Site visit

Back in a city once again! Well, in all fairness, I was in Marrekech last night, which is technically a big city but didn't have enough time for updates. Marrekech is crazy. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I just finished site visit- I was finally able to see where I will be going for the next two years, and let me tell you: I am completely and totally overwhelmed.

I don't know where to begin, so I'll start at the beginning.

Sunday, a bunch of us piled in a few taxis and rode through what I thought of calling "the pass of death" but really is more of the pass of intensity to Ouarzazate. I'm hours away from it, but it is sort of the nearest biggest town I'm near. It was an interesting taxi ride, to say the least: rather than take the touristy route, we took a "shortcut" that included hours and hours without cell phone service, and the taxi we were in kept stopping and starting to overheat, so the driver would get out and douse something under the hood with water. After a few hours of these crazy switchbacks at breakneck speeds, we stopped on the side of the road (so I could turn a pile of rocks into a bit lma), and a few minutes later, he randomly stopped and looked out into the mountains and honked his horn, then started driving again. Weird. Some in our taxi were a bit freaked out by his driving at such high speeds, and kept saying "stawil, afuk" (slow down, please)... and about an hour after the last "stawil, afuk" he started giggling to himself and muttered "stawil" under his breath. He probably thought we were crazy. When we were close to Ouarzazate, the road just kind of stopped and we drove for a kilometer or two in a dry river bed... that had some mud... and we got stuck... and got out and pushed the taxi. Yeah. Travel in Morocco is never boring.

So, Sunday night after six or so hours of travel, we had a fun night in Ouarzazate that included a nice dinner out with friends and some shopping, and more of the delicious juice I had on field trip. I met up with the current PCV nearest to my site who is leaving in June. She had helped with my site development so she knew a lot about my site and told me a lot. A current PCT in my stage, Lacey, is taking her site and so she's the nearest to me: an hour by transit once a week, or 20 min from the town that I have daily transport to that takes an hour.

Monday, we headed towards what might end up being my cyber town: a fairly decent sized town about an hour from me. It's kind of on the touristy path, so I get a bit more harassment there than I get at my site or in the seminar site, but the current PCV showed us some of her hangouts: a local hanut, and a cafe that really knows and is frequented by lots of PCVs. I left my backpack at the cafe for about six hours that day and the owner watched it for me. Good people; and it was really comforting to feel a part of that kind of network. In fact, the PC network in Morocco is incredible... especially in regards to police and gendarmes... but more about that later.

I have three transits a day to my site from that town. A transit is essentially a van that holds 15-20 people. Fun, in some ways. In any case, the transit was already full and we had to wait until late in the afternoon to go to my site. Instead, I was able to go to and see Lacey's site first. Interesting place. I like it a lot, and after 2 months of homestay, she's going to be able to move into the most incredible house. It's beautiful and has pomagranate and fig trees. Really nice.

But after a few hours, it was time to go back to catch a transit to my site. Needless to say, I was excited, scared, nervous... there were so many thoughts running through my head it was insane. We turned off the main road onto a dirt road and finished the last half hour or 45 min on a crumbly rough dirt path. Home. Interesting. There were tents that were brightly colored and might have been nomads on the way. The whole transit was curious why two taromits were going to the site and with the help of the other PCV (who spent Mon night at my host family's... thank God!) we explained that I was moving there later this month for two years to be a sort of health educator. They tried to give me an Arabic name but I'm sticking to Katy. I don't want to give that part of me up, I think. There was a crazy old woman who kept talking to me and I found out later that she's my next door neighbor!

When we came up to my town/village (there are around 2000 people in the town center, 5000 people covered by the sbitar), the moon was starting to rise even though it wasn't late and the sun was still up, and the mountains were silouhetted in shadows. There were a few palm trees (date trees), and the town just looked beautiful in the valley. Dry, arid, dusty, rocky mountains, lush green fields. Stark contrasts.

That being said, the town itself was absolutely beautiful. There are a lot of families with some family members working abroad, mainly in Europe, who send money home, so there are some adobe houses and some stunning two or three story cement houses that are large by Moroccan and US standards. The PCV with me said that they might be not at all nice inside and not to judge them by their exterior, but let me tell you, some of the houses are really zween.

