gimme some wool, i've got a wheel!

26 February 2008

(just putting out the vibe in my big lonely kitchen)

It’s been a fine day, and that’s all I’m gonna write about for now. I woke up and made Swedish pancakes (a great reassurance that I can survive morocco), did a couple loads of laundry (meaning two sink loads, amounting to a quarter of a load in a real washing machine, scrubbed by hand on a wooden washboard, rinsed in buckets in the bathroom, and saving the frigid water for toilet flushing, and hung to dry on the power line outside, it’s quite a process), and then made my way to the cooperative. I’ve been way too busy lately and worried that I haven’t been building much of a relationship with the co-op, or my community as a whole because I’m gone so much. I’ve decided to cut back my tutoring to once a week beginning in March, because I’m tired, broke and just want to spend some time in my site! Anyhow, so remember how I said in morocco things just happen and they just don’t? Well, things happened today! I went to the co-op with no real big plans, just the usual sitting there, absorbing Tam and trying to communicate and thinking a lot about what I’ll be doing. Then the president asked me if I could try and fix the broken loom, yippee! I had to go to another woman’s house for some parts, and like my host moms shed, she’s got an entire room of weaving supplies. It makes me drool. I then worked up the courage to finally ask to borrow a spinning wheel, and of course they said yes. So back at the co-op I couldn’t fix the loom, I need to look up the model, it’s the only one like it at the co-op, and I can’t get the treddling to harness tension right. Then I had lunch at my counterparts house, I love her family. And she seemed to be more approving and encouraging of my Tam today than other days. I told them I’d come back to fix the loom Saturday. I went home to bring my clothes in before the rain began to pour again, went for tea, and brought a lovely spinning wheel home! I’m working on getting carders and wool, and inshallah, by Sunday I should be spinning up a storm! I’m still dying to weave, but spinning’s my second choice. I came home, rested, made mac n cheese, and pretty much spent the last few hours cleaning, admiring and making my house my home. Today was small and manageable, and I needed the simple encounters I had with people to reassure my place.

Big thanks- once again the mail didn’t come for a few weeks, so when it did I had three packages to embarrassingly walk home with. I should stop listing off every single delight they were packed with, but I’ll say two were from my dad and stepmom, with enough valentines to give my whole staj, and enough powdered cheese packets to avoid Moroccan food for a month. And my mom sent me enough books for me to avoid studying and read happily for the same month (some she’s been trying to get me to read for years and I know she threw them in cuz when im desperate I will! Ooo, sneaky)

Im really sorry to anyone who hung around skype waiting for me last Friday, as I obviously never showed. Dang me for trying to make plans again! Shh, don’t tell, but maybe next Friday.