Field Trip!

This past week, I traveled to Imilchil with Alex, one of my fellow trainees. We visited an Environment volunteer who is close to completing her 2 years of service. It was quite an adventure!

On Wednesday, we took an 8:30am souk bus to Errachidia...a souk bus means it stops at towns and villages and anywhere else someone flags it down. Needless to say, it was a long ride. All the seats were full and so was the aisle, so that when we went through a police checkpoint, everyone in the aisle had to squat down so the policemen couldn't see that the bus had more passengers than was legal. Luckily, we had boarded the bus at the beginning of the route, so we had a seat!
In Errachidia, we had the option of a bus or a taxi and we opted for the bus. I think we chose the wrong mode of transportation. It took us about 2 hours to go a distance that should take only 45 minutes! We stopped to pick up and drop off people almost every 5 minutes! When we finally arrived in Rich, it was 5pm and we did not have enough time to make it to Imilchil before dark. Note – due to the generally dangerous nature of travel in developing countries, PC forbids travel after dark when the dangers increase.

Our program manager, Mo, was visiting a couple volunteers on the road between Rich and Imilchil, so he met us at the bus station and took us to a hotel. For $5 we had a bed and a hot shower the next morning! A health volunteer named Jamie met us and took us for an amazing egg, potato and cheese sandwich. It was heavenly and less than $1.

On Thursday morning, Alex and I met Mo for coffee and then hopped into a PC 4x4 complete with a driver to head up the mountain. We stopped to visit an environment volunteer and then drove a bit further to have lunch at Jamie's apartment. She made a mean batch of spaghetti with garlic bread – a welcome dose of American food. Her site-mate is another environment volunteer Mo had to meet, so he also joined us for lunch and we heard a bit about his projects. He is creating a guide to local amphibians with pictures he's taken and local folklore about the animals. After lunch we finished the drive to Imilchil. Mo dropped us off with our hostess (Becca) and continued on his way back to Rabat.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were pretty uneventful. We met Becca's site-mate, who is a small business development volunteer and ate dinner. On Friday, we hiked to the closer of 2 nearby lakes. There is a legend about the lakes that is similar to the story of Romeo and Juliette. A young man from one Berber tribe fell in love with a woman from a different tribe, but were forbidden by their parents to marry. They cried so much that a lake formed from each of their tears. The lakes are named for the Berber words for bride (Tislit) and groom (Isli).
We attended a double wedding on Saturday night. It was for two brothers who were marrying women from a different village. We didn't arrive until about 9pm, but I don't think we missed too much. At dusk a big truck drove through town honking and playing loud music to pick up anyone who wanted a ride to the wedding. Once it arrived at the house, it is customary for the bride's male relatives to show the guests the clothing she will wear the following day. This supposedly includes all layers – panties, bra, etc.

By the time we arrived, the dancing was in full swing. The young men and women formed a circle, surrounded by the older guests. The people in the circle were close together and dancing, which mostly involved bouncing up and down and moving your arms/shoulders up and down in an animated, shrugging kind of way. The music was a drum and flute-like instrument. Inside the circle, female relatives of the groom were dancing. Surprisingly to me, most had their hair down – no scarf, not tied back, nothing, but loose, long hair. Sometimes they would dance and flail their hair about, which I'm told is a Berber tradition. This dancing lasted a couple hours and we alternately watched from the roof of the house and from outside the circle. After much encouragement, we joined in. I danced with a couple young girls who seemed thrilled I had joined them and just kept looking at me and smiling.

Meanwhile, the brides sit in a room in the house with their female relatives. They were dressed elaborately and had white veils covering their faces. It didn't sound like they got to participate in the festivities at all and they didn't look very happy. According to the PCV's the marriages were arranged, so the brides had probably only met their husbands a couple times in supervised situations. I would be terrified if I was in their situation.

Eventually, they herded everyone into the house to eat. They crammed a lot of people into the "living room." Everyone sat around the perimeter of the room and more people just kept squeezing in. They served 2 rounds of tea and then everyone sat and relaxed for a while. Someone started playing music again and a few men and women got up to dance. I'm told Imillchil is a bit of an anomaly – they are a bit freer in their male/female relationships. This was evidenced by the male-female coupling of the dancers and later as we ate dinner.
The young women next to me started talking to me and asking where we were from. I told her as much as I could with my limited vocabulary and Becca filled in the rest. She eyed Alex and asked about him. She wanted him to be her boyfriend, even though Becca told us she had a steady Moroccan boyfriend. She flirted with Alex for a while until it was time for dinner.
They brought in small tables and people gathered around those to eat dinner. Alex got stuck at a table by himself (no other Americans). Over the course of dinner, the young woman across from him started rubbing her foot against his leg and making eyes at him. He kept inching away and she kept inching closer. She was wearing a traditional head covering that indicated she was married, but apparently Alex was irresistible!

We left after dinner was finished – it was close to midnight and we had to leave early this morning. Becca told us the dancing would begin again and continue through the night. We could hear the music from her apartment when we went to bed.

The ride back to Ouarzazate was interesting. Instead of going the long way around, we took the Tinghir pass, which continues over the mountain and cuts a couple hours off the ride. To do so, we boarded a transit – kind of like a conversion van only larger – in Imilchil. Becca had warned us that if women or children got on we should watch out because they don't ride the transits very often so they tend to get motion sick. The ride was uneventful and we didn't experience any sick passengers.

When we got to the end of the transit route, we grabbed lunch and then walked to the taxi station to get a taxi to Ouarzazate. Along the way we found Omar who tried to convince us to stay at his hotel. We tried ignoring him, but he kept walking with us and we told him we didn't want a hotel. He asked where we were going and we told him that we were going to the taxi stand. He wanted to know where we were going, so we told him. Coincidently, his brother drives a cab and was going to Ouarzazate that very moment. Fearing Omar was taking advantage of us, we walked to the taxi station and asked the manager. He directed us to a taxi that was indeed driven by Omar's brother. Omar gave us an "I told you so" look.

We were passengers 4 and 5 so we had to wait for a 6th passenger. While we did so, Omar gave us his views on the Democratic race in the U.S. He's pro-Obama because "women can't be president." I asked why and he told us that when women are pregnant, they are mean to men. Clearly this is why Clinton couldn't cut it as president. Although we had explained to Omar that Alex and I were friends and co-workers, he kept insisting that we were romantically involved. He turned to Alex and said, "When your wife is pregnant" and pointed to me, "You'll know what I mean. She'll be awful to you." After insisting that we were not married, Omar turned his attention to me and told me how beautiful I was. He called me a gazelle, which he thought was a compliment, but I took as insulting.

Gazelle is the term men on the street call out when a foreign woman walks by. I'd gotten plenty of it over the past month in Ouarzazate. When I told him it was insulting, Omar explained that gazelles have wide hips and are curvy, so naturally I should be flattered. Then he told me that since I have big hips I should have no problem finding a husband in Morocco – they like women who can pop babies out easily. I was really annoyed with this guy because he wouldn't leave us alone. Every couple minutes he'd suggest that Alex and I buy out the last seat in the cab so we could go.

While that was tempting because it meant we were finished with Omar, PC had given us a limited travel budget and neither of us was inclined to dip into our own money. Plus, it felt like we would be feeding the image of Americans as wealthy visitors with unlimited money. So, we waited and we tried to avoid Omar by walking up and down the sidewalk, but he followed us.
I had a candy bar in my backpack and the top of it was sticking out of a side pocket. Omar spotted it and asked me to give it to him. I said no, it was mine and I wasn't sharing. He kept insisting that we owed him something and should give him the candy bar. We kept saying no and then he said we should all share it. We still said no. Moroccans are generally very open and share everything, but it felt weird that he was asking us to open the candy bar for him. If I had sat there and ate it all by myself, I guess he would have had an argument, but it was still wrapped and in my backpack.

While this was going on, Omar told me that I looked Chinese or maybe Japanese. I have no idea what he saw in me that looks like either of those heritages. I am average height and weight, and he previously mentioned my wide hips. Plus, I'm white as white can be. He tried to justify it by mentioning the hat I was wearing and by saying my eyes were oblong. I think this guy was on something because after this line of conversation ended, we were back on Obama vs. Clinton. We exhausted this topic, and he turned to me and told me I could find a man in the desert. Apparently, they like fair-skinned women, especially ones with freckles. This is more how I would describe myself, but Omar seems to have forgotten that he thought Alex and I are married. Just as I was reaching my "I can't take this anymore" moment, a 6th passenger arrived. I have never been so happy to get crammed into the back seat of a car with 3 other people.

The ride back to Ouarzazate was uneventful, but I think I'll always remember Omar. It was the most bizarre conversation I've had in some time.

My CBT Village

For safety and security reasons, PC asked us not to publish the names of our actual sites, but I can tell you that we are in a village a couple miles outside of K'laa Mgouna, which is northwest of Ouarzazate. I don't know the population of our village, but it is fairly small. I have a five minute walk to class and that is probably a 1/3 of the way across town. There is one hotel in the village, and they host small tour groups heading either into the mountains or out into the desert. They must bus people right to the hotel and then leave early in the morning because I haven't seen any of the visitors around town.

The village is on a small cliff above a river valley. The river is pretty small, but it looks like it gets much larger seasonally, perhaps when the snow melts in the mountains. The village has extensive fields in the valley, growing alfalfa, wheat, almonds and some other fruit trees – we've heard apple, pomegranate, and apricot. Each family has their own fields, which have been passed down over the generations.

The village recently received help from the government to install a water chateaus to treat the river water and then deliver it to the homes via indoor plumbing. Before that, women would have gathered water at the river and carried it home. The village also has an irrigation system that diverts water from the river to the fields and delivers the water using gravity. Both were installed in the past 5 years, which has changed the daily lives of our villagers. Pictures to follow, as soon as I can get them uploaded.

Two Imams

One of our assignments was to meet with the Imam (similar to a priest) of our village to discuss the role of religion in environmental conservation. Morocco is 99% Muslim, so religion and culture definitely overlap and feed into each other. Our school landlord arranged the visit for us and we were happy to find that not one, but two Imams came to meet us. They told us about a number of stories from the Koran as well as sayings of the Prophet that speak to the way animals and the environment should be treated. I was struck by how universal the themes are for being a good person. They asked us about Christianity and if there were similarities or differences, which we identified and talked about.

From our discussion, I learned that Muslim men are supposed to provide for their wives. Women typically go from living with their parents and families to living with their husband, many times still in the same family compound. It is interesting that in the rural areas of Morocco, and in our village, the women do the lions share of the work. They cook, clean, care for and feed the animals, care for and raise the children, tend the fields, gather the firewood, and often times they have a craft such as rug making or weaving. All of this happens during a day that begins at 6:30 am and goes until after dinner at 10pm. In our village, it was difficult to discern what the men do. They are home for meals, but I don't know where they are during the day. We saw only one man in the fields during our daily walks around town and my host father was at school the afternoon we met with the local Mokadem (kind of like the mayor).

Happy Birthday!

This year I happen to share a birthday with the Prophet Mohamed. The Islamic calendar is based on the lunar calendar, so the dates of their holy days shifts in relation to the Gregorian calendar. Anyways, this year we have the same birthday! We had the morning off from school so we could celebrate with our families. Hoda told us we would probably have a big breakfast and then go out visiting with our host families – she warned us to be prepared for lots of tea and cookies. Holidays are also when host families take an opportunity to dress their volunteers in traditional dress.

Imagine my surprise and mild disappointment when today was a regular day in my host home. We ate a normal breakfast and then I went down to the fields with two of my host sisters for a couple hours. We gathered brush for the fire from the edge of the river bed and then went to the fields to harvest what I think was alfalfa for the sheep. We also “chopped” up a couple saplings that had been drying and piled them into their sacks. I don't know how heavy the were by the time we were done, but they looked heavy and both women strapped them onto their backs and headed home. We even took the scenic route back, which must not have been comfortable with their heavy loads. Apparently, our village doesn't celebrate Ait Mulud the way the rest of Morocco does.

We were at school late today because we got caught up in a project and it was starting to get dark when we left. Women aren't really supposed to be out after dark by themselves, so two of the school family's boys walked me home. They are probably 7 to 12 years old and they took their job very seriously...walking a few steps ahead of me, but looking back regularly to make sure I was still there. Mind you I have a 5 minute walk home, so it was endearing to see how well they took care of me. They even said something to a couple of the village kids who usually ask me for stilos (pens) on my way to and from school. They didn't ask me for anything tonight.

