It's Good to Be Back

Welcome to the new incarnation of my blog, which is mostly strange encounters and bizarre experiences in Africa. My previous blog, yayhagambia.blogspot.com, was about my Peace Corps service in the Gambia, a tiny country in West Africa that is noted mostly for its size: the entire country is basically one river, with a little bit of land on either side. It was cynical, bad tempered, and generally impossible to believe, and since a few people liked it I thought I'd do another. Anyone just now joining my story is welcome to take a look at the old one, although make sure you’ve got some free time to hunker down, because I wrote me some long damn entries.

This blog is going to be a little different. Rather than write a novel every couple months, these will be short entries every week, discussing the culture I live in, the language I’m studying, and the terrible, terrible situations I tend to find myself in.

A recap – after I finished my Peace Corps service, where I specialized in small business and infrastructure development, I moved back to the United States, drooling in anticipation of the cold beer, the delicious food, the easy transportation, and – God help me – the AC. I was really, really looking forward to not sweating like a popsicle every minute. No more mosquitos and killer ants. For a month after landing stateside I stuffed my face like an animal and luxuriated in all the comforts and wonders of America.

Then I got bored. I missed the bizarre adventures and stupid, random interactions that were part of everyday life in the Gambia. I missed bargaining for groceries, fighting with pickpockets and goats, putting my life at risk every time I used public transportation. None of my friends brought severed sheep heads when they visited me, and I never once was invited to hunt witch lights. I loved seeing my friends and family again, but Africa was never far from my thoughts.

So I found a way to get back out here, and maybe find a way to have a little more impact than I did as a volunteer. I applied to business schools, focusing only on those with a reputation for international business. Turns out that although every MBA on the planet calls itself a “globalized" program, this basically means that they have a few token classes on doing business internationally, with the idea that their students might work for a multi-national based in America someday.

Then I found the Moore School. Located in Columbia, South Carolina, it’s one of the top-ranked international business programs in the country, largely due to their habit of kicking their students out after six months and making them learn another language in a foreign country. I was waffling for a while between Moore and a few other programs, and it was a pretty tough decision until I saw that the Arabic program spent its first three months in Fez, Morocco.

Done.

For those of you who remember my previous blog, Fez was one of the cities I visited back in my whirlwind tour of Morocco during Peace Corps. A few friends were going to fly there, but I didn’t have the cash, so I decided to schlep it overland, hitching rides with fruit trucks and random travellers. Four terrifying, miserable days later I made it to Morocco, which was hands-down the most incredible country I’d ever seen. From the sculpted dunes of the south to the cliffs of the Atlas Mountains, it was a magnificent mish-mash of terrains, each beautiful and saturated with thousands of years of rich and violent history.

Of all the places I saw, Fez stood out as being the most real. Marrakech was fun, with its nightlife and various attractions, but the entire city essentially turned itself into one giant tourist attraction, and a manufactured culture is no culture at all. Fez will take your money, but it has its own life to live, particularly in the medina, the ancient heart of the city. The swarming buildings of the medina, tucked together in winding alleyways and labyrinthine streets, have each stood for over a thousand years. It is the last medieval city to retain its original architecture, and walking through it is like stepping into the Arabian nights.

There’s a square where metalworkers hammer out dishes, jewelry, and lattice-works - every time I walk through there I think how great they'd be if they planned out a rhythm and did a few rehearsals. There are Berber apothecaries, each shelf lined with strange oils, powders and potions. For a few dirham the owner does a spiel on the wondrous properties of each weird substance. I’m not sure what’s going on with the men of Morocco these days, but clearly there’s some sort of issue – just about everything they have is also an aphrodisiac, guaranteed to “put wood in your spear.” After a while you get a little suspicious. Saffron? Really? Is that why I always get so crazy after a bowl of basmati rice?

Everyone lies here, which can also be fun if you don’t take it personally. Prices jump a good 200% when they see Western features, and bargaining them back down to local prices is good practice for my negotiating skills, which had gone rusty in the land of bar codes and clip-out coupons. You can never tell if this guy who’s agreed to show you to the best restaurant in town is really just helping you out, or if you’ll have to give him money at the end. It creates a wall of subtle tension, vague suspicion, both sides being unsure of just what the relationship is and who’s benefiting.

One place I don’t have to worry about that is with my host family. I asked for a homestay while I was here, and got placed inside the medina with an absolutely fantastic family, two parents and four brothers, who have been absolutely fantastic. I’m running up against my two-page post limit, so I’ll have to save them for the next post. I’ll also tell you about the dead snake I bought, and the terrible thing that Fate did to my foot.