Becky in Morocco

Moroccan receives $1 million Opus Prize

2009-11-07T01:39:00.000-08:00

I had a rough week last week and was getting down on Morocco. However, this story helped renew my faith in the people here. Education and particularly women's education is one of the greatest challenges facing Morocco. Illiteracy rates among rural women reach 80%!

Excerpted from News Release:
Aïcha Ech Channa, founder and president of a Casablanca, Morocco, organization that provides services to unmarried women with children, is the winner of the $1 million 2009 Opus Prize.

The University of St. Thomas and the Opus Prize Foundation of Minnetonka conferred the award Wednesday night at an event in Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. The other two finalists – Sister Valeriana García-Martín of Bogotá, Colombia, and Father Hans Stapel of Guaratinguetá, Brazil – each received $100,000 awards.

The honorees, who will use the award money from the Opus Prize Foundation to further their faith-based humanitarian efforts, were recognized as unsung heroes creatively transforming lives through a commitment to service and social entrepreneurship.

“The Opus Prize recognizes individuals whose work and story can inspire us to tackle the world’s most deeply rooted problems,” said Amy Sunderland, executive director of Opus Prize Foundation. “They demonstrate what faith, will and vision can do to make our world a better place. They show us change is possible.”

While the Opus Prize Foundation has worked in partnership with Catholic universities since 2004 to make the annual award, the recipient may have roots in any faith.

Aïcha Ech Channa of Casablanca, Morocco
Aïcha Ech Channa
Ech Channa, 68, is something of an icon in Morocco when it comes to human and civil rights for single mothers and their children. During the 1980s she worked in the Moroccan Ministry of Social Affairs where she was confronted daily by the ordeals of single mothers.

She recalled an afternoon in a social worker’s office where a single mother was giving up her baby for adoption. “This mom was breastfeeding her baby, which means she never wanted to abandon it. And at the moment when she forcibly took away her breast from the baby’s mouth, the milk sprayed all over the baby’s face and the baby cried. This cry was in my head. And that night I did not sleep. I swore to do something.”

In 1985, Ech Channa founded the Association Solidarité Féminine in Casablanca to provide services for single women and their children. She started in a basement and now operates three day-care centers and training schools, two restaurants, four kiosks and a hammam (fitness center and spa).

More than 50 women receive training every year in literacy, human rights, cooking, baking, sewing, fitness services and accounting. Participants also receive daily child care and medical treatments in addition to social, psychological and legal support and counseling for better reintegration in their society.

Ech Channa, a Muslim, says she gains inspiration from a sense of justice rooted in the value systems of all religions.“I want Solidarité Féminine to be a model that provides an example for the respect of human rights, economic development and confidence in humanism,” she says. “This is a model that can be carried everywhere in the world.”

Her organization was officially recognized in 2002 by the government as a charitable organization and has received support from Moroccan King Mohammed VI.

A Lovely Day in Khenifra

2009-02-25T01:19:00.000-08:00

I got up early today and rode the transit from my village to Khenifra. My friend Miriam was waiting for me at the bus station in Khenifra. She used to live in my village but her family recently moved to Khenifra, so we had made plans to spend the morning together. She loves my pumpkin bread, so I had brought some with me and we went to a cafe to have coffee and catch up with each other. Miriam is 16 and has had a pretty rough life. Her father died a couple years ago leaving the family in a tough spot financially. Miriam is the youngest of a bunch of children and only her and an older sister are left at home; all of the other siblings have married, but none of them are helping to support their mother and sisters still at home. They moved to Khenifra so Miriam and her sister could work to support themselves and their mother. This meant that Miriam had to quit school, which broke my heart. She was one of my most enthusiastic English students and was visibly upset when she told me she had to quit school. I was a bit pessimistic about their move – many young women looking for work often end up in prostitution. Thankfully, both Miriam and her sister are working in cafes.

Today, I had a glimmer of what it must be like to be a parent. The last time I saw her, Miriam had told me about her new boyfriend, who is in his early 20's. He sounded like a nice enough guy, but men are men no matter what country you are in and I couldn't help but wonder what his motives were. While we had coffee, Miriam told me that she broke up with him because he wanted to sleep with her! Oh how my heart swelled. I have her a huge hug and tried to explain how proud I was of her. My Tamazight is not that good, so I told her in English. I'm not sure she fully understood, but I did my best to explain. Miriam went on to tell me that she was done with boyfriends for a while because all they do is cause trouble.

A little background on male-female relationships in Morocco: they aren't supposed to exist outside of marriage. While Morocco isn't nearly as strict as other Muslim countries, like Iran, sex before marriage is still not accepted. Well, its not accepted for women. A women who is discovered to be “making relations with a man” must either marry the man or face the consequences which include being shunned by your family and being essentially a “marked” woman. Then she must support herself, which often means turning to prostitution. Its a little easier for the man, since its culturally acceptable for men to have sex before marriage. Now I know you are thinking, who can the man have sex with if there are all these consequences for the women. Well, this is why prostitution is lucrative.

A side-story on this issue. I recently ran into a young Moroccan women who was friends with a previous PC volunteer. She lives in EEK and I hadn't seen her in a while. Turns out, she was visiting her new boyfriend and her old boyfriend saw them together. He called the gendarmes (the local police) and sent them to “catch” her and her new boyfriend together. The gendarmes found them alone (not necessarily in a compromising position, simply alone together), which resulted in a very quick wedding. Her choice was to marry this young man she barely knew or be turned out of her family's home. Just like that, her life changed forever. She is 19 years old, speaks English fairly well and had plans to attend University in the fall. Gone; all of that is gone. Now she lives with his family in a small village near mine and spends her days tending the house.

All of this was to frame Miriam's story. She is a bright, energetic young woman who wants to be a police woman! I would hate to see her dreams shattered and for her to start married life at 16. I was thrilled beyond words to learn that she had stood up for herself and not succumbed to pressure from her boyfriend.

We had a rather busy day together. We went to the Oued Srou Association, which led the SIDA workshop, to pick up more brochures for the event in my village. While we were there, another PC volunteer from Midelt showed up with a couple men from an association there. They are planning a month of SIDA-related activities, so we all met with Khadija together.

Miriam and I met another volunteer, Linda, for lunch. Linda has an Obama action figure, so we took pictures with Obama and our tagine. Miriam was a good sport through all of this because Linda and I spoke English as we caught up with each other. Tory met us and we went to tutoring. Miriam helped with our tutoring session by asking questions and answering our questions.

It was after 4 when we got to the bus station and the transit was already there. Miriam and I said goodbye and she made me promise to visit her again soon.

A Productive PC Day

2009-02-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

I was still recovering from the weekend and a late night last night, so I slept in until 9:45 this morning. Giving me enough time to throw some clothes on and rush out the door to meet Said and Ali at 10am to meet the director of the high school. It was a brief meeting and my role was mainly to lend them credibility. The director and teachers agreed to allow us time this Saturday afternoon for an information session about SIDA. Whew! They didn't seem to need any convincing, but this Saturday will be here before I know it. I made plans to meet Said and Ali later in the day to make a game plan and went home to eat breakfast and do some laundry. The sun was out, so I had to take advantage of it!

In the afternoon I met the women from the weaving cooperative. They did some serious networking over the weekend at the workshop – they learned about several craft fairs and festivals, picked up some great ideas from Fatiha and were talking about creating a shop close to the main road where they could be more visible to tourist traffic. Right now they mainly work out of their homes, if they work at all. They do own a small house but it is tucked behind another house and not easily accessible to the main road, plus its very dark so its not very conducive to weaving. There was some heated discussions going on as they made plans to purchase supplies to start weaving together. I suspect there are some trust issues and I want to talk to Zinb about doing some small seminars or tea talks about business skills and team work activities to try to build up their trust. They made plans to meet on Friday to hand roll couscous to sell at an upcoming fair.

The meeting was great because we hung out on the roof of the house they own. It was a beautiful day and women trickled in in the half hour after the meeting was supposed to start. Some had babies strapped to their backs, while others were had young children in tow. Everyone was very animated and opinionated. Sadia the young woman I mistakenly thought was shy and soft-spoken kept interrupting Zinb as she was talking. Zinb would quickly tell her to be quiet, please and she would pipe down for a few minutes before jumping right back into things. All of the ruffle feathers were smoothed by the end of the meeting and we all left on a good note.

I went over to Zinb's house for tea after the meeting. I had made pumpkin bread, also known as muskoota (cake) in my village. Most women make something like a tea bread in bundt pans and I don't think I've ever had the same cake twice. Since recipes are passed down from mother to daughter and nothing is written down, every woman's cake is a little different. None of them ever put any vegetables like zucchini, carrots, or pumpkin in their muskoota, although sometimes its flavored with yogurt or shredded coconut. I make what Americans know as zucchini/pumpkin/banana bread with chocolate chips and call it muskoota. It usually goes over very well and today was no different. The women loved it and wanted to know why mine had a nice golden brown color. My secret is whole wheat flour I bought in Meknes. It gives everything a heartier texture and that nice golden color. Unless you buy wheat kernels or grow wheat and grind your own flour, the only kind available in stores is bleached white flour.

We had a lovely tea time and I meet Zinb's family. She has twin brothers, who I haven't met, but she keeps trying to set me up with one of them. I always laugh and deflect her overtures by saying I don't know him (this doesn't usually work because arranged marriages are still fairly common) and she always tells me that he looks just like her. What more could I need to know?!

I had to leave tea early to go teach my English class. Zinb tried to give me bread before I left, but I declined with a promise to come to her if I ever wanted bread. Meals and snacks are not complete without bread and the fact that I don't eat bread all the time still miffs people. In English class, we worked on time and I was amazed at how quick they were with picking up the quarter past or quarter to an hour. They recently learned this in their regular English class in school, but I was still surprised at how fast they were telling time.

I went straight from English class to the women's literacy class. These women amaze me too. Most did not know how to write numbers or recognize numbers when we started and they are already counting in the thousands. We are also learning the Arabic alphabet – the main reason I joined the class. We are starting to learn words, but I don't usually follow enough of what is happening to pick up the words. Once I'm comfortable with the alphabet and feel confident enough with my Tamazight, I'll start studying Arabic. For now though, I'm focusing on improving my Tamazight and practicing the Arabic alphabet by writing new Tamazight words with it instead of the English alphabet. Literacy class also gives me face time with a group of women and hopefully, I can plan some tea talks or other events with the women from class.

Just as I was starting to make dinner, Said rang my doorbell to see if I could come to the internet cafe with him to find additional information and pictures to use for the SIDA information session. I needed a few minutes to eat something and gather my things together so I told him I would meet him there. He and Ali were crowded around a computer google-ing to try to find the information they were looking for. I had some pamphlets with a website in Arabic, which proved useful. Another English-speaking young man from the Sisterhood was there helping an older man video chat with someone. He asked me why I didn't invite him to the workshop...I wanted to tell him because I didn't know him, because he always asks me to help him with his English, but never shows up to class and because he strikes me as kind of a jerk - not good qualities for someone I wanted to do peer education about a sensitive subject. Instead, I told him there were only a certain number of slots for each village and I was sorry he didn't get to go. This made me realize how careful I need to be about singling people out for opportunities.

Said and Ali found some good information (I hope – its all in Arabic) and I agreed to buy red ribbon and print out some documents for them while I'm in Khenifra for tutoring on Wednesday. PC had sent me a bunch of pamphlets for World Aids Day, which we'll use at the high school. I was counting them, in English in my head, and I noticed that Said was counting along with me in Arabic. This struck me as rather funny and I told him we should switch – I'll count in Arabic and he can count in English to help us with our language.

They walked me home and I was kind of hoping one of them would invite me over for dinner since it was 9pm and none of us had eaten dinner. No such luck, Said mentioned hoping there was still dinner left for him, so maybe we were past dinner time and they didn't want to invite me over to nothing. I ate popcorn with curry powder (yum! you should try it) instead.

Building Friendships

2009-02-23T18:31:00.001-08:00

Today was souk in EEK, but I slept in and missed the last taxi out of my village, so I had to walk part of the way to the main road before getting a ride. I met up with Michael, the new PC volunteer there and we did our souk shopping together. We swung by the office briefly so I could meet one of the new employees at the project. It was pretty quiet in the office so we didn't stay long. I got back home in time to enjoy a snack on my roof before it was time to go to Arabic class. Zinb, one of the women who went to the workshop was there and we chatted for a bit. I learned that she is going to be the director of the new NEDI!!! I've been waiting for it to open for months and finally I know who is going to be in charge. I'm so excited because she came to the workshop, so she met some people who are doing great work at other NEDI's and hopefully we can replicate some of that here. We made plans to meet tomorrow for tea and to talk about the NEDI. She is also the president of the women's weaving cooperative that is trying to get going again, so she's a busy woman.

Just as I was making dinner, Said called to invite me to dinner with his family. I went over and spent a wonderful evening with him and his family. His father remembered me! He is old and doesn't hear very well, so sometimes I can't tell if he knows me or not, but today he greeted me with a strong hand shake and a solid hello. I've never seen him without a hat, but today he wasn't wearing one and you could see his permanent tan line. His head is bald and bright white, but his face is tanned and wizened.

Said and I made plans to talk to the director of the college (high school) to see if we can do a SIDA training for the students. We practiced his English and then my Tamazight. Over the weekend we had agreed to meet everyday to practice our languages together, so tonight was our first opportunity. After dinner, we drank tea and chatted. Before dinner, his mom had asked if I wanted tea after dinner and I had asked Said what they would do if I wasn't here. I hate to be a burden on people and I didn't want them to make tea just because I was there, but I don't know how to say that in Tamazight. Said translated and his mom looked at me and said, "we'll have whatever you want." I said, not to make it just for me, but of course we had tea. And it was wonderful! I had been craving a good glass of tea with shiba and that is what we had!

Ali showed up for tea and we all had a great time laughing and teasing each other. There was something on TV about Agadir and they asked if I had ever been. I haven't, so Hessna (Said's sister) offered to take me there. I would have to pay for her transport, but once we got there we could stay with another sister and we wouldn't have to pay for food or lodging. It sounded like a nice idea so I agreed, but I don't think they believed me. Later Said told me that he and another sister we planning a trip to Agadir and he invited me along. We joked and laughed about the boys - one of the other PCV's at the workshop is fluent in Tamazight and they were impressed with her. They kept saying the other one wanted to marry her, but Hessna told me they were both smitten with her! Said told a joke they had heard over the weekend and we had a good laugh over it. Said was in rare form - making faces, teasing me and generally seemed to be taking life a little less seriously than I am used to seeing him. It felt really wonderful to be among friends. Said told me again that I was part of the family.

Over the weekend, I felt like we reached a new level with our friendship. I was teasing them about going back to America - I had to leave the workshop on Saturday morning to meet with an association in Khenifra and I told them I was going back to America. Ali told me not to joke about things like that because I was his best friend and I couldn't just up and go back to America yet. I think he was serious, which just made me melt. I told him I thought Said was his best friend and he clarified that we were both his best friends.

While we were laughing and talking tonight, Ali asked me a question in Tamazight that I didn't understand. Said translated in a whisper for me, which didn't make sense since no one but the 3 of us would understand the English. Ali was asking if I ever drank alcohol. Said told me not to answer because it was none of his business, but I answered and truthfully. We had talked about it before when I first met them and had told them that I drank in America, but not anymore. I was still hesitant to be completely honest about that since it is a cultural taboo here. But, over the weekend, they borrowed my camera to take pictures with some of the other participants at the workshop. Said looked at the other pictures on my memory card and saw some pictures from New Years Eve, when I had a party at my house. We were drinking and it was obvious from the bottles in the picture. He told me when I sat down next to him that he was sorry he looked at my pictures and I told him it was OK. I didn't realize those pictures were still on there and that he saw them until I got back to the hotel that night. There was nothing I could do about it, so I let it be. Now Ali asked me this question tonight and I didn't feel I could continue the charade. Plus, I felt like I could trust them. That was the end of that discussion. I answered and they changed the topic and we carried on with our evening.

Before I knew what time it was, the clock struck 11 and I took my leave. Said and Ali walked me home and told me to be careful of monsters and scary things on my staircase. They know that when my downstairs neighbor is gone, she turns off her electricity, so the stairs are dark! They don't know that I hate to think about things like that. Its the reason I don't watch scary movies, so I told them so. They teased me some more and made monster noises while I turned on my flashlight. We said goodnight and I went home to tell you about it. It was really a great day.

Breaking Down Barriers

2009-02-22T17:34:00.000-08:00

This weekend was an incredibly productive and rewarding weekend. Last Thursday, 5 people from my village joined me in Khenifra to attend a workshop about “health.” This was my euphemism for AIDS. Sadia at the rural commune suggested this to me – she used to work for the association leading the event, so she knew what they would really be learning. AIDS (known as SIDA, the French acronym) is still very taboo in Morocco and I wasn't sure if they would be open to attending the workshop if they knew it was about SIDA. The guys, Said and Ali, are young, more educated than many and speak English. They've been my buddies over the past couple months, so they kind of knew what they were in for, but I don't think they really knew what to expect.

The taxi ride to Khenifra was a bit awkward – everyone was quiet and a little shy. When we arrived in Khenifra, the boys took off on their own to meet a friend and the women, Fatima, Zinb, Sadia H, and I walked to the hotel. Along the way, I talked to Sadia and learned a bit more about her. All 3 women are members of the weaving cooperative in my village and they have recently started working again. We were some of the first to arrive, so they went to get settled in their rooms and I hung out with Mara, the volunteer who organized the event.

The goal of the workshop was to teach HCNs (host country nationals – a nice government name for Moroccan citizens) to be peer educators about SIDA prevention. As Peace Corps volunteers, we can only do so much in terms of education and awareness, by teaching the people of our villages to be educators and leaders, our work is more sustainable. Ideally, the workshop attendees will return to their villages and teach their friends, family members and other community members about SIDA prevention.

The next 2 days were full of laughs, new friendships, some heated discussions and lots of bonding. Everyone met for dinner together on Thursday night and I managed to be the source of much entertainment at my table. Said and Ali were quick to translate when I didn't understand something one of the women from the Sisterhood said and then to give me a hard time about needing to study more. They told me I was like a student in elementary school and that if I didn't study, they would punish me! There was silverware on the table and Fatima looked at me and said she didn't know how to eat with silverware. I told her that I'd been in Morocco so long that I forgot too! We had a good laugh over that one and it seemed to break the ice a bit. Dinner was at 8 and it was after 10 when we actually finished and headed back to the volunteer's hotel. The participants were staying at the hotel where the workshop was taking place, but the volunteers had to stay at a different hotel across town because the participants filled up the first hotel!

Friday morning started with introductions and ice breakers. I sat at a table with the 5 people from the Sisterhood, but we were told to go meet someone new. I met a woman from Boumia who is a force to be reckoned with. She is the director of a women's center and runs all kind of programs to help women – she has a bakery cooperative, a weaving cooperative and other ongoing activities for women. And she knew about my NEDI and wants to help get it opened and up and running!!! Lahamdulah! Once everyone had a few minutes to meet their new person we went around the room introducing our partners. Everyone was very gracious to the PCV's as we tried our best to speak the language. Sadia H from my village was a little shy about the introductions because she couldn't remember everything her partner had told her, but she did her best and everyone was very supportive.

During the morning coffee/tea break, Said and Ali sought me out to tell me they felt a little out of their league. Most of the other participants were presidents or active members of associations, well-educated, and active in their communities and they were feeling unqualified to be there. I did my best to encourage them, told them I wouldn't have invited them if I didn't think they would be successful. Plus, I invited them because I don't think they realize the potential they have. I was hoping they would see what other people are doing in their communities and it would get them thinking of ways to be active at home. They are always telling me there is no work and nothing to do in our village, so maybe this will be the kick in the pants they need to start doing something.

A note about languages in Morocco – there is written Modern Standard Arabic, which is based on the Arabic of the Koran and is the universal spoken and written language of the Arab world; there is Darija, the spoken Arabic dialect of Morocco, which varies a little across the country; and there is Tamazight, the “Berber” dialect spoken by people in the Middle Atlas Mountain. These are not the same languages; a person can speak Darija, but not understand or know how to read Modern Standard Arabic. The women from my village fall into the latter category – they know the alphabet, but still sound out words and aren't comfortable speaking Darija. So, they were a little daunted by the morning activities which included a doctor from OPALS (another French acronym for an African organization fighting SIDA) talking about SIDA statistics in Morocco and other medical topics. Most of his talk was given in MSA, so they were a little out of the loop when we sat down to lunch.

The event was funded by Peace Corps, but led by a local association, Oued Srou which leads workshops like this in the Khenifra province and is involved in other community development activities. Khadija, the woman who led the workshop did a wonderful job and since she speaks Tamazight, made time during the breaks and at meals to explain anything my women didn't understand and to answer their questions. Most the other participants also spoke Tamazight, so they would explain their answers or reasons during discussion times in both Arabic and then again in Tamazight. It was awesome to see everyone come together like that.

In the afternoon, we played a game to demonstrate how quickly an STI or HIV can spread through a group of people. Everyone received a plastic bag and was told not to look at the contents. Then we went around greeting everyone and swapping a handful of the contents of our bags. After a few minutes we all sat down and opened our bags. Everyone had a mixture of lentils and rice. Khadija explained that at the beginning, one person had rice and everyone else had lentils. By sharing the contents of our bags, we had quickly spread a “disease” through the entire group. It is a great exercise and extremely illustrative. I had my women explain it to me and they were spot on! I've played other versions of this game where participants are given the option just to shake hands with people when they greet. This is illustrative of abstinence. Another option is to allow participants to knock their bags together in a “cheers” kind of motion. This is illustrative of wearing a condom during sex, i.e. you can still “meet” a person but not swap bodily fluids/lentils and rice.

In addition to their language challenges, it was hard to miss the fact that my women were the only ones wearing jellabas, a traditional, more formal garment. Women usually wear them when they go to souk in Khenifra, travel, or go to special events. The rest of the women wore more modern clothing - pants and sweaters or pants suits. I think it was partially because the other women are from larger cities/towns and they were a little younger than my women. Interestingly, all of the women wore head scarfs.

During dinner, some of the men started drumming on the tables and singing traditional Berber songs. This is known as a Hadus and one of the participants is a Hadus master/leader. As soon as the dishes were cleared, everyone joined in and soon books and metal serving platters were being used as drums! A lot of the music is based around drumming and call and response songs, so it didn't take much to get everyone going. Pretty soon, the men were lined up together and the women lined up across from them. Everyone stood shoulder to shoulder and danced...its mostly a bobbing up and down with a little hip thrown in. The Hadus master stands in the middle and leads and dances. Then a couple girls get in the middle and dance together...then a couple boys. Sadia H was the first to get in the middle and start dancing – I thought she was a shy person, but not anymore. She pulled me in and then before I knew it, Mara was wrapping her scarf around my hips. Its funny because in America, most women don't like to accentuate their hips, we would tie a scarf around our waist to accent it. But here, its the hips and then you shake them. So I did. And, I tied my scarf around Mara's hips and we all danced and laughed together! Since we had to get up early the next morning, we didn't stay up too late dancing.

Sunday was another full day of discussions and activities. In addition to learning about SIDA prevention, the participants learned how to be good communicators and educators. There was a heated discussion about communication styles. Many people believed that if you told people enough times or gave them the information forcefully enough, they would listen. This may be partially due to the education system where memorization and recitation is rewarded and critical thinking is not really taught.

During our afternoon break, I sat outside with Ali and Said and we discussed prostitution. Its a major issue in Morocco and something that people seem to accept. Its part of the reason SIDA could explode here in the next decade. Although Morocco has few cases of SIDA relative to Sub-Saharan Africa, the culture and sexual practices are ripe for SIDA to reach epidemic levels. Testing rates are not high, so infection rates may be much higher than what is reported. Said was arguing that if the women would be 'good' women and not make themselves available for prostitution, then prostitution wouldn't exist. I was arguing that just because it was available didn't mean men had to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, prostitution is economically viable. One of the participants is working with prostitutes in his village and his challenge is that most other income-generating ventures don't generate as much income as prostitution. Its kind of a vicious cycle because a woman who has been raped, divorced, widowed or has premarital sex is often shunned by her family and must support herself and her children. Education rates are low, especially for women, so often the only means of immediate income is prostitution. Said's argument was indicative of the cultural norms here and in many places throughout the world...Women are responsible for prostitution, not the men who shun them in the first place, leading them to prostitution...not the men who visit them. Its the women's fault. It is frustrating to have conversations like these, but I try to remember that we come from very different cultural backgrounds and in this culture, prostitution is widely accepted as a norm.

Linley, one of the other volunteers and I were also talking about this and came up with a campaign idea. We want the men to spend their money on other things than prostitution – baked goods, locally made clothes and crafts, eating out a restaurants and cafes, etc. It would support more women in other professions and save the men money.

We had another Hadus on Saturday night. At 11pm, the Moroccan participants started telling jokes and we volunteers headed back to our hotel. The sense of humor here is different and the jokes I understand aren't funny to me. Plus, everyone was talking so fast that I missed much of what was being said. Everyone met again for a farewell breakfast on Sunday morning. We all went our separate ways, but somehow ended up at the bus station together again. A majority of the participants were taking a 1pm bus so they bought tickets and then we went to souk together.

Khenifra's souk is on Sundays and it is crazy...packed with people, carts, donkeys and of course lots of food and goods for sale! It was great to be there with locals because they watched out for us “white folks” and made sure we didn't get lost in the crowd. At one point, a fight broke out and one of the young men from Midelt pulled me out of the way and then led me to a safe spot away from the gathering crowd. Its so interesting because in their own way, the men do look out for the women in their lives. Its just not the same way men look out for women in America.

I met my friend Miriam for lunch. She used to live in the Sisterhood but moved to Khenifra last month and I hadn't seen her since her family moved. We went back to her house and made a vegetarian tagine. Then we went for a walk to a little stream with a waterfall. It was beautiful and full of kids enjoying the warmer weather and sun. She begged me to stay the night, but I was exhausted and ready to crash. I promised to return again soon and to spend the night. She walked me back to the bus station and we made it just in time for me to get the last seat on the transit back.

Said and Ali were there and they gave me a hard time about being late. It was a quiet ride, but when we got close to home they struck up a conversation with me. We spoke Tamazight and they pretended that we weren't at the same workshop over weekend. It felt great to be taken into their fold and treated like one of them. As we got out of the transit in the center of town, they continued the shtick about not knowing me and invited themselves over for coffee. I welcomed them and told them they could come over whenever they wanted, but they told me they were just kidding and wouldn't actually come. They didn't of course, but I feel that a lot of cultural and personal barriers came down over the weekend. Even though Said and Ali had figuratively opened their arms to me before the workshop, I still felt like I had to be careful about how much I shared with them or how open I was with things that aren't culturally acceptable here (alcohol, sex before marriage, allowing American men in my house, my real religious views, etc.), but now I feel we have reached a new level in our friendship.

Over the past 3 days, I also bonded with the women from my village. We laughed and teased and were serious when we needed to be. It reminded me of the time I've spent with my Grandmom, Mom and sister in the sewing room or during quilting classes we've taken. We always have such a good time together and the atmosphere this weekend was reminiscent of those times with my family. I feel honored and humbled that these women embraced me as one of their own...they kept calling me “Hibangh” which literally means “our Hiba.”

Moving Day!

2008-08-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

I am anxious to get into my apartment! I have enjoyed getting to know my host family, but the lack of privacy and general chaos in a family with young children is wearing on me. For the past week, my host family has been telling me that I don't need to move, that I am welcome to stay for as long as I like. The idea of my living alone seems somewhat unsettling to them. It is understandable, since most young adults live with their families until they get married or move to a big city to work or continue their studies. Even then, they often live with extended family or with roommates. Living alone is unusual, especially for women. By living on my own, I'll have to cook my own food and “gasp!” eat alone, clean my house, do my laundry, etc. If I stay with my host family, I won't have to worry about those things and my host mom keeps trying this argument on me to convince me to stay.

I told my host mother that I wanted to move today and she told me to wait until the afternoon so she could help me clean before I brought my things over. I found my landlord and got the key to the front door of the building and went over to check it out again. I was happy to find my front door still in tact and the new lock properly installed. The trash was gone, but unfortunately, my window locks were still missing handles and my landlord had stuck various wires or nails where the handles should be!

I am on the 3rd and top floor and the stairs are uneven and the tread is narrow, making them rather treacherous. Building codes are non-existent, so you really need to be careful on stairs and with doorway and ceilings! I also have access to the roof, which is great – I can see all of my village and have a great open view for sky gazing and enjoying the sunsets. My apartment is probably the same size as my host family's house. There is a “front hallway” that is more like a small room that leads to each of the other rooms. Towards the front is a large living room and on the side is a kitchen and bedroom. I have a bathroom, plus a smaller extra room that I plan to use for storage. I am lucky to have both running water and electricity! There is a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the center of each room. I don't have a shower or hot water heater, so I'll be boiling water on the stove and taking bucket baths when I need to bathe. The apartment is just down the street from my host family – I can see their front stoop from my kitchen window!

After our afternoon nap, my host mom, Zuhir, Jalil and I went over to clean. Since all of the floors are cement, we splashed buckets of water over the floor and squeegeed it all to the drain near the front door. Its a great way to clean and we didn't use any soap! I wasn't using the squeegee properly, so Zuhir took over. We even did all the stairs down to the front door.

I began carrying my things over, starting with the smaller items in hopes of getting help from a couple men with the larger duffel bag and my bed and ponjs. My host mom recruited Hakim, my host cousin, and a couple of his friends to help and they quickly carried everything else over. I thanked them as best I could, but I think inviting them to tea would have been the appropriate show of thanks. However, having just moved in, I wasn't quite set up for tea.

I spent the afternoon getting settled in, although, there wasn't much to do. I don't really have any furniture, so I couldn't unpack my clothes yet. I haven't bought a refrigerator either, so I don't have any food. I ate dinner with my host family, but happily spent my first night in my new apartment! It was wonderful to sleep in a bed and to wake up and not worry if I am properly dressed to leave my room to use the bathroom.

Pictures of my new house are posted here.

A Visit to Azilal

2008-08-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

I visited my friend Dan over the weekend! He lives a couple hours Southeast of Azilal in the High Atlas Mountains. His village is absolutely beautiful and more what I pictured my PC experience to be like than my village. I met Kaylyn, Audrey and Brian in Azilal (they all live within an hour of Azilal) and we took a taxi through the mountains on a stunning drive. Dan's village is a small farming community nestled into a valley, which also draws a fairly consistent stream of tourists. Many families have a “gite” attached to their homes; these could be compared to a bed and breakfast in the States – a couple sleeping rooms with communal eating. The gites house the tourists in a relatively discreet way – several of the guides we met told us there were a lot of French tourists in town, but we saw only a handful when we were walking from the taxi stand to Dan's house.

Dan's sitemates are Zarnaz and Doug, who were waiting for us at Dan's house. Dan's friend Tova was also visiting. She just finished studying abroad for a year in Israel and is traveling for the summer before heading home. Doug received a care package of dried fruit from Trader Joes and was making scones with crystallized ginger – yum! Dan's host family lives next door and they invited us all over for tea. They have a gite on top of their house and Dan was telling us that their actual house pales in comparison to the gite. In fact, he lived in a room the size of a closet during his home stay! The gite was beautiful and apparently they pull out all the stops for visitors. We had tea and coffee and wonderful bread with honey from the area!

Afterwards, we settled into Dan's house for the evening – made dinner, hung out on his roof and stargazed, had a “trash fire” and caught up with each other. A trash fire is kind of like a campfire except you add your trash. Dan's village is relatively remote, so absent packing it out when he goes to Azilal once or twice a month, Dan opts to burn his trash. We did not roast marshmallows over the fire! It was a beautiful evening and we caught a few falling stars. Dan's village doesn't have any streetlights, so we could see the Milky Way and more stars than I can remember seeing in a long time. I tried to sleep on the roof, but ended up inside on the floor because it was too cold! Can you believe it? In my site, I sometimes sleep on the floor because its too hot, but in Dan's mountains it was too cold to sleep outside!

Doug, our chef for the weekend, made pancakes with dried blueberries from his care package! After eating bread and oil for breakfast for the past 5 months, it was a wonderful treat. We headed out for a day hike to a gorge Dan had visited with the previous volunteer in his site. It was unbelievable – we hiked for about 3.5 hours through tiny Berber villages that still seem incredibly isolated. In several, they were separating the wheat grain from the stalk the old fashioned way. This involves tying a handful of donkeys, mules or horses together (shoulder to shoulder) with one attached to a pole in the center of a field. The grains are on the field and the horses walk or trot in a circle, while men mix the grains with pitchforks. Tova just finished a year studying abroad in Israel and she explained that there is evidence there of people using this technique hundreds of years ago.

This got me to thinking that in some ways, life in Morocco hasn't changed much over the past several centuries. Women still make bread the way they have for probably thousands of years. This grain technique dates back a while and although tea is a relatively new addition, arriving with the British in the late 1600's, it doesn't seem to have changed much in the past 400 years! Then we passed a man selling sodas and scarves outside his house – obviously, some things change! I just wonder who his market is – we didn't see anyone other than locals during our entire hike and he was a couple hours into the hike.

We had lunch at the mouth of the gorge where this is a beautiful waterfall formed by a natural spring. We drank right from the falls – cold, clear water! It was so refreshing. We had forgot to pack lunch before we left Dan's village, so we bought some bread and cheese from a small hanut in the first village we passed at the beginning of our hike. The bread had whole wheat flour and was among the best bread I've had in Morocco! We napped and relaxed by the falls for a while before heading back.

By the time we got back to Dan's village it was starting to get dark and we were all exhausted from our hike. Dan and Doug introduced us to their “Berber McMuffins” - basically a scrambled egg sandwich with laughing cow cheese and some sort of salami. You can get this just about anywhere I've been in Morocco, but they swore by the sandwiches at their favorite cafe, so we all had a sandwich before heading back to Dan's house.

Dan had asked everyone to bring food to share, so I bought a watermelon in Azilal on the way down. I didn't realize that Dan's house was an hour walk from where the taxi dropped us off. By the time we got to his house yesterday, I couldn't raise my arms because I'd just carried a good-sized watermelon for an hour! Today, it was totally worth it – after our egg sandwiches, we gorged ourselves on watermelon.

After a short night of sleep, we all headed home. I had a long, hot trip back to my village, but I stopped in Khenifra for a shower. There's a place where you can pay 8Dh ($1) for as long and as hot a shower as you'd like. I opted for cold, but not ice cold and spent a while cleaning up; it'd been a while since my last real shower and I missed out on my family's hamam last week, plus our hike was pretty dusty.

Before I left I was feeling a little disheartened after my host uncle's advances and some other personal things going on. The weekend was just the escape I needed to get back to my site feeling energized and ready to face the world again. Dan's language is pretty good, which was encouraging, since he was communicating pretty well with people in his site and I understood the majority of his conversations. This gave me hope for my language skills because I still feel like I miss 70% of what is said.

View Pictures of my trip to Azilal here.

Souk...again

2008-07-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

Today was souk in my village and I wanted to get a few items for my apartment. Soumia went with me and we bought a bucket, tea pot and some pots. As soon as we got home, everyone asked how much my purchases were and then examined everything. The same thing happened when I got back from Khenifra on Sunday. In a society where just about everything is bargained for, I can understand the interest in prices, but it sometimes wears on my nerves. Luckily, I seem to have done a good job with my purchases, although my host mom was curious what I am going to do with 5 pots. She has one sauce pan, a pressure cooker, a frying pan and several different tagines. I plan to start a “family” dinner once a month so that any of the volunteers in the area and others who are visiting can come for a good home-cooked dinner and a movie or game night. So having a couple pots will come in handy.

I was supposed to get the keys to my apartment today, but that didn't exactly go as planned. When Mo came for my site visit, he suggested I buy a new lock for the door to my apartment, so that I would be the only one with the keys. I did so and turned the lock over to my landlord the very next day. So, imagine my surprise when we go to my apartment today (a week later) and he brings the lock with him! The lock didn't quite work as easily as it should and after 45 minutes or so of him messing around with it, he told me he would have to come back on Saturday to finish everything. There was still trash from the previous tenant and the remnants from the painter – paint cans, paint thinner, brushes and other trash. My landlord also indicated that he would fix the windows – they all have locks, but some were missing handles.

I am glad to be leaving for the weekend. It would be really frustrating to be here all weekend and not be able to move into my apartment.

Another Swim!

2008-07-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

Today was a holiday in Morocco, so I met Elisabeth, Anna and Tori to go swimming! We went to Tori's village and swam in the river. It was blissful! The sun was shining and it was hot – we worked up a good sweat on the hike to the river and the water was cold and refreshing. There is sand in the river and its really goupy. I was goofing around and rubbing it on my arms claiming to be giving myself a beauty treatment. Pretty soon, Tori, Elisabeth and I were covered in mud! It was fun and actually helped cool us off as we sat in the sun for a while.

Peace Corps sometimes reminds me of being in high school again. Although everyone is a college graduate, I feel like we are in some warped version of Sweet Valley High. The gossip mill is amazingly swift and vicious. I was happily out of the loop during training – I would much rather talk with friends about their experiences and lives than talk about other people. But one of the volunteers close to me is plugged into the rumor circuit and happily shares information and conversations had in confidence. While its nice to know how other volunteers are doing, all of the extraneous commentary and judgments seem so immature and hurtful. I feel like I have to be careful what I say around this person and I don't like being so guarded.

I guess its to be expected...there are approximately 200 volunteers in Morocco and when almost your entire life – friends, support network, significant others, co-workers, etc. are contained within such a small community, news is bound to travel fast.

Khenifra Souk

2008-07-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

I had planned to get up early today and go to Khenifra to buy the big ticket items for my apartment – a bed, ponjs and a fridge. But no one in my house was up because they were at the wedding last night! I had mentioned to my host father that I wanted to go to Khenifra and would like him to go with me. I knew I needed a Moroccan to go with me so I wouldn't get ripped off. He was still asleep when I was ready to go and Fatima asked if he wanted to go and he said no.

I decided to go anyways, thinking I could get the smaller items instead. I have to take 2 taxis to get to Khenifra and while I was waiting in T-town I ran into my host uncle, Sidi Mo. He agreed to go with me to Khenifra and we were off.

We went to souk first, but Sidi Mo decided we should go to the regular stores instead. We went to a friend of his who owns a fabric/bed/ponj store. I want a double bed because I like my space when I sleep, but this completely miffed Sidi Mo. He kept asking who else was going to sleep in my bed with me. I had 2 options – top of the line and not top of the line. Top of the line was out of my price range but the other one was within my budget, so I bought that one. The store was tiny, so we couldn't lay the mattress on the floor so I could try them out. I have my fingers crossed that the one I bought will be good for my back.

Now we were on to the ponjs. These are kind of like large floor pillows that serve as couches. Some are simply foam rectangles and you can choose between different heights. This is what I have been sleeping on for the past two months and it is not comfortable. There are also ones that are stuffed with stuffing, which is what I wanted. We went upstairs to an apartment filled with foam rectangles. I sat on a couple different heights and found one I liked. Then we went back down to the store and I saw the stuffed ones. Sidi Mo negotiated a price on the ponjs and then we just hung out for a couple minutes. I'm not sure why.

