Reflecting on the last weekend, all I can say is that i’m very grateful… and for many reasons. First of all, for the wonderful volunteers that share a souq town (market) with me. I turned 24 last Friday, and a real effort was made by all to get together and celebrate in the best way we volunteers usually can: cooking dinner. Being the lucky Irish lass I am (also, the corny-ness is hereditary), my birthday happens to coincide with that loveliest of Irish holidays: St. Patrick’s Day! This collusion of events lead to one logical outcome: Irish food dinner party to ring in my birthday on the 18th!

happy Irish birthday to ME!

Avery and the sign noting the path to my village: it reads "Association of the Future"!

Avery and Phil eating OUTAT TACOs in my living room...

 

 

Meagan cooked soda bread with raisins, and the main course was Shepherd’s pie, and in the sad absence of Guinness… or any beer for that matter…. we made do with affordable and swallow-able red wine (i will NOT call it decent, “swallow-able” is what fits into our budgets I made sure to remind everyone that wearing green was necessary and I think we did pretty well for ourselves, overall. There WERE the typical “wow, really?” peace corps moments… like when we realized we’d bought cut up chunks of meat as opposed to mince meat for the Shepherd’s Pie…. then tried to blend it to fix that problem. Blended meat = mince meat…. right? Well…. not really. Blended meat = smoking blender. Not that we stopped there. “What’s probably wrong?”, we asked, “we should probably just add water”…. this worked for about 30 more seconds before the smell of burning plastic and smoke returned. So we made do with cut up meat/half blended and in a weird way…. creamy…. from the blending, as opposed to mince meat. It all tastes the same in the end, though, right? Sure.

My fellow volunteers gave me presents, which was unexpected, but absolutely wonderful of them. One, from my friend Phil, was a mix-CD with a song on it that I’ve been wanting for a while and now have had stuck in my head for a week: “Ooh la la” by The Faces. Such a great birthday song and just so easy to bop along to throughout your day. Avery came through with maybe not the most culturally “appropriate” present… but the most culturally AWESOME present: a recycled, un-labled jam jar, filled to the brim with duty-free black label whiskey…. wrapped in a plastic bag from a local pharmacy in town. Just SO HSHUMA (“shameful”) and so wonderful, considering the context. We whiled away St. Patty’s with red wine and “Apples to Apples” and “cheers!”-ed to my 24th at midnight.

Following such a joyful and family-like evening (at least it’s similar to my family evenings- good food, wine and usually board games that everyone takes a little too seriously), I started my actual birthday day in a GREAT mood. I managed to get some work done in town, buy all the groceries I needed, pick up my mail to find another birthday surprise (a card from another volunteer friend) and then hit the road back to my site with Phil and Avery.

Now, Phil and Avery had never visited my village before. As I’m the first volunteer there, and a woman living alone, I had been really hesitant to have boys visit for a long time. Phil has been here four months, which seems like a long time to never invite a friend over, right? Well, AVERY has been here the same amount of time as me (10, almost 11, months!) and he had yet to come out. I have been feeling pretty comfortable with my language and relationships in site lately, so I figured it was about time to let them come out. I mean…. may as well go almost a year without ANY boys visiting and then bring two (and only the two) at once, right? Shock tactics at their best.

Everything went really smoothly, however. We cooked Outat Tacos (a description of THAT amazing tradition of ours to come in the next few weeks, I promise), we all ran my weekly health lesson together, which really helped with crowd/children-monkey control, and we hiked all around my site (in the fields, the town, and the several ruins of old mosques and things that are just scattered around).

the fields just before sunset...

a very green irish birthday

 

It was an interesting experience to have them there, and to be tour-guiding them around for two days…. in that it was an opportunity to re-live my first time seeing it all. Early-on in living here, I used to refer to my site as “narnia” for it’s vibrant green fields next to a beautiful, stark mountain range and gurgling crystal-clear river. The dense olive groves, flowers, charming stone houses and ruins all just add to the effect. It’s funny how living somewhere, you can so quickly take it for granted. Even here, where I daily try to remind myself “Caity, you live in Morocco! Enjoy it!”, it can be hard to take yourself out of the day-to-day regularities and value what you have been given. I live in such an Idyllic locale, yet probably only take a stroll around when some plan I have made accidentally falls through and I find myself a bit far from home and listlessly wander the long way back. Why don’t I go out with the express purpose of appreciating where I live? Why have I not posted on this blog about the AMAZING ruins that are literally 200 feet from my front door? It makes no sense. But… having guests over, and seeing them see it for the first time, really helped me to appreciate it again for how special and unique it is. I KNOW this is ridiculously corny, but thats a pretty great present to get on your birthday in the Peace Corps….. a feeling that you really love where you live and are lucky to be there.

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