Handy-Woman

I've updated twice today; I kept the glossary as separate, but if you are curious about any terms I'm using, give it a peruse. :)

8.10.07
(3shra, shr tminya, alfayn u sb3a)

I feel like I’ve been a mixture of very productive and a bad volunteer recently. I’ve been to my souk town twice in one week, which just feels like too much, even if I tutor both days. This week, I have been to a few weddings, eaten some meals out, and visited my host family, but I’ve also essentially not left the house two days, and two other days I was out of town most of the day.

That being said, I do feel productive but still just scratching the surface with making my house “home.” Today, I finished my fire pit for burning trash. There’s something rewarding about hauling rocks around and shoveling dirt, even if I did it in the heat of the day and literally was soaked in sweat. I’m still a bit nervous about burning trash; plastic fumes have dioxins and furans. These chemicals are bio-accumulative, meaning that once they enter your body they never leave. That scares me, since I know I have and will continue to breathe some in. I’m also terrified about starting a fire in what is essentially the desert. I’ll continue to be cautious and eventually be more comfortable with burning trash, but I do like my little fire pit.

Today, I put screens in two windows. I realized, belatedly, that I didn’t have enough supplies to do the other three, but it’s okay to do it little by little. I need to get more screen and thumbtacks, but I might see if I can get someone to build me one for my bedroom window that opens and closes. There’s a great ledge that I want to be able to use as a shelf for cooling water, candles, herbs, and little other knickknacks if possible. If not, I can make do with the ledges in my salon.

I’ve started to scrub down the walls, but haven’t even been able to really make a dent in that. The problem with mud houses is that in a particularly bad thunderstorm, the roof leaks and leaves mud streaks on the walls. When I get a ladder or something to stand on, I’ll try my best to plug up the leaks if that’s feasible: maybe some plastic and cement will do the trick. The good thing is that I know exactly where the leaks are coming from, and that the last time we had rain, there was no leaking. It’s also nowhere near any electrical outlets. Hamdullah.

I think I’m slowly but surely making headway against the dirt and insects. Maybe that’s naïve and wishful thinking, but I’m thinking by putting in screens, using flypaper, plugging up antholes at first with ducttape and eventually, hopefully, cement, and keeping cloth under the front door (there’s a large crack), sweeping twice a day, keeping everything as absolutely positively clean as possible, and most importantly, maintaining these measures, I’ll be able to minimize these issues.

The last few days I’ve also started hanging up pictures, rearranging furniture, and putting mosquito netting up over my bed. I still am not satisfied with my bedroom setup; I’ll give it a few days and see what kind of ideas I come up with.

I’ve had a few questions about my house: yes, it is made of adobe. Most of the interior walls and the floors are covered in a thin layer of cement (paint-thin), but there are some parts of the hallway and bathroom that are just mud, as in I can pick out pieces of straw and if you get it wet, it turns into muddy goop on the floor. . One or two of the interior walls are all cement, but most are just coated in a layer the thickness of a few layers of paint. The roof has beams that are round raw tree trunks, then bamboo on top of that, then plastic and agrtil (the plastic carpeting) and ultimately a layer of adobe.

Okay, enough about my house, though I’m proud of the work I’m doing on it. I’ve never been the toolbelt type of a girl, but these days I’m wishing I had one.

The other things I’ve been doing that are productive are work-related: brainstorming real ideas of projects to implement. I know I will feel better and my community will understand why I’m here more when I start to actually do something. My newest idea that I’m really excited about is doing prenatal lessons for pregnant women. Most women I talk to aren’t open to going to the clinic to give birth unless there’s a complication, and most don’t plan to have a traditional birth attendant (qabla) come to their house during labor, so other than encourage this, I feel the best thing to do is have classes for them. I’m hoping to work with a qabla and my nurse so that it can be sustainable when I leave, and I’ll try to gage whether or not women would come. I’d like to have healthy snacks, go over fetal development, breastfeeding, nutrition during and after pregnancy, labor, minor discomforts, when things are serious enough to go to the doctor, and anything else that’s relevant. I’m hoping women will want to come.

I also have ideas for a few murals, for lay-healthworker trainings, a qabla training if it makes sense, especially for women in outer douars, working with schools, continuing informal lessons at the sbitar, having a girls’ group that meets at my house, designing some sort of waste-removal system for town, and maybe even some sort of a yoga or stretching class for these women who work so hard in the field and have lots of back problems. I don’t know anything about yoga except for having taken it a semester in college, but I think it’d be good to get people stretching. I’d also like to work with other people in my province and the Ministry of Health to do a training for medical providers on communication sensitivity, but I don’t know how feasible that is. On the same level of possibly controversial ideas, I’d love to get my nurse to work with some of the local leaders (men) in town to go over STD prevention. It’s not something I can address with men, but it’d be a good thing to do and to be able to help design the curriculum.

As a secondary project, I’d like to talk to the outfits that take 4x4s of tourists down the road to see if they need a rest stop, or if they’d use it. Since they’re paving the road past my site and it will become a thoroughfare within the next few months or year, my guess is that tourists will start to use the road more, and that might be a way to bring income to Tamazitinu. If we got a rest area with clean western toilets, AC, and crafts that benefit the artisans rather than the shopkeeper, and had something unique: maybe a small Berber history exhibit, it might be a draw. I have no idea how feasible that is, or how many tourists will be coming through, or how to get something like that started, but if it worked, it’d be amazing. I’m also considering teaching English lessons, and talking to schools to see if they want to do a world map mural.

It hasn’t sunk in that I’m here or in the Peace Corps. Once, when I was coming back from my souk town, we were stopped at a gas station and, since we had passed the gendarmes checkpoint, some of the men were climbing on the roof to be more comfortable. A tourist stopped and took a picture of our tobis with me in it. Of course, it was so crowded inside, she didn’t see me and I bet she’d be shocked to see a foreigner in the tobis, but it was really ironic to me: a tourist was (unknowingly) taking a picture of me.

It’s only in moments such as those that it hits me. I am in the Peace Corps. I am living in Morocco. I’ve become so accustomed to it that it doesn’t seem strange anymore. It seems normal here, even though I don’t know the language and am living in a mud house. It’s pretty unremarkable. Sometimes I wonder what in the world I’m doing here, but really, I forget where I am. Or I don’t forget; I don’t think I’m in the United States, obviously, but it just is unimportant. I don’t know how much sense this makes, but it’s really sort of strange when about once a week, it hits me that I live here and that I am a PCV. It’s a really bizarre feeling: sometimes it feels like a little panic attack, and sometimes it makes me giddy with joy and I just laugh out loud. It’s even more strange thinking of people in the US. When I can catch people on Skype, it’s almost surreal. Life goes on; it’s not just stopped in time, but it also feels stopped in time, the same as when I left.

I had a nightmare last night that I was at home and still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In my dream, someone turned to me and asked, “So, you even did the Peace Corps for two years, and you STILL don’t know what you want to do?” Peace Corps has been in my plans since I was fifteen, but I’ve never had a concrete plan for after, and I still don’t. Non-profits? International development? Public health? I know I want to continue living abroad and working in developing nations, but doing what, I’m not sure. I certainly want to go to graduate school, I know that much.

8.11.07

I spoke too soon about winning the battle against insects. I accumulated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from a friend this week, so of course, last night I was up reading. I was feeling smug about my newly-mosquito-net covered bed, and especially crafty with my hanging “table”- a Tupperware box hung with dental floss that pokes through the mosquito net from a ceiling beam to keep a flashlight, lotion, and other little things that I might want at night. At midnight, I stepped out of the safety of my covered bed and saw something crawling on the ground. I thought at first it was a mouse, but it was moving too slowly and scuttling too much. I screamed: it was dark out, I was alone, and there was something big and nasty in my room.

It was a scorpion. Now, I’m not usually too freaked out by scorpions. When I lived in Texas, we had them in the house occasionally, and I know how to deal with them: pick them up with a pair of pliers and dispose. Nothing too difficult, and I’ve done it before here without worrying too much.

However, this scorpion was the queen of the scorpion world. It was huge. I’m talking the size of a small rat. I was terrified. Terrified. It was too big to try to use pliers with, and too big to try to get with a shoe because it’d make too much of a crunch, and I hate that crunching sound. So… half-asleep but really wired and pumped with adrenaline, ran to the kitchen, looking for anything, but wishing for a baseball bat.

