27monthswithoutbaseball

This is a mosaic that decorates the Azrou mosque. It's really pretty - but nothing compared to what I have seen in pictures in the big cities! I look forward to seeing those! Someday...months from now...

Presentations on
Small Business Development
A ton of info

To start a cooperative you have to write to the ministry of cooperatives as well as to the ministry of artisans and involve your local government - then you have to have a meeting - and bylaws - and pay in and have an accountant and a bank - and have seven people sign the founding document - and wait 90 days - and do lots of other stuff. Culture Shock: Morocco mentioned French-type bureaucracy as a legacy of the colonial period and I thought about that as we heard the presentation today. It is likely that I'll work with a cooperative or help to establish one.

Last week I was talking with one of the Program people (the APCD - have to think about that acronym but basically he's one of the three Americans and just under the Country Director) about who he got compared to and who they asked for - they said that they request people based on skills - not gender, age, or anything else - it's just based on skills. Which I found interesting.

I don't usually pay attention to football until after the World Series but the other Chicagoan in the group mentioned that the Bears are 5-1. Is Chicago going crazy? I also heard it snowed there! It is still short-sleeve weather here - in the mountains...I wonder how the election campaigns are going in IL because I haven't gotten my absentee ballot yet, but also PA and anywhere else that it's important...I read the Times headlines and if I get my own computer I will see if I can get Sunday talk shows on my iPod shuffle...

Played some Boggle last week and may play Scrabble again tonight. We also have a tea time talk about Moroccan music.
I apologize to those who are waiting for e-mails from me. Blogger is a pretty fast web site to use...yahoo considerably slower...hotmail incredibly slow. I'm lucky if I get to a couple of those!

I keep looking for hammam mud when I go out. It's good to have a shopping quest, but it's also something I can use. I bought hammam olive oil soap the other day - moisturizing - but cannot find the mud. I have Calistoga mud and other mud in storage. I hope I can find some at the souk. Today I looked into getting digital prints. I hear they're blurry and of poor quality but I think my family and some of the other people in TimHdit will appreciate getting prints. I didn't get them yet, but I had an actual conversation with the storekeeper, in a combination of Arabic and French - enough to be understood and to understand him! One of the books says to be careful of feeling too good about a conversation like that being your accomplishment of the day - but another says to celebrate those accomplishments...

One more quick note and then I should let someone else have a turn on this computer...I've mentioned self-directed learning day a couple of times. We have no lectures or classes on Sundays but rather than calling it a day off they call it self-directed learning. We can do what we want - read Peace Corps info, go shopping, walk around town to get to know it better, spend the time observing our families - but it must be with purpose and we must accomplish something and write about it later. I've done a little of all of the above. Still thinking about how I can make the most of this coming Sunday. Last week we interviewed the shiekh (my host dad - and then my host mom for the female perspective) about the history of TimHdit. He mentioned remembering lions and gazelles in the area when there was a lot of forest, and lots and lots of snow where now there are only a couple of feet. I'll write more about that conversation. It reminds me of something else though - there are a couple of random people in town who come to my house and another group member's house for l'ftur all the time - Moroccans don't want anyone to eat alone. They aren't from TimHdit but are in town working to sell solar panels to people in remote areas in the region who do not have electricity. The goal is to have everyone in the country either on the electrical grid or on solar by 2007. Very impressive!