Then it was time for lunch. I kept mentioning that I wanted to buy a fridge, but Sidi Mo kept telling me “shwia b shwia,” which means little by little. We went to the fish/pizza place, which I have since discovered has a good salad. It was hot and I welcome any opportunity to eat fresh vegetables, so I ordered a salad. This did not please Sidi Mo and he kept insisting that I eat something else. I kept saying no and telling him I didn't want to eat a lot because it was so hot. This conversation continued for most of the meal.

I had expected to rent a little van to haul everything to my village, but Sidi Mo said we could put it on top of the transit vehicle that goes to my village every evening at 5:30. We had some time to kill and we were not buying a fridge, so we went to an air conditioned cafe! It was too hot for coffee or tea, so I ordered a juice. We sat for at least 2 hours and Sidi Mo kept telling me to order something else. I didn't want anything else and he kept telling me to drink coffee or a soda. I am so frustrated with people telling me to eat and drink. I know when I am full and when I want to drink something. I didn't want to drink anything else!

Earlier in the day, we had seen my fellow volunteer, Sarah, who is dating the English teacher from her village. He is Moroccan and they were walking hand-in-hand down the street in Khenifra. Since dating isn't really practiced in Morocco – most marriages still seem to be arranged or dates heavily chaperoned, most people expect Sarah to marry this young man and take him to America. This situation apparently planted an idea in Sidi Mo's head because most of our conversation at the cafe revolved around him asking to go to America with me. I tried to fend this off with my usual answer, which is that its expensive to go to America. When I told him the cost of the plane ticket, he told me no problem. I mentioned visa's and passports and he said no problem. Then I joked about how everyone in the Sisterhood wants to go with me and I'm going to have to buy an airplane to bring them all with. This line usually diffuses these kinds of conversations but it wasn't working with Sidi Mo.

Somehow the conversation turned to me being old and needing to get married quick and start having babies. Because once I turn 30, I'll be too old to find a man. The conversation was cyclical...We'd get to me not wanting to get married and not wanting to have babies (not really true, but it usually quiets people down when they are annoying me with questions about my marriage plans) and then we'd start over with him wanting to come to America with me. He never outright said I want to marry you, but mentioned getting a job in a factory and buying me a car and nice house. Then he mentioned me having babies – skipped right over the marriage part to me having his babies. We'd come to Morocco every summer to visit family. I kept telling him no, that only I was going back to America and he asked me what I tell my family about him! He also kept telling me that it was easier to get papers if you are married to an American!

I can't tell you how frustrating and belittling it is to feel like all anyone sees me as is a ticket to America, especially the men. Sidi Mo is someone I trusted and thought would not follow this line of thinking, or at least be decent enough not to bring it up with me. I felt trapped...I had no desire to be anywhere near him or to continue the conversation, but he was helping me get my stuff back home. I felt helpless and completely out of control of anything, which is really a crummy feeling.

Thankfully, displays of physical affection between men and women are not acceptable outside of marriage, so Sidi Mo did not try anything, but I still felt like I'd been violated somehow. By the way, public displays of affection are illegal in Morocco. Foreigners can get away with it, but it is not accepted among Moroccans.

Around 4pm we returned to the shop to collect my purchases. We hired a small pick up truck to bring them to the bus station. Sidi Mo was really helpful in getting them loaded on the transit and making sure we had seats. I would have struggled to get everything done that we accomplished, had I been alone.

A Party

2008-07-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

I slept in today and when I finally emerged from my room, after reading for a while, it was nearly 11am! While I ate breakfast, my 2 year old host cousin, Samir, walked in wearing dress clothes. He was antsy, so I took his picture and asked him where he was going. I thought my host mom told me it was a wedding, but it turned out to be a party for a boy being circumcised, I think. They invited me to go and gave me a “taksheda” to wear. It's kind of like a jellaba, but doesn't have a hood and its fancy. It was absolutely beautiful and I accompanied Fatima and Mouna to the party.

It was your typical Moroccan party – we hung out for a while and then drank tea. Once everyone arrived, we ate lunch. There's a special occasion dish I've eaten a few times here, which always poses a challenge for me. Its a big hunk of meat served over a bed of onions and topped with either olives or stewed dates. It tastes a lot better than it may sound and I enjoy eating the onions, olives and dates, but the people at parties are always miffed when I don't touch the meat. In some cases even breaking off chunks and putting them in front of me! I'm wasn't worried when it showed up today, because there is usually a second course that is more appealing to me.

But my host mom was worried about me and she asked the hostess to bring a bowl of onions and olives for me, which the hostess happily did. Problem was, this happened after they had kept telling me to eat and I'd eaten a bunch of bread. So, I ate some of the extra food, but couldn't eat it all, plus they brought out another course! It was yummy – buttered spaghetti noodles topped with crushed peanuts and sugar. Delicious!

After lunch, many of the woman made a dash for the door, my host mom and Mouna included. I had befriended a couple of the girls at the party and they asked me to stay for the “hadus.” I stayed and danced with the women – a hadus seems to be anything that involves a drum and dancing. Someone drums and chants a song which others join in. Sometimes its a call and answer style. Eventually a couple girls start dancing and by the end all of the women were dancing. It was a lot of fun!

I went home with Fatima and her daughter, Mamaw who are somehow related to my host family. My host mom was coming there for evening tea. Fatima's brother, Mohamed, has always been kind to me and he started talking to me and asking me questions partly in French and partly in Tamazight. I was holding my own for a couple minutes until he asked me about Israel. My standard answer is that I don't know enough about the situation to form an opinion, but he wasn't accepting this. Thankfully, but also infuriatingly, Mamaw chimed in and asked why he was talking to me because “she doesn't understand Tamazight.” I was thankful for the interruption, but so maddened by her comment. It is so frustrating, especially when I've just conversed with someone for a couple minutes and then I don't understand something and they tell me I don't know any Tamazight or that I don't understand anything. Sometimes makes me want to scream!

The rest of the day was uneventful. There was a wedding in town and my family was going to watch, at 12 or 1am! I opted to sleep instead.

I Hate Flies

2008-07-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

Its 6am and I woke up to the rooster next door cockle doodle doodling. He seems to live on the roof and for some reason he always comes to the edge closest to my window seemingly to wake me up. Once he starts, the donkeys soon follow and I think once one starts, they all start hee-hawing. Normally, I just turn over and fall back to sleep, but today the flies won't leave me alone. I don't know where they come from – my window has a screen and my door is closed when I sleep. There weren't any flying around when I went to bed last night, because I killed them all with my trusty Reader's Digest! It's too hot to wear much to bed, so I am in a t-shirt and shorts, which leaves plenty of skin for the flies to find. Its when they land on my face, especially my nose or lips, that really gets me going. I tried pulling my sheet over my arms and legs, but that drove them to my face! GROSS!

I had heard that the flies were bad during the summer, but I thought I might get lucky being in the mountains. No such luck. I've gotten used to them on the table when we eat and finding them swarming in the kitchen, but it really drives me crazy when they land on me!

I have a meeting this morning, which I am leaving for at 8:30, the time I usually roll out of bed! So, I'm annoyed that I'm missing out on my last hour of sleep. By the way, if it sounds like I get to sleep in, consider that we don't eat dinner until 11-ish and I don't make it to bed until midnight or later.

Friday Evening: The meeting went well. It was with the presidents of several associations in my rural commune and a neighboring one. MEDA is working with them to create a new association to manage and protect the forest in the area. I didn't understand most of the meeting, but I got the gist of what was going on and was able to repeat the highlights to some of the MEDA staff to prove that I understood something!

If you are interested in some background information on the forests and this project, here it is. A rural commune is kind of like county government in the U.S. Its a local unit of government that collects taxes and provides some services to its residents. My village is the “capital” of the rural commune, so both the village and commune have the same name. The commune governs a sizable area of the surrounding countryside, which includes a bunch of smaller villages.

The area is mountainous and forested in some areas. Due to a number of factors including erosion, clearing land for farming, and cutting trees for firewood the forest is disappearing. The firewood issue is a big one, remember that fantastic hammam experience I told you about? Wouldn't be possible without some firewood feeding the fire. Consider that a majority of the houses in my village have their own mini-hammam on the roof, which they fire up once a week. Plus, there is the communal hammam that provides hot water all day, every day. Don't forget the bread, many families still cook their bread in wood ovens – there is a somewhat pervasive view that bread baked in a gas oven isn't as good as bread from a wood oven. So, people in my commune are still cutting a lot of wood for fires.

The national government, through its Water and Forest Ministry developed a forestry management plan for the region which includes planting new trees, preventing the cutting of existing trees and fencing off areas to protect them indefinitely. Interestingly and perhaps somewhat progressively, when Morocco conducted a comprehensive inventory of its natural areas, it allowed indigenous groups and existing communities to remain within newly designated protected areas. The idea being that through grass-roots development, these communities could live in harmony with their surroundings. My commune is not in a national park or SIBE (Site of Biologic Importance – the acronym comes from French, so it doesn't quite translate), but the forest is critical and needs to be protected.

The idea behind this new association is to help get local buy-in and support for the forest management plan. If the existing community associations are supportive and bringing their constituents along as active partners in managing the forest, then the plan will be more successful than if a forest ranger from Rabat comes in and tells people not to cut trees down. Once the association is up and running, environmental education about the benefits of a healthy forest and alternatives to all that firewood must be presented. That is where I come in.

The Peace Corps Morocco Environment Program is a partner with the Moroccan Ministry of Water and Forests (EEF). We have a MOU and a strategic program plan that was developed jointly by PC and EEF. The main goal of our plan is environmental education – building an environmental ethic in our communities and linking it to everyday life. In my community, trash is the other big issue. Although the commune collects trash every Friday, they take it across the valley and dump it on the side of the mountain! I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone open a package of candy, cigarettes, etc. and just drop the wrapper.

Changing those kind of behaviors definitely won't happen overnight, but one of the PC target audiences is children – if we can get them early, it is easier to teach them new environmental ethics than if they are adults and already have habits and ideas somewhat ingrained in their minds.

Site Visit

2008-07-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

I don't think I explained how PC Morocco is structured. There are four program areas – Youth Development, Small Business Development, Health and Environment. Each program has a manager and assistant – all are Moroccan and have extensive experience in their field. My program manager is named Mohissine (Mo) and our assistant is Aicha. Both are awesome – well-informed, supportive, approachable and responsive to my requests for information. Throughout the month of July, they are visiting all of the new volunteers to make sure everything is going well.

Mo visited me today and I was a little nervous about it, but everything went well. I went for my usual walk this morning and came home sweaty and ready for a bucket bath. Much to my dismay, the water in my village was turned off! I hadn't had a “real” shower since Fez and it had been a couple days since my last bucket bath, plus its been hot, so I was feeling rather rank. Oh well, I thought, I'm sure Mo has seen volunteers in worse shape than me. I put on fresh clothes and did my best to clean up, which is difficult when you don't have water.

I met Mo just after lunch, around 3pm and we went to a cafe to chat and have a limonada (code word for soda). We were there for a couple hours chatting about the situation in my village, potential projects, my host family, my family at home, etc. It was a good talk and very reassuring that I'm on the right track. Then we went to check on my apartment.

I had asked my host father for help finding an apartment and he showed me one which, thankfully, worked for me. I got the impression that it was this one or I was on my own, so I'm glad I liked it. Its just down the street from my host family and close to the center of town. I should be able to see the bus from my window and know when to go out to catch it! When we saw the apartment for the first time a couple weeks ago, another man from the Commune went with us to see it. I thought he owned the building, but he told me to negotiate rent with my host father. PC had scoped the real estate market when the chose my village and determined an acceptable amount of monthly rent, which I wasn't allowed to exceed. This amount was fine with my host father and we filled out a rental agreement earlier this week.

When Mo and I went to see the apartment, Mohammed, the man from the commune told Mo that his mother owns the building and she wasn't happy about renting the apartment to me for the previously agreed amount. She wanted 25% more per month! They went back and forth in Arabic, so I didn't really understand, but Mo told him that once we saw it, he would decide if it was worth the increased price.

Luckily, he decided it was – when we got there, a man was painting all the walls and window and door trim! It had looked pretty shabby when I saw the apartment and I had asked if I could paint. I don't know if there was a misunderstanding or if they wanted to fix it up, but I'm so glad they are painting it! They are also going to put new fixtures on all the windows so they lock properly. I kind of wonder if the mother story was a ploy to get a little extra money – I've heard so many stories like that and PC has warned us that we will always be seen as a rich American, although I recently learned we make less per month than welfare recipients.

I said goodbye to Mo and he set off to return to Khenifra. As I turned the corner on my street, I could smell the smoke of a wood fire. My heart soared when I saw smoke coming from my family's roof – the hammam was stoked up! Oh the absolute joy in my heart when I realized I'd get a good scrubbing. Its been a couple weeks since I've been to the hammam and I was starting to notice the effects. There's really only so much you can do with a bucket of cold water and a bandanna. The hammam was wonderful and I am once again squeaky clean. In the heat, it won't last long, but I will savor it while it lasts. By the way, my apartment doesn't have a shower, so I am hoping I can continue to join my host family for the weekly hammam.

Wedding Fun!

2008-07-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

My friend Marja, who lives in EEK, has been out of town for a couple weeks working at summer camps. She's a youth development volunteer and while the youth center is closed during July and August, she is working at a summer camp near Casablanca. Her host sister got married last night, and I went with Marja to the wedding.

Weddings are normally 3 days long, but this one was crammed into one. Normally, the first day is for the groom, the second day for the bride and the third day for the couple. I'm still trying to figure out everything involved in the weddings. They are usually held at home, but are still expensive affairs. We arrived at 10pm in time to hang out for a couple hours before things really started happening. The women were in one room, men in another. We drank tea and ate dinner around 12:30am. By the time the meal was finished it was pushing 2am and everyone moved to the roof.

It had been tented and the floor covered with carpets. There were ponjs around the perimeter and pillows on the floor where people could sit. It was quickly crowded and more and more people kept coming. Apparently, since the party goes all night, the neighbors all join in for this portion of the party. They family had hired a “band” - I forget the proper name for them, but its a group of male musicians that includes a drum, violin, recorder-like instrument and a vocalist. There are also four women who do traditional dances.

We stayed until 4:30am and the groom still hadn't made his appearance! There was dancing and singing and they did some things with the bride while we were there, but I'm pretty sure we missed the actual “wedding.” I kept getting wafts of what I thought smelled like beer, but dismissed it as my mind playing tricks on me. I later learned that there was indeed “shrab” or alcohol at the party.

The dancing was interesting, because the corner with the alcohol was surrounded by all the young men. The next layer of people was young women and there was quite a bit of male/female dancing in that corner of the roof. I was somewhat surprised - although Morocco is more tolerant than other Muslim countries, I hadn't seen men and women dance together.

Sick again!

2008-07-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

I was exhausted last night when I went to bed and I woke up with a fever and flu symptoms. Gross! It's souk and my counterpart Said was supposed to be in town, so I dragged myself out of bed and took a couple Tylenol. I made it to the post office and decided to come home. Some kids were yelling “tiromine” at me, which means foreigner when I walked out of the post office. Souk was super crowded and I couldn't handle all the people and animals, so I went home and slept for a couple hours. When I emerged from my room, my host mom teasingly scolded me for sleeping all day and missing lunch. I told her I wasn't feeling well and she asked if I wanted to eat tagine – they had saved me some! I couldn't handle much in the way of food, so I agreed to eat some bread. When I walked into the living room to sit down, I saw a plate of “shalada” which is onions and tomatoes chopped up and seasoned with salt and cumin. Its one of may favorite things to eat and I almost burst into tears at how thoughtful my host mom was. I was in need of some TLC and she definitely gave me a little.

Another Trip to Fes

2008-07-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

I met my friend Jonathan in Fes this weekend and we had a wonderful time. We spent most of Saturday wandering and getting lost in the medina. Once we got beyond some of the touristy areas, it was surreal – narrow alleys, dead ends, people going about their daily lives. I read something interesting about Fes recently – few of the homes in the medina have first floor windows and if they do, they are usually covered. Its true and its because as the city was built, wealthy families lived beside poor families and without windows you wouldn't know who lived where. This concept hit home when Jonathan and I found ourselves lost and decided to follow signs for a tapestry cooperative.

It was a short walk and we quickly found ourselves in a beautiful building, but you wouldn't know it from the outside. There was a wooden sign hanging above a nondescript doorway, but once you entered, it was a whole new world. A docent/salesman introduced himself and told us about the home. It dates to the 14th century and was recently restored by UNESCO! It was obviously one of those wealthy families that built the house because the tile work and attention to detail was stunning. The tapestry cooperative is now housed there and one room had carpets seemingly stacked floor to ceiling.

When we regained our senses, the gentleman led us to the roof, which was literally breathtaking. We could see the entire medina spreading around us in all directions. Words truly can't describe how incredible it was – you'll have to look at the pictures. I was struck by the vastness and the thought of everything that happens in the medina – food markets, clothes markets, tanneries, people living, tourist attractions, mosques, and universities, much of it continuing as it has for centuries. The modern satellite dishes on almost every roof are a striking contrast to the centuries-old building they reside on.

Juice is big in Morocco – not just orange juice, which you can find just about anywhere, but avocado and almond “juice,” which is like a milk shake. Any kind of fruit or nut you can put in a blender can find its way into your juice. One of my personal favorites is avocado, almond and prune – don't laugh - the prunes add a nice sweetness. While walking in the medina, Jonathan mentioned finding a place to get juice and I immediately got visions of these “fancy” juices in my head. We did find a cafe with orange juice, but no other juices. I was a little disappointed, but couldn't shake the idea of a good juice.

We later found a medersa, which served as a dorm for poor, rural men studying at the mosques. There are several in Fes and I don't remember which one we visited, but it was stunning despite its less than well-preserved appearance. Medersas were built all over the Middle East beginning in the 1st century. The ones in Fes date to the 14th century and were used almost continuously until the 1950's.

We ate lunch at McDonald's and it was less than impressive. Unlike the U.S. where the golden arches are a cheap lunch, the cost was the equivalent of going to eat at a decent restaurant in Fes. Although the fries certainly tasted like McDonald's fries, it wasn't worth it.

On our way back to the hotel, we passed an ice cream and I poked my head in to see if they had juice. I was so happy to see a basket of avocados and other assorted fruits! I made Jonathan stop for a quick juice even though we had both just said how tired we were. It was wonderful!

Another MEDA Meeting

2008-07-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

The K-5 attended our second MEDA staff meeting today. Once again the day started wonderfully with lunch together in Khenifra at our favorite pizza place. The pizza isn't great, but its centrally located and one of only 2 restaurants that offer anything other than tagines and sandwiches.

My cell phone stopped sending text messages over the weekend. This might not sound tragic, but since this is the cheapest way to communicate, it is my main connection to other volunteers. I had fiddled with the settings to no avail and took it to the young man who works in the teleboutique where I buy my phone cards. He spent a good 15 minutes checking it out and told me it was a problem with the network. He suggested going to the Maroc Telecom office in Khenifra, which I did before the MEDA meeting.