I was literally dropped right off at the door to my hostfamily's house and was able to meet them and drink tea. The family is small: a mother who is a few years older than me who got married when she was fourteen, and her two children, both girls, who are one and five. Her husband works as a laborer in Marrekesh and isn't home often. My host "mother" always has friends stopping by, and we live in a small compound with another family. The way it's set up, there is a courtyard with a well and a pomegranate tea and fresh mint and other herbs or vegetables growing in it, a place for the sheep that my family owns (I think there are only one or two), my house,
the neighbors house, and a shared bathroom. The only running water is in the bathroom, so we fill up big containers from that spiget (robini) and use them throughout the day. I got really dehydrated the first day because it was so hot so I've been keeping a full nalgene near me at all times.

The house has a salon that everyone but myself sleeps in which is also used for entertaining guests and eating, a storage room for clothes, a storage room for other things, my bedroom (empty but for a mattress), a kitchen, and a large open area.
The salon has a butagas in it, which I think is typical for the area, and a container for water, so tea is almost always prepared in the salon. There aren't any couches or ponjes in the house, nor do we have a refrigerator, but we do have a butagas stove, an oven, and an outdoor oven near the sheep pen. The town also has a public oven.

Anyway, on Monday night we pretty much just got situated and ate dinner and answered questions, using the PCV as a sort of intepreter. The most amazing man I've met at my site came in: someone I'm sure to be working with closely. He's the president of the water association (an association is an independent organization set up in towns to get projects done), as well as the owner of a hanut right down the street and he speaks shwiya English. It's because of him that the town has running water, and it may be because of this association that there's a Neddi, or women's center as well. In any case, I'm incredibly fortunate to have an active association, which was something that I said I wanted in my site interview.

As an aside, I'm sick of referring to what will become my new home as "my town" or "my site," so I'll start calling it Tamazitinu, which pretty much means my home in Tamazight.

Okay, so back to Monday night. We went to bed pretty early because we were exhausted, and I didn't sleep well. Nervousness, I suppose. Tuesday was a holiday (May 1= labor day in the rest of the world) so we couldn't visit the sbitar or commune, and the PCV left to show Lacey around her site after we walked to some of the neighboring douars and I was on my own. On that walk, I saw the sbitar and that they do not have a method of medical waste disposal that seems to be safe, and I saw some trash fields that made me think that waste management might be an important set of projects for me.

The rest of Tuesday is kind of a blur for me. I met lots of people, lots of women, went to tea at a family member's house in a huge salon with probably 20 women and talked as much as I was able to. We ate dinner, which was couscous (ksksu) with this delicious buttermilk called aghro, and finally we walked in the fields.

The walk in the fields with women members of "my family" was incredible. There are palm trees (dates), and lots of greenery and tiny irrigation channels that just make it feel like I am in an oasis. The moon was out and it was big and bright and full and it just felt right and comfortable strolling through the fields, tasting the different crops, and hearing how the hail (brrurri) they had last Friday killed all the tomatoes. There are a few old mud houses that are old and decrepit near the fields that look like kasbah's and the mosque tower peeks out over the rest of the town. It felt right, it felt beautiful, and I was almost moved to tears over the beauty of it. Even just saying "ayd iHlan" for "the most beautiful" didn't seem to do it justice, and I slept well that night, happy, content.

Wednesday was a bit nervewracking because I had to go meet the members of the Commune (local government officials) and the sbitar staff on my own. With just a month of Tamazight, I didn't know what to expect or what to really say. PC gave us an official stamped letter (stamps are a big deal here) so I figured I'd go try to introduce myself and hand them the letter.

On the way, I passed by two older women. I said hi, because I'm trying to be friendly with everyone, and they got excited and I heard "Oh! Tsnt Tashelheit!" (Oh, you speak Berber!) which I heard a lot... and they were talking and looking at my clothes and lifted up my skirt and saw that I was wearing leggings underneath. "It's hot, and you're still wearing long sleeves and a long skirt. Thank you." It was so simple but it meant a lot to me that they appreciated my efforts to be culturally appropriate. It was hot. I wanted to wear short sleeves, but I didn't. Of course, people keep trying to get me to wear a head scarf, but when I tell them "I don't wear one, my mother doesn't, my sister doesn't, my mother's sister doesn't, my father's sister doesn't, my grandmother doesn't... so I will be like my family" it seems to satisfy them. For now.

