Giving Thanks

November 24 and 25 had much significance this year—Thanksgiving, Moroccan national elections, and the day that marks one year left in our Peace Corps service.

Thanksgiving day dawned sunny and crisp with fresh snow on the mountains promising a festive feeling. Things kind of went downhill from there. We had invited three other volunteers for dinner which I was going to cook. Cooking here is time consuming since everything has to be made from scratch. First, the bird has to be killed, gutted, and defeathered. Pumpkin pie starts with cooking and pureeing the pumpkin.

It was a two day process. Five minutes after the pie went into the new electric oven, the electricity went off. An hour later, the water shut off. Fortunately these both came back on again and then the buta gas tank ran out. Normally, we could run down and get a new one, but the truck hadn’t come in yet so we had to wait until two in the afternoon to replace the buta. It all had me wondering if the powers that be were intentionally sabotaging my effort, but eventually it all came together, and even with a meskina burned pie, the dinner turned out to be a success.

The next day we took a walk along the ridge trail in the bright sunshine. We saw some cute baby goats frolicking near the fence of the old military school compound. Of course we took out the camera and snapped a few photos of their antics before we looked up and saw five guards running toward us. They were pleasant but firm. You do not take photos of government property. I’d post a picture of the cute baby goats, but they were hastily deleted while the guards looked on.

Today the results of the first national election under the new constitution in Morocco were posted, and a celebration began. REK now has a representative in Parliament, one of three in the region! Each candidate has a symbol to represent them for voters who can’t read. (Wouldn’t this be fun for US candidates?) The winner for REK was the tractor.

Both of our co-op presidents worked hard for the tractor candidate. Latifa even campaigned for him on Facebook, and Fatima was the only woman on the victory truck. Time will tell if the election results satisfy the protesters.