5.20.2007

I couldn't have asked for a better last day as a trainee. Yes, that's right. Tomorrow morning, probably by the time I actually post this blog entry, I will officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer, enshallah. However, as our last official SDL day (self-directed learning) before swearing-in and having every day essentially be a SDL day, I couldn't have asked for more.

We left the hotel at around 9:30 after I slept in until almost eight thirty- a first since being in country! For some reason, I find it impossible to sleep in here. Maybe it's the sun in my eyes or something about the air, but it's hard for me to sleep past seven at the latest, usually six or six-thirty. In any case, I woke up, took a quick shower, and fell down an entire flight of stairs.

Now, if you don't know me well in real life, you might not know I'm the biggest klutz in the world. Even my host-sister in CBT during training was worried about me because I'm always stumbling around. A friend of mine here in training yesterday even remarked "I'm surprised you don't have more bruises for as often as you're falling down or tripping." Well, as I mentioned before, there are many hot showers in this hotel. A few of them are on the roof. My favorite shower is up one flight of very narrow, very steep stairs with no handrails that goes to the bathrooms on the roof. If I remember tomorrow, I'll take a picture of said staircase.

Well, after taking a long, relaxing, hot shower and loving every second of it (because, if you didn't know, I probably only got hot showers if at all once a week or so during training. The rest were all bucket baths or hammam visits), I started down this narrow flight of stairs. I knew as soon as I started to slip that I was in trouble, as my hands were full and there was nowhere to grab onto for support. Somehow, once I fell off my feet, I managed to flip onto my stomach, and after hitting each stair quite painfully, found myself on the floor on my stomach. My feet kicked open the door to a room with 4 or 5 other trainees in my stage sleeping, and I started to laugh hysterically. One of the ladies that works in the hotel who I had met yesterday and talked to a little bit came to make sure I was okay, and I woke up every SINGLE person in the two nearest rooms. Yeah. Oops. So, now, I have a lovely huge purple swollen bruise on my hip, two bruised arms, a bruised stomach (which isn't fun), and a bruised…well… part of my body that would be covered by a bikini top. Great times.  Ironically, one of the people who woke up when I fell also fell down the stairs about an hour later. Don't worry about me, I'm fine… it's just hard to play it off when you literally bust down a door to a room of sleeping people. Bruised pride. Ha.

So… a few of us went to eat breakfast and coffee in a café, then we went to get tickets for a CTM bus to a city near our site. Unfortunately, there are no CTM buses we can take, so we're going to have to take either grand taxis or a souk bus. Either way will be an experience… but it was interesting talking to the guy who only spoke French and Darija (and probably Fusha; Classical Arabic) with our limited French and Tam/Tash.

A few of us went shopping in the medina again. I actually made a few purchases from an artisan cooperative that make me happy: a beautiful necklace and earrings (cheap! And fun!) and a carving of the hand of Fatima. The man who sold me the hand of Fatima carved out of cedar wood was a really sweet old man named Moha (short for Mohammad). I love being able to get things that might be a little touristy but know that the money is actually going to the artisans and not the shopkeeper. A SBD volunteer apparently works with them and I had a pseudo-conversation with one of the people who worked there, but I found out in the middle of the conversation that again, he pretty much just spoke Darija. Tamazight is great for where I will be living starting Tuesday (scary to say!) but not so hot for traveling or other parts of the country.

We did lunch at the same pizza place I've now been to three times. We keep going in big groups. Yesterday, I forgot to mention this in my blog, but they played Elvis Crespo's Suavamente again and again and again. I love that song, but it's strange to hear it in a café in the middle of Morocco, especially on repeat.

After lunch, some of us headed back to the hotel briefly to talk to someone about different options as far as how to get to site easily and efficiently. I still don't know for sure what we'll end up doing, but I'm sure we'll get there easily. From there, more medina shopping! Oh, earlier in the day there had been a horrible car crash: a truck crashed into a teleboutique… really scary. All day, there was a crowd in front of the teleboutique just staring at the rubble, and the truck stayed out on the main street, mangled. Sobering.

In any case, though, I finished up shopping with a good friend and one of my roommates from the training site and my favorite LCF. It was a wonderful sort of full-circle way to finish training because she was the one who took the two of us and some other people to get jellabas made our first week of training, and now, my last day as a trainee, we went shopping together again. I'm going to miss her. Sometimes it's hard to get to know people, especially with cultural differences, but she and my host sisters from CBT show that really friendships can happen easily, despite cultural differences. Hopefully I'll be able to see her sometime during my service. Enshallah. But it was fun walking around the medina with them and splurging on homemade potato chips from a street vendor and listening to her give my other friend advice on which shoes to buy.

