I am in Morocco! I flew into Casablanca without a hitch, even getting in a little before schedule. And then the problems began. My friend Colleen and I had arranged to meet outside of baggage in the airport since I was supposed to get in a couple hours after her, but she was nowhere to be found. I searched for a good 20 minutes or so before realizing that her flight had been delayed....for 4 hours. Good seeing as how I hadn't been able to find her, bad seeing as how we were supposed to check into our hotel shortly. Slightly before panic set in she came through the gate and we hugged and went to get some money. Unsuccessfully. Apparently all of the ATMs at the airport hate us. So we exchanged some cash and headed into town. Our hotel was fabulous, easy to find, and a great comfort after the debacle at the airport. We went out to explore for a while, then came back and slept.
The next morning we had a mission: get money. We failed at our mission. Apparently all the ATMs in Casablanca hate us. We wandered around for literally hours, trying at banks and hotels for some way to get money, finally going back to ours, our small little budget hotel which to our great surprise was able to help us out. Now that we weren't panicking about going broke and being stuck indefinately with no money we went to see the one sight in Casa that we wanted to: the Hassan II mosque. It was really big, really elaborately decorated, and actually allowed us infidels inside to look.
Now that we were done with that one thing in Casa, taking into account that the city appeared to regard us with loathing, we set out for Marrakesh.
Marrakesh loved us! First of all we were finally able to get money, but even better: the city was a bustling sensory experience: tons of color, spicy scents, music....it was fantastic! We walked around the square and market all the time, checking out all the wares and goodies, watching the snake charmers and musicians, and fending off women doing henna and vendors selling everything from spices to fresh squeezed orange juice to silver jewelry to leather everything to rugs to clothes to everything else. And yes I bought some shoes.
After Marrakesh we headed to Essouira on the coast to relax a little. For a few days we wandered around, walked the beach, and ate fresh seafood. Once we were completely relaxed from that we headed back up north to Rabat. Rabat was really nice. It had the feel of a functioning city that was just very comfortable with itself. Whereas Marrakesh had felt a little divided, with one part of town a little stuck in the past and the newer part of town trying so hard to be like a hip western city, Rabat just really seemed to have it together while still having some beautiful sights. While there we went up to the kasbah overlooking the sea and also checked out an old ruins on the edge of the city with some Roman, some Islamic influence, took lots of pictures and even did some sketching.
After Rabat we headed off to Fez. I was kind of expecting Fez to feel a lot like Marrakesh, but it really didn't. Once again we stayed in the medina (old town), but this time it felt like it was still functioning for more than just tourists. On our first afternoon there was a parade through the streets complete with horsemen, camels, musicians, singers, and dancers, and we were able to watch it all from the roof of our hotel. The next day we wandered through the tiny narrow streets, getting out of the way for pull-carts and mules overloaded with goods and supplies (the streets are too narrow for cars to be allowed) and at one point got so lost that a couple little boys had to help us find our way back to the more easily identifiable part of town. In the hopes of that not happening again, we tried to stick with more recognizable routes from then on and on our trip to the Jewish quarter we even allowed ourselves the luxury of a bit of a guide. He took us around, and then, surprise, surprise, we ended up at a big shop full of goods they were just looking to unload on us poor unsuspecting tourists. Little did they know how many times we had already fended off such attempts at parting us with our hard-earned money, and little did they know just how little of that money we actually had at our disposal. Of course, little did I know just how good these guys actually were. Now I don't want you to think that I don't love my beautiful, gorgeous, lovely Moroccan rug, but I was shell-shocked for the rest of the day that I actually bought it. It felt like it happened so fast, but I know it didn't. We were probably in that shop for over an hour, drinking mint tea, learning about the different types of rugs and materials, but when they actually tried to start selling us stuff it just happened so quickly. I had noticed my future purchase at the very beginning, so to be polite I said I might be interested. He wrote down the expected price. I then wrote down my insultingly low offer. He countered. I didn't budge. He countered. I didn't budge. And then he said ok. Oh my god. I couldn't believe he actually said ok. So now I have a rug. It's beautiful and I love it, but what on earth am I going to do with it? I don't even have a place to live yet! C'est la vie...
I did finally get over my shock (Colleen did, too: she also got a similar, though smaller rug), which is good, since we had another day to enjoy Fez before heading north to Chefchaouen, which is where we are now. This place is stunning. It's almost unreal how beautiful it is. It's set on the slope of the mountains and in the medina where we are all of the buildings have been coated with a blue-tinted lime wash. We've been seeing postcards all over Morocco that have pictures taken here, but it's so striking here in person. The other night we were wandering around and I looked down this little side street that was just gorgeous and it took me a minute to realize that, no, it wasn't the lighting that made the blue look so pretty, it was just the color of all the walls.
We're now heading off to Tangier for our last little bit in Morocco and then heading across the straight into Spain. It's getting obvious how close we are to Europe with all the other tourists and the menus translated into French and Spanish and sometimes even English. Oh yea: the food here is amazing! We've had tons of couscous and tajine (slow-cooked meat and veggies in a spiced, savoury sauce) and pasteries and flatbread sandwiches. I don't think we've had anything that I didn't love. Last night we decided to fix a simple little feast of flatbread and cheese and olives and even that was amazing. Mmmmmmmmmm....
Here's hoping that Tangier treats us as well as the rest of the country (Casa nothwithstanding), and we cross into a new adventure in Spain soon.

