I can finally say I’m ur isula and not be lying!

February 18, 2008

I feel incredibly busy right now, which makes me very happy.

My first English class, an advanced class, was last Wednesday, and it was fantastic. I have six students with varying levels and experience (some have studied 10 years, some can barely introduce themselves), which is challenging, but I had fun and it was much easier than I anticipated. I spent this morning coming up with the new lesson plan for this Wednesday and am having fun with it, assigning them to watch English television, or writing worksheets with vocabulary relating to Tamazitinu.

I didn’t end up having a get-together at my place but instead headed over to nearby Peace Corps Alley (2-3 hours away; 9 volunteers have the same souk town and it’s literally driving through one site after another to get there) and had a lot of fun working on grant materials for the incinerator project and getting the training of trainers off the ground.

My buta ran out… the oven burns through it fast… so I ended up hauling another butagaz container around yesterday in a borrowed wheelbarrow.

February 19, 2008

I guess I didn’t want to write much yesterday. Today has been a good day. It started out rough: I had been planning with my nurse to do lessons all morning at the sbitar, but when I got there, he wasn’t there, so I didn’t do them. I was so frustrated I didn’t even poke in my head to say hi to the doctor, something I really regret now.

I found out about an hour ago that this morning, a woman gave birth in the clinic. This may sound routine, but it’s not; the nearest birthing room is in my souk town and people don’t regularly give birth in the clinic itself in Tamazitinu. I don’t know if it was all over by 9 am when I got there, but if I missed out on watching, I’m a little disappointed, though apparently it was very intense and messy.

A bit disappointed about the morning, I decided to go home, but ended up not being back until 2 pm; I stopped at four houses for bread and tea and had at least six or eight lunch invites, but I’m still full from the all fatbread.*

I have a friend in town who I only hang out with once every month in a half or two months, but she’s one of my favorite people. I don’t know her husbands’ family well enough to be comfortable just going to her house, so our interactions are limited to when I see her outside and she invites me in or we walk around together, but I’ve eaten three or four meals at her place.

I saw her today and immediately thought she looked pregnant. “Impossible,” I thought, “she just had a son this summer.” She grabbed my hand, and looked me in the eyes, dark bags under hers. “I’m sick,” she told me. “I’m pregnant. Again. It’s terrible, my son is so little.”
It hurt my heart… and it’s strange to think that even though I’m only in town for two years, I’ll see her right after she gives birth twice, enshallah. Her husband knows but his family (where she lives) doesn’t, so she went to the store and bought some high-energy high-nutrient foods and hid them in my bag so that she could hide them in the house and sneak bites when nobody was looking.

Ironically, the lesson I wanted to do at the sbitar today was about birth control options.

We sat and I showed her a book in my bag about stages of development and pregnancy steps and she asked good questions and seemed to learn something about what was going on with her body, which was heartening.

I really want to move to the neighborhood where my homestay family is because that’s where most of my friends live. I get so happy every time I’m over there and I feel like I belong there so much more than in my part of town that it would, I think, improve my social life a lot. There’s even an empty house, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. I’d have to buy a bed and some kitchen things, and there’s no running water in the house, just in the bathroom, so I’d have to use water containers in the kitchen. It’s cement, which has benefits and drawbacks, but really, I don’t know if it’s worth the hassle.

February 22, 2008

The fact that I haven’t blogged for three days is fantastic. It doesn’t mean that I have nothing to talk about; it means I’m busy. I finally feel like I have a purpose in being here and that I’m starting to feel like I have a job. It’s sad in some ways, but good in others, that it’s taken this long. It’s encouraging to know that I still have over a year to do the work that is now happening.

I’m stressed out, which is bliss after months of trying to figure out how to do my time. I remember during homestay, I’d look forward to Fridays or Saturdays because those were the days I’d let myself do laundry, and this took up a few hours where I could feel productive. Now, I’m trying to schedule grant meetings with people on weekends, have a lot of lesson plans to translate for health lessons, am choosing not only not to take my out-of-site weekends but not even taking all my souk days in town, and making lesson plans for things. It’s so refreshing, I don’t know what to do with myself, though I still have time to watch the same DVDs over and over, with the directors cut, in Spanish or French…

In any case, Wednesday night I had my second advanced English class. I’ve come to the realization I have no idea how to teach ESOL, and am literally one step ahead of the students in that matter. It was a bit too lecture-like for me, but people in my class weren’t eager to participate, so I’ll have to create a seminar-like atmosphere little by little. The levels are also drastically different, so two people know all the answers while the rest struggle, which is a big challenge. Kids are still asking me when I will teach them English (young girls), so I need to decide how to handle this. I would look at it more as an English club, where we learn some vocabulary and basic information but also have fun and do things that are empowering, but I know it will be challenging to develop that curriculum on a weekly basis.

Thursday (yesterday, I skipped my souk day and went, instead, to the sbitar to do a lesson for pregnant women. It wasn’t crowded, and I ended up doing it for groups of three for about twelve women. It wasn’t a structured lesson, but went over basic things: eat more protein, try to give birth in the clinic, if you have to give birth at home, boil the scissors for the umbilical cord, use clean cloths, bathe them every two days, don’t have anyone push on your stomach from the outside during labor to help it go faster, don’t put henna on the umbilical cord or eyeliner on the newborn’s eyes, etc. It was a condensed version of what I want to do eventually in a few weeks’ worth of classes, but it went well. They could at least repeat back things and I think, in most cases, understand why (which, of course, is the most important thing).