Anyway, I stopped by the sbitar first, but there were ten or fifteen women in the waiting room. They were all kind of skeptical about why I was there and kept insisting I was a doctor or a nurse or a dentist... and I was nervous... so after ten or fifteen minutes of waiting for the doctor or nurse to come out, I left to go to the Commune.

That was also slightly intimidating, but I wandered in and introduced myself to a man at a desk at the only door that was open and handed him the letter and he immediately took me to talk to the Khalifa and the two Moqaddams. The Khalifa speaks reasonable English, and so we had a trilingual conversation in Tamazight, French, and English. It was easy and he was friendly and asked my name and a few other questions and said that I was welcome to Tamazitinu and that they were happy I was there. Phew.

I skipped out on the sbitar because I felt one nervous visit was enough for one day and spent the rest of the day with my family and her friends. At one point, she passed me off onto the other woman who lives in the compound (30, divorced, three or four kids, lives in a one room house, and I LOVE her... she talks slowly and clearly for me and is very warm). She wanted me to take pictures of her so I did, and then, we heard the madrasa (primary school) kids coming back from lunch. We peered out the window at them and probably sixty of them swarmed the window staring at me. At the woman's urging, I took some pictures of them, then went down and talked to them. It was funny. I'm the first foreigner to ever live in Tamazitinu. I asked at one point if there had been others, and they said there were two French people who came and visited named Paul and Madeline... but just for a few days, and that had been a few years ago. So, I've made a few babies cry and definately have gotten a lot of stares here.

Well, after meeting some of the madrasa kids, they all lined up to go into the madrasa. From the woman's window, you can see into the gated madrassa and she told me to take pictures of them all lined up inside. I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing it on my own, but with her encouraging me to, I did. This is important to remember when I tell you about Thursday, the day I had a little breakdown.

So, the rest of Wednesday was exhausting. I took a little nap, a bucket bath (you can get REALLY clean with just a kettle full of hot water and a faucet for cold water) and then after again, visiting with people who came by to see my hostmom, we went to her extended family's house for dinner. She has nine siblings, so it seems like everyone in town is related to her.

Dinner was hard. We had couscous again, but something happened that I knew was a possibility, but I didn't realize how hard it would be for me to deal with it. The women, the women who work in the fields and cook and clean and take care of the kids while many of the men don't work; yes, these women and myself ate after the men. They pulled out the communal plate of couscous and I was waiting for them to tell me to eat, the way they always do (Eat more! Eat! Eat more! Eat bread! Drink tea! Eat! Eat!), but the usual encouraging words didn't come. Instead, three men and a four year old boy came up to the table and started to eat, and we just sat there. The women didn't seem to care, but I felt very very bizarre. At least I didn't have the experience some female PCVs have where they are told to eat with the men while the rest of the women wait, but it was still really really difficult to see these women accepting it as a part of life. I almost cried. It made me wonder: what about the Moroccan men on staff here in Morocco? At gatherings, do they eat before the women too? Why do the women accept it? Why does it happen? How has this really truly been the first time in my life when I have been discriminated against in such a tangible way? And how is it that it is just a normal part of life for some people?

I asked one of the women later on if that was normal, and they said it was in a big group because the table is small and there's not enough room for everyone. This was true. But it is still something I am processing, and trying to think of how to handle best. Some volunteers I talked to about it have gotten used to it, and some say it's only happened once or twice in their entire time in Morocco. We'll see.

We walked out to one of the hills that night and sat to watch the sunset. I love the nighttime girls-only walks. The women are of all ages, but it's just a fun little walk, beautiful weather, and good socializing time.

Thursday, I woke up early and excercised (walked on the same hills) with the thirteen-year old in the same compound as me. We left at six am. It was already really hot. Summer should be an interesting challenge.