I was thrilled when I walked into an air-conditioned office which was mostly empty. I thought this would take 15 or 20 minutes and I'd be on my way. I took a number and waited a couple minutes for my turn. In my best Tamazight, I explained the situation to the customer service man. He called someone else over and this man played around with my phone, but couldn't find anything wrong. He asked me to come back tomorrow. I told him I couldn't come back tomorrow and told him where I lived. They looked me up in the computer and declared that I didn't have a contract. This was correct, but I was using the prepaid phone cards – no contract needed. They suggested a new SIM card and the customer service guy disappeared to an upstairs area for a while. He returned with a stack of SIM cards, but then called the next customer over. He tried putting a new SIM card in my phone, but it didn't work. He didn't explain this to me, but just set my phone down. Apparently the next customer needed a new SIM card, too and they fixed him up immediately. This had now taken 45 minutes and I got the impression that the customer service guy was going to ignore me. He called the next customer. I picked up my phone and handed it to him and asked for the new SIM card. He told me to go to a teleboutique to buy one. I couldn't see how the teleboutique would have a card that would work, but he wouldn't. The teleboutiques are independent shops that sell phone cards and SIM cards, but they aren't officially affiliated with Maroc Telecom.

I was extremely frustrated because before I could clarify, he called the next person. ARGH! Was it because I'm a foreigner, an unaccompanied woman? Why wouldn't he help me? I left because I was going to be late for the MEDA meeting.

After last month's meeting, we were all frustrated, so Elizabeth and Jake invited their tutor to the meeting to translate. This was not received well and we spent a good 15 minutes going back and forth with Mr. S. He explaining that this was an internal meeting and only staff were allowed. Point taken by us, but what is the point of sitting through a meeting we won't understand? Mr. S told us it would get easier as we learned the language, except that we are all learning Tamazight and they conduct meetings in French and Arabic. Finally, they brought in Mr. C who I think is the number 2 person at MEDA and who speaks English. He explained again what Mr. S had told us and we conceded, but then he left and we sat through a meeting we didn't understand.

I later asked Said why Mr. C couldn't or wouldn't stay to help us understand the meeting and he told me that he isn't responsible for this area of the project. I'm not used to this kind of response to things – I'm used to the “if we have the resources, we should use them” kind of response. If I was running the show, I'd want to make sure the volunteers knew what was going on. I'm not in charge, so I contented myself with Said's explanation of the meeting. We've gotten to be friends over the past month and he has patiently explained as much as he can to me about MEDA and the projects they are working on in and around my village.

I asked Said to help me with my phone, thinking maybe something was lost in translation. He took me to a friend of his in Khenifra who owns a technology hanut that rivals Best Buy. It took about an hour, but he diagnosed the problem as an old program on my cell phone that doesn't work with the Maroc Telecom's new network. For 20Dh he put the new program on my cell phone and I didn't have to buy a new SIM card or a new phone, which would have run me 400Dh! The best part is that I'm back in touch with my friends!

On our way to the taxi station, Said and I stopped for a juice at the patisserie. We must have taken our sweet time because by the time we got to the station, there were no more taxis to the Sisterhood! Yikes! We tried a couple options for getting me home – calling my host dad to see if he was around, Said calling friends who have cars, etc. but we weren't successful. Since I had come for the day, I wasn't prepared to spend the night in Khenifra and Marja, the volunteer who lives in El Kebab was out of town, so I couldn't crash with her. I ended up buying out a taxi to take me home. I had to pay round trip since it was too late for him to pick up passengers for the ride back. I tried my best to haggle with him – chatted him up on the ride, used my best Tamazight, talked about how I am a volunteer and a friend of Said's (he is a friend of Said's so I thought that might work), even talked about my brother after he told me he served with American troops in the Balkans, but nothing worked. I reluctantly handed him the cash when we got to my village. He insisted on giving me his phone number and told me to come to his house to meet his family and eat couscous, like we were old pals.

I certainly learned my lesson the hard way – don't stay past 7pm in Khenifra! It would have cost me half of what I paid for the taxi to get a hotel room in Khenifra, which is an alternative should I find myself stuck in Khenifra again.

Party Time!

2008-07-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

I slept in today, knowing that I didn't have anything to do and that we wouldn't leave for the party until early evening. When I finally emerged from my room around 10am, Fatima was dressed like she was going somewhere and there was a flurry of activity in the house. The whole family was going to nearby Tighsline, which has souk on Saturdays. Fatima told me to stay home and relax and that I could eat lunch down the street at Mouna's house. WOW, could today get any better? I get the whole house to myself for some much needed and appreciated alone time.

I read, I watched TV in English, I read some more. It was downright heavenly! About the TV, most families have a satellite dish and get more channels than I could possibly imagine and there are a handful in English. My personal favorite for news is Al-Jazeera International, which provides some of the best world news coverage I have seen and produces some amazing specials about issues in the news. A recent one was about the U.S.'s ethanol policy and the impact it could/is having on world food prices and availability. There is also a series of MBC channels that show movies, old and new American TV shows and cartoons. Tom and Jerry and Looney Toons are wildly popular – I never fully appreciated these cartoons as a kid. They seemed so silly, but seeing Zuhir and Jalil crack up over and over at these classic cartoons has helped me develop an appreciation for them. I haven't figured out the schedule, but Oprah, Days of Our Lives and several other American shows are shown in prime time.

Back to my really amazing day, I took my usual afternoon nap and fell asleep to the sounds of American TV. My family returned home around 4pm and we had tea. They showed off their new purchases – mostly new clothes for all of the kids to wear to the party. Everyone changed into their party clothes and piled into my Haddou's car. We drove to “T” the nearby village my host mom is from and hung out at her parents house for a while. The kids ran around in the fields, trying to knock the ripe plums from the trees.

The party was next door and was a relatively quiet affair. The men hung out in separate rooms from the women and children, although, the boys are allowed in both rooms. Most of the time was spent chit-chatting and taking care of the small children. I don't think we ate until midnight and it was close to 2am by the time we got home. I was surprised there wasn't music or dancing, but there was still a festive feel to the evening. As far as I could tell, they didn't do anything special for the woman who is leaving.

I give her a lot of credit. Her husband has been working and living in France for a while and they finally saved enough money for her to join him. She doesn't speak any French and is leaving behind her family, friends and everything she knows.

Under My Umbrella-ella-ella

2008-07-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

Rihanna is performing in Casablanca this month! WOW! It rained today and I was having lunch with a family that lives a little outside the main part of town. They were trying to convince me to stay for tea, but I had told my host mom that I would be home to go to the hammam with her. That explanation wasn't working, so I used the rain as an excuse to go. It was barely drizzling, but the storm clouds were rolling in. Their son Said was telling me I needed an umbrella, but I didn't know the word for umbrella and it sounds like the word for “later,” which was confusing because I thought he was telling me to stay later. We had a somewhat circular conversation until someone straightened me out.

Their daughter, Naima, walked me home and I was explaining to her that I always slip on the steep path that leads to their house and that the boys hanging around always laugh at me. Just as I finished telling her this, I slipped on a relatively easy portion of the trail and landed on my butt. We both had a good laugh about this and when we got to the steep part, she showed me a shortcut that is more manageable than the trail I knew and runs next to a couple houses, so the boys don't congregate there.

This path went past a fig tree, which has good figs. Naima had pointed out a couple trees where the figs were “no good,” and I told her how much I liked figs and that it was sad that we couldn't eat the figs. This tree with good figs had quite a few that were ripe and Naima hiked her skirt and started climbing among the branches to pick them. Both her and I had large handfuls of figs when Hafida, the tree's owner, joined us! I offered her the figs in my hand and she just laughed. I guess Naima regularly “steals” her figs! Hafida kindly gave us each a bag to carry our figs home and told me to come to her house whenever I wanted a fig.

Have you ever eaten a fig straight from the tree? It is a heavenly experience and the figs at home pale in comparison to these. I shared the figs with my family when I got home and told them that I love figs, but we don't have them where I live in the U.S. They were somewhat shocked by this information and then told me to eat the rest of them. I happily obliged.

Rihanna is coming to Casablanca....this is completely irrelevant information except for the fact that the TV commercial for her concert featured her Umbrella song.

Happy 4th of July! It doesn't feel like it can be this late in the year already. My parents and sister leave this weekend to spend a week with my extended family in upstate New York. It is slightly surreal that life continues as usual back home and everyone is going to BBQ's and fireworks and enjoying a 3-day weekend, while today was just another day in Morocco. Some of my PC friends who live near the Mediterranean are camping at the beach this weekend. I am a little green with envy.

We PC volunteers do not observe American Holidays, we observe Moroccan holidays, so today is just another work day. Plus, the new volunteers like me are not allowed to take vacation time during our first 3 months of service. The beach is too far away for me to get there and back in 2 days. Have I mentioned I'm a little bummed?

Party Dress

2008-07-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

I spent most of today at souk and meeting with my counterpart Said, who was in the Sisterhood. By the time I returned home, it was tea time and I joined my family in the family room. Souk days are a bit crazy at my host family's house – their family from the nearby village comes to town for souk and uses the house as a home base. There are usually 5 to 10 more adults and a handful of kids around. Throughout the day, their purchases pile up in the entryway, so I didn't really make much of the ubiquitous black plastic bags that were stacked in the hallway when I arrived.

After tea, nobody got up and left like they usually do. The conversation turned to me – I couldn't quite figure out what they were saying, but someone told Zuhir to go get the bag. He quickly returned and handed me one of the black plastic bags. “Open it!” everyone told me. My host sister, Sumia, had the biggest smile on her face and everyone else was watching me expectantly. I opened the bag to find a polyester outfit in maroon with black flowers! I had absolutely no idea what to do. I must have looked confused because they told me to go try it on. Still rather confused, I tried it on and discovered that the skirt was tight. Thinking this was my “out” I returned to the living room with the shirt and my own pants on and explained the situation.

The only solution was to return to souk and find a bigger size. By this time it was early evening and the vendors were starting to pack up. Despite this, Sumia, my host uncle and Zuhir and I quickly headed to souk and found the vendor nearly completely packed up. He gladly opened one of his large boxes to reveal several versions of the outfit I had just tried on – white with gold flowers, black with gold flowers, black with white flowers and another to match mine. None of them had sizes, so I suggested holding up the skirt I had tried on to see if any of them were larger. This was interpreted as taking all of them home and trying them on. We rushed back home and all the women in the house ushered into my room for the fashion show. There I was with my host mom, aunt, cousin and Sumia – all of them watching and waiting for me to start modeling.

Seeing no other option, I grabbed the first outfit and tried it on. We went through all of them, my host mom reassuring me that the skirts were not too tight and me protesting as best I could in Tamazight. Without a full length mirror, I was relying on their judgment of what was appropriate or too tight. I try to call as little attention to myself with my clothing by wearing long, flowing skirts that don't hug my hips or loose-fitting pants that don't draw attention to my backside. This new skirt was decidedly hugging my hips and would probably have been completely fine if I was at home, but I am in Morocco where the men stare and tell me how beautiful I am when I'm in an over-sized t-shirt and sweatpants. By the time we got to the last skirt, which was identical to the one my family picked out, I was holding out hope that none would fit. But as soon as I slipped it on, my host mom smiled and said this was the one. It was indeed looser fitting than the others and didn't hug my hips.

We dashed back to souk, where my host uncle was waiting. He wouldn't let me pay or even help to pay for the outfit, which was rather expensive. We returned home and I wondered what would happen to the matching outfit that was still sitting at home. I didn't have to wonder for long, because my host mom handed it to Sumia and she took it home with her. My next mission was to find out why I needed a new party dress and I asked Mamaw, my host-cousin. She told me there was a baby-naming party over the weekend. For good measure, I also asked my host mom, who told me that a cousin I had met previously was moving to France and there was a going away party for her. Turns out the party is on Saturday evening in a nearby village.

My Typical Monday

2008-07-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Mondays are the day that my counterparts Rachida and Said are in their office in EEK. It is souk day in EEK so many people from the surrounding towns and villages that Rachida and Said work with travel to EEK to do their weekly shopping and they stop in the office to say hello and take care of paperwork. Sarah and I are the K-5 volunteers assigned to work with Said and Rachida, so we go to the office on Mondays.

I get up early, at 7 or 7:30 to get ready and make sure I catch a taxi by 8:30 or 9am. If I am any later, the taxis are gone and I have to wait a while or walk out to the main road. My host mom usually insists on my eating breakfast, but breakfast usually isn't ready before I want to leave, so I try to “sneak” out when she is milking the cow or otherwise occupied.

The taxi usually isn't full when I get there so I make a quick run to the post office to check my mail and to send any letters I've written over the weekend. By the time I get back, the taxi is usually full and we are on our way. The taxi is a 15 to 20 minute ride and EEK is busy by the time we get there.

I haven't figured out the office schedule, because some Mondays, Rachida and Said are there and in full swing when I arrive and other times I've sat outside reading my book until 10:30 or 11am waiting for someone show up. So far, there hasn't been any work that Sarah and I can help with, so we catch up with each other and try to get information out of Said and Rachida. They are busy actually working, so I feel a bit awkward pestering them with questions. Sarah and I usually stick around for an hour or two and then take off to meet Marja, the youth development volunteer who lives in EEK. We meet for lunch and sometimes hit the internet cafe or go to souk. By the time we return to the office around 3 or 4pm Said and Rachida are wrapping things up and there is more time to talk. I stay and chat with Said about the things happening in my village and he patiently answers all of my questions.

Around 5 or 6pm I head back to the taxi stand to get a ride home. For some reason, they really cram people in on this route. Once I counted 13 people in a station wagon – 4 in the way back, 5 in the middle and 4 in front! The front seat was interesting because it was the driver, 2 women and me. One woman was straddling the gear shift and I was sharing the front seat with another woman. Talk about uncomfortable! The woman next to the driver had her jelaba hiked up and she had to kind of stand up every time the driver shifted gears.

Its usually tea time when I get home and Fatima, my host brothers and I sit down for an early evening snack. Sometimes I accompany Sumia to the spring to get water and other evenings I simply relax and try to process the day. Mondays are good because I have a set schedule and I get to speak a little English!

Oued Oum er Rbia

2008-06-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

I finally went swimming yesterday! It was glorious and I am a bit jealous that my friend Tori can walk to the river whenever she wants. Tori lives just north of Khenifra, outside Mrirt in a small, agricultural community. I visited her and her host family yesterday and went went for a swim. Getting to the swimming was interesting, though.

I met Tori in Mrirt and we took a transit bus to her village. It was packed to the gills and these 2 boys kept asking us if we were going swimming and if they could have a couple Dirhams. We made the mistake of telling them we were going swimming because then they wanted to join us. We firmly told them no and thankfully, they got off well before we did. When we got to Tori's house, her host mom, Shumisha wanted to make tea, but we were anxious to get swimming so agreed to have tea afterwards.

We walked/hiked/slid through the fields and along a path to get to the river, but found the spot Tori swam last time to be overrun with young men. She knew of another spot further downstream, so we headed in that direction. Our walk was accompanied by the sounds of “Bonjour,” “You want to swim?” and plenty of stares. Just as we were spreading our towels on a rock and looking around to make sure we were alone, 2 young men emerged from the path and joined us. They were probably in their late teens or early 20's and spoke a little English. They wanted to join us for a swim, which we tried to decline, but they weren't taking a hint, In addition to simply wanting to be by ourselves, it would have been very inappropriate for us to swim with Moroccan men.

One young man was wearing his white boxer briefs and matching white Crocs; the other a looser pair of shorts – no shirts, no modesty that we could very clearly see their “family jewels,” and they seemed completely oblivious to the fact that we were uncomfortable with their presence. They encouraged us to jump in the river with them and one of them even jumped in to show us everything was OK. We continued to decline and increasingly, just ignored them. They finally took a hint and left, leaving Tori and I marveling at a society in which many women won't leave the house without their head covered, but men can walk around in their underwear.

We enjoyed the rest of our swim – the current was fast so we had to jump in and then swim as fast as we could to the edge. It was a rush and a welcome relief from the heat. We went back to Tori's house and lingered a bit too long over tea because we missed the last transit back to Mrirt, where we were going to meet Anna and Ian to make dinner and spend the night at Anna's.

We walked out to the road and waited a while, expecting one to come at any minute. I was sitting on a rock close to the ground when a herd of sheep and goats passed. We were talking and watching them walk by when a black goat at the end of the group strayed and approached me. I naturally said hello and he stared at me for a minute before rubbing his head against my shoulder. I was completely taken aback and busted up laughing, while the goat sniffed my bag. He lost interest and quickly joined the rest of the herd, leaving Tori and I laughing rather hysterically.

In the mean time, her host mom and aunt watched us from afar, waiting for us to admit defeat and come back to the house. It seemed like they were watching from a distance so that we wouldn't notice because as soon as we started to walk back, they scurried into the house and were seemingly going about their business when we got back. Like almost every Moroccan mother I've met, Tori's was concerned with how much dinner we ate. We were eating sharia, the spaghetti noodles with a creamy sauce, but everyone had their own individual bowls. Once Tori and I finished our first ones, Shumisha wanted to fill them up again. Tori asked for a half bowl and I tried to explain how nice it was to get something only half-filled because in my host family, you always get a full glass of tea even if you ask for half. Shumisha jumped on this and said that if that was the way it was in my house, she would fill up our bowls because she wanted me to feel at home!

We spent the night at Tori's and got up early the next day to go to Azrou, because one of the volunteers was having a get together so the new volunteers could meet the other volunteers in the area. Sharon definitely lived up to her reputation as the Martha Stewart of the Middle Atlas Mountains! She has a beautiful apartment and prepared quite a spread of food. There were quite a few volunteers and it was a nice day.

I traveled back to Khenifra with Linda, a small business volunteer who lives there. I misjudged when the last taxis to my site would leave and missed the last one, so I spent the night at Linda's. She is a lovely host and is endlessly inspiring. In her 60's, she is an “older” volunteer, but is still young at heart. There is something in Linda that reminds me of my Grandmom, but I haven't quite placed it. It is something beyond the obvious.

Packages from Home!

2008-06-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Oh the exquisite joy of mail! I went to the post office yesterday – I try to limit my visits to once or twice a week, otherwise I am disappointed when there is no mail. Much to my surprise, there were 2 packages and 4 letters waiting for me! My friend Andrea sent me my favorite shampoo and some other goodies from Lush as well as an assortment of books and magazines. Today, I took an extra long “bath” and finally washed my hair with good shampoo! I usually have to wash it twice with the shampoo I bought here because the first time it doesn't lather, just soaks up all the grease! gross, but this Lush shampoo is awesome! I used a dusting powder that Andrea sent and I felt like a woman again! It was downright luxurious.

My brother and sister-in-law sent some goodies, too! 2 bags of mini reese's PB cups, which are my favorite! They are a little melted and smooshed, but still delicious. I can't wait to have my apartment so I can put them in the fridge.

Mail is awesome.

My First Joke!

2008-06-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the way back of seat of a station wagon taxi waiting to go back to my village this afternoon, when I understood my first joke in Tamazight! The last passenger to show up had some large sacks of grain, which the driver was trying to fit in the trunk. Unfortunately, the other passengers had placed their souk purchases – mostly fruits and vegetables in the trunk and people were admonishing the driver to be careful not to crush their fruit. I was taking it all in, when the driver pulled out a plastic bag of figs and handed it to the man sitting in front of me. He examined his figs and declared, “These aren't figs, this is jam! Where's the sugar I bought? I'll just add it now.” I busted up laughing and then realized that I had understood what he said. People usually take notice and are really excited when they realize I speak Tamazight but today, no one noticed. I was a little disappointed that not one of the 10 or so people noticed that I was laughing with them, but I was pleased with myself for my progress at understanding the conversations taking place around me.

Americans!

2008-06-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

I met up with Tori, Kaylyn, Jake and Logan this weekend. It was Kaylyn's birthday so she came to visit us in Khenifra. Its amazing what a few weeks of immersion in another culture will do to people! I met up with everyone mid-afternoon and they had been talking since mid-morning. We continued to talk well into the night – I think it was close to 3am by the time we called it a night! Everyone had stories of host families, mild harassment in their sites, frustrations with the language and cultural barriers and those moments where all you can do is laugh at yourself because you are failing miserably to communicate with someone in your site. Lacking any solid time to interact with people who speak English, it felt like we had to get the most out of our time together. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

It is miserably hot this week, but I had no idea how hot it was. My village is at an elevation of approximately 6,000 feet and it was 100 F! Down in Khenifra, which is closer to sea level it was even hotter. Growing up in Chicago, where humidity can reach 100% and 90 F can be deadly, I was somewhat surprised at how well I was faring. OK, I wasn't doing fantastically, but I don't really have anyone to complain to, so I wasn't complaining. I have never really bought into the whole dry heat theory, but it has earned some credibility since I've been in Morocco. But, hot is still hot and my butt still sticks to the plastic chair at the internet cafe even in the “dry” heat. Thankfully, it cools off somewhat at night, although I have spent a few nights sleeping on the floor because simply laying on a bed was too hot.

PC Paunch AKA Bread Belly

2008-06-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Despite my best efforts to “maintain my figure,” as someone recently put it, I am growing a bread belly. Moroccans eat a lot of bread. Breakfast is bread with olive oil, butter, jam or honey. Lunch and dinners are usually eaten without utensils with bread serving as the means to getting food in your mouth. I've devised ways to eat less bread – stopping when I am nowhere near full because someone always insists that I eat more and puts another piece of bread in front of me or finishing my first piece of bread and then eating the potatoes and carrots in the tagine with my fingers or using as small a piece of bread as I can to scoop the largest chunk of vegetables. My family is catching on because they offer me utensils for some meals like the salad (chopped tomatoes, onions and garlic) usually eaten with bread, but I get to use a spoon. Other meals are simply delicious, but not at all healthy like fried zuchini or eggplant and french fries. Yummy, but not helping my waistline.

My attempts to exercise have been counteracted by the invites to tea and breakfast that I receive while out on my daily walk/run. I usually go out early to beat the heat and most people are at home still sleeping. When I return, my host mom has tea and breakfast waiting for me. Even if I've stopped for tea or breakfast on my way back, she still insists that I eat again and I have a hard time refusing her.

It would reflect poorly on Fatima if I lost weight while under her care. Many of the women tell me I need to gain weight so I can have a larger chest and a nicer belly. I try to explain wanting to be healthy, but it doesn't really translate, so I stick my belly out a far as I can to demonstrate that I have one. The chest is more difficult to prove because I wear looser fitting clothes to detract any attention from the men in my village. One women told me to keep eating because I don't have a chest and men like women with large chests. She demonstrated this last part by holding her hands out well beyond a reasonable size!

Despite what I eat, someone always tells me that I don't eat enough. I honestly think I could eat a whole tagine, and they would still tell me I didn't eat enough. I think part of it is that I don't eat meat, so they want to make sure I eat more than my share of vegetables and bread. Part of it is cultural, they tell everyone to eat. Except that they are much more persistent with me. If someone else says they are full, the pressure to eat is off. But when I say I'm full, I am faced with “a little more, please?” Sometimes its a nice request and other times its a sharp directive to “EAT!”

Thankfully, my pants still fit and I'll be cooking for myself in a month. I have visions of stir fry and eggs over easy dancing in my head.

Circumcision Celebration!

2008-06-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read correctly. Today, was circumcision day at the clinic and there was quite a bit of celebrating to accompany the procedures. All last week, people in town would stop me and ask if I was going to the hospital on Sunday. They would hold up their pointer and index fingers on one hand and mimic a scissors with the other hand. “They are cutting the boys,” was the message I took away from these interactions.

This morning, I walked to the clinic to find a large group of women gathered outside and some kids hanging around. I had my usual group of girls accompanying me and we hung around outside for a while. My host father noticed me and invited me to come into the hospital. I was a little nervous about what I would see, but figured I should check things out since everyone made such a big deal about it.

Thankfully, there were a lot of men from town milling around and drinking tea, and they stopped me to chat for a few minutes. I learned that they bring in a handful of doctors from the larger hospital in Khenifra about once per year to perform the procedure. They were surprised to learn that in America, most boys are circumcised before they leave the hospital. The boys here are circumcised anywhere from 6 months to 4 or 5 years old. Families from the surrounding countryside traveled to the Sisterhood for the procedure.

As for the actual procedure, I have no basis of comparison to what happens in the U.S. In my village, they had desks from the school set up as operating tables, which were covered with plastic. Each boy was propped up on a pillow and held spread eagle by a male member of the community – not a family member (they waited outside). The doctor performed the procedure and then bandaged the boy, who was returned to his mother with a “goody bag.” The goody bags had yogurt, a hard boiled egg and some bread.

I didn't have the stomach to watch an entire procedure, so I watched the end of one and it was gruesome enough for me. The interesting part was that the pillow the boy was laying on matched the set in my room at my host families house! I thought, “No, someone else must have the same set,” but when I returned home, a pillow was missing from the room!

Back to the hospital. I was struck by the less than sterile environment. One doctor had a pile of peanuts and a cup of tea on the edge of his “operating” table. They would wipe the surface off after each procedure, but it didn't look like they were disinfecting anything, merely washing things off.

I went outside to see what was happening and found the women singing and celebrating. It was a small Haduse, involving drums and singing. Some of the younger girls were dancing. I couldn't help but notice one boy who wouldn't stop crying. He was strapped onto his mother's back and it must have been putting pressure on his recent wound. I felt so bad for him, but his mother seemed oblivious to his cries.

After the last of the surgeries, I hung out for a while chatting with the doctors. Several of them spoke English and I was a bit of a novelty, We talked about life in Morocco and life in America and compared notes. They were surprised that I liked living in my village. We went to lunch at the home of a prominent community member. It was a bit surreal as I was one of 2 females – the other was a nurse from Khenifra who had helped earlier in the day. Lunch was a dish that must be reserved for special occasions – its a large chunk of meat (I don't know what kind, maybe lamb or beef) served over a bed of onions and topped with stewed dates. This obviously doesn't leave much for me to eat, but I dug into the onions and dates and when someone noticed that I wasn't eating the meat, we got into quite a discussion.

Normally, I tell people that eating meat makes me sick. While not entirely true, after 8 years of not eating it, I'm sure it would make me sick. This usually works on the women in my village, but this was a room full of doctors! They weren't buying it, but I insisted and told them that I didn't eat meat in America either, which seemed to satisfy them.

After lunch a man started chanting and the others joined in. I wasn't sure what was happening, but this continued for a couple minutes with the men bowing their heads and placing their hands palms up, one on top of the other. Afterwards, they explained that they were chanting a verse from the Qu'ran and the man who initiated it was the Imam. A short time later, the festivities broke up and I headed home to join my family for a nap.

Hospitality

2008-06-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

Moroccan's have a wonderful sense of hospitality. I think if I wanted to, I could stop cooking for the next two years and just rotate through my community. It seems like everyone I meet wants me to come to their house to eat lunch or dinner and spend the night. That old saying of “What is mine is yours,” really applies in Morocco.

One family invited me for tea and then insisted on watching what I wanted to watch on TV. Most families have satellite, so the channels are endless and I really don't know what is available in English. They flipped through the English channels and we settled on the news. I was somewhat enthralled and after we exhausted our conversation in my limited Tamazight, I happily learned what was happening in the world. This was one of the wealthier families in town, so they insisted on me using their computer to check my email. WOW, I thought, this is not the Peace Corps I pictured. The family insisted that I stay for dinner and then asked if I wanted to take a shower! My protestations of no clean clothes were met with offers to loan me clothes and no worries about shampoo, soap or a towel, either. As I was leaving, the family invited me to come back whenever I wanted to watch English TV, use their internet or take a shower. They even told me they have multiple TV's so I could watch in English by myself while they watch their shows!

I joined another family for tea and over the course of conversation, my habit of not eating meat surfaced. They invited me to lunch the following week and planned it so that it would be the day after souk, so they could buy lots of fresh vegetables. The meal was huge! Lots of vegetables for me, 3 hard-boiled eggs they expected me to eat by myself, a tagine, and salads. This was topped off with honeydew and watermelon and more tea. We rested for a while after lunch and they showed me some of their handicrafts. When I tried to leave, they insisted I stay for evening coffee. After coffee, I was leaving and they invited me to stay for dinner! I declined because I needed to get home, but they invited me back the following week for lunch and a bath (more on that later).

I simply have to walk out my door and down my street to receive an invitation for tea. If it is evening, tea usually turns into an invitation to stay and eat dinner and then spend the night. The sleeping over thing still confounds me, but I guess it is standard procedure.

Weekend in Fes

2008-06-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

I met up with a couple volunteers from my training group in Fes for the weekend! It was great to get out and travel on our own without the rules and restrictions of training. We barely saw any of the city, but had a good time!! I met Jonathan, Phil and Erin.

Fes has a new city, built by the French and an old city built over the past 1,000 years by the locals. The old city, Medina, is still surrounded by defense walls, but has large “doors” or entrances. We stayed at a hotel near Bab Boujeloud which offered views of the nearby mosques and the beautiful “door” to the city.

We spent Saturday morning walking through the Medina, which is a maze of roads and alleys. There were narrow alleyways where it looked like the buildings on either side were reinforcing each other with wood beams. Others where you'd see a sign directing you down a side alley towards a shop promising wonders. We found our way to a leather shop and after much discussion, back and forth bargaining and pleas of “we have very little money, we are volunteers,” all 4 of us left with new leather bags! The shopkeeper had to go check with the “owner” to make sure he wasn't accepting to low a price. He made sure to tell us what a deal we were getting.

OK we didn't exactly leave with the bags. The straps on mine and Erin's bags were too long, so the man offered to shorten them for us. We paid half the agreed price and told him we would return before he closed at 7pm. When we returned later in the afternoon, he tried to charge us an extra 20Dh for the sewing job! We refused on the basis that he didn't tell us that previously and he kept telling us no problem to shorten the straps when we were bargaining. As were were leaving he told us “Well, I paid the man 20Dh but if you don't want to pay me then OK, but I paid him 20Dh.”
We barely touched the old Medina in our 2 or 3 hour stroll...I think we were still in tourist land and not into the heart of the Medina. One of our teachers from training, Said, lives in Fes and we met him for lunch. He took us back to his family's house and his mom and sister made us a wonderful feast! It was fun to see how city Moroccans live and to compare and contrast that with how people in rural areas live. We all practiced our language and also spoke English with Said and his brothers.

By the time we got back to our hotel it was 7pm and everyone wanted a shower and some time to relax. By coincidence, there were 4 PC volunteers from Gambia staying at the same hotel. They were at the end of a month-long vacation around Morocco! It was a great surprise and we spent the evening chatting and comparing our work and the PC rules. We Moroccan PC's had planned to go to a sushi restaurant for dinner and we convinced our new friends to join us.

The restaurant was just outside a fancy hotel/resort place and was a bit upscale for PC volunteers, but we were all craving “American” food and decided to go for it. We Moroccan PC's are still living with host families so we can't yet cook for ourselves and the Gambian volunteers stay with their host families the entire 2 years so they were really craving a taste of home. Over dinner we talked about food...we are sick of bread and tea here in Morocco but the Gambian volunteers were thrilled to see bread. I would love some beans, and they are sick of beans. So we decided its a give and take and no matter where you are, the local food will become routine and unexciting.

My sushi cost half as much as my new leather bag and I decided I would be staying home for the next month and saving my Dirhams. It was worth every penny, though – yes Fes is nowhere near an ocean and I am in Morocco, but I've been eating home-cooked Moroccan food for 4 months. When else will I get a chance to eat sushi?!

Sunday morning was too short! We slept late because they began tearing down the building next door at 1am and continued for most of the night, so none of us slept much. Since the streets are so narrow and crowded during the day, I guess the construction has to happen at night. There was yelling and then something would crash and then people would cheer. This happened over and over again...

We ate a leisurely breakfast and then said goodbye to Jonathan and Phil, who had an 11am train to catch. Erin and I walked around a bit until it was time to catch our buses. We passed the man from the leather shop and he greeted us like old friends, so I think the extra 20Dh request was just a way to get a few extra Dirhams out of us.

The bus ride home was long and hot. The bus was oversold and I waited until it was leaving to board. This was a mistake because people save seats on the buses and I hadn't saved one so I was stuck with the back row. I was relieved when I found that there was an open seat, but that feeling was short-lived. The bus was oversold, so they crammed an extra person in with me. So I spent the next 4 hours between a young man listening to his music and trying to make room for me and a man who alternately rested his arm on the seat in front of him or on my leg. Neither was pleasant because when he lifted his arm, I was overwhelmed with body odor and when he rested it on my leg, I was just plain uncomfortable.

There's no air conditioning on the buses and only 2 windows that actually open, so its like being in a greenhouse in the sun. By the time I got to Khenifra, I was drenched in sweat and thrilled to breathe fresh air.

Transportation

2008-06-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

My village is 4k from the main road to Khenifra and if there aren't any taxis or mini buses in my village I start walking to the main road, where there is a taxi stand and a few cafe's. This morning was a walking day, so I set out for the main road. A car I recognized from my village passed but didn't stop to offer me a ride and then a taxi went by and it didn't stop either. I was beginning to think that I would actually end up walking all the way, when I happened upon my host father getting his car fixed. He was talking to a group of men and I stopped to say hello.

A man I'd met previously was among the group and he asked if I remembered him. I did but couldn't remember his name. He gave me a hard time about it because he remembered mine and I tried to explain that it was easy for him to remember my name because I am the only white girl in town. There are 4,000 people in the Sisterhood and I am meeting so many people its hard to remember everyone's name. I have taken to writing them down along with an identifying characteristic, so I had Said write his name in my notebook. He drives an orange car.

Said ended up driving me out to the main road where we hung out for a while. An empty mini bus passed and they flagged it down. The driver was a friend of Said's and agreed to take me to Khenifra. He and his passenger were from my town and going to spend the day in Khenifra. Apparently the mini bus was the only vehicle they had to drive. We chatted in Tamazight and when we arrived in Khenifra would not accept payment and insisted on taking me out for coffee, which I really couldn't refuse.

Becky's No Good, Very Bad Day

2008-06-04T09:18:00.001-07:00

Today started well enough – it was our first official staff meeting with the MEDA folks and the K-5 team had made plans to meet for lunch before our 3pm meeting. We had a pleasant and leisurely lunch and then split up for a while since we each had different errands to run while we were in the 'big' city of Khenifra. I cut my time at the internet cafe a little close and was power-walking to the office and hoping that this meeting, like all the others, would start late. I was right. The 5 PCV's spent 45 minutes in the conference room waiting for everyone else to join us.

Once the meeting finally started, Mr. S told us they would do their best to translate, but we might not follow everything. We spent the next 2.5 hours listening to a meeting conducted almost entirely in Arabic and French, 2 languages none of us speak! Mr. S has taken a liking to Elizabeth and MEDA is doing a lot of work in her site, so he took time to get her up to speed, but left the rest of us hanging.

I was hitching a ride home with Sidi Mo (MEDA, not my host uncle), Said and Rachida, so I hung around after the meeting while they finished up a few things in the main office. I was feeling rather down...aside from the whole not understanding the meeting thing, the weather was hot, the meeting room hotter and there wasn't any water to drink, so I had developed a headache and was kind of cranky.

As we walked to meet Sidi Mo across town, I asked Said what they talked about in the meeting. He told me it was an update for Mr. S and that I didn't really need to know. Mr. S requested our presence at the meeting, so I'm thinking he wanted us to know what was going on. I persisted and Said turned to me and said, “You didn't understand anything in the meeting?” “Hello!” I wanted to scream, “the meeting was conducted in 2 languages I don't know! Of course I didn't understand.” Instead I calmly told him I did not and repeated my request for an explanation.

Said speaks some English and between his English and my Tamazight and the similarity of many words between French and English, we usually communicate pretty well. By pretty well, I mean it takes us twice as long as if we both spoke the same language frequently, but hey its better than nothing. Said had taken time before to explain things to me, so I was a bit miffed by his dismissiveness.

Rachida joined the conversation to get a few punches in. She wanted to know why I didn't come to the El Kebab office and ride to Khenifra with them. I explained to her that the K-5 team got together for lunch and that I had told Said I wasn't going to meet them. We had this exchange about 5 times, back and forth essentially saying the same thing. I gave up which I don't usually do, but I couldn't see an end and I felt like she just wanted to pick on me for something.

By this time we had made it to the car, but Sidi Mo wasn't around. Said walked to the cafe he usually hangs out in and left Rachida and I waiting at the car. At this point, now that I'm feeling really crummy and the headache is getting worse, Rachida tells me that Sarah (the volunteer who finished her 2 years in May) spoke 4 languages – French, Arabic, Tamazight and English. She ticked them off on her fingers for emphasis. Then she kind of smirked at me as if to say I wasn't good enough. A little note about Sarah, she came to Morocco speaking French fluently and learned Tamazight during training and then switched to Arabic once she got to her village. So she really only spoke a little Tamazight and Arabic, but apparently that was enough.

I decided I was done for the day and really just wanted to go home. Rachida's comment left me feeling more than inadequate and wondering what the heck I was going to accomplish if I couldn't communicate with my co-workers and boss. Sidi Mo and Said arrived and we got on the road. Almost immediately, they tried to convince me to stay in EEK instead of going “all the way” to the Sisterhood. My village is 14k (approximately 8 miles) and about 15 or 20 minutes away from EEK. I was wondering why they even offered me a ride if they didn't want to give me one and thinking I should have just taken a taxi because I couldn't really bear all they badgering about staying in EEK. They even told me I could stay with the youth development volunteer who lives there! I happened to know that she was out of town and told them as much and then they offered for me to stay with Sidi Mo's family!

This line of conversation got dropped because we made a u-turn at the outskirts of Khenifra to see a house Rachida was thinking about buying. This turned into at least an hour long affair involving an argument with a man who seemingly was just trying to help. The “house” is an abandoned building that may have once been a house but isn't anymore. There was a telephone number painted on the wall and this man was telling Sidi Mo to call and talk with this person. I don't know all that transpired, but voices were raised, hands were flailing and I was sitting thinking, “Boy, does my head hurt. I'd really like to go home.”

Meanwhile, I was attracting quite a following of young children, 20 at least who followed us at a close distance and would shout, “Bonjour Madame!” or “Ca va?” I tried my usual tactic of ignoring them, but that didn't work. They just stood there and watched me and then the group would push one of them forward and he or she would repeat the “Bonjour!” Then the started singing, which really aggravated me. My head was pounding and this was making it so much worse.

Said took notice and told them to go away. They simply backed up a few feet. I told Said about my headache and asked if I could sit in the car. He unlocked the doors and I sat back and closed my eyes. Even after more admonitions from Said, the kids continued to hover and shout a “Bonjour” every now and then. At some point they found the owner of the house who had blueprints that were consulted over a pot of tea, while I tried to remain calm.

Once everyone piled back into the car and we got on the road, it was close to 8pm and the sun was starting to set. The conversation turned back to my staying in EEK, which I had no intention of doing. Even though I still feel like a guest with my host family, its the closest thing to home I have and its the only place I wanted to be. I finally convinced them on the grounds of not having my contact case or glasses with me. This was quite a conversation as I tried to explain contacts – it wasn't working very well. “Glasses for your eyes,” and hand motions of putting something in my eye had them thoroughly confused. Luckily, Sidi Mo was the aforementioned Sarah's host father and she wore contacts, so he explained the situation.

The Sisterhood had just come into sight when Sid Mo slammed on the brakes and pulled over. “Haddou's car is here. You get out and stay with him.” Oh how my heart sank. We were at the junction 4k from my village where the road meets the main highway to Khenifra. There are a couple cars that look like Haddou's so I thought maybe it wasn't him, but before I could gather my things there was my host father saying hello to Said. I reluctantly got out of the car and joined Haddou and several other men drinking tea.

Among them was another man from town who I know through his daughter and his work with the association. He insisted on feeding me and brought me back a yogurt drink and something like a hostess cake. Although I wasn't feeling hungry, I ate it all and somehow felt a little better. As I was sitting there trying to follow the conversation, a pickup truck with an entire soccer team pulled up. They must have won their match because they were singing and beating drums! Oh could this day get any worse I thought as my head started to pound with the beat of the drum. Luckily they were stopping to pick up soda's or something because they didn't stay long and my head returned to its own beat.

The men seemed to be conducting a business meeting and Haddou seemed to be the moderator. I observed quietly for a while and once they were finished, the conversation turned to me. I must have been showing my tiredness because Haddou asked if I wanted to go home. I promptly said yes. One of the other men drove me home and we talked for a few minutes about what Id done in Khenifra. It gave me hope for my language abilities as we communicated fairly well.

I was so happy to see my house. It was 9:30 or so when I got home and dinner wouldn't be for another hour at least. I told my host mom that I was going to bed and she tried to convince me to eat, but for once, I prevailed and went to bed without eating.

Bath Time

2008-05-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

Let me give you a little background on bathing in Morocco. During training, my host family would give me a teapot of hot water every morning and I usually managed to either wash my hair or my body by mixing it with cold water and bucket bathing. Despite this daily cleansing, I was still thrilled to see my shower when I got back to the hotel in Ouarzazate. There really is something to be said for the feeling of water flowing over you while you bathe. My village during training did not have a communal hammam, so I hadn't experienced this style of bathing.

During my site visit, I had noticed that my family had a shower, but it didn't look like it had been used recently. Today, I discovered why it goes unused - my family has a mini-hammam on the roof of the house! It is a small “room” created with a metal frame covered with plastic sheets. It is built on a small cement pad that has a space underneath for a fire. The fire heats the whole thing as well as a large basin of water, which is housed inside.

My host mom fired it up after lunch and everyone in the family got a turn. First her and my host aunt, who took the little kids in with them. Then a couple of the boys had a turn and by early evening, I joined Sumia for my first hammam experience.

Its like a steam room – very hot and humid and first you hang out for a couple minutes. Then you soap up with an olive oil based, gooey soap. Then you start scrubbing with these black mitts that are really harsh. You wouldn't believe how much skin comes off! I just hope it was all dead because it felt like quite a few layers got taken off. Sumia scrubbed my back and I scrubbed hers. We worked on our feet with pumice stones, shampooed and rinsed down. I think the whole thing took at least an hour.

I wasn't sure how the exiting of the hammam would work since we were on the roof and plenty of people could see us. I had entered and then taken my clothes off, so they were outside. I wrapped in my towel and stepped outside unsure what I was going to do. Fatima told me I could go down to my room, which is exactly what I did. I felt so refreshed and relaxed that I put my sweatpants on and hung out for a few minutes. I emerged from my room feeling like a whole new person!

I wasn't allowed to leave the house with wet hair, so I wrapped a scarf around my head for the rest of the evening. I am a convert to this way of bathing...I still enjoy a good shower, but the hammam definitely has its place. I hope I can continue to join my family for the weekly hammam even after I move out on my own.

Paperwork

2008-05-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

Upon instructions from Mr. S, the K-5 team arrived in Khenifra yesterday to pick up our attestations. These official documents formalize our jobs and are proof that we are working legally. We needed the attestation to apply for our national identity cards, which we needed to complete before June 4th. After that, if we were stopped at a police check point, we could be deported. So, the papers were important.

We discovered that Mr. S. wasn't in the office, the paperwork wasn't ready, and told to return tomorrow. We debated what to do. Both Tori and I decided it would cost us the same amount of money to spend the night in Khenifra as it would to get home and back again. We met up with Jed, Duncan and Samuel, who were still in town for their meetings and spent the evening at a cafe drinking hot chocolate and getting to know each other.

The next day, Sarah got up bright and early to get her paperwork and get back to her village, only to find out that they needed one more signature from someone who wouldn't be in the office until after lunch. Lunch in Morocco can stretch from noon until 2 or 3 o'clock. We had some time to kill. I took a real, hot shower at the hotel and thoroughly enjoyed it. Tori and I took an extended breakfast at a cafe – we soaked up fresh air, real coffee and the company of each other. We traded stories about our host families' quirks, the situations in our villages and news from other volunteers.

For lunch, we met up with the health guys and Samuel showed us his favorite sandwich shop. The owner is college-educated, speaks English meticulously and owns a sandwich shop in Khenifra. Unfortunately, this is indicative of the job market in Morocco. More and more people are staying in school and attending university, only to graduate with no job prospects. Lunch was great and the owner friendly and happy to meet us. There isn't much to do in Khenifra and it was drizzling, so we spent the next two hours at the cafe drinking coffee and playing cards, until it was time for the Health guys to return to the office.

Thankfully, when Tori and I returned to our office, the paperwork was ready!

Side note: As part of our getting to know each other conversations, we were talking about why each of was here. I was telling them that I had been at my job for 5 years and had realized that I either had to find a new job or go to grad school to continue to advance in my field. Since those options seemed too daunting, I had applied for Peace Corps instead. Someone started laughing and I realized how my silly it sounded. Here I am in Morocco, a country with a culture vastly different from my own, where I have a kindergartener's vocabulary, doing development work, a field in which I have no experience. How is that any easier than grad school or finding a new job? There is irony in there somewhere.

Missed Milestones

2008-05-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a series of missed milestones back home. My sister's birthday, my brother's first wedding anniversary and my college roommate's wedding! The past week I'd been wondering how I would handle missing all of these celebrations. Luckily, I kept myself fairly busy and didn't have much time to dwell on what I was missing back home. Yesterday was my day at school and today I unexpectedly found myself in Khenifra.

My host uncle, Sidi Mo was over for breakfast, so I asked him about the village he lives in and the association he manages. The village is 5k over the mountain and I have yet to visit, although I hear a lot about it because my host mom is from there and her parents, Sidi Mo and other family still live there. In the course of conversation, I mentioned that I was going to Khenifra tomorrow to pick up some paperwork from the MEDA office. Sidi Mo asked if I wanted to go today to see the souk. Before I knew it, we were in a taxi on our way!

The postman was in the taxi with us and the three of us had coffee, real coffee, together at a cafe in Khenifra. Real coffee is a treat in Morocco. Coffee at home is hot milk with sugar and Nescafe – a delicious drink, but not really coffee. Plus, I'm a coffee with milk, no sugar kind of gal and I really do enjoy the taste of real coffee. The coffee at cafe's is actually espresso, which is even better than regular coffee, so I was pretty content with the day and it was only 10am.

Sidi Mo and I strolled through the souk – it is a large, open air market where you can buy just about everything. By everything, I mean everything – large kitchen appliances, big metal doors, fruits and vegetables, meat, clothes, shoes, spices, furniture, kitchen utensils, hardware, and just about anything else you can imagine. Some stands have tables, others have their wares spread on the ground; tarps and tents cover most of the area, which helps keep vendors and buyers cool and out of the sun, but makes walking treacherous as you must dodge stakes and ropes with every step. There are people walking, some pulling handcarts, others pulling larger 2-wheel carts and the occasional donkey and everyone seems to think you are going to get out of their way. I am slowly learning to push my way through crowds and gently guide people out of my way.

As we strolled through the food section, Sidi Mo pointed to the different vegetables and told me their names. A few had different names than I had learned in training, so it was helpful. Occasionally, we'd stop to talk to a vendor that Sidi Mo knew. I was usually handed a cup of tea and had to drink fast because the conversations were short and Sidi Mo would stand there waiting for me to finish the tea. Sidi Mo bought a couple melons , plums and popcorn for the kids in the family.

We stopped at a hanut at the edge of the souk and Sidi Mo left his purchases with the owner. He brought a single melon and a couple plums with, which puzzled me. We made our way to a restaurant that serves fish, pizza and rotisserie chickens. On the walk over, we talked about what I eat – my vegetarianism is truly a marvel – and when we arrived Sidi Mo ordered without consulting me. There was tons of food for the two of us – I received a good sized “salad” - boiled, chilled potatoes and beets, corn, green pepper, olives and tomatoes served over a bed of rice. Plus, a fried fish platter of sorts that had 3 whole fried fish, a pile of fried baby shrimp and fried calamari. I didn't know how to tell Sidi Mo that I am allergic to shrimp, so I dug into the salad and ate the other fish and was stuffed without even touching the shrimp. I was so thrilled to see vegetables I could eat with a fork!!!

During lunch Sidi Mo gave the bag of fruit to the waiter. After clearing our plates, he returned with a beautiful platter of fresh cut melon and clean plums. It was delicious! When we finished our fruit, we walked around town a bit and then settled into a cafe for another round of coffee. I have been to this cafe a couple times with Sidi Mo and they have a single flat screen TV that is always tuned to Animal Planet. It is kind of weird, but enjoyable for me because its in English and thrashing animals are universally appreciated.

After coffee, Sidi Mo and I were walking to the taxi stand when I saw a white person sitting outside at a cafe. I did a double-take and realized it was Duncan, a fellow, new volunteer in the Health sector. He was in town for a series of introductory meetings with the Ministry of Health. I was thrilled to have an American to talk to, so we sat down to chat. Sidi Mo told us to speak in Tamazight so he could join the conversation and we did our best. Soon, Samuel, a 2nd year Health volunteer joined us; he was in town to help Duncan and the other new volunteers find the Ministry office and to help with translation. Samuel has a knack for languages and thoroughly impressed Sidi Mo with his abilities. We had been chatting for about an hour, when Jed, another new Health volunteer arrived. It was quite an experience – the 4 Americans doing our best to speak with Sidi Mo. We all had a good laugh and Sidi Mo told Samuel that I am part of the family, like a sister to him.

The voyage home was long. We took a taxi to a town about 20k outside Khenifra and hung out for a long time waiting for a taxi to the Sisterhood. We drank tea, talked to the taxi stand manager, ate yogurt, and hung out some more. I saw an internet cafe and asked if I could go over there for a few minutes. Sidi Mo escorted me and I got the impression that the taxi was going to leave any moment, so I had better hurry. All of the computers were taken, but Sidi Mo talked a group of girls into giving up their computer for a couple minutes. I got the impression that he played the “American” girl card. They fell over themselves to make way for me at the computer and after my 5 minute email session, wouldn't accept any payment. I got a quick email off to my sister and my brother and sister-in-law to let them know I was thinking of them on their special days.

Driving back to my village, I had a feeling of coming home. It was a cool evening and there was a breeze coming in the window of the taxi. When my village came into sight, I felt a familiar safe, content feeling I used to get when I traveled and was returning home. I used to feel that way when the lights of Chicago would come into view from an airplane, or when I'd get off the expressway at the exit for my parents house. It was a good feeling.

It also occurred to me that my host family and many members of the community treat me like a cherished child. Everyone seems eager to show me around and treat to me to small things like coffee and sweets. They beam proudly at me when I identify something correctly, and chuckle to themselves when I mispronounce words. I also feel like they are showing me off...like “Look we have an American with us.”

My parents were having a family BBQ for Memorial Day and my sister's birthday. Via the wonders of Skype, I was able to talk with everyone at the party all at once! It was great to hear everyone's voice – voices I didn't expect to hear for a couple years.

My First Day of School

2008-05-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

I didn't have anything to do today, so I decided to check out the elementary school. My host brother, Zuhir was assigned to accompany me. The school week in Morocco runs Monday through Saturday and students only go for half the day. This is due to a shortage of teachers and classrooms. Somehow, all of the kids in my family are on the same schedule. Every other day they go mornings and the other days they attend in the afternoons. Saturdays are afternoon days, so Zuhir was giving up his free morning to escort me to school.

We stopped at the director's office first; his duties are administrative and disciplinary in nature, similar to a principal. I dove in with my introduction in the best Tamazight I could muster and he looked at me like I was an alien dropped into his office and speaking gibberish! He asked me to speak French and I explained that I don't speak French, so we struggled along in Tamazight. After exhausting my “who, what, where, why” sentences about myself, he asked me what I wanted and I told him I wanted to know more about the school – how many students, their ages, the teachers, resources available to the students and teachers, etc. I thought I had explained myself well, but he gave me with another quizzical look and asked if I wanted to see some kids. I said “Sure!” and he escorted me to a classroom.

The school is built in an almost park-like setting with each classroom its own little building, surrounding an open field where the kids take their recess. The classroom we went to was the closest to the Director's office, which is also its own building. When the director entered the classroom, the entire class stood up and greeted him in unison. He spoke to the teacher and they directed Zuhir and I to a desk a the back of the room. We observed for a while – the students were taking turns going to the front of the room to recite something. The teacher joined us in the back of the room and was explaining some of the details of the school to me. He spoke quite a bit of English which helped facilitate this process.

Education in Morocco is free, but students must purchase their books each year. These are more like workbooks – soft cover books that include both reading material and exercises. Thus, they are used only once and not recycled as text books in the States are. On average, they cost 180Dh each year, which can be prohibitive for families with many children or with limited incomes. The books are written and distributed by the Ministry of Education and all schools follow a national curriculum that includes:

Arabic
French
Writing
Islamic Education
Math
Science
History
Geography
Drawing
Sports

Although students speak Tamazight at home, educational institutions are conducted in Arabic. Students learn Arabic and French beginning in elementary school and in high school, they begin to learn English! Its no wonder everyone here assumes I speak French and are stunned when I tell them that students in America are only required to learn English. Many people assume that all foreigners speak French.

I was somewhat surprised by how little was accomplished in the classrooms I observed. The first class was a writing class, but they spent a significant amount of time with the recitation and then colored a picture in one of their books. A math class consisted of the teacher writing a series of problems on the board and then giving the students more than enough time to complete them. While correcting them, he didn't take time to explain the answers or help any of the students who had questions. One class ended quite early and the teacher played music and the kids sang along for the remainder of the period. In addition, all of the students I knew, either from playing with them on my street or meeting at their homes, spent more time waving to me and making sure I saw them participating or helping the teacher than paying attention in class. I must make a small disclaimer that some of the teachers may have altered their plans because I was present and these observations were made on one day; things may be different when I am not around.

Throughout the morning, Zuhir would give me a look that said, “Let's go!” I tried to tell him that he could go home and I would stay at school, but he wasn't leaving without me. Once the afternoon classes started, he left to attend class, but only after the director assured Zuhir that he would make sure I got home OK.

I ate lunch with the Director and one of the teachers at the Director's home. It is adjacent to the school and I wonder if housing is provided by the Ministry of Education. Teachers and Directors are assigned to schools somewhat arbitrarily it seems. We talked a bit about the importance of education – both heartily agreed that education is the first step towards a brighter future for Morocco. They stressed the importance of an appropriate and correct Islamic education. This teacher in particular, talked about the extremist views in Islam and how those are not the mainstream or correct beliefs. I felt like he was trying to reassure me about his religion and beliefs and the future of Morocco.

I also learned that a Japanese development organization donated a computer lab to the school. This prompted me to ask some questions of my fellow volunteers and I learned that Japan outspends every other country (including the U.S.), both in percentage of GDP and gross investment, on international development. I received a history lesson, too – somehow my history classes never really made it to modern history i.e. WW2, so I recently learned that the U.S. essentially wrote Japan's constitution and wrote it in such a way as to exclude the possibility of maintaining a standing military. Thus, Japan has plenty of money to spend on peaceful pursuits such as development.

Home Sweet Home

2008-05-23T13:02:00.001-07:00

I finally made it to my village today! My counterpart, Said, works for MEDA and lives in EEK. He was working in the one of the villages near mine, so I met him and the driver at the office in EEK this morning. We loaded up my luggage and drove up to my village, which I'll call the Sisterhood. We drove right up to my door and they helped me unload my bags. Then we drove up into the mountains and when the "road" became impassable even in the Land Rover, Said and I got out and walked.
MEDA is funding a massive erosion control project in the area surrounding my village. I haven't figured out if the erosion is caused by farming, grazing or both, but it is a significant problem. Between my limited Tamazight and French and Said's limited English, this is what I understand: Erosion in Morocco, while generally bad because you lose topsoil, is also causing the sea level in the Mediterranean to rise. I haven't had a chance to check this out, but it makes sense that the EU would fund this type of project because the Mediterranean is a prime tourist destination and rising water levels would be a detriment to business. I'll get back to you on whether this is truly the case.
Back to Morocco, Said thought the men were working in one area, so we hiked in that direction. All the while he was pointing out different trees, animals, etc. and giving me their names in Tamazight. When we got to where he thought they were, the men weren't there. We asked a man working in his field and he pointed across the valley. Said thought we should hike up to the top of the mountain (we were already about 2/3 of the way) to get a better view. We did, but still couldn't see them. By the way, at some point, I asked about calling these phantom men on the telephone, but neither one of us had "rizzo," which is what they call the cell phone signal.
I was starting to get hungry, but didn't say anything because it didn't seem like there was much Said could do about it. He must have been getting hungry as well, because he went over to a tree and picked a couple unripe peaches. They were good, really crunchy and sour. He also picked a couple fava beans and we munched on those. I also liked those – they still weren't ready for picking, but they tasted a lot better than the cooked ones I was eating in Ouarzazate!
We climbed up to the top of the mountain while we ate our impromptu snack and found we still couldn't see the men working. Said pointed to a small village across the valley and asked if it was OK if we walked over there. I said, "Sure" but wondered how on earth we were going to get there. There wasn't a path down the mountain, only around the valley. We "hiked" mostly, I just skidded and slipped my way down the mountain. We stopped under a tree for a rest and Said smoked a cigarette. I think it was a hazelnut tree, although I've never seen a hazelnut on a tree, so I'm not sure. I know what it is called in Tamazight and they explained that you crunch it up and mix it with chocolate, so hazelnut seemed like a good guess.
We continued our hike up the other side of the valley and arrived in a small village. It was mid-day on Friday so the men were at the mosque. We hung around for a few minutes and then the man we were looking for exited the mosque and greeted us. We walked around the village for a little while and then went to this man's house for lunch.
First however, we drank tea and ate bread with what I think was melted goat butter. I was pretty hungry, having eaten yogurt and a banana for breakfast, so I ate more bread than I normally would, thinking it would have to tide me over until evening tea back at home. Plus, they kept telling me to eat more. After tea, they brought out a tagine, which I happily ate until I was full. I had to explain to Said and our hosts that I don't eat meat, which brings the inevitable question of "why?" they asked if I ate meat in America and I said no. I explained that I hadn't eaten meat in at least 8 years because I don't like it. They seemed a bit miffed, but didn't press me to eat any of the meat in the tagine.
After lunch we hiked to the top of this mountain and took a look at the infrastructure the village was building. This mountain was a lot rockier than the one we started on, so they were using the rocks to build long, low walls every 15 to 20 feet. The walls followed the contour of the hillside and were meant to prevent rain from washing the topsoil away. Some of the walls were not built properly, so we were checking on the progress since this was discovered. The walls the mean were working on today passed inspection, however there was a whole field with problematic walls. I'm not sure if they will rebuild those or leave them as is.

It was a long day and I was sunburned on my forearms, with a nice white outline of my watch. I had worn a lightweight scarf around my neck at the beginning of the day, thinking it might be cool in the mountains, but it had come in handy as a wrap for my head and neck, to keep the sun off.

