan police would probably agree with me on that too.
To break the routine (and also to try to take care of some personal business) I took a little trip down to Jerada on Monday. Jerada is not the nicest place in Morocco to go to, but as Joe, one of the volunteers who lives there can attest, it’s not the worst place either. Its main employer is the big coal plant just on the outside of town. I know in the US we think of coal plants as dirty dirty places, but I imagine with the environmental standards that they have to comply to, they look a lot better than this place. There are days when it looks like Dante’s Peak with a dusting of ash drifting down from the sky. Anyway, I went there for a change up and some business. The business wasn’t taken care of, but it’s always great to see Joe and Socorra, the nearest volunteers. We always eat well and have fun playing cards, music, or watching the countless hours of movies and TV series on their external hard drives. In this trip also went to see Socorra's site of Gafait about half an hour further from Joe. Her site is beautiful and spread out with a very popular river running through the middle of it. Fasting didn’t make for a pleasant ride back, but in Berkane I saw a group of little old Spanish women who clearly looked like they were having the time of their lives venturing into this part of the country on their own, and that made me happy.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
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.
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.
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