Site Announcements!

The much anticipated announcement of our final sites took place this morning. Towards the end of breakfast, Aicha posted a list on the bulletin board, but didn't tell anyone it was there. I saw her walk away and went to see what she had posted. I saw that I was in Khenifra province with 4 other volunteers. They had told us that they would be placing a team in Khenifra, and now I knew I was on it! Then, I saw that my roommate, Tori, was also on the team. I looked around the room and didn't see her. I was so excited, I ran upstairs and threw open the door to our room. Tori was brushing her teeth and I breathlessly told her we were going to Khenifra together. We jumped up and down and hugged each other before running back downstairs to get more information.

We each received a packet of information about our future homes information about our host families, the village, previous PC activities, etc. I'm going to be near Khenifra which is just south of Fes and Meknes. They are placing a total of 5 volunteers from my environment group in the area and we'll all be within 2 hours of each other. In addition to working in our villages, we'll be working as a team to extend environmental education in the province. Not sure what that will entail, but it means we get to meet every two weeks in Khenifra to work together.
My village, SYO, has 8500 people, is about 60k from Khenifra and about 13k from EEK which is a town larger than mine, but not as big as Khenifra. EEK has a cyber cafe, which means I should be able to access email about once a week.

The other volunteers on the K-5 team are Elizabeth, Jake, Sarah and Tori. All five of us are new sites, which means the villages haven't had PC volunteers before. We will be working with a project called MEDA. It is a joint project funded by the European Union and the Moroccan government. I don't know much more than that, but I'll let you know when I have more information! We leave tomorrow to visit our sites for a week.

Final Project

This was the last day of our 3rd week at CBT. We had kept hearing about a Water Association in the village, but people kept telling us it didn't exist. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that Arik's host brother is the president of the well-functioning association! Our final project for training was to work with a local association to plan and carry-out a small project similar to something we will be doing when we get to our final sites. We'd been struggling to come up with something, given our lack of access to the school and and our supposedly defunct association.
We met with the association yesterday and decided to do a tree planting. Our main goal was to do something that would have a lasting impact on the community and we had kicked around a few ideas, but settled on the tree planting before we met with the association. They offered it up as an idea and we quickly started hammering out the details. By the end of our marathon meeting (it was at least 2.5 hours long) we had a plan.

The association would develop a list of families in the community and decide, based on need, how many trees each family would receive. We decided that each family would get at least 2 and as many as 5 trees. The association members also agreed to charge a small fee 3Dh per tree which the association would use to either purchase additional trees or do something else to benefit the community. We pushed for this "community contribution" because we wanted the community members to be vested in the success of their trees. We figured if we just handed them out, the trees might not receive the proper care they require. We were in charge of getting the trees.
PC gives us a budget of up to 2000Dh for our project and we planned to put all of that into purchasing trees. We would be paying about 15Dh per tree, so the sale was a good deal for the families in our village. We'll be gone from our CBT village for the next two weeks, so we have our fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan.

Earth Day

We had a mini Earth Day celebration in our CBT village today. We haven't been able to get access to the school in town because the mudir (director) was being uncooperative. The first week we were in CBT, we went to the school with a letter from the Ministry of Education that sanctioned PC and allowed us access to the schools. The mudir told us that since it wasn't from his immediate boss, he could not allow us to enter the school, speak to any teachers, or otherwise do anything on school grounds. He really turned me off – it felt like he was on a power trip and relishing the fact that he could turn us down and we really couldn't do anything about it. Never mind the fact that the letter came from his boss' boss.

One of our projects for PC was to plan a small Earth Day project, ideally involving environmental education at the school. We didn't have the luxury of the school, so we organized an informal trash pick-up. We spread the word by telling the boys from the family where we held class and the kids in our host families. This morning at the designated time and place, we were pleased to find about 25 boys waiting for us.

