With Pictures

Hello. All finished with the first week of homestays. Experience was all that I could have asked for. My family has 4 brothers and an older sister who is engaged to be married this summer. One of the brothers goes to the university in Orzazate which from what I can tell is somewhere between highschool and college for us. The two oldest brothers run the shop and lead tourist excursions into the desert. Nordin and the brother in the university speak some English which is nice. Most of the time Nordin and I communicate in Spanglishahit, as his spanish is better than his english and mine is still better than my Tashlihit, although given another 5 weeks or so, that may no longer be the case. Our site was great, and if the pictures I took eventually upload through this modem, you will see for yourself. The Kasbah where we are located is internationally known, and although this made for an increased tourist population, it was still marvelous to see. There are 9 familys that still live inside, though I have no idea whether that is immediate family, or otherwise. Everyone in each village is connected in some way, and its hard to delineate where a family begins and ends. We're still working on 4 hours of language a day, with one or two interviews. Last week we met the Moqadim who is the head or the village, the immam(religious head), a few farmers, and the vice president of the local association for culture and development. Our other assignments have been predominantly mapping the communities resources.

Its hard to talk about myself as an agent within all this. They keep everyone very busy, and on my days off, of which this has been the second, ive spent the majority of the day playing catch up with the language, handwashing laundry, and finding various odds and ends that I need around town. Today we had to prepare a presentation for tomorrow as well.
I fed a baby camel the other day, and spoke to him exclusively in Tashlihit. My language skills are deffinately at their best when speaking to animals and children under 8. We've done a great deal of hiking, and except for the sandstorm that slowed us down one day, the weather has been fairly nice. Its deffinately T-shirt weather in a no T-shirt country, but I'm doing better with the sun. The key really is covering up here. Its the sun that kills you, not the heat. To the left is my brother Nordin, and me in a freshly purchased turbin. This has been a rather jumbled email, for I'm trying to show you all an experience before I've had time to reflect upon it myself. It really is crazy how quickly you adjust and start to take thing for granted. I dont even blink when I hear the call for prayer being bellowed over the loud speaker above the mosque 5 times a day and I have a sense that walking through my own front door would some how be more alien to me today than walking in a mudhouse lined with bamboo built into the side of a mountain. Human adaptation truly is a remarkalble phenomenon.
Another question/thought that has filled my leisure time: what is the American tradition and does it still exist? When we analyze what the community could do in order to develop itself, the thoughts seem to all concern money. Cheap marketing techniques to steal a D here and there. One person in our group was baffled that there was no one at the door to take money when people entered the Kasbah. Someone even brought up those I love NY tshirts as a positive as something to draw upon. I've also been reading the book Dr. Reed gave me on our last encounter, titled The Closing of the American Mind. He seems overtly pessimistic about everything but it has kept me in a dialogue about what it is in American life that binds us to ourselves. American individualism just gets shoved in your face when your in a culture that really tends to be reserved and withheld about what they want. We have big dreams, and its encouraged even back to the childrens books we read, and if dreaming is not a virtue but a vice, I wouldn't know where to begin assessing meaning. I dont know where I mean take this, but the notion of tradition, whether it be intellectual or religious, or familial, or even political is something that seems lacking in the daily lives of my generation. Vive Le Dream, I guess.
For those interested, this room was supposedly used in the movie gladiator. We came across it wandering around the Kasbah, and were informed later that it was a significant place.

This picture was taken at sunset here in Orzazate. It really is a wonderful point at the end of the world, for if you go another 20 miles you hit an ocean of sand which goes on for another 600 miles.

I miss everyone and hope thing are going well at home and in Charlotte, and in Athens, and Florida, and anywhere else my past or present peeps may be living. Consider perfection.