I grabbed two pots and a broom and went back. It was gone. Oh, no. I am NOT going to sleep when this guy was literally behind my bed before it ambled out into plain view. It had to be behind the door.

I threw a knitting needle down on the ground and pushed it under the door with the broom. Going in the room was too risky. Who knows? It could come out and get me before I could defend myself because I didn’t know exactly where it would be coming from. I was hoping to push it out from behind the door into plain view with the knitting needle, but it wouldn’t leave. I stood there, staring at the room, for about two minutes doing nothing. Time to ET. Time to go home. I can deal with a lot of things but the idea of living in a house infested with monster scorpions is too much even for me.

But that’s what I wanted, right? What else did I expect? I’m in the desert, for crying out loud. There are scorpions in the desert. There are also camel spiders. It’s not worth going home for something stupid like that. I asked myself: are you a high-maintenance girl, or do you go with the flow?

I stepped in the room and closed the door. There was the monster scorpion. She was huddling in the corner, shaking, obviously terrified of the knitting needle that had been coming for her. Thinking the path was clear, she started to scuttle away. Do I throw a pot at her? Do I smash her with a frying pan with no handle? Or do I try to get her with the broom?

The broom had the longest handle, so it won out, and I gave a warrior cry as I beat her to death with it. At this point, I was feeling a bit badly for her, but when I swept her to the toilet and heard her shell rattling against the floor, I didn’t feel so badly. I took a bad picture before flushing her down my Turkish toilet, and haven’t seen another scorpion since; enshallah it will stay that way. I am, however, still on edge with bugs: once I leaned on my cell phone while reading and screamed and was halfway across the room before I realized what it was. Oh, well.

Today was an interesting day. Once more, I didn’t leave the house/courtyard until about 4:30. I finished burning my trash, took a shower (bucket bath, of course), washed clothes, cooked a southwestern stir fry and juice, realized my hair is falling out, so made myself another shake and had a protein bomb, and read some Harry Potter. I tweaked some of my insect and dirt prevention measures, and then realized that this is a bad habit to get into: staying at home. I need to make friends here and get to know my community.

So, at 4:30, I headed out the door, thinking I was just going for a walk, hoping to get at least one tea invite so I could feel social, and get back soon to my house to continue reading/cleaning/resting. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t get home for almost eight hours.

At first, I was disappointed. I walked all the way to my host family’s house while only seeing one person I knew and having a short conversation with her. Hostmom invited me in for tea, and I stayed only as long as I had to, as she was getting in a heated incomprehensible conversation with her husband and I felt awkward.

I was hoping the next door neighbors were home, but they weren’t. A neighbor girl, who sometimes went on walks with me and other neighbors, invited me for tea. I told myself I’d accept any and all tea invites on this walk, so I went in her house. I had no idea how poor her family was, but what was most intriguing was that it was nothing like any house I’ve seen in Tamazitinu before. I’ve seen it in outer douars, but not here, and it was only four or five houses from my homestay house. It’s all mud, but most of the living and animals are kept in mud rooms on the second floor. Difficult to describe, but cool to see they were raising quail, sheep, and goats. I’ve never seen quail here either. A baby goat came into the tea room and started drinking out of the tea-water bucket and eating out of the sugar bowl. It acted almost like a dog, and even leapt up on the windowsill. I’m adding that to my list of health-related lessons: keep your farm animals out of the room where you eat, and especially the sugar bowl. Audacious creature.

Her family is lovely, and said I was welcome any time to eat or drink tea. We had bread dipped in a mixture of olive oil and honey (both locally produced by hand, fresh and unprocessed; what am I going to do in the US when that’s impossible to find?) which is an interesting combination. Good people, though the father kept speaking Darija to me even when I told him I just speak a little Tam.

My young (11 or 12) friend invited me to go with her to the fields, and, since I had nothing better to do, I accepted. On the way, my closest friend (the 30 year old) from next door to homestay was at home and said when I got back, she’d go with me to Ait Bahalu: the house where my two friends who just got married live. Waxa.

I went to the fields, and we ate figs off her family’s trees. One tree cluster had no visible figs on them. “People must have eaten them,” she said, meaning people just wandering around the fields, wanting to eat figs. She said it so nonchalantly that maybe people really don’t care if you go around and pick a few vegetables or fruits from their fields. I’m still not comfortable doing that though. After munching on those, a few nut-like fruits that are tiny and sweet, and some not-yet-full-grown jalapeno peppers that aren’t spicy when they’re young, she spent about five minutes harvesting some alfalfa for sheep (and only let me help with one bunch), and we headed back.

My other friend grabbed me, and after walking into someone’s house and peeking in at a bride getting done up in makeup and passing by a wedding, we met up with two of her sisters and headed over to Ait Bahalu. On the way, my friend’s sister’s daughter, who is one and a half, did her typical act around me.

I’ve debated about whether to discuss this in a blog, but it’s too funny not to put out there. This little girl is obsessed with my chest. At first, probably a month ago, she just grabbed my chest and said, in Tam, “Breast.” This, of course, got lots of giggles and only served to encourage her. Now, though she knows my name, she calls me “Breast,” and does everything in her power to get as close and personal to them as she can, whether that means burying her face in my chest, plunging her hand down my shirt, grabbing them from the outside, or, when I pick her up and hold her to keep her hands to herself, even just resting her feet on them (or actually standing on them… or dancing on them…).

So, as we’re walking, she starts quietly. “Bush.” The word for breast in Tam is “bush” (boo-sh). Yes, there’s a joke there. No, I’m not going to go there. Then, she gets louder. Louder. When we’re walking down a crowded part of town, she starts screaming it and reaching for me from her mothers’ back. “BUSH! BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!”

I’m dying, I’m laughing so hard. We all are. We all try to say, “No, that’s bad; that’s hshuma to say, don’t say that,” but it’s such a strange phenomenon and she’s so passionate about it that it’s absolutely hilarious.

We get to Ait Bahamu, with her still whispering “Bush” and giggling every few minutes, under her breath. One of Bahamu’s daughters, who is married to my hostmother’s brother, invites me for dinner. I don’t know yet if I’ll accept, so I just say “thanks, enshallah.” We all sit around for awhile, I see one of my bride friends getting saffron painted on her face, and after an hour or so, we’re walking out the door.

Just as I’m starting to walk towards my house, my other bride friend sees me. “Katy! Come on!” She, who is all done up, this time with a white wrap and black head scarf with dangling jangly silver discs, grabs me and pulls me inside. “You have to stay for dinner.” Two invites to the same dinner? It was a sign. I stayed.

“But I’m not wearing nice clothes!” A woman, who I know I’ve seen before but don’t remember anything about says “You look fine, but if you want to borrow this, you can.” She was dressed almost as a bride too, though she’d been married for years. I still don’t understand this, but apparently it’s okay to dress like a bride even when you aren’t one. People started telling me to go with her, so I did. I love how giving people are here. I can’t say that enough.

We winded through the alleyways to her house, and she stripped down to pajama pants and a tank top, handing me articles of clothing. She wrapped a white lacey shawl around my torso and tied it with a belt, then did my hair in a bridal wrap. “Here. Let me do saffron too.” Five minutes later, I was back at Ait Bahalu.

Everyone was complementing me; “bsshha”s and “stisnt”s were flying at me from every direction. The mothers of both brides, the mothers of both grooms, the father of both grooms (remember what I said about the polygamous Bahalu?), neighbors, a lot of people who look familiar but I don’t know well, were talking to me. My bride friend was dragging me around with her, which I was grateful for, and after dancing some in the aheyduss line, I sat with her, then her mother some, then another older woman who called me over, then back to one of the brides. I ate, and sat and waited to eat, between her and a family from France who was related to the grooms. They also have family that is a neighbor: good to know! I had conversations with people in Tam and French, talked a lot to my bride friend, and finished up dinner and got home at about midnight.

It’s hard leaving the house sometimes, but every time I do, it ends up making things better.

Wedding season is over. When everyone said “shr tminya is full of weddings,” apparently that really means “the first half of shr tminya is full of weddings.” Speaking of shr tminya, I moved in the first, so I’ve been in my house eleven days. That’s a lot. Only around 654 to go.