I went yesterday to my teacher friend’s house in the next douar over at about three and, thinking I’d be back at seven that day, came home 24 hours later. It was fantastic. I sat in on an hour of her classes: she teaches two levels of French at once! It seemed to be challenging to teach two lesson plans at once, but she handled it well. Then, we just spent time at her house, me teaching her Spanish, her teaching me some Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). She’s very fast with Spanish because she’s fluent in French, but MSA is very slow. We went through the entire Spanish alphabet and she can spell pretty much any word I can throw at her; I’ve barely made it through a third of the Arabic alphabet and can’t spell worth anything. It’s fun though.

I also found out yesterday that I will be a camp counselor in a nearby city for a 4-day English language Spring camp in early April. This is immensely exciting for me: I’ve always wanted to be an overnight camp counselor, but I never thought this would come true in Morocco! Along with other lessons and projects, I now need to come up with camp health materials, and maybe some magic tricks that are easy to teach.




*Fatbread: aghrom n taguri. A homemade bread stuffed with “taguri:” chopped green onion, fat, cumin, salt, hot pepper, tumeric, and a few other spices. Delicious, but a heart attack waiting to happen. If you’re really lucky it’ll have ground beef inside.

February 4, 2008

 

I am exceedingly happy today.

 

It's hard to think why or how, considering less than 24 hours ago, I could barely swallow, was soaked in sweat in my sleeping bag, continuing a fever that started 24 hours previous with tonsils the size of golf balls… while the Super Bowl, commentary in French with NONE of the fantastic commercials was playing in the next room over. I did get to hear snippets of Tom Petty while making a bathroom stop at about 2 am though. Fortunately, the antibiotics finally kicked in this morning and, lHamdullah, I'm operating now at about 95% health and am safe and sound back at my house.

 

It's been a remarkably productive weekend. Thursday was at my house, taddartinu, and really set things off and rolling. Let me back up. Myself and two of my volunteer friends in the province were all set up to do what we called our "sbitar incinerator tour." This entails going to each of our sites, checking out our sbitars, talking to our staff, and any communes or associations to get the ball rolling for building medical waste incinerators for the clinics.

 

We started at my site, and so I was off early Thursday to meet my friends so I could save them seats and we could grocery shop together for what ended up being the beginning of a weekend feast. We got back to my site at about noon, and I called my nurse, and in Tashelheit, invited him to lunch at my house, then we'd go look at the incinerator and talk to the president of the commune (Rais, like the mayor).

 

Or at least that's what I thought I said. One o'clock came around and we had a fantastic American lunch: pasta with meat sauce with delicious Italian spices, a salad with a balsamic vinaigrette, and brownies I had made the night before for dessert.  He said he'd be by at one… and we were starving! He wasn't there at 1:15…1:30… and so finally when I tried calling for the third time at 1:45, the conversation was confusing. I figured it out right after hanging up: we had a miscommunication… and he had been waiting at the sbitar with the Rais since one.

 

I was a little nervous, having made them wait for almost an hour with no explanation, so we shoveled food down and boogied down to the sbitar. They were both gracious and understood the miscommunication, to my relief, and didn't even come close to giving me a hard time about it. Again, lhamdullah. The meeting went swimmingly: not only was the Rais all for it but he had absolutely no hesitation for the commune providing 25% of the costs and actually wanted me to hurry and push the grant through. I hope my timeline (the one we're forced to follow, with all the steps before the grant application, then waiting for that to go through) will be acceptable.

 

We had orange juice and bread with honey and fruit at his house and, after some very strange conversation and actions, we headed to my house to watch movies and just relax. We were all surprised at how easy it was to get the Rais onboard and how willing he was to work with us.

 

Our luck carried through to the next day. We went to my friend J's site. His site is one of my favorites: it's in a river valley and is covered with rosebushes, rapids, and literally dozens of falling-apart old Kasbahs. In the distance are the snow-covered tops of the High Atlas mountains, and the people are just as friendly and welcoming as they are at my site. There are also a few cave houses: houses built right outside the entrance to a cave with cool, damp cave rooms that are used a lot during summer. He also has consistent transportation to his souk town about every 10-15 minutes during the day. It's fantastic and has a great vibe. I can't help but admit that I am a bit jealous, though not necessarily of the fact that he has 5-6 small hotels/guesthouses.

 

His nurse was happy to help suggest a location for the incinerator, and at our request, accompanied us to his Commune. His Rais also agreed to help contribute the 25%, right off the bat. Easy as pie.

 

After business, we went on a hike through the center of his town, then along the riverbed, through a douar built entirely of 3-4 story mud Kasbah-like houses. It was stunning. We happened on a group of women who were washing clothes in the river ("Come and help!" they joked), and finally, a very precise looking set of bright white tents.

 

I asked a man who was sitting on a nearby about the tents and he invited us to have a look. It's a setup done by a nearby guest house for foreigners. It was quite luxurious looking as far as tents go: clean white linens, beds elevated from the tent floor, a hammam tent (water heater with buckets of water and a heater to make the tent really hot), a restaurant tent… the works. If it weren't 500 Dh a night, I'd be tempted to take people there when they came to visit. If it sounds appealing… he invited us for tