After the disappointing interview with my key subject a week ago, I think a part of me maybe finally gave up or gave in. I definitely felt a real sense of defeat set in and the next day, woke up with some kind of weird combination of vomitous virus, migraine and intestinal warfare. When that got better, I discovered I had the flu or something of the sort so I finally decided my body wanted to stay in bed for awhile. I got a bunch of funny cartoon movies in English, read a lot and stopped thinking altogether about my paper and research.
Maybe my body has been wanting to stay in bed since my back went out in March and I've been fighting it. I realized that I haven't really felt 100% well since early February when I was in Mali. It's been one thing after another with my health since then. Aside from working overtime against all the unfamiliar bugs and bacteria and different food and climate, my body is probably also worn down from the mental and emotional environment which has taken its toll as well.
As if that wasn't enough, my crazy little landlady (bless her senile little heart), tried to kick me out again last week when I went upstairs to pay her for another month. She's become maddeningly unpredictable and when I asked her for a reason why I couldn't stay, she came out with the same phoney line as last time, a mysterious brother coming into town... who then got mysteriously ill for one more month after Hassan spoke with her. But now I really DO have to leave this place by mid-June which is the worst time of the year to be homeless: the height of tourist season and a week before the internationally acclaimed Gnawa festival where the town fills up with thousands of people and everything has been booked for that week since Christmas.
So now I'm trying to decide what I want to do for June. I'm thinking about seeing a bit more of Morocco and letting the old lady have this apartment back. Maybe I'll come back just in time for the festival and stay with Hassan. I miiiight try to squeeze in one more interview before I leave but I'm trying to hold that idea lightly because these days, I've almost become superstitious that the harder I try at something, the less likely it is to happen.
And then after the festival, I'm probably leaving. I still have my sights on Turkey... but trying to balance a need for something new with the fact that I'm admittedly a bit worn down now, particularly from being sick and tired of being sick and tired. My poor immune system.
Still there's something in me that is so fed up with not feeling well here, as well as fed up with the research challenges, that even if it's not Essaouira's fault, a change of scenery might be enough to revive me from my state of "blah."