 I ate with another dear friend from training and the same LCF… then headed upstairs to help with computer issues. We tried, and by "we" I mean a friend of mine here really did the whole thing herself, to make a video of all the pictures of the LCFs to give them copies of as a way to say thanks. We all gave our CBT LCF gifts as a CBT group, but this was something we wanted to do for everyone. The computer kept messing up, and she hadn't used the program before, so I spent a few hours tonight working on it with another trainee. We've burned 6 CDs; have 6 to go. Our program assistant (the one who has led our training these last three months) came by and sat for a few minutes, and I got him to promise me his zween Peace Corps Morocco sweatshirt.

Now, this zween Peace Corps Morocco sweatshirt has a story. Yes, it has a rather interesting story. They aren't available anymore and are absolutely beautiful: grey, with PC Morocco written in English and Arabic. They look warm and fuzzy and all zween and amazing because it's just cool. There's no other word for it. Well, at the beginning of training, we all said we wanted one and it turns out they are no longer available.

 There was nothing to do but to steal it. However, being paranoid as I can be sometimes when it comes to breaking the rules, and seeing as this was the first week of training, I wasn't comfortable to steal it myself… so I formulated a plan that we should steal it, write a ransom note, and hold it hostage until our demands were met. I got a sort of troublemaker (ie someone more fearless than myself) to do the actual theft and disposal of the ransom note… and it became a joke for awhile. We took pictures of it in two or three different places and left them in his office… but someone gave it back on his birthday. An opportunity to have the traveling sweater lost forever. But, I now have a signed statement that says he'll give it to me in a year, and you better believe I'm going to hold him to it. In one year, I will be the owner of a grey, zween Peace Corps Morocco sweater.

So, that was my last day as a PCT. Tomorrow, I swear in and become an official volunteer. I've wanted this since I was fifteen, and tomorrow, it will be a reality. Amazing. Mindboggling. It's not the same Peace Corps as it was in the 1960s, but it'll be a challenge nonetheless and an incredible experience. Wish me luck. It's going to be a long, bumpy road.

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5.21.07

I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. This is something I've dreamed about since I was fifteen and now it has become a reality. I don't feel any differently than I did yesterday, but I do know that it's a good feeling to not be a trainee anymore and to really be a volunteer, with a pieced-together PC ID card in hand and an attestation de travail in pocket. I will soon be applying for a carte de sejour; the equivalent of a green card, and will become a real official resident of Morocco.

 

Swearing in was nice. We all piled onto a bus and rode maybe an hour or so to the nearest big city, the name of which is easily recognizable by most who have heard of Morocco. I wish we could have spent more time there, as apparently there's good shopping, but seeing as I'm a volunteer, I don't really have much money to be spending anyway, so I guess it might have been a good thing for me to just stop in for a few hours.

 

We went to a five-star hotel on the top of a hill that overlooks the city. It was a beautiful hotel (and apparently PCVs get a sizeable discount, so if anyone wants to fork over some money to stay somewhere really nice and take me with…) and the ceremony was short and sweet and amazing. It's funny to see everyone all dressed up as well, especially staff I've been accustomed to seeing in jeans, t-shirts, sweatpants, a baseball hat, and other very casual clothes. Probably about a third of us health volunteers wore Moroccan clothes. I wore black pants and a maroon shirt I had made here that laces up the front and has long loose sleeves and black lining. It's a sort of a modification of a shirt that one of our LCFs had that I fell in love with.

 

The ambassador usually swears in PCVs but he had a prior commitment, so the second-in-charge at the embassy swore us in. It was a really fun, sort of moving experience when I realized that it was really happening. I really became an official PCV.

 

Now, I don't quite know what to expect. I think it's kind of like skydiving: the first minute of it is exhilarating. You're falling fast, everything is coming at you, fast, even if you don't realize it, the wind is roaring in your ears and it's loud and intense and stressful and your heart is pounding… then all of a sudden, when the parachute opens, everything stops for an instant and it becomes absolutely silent, peaceful, slow, drifting… but you're still processing everything that happened when you first jumped out of the plane.

 

I don't know what to think. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm anxious and I can't wait, but I'm not ready at all to go to site. We'll see what happens. Wish me luck. I need it!