August 13, 2007

I keep putting off going to the sbitar. I know my nurse is going to be disappointed in me for only going a little when he wasn’t there, but I had to move into my house and get settled. I think that the transition excuses my laziness, to some extent. I was going to go this morning, but didn’t. My next door neighbor, my landlady’s sister, had told me last night when we went to the fields together that she needed to go to the taHanut this morning at about eight am. I thought we’d go, I’d come home, start bleaching my vegetables, then head to the sbitar. We didn’t end up going until around 10:30, and by the time we were back, it was too close to lunchtime to really make much sense to go to the sbitar. Ar aska, enshallah (‘till tomorrow).

When we did go to the taHanut, I was really disappointed with the selection. All the veggies they had were some good looking carrots, potatoes, and onions, and some wilted tomatoes and peppers. The only fruit were yellowing oranges and some melons. I can get creative with food, but the last week, I’ve lived off of those ingredients. I need some variety: no wonder people here seem to eat meal upon meal of couscous, duas (tagine), bread, rice, and sharia (plain pasta). There aren’t a lot of options without going to the souk town, though vegetables from the field are quite delicious when in season. I’ll have to get a fridge and get some specialty vegetables and especially fruits from my souk town, like pears and quince and peaches and apples and avocadoes; cauliflower, eggplant, beets, and cilantro.

I went home and killed time napping and reading. I’ve now read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows three times, and HP 4 and 5 twice in the last week. I need some more variety but don’t have much reading material.

I don’t usually leave the house after lunch until after l3sr, the call to prayer around 4:30 pm. Most people aren’t out, the taHanuts aren’t open, and a lot of people are sleeping or resting. Come 4:30, I was out the door. I went over to IHndar, my old neighborhood. Tamazitinu is divided into different neighborhoods, and most of my friends live in IHndar, because that’s where my hostfamily was. I love it. Whenever I walk back now, it feels like coming home. I figure it’s good to get some exercise, and am hoping for some tea invites to be social.

Lo and behold, the man who has the nice house he wanted to rent me and there was all the confusion about invited me in. The older lady from next door who I adore was there, as well as “Bush” girl, her granddaughter. I sat around and had some tea, but skedaddled earlier than I could have because there were lots of awkward silences. He did still offer me his house, this time, is really nice house that has the western toilet and shower. I couldn’t use it all year, but until next summer. Tempting, but I don’t think so. I may feel differently in the winter, when the thought of a hot shower is too much. We’ll see. Whatever works itself out will work itself out. I do love IHndar.

On my way back, I was going to cut through the fields to go to another taHanut that was supposed to get a delivery of vegetables in the afternoon. I wanted fresh peppers. On the way, the director of the Neddi was out and about, and after I said hi, she and her mother invited me in for tea.

I’ve been intimidated by her in the past, I don’t really know why. I think part of it is that since she’s actually from the provincial capital, and not Tamazitinu, her Tam is really hard to understand. Another part is that she’s one of the only other women actually working in a prominent position in town and am afraid she judges me. In any case, I had a really good time at their house (they live in a room in the Neddi) and found out she’s my age. Ironic, to me, that other than the teachers, the only woman working in a somewhat official capacity is from out of town and is 23 years old. She and her mother left the capital and have lived here for three years and Tam is a second (third) language for them as well; they grew up speaking Arabic and Tassusite. I do think I’ll go hang out at the Neddi some more after it opens again in September. She was listening to Hindi music, and, really, just seems like a good, fun, warm person. I was quite glad to have gone over.

I finally headed home, after a quick stop for peppers and frozen Monaish. I was tired, and excited to have ingredients to make a really good lentil dish, served on top of leftover bread. I have an arrangement with my neighbor: I buy one type of flour for her, and she’ll bake me a little homemade round of bread every day.

It was getting dark out. As soon as I got home, four girls appeared at my doorstep. Okay. Neighbors. I invited them in and tried to talk to them, and gave them some instant iced tea. They stayed about half an hour, but I was tired and had to kick them out. Sweet girls though.

As soon as they left, I pulled out the computer and started blogging. My cell phone rang. It was my host mother, inviting me to have dinner at her house. I had just been to iHndar, but was excited to have another invite out.

