The past weekend was a holiday weekend: youth day/King’s birthday, so a few other volunteers came to visit our site and then we went through Essaouira up the coast to Safi. We spent the day in Essaouira as we usually do, an hour or two at the post office to pick up mail, then hanging out and having a good dinner. We decided to try the fish market (see photo), where all the catches are brought and then cooked to order or taken home as you wish. We had shrimp, two types of snapper and sole grilled and it was really delicious (total for both of us was about 12 US dollars.) After dinner we caught the bus to Safi, a coastal town about 2 hours north of Essaouria. We got in pretty late, found a cheap hotel and feel asleep for the night. Safi is known for it’s pottery and sardines. We didn’t try any sardines but we did go to the pottery souk (see picture) and had a good time looking around. We also got to see the workshops where there were men (and a few women) working to produce the pottery you see in the picture. We saw each stage beginning from raw clay to the pottery wheel to a gigantic kilns to the carvers, the glazers and finally the painters. After our tour we went to the beach which was completely full of families and kids swimming, playing soccer and lounging under umbrellas. We saw very few foreign tourists in Safi, which was a bit surprising because of the beauty of it. Also saw the snake psammophus schokari and the toad Bufo viridis

In TashelHit, Agadir means wall. The city of Agadir doesn’t have a wall, it fell down along with everything else in a huge earthquake in 1960. Although it doesn’t have a wall, Agadir is a great city that we visited last weekend along with about 10 other PCVs. The temperature is beautiful, the beach is fun, and it has all the comforts of a big a city, such as big supermarkets, McDonalds, a skate park, and an English pub (good shepherd’s pie but pitiful beer selection – an unfortunate ailment of the entire country it seems).
Today, Carrie completed our first activity in the community. In order to spread awareness of the importance of hand washing and dental hygiene, she recruited several young girls to help paint pictures on the wall of the local clinic. These pictures are colorful, simple, and have a clear message that literate and illiterate people alike can understand. Nshalla, this is just the beginning.
So what has Ben been doing? Aside from salmonella, things

are pretty slow. I spend a lot of time sitting at one of the local hardware stores talking about anything from chameleons (which are NOT poisonous despite what the taxi driver says) to rich American women (lots of people want them, but how to get them to come here?).
Yesterday, a nearby town hosted a moussem (basically a small fair with some commerce and music). Lots of men, women, and children showed up to see some traditional Berber musical performers. I was impressed at the instrumental skill although I couldn’t understand the words. This town has something unique: year round surface water that flows from a series of springs which have been modified into an irrigation system called a qatara. In a qatara, water is diverted via underground canals

to several exurgences where the water is used for a swimming hole, a watering hole, a tap to get drinking water, and irrigation canals for olive trees. There was also an abundance of hydrobiid snails (undescribed species perhaps?) in the cool water. This water was especially unusual because it emerged on the top of a big, arid plateau.

• I guess our big news is being moved into our apartment. It’s a weird feeling after spending the past 5 months in hotels and with families. Now we’re cooking, cleaning and have freedom to do what we want when we want. The past five months have been good and we love our host family, but there’s a freedom now that I haven’t felt for a while and it feels good. We working on furnishings and finding hiding spots for all of our stuff because we don’t really have much of a ‘storage’ area. Although our apartment now is bigger than DC and we have less stuff so it shouldn’t be an issue. We spent the weekend in another volunteer’s site with 5 other volunteers. We had pizza, lasagna, brownies, cake…it was amazing (oh and we had fun hanging out with friends too!) We slept on the roof last night under the stars. Because of the lower pollution and less light at night the stars are really visable and the milky way is clear.
  Unfortunately, the midwives are on vacation today and the women that came, not knowing, weren’t able to get vaccinations for their babies. It also means that I don’t have a lot to do today. Although, I’m contemplating trying to make flour tortillas…oh, the things you take for granted in the US!
  There’s a latrine/cistern project in a school about 30 kms away about to get started, so we’ll try to go and help out with that later this week. These are pictures from Essaouira.