Last Wednesday was indeed like Christmas for Liz and myself.
We made an hour long trek to the east squeezed into the front seat of a pickup truck with our host dad sitting hopefully somewhat comfortably in the bed of the truck, finally arriving in a small village on the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains to visit a soon-to-depart health volunteer named Mir. And by “visit” I mean pack up her entire household and bring it back to our apartment.
Mir and Liz, two awesome people.
Mir’s view.
Host dad and our driver had the entire place packed up within about a half hour, leaving the truck looking like the Clampets had arrived. In fact, there was so much in the truck that there wasn’t room for all of us to ride back to T–, so Liz and I took taxis back to town.
Our worldly possessions traveling down the road.
Mir’s village is absolutely gorgeous, with mountains, trees, and a dry river running through the middle of the community, so it was lovely to be a bit more surrounded by nature after living in the middle of a city for a few months.
Thanks to her, we now have:
- chairs
- beds
- a desk
- a full compliment of kitchen utensils
- a stove
- an oven
- a fridge!
- blankets
- buckets
- American candy (that’s a lie, it’s gone already)
- a set of drawers
Basically our apartment is a living space now. And let me tell you, my butt was getting a bit tired of sitting on the concrete floor. We spent a couple days cleaning and organizing and things are getting to the point where they’re almost set. My room still needs some organizing done, but shwiya b shwiya (little by little) it’s getting there.
Liz in the midst of a pre-cleaning lunch.
How our apartment looked after everything got unloaded.
Lunch in the courtyard! With chairs!
The basic organizational structure of my room before the arrival of furniture.
To celebrate both our new apartment and Mir’s departure, this weekend we hosted a small going-away party. We made hamburgers, homemade chips and salsa and watermelon and it was the best ever. Also Saturday morning we made pancakes, so our new kitchen is nicely broken in.
We have also successfully secured our post office box and have a mailing address! So it’s like we actually live here now.
On a less fun note, my skin has decided either the heat or dusty air or both doesn’t agree with it and has taken to developing large, embarrassing infections in awkward places. The first was a stye on my left eye, which appeared right as I got to site. The second was on my lower abdomen and grew to be about the size of an egg. The third is currently in one of my armpits. As a consequence, I’m getting very good at both hot compresses and talking about my symptoms with the Peace Corps doctors over the phone, and am on my third round of antibiotics within the last two months. Wouldn’t be Peace Corps without some sort of weird medical stuff going on, right?
I hope you are all well and infection free!
