Comings and Goings

Note: more entries to come about Marrakesh and other things, but I need to buy more batteries for my camera so I can upload pics.

So there have been lots of comings and goings the past couple weeks.

9/30/09

My running buddy Tom has gone back to England. :( He is going to be working there in a lab (I think) for two or three months, then he sets off for Argentina where he will be teaching English for a few months. His grand plan is to then drive home to England, yes that's right, drive up through South America, Mexico, the States, Canada, Russia, the whole shebang...we'll see if it happens or not.

The upside of him leaving was that we all went out to celebrate for his last night!

This guy Alex, from Maryland, used to live with the same host family as Will and Tom but now lives on his own and teaches English. He's become friends with all of us and he took us to this hotel bar in Centre Ville which serves alcohol (hard to find in a Muslim country and illegal in many places) and has live music. The band was so amazing! I hope I can get a copy of their music before I leave. It's this funky mix of Latin and African music. The rhythms are out of control and made dancing very interesting! However, their beats were not as impossible to dance to as the Moroccan music played while the band took their breaks. Will and Tom's host brother had been showing me some neat dance moves earlier in the night, and he kept trying to show me how to dance to the Moroccan music but really all he did was gain a good laugh at my expense. I think I deserve an A for effort though!

Note: there is no proper dance floor in this place, just a small area which happens to not have tables. But everybody squeezed in the small space and gleefully shook their tail-feathers - I have been thirsting for a good "dance-break" in my life for some time, and it really hit the spot!

We will be frequenting that place for sure.

PS - Tonight is technically Will's and Simon's last nights with Projects Abroad, but they will both be in Rabat for a couple weeks so it doesn't really count.

10/1/09

A new volunteer arrived in our house today! Her name is Fabienne and she is Swiss. She seems pretty shy but also very sweet. I'm sure she'll start to open up after being here a little while and getting to know everybody.

Her story for coming here is very sad. Her brother died in a plane crash here four years ago, only a few days before his 22nd birthday. He and his friends were all hobby pilots and they were flying from Marrakesh in a small plane and never made it to their destination. The plane crashed near a small Berber village. There are a lot of mysteries about the crash and the Swiss government and the Berber eye-witnesses have different stories about how it all happened. Her family is also forbidden by Swiss law to speak with the families of the other victims. It's all very strange. The Swiss government told her family that they tried to land their helicopters to pick up the bodies but all the villagers tried to attack the helicopter and that the family should not go to Morocco because the people there would try to kill them. After months the family still had not received the body of Fabienne's brother, and they decided that they'd had enough. Two years ago they went to Morocco to climb the mountain where the plane crashed and speak with people in the Berber village. The bad impression the Swiss government had given her of Morocco was changed after her visit here, and she decided then she wanted to come back to Morocco later on her own terms, for her own reasons. It's a way of making piece for her.

And by the way, while she climbed the mountain where the plane crash happened she was able to collects pieces of the debris from the crash. Her family also was able to collect her brother's body and give him a proper burial. They still don't know why the plane crashed - the hypothesis is that it ran out of fuel because there was no explosion and there would have been if there had been fuel in the plane. Sometimes the people who sell gas here mix it with water to save money...

I would like to give her both FORGETTING and TD/BC to read.

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The strange thing about playing roles that really mean something to me is that I sometimes have a false sense of my own experiences. Because of FORGETTING I somehow felt like I really strongly connected with Fabienne about her brother...I know that that sounds absolutely ridiculous and I know that the experience wasn't mine and in no way do I seek to undermine what it truly means to experience that kind of loss....but Trista's writing and her presence in rehearsals made me feel like I was inside her experience of it all somehow....I know it sounds strange but I think a couple people reading this might kind of understand what I mean.

I miss acting.