Today is my last official day as a Peace Corps volunteer. Tomorrow I will wake up, not at the Peace Corps house, but at a friend's, because I will be an RPCV. The R stands for Returned, and, even though I don't actually leave Mali until Monday morning, and am traveling for 10 weeks before returning to the US, returning is what I suppose I'm doing. It makes me nervous. My time here in Mali has been this amazing, enlightening, challenging, slow-paced while still intense two years. I will be returning to an America that I may not altogether recognize, and I know that I've changed at least a little. I suspect more than just a little, but I suppose I won't actually realize how much for quite some time.

I left my village on the 28th of August. It was really hard to say goodbye, even though I had kind of been looking forward to that day since I got back from Ghana. Due to the loss of my project I had been more than just a little depressed about the course my service had taken, but that didn't really change the attachment I felt to the people in my village. I started packing way ahead of time (big surprise to those of you who know me well), sorting what I would give away to friends in village, what I would leave for friends in Peace Corps, and what I could actually fit in my bags to go home. Since I'll be traveling for so long before getting back to the US I am only taking one bag with me, and that has necessitated a lot of purging. I also burnt a lot of stuff...mmm, fire.

When that Saturday actually arrived, though, I wasn't ready. For one thing, I thought I wasn't going to be leaving until the afternoon and the car showed up in the morning. For another, I hadn't come to terms with the fact that I was leaving, probably for good. Since I am not being replaced in Drametou by a new volunteer, I was moving all of my stuff out and thankfully being helped by a car and driver from Peace Corps. When they showed up, I said final goodbyes to as many friends as I could, but many were still out in the fields working, as they had intended to come in in the afternoon to see me off. I'm not entirely sure which would have been harder: not getting to say goodbye to everyone, or having to say goodbye to everyone. Regardless, I was upset and still in a little bit of shock as I pulled out of village, silently crying in the back seat.