But later that morning, I finally got to my sbitar and met the doctor: he's new (has only been in Tamazitinu for two weeks) and said I'd be working with the nurse (my official counterpart) who has been in Tamazitinu for a long time and knows about PC, but the nurse is gone for a few weeks. I only stayed five or ten minutes but the doctor was polite and seemed to be looking forward to working with me. Who knows.

I also walked to the Neddi and sat in on a sewing class for a few minutes. They invited me back anytime and it seems like especially the first few months it will be fun to go and sit and sew with the ladies there and talk informally about life in Tamazitinu. It was scary just walking in there as well but most people are really welcoming. In fact, not a single person was ever rude to me or harrassing. Curious, sure, but very welcoming and friendly.

That afternoon, I was getting tired. The kids at home who are adorable were driving me up the wall, my mom tied the little one to my back for about an hour and I became really uncomfortable with that (and will not let it happen again. I think I have to draw the line at that. I don't want to be responsible for her kids) and tired. Some friends she had over were speaking Tam so fast it was impossible to even follow a little bit of the conversation and I was tired and stressed and overwhelmed. After lunch and another nap, we had friends over and my "mom" told me in the middle of their conversation, "Katy, you can't take pictures of people without asking them." I was a bit confused. I don't. I'm really careful of that. I don't ever want to be the ugly tourist with the camera.

"I didn't, did I?" I asked. Well... the night before, I had shown some of the kids the pictures of them in the madrasa, which I had assumed were fine since it was a Moroccan woman who had told me to take them and who encouraged me to take them. Apparantly, the kids told the principal, who was not happy about it. My stomach dropped. I hadn't even met the principal of the one school in the entire site yet, but the first impression he had of me was of me doing something inappropriate. My heart started racing and I was really stressed out. The shock of eating separately, of speaking exclusively Tamazight for the last few days, of the new food, of the kids around all the time, of knowing this was my home for the next two years, of having to go do all these things and introduce myself to strangers and really put myself out there all came together at once with this whole realization that even if I had tried so hard to do things right, I still messed up came to a head and I started crying. Slow, small tears, but I started crying.

"I didn't know! If I would have known, I wouldn't have done it. Someone told me it was okay and told me to take the pictures." I erased them and had them watch me erase them and offered to take my camera to the mudir (principal) and show him they were gone. At that point, I would have probably considered giving him my camera. I felt like an ugly American with no regard for cultural sensitivity even though it was an accident.

My host mom said she'd go talk to the mudir and left. She came back with the association president, which, of course, made me even more embarassed. "Don't cry, Katy. It's okay. It's no problem. Mashi mushkil. If you have any problems, you come to me, okay, but it's no problem, really. Don't cry."

And of course, in some ways that made me want to cry harder, although it was good to know that he has my back and that I really can go to him if I have issues. So, at this point, I'm a bit embarassed about that incident and don't quite know how to handle it when I go back, but in any case at least the positive I got out of it was that they know that I really feel strongly about NOT being the ugly American with a camera and no regard for their ways, and I know that the association president is someone I can go to. Enshallah. I don't know. I might talk to my program staff about it too to see if they have any reccomendations or to see how bad that really was, but I'm also embarassed about it. We'll see.

So. Thursday night, after a dinner of rice, we didn't go for a walk but we talked outside in the dark until late, and the woman from the transit ride who lives next door showed me her house, and we ended up having me dress up like a bride (or was it just like a wedding guest?) and had a small dance party in the salon, while the kids slept in the middle of the floor. I felt warmer towards my host mother than I had before and it ended on a positive note.

Got up really early (5 am) to catch a 6 am (but more like 5:45) transit back to the bigger city. On the way, in the transit, there was a truck with men with black turbans and a black sash across their face and there were sheep tied on their backs on the roof of the truck. The woman next to me pointed to them and said "ait sahara" which sort of means "Saharan tribe." Really cool. There were also the same brightly colored tents with a herd of camels that I think are camel nomads heading towards Azilal province. The woman also called them Ait Sahara.

Getting into the bigger city was interesting. There is a lot more harassment there because it's a sort of stop on a touristy route and they're used to tourist foreigners. Nothing was open except a few hanuts, and the hanut man from before remembered me, as did the man at the cafe we had gone to on the way. Apparantly, they are the two unofficial PC hangouts in town, and it made me feel part of a big PC family to be able to call them my hanut guy and my cafe guy. Even though the cafe wasn't open yet, I told him I was waiting for my friends and he said I could sit up on the roof (out of sight of people wanting to rip off tourists) if I wanted to. So I waited for an hour, finished up some paperwork, used a bathroom with toilet paper, and had sort of a home base in this town that I may go to as much as once a week or every two weeks. Fun.

When the PCV and Lacey got there, we tried to set up a post office box unsuccessfully (so I still don't have an address... my site has no post office) and we met with the gendarmes (country police force). That was another sort of entertaining conversation. The PCV speaks Tam but no Darija. The Gendarme head speaks Darija and Fusha and French, but no English or Tamazight. He pulled in a guy from the waiting room to translate from Tam to Darija and the PCV translated for us, but I'd pipe in with French every once in awhile and the guy from the waiting room spoke better Spanish than English, so the five of us were speaking English, Spanish, French, Darija, and Tamazight. What a mess! But so fun.

Lacey and I finally got a cab to the bigger city three hours away with a French tourist and her Moroccan boyfriend and some other people. They were really impressed with our Tamazight and because it was Friday, the cab driver pulled over in a random town to go to the mosque and Lacey and the tourist and the Moroccan and I had another multilingual conversation about PC and why we were there. Fun. We then took a cab to Marrakesh through the pass of death again (but the touristy road this time, which did NOT include getting stuck in the mud in the river bed, hamdullah) and got to Marrakesh by six.

I don't really have the time to talk about Marrakesh that much, except to say it is the most touristy place I've been other than Disney World, and when you speak Tamazight if they understand Tam, you're golden, but most people treat you like you are rich and crazy and try to sell you everything and do lots of catcalls. I had no patience for this, and yesterday, before we came back to the seminar site, I almost got into a few fights.

For example, a few young teenage girls kept throwing rocks at us. I finally turned around and screamed at them, in Tamazight, "Do you want to go to the Gendarmes? Let's go to the gendarmes! Come on, let's go. HSHUMA!" Now, Hshuma loosely translates to "shame on you" and it's not something to do lightly, but these girls who were probably 13 or 14 definately knew better than to throw rocks at our heads. They ran away. They should have. I was serious. The police in this country look out for us like no other, to the point that it almost makes me uncomfortable.

Case in point: PC has to know where we are at all times, and they in turn, tell the gendarmes where we are so that they know to look out for us. No joke. We're in the middle of the huge square in Marrakesh that has, at least 500 tourists at any given time. It's huge and chock-full of Europeans. We stopped a random gendarme in front of a bank to ask directions, and, yes, it was in Tamazight, and a plainclothes officer in a suit looked at us and said "Peace Corps. You are going to *name of seminar site* tomorrow. Hotel *name of hotel we stay at here*." Yeah. Kind of scary. They recognized us as PCTs and knew where we were going to the point that they knew what hotel we were in.

We also got ripped off taking a taxi back and I got into it with the courtier. He tried to charge us 600 dirhams for what should be a 420 dirham trip. I got it down to 450 but there were major issues and on top of that I almost got pickpocketed as we were getting into the cab. All in all, it was okay though and a rather comfortable trip back, for a taxi ride here.

But despite all that, I had a delicious meal in Marrakesh (including a mozerella cheese and tomato salad and a goat cheese salad and a pizza with capers), and the most delicious ice cream in the world. I also got a shirt I should be able to wear at site with no problem, so it was worth the trip.

I'm overwhelmed. I'm excited, but homestay scares the crap out of me. I feel so at home with my CBT family, and with these 35 Americans in training and the amazing staff we have here who understands what we are going through and jokes with us and who I've become close to. The idea of being so far from people and so isolated scares me a lot. Oh, well. I'll survive. I think that's my goal: to survive the first six months. After that, I feel like things will go much more smoothly. I'm just not allowing myself to give up until I've been at site at least six months. Wish me luck. I fear I might need it.