I took my cell phone to school today so I could charge it up for the phone calls I was hoping to receive. I, of course, forgot it at school and had to go back to get it. I was having a hard time explaining this to my host mother, and finally just told her I wanted to go see Hoda. All I have to do is mention Hoda and everyone smiles. She is well-liked and respected in our community.

I felt silly because I'd just been escorted home and now I was walking back to school alone! I made it there and almost home uneventfully, until I was one house away from mine. An older woman I think I've met in the village before stopped and started talking to me. She was pointing to her features and telling me the Tamazight words eyes, mouth, etc. I joined the game by pointing to a few more and giving her the words I knew. What I thought was an innocent game soon turned interesting when she grabbed my chest – literally one in each hand – and gave me the Tamazight version of boob! Its l-bush. I was so surprised I couldn't help but laughing and I told her I had to get home before she could teach me anything else.

Birthdays aren't really celebrated in Morocco – mainly because many people don't know the exact date they were born and records aren't kept like they are in the states. I didn't tell my host family because I don't know how to tell them in Tamazight and I didn't want them to feel obligated to do something for me. I had mentioned it to my CBT group earlier in the week, but they didn't remember it, so I had a very uneventful birthday. All those calls I was expecting – I only received one call from my Mom!! I was very happy to hear from her! It was about 830pm and she thought she might be waking me up, but we hadn't even eaten dinner yet. We usually eat around 9 or 930 and then go almost straight to sleep.

Aicha

Our LCF lives with a family, too, and we use another room in the family's house for our classes. I was walking into their compound this morning and their daughter Aicha met me at the door. She asked me in English what my name was and gave me a purple and white plastic bracelet. Aicha absolutely made my day. She is 17, a beautiful young girl and she is probably waiting to be married. It was so touching that she took the time to learn a few words of English to try to talk to me. I have some jelly beans I thought I would give to my host family, but I think I'll give them to her.

The figs showed up on top of couscous tonight! They looked like a huge pile of olives, but were in fact the ikoran I'd helped pick. It was delicious. All of the food is served in a communal dish and everyone digs in – mostly with their hands. My family can scoop up the couscous and form it into a ball, using one hand, and then pop it into their mouths! Thankfully, there is always a spoon for me when we eat couscous.

My Host Family

We spent yesterday afternoon and evening with our host families. Mine has:

• Mohamed, father, who is some sort of laborer. I'm not sure if he works in the fields or has another job. I don't know enough Tamazight to ask yet.
• Khia, mother, who works in the home preparing meals and taking care of the baby.
• Mina, daughter, who is in her mid-20's and not yet married.
• Fatima, daughter, also in her mid-20's and not yet married.
• Zia, daughter-in-law, who is in her early 20's and married to the family's son. They have a baby, Ouaseem, who is 7 months old. I don't know where the adult son is, but I assume he works in one of the larger cities in Morocco. It is not uncommon for men to work in construction or labor jobs in the cities to support their families still living in the rural villages.
  

The women in my family spend their days preparing for and cleaning up after meals, tending the fields, where they grow wheat, alfalfa, and some fruit-bearing trees like almonds and olives, and tending to the animals. My family has a donkey, about 10 sheep, some goats and chickens.

I walked down to the fields with my host sisters yesterday and we gathered green figs (ikoran). They are small and green and not yet ripe, so I don't know what they do with them, but we spent about an hour picking all of the green ones off the tree. We left many purple ones on there, so I hope we get to eat those at some point, too! I love fresh figs.

The Not so Grand, Grand Taxi

A grand taxi sounds, well, grand doesn't it? In Morocco, grand taxis shuttle people between larger cities. The taxis are old yellow Mercedes 4-door sedan cars, which typically hold the driver, plus 6, yes 6, passengers. There are 4 passengers in the back seat and 2 in the front passenger seat! PC has recommended that when traveling by ourselves, female volunteers purchase two seats and sit in the front seat alone. Now I know why!

My CBT group, which includes Sarah, Liz, Arik and Dan, plus our LCF Hoda, piled ourselves into a grand taxi for the hour and a half drive from Ouarzazate to our village of Ait Khiar. I shared the front seat with Dan and it was an uncomfortable ride. There isn't really room for two people in the front seat, especially since it was a manual transmission car - Dan had to move whenever we shifted gears. Yikes! I will definitely be buying two seats if I'm traveling alone.

