Lmashakil Amkran

As I have been saying, Ait Benhaissa is among the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The aesthetics of everyday life here can appeal to anyone. An amazing balance of man and nature exists here, its as if nature has ceded ground to some of mans comforts while maintaining her identity, and vice-versa. People are wonderful in everyday interactions, and I feel welcome to relax and explore here.

To be a new Peace Corps Volunteer sent way out here in the Bled to start from scratch, be these people’s first contact with the west, and be in development work is amazing. It is an unique and irreplaceable situation. There has been what can only be called a honeymoon period, where everything seems so new and different and exciting that you deny that anything bad could exist here.

I started discovering these problems when I began my business here in earnest. Task one: find a safe, secure, and independent home which Peace Corps Washington would approve. Negotiate, and live in said house.

I will start by saying that the concept of a single male coming and wanting to rent a house is completely alien to people here. Think about it, single men live in their parents houses until they are married, and no one rents their house. They all built their houses from mud bricks and materials you can find within 20 kilometers of the site. It goes without saying that in Ait Benhaissa’s housing market, there are no “Real Estate Agents”. If someone needs somewhere to stay, they aren’t going to have to find their house on their own, they will have family. Why would you be here if you didn’t have family, right? Finally, anyone moving here would theoretically speak fluent Marmouchan Tamazight. I am not going to put myself down in any way concerning language--I am really good--but dealing with such a complex and foreign idea within my happy group of Berbers is a crazy challenge.

So, in my search for houses, I have had people tell me everything from “move in tomorrow” to “you will never find an empty house in Morocco”. I have had people set up meetings only to break them, bang on my door to show me a vacant dirt-floored sheep room without windows or electricity, sign a contract and break it after I moved in, and jerk me around for weeks only to tell me, unequivocally, “no”.

Within each of these encounters is a fair amount of community PR scheming. I am the first of what may be a long line of PCV’s in my town, so I need to endure all of this bullshit with a smile, or risk endangering the Peace Corps mission, and my own ability to conduct my projects.
Dealing with this stuff has been horrible. I have found so many sketchy people in my town that it makes it difficult to trust anyone. Aside from that, the people I spent 3 months asking for nothing but their friendship didn’t warn me about the criminals and sketch balls I was talking with about business. It was really frustrating.

I didn’t give up though. I kept asking people, telling them about the requirements, my situation, everything. Soon people in a neighboring town that is part of my commune started hearing about my dilemma. Offers of houses started trickling in from a place called Ait Youb, the center of the commune. I checked a few that had limited promise. After a while I got word that the top guy in the High Commission of Water and Forests wanted to show me a house. I thought it was strange that he hadn’t been the first to offer since he was one of my first contacts in the region.

So one day I set up a meeting with him, Lahcen, at souk. After souk he took me to the house. It was in the middle of a beautiful apple plantation with views of what I call “El Capitan”, a close cousin of the famous Yosemite landmark, but in Morocco, and named Shay‘at. It was an amazing place with plentiful water, access to transport, fruit trees everywhere, and people who had heard only good things about the American living 10km down the road. Perfect.

Lahcen was cool about all of the requirements concerning the house, and agreed to bring it up to Washington standards quickly. I told him I would be calling Peace Corps to send someone to inspect it soon. We left after a big lunch and some requisite kisses that follow any business deal here. I walked out thinking about how my landlord is a top dog in a government department in which I need contacts, and his repeated invitations to break Ramadan fast would provide me with many. The house was not perfect but the situation was as good as it could get.

A week went by and Peace Corps was on the way to check out my new house. I planned on moving in shortly thereafter. The day before Peace Corps intended to come to Ait Benhaissa I found out that people were really sad/offended/whatever that I was going to just leave Ait Benhaissa, like I was too good to live there. Obviously this idea was ridiculous. I had tried to the ends of my wits to live in Ait Benhaissa, I loved it there, despite its, ahem, quirks.

Hurting, I called off Peace Corps visit to Ait Youb to check my house. I decided to look again in Ait Benhaissa. I was met with the same problems, oppositions, questions, confusions. The search has been fruitless and frustrating, and has left me questioning everything people tell me, questions that extend way past work and Health problems and housing.

I occupied what can only be called Moroccan housing limbo for awhile and decided to go ahead with the house in the neighboring douar, Ait Youb. I called and set up a meeting with Lahcen and got Peace Corps to send someone to negotiate their end. Everything worked out great during the negotiation and I got everything I wanted and more. We all walked away happy.

Obviously the news of the contract traveled faster than I could back to my Ait Benhaissa. The kids are pissed, the Nurse in my clinic is convinced I am going back to America, and people cannot seem to get over that simple question about me leaving; “but, why?”

My house is in a place called Ait Oualagh. Not a pretty name but equally as naturally beautiful as Ait Benhaissa, and more so in a number of ways. It is a full 10km closer to the souk town, internet, the other Volunteer, and the major clinic in the Commune, along with the rest of the government buildings. It is a massive improvement as far as wintertime goes, as well. I will not have to hike 5km in the snow to pick up transportation, it will come to my door.

Also, I get to start over. I don’t like the way I went about meeting people in my community, and any image problems stemming from my inadvertent dealings with criminals during the housing search will be ameliorated. People are very much impressed by my language because they get to see me after living here for a few months, not as a green volunteer who still uses all the southern Tamazight he learned in Pre-Service Training. Also I get to live in a place where people will not see me going to the clinic, and I can develop my image as a Health Educator instead of a hospital worker who hangs out with the wife-beating, dog-killing Nurse.