Meeting our Counterparts

2008-05-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

The MEDA staff had planned a farewell party for Matt and Sarah and invited the K-5 to attend. We all returned to the office this afternoon to send them on their way. All 20+ staff were there, so we finally met everyone. The party was reminiscent of the going away parties I've attended for co-workers in U.S. There were cookies and soda and toasting of the departing parties. No roasting - I don't think it is culturally appropriate to tease or point out traits or situations where people haven't been at their best.
Mr. S even prepared remarks about both Sarah and Matt. He had a fatherly air about him as he spoke of their growth and achievements over the past two years. It was kind of funny because he spoke French and then Sarah translated to English for the K-5. He would say something about how great she was and she would smile or laugh and then tell us what he said. She also translated for Matt, so she would exclaim over what Mr. S said about Matt and then tell Matt what he said.
I spent last night and will again tonight with Marja, a youth development volunteer in a village between Khenifra and mine. I'll call it EEK since I can't disclose our exact locations. MEDA employs a couple drivers, one of whom lives in her village. He graciously drove us back to Marja's and detoured to the bus station on the way. Both Sarah (K-5, not the departing one) and I had shipped bags from Ouarzazate and they were waiting for us at the bus station.
I am excited about what lies ahead – the MEDA staff were warm and welcoming and genuinely excited to have us working with them. Seeing the way they interacted with Matt and Sarah reminded me of the relationships with co-workers I left in the States and that was encouraging. They laughed and joked and teased each other which indicated to me that they had more than a professional relationship and were also friends. I look forward to developing those relationships. Everyone also went out of their way to welcome us and make us feel at home.

Mini-Field Trip

2008-05-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

The K-5 team met up with Matt and Sarah (outgoing Environment volunteers) bright and early. We had coffee at "the cafe." Although there are a lot of cafe's in Khenifra, this one is on the corner of the major intersection in town and is right by the hotel. I think it will become our main point of reference. By the way, there are 3 hotels in Khenifra – one is out of our price range, even though its only $25 per night. The one we stayed at is less than $10 per night and supposedly there is one thats about $5 per night and offers the same "amenities" as the $10 one.
After our coffee, we walked to the MEDA office for a meeting with our boss. Mr. S speaks French and Moroccan Arabic. The K-5 all learned Tamazight, so there is a language barrier. Luckily, outgoing Sarah speaks French and translated during the meeting. Mr. S gave us some information about MEDA and information specific to our sites. He had a packet for each of us, complete with a report about our village and some office supplies to get us going. He invited us to go to a workshop later in the morning at Elizabeth's village. After some consultation about logistics and luggage, we all decided to attend.
I was slightly intimidated by Mr. S because, according to Matt and Sarah, he is a big shot in the world of development. He was no-nonsense during the meeting, directing people do make copies, write this down, translate that. It seemed he commanded everyone in the office. Plus, he smoked and he'd wave his hand with the cigarette in it. For some reason I associated that image with something not entirely positive.
We all piled into a couple Land Rovers and drove out to Elizabeth's village. Along the way we asked Mr. S about the project and learned a lot more about what we'd see when we arrived. In an effort to raise the income potential of families in this and surrounding villages, MEDA had done an extensive survey of the land, people, etc. People are currently growing wheat and barley, which is by no means a cash crop. By switching them to medicinal plants, their income potential increases 2 to 3 fold. MEDA is helping facilitate this by building a "factory" to extract essential oils from the plants. The factory is male territory. MEDA is also building a drying station to allow women to dry herbs that they can then sell. In addition, they developed Elizabeth's village as the center of all of this activity. They are building a cafe where patrons can sit with their feet in water scented with a byproduct of the factory, and they built up the amenities in the village. This includes a new "source" where water is gathered for drinking, a separate area for animals to drink, washing stations where women can wash clothes (instead of in a stream) and a system for collecting the waste water and sending it through a natural treatment system. A source is simply a naturally occurring spring. Some have infrastructure that allows for more sanitary collection of drinking water, which is one of the things addressed with this project.
Matt had helped design the factory and drying station to take advantage of passive solar heating and light, so he was giving a workshop about that. It was cool to see him speaking English, Sarah translating to French and then one of the MEDA staff people translating the French to Arabic. After the workshop we went to Elizabeth's house for tea and all 20 or so people crammed into the living room.
It was a good day – we got to see Mr. S out in the field and he's much more relaxed and easy-going. He's taken a liking to Elizabeth, so he was teasing her about something on the ride to the workshop. We also had an opportunity to meet more of the MEDA staff.

Good-bye Ourazazate, Hello Khenifra

2008-05-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

PC training is often challenging in many regards and surprisingly challenging emotionally. For the past three months, I've lived, eaten, trained, socialized, and studied with 25 people who were complete strangers when I met them on March 1st in Philadelphia and another 10 Peace Corps staff who joined us in Ouarzazate. As you would expect, we all got to know each other to some degree. Some more than others – when I asked Tori if she wanted to room together in Ouarzazate, the only memory I had of her before that was talking to her in the hotel lobby in Rabat. She was going on and on about how she talks a lot and she knows she does this, particularly when she is with people she doesn't know and there are those awkward silences. She fills them up. Tori quickly became one of my closest friends in Morocco. Luckily, we are within about 2 hours of each other and can meet halfway in Khenifra. Others are so far away, the next time we'll see each other is November when we have In-Service Training. It is hard to picture life without any Americans, especially these 25, around to talk to. It is also difficult to imagine heading out today without the immediate support of our PC staff. They have been here to answer all of our questions about Moroccan food, behavior, dress, language, etc. When my new host family does something I find strange, I won't have Hoda to explain what was going on!
I was also surprised by how quickly I bonded with my host family in CBT. The 4 weeks we spent together were spread over a 10-week period and I was at school from 8am until 6pm for the majority of the days I spent with them. Given the language barrier, it is hard to believe how much I will miss them. It will be an adjustment for me to move from their relatively quiet and serene home, to bustling and lively home of my new host family.
To get from Ouarzazate to Khenifra, the K-5 group of volunteers opted to take a CTM bus to Marrakesh and then taxi it the rest of the way. The CTM is a private bus company that operates on time and only stops in major cities, so it took us about 4 hours to get to Marrakesh. The drive is through an insane mountain pass – I equate it roughly to the Highway 1 trek through Big Sur in Calfornia. But this is Morocco so there are no guard rails, the road is really only 1.5 lanes wide and the rules of the road aren't exactly followed to a "T." I like the drive better by bus because I can't see all the perils and I have my own seat.
We arrived in Marrakesh in good spirits. We planned to stop at McDonalds – yes, that American institution. Being a vegetarian who didn't frequent McDonalds in the states, even I was excited about a tiny piece of Americana before I set out for my village. Our plan was to take a petit taxi to the Grand Taxi Station. Remember we are moving to our sites, so we have a lot of stuff. The taxi guys at the CTM station wanted to take us right to Beni Mellal where we would transfer to another Grant taxi to take us the rest of the way to Khenifra. There were a couple problems with this scenario:
They wanted to overcharge us by a lot
Technically, they aren't allowed to take passengers long distances. They are allowed only to operate within the city limits of Marrakesh.
We wanted to go to the Taxi Station, but none of them would take us, leaving us to their mercy. We finally agreed to take a small van taxi straight to Beni Mellal. They packed all our luggage in and then we realized that there really wasn't enough room for us to sit. They wanted 4 of us in the back seat and 1 in front. This isn't an unusual situation except that the backseat was really tiny. They wanted Tori, who was on the end to sit sideways. We argued a bit and didn't get very far – we were at this guy's mercy. We told the driver we wanted to stop at McDonald's for lunch before we left Marrakesh – we knew it was close because we passed it on the bus.
We drove off and shortly stopped across the street from McDonalds, but we were just on the side of the road, not a parking place. The driver got out and started talking to another man on the sidewalk. We debated what to do and decided we would leave someone in the van with all of our worldly possessions, while the rest of us got a bite to eat. Just as we were taking Jake's order (as the lone male in the K-5, he often gets stuck with these jobs), the driver got back in and we started driving again – AWAY FROM McDonalds! We all started talking and trying to explain that we were going the wrong way. He told us not to worry that we'd drive a little while and then stop for a tagine. That was the last thing any of us wanted to eat – we'd been eating them for three months and wanted a taste of home. We tried some more, but there was no persuading the driver. The somewhat buoyant mood suddenly turned sour. None of us spoke for the rest of the ride. I think we all lost our appetites and had the realization that America was out of our reach for the immediate future.
We stopped at a gas station on the edge of Marrakesh to fill up the gas tank. It was more like an American truck stop with a restaurant, convenience store, etc. He offered to let us eat there. We said no – I felt like I'd rather not eat than eat another tagine. I was really looking forward to fries and a McFlurry. I'd even heard from another volunteer that they have good salads, ones without chicken on them!
The driver kindly took time to rearrange our luggage to make room for Jake to sit on the floor in the back. He made a little cubby-hole and insisted that Jake, none of the girls, sit there. This took a while because he had to put some bags on the roof and tie them down. We had to pay 1/3 of our fair at the gas station so he could fill up his tank.
About 30 minutes outside of Marrakesh, there was a Gendarme checkpoint. These are fairly regular along the major routes, so we didn't think much of it. None of us had been in a vehicle that was stopped – they usually waive you through. Our luck was not so good today. As soon as we were waived over, the driver asked for 20Dh to bribe the officer. Before we could gather the change from our pockets he got out to talk to the officer who approached our van. They talked for a good 10 minutes and then the driver got back in the car and we took off again. We weren't sure what happened, but were glad to be back on the road.
About 15 minutes later, a legit grand taxi passed us without any passengers. Our driver gunned it and followed him, honking and waiving for him to pull over. The drivers talked for a few moments and then they told us to get in the other taxi. We asked about $$$ because we'd already put a 1/3 of the fare into the gas tank of the first taxi and we were not a1/3 of the way to our destination. They said not to worry about it. The drivers unloaded our luggage from the van and put it in the new taxi. It was your typical old Mercedes and we had to cram backpacks by the back windshield and wedge a couple into the "4th" seat in the back. When were finally moved into our new taxi, the drivers started talking money. We argued for a reduced fare, because of the inconvenience, but they wouldn't have any of it. After a few minutes of back and forth, we gave in. What were we going to do? This guy had all of our stuff packed into his car and we were on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
The remainder of this ride to Beni Melal was quiet. I was sick and tired of all the jerking around and felt like we had been totally taken advantage of. Sometimes drivers will take you all the way to your destination instead of going major city to major city the way they are supposed to. We tried to get this driver to take us all the way to Khenifra, but he insisted on dropping us in Beni Melal.
We got to the station and unpacked all of our bags. It was like a clown car – we just kept pulling bags from all corners of the car, including the roof rack. The station manager directed us to another taxi that did not have a roof rack. The new driver seemed surprised that all of our luggage, which he had just helped us unload, would not fit in his taxi. He, the station manager and a few other drivers stood around looking at our bags as if magically they would shrink and everything would fit in this car. After a couple minutes they directed us to a different taxi, also without a roof rack. Surprisingly, our luggage didn't fit in this one either!
Elizabeth pointed to another taxi with a roof rack and tried to explain that we needed one of those. They directed us to a third taxi, also without a rack, and I walked away. I was so frustrated and now hungry and thirsty because we hadn't really eaten since breakfast and it was 4pm. Luckily, they outfitted this new taxi with a couple brackets that functioned like a roof rack and loaded us up. This whole process took at least 45 minutes and then we had to stop at the Gendarm to get permission for the taxi to leave the province because Khenifra is in a different province. Finally, after an hour layover, we were on our way.
The final leg of our journey was uneventful and the driver took us to our hotel instead of the taxi stand. This way we didn't have to drag our luggage the 5 or 6 blocks from the station to the hotel. We were all a bit out of it and went across the street to get a bite to eat. We didn't talk much, until "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton came on their music system. It was the theme to my high school prom. I realized that it would be 10 years the following weekend. This started a conversation about proms, dresses, anti-proms, etc. It was nice to get to know the K-5 team better. Even though we'd just spent the entire day stuck in various taxis together, we hadn't talked much. Besides Tori and I, none of us had been great friends during training, so we still didn't know each other well. After dinner, we went to the hotel and crashed. Traveling takes a lot out of you.

Swearing-In

2008-05-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

What a day! Our ceremony was held at a 5-star hotel about a 10 minute walk from the hotel we've been staying at for the past three months. The Berber Palace pays tribute to the movie industry in and around Ouarzazate. Recently, Babel and Charlie Wilson's War were filmed here, but the area has a long-standing history of movie making. We also heard rumors about a month ago that Leonardo DeCaprio and Matt Daemon were in town filming a new movie.
For all the glamour and over-the-top décor in the lobby of the hotel, the ceremony took place in a rather plain conference room. At the front was a podium, flanked by the U.S. and Moroccan flags. On either side, facing the center of the room, were the trainees – Health group on the left and Environment group on the right. The remainder of the room was general seating for PC staff and many of our host families from CBT. Mina had told me that she was coming, but I didn't see her or my host dad before the ceremony began. It was a surprisingly brief and straightforward ceremony. The Governor of Ouarzazate Province gave a brief speech (in Moroccan Arabic), followed by Bruce Cohen (speaking English), PC Morocco's director. Abderachmane, a PC staff person, translated these speeches. Then the trainee with the highest achievement in each of the 3 languages, gave speeches in their target language. It was pretty neat to see the audience, of mostly Moroccans, react to these speeches. We each learned just one language, so I only kind of understood the one given in Tamazight.
The ambassador couldn't join us, so the number 2 person from the embassy gave a brief speech. He spoke first in French and then gave the speech again in English. Finally, we took our oath and things were finished. There wasn't much fanfare or ceremony involved, but it was exciting. There were moments when getting to this point seemed impossible and others when I wondered if this was really where I wanted to be. Being here, today, confirmed that this is where I should be. I shed a few tears of joy, amazement and wonderment while we were repeating the oath. I am joining a group of Americans who choose to spread peace; we are a small group, but there is a common bond among those who take this road. today, I join 150 volunteers already serving in Morocco and more than 3,800 volunteers who have served here since 1963.
There was a reception after the ceremony with lots of food and soda. Mina and my host father were there – I spotted them at the end of the ceremony – so we sat together. We chatted and they told me to eat more. I hadn't felt like fighting the crowds for the food, so I only had a few things from the beginning of the buffet on my plate.
We spent the afternoon at the Berber Palace – they graciously let the new Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) stay for the afternoon and hang out poolside. It was glorious to bask in the sun in a swimsuit. After three months of pants or skirts that go to the ankle, shirts with sleeves that go past your elbows and nothing that remotely reveals cleavage or your midriff, it was slightly intimidating. My roommate and I joked about how white we were and how even though our swimsuits were ones we had worn Stateside, they seemed most inappropriate. It was weird to show all that skin.

Wrapping Up Training

2008-05-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy couple days as we wrap up training and prepare for Swearing-in on Monday. For the past couple months, all of our sessions in Ouarzazate have been separated between the health group and the environment group. We are at different hotels across town and have our training and meals at our respective locations. For the past couple days, we've been together for all the "boring"-we-have-to-tell-you-these-things sessions. Unfortunately, this means the environment group has to walk across town in the morning, walk back to our hotel for lunch, walk back after lunch and then return to our hotel at the end of the day. While the really horrible summer weather hasn't hit yet, it is already really darn hot and always sunny. The room we use for training is tight with 60+ people in it and doesn't have much air circulation, so we are all a little worse for wear.
Tonight was a talent show, hosted by the health group. They put a lot more effort into it than the environment group did, but we all had a lot of fun. Tomorrow, the environment hotel is hosting a traditional music group after dinner. These events were organized by Peace Corps staff and the theory among the trainees is that it is an effort to keep us from going out partying these last few nights we'll be together. It is kind of working, although I think everyone is pretty exhausted from the past three months.
We've also had more free time during this last week of training than we had previously. It is kind of weird because most of us don't know what to do with ourselves. Its like we forgot what free time was and how we used to spend it. It is also a bit frustrating, because one of the top complaints among trainees was the lack of free time during training. It seems like we could have spread it out more evenly over the weeks instead of getting it all at once at the end. I think PC staff might be preparing us for the next phase of our service – being in our village without any structure and lots of time on our hands.

Free Bananas

2008-05-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Although I was feeling better today, after sleeping for most of the afternoon yesterday, I still couldn't stomach much food. The hotel serves a lot of vegetables at lunch and dinner, but they always put cilantro on everything. I am not a big fan of cilantro, but have been eating the veggies for the past three months. Its starting to catch up to me though. With a somewhat upset stomach and a mostly empty one, the veggies just weren't cutting it for dinner tonight. Plus, they served a special pastilla dinner and didn't offer a vegetarian option like they usually do. Pastilla is a meat pie-like dish that is dusted with powdered sugar. I'm told its great, but I still haven't incorporated meat into my diet. I was hungry and there wasn't much to eat.
I walked over to my favorite vegetable stand to buy a couple bananas. Local fruit is extremely inexpensive, so my 2 bananas were about 3Dh ($0.40). I didn't have anything smaller than a 20Dh bill and he didn't have change so he told me to just take them. I can't tell you how much it made my day. I felt like I was finally starting to be at home. He recognizes me, knows I'll come back and pay him tomorrow and treated me the way he would any of his regular Moroccan customers.

Saying Goodbye

2008-05-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day in CBT and it was tough to say goodbye to my host family. In the 4 short weeks I've spent with my family, I've developed a great relationship with them. I feel as if I truly have a new family in Morocco. They welcomed me with open hearts and arms and made me feel at home. I will miss hanging out in the kitchen with my host sisters and pointing to all the different pots and pans, teapots and coffee pots and the fridge and asking "matta wa?" (What is this?) They let me ask the same questions over and over and never lost patience. I will miss the silly games they play – mainly sneaking up behind each other and tickling the person. Their laughter is contagious and watching them reminds me of my sister.
My host mom and I haven't talked much, mainly because she doesn't slow down her speech so I can understand. But she always welcomes me with a big smile, a warm welcome and her standard question of," how was school?" My reply was always along the lines of, "good." Sometimes she asked about the other PC people in my training group and I tell her they are good. I will miss these exchanges and the excitement and tinge of surprise in her voice when she met me at the door. It was almost as if she was pleasantly surprised to find me at the door every evening after school.
My host sister, Mina, is the dominant force among the women in the house. She is always telling my other host sisters what to do and how to do it. I am mostly inferring this from the tone of her voice, her body language and the limited words I pick up from their conversations. She isn't mean or rude, just takes charge of the situations. She reminds me a lot of my sister. Mina is a natural teacher – she intuitively knows when I don't understand and usually comes up with a way to explain things so I understand what's happening. She takes the time help me with homework and talk with me. Keep in mind that I have the vocabulary of a 5 year old, so it can't be easy. I think I will miss her the most.
Fatima is quiet and a little shy, but she is quick to smile and make sure I have everything I need. One evening while we were doing the dishes, she reheated some leftover coffee as a little treat. I'd been wondering how they made it and asked her. She thought I wanted more and started getting things out to make it! It took us a couple minutes, but we figured it out and made a date for the next morning. She carefully walked me through everything, from how much coffee, to warning me not to put the milk in until the very end.
My sister-in-law, Zin, is mom to baby Ouassim. She is tender with him and is a natural parent. She is soft-spoken and I think she would like to help with my homework, but stands back to let Mina shine. She has a beautiful smile, but flashes it only rarely.
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to my host father. He had already left for work by the time I got up. Mohamed was always a bit intimidating, but I think it was his physical presence and the lack of communication between us. I always got the impression that he was proud of me, though.
After lots of hugs and a few last-minute gifts exchanges, Mina walked me to school. I think if we let her, she would have climbed in the taxi with us.

Sick!

2008-05-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

I woke up feeling awful today – headache, upset stomach and a bit of a fever. I had hoped to go to the fields with my host sisters, but they left at 7am and I didn't roll out of bed until close to 10. I made an effort to be social and hang out with my host family, but all I really wanted to do was put my pjs on and go to bed. One of the other girls in my training group hadn't had the henna experience yet, so we had made a date for her to come over for henna in the afternoon. Liz arrived after mid-afternoon tea and we spent a couple hours getting henna on our hands. Afterwards we went for a walk in the fields – Mina was kind enough to take us on a walk even though she didn't need to go down for anything.
On our way back home, Liz and I stopped by the family we had our school at. The women wanted to dress us up in traditional clothes and take some pictures with us. Just as they got a beautiful jellaba over my head and a traditional scarf tied on, I started to feel nauseous. We snapped a few quick photos and then quickly took everything off. I felt horrible – I had been excited because we'd been talking about doing this for a few weeks and Sphia and Aicha were so obviously happy to see us when we got there.
Arik and his host brother had stopped by to find out what time we were leaving the next morning and they escorted me home. It was about 8pm and I really just wanted to sleep, but I hadn't eaten much all day and was feeling kind of hungry. I asked Fatima what was for dinner and instead of answering me, asked me why I wanted to know. I told her my stomach was still upset and wondered if she could make me a bowl of rice or sharia to eat. She told me it wasn't a problem and I went and laid down. I was somewhat surprised and also kicking myself when they woke me up for dinner because everyone was eating rice! I should have known that she wouldn't let me eat rice while the rest of the family ate whatever was on the menu for the evening. Instead we all ate out of the huge bowl of rice. It was wonderful – exactly what I wanted, a Moroccan version of comfort food.

Movies

2008-05-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

It was a relatively quiet day – we had a practice language test with Hoda, watched a couple movies in Tamazight and prepared for our good-bye party. First, a word about movies in Morocco. All TV and professional movies are in French or Moroccan Arabic, so there are many semi-professional and amateur movies in the local Berber languages. They range from ridiculous to almost professional with serious plot lines. My host family is currently watching a series about a young woman from a wealthy, educated background who marries a taxi driver, against the will of her parents. In the episode we watched this week, the woman's mother tricks her into getting divorced. We then flash forward 2 years to the woman with her toddler child, who is subsequently abducted by the ex-husband. The fight scene that follows involves the ex-husband running away with the child strapped to his back. When he gets caught there is a lot of obviously fake fighting and lots of grunting. The best part is when his aggressors slam him back into a tree with the baby still strapped on! Then someone gets a knife and slices the fabric holding the baby in – and the baby falls softly into its mothers arms! My group was so excited to see this scene that we sat through 45 minutes of a movie we mostly didn't understand just to see it.
Our good-bye party was a lot of fun – we invited all of our families and some of the other community members we worked with during our training. We drank a lot of soda and ate a lot of cookies, but because of a death in the community, we could not play any music. We even successfully told the group about our final sites and they understood! Language is getting better every day!
The afternoon ended almost appropriately because the trouble-maker in town followed Liz and I as we walked home. He's bothered us a couple times before and ignoring him usually works. Tonight, though, he was rather insistent that we play soccer with him. Neither Liz nor I wanted to engage him so we told him no, but he continued to follow us and eventually threw the soccer ball and nailed me in the back of the head. I flew around and started yelling at him in Tamazight, while shaking my fist at him. He was so startled that he ran away. Liz somehow caught the ball bouncing off my head and was going to keep it, but he came back for the ball and started bothering us again. She chucked the ball as far as she could and the boy chased after it, giving us enough time to get home.

Shjr n Zitoun Sale

2008-05-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

We had our olive tree sale yesterday. I think we have a picture of each person receiving their two trees! We didn't get quite the outpouring we expected, so we are continuing the sale today. The Association members have been great – they completely ran the show yesterday and we kind of hung out and took it all in. The town has one machine that grinds their wheat into flour and it lives in a small house near our school. It is commonly known as the "Machina n Ali" around town. Ali is the man who runs and cares for the machine. We stored the trees and sold them from there. It was kind of surreal to sit in that room with the men from the association. We were sitting on flour sacks, some full and functioning as stools and others empty and laid out on the ground like a blanket. The Moroccan men were at one end of the room and we Americans and Hoda were at the other...not sure what the men were discussing but we were playing cats cradle with some string we found on the ground and generally shooting the breeze.
Everyone in the village seemed quite happy to have the olive trees. The trees are still very small and won't produce many olives for at least 5 or 6 years. When they mature, the olive harvest will supplement the income of the families in the village. I was amazed when I learned how many olives a tree makes in one year – its 40 kilos! Depending on olive prices, one tree could generate 500 Dh (approximately $70) per year. That might not sound like much, but it could buy school books for 3 or 4 children. This is sometimes a prohibiting cost that keeps families from sending all of their children (usually the girls stay home) to school.

Takurt!

2008-05-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's been really hot and the sun is constant, which makes for long days. Its a bit cooler in our CBT village, but still hot enough that we haven't ventured out for walks at lunch time. We had our tree sale today and it started out as a nice sunny day, but by afternoon the wind had picked up and the dark clouds rolled in. We watched the storm approach from the mountains and could see the wall of rain move towards us. It was a good storm with lots of lightning and thunder. The thunder was a low rolling rumble, not the violent claps we have in Chicago. It was a welcome reminder of spring time at home; the rain even smelled the same – that earthy, fresh smell.
Everything cooled off and the storm cleared before we left school. When I got home, we drank tea and then my sister Mina and I walked to the cliff overlooking the river. Due to the rain, the river is full and she wanted me to see it. We ran into Arik and his brother doing the same thing, so we walked down together. It was a beautiful evening, cool and breezy and the sky was kind of pink with a few puffy clouds. The river was definitely full of water and mud! It was brown!
Dan and his host brothers were playing takurt (soccer) at the field there, so I joined them. It was the first time I've played soccer since I arrived in Morocco! Living with a family of mostly women, I haven't had an opportunity to play. Even though I'm horrible and don't know the strategies, I had a great time. They treated me like one of the boys – when I got knocked down, the game continued as if nothing happened! I picked myself up and got right back in the game. I even scored a goal. It was great to run around and work up a sweat.
My family was a bit concerned about me because women and girls in my CBT village don't play soccer and they were worried that I wore myself out. When we finished dinner at 10:15, I was exhausted and ready for bed. They told me it was because I had played soccer, but I think it was because I'd been going since 7am that morning!

Change of Plans

2008-05-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

We met with the Water Association this afternoon to finalize plans for the tree sale. Much to our surprise, they had decided to change key aspects of our plan! I'm glad we had Hoda there to help with translating because it would have been a challenge without her. At first they wanted to open the sale to all of the duars (villages) served by the Association. We were able to talk them out of that because of the limited number of trees and by explaining that this was our way of thanking our village for hosting us over the past two months. Then they told us that instead of three trees per family, they wanted to sell two trees per family – this is because they weren't sure how many families would participate. The final issue was whether or not to charge a small fee for the trees. We had previously decided to charge 3Dh per tree as a way to instill a feeling of responsibility and buy-in from community members. The Association members were concerned that the villagers would be suspicious of the Association and how they would use that money. It was kind of a strange discussion because they quickly dropped their arguments and agreed to keep the fee. I have a feeling that this isn't the last time we'll run into situations like this.

Harassment and a Carnival

2008-05-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

One of the more challenging aspects of living in Morocco is the near constant harassment foreign women receive. While it doesn't happen very often in the small villages and towns we will be living in, it is prevalent in Ourazazate, where we have training, and in the big cities. One of the more annoying but harmless types of harassment is the shop owners and souk stand men who call after you trying to get you to come into their stores. A typical walk down the street includes calls of "Gazelle, come to my shop." "Parlez vous Francais?" "You are beautiful, come to my house for dinner." "Gazelle, do you speak English?" If you walk past a cafe, you often receive an invitation to join a group of men already there. In the larger cities, the men can be more aggressive – they follow you, or walk alongside you and continue to try to engage you in conversation. One of the reasons PC expects its volunteers to dress conservatively is to stave off some of this negative attention.
We leave tomorrow for our final visit to our CBT village, so I went out this evening after class to buy a few small gifts for my host family. After a walk around the souk and main street in town, I didn't have anything to show for my efforts. I was tired and didn't have the energy to deal with telling shop keepers that I don't speak French or to bargain over prices. (Many items get marked up, some 50 or 60% when a foreigner inquires about the price) Luckily, Arik, one of my fellow CBT-ers, offered to go with me for moral support and we found scarves and soap for my host sisters and mom, socks for my host dad and some Johnson's baby lotion for Ouassim. I also printed pictures I've taken of the village and with my host family and put together a little photo album for them.
Dinner was a special treat of pastilla (meat pie) without the normal vegetarian option so Tori and I went out for juice afterwards and to finish up our shopping. The date, almond and avocado juice really hit the spot – its almost a meal in itself! I was on the lookout for something to send my Grandmom for her birthday and went back to a shop where the owner had been kind and fair on prices to me before. I'd run into him earlier when I wasn't in the mood for bargaining and when he invited me in for tea, I told him I didn't have time and would stop by another time. He greeted me warmly and asked what I was looking for. I told him and he showed me a few things that were out of my price range. When I told him how much I had to spend, he showed me a few things and then brought out a beautiful necklace and sold it to me for about half of what I know others have paid for similar ones. It was refreshing and restored a little of my faith in the shop-owners in Ouarzazate.
On my way back to the hotel, I ran into a few people going to a carnival! They promised me real bumper cars, so I joined them. For a total of 15Dh ($2) we got into the festival, rode a ride and ate ice cream in homemade waffle cones! It was as close to an American carnival as I could have hoped for – there was corn on the cob, ice cream, and rides! The line for the bumper cars was long so we rode the "Cap Kennedy." It had a space/moon theme and looked like it was from the Kennedy era. We speculated that it no longer met U.S. standards for safety and was sold to this carnival. It was one of those rides where you sit with 2 or 3 other people in a car, with each car connected to the one in front of it. They go around in a circle, but the track has some hills in it. There is a modern version whose name I can't remember. Anyways, it was kind of like the wooden roller coasters because you could feel every joint and connection as we rode. All of a sudden something seemed to fall on us from above and we all started screaming, thinking the ride was breaking. It was just an awning coming up over the cars to cover us. Now we were in the dark and the ride started going backwards. We picked up some speed and then came to a halt! It was exhilarating, mainly because we all thought the whole thing would collapse at any moment.

Site Visit

2008-05-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy couple days. I visited my final site this week and spent a few days with my host family. My site is a larger village about an hour drive into the mountains from Khenifra. It is a strange mix of urban and rural life. Rural because it is out in the mountains and you can't see much evidence of civilization outside the town. Urban because it looks like a mini-city and has amenities including running water, electricity and an abundance of hanuts (small stands that sell just about anything you really need).
Last Saturday, the 5 of us and Sarah (Environment volunteer who is almost finished with her 2 years) took taxis from Ouarzazate to Khenifra. It was a long day, but we had dinner at Matt's apartment and then went to a hotel to crash. Matt is also an environment volunteer who is about to finish his service. Both have been working with MEDA for the past two years and the K-5 will be continuing their work.
On Monday morning, we met with our new "boss." It was a brief meeting with Sarah (outgoing PCV) translating from French to English. We covered the basics – name, site, background and Mr. S told us a little bit about the project. We met everyone in the main office in Khenifra and left. This was where we parted ways – each of us trainees was headed to our new homes. I was excited and nervous about what lay ahead.
Sarah accompanied me to my new village. We tried calling my host father at the number PC provided, but he didn't answer. Luckily, when we got out of the taxi in the center of town, my host uncle was there and showed us to the house. We were ushered into the formal living room and promptly served tea. Sarah told them about my vegetarianism, which was met with a "little by little" response. My host uncle told us that I just needed to eat a little at first and before I knew it I'd be eating a whole chicken. He recognized that it might make me sick at first, but I'd get over it. Sarah told him that a lot of people in America don't eat meat and that she too was a vegetarian for a long time. We met a few family members:
Host mom – Fatima
Host brother – Zuhir
Host brother – Jawil
Host uncle – Sidi Mo
Mona, Sumia, and Mamaw

Once tea was over, Sarah left and I tried to figure out what to do. My host mom was in the kitchen with a couple other women making cookies. I joined them for a few minutes but quickly realized I understood almost nothing they were saying. The kids had gone back outside to play, so I joined them.
They quickly welcomed me as one of their own and we played volleyball and a game called P1. We tried to talk a little bit, but I felt like they were speaking a different language than the one I'd been learning for the past 2 months! We got a few ideas across and they helpfully pointed to all the objects in sight and gave me their names.
The king was supposed to visit Khenifra on Tuesday and my family kept telling me that we were going to go there in the morning. At least that's what I thought they were telling me. On Tuesday morning I got up and ate breakfast with the family. Sidi Mo took me to the post office to open a post box. I wanted to walk around town, but wasn't sure if I should because they were still talking about going to Khenifra.
My host mom was visibly pregnant, but I didn't realize how pregnant she was until late-morning when my host dad showed up and said they were taking her to the hospital in Khenifra to have the baby! Off they went and I spent the rest of the day hanging out close to home.
I went for a brief walk around town after lunch and received several invitations to tea. I politely declined because I wanted to actually see the town. I ran into the pre-school teacher as I was desperately trying to explain to a group of women who I was and what I was doing in the village. He knew the outgoing PC Sarah and knew generally who I was. He explained who I was, and then invited me into his "classroom."
Sarah had told me about the classroom and that she had helped write a grant proposal to build a new one for the town. The room is a long narrow room in what looks like an abandoned house. There is no electricity and the children are overflowing the available desks. The teacher was kind enough to explain how the pre-school works, how many students there are, etc. and teach me a few new Tamazight words.
On Wednesday, Mamaw, Sumia and Zuhir and I boarded a transit to go to Khenifra. There was a festive feeling in the air. It took us a while to get there because we stopped at the taxi stand for a while and then for a long time in a town about 20k from Khenifra. I wasn't sure what was going on because the driver was hanging out near the van, but we weren't going anywhere.
Eventually someone spotted Sidi Mo and he put us on the bus to go the rest of the way to Khenifra. We walked to the hospital and found the rest of the family there visiting Fatima and the new baby. After some time visiting, the conversation turned to lunch. The family was concerned about what I would eat. I understood that they were talking about fish, but didn't know why. My host father, Haddou, speaks some English and asked if I eat fish, to which I said that I do. After some more discussion, we packed Fatima and the baby up and put them in a car to go home.
The rest of us went to lunch at a pizza/fish restaurant. Pizza sounded a lot better than fish, so I ordered a cheese pizza and everyone else shared a chicken tagine. I offered for everyone to try the pizza, but no one took me up on it. After lunch, we walked to the festival.
The festival was in a big lot and consisted of a lot of large tents. The ground inside of the tents was covered with rugs and some of the tents had ponjs around the perimeter. There weren't many people around, so we relaxed for a while. The festival was in honor of the king's visit and I learned that his visit had been pushed off until Thursday.
After a while, we went for a walk through the main market in town. Mamaw bought a few gifts for Fatima and the baby and the kids and I got something to drink and a snack. I was getting hot and tired...I had worn jeans and a long sleeve shirt not realizing we'd be outside in the sun for most of the day.
We returned to the festival to find that more people were there and the action was starting to pick up. Mamaw, Sumia and I walked around for a bit. There were lots of people and someone always had to hold my hand so I wouldn't get lost. I got the feeling they were scared of losing me, but I was starting to feel suffocated. I'm not good in large groups and the heat and the crush of people was overwhelming.
After a while, we returned to the tent to hang out some more. It was getting to be late afternoon and I thought we would be going home soon, but we kept hanging out. At one point, we walked to a cafe next to the taxi stand and I thought we were going to leave, but we just had a snack and then returned to the festival. I was starting to get a headache and feeling the effects of being in the heat all day with little to drink.
There was traditional singing and dancing outside the tent. It was great to see it in person. When that ended, the tent started to clear out and I thought we must be going home. But we hung out a while more and finally got into the transit we had rode in this morning. By this time, my head was pounding and all I could think about was closing my eyes and going to sleep. We waited a while on the transit, with people yelling and kids jumping around. They kept getting on and off and accidentally bumping and jostling me, which was making my headache worse.
The drivers were milling around near the transit and I couldn't figure out what we were waiting for. I was on the verge of tears, mainly from exhaustion and the headache, but was trying desperately to wait until I was alone before I started crying. Someone noticed and asked if I was OK and the floodgates opened! Once I started, I couldn't stop. Everyone seemed to spring into action. One of the young men spoke a little English and asked what was wrong. I explained the headache and almost immediately had asprin in hand. Someone else rounded up all the passengers and got them back onto the transit. We were on our way in seemingly record time! I wonder how long we would have waited around if I hadn't started crying.
There was a party waiting for us back at home. With the new baby, a bunch of family members were at the house celebrating and helping get Fatima settled. It was 11pm, but we all ate tagines and although the party seemed like it would go all night, I went to bed. Although I don't understand a lot of the conversations flying around me, I could tell everyone was talking about me the American who doesn't eat meat and who ordered at 24Dh pizza. They kept talking about how much the pizza was, which made me feel terrible. No one would let me pay for anything the whole day and now it seemed to me that everyone was talking about how expensive the pizza was.
I needed some reassurance, so I called my parents. I immediately started crying when I heard my mom's voice. I think I scared them a bit, because they swung into parent-mode – what's wrong? Are you OK? Where are you? Why are you crying? I assured them I was OK, just in need of a hug and some words of encouragement which they dutifully and lovingly provided.
I awoke Thursday morning feeling much better and ready to take on the day. I was meeting the rest of the K-5 in Khenifra, so we could spend the night there and get an early start back to Ouarzazate on Friday. Sidi Mo accompanied me to Khenifra, which was a production. It seemed like the entire village was going to see the king. We had a caravan of at least 15 taxis, trucks, and private cars – all jammed to the gills. It was almost like a parade as we drove down the mountain.
The streets in Khenifra were already lined with people and we drove to the other end of town, where all the vehicles were stopping to let people off. We met up with a few others from the village and started walking back to the center of town. We stopped at a cafe for coffee and were hanging out there for a while. I realized that we were around the corner from Matt's apartment, which is where I was meeting the rest of the group.
I tried to tell Sidi Mo that I was going to meet my friends, but he wanted to meet them. So, Matt kindly walked over to the cafe and introduced himself. Sidi Mo insisted that he have coffee or tea or stay and have lunch. Both Matt and I tried to politely decline and after some explaining about meeting the others and already having plans for lunch, we left.
Tori and Elizabeth arrived soon and we were at Matt's apartment debating what to do for lunch when we heard someone yelling from the street. We looked out to find Sidi Mo! He wanted to take us all out for tagines! I think he also wanted to check up on Matt and I – the fact that we were going back to his apartment alone would be unacceptable if we were Moroccan. Men and women don't have friendships and being alone in a house with a male friend is not OK for a woman. Luckily, Tori and Elizabeth reassured Sidi Mo and we promised to eat tagines another day.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. Jake and Sarah joined us in Khenifra and we made dinner at Matt's. The ride back to Ouarzazate was long and hot, but we made it without too much trouble. We even found a cab driver willing to bypass Marrakesh, which shaved a couple hours off our drive.

Site Announcements!

2008-04-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

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!

Field Trip!

2008-03-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-03-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

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.