Right before I left, there was a knock at the door again (I’m actually finishing this up on Tuesday now). Another neighbor. Nice. I had her drink some soda and talked for a few minutes, but left for iHndar soon afterwards. It was a wonderful dinner. I like my host family a lot better now that I don’t live with them. They’re good people. We got done eating around 10:30, and rather than walk back, they said to just sleep there. Once more, I slept under the stars, on two blankets and some agrtil. It’s nice sleeping outside. I don’t know which one I prefer: outside in iHndar, or at my house, on a bed, under mosquito netting and with a fan.

This morning (Tuesday now; the 14th), I got up at about seven, stayed at hostfamily’s for breakfast (coffee, bread, and honey), then was ushered next door by the older woman I like so much.

They got a shipment of medications from family in France and wanted me to translate when to use them. I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with the task, but I figured the safest thing to do was to separate them into two piles: one that was essentially aspirin substitutes and fever reducers that would be over the counter in the US, and one that was more prescription. I told them under NO CIRCUMSTANCE to take the prescription drugs without going to the doctor first.

I went to the sbitar, but it was empty. No nurse, no doctor. After half an hour, I left, and came home. Here I am now, debating whether or not to make that lentil dish for lunch.

I’m touched. A neighbor kid just ran me over four eggplants from their garden.

Oh, and another interesting sidenote: rumor has it that Tamazitinu is getting internet soon. Now, I don’t think I can afford getting internet in my house (and don’t know if I’d really want it anyway). I think that people are saying it’s coming to individual houses, and not necessarily a cyber, but I’m shocked. We don’t have a post office, police presence, we just got a paved road literally last month, the water is constantly out, I constantly meet women who got married when they were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, there are only a handful of small shops, and we have no souk…but we may have internet. Never mind the fact that most of the women in my town are illiterate. It’s amazing what globalization and the immigrant population brings to Tamazitinu, and the sort of dichotomy between different groups here. Some houses don’t even have a latrine… but some will have internet.

And that’s another thing: the illiteracy. I think that’s the biggest barrier to health education in my town, the fact that probably 60-80% of the women here are illiterate. It might even be more than that. Most women my age haven’t been past elementary school, though a lot of the girls who are a few years younger have been to middle school, and there are some who go to high school. We only have a madrasa at site, so middle school or high school students have to board, which costs money, and a lot of parents don’t like having their children, especially their daughters away from home. When a lot of girls get married at 15, 16, 17, that happens when they’re not in school as well.

It’s even more difficult given the fact that Tam isn’t, for all intents and purpose, a written language. The alphabet is being revived, but there aren’t any health-related publications that I’ve found, so in order to teach women to be literate, they usually learn Fusha, the language of the Koran, which is not only nothing like Tam, but is very difficult and the women don’t speak it as a native language. So, everything I need to present to women needs to be in a way that is not written. I can’t make a little home-care booklet with written instructions, or a card to pass out with medications describing how to take it; everything has to be with symbols and pictures.

8.15.07

What a morning!

I woke up to having some girls pounding on my door. I almost didn’t answer, but realized it was the nice girls who I said could come back sometime. Time to get up anyway, so I told them to wait a minute, threw on clothes, and let them in. I made them some fruit punch, and we talked for about an hour or so. Nice girls, I thought.

When they left, I decided to go ahead and make lunch early for sort of a brunch, but there was a knock on the door half an hour later. The same girls, with a new girl I hadn’t seen before. “We have something for you.” Okay…

They handed me a fig and a huge bunch of grapes from one of their aunt’s garden. I was touched and had them come back in. They’re all nine years old, but two don’t live in Tamazitinu, one is the daughter of an immigrant to France so we spoke French, the other is from my friends’ site and knows Peace Corps and two volunteers, and the other one is a girl from Ait Bahalu. I went to the kitchen to get more juice or something for them to drink, and when I came out, they were all cleaning the house.

“You don’t have to do that!” But they did, and they had fun doing it. One girl swept and mopped all my floors, another scrubbed my bathroom, and when they finished that, they both sat down and started washing the clothes I had thrown in a basin to soak.

I kept saying, “No, no, no you don’t have to do that!” but they insisted they wanted to. I thought maybe they expected me to give them candy or something, money, even, but they left right at lunchtime and thanked me for letting them come over. Thanked me! They were the ones who brought me grapes and scrubbed my floors and washed my clothes, and seemed to have fun doing it.

It was a nice pick-me-up, to be sure.