My CBT Village – near K'laa Mgouna

PC Staff showed us pictures of each of our CBT villages – all of them except mine are look lush and green. Ours looks like its in the middle of the desert, which is possible since we are close to the desert and Ouarzazate is the launching point for trips into the Sahara. I'm getting a bit nervous about our CBT visit – we'll be living with a host family and going to school every day. I've never lived with a host family before and I certainly don't have the language skills to do much other than introduce myself and identify a few items in the local Tamazight language. We leave at 9:30 on Sunday morning and spend the whole day with our families...I'm not sure what we'll do for that whole day!

A few pictures here. More to come... http://picasaweb.google.com/f/img/transparent_album_background.gif

Conquering the Turkish Toilet

You might be wondering what a Turkish toilet is, and I'll happily fill you in. Its a fancy hole in the ground! The Turkish toilet originally, and in some rural areas still is a covered a pit toilet. Today, many homes and buildings have sewage pipes that carry things away. I still haven't figured out where it goes, because no one seems to know about the sewer system. Anyways, your typical TT is a ceramic square on the floor, complete with places for your feet and a conveniently placed hole. You squat, do your business and then wash things down with water from a nearby bucket.

Our hotels so far have been furnished with western toilets, so we haven't worried about the TT too much. However, our host families will have TTs, so we needed a lesson in proper use. Our LCFs put together quite the lesson – they drew a TT on a big sheet of paper so we could practice squatting and they even prepared a game to get us excited about the TT! They tied strings around our waist and then hung a pen down from the string. Our goal was to squat and get the pen to drop into a water bottle – simulating the TT experience. We had several rounds and everyone got quite competitive! Someone has pictures, but I haven't gotten them yet.

Peace Corps Approach to Training

My training in Morocco is 11 weeks long and is a combination of traditional training on topics such as Peace Corps policies, how to treat our water and clean our veggies, and technical topics such as learning about the flora and fauna of Morocco. This training period is called stage.

We spent the first week in Rabat, and the training was for both the environment volunteers and health volunteers. After that first week, we traveled to Ouarzazate to begin our focused, sector-specific training. The health volunteers are staying at one hotel, while the environment volunteers are at another. While here, we are in “class” from 8am until 6pm. We have 4 sessions per day and each lasts 1.5 to 2 hours. 2 sessions are usually dedicated to language training, while the other 2 are dedicated to either technical or PC policy-related topics such as safety and security.

Our remaining time in training will be split between this kind of group-based training in Ouarzazate and Community Based Training (CBT). For CBT, the 26 environment trainees are split into 5 groups – each group has 5 or 6 trainees, plus a Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF). We have 3 groups learning Tamazight, 1 group learning Tashlheet and 1 group learning Darija. Each CBT group is assigned to a village that speaks the language the group is learning. We will spend the next week, Sunday – Sunday in our CBT villages each living with a host family and continuing our training. We'll go to class 8am -6pm and spend half of that time learning language and the other half working on projects and assignments similar to the types of activities we'll be doing over the next two years.

The Ups and Downs of Being a PC Trainee

Today was one of those days that started out great because we had hot water and the hotel had fixed the hole in our shower hose! So, I got a hot shower that actually had water pressure! YAY! It was kind of down hill from there as we got a couple immunizations including typhoid, which really knocked the wind out of my sails. The doctor was running behind schedule with the shots, so I was late to our next training session. When I asked a question, the staff person leading the session made a point of the fact that he'd already covered the topic and indirectly reprimanded me in front of the group. He didn't give me a chance to explain why I was late, so I felt like I was back in high school.

By the time lunch rolled around, I was feeling crummy from the typhoid shot and the reprimand, so I dug into the stockpile of cards my parents tucked into my backpack before I left. I'd been saving them for this kind of situation, when I needed a pick-me-up and some encouraging words from home. I eenie-meenie-minee-moed the stack and opened one up. Somehow, that card was exactly what I needed. After a good cry and a hug from my roommate, I was feeling better, but not great.

