blog entries that never made it up...until now
In Sidi Ifni
We are in the land of blue and white. Sidi Ifni has these old crumbly Spanish influenced buildings that look very horror-esque. We've been student leading and Abby and I are in charge of budget so we are furiously writing down every purchase.
I just dyed my hair with henna so it is a nice shiny orangey but my head smells like henna. The first time I tried to dye it I like any normal person bought the henna for hair, thinking it would turn my hair red. I didn't know that hair henna just conditions the hair and maybe tints it a liitttlle bit. So after a very messy and globby experience my hair just maybe felt softer and it was a bit disapointing. This time I bought the correct henna which is just body henna and real gloves this time and I kept it on overnight so that it would intensify and voila! My hair is excellently coloured now.
This student led business has made me really appreciate Kempie and Michelle's work to make everything run smoothly. We have people divided up to do transport, food, hotels, budget and etc but Kempie and Michelle do everything which is really admirable.
The American election is I guess tomorrow so the whole group is really into it...CaNADian elections already happened so it's not really my concerns, although probably it indirectly affects Canada.
Tomorrow we move onto Taroudant and hopefully some accessible internet! Cross your fingers for whoever you wish to win !
Jenny
I must preface this post with my zeal at the thought of public transportation; in San Francisco, I felt so moved by my experiences on the Muni, the local bus, that my roommate and I wrote a series of vignettes entitled “Adventures on the Muni”. In India, I collected newspaper clippings of the various tragedies involving electrocution due to the locals sitting atop moving trains (I longed to be one with the locals and sit atop the overspilling trains but had to make due with the newspaper cutouts seeing as my grandmother forbade me from even the thought of riding the local trains). In Manhattan, my experiences extend from someone threatening me with “imma stick this knife in you, if you bump me one more time” to being surrounded by a quartet of harmonizing vocalists. Certain experiences have since transformed my pure pleasure at public transit into a more skeptical enthusiasm, however I cannot deny that almost every experience, is a full-of-kinks adventure.
November First. The start of a new month, a new city, and new leaders. With our departure from Essaouira we felt the “winds of change”.
I naively remarked to Ella that we had been lucky with weather thus far on the journey, thinking that we were leaving behind the storm front which had approached Essaouira just as we had with the rains in Fes before Marrakesh and Marrakesh before the High Atlas. Alas! Such was not our fate as we took our voyaging into our own hands. The bad weather seemed to be travelling with us as we walked through festering puddles with our 20 lb packs strapped to our backs, braced ourselves against the damp air and held out in soaking wet clothing and dirt coated feet.
I suppose it taught me a think or two about appreciating comforts however.
Isabella
Hamak bizef or shwiya? Transl: very crazy or a little
Whenever i mention my homestay mother, L'aziza, the uniform response is for people to express that she is a bit "off". Its been something I take for granted when mentioning my host mother, and let is slide with a knowing chuckle. She is undeniably quite the character.
L'aziza had in the past requested my empty water bottles for various uses; however, now, I have begun to hand my empty bottles to her without being asked to. And each time, i give her an empty bottle, she wishes me "may god give you a good husband", i discovered thanks to the translation of my homestay sister.
Upping the crazy meter, however, a few days ago, L'aziza bade the family goodnight and went up to the second floor to sleep. About fifteen minutes upon her retreat however, we were jolted by her shrill cry of "eh Lamia!" (her daughter) and the pelting of apples from the above terrace. An important point to keep in mind firstly, is that the distance between the first and the second floors of my homestay isn't slight--at least six meters, so dropping apples from the terrace of the second floor to the first is hardly an effective method of transport (if in fact that is what l'aziza was going for) because any apple would break upon contact with the ground. Secondly, l'aziza had half peeled the apples, so we hardly found the dirty remnants appetizing when we picked them up off the ground. Lastly, however, and perhaps the most puzzling was that Lamia already had a basket of fruit on her lap downstairs, which l'aziza had handed her before going to bed. So what L'aziza thought she would want with more apples is beyond me.
Perhaps there's more to the exclamations of "L'aziza Hamak" than I had realized before....
Isabella