I didn't actually have much time to dwell on my loss, as we promptly got stuck in the mud. Really stuck. As in I could see the growing panic in the driver's eyes, thinking we were never going to get out. Thankfully, a group of men from the nearby village came to our aid, and after a couple hours of digging, scraping, and cutting branches to put under the entrenched tires, we were free. Bakoye cew: i ni ce, i ni baara ji. By that point in time I had stopped crying, and since they wouldn't let me help (it was muddy, and I was a white woman wearing a complet, and therefore completely inept), and I knew that even if we were stuck for the night it would still be okay, I admit I found the whole situation kind of comical. The downside was that I also felt guilty: the car wouldn't have gotten stuck if it hadn't come out to my village to pick me up and had all of my crap loading it down. But, we did get out, and from that point on it was pretty smooth sailing, or at least as much as it can be on the road between Bafoulabe and Kita. In Manantali we unloaded most of the stuff. I left all my furniture, a lot of my clothes, and various other small things there for a new volunteer that wasn't immediately replacing a previous volunteer. Best of luck in the next 2 years Jorie! We also unloaded a bunch of soak pit construction supplies for another volunteer who is planning to take advantage of the benefits that my village didn't and restart the project in Manantali. I took one last look at my favorite place in the country, the stage house overlooking the river, and briefly mourned the loss before climbing back in the car and heading to Kita for the night. I parted with the car and driver the next morning and spent a few days moping in Kita before heading into Bamako myself on my final stint in Malian public transport. Of all my frequent routes on transport, this is/was by far the easiest. The bus was basically on time, not too crowded, and in good condition running on a paved road. Of course, there were also frequent stops to pick up more people along the way, a handful of those people sitting in the aisle, a few crying babies, a few people getting sick, and the unavoidable midday heat, but nothing unmanageable or out of the ordinary.

I actually came in to Bamako a day earlier than I had originally planned since my friend Alaric was going to be leaving a day earlier than I had thought. I'm glad I did, because it turned out that there was a concert that night at Tubaniso, the training facility just outside of Bamako, by Vieux Farka Toure that I got in just in time to go to. When I was in training out there we didn't get any private concerts like that, so I chose to consider it a little bit of a send off for me as well.

The next few days were a whilwind, filled with lots of hanging out, going out on the town in Bamako, and reminiscing. On Friday, 3 September the new stage of volunteers swore in at the embassy in the midst of a huge rainstorm. In the few hours between my morning run and leaving for the embassy, several feet of water accumulated in the streets, and my 2 minute walk from the house to the bureau to catch a car resulted in a full soaking. When I arrived at the embassy I literally wrung out the bottom of my skirt. At least it wasn't too hot I guess. There were a few short stints of sunshine in the afternoon, but it was still pretty cool and drizzly when we went out with the new volunteers to celebrate that evening. As in previous years it was a good party, and then it was over and I spent the next few days recovering from the sleep deprivation of the previous few.

After the weekend's festivities I had to buckle down and get the last of my work done. I had unknowingly chosen the worst week ever to try and close out my service. Officially, today is my last day. However, today happens to be the last day of Ramadan for most of the world, and the day after the the last day of Ramadan for Mali (don't ask me why, I'm still a little unsure), so Bamako is pretty much non-functional both yesterday and today. Oh yea, and Monday was Labor Day, which means our office was closed then, too. So I only had Tuesday and Wednesday to get the last two years wrapped up. Throw into that mix the fact that all of those new volunteers that just swore in were moving into their villages this week and you have a seriously reduced number of staff actually in Bamako on those two days and you get a somewhat panicked me. Fortunately I was still able to get everything taken care of at the bureau and now I am just waiting. I've gotten a lot of practice waiting in Mali.

So.....

Inchallah, I will fly out on Monday morning for Casablanca. My friend Colleen will meet me there and we will embark on 6 weeks of traveling in Morocco and then up through Spain and France to London. Once in London we'll catch up with our friend Kelly who currently lives and works there and then Colleen will head back to Spain and fly to America, I will fly to Mumbai/Bombay, and Kelly, well Kelly will go back to life as normal in London. In India I will meet up with my friend Jen who also just finished up her Peace Corps service in Mali, and we will travel around for a month before getting back stateside.

Here's to Mali, here's to travel, here's to the world! Oh yea, and i sambe sambe!