Our afternoon project was to interview a couple people about their day to day lives. We broke into same gender groups, so the guys could interview men and the female volunteers could interview women. My group talked to a couple women relaxing in the square outside our hotel. They were open and friendly and happily answered our questions about how they spend their time. We were heading back when a young woman crossed the square in our direction. We decided to take a few more minutes to interview her. She turned out to be a high school student on her way back to class. She gladly told us about her typical day and when she learned we were PC volunteers, welcomed us to Morocco and wished us the best in our endeavors. When we said goodbye, she went around the group and gave us each one of the traditional greetings, which includes a gentle touching of hands (think weak girlie handshake) and then a cheek to cheek kiss (similar to the stereotypical French greeting) on both cheeks. There was something so simple and human in her gesture that immediately lifted my spirits.

It is the small moments like this one that balance the more challenging times.

Tamazeight

After much anticipation, we found out which language we'll be learning! Morocco has an abudance of languages - Moroccan Arabic, French, and 3 Berber dialects. Moroccan Arabic and French are spoken mainly in the cities and for conducting business. The Berber dialects are spoken in the rural Atlas and Rif Mountain areas and for that reason a majority of PC volunteers learn one of the Berber dialects. The prime language among PC trainees is Moroccan Arabic, as it can be a jumping off point to learn classic Arabic and is also a great language to know, but only 5 people are learning that language. I'll be learning Tamazeight, which is spoken in the Middle and High Atlas Mountians!

In my interview with the Environmental Program Director, I also learned that I'll likely be working with a women's association or working to organize one! It sounds like an exciting and challenging assignment as I'll need to establish relationships the women in the village as well as earn the trust of the men. We've learned a bit about the PC's approach to development and it is all about capacity building. I knew I liked the PC for a reason - our assignment is to build the human capacity in our village through education, training and support to allow the village to help itself long after we leave. What could be better?

The Atlas Mountains

On Friday, we drove from Rabat to Ouarazazate. The drive was long, but beautiful! We arrived in Marrakesh in time for a late lunch at a "rest stop." After a couple days of "European" food at the hotel in Rabat, we had our first taste of more authentic Moroccan cuisine. We ordered a couple tagines and after everyone raved about the meat, I gave it a try! I still don't like it, but at least I know I can eat it if offered by my host family.

The drive from Marrakesh to Ouarazazate was absolutely stunning. We drove through the mountains, on a relatively new highway. It was two lanes and at times had hairpin turns and twists reminding me of Highway 1 going through Big Sur. There were few guard rails and our bus seemed to barrel around the turns at top speed! The mountains themselves were stunning with snow-capped tops, but the villages really completed the picture. Some were rich jewel green with terraced fields and trees while others were clay red with little greenery. The villages are literally built into the sides of the mountains and almost blend in with the rocks. One of those lush green villages is a successful former PC site, which leads me to believe the sites we'll be assigned to will be less green.

Ouarzazate is a smaller town and our hotel is on the town square in walking distance to the souk, kasbah and the touristy part of town. The town has a booming film industry and they are currently filming an American film somewhere outside the city. Several well known films were made here, but at the moment I can't think of any.

We are here for a week and then we go to our host families and begin our community based training. There will be five or six of us in a village and we will go to classes all day together. Our week in Ouarzazate will be filled with language training, introductions to the environmental challenges in Morocco as well as lots of information on development and the PC process.

Ana Mashee Tourist - I am not a tourist

It's been a busy couple days – we arrived on time at 7:40 am on Tuesday, March 4th. We had an hour and a half bus ride from Casablanca to Rabat. The buses stopped at the PC offices so we could meet the staff and see the offices. They have a beautiful complex with a large lawn/garden where we had mint tea and pastries and a brief time to meet the staff and poke around the offices. The afternoon was filled with briefings about PC Morocco and more specific introductions to staff.

We had several Official meetings with the state department's regional safety officer and the US ambassador to Morocco. We also had our first health briefing on the causes, symptoms and treatment of diarrhea – it was after lunch.

Before sending us out to explore Rabat, staff taught us a few key phrases to use while we were out. My favorite is 'Ana mashee tourist' - meaning I am not a tourist. I don't think any of us would have known is someone was asking if we were a tourist, but its an easy one to pull out when someone stops you on the street.