🦟This Is Life (Yes, Even the Mosquitos)
I am currently in a small village outside Essaouira, Morocco - where the desert meets the sea, and modern conveniences are a rarity. My days start with a shot glass of coffee, but not just any coffee, a magical concoction of aromatic spices, followed by a simple breakfast of two hardboiled eggs, flatbread, and a daily dose of amlou (Morocco’s best invention in my opinion - almonds, honey, and argan oil blended into a watery paste that would bring a twinkle to the eyes of the most brutal souls. )
I always thought a more chilled life would bore me, but as it turns out, there is always something going on. No day is the same, but every day is sweet. Sometimes, a donkey wanders into the garden, and we must scare him away from the baby watermelons that are just starting to take shape. Yesterday, we walked one hour to fill our water jugs from a natural source by the sea and caught a magnificent sunset. On the way back, it started to get dark, and a blanket of stars filled the night sky. A few minutes before we would have arrived home, our forearms at the brink of exhaustion from lugging the splashing jugs, we got caught in a Moroccan traffic jam. An old sheepherder was atop a donkey, shepherding his flock of forty or so sheep back to their barn for the night. We had to slow our pace considerably, which was ok with me because, wow, the stars.
A year ago, I never would have guessed that I’d be posted up in a converted sheep barn built over a hundred years ago from rocks and sand found on the exact land, meandering through markets for fresh vegetables, spices, and fruits, befriending camels and stray dogs, and riding in the back of local taxis crammed packed with working-class Moroccans with toothy grins. Nor would I imagine I’d be one of the only women and the only nonveiled woman roaming said markets. “Bonjour, Madame,” a confident young boy yells out as I walk by his father’s fruit stand, his eyes wide with pride as I answer back, Bonjour.
How could I explain to the boy that I wasn’t French? And as of September 19th, when my German visa finally expired, I wasn’t German or European. After living abroad for so long, I did not feel American either. For now, I guess I will just be me as it seems to be working out just fine.
Yesterday, two neighbors dropped by our barn minutes apart, each gifting us a plate of couscous piled with steaming root vegetables and a humble piece of chicken. Alas, it was Friday, couscous day.
“This is life,” I announced emphatically to my boyfriend, a phrase we both say sporadically daily to express our delight with the unfolding of yet another remarkable happenstance. Sometimes, the phrase expressed gratitude that life must not be complicated to be good. And sometimes, we used it when life wasn’t going as planned, but it was still oddly amusing, like when a mosquito bit my face in the middle of the night, the only place I hadn’t doused with repellent.
The mosquitos, the dust, the trash, oh but the couscous-yielding neighbors, the amlou, the sunsets. This is life.
Even though this journey has sometimes been lonely, heartbreaking, and confusing, following my curiosities, animating my gratitude, and finding joy in simplicity has absolutely been a worthwhile endeavor for me (and also for the mosquitos who gladly feast upon my foreign blood nightly.)