An ideal day in the PC

I feel like today was sort of an ideal PC day.

After eating a leisurely breakfast, I went to the sbitar, gathering a lunch invitation along the way. Perfect. My nurse was back, after the long weekend, so I went and spent the morning with him, talking about things and watching him and interacting with patients. It’s great to have him back—I forgot how rewarding it is to go to the sbitar, and how encouraging he can be with things.

After talking to a few people about water sanitation, I mentioned to my nurse that I had a few ideas for projects, and asked when the next equippe-mobile will be. He told me not until November, to which I responded “Oh, that’s not for awhile. I’m excited because I have some good ideas for health education lessons.”

“Okay, that’s a great idea. Let’s go this weekend. It can’t be official, and I can’t give vaccinations, but we can go and do lessons. We’ll need to spend the night out there to make it really effective and to be able to gather people for a good amount of time, but let’s go.”

Wow. Okay. Now, I was thinking more mid-September or October, but if he can get the commune’s car this weekend, we’ll go… so, naturally, I’m trying to come up with some good health lessons. I have some ideas but I’d like to do it with visual aids or activities to be more convincing and engaging. I told him I wasn’t in a rush, but he responded with, “No, it’s a great idea, and I’ve decided that I’m going this weekend with or without you, but it’d be better if you came.” It’s wonderful working with motivated people.

I did lunch and tea at a “friend’s” house: the family of my hostmother’s husband. I don’t call him my hostfather because, well, he wasn’t there at all the entire time I was living at the house, but he’s a good guy, and one of his sisters is very friendly. We sat and drank tea, and listened to Berber music… even danced a bit. One thing I love about dancing here is that women often tie a sash or jangly thing around their waist, so it’s easier to feel what muscles to use to dance. I’m learning, shwiya b shwiya, how to dance a la Berber. I’ve never been able to isolate my hip muscles before, but I’m hoping to be able to not be shy by the time I get back so I can come to the US and crank up the Berber music and let go.

Lunch was tagine and, well, sheep head. They understood that I didn’t eat meat so they didn’t push the issue, but the matriarch did squeeze a mostly solid but soft white, veiny ball out of a sac of grey slimy eyeball covering. She pushed it over to my part of the table to show it to me, and said, nonchalantly,“We don’t eat the eyeball.” Um, thanks. I’m still not accustomed to people eating goat head or sheep’s head or intestines with their bare hands, let alone seeing someone squeeze and dissect an eyeball with the same hand they’re eating with, but, sometimes it’s fun.

When I got home, I realized some of the ingredients for specific recipes were going to go bad, so I went ahead and opened some of my special ingredients I bought at Marjane in Meknes this weekend: rice paper for spring rolls. Mine were simple: cabbage, carrot, and cucumber julienned and wrapped in the rice paper, but I made a dipping sauce with ground peanuts, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, rice wine vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, and a dash of fish sauce. Yes, you can get all of that at Marjane in Fes, Meknes, Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir (I think), and Marrakech. No, I don’t feel guilty for eating well occasionally in the Peace Corps.

As I was wrapping my first spring roll, some girls came to visit. I couldn’t entertain them because the kitchen was a mess and I was in the middle of making the first Asian food besides a mediocre stir-fry since being in country. They told me they’d just come in for five minutes, and I relented.

I decided to share my spring-roll goodness, talking about why it was good to eat raw vegetables. To my utter shock, all three girls loved them. One was afraid to try it at first, but after her friends demolished three of them, she relented. Not only did they love them, but they also loved the dipping sauce, despite the fact that it had fish sauce! A lot of older PCVs said it’s really hard to cook American or any different food for people at their site because they don’t often like it because they’re not used to it—after all, I think it’s safe to say that a majority of people in Tamazitinu eat variations of bread, tagine, couscous, and occasionally brochettes or chicken 90% of the time. I was pleasantly surprised at their willingness to try new things and how excited they were. One even wanted a spring roll to take home with her.

They grabbed my dirty clothes again, while I was washing dishes, and scrubbed some of them for me. As a thank-you, I made them an apple-orange-yogurt smoothie. I got my clothes cleaned and company for an hour or so, and they got a mini-health lesson and good nutritious food, and had fun, I have to believe, because they were quite insistent about both coming in and washing my clothes. I think it was a win-win situation all around.

The girls, one of whom is a neighbor, told me that I should go to a wedding. I didn’t know who the bride was, so I said probably not, but one said her aunt specifically said I should go. Okay. I was a bit early, so I tried to leave, but someone else invited me to her house. I had fun there, then went back to the wedding and ate dinner there. It was nice and I got to meet some neighbors, which is always a good thing. I also love eating at weddings because at the end of the meal, there’s usually a big basket of fruit. Tonight it was a green melon and grapes. Delicious.

People told me there was another foreigner at the wedding: a man from France who knew someone from Ait lxarij and comes to Tamazitinu once a year. I met him and explained about PC. He seemed to find it interesting and said he was jealous because he loves Tamazitinu and the people there. Yeah. I’m beginning to feel that way as well, at least days like today.

Then, home, and the first shower in my own house! I have rigged a summer shower, which, I must say, is delightful. I say it’s a summer shower, because there’s no real easy way to hook it up to hot water, so in the winter when it’s freezing, I’ll stick with a hot bucket bath. It was actually really easy, and I don’t know why more people here don’t do it: all I did was buy two meters of hose from a hardware store, and a plastic shower head from Marjane. I just fit it over the faucet; turn on the water, and voila: shower! The best part is that the water is occasionally lukewarm, so the temperature tonight was perfect: cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough to take the edge off.

Aside from that, I bought a bit of cement last time I was in town, so soon I’ll be patching up some of the holes to the outside. I could probably get my landlord’s family to do it, but sometimes it’s more satisfying to do it on my own.

And so life goes… I’m most likely updating from my souk town on Thursday (tomorrow), but I really don’t want to go. I have to: I have tutoring (and am hoping to get some help for the lessons this weekend, enshallah!), and I told my nurse I’d pick up some medications from my conscription hospital. He sent me a mini-cooler for them, which has been amazing because it means this afternoon I had really cold water. My other goal is to try to find a fridge, and maybe a teapot and small table. I just feel like I need to be in site, because last Thursday I was at my souk town, then Meknes from Saturday until Tuesday. I think it’s good that I want to stay in site and not leave. It’s a nice change from homestay when I’d count down the days until I was able to leave and have a change of scenery.