Each of us had prepared a short presentation in Tamazight, but assumed Hoda would have to "translate" for us. I.e. repeat everything we just said with the correct inflection, intonation, etc. but we were pleasantly surprised when the boys not only listened, but for the most part understood what we were trying to say. Dan talked about PC and what we do generally, Liz talked about Earth Day, and Sarah talked about why trash is a problem. We had prepared a simple game – basically whoever gathered the most trash won. I explained the rules and before I could tell them that we had prizes, the boys were running in all directions.

They collected quite a bit of trash, which we had planned to haul back to Ouarzazate. Hoda talked us into burning it, with the simple argument that Ouarzazate also burns its trash. While not an ideal environmental solution, it did eliminate the trash we had gathered. The fire even fueled the boys to gather more trash from the area adjacent to where we burned the trash.
Overall, we were happy with the outcome. We were a bit disappointed that no girls showed up, but we kind of expected that. We had rarely seen girls outside their homes, except when accompanying their mothers or older sisters to the fields to work or walking to and from school. Had we been able to use the school, we could have had a broader audience, including the girls.
Trash is one of the few environmental problems we identified in our CBT village and it is a common problem throughout Morocco. Until relatively recently, almost all "trash" was recycled or reused in some way. For example, old sweaters and other knit clothes are unraveled and the yarn used to make rugs; food scraps are fed to the animals (I delightfully discovered that sheep eat just about anything!), containers are used again and again to hold a variety of things. Most families generated very little, if any, trash. The advent of plastic bags, individually wrapped food, and packaged medicine has contributed to the pile-up of trash around the country.

Unfortunately, most cities and villages lack the infrastructure to deal with trash.
Moroccans, generally, don't have the "don't litter" value that many Americans have. People simply throw things out the door or drop them as they walk. Walking through our village you'll see all sorts of random trash – shoes, clothes, broken dishes, empty bubble packages (like the ones used for cold medicine), candy wrappers, etc. The "reuse and recycle" value continues to thrive. Items that can be recycled and reused are. For example, my host sisters make decorative trees out of plastic bottles, rugs are still made of old sweaters and the animals still get the food scraps.

Our Earth Day trash pick up addressed only a small portion of this problem, but we hope that we got the kids thinking about trash and what they can do to prevent it.

Phone call!

My friend Mary called me today! It was awesome to hear from her and to talk to someone back home. I've talked to my parents and sister pretty regularly, but haven't talked to any of my friends yet. It was wonderful to hear her voice.

We had a party for all of our host families' this evening. Malika, a PC staff person came out for the afternoon and helped translate their questions and our responses. It was a festive evening with all of the women getting dressed up. My host sisters and host mom were dressed to impress, they were all wearing perfume and someone even had high heels on! We talked about all kinds of things, ranging from our backgrounds, to the U.S. traditions on dating and marriage!
It was great to be able to communicate better with our host families. My host father told us that they loving having us and want us to feel like a member of the family. He emphasized that they want to keep in touch with us even after we leave. My host mom said that when they laugh, its not at us, but hopefully with us. I've felt like we were laughing together at my verbal clumsiness and lack of knowledge of how things work in a Moroccan household, so it was nice to hear that they feel the same way.

Dinner Time

I get home from school between 6 and 7pm and the family has tea. This usually includes drinking at least two cups of tea, sometimes three and eating bread with either olive oil, honey, or jam. Sometimes we eat a mini-dinner or something sweet like crepes instead of bread. Around 8:30 or 9pm we have more tea and then eat dinner. Dinner is a communal meal with everyone sitting around a small table on the floor. Most meals are eaten with your hands although some require a utensil. Typical dishes in my house include:

l Couscous with the green figs (ikoran), or sometimes there are lots of vegetables on top. My family mashes some vegetables and couscous together and then rolls it into little balls that they pop into their mouths. I have yet to master this skill, so thankfully, they give me a spoon to eat with.
l Tagines which consist of meat and vegetables (usually carrots, potatoes, fava beans, turnips and sometimes peas) and are eaten using bread to scoop up the vegetables. The meat is saved until the end of the meal and divided among those eating the meal. This is a great tradition for me, the vegetarian, because I can eat the veggies without worrying about the meat. My family still offers it to me, but they seem to be over the initial shock that I don't eat it.
l Sharia is like spaghetti, but the noodles are shorter. We eat a seemingly huge bowl, but by the end of the meal it is usually gone and I never feel grossly full. It is boiled noodles with either melted butter or drizzled with olive oil. My host mom likes olive oil and always adds more, usually to the chagrin of my host sister Mina.
l I don't know if it has a name, but we also eat rice prepared just like the sharia. They are both very comforting meals.

My host family eats fruit for dessert after dinner each night. For the past couple weeks, we usually split two oranges between the six of us. The first night I was there, they cut the un-peeled oranges into quarters. Every member of my family expertly removed the peel and ate their section of orange with ease. I made an absolute mess of myself with orange juice dripping down my chin and all over my hands and lap. I couldn't help but laugh and was quickly handed the fota (kitchen towel used as a communal napkin) to clean up with. Since then, my host dad (he's in charge of cutting the oranges) either peels the whole orange and breaks up the sections or, if he simply quarters the orange, he peels my quarter before handing it to me. It is quite endearing because he is a bit intimidating, but I think it is his way of looking after me.

Mail Call

I finally got mail! It's rough to know that things are on their way, but may take a while to get here. The good news is that the letter and package my parents sent finally arrived. It was just in time, too. We leave for our CBT village tomorrow and we'll be there until next Saturday. I have two Newsweeks to read! This is fantastic because I have no idea what is happening in the world...I'll be a few weeks behind, but still I'll have a clue about US current events.

I'm a bit behind with my blogging - you aren't imagining things. I posted a bunch yesterday and post-dated them. I'll have more for the past two weeks when I get back from my CBT village. We went on a field trip to visit a "real" volunteer last week and I have some adventures from that trip to write about. I'm sure I'll have a few more as a result of the upcoming week with my host family. If you have questions about Morocco, my experiences, etc, drop me an email and I'll try to answer them on my blog if possible. I'm still working on pictures - I need to find an internet cafe with a faster connection or something. None of the photo management sites work here - they just crash Internet Explorer. I've tried Picasa and Kodak Gallery because I have accounts there. If you have another suggestion, drop me an email!

It's dinner time here and if you get there late, all the good food is gone. The food at homestay has been varied and interesting, so I need to get a good meal in tonight, while I'm in Ouarzazate, before I go back to homestay.

Gender and Development Council

I am the 2008 Environment Stage's representative for the Gender and Development (GAD) Council! Worldwide, Peace Corps is committed to ensuring that everyone - women, children and men - are included in the development process. The GAD Council in Morocco works toward this goal and works to ensure that gender issues and activities are incorporated into community projects. I think all PC countries have a similar committee. I am very excited about this role and especially look forward to helping advance the opportunities for women and children in Morocco.

I knew I was interested in representing my Stage on one of the several PCV committees, but wasn't sure where I would be most effective. Over the first two weeks living with my host family, I'd realized that my host sisters were "waiting to be married." Because my village is more conservative and at the lower end of the economic ladder, they stopped attending school after the equivalent of U.S. elementary school. It is heart-breaking to think that the rest of their days will be spent much the same as they are today – working in the fields, tending house, making handicrafts, and maybe someday caring for their husband and children. That realization fueled my interest in serving on the GAD Council.

It also forced me to reflect on how lucky I am. I chose to quit my well-paying, professionally satisfying job in downtown Chicago to move across the ocean to live in a country I knew very little about. I also had many other choices besides PC, for example a new job, perhaps in a new city, graduate school, or any number of other service programs to choose from. I don't think my host sisters consider options other than marriage and a family. Many people have talked about the sacrifices I am making, but I see it as a privilege. Very few people I've met in Morocco can fathom, nor afford to do something like this. I have my family supporting me – without their help, both emotional and physical, I couldn't do this. I have a fantastic group of friends who anxiously await my emails an blog postings and send me fantastic letters and care packages.
I am excited about this opportunity. It will also give me a chance to get to know PC staff better, meet volunteers from the other sectors, and travel to Rabat 3 times per year for our meetings. I'll also have a reason to keep in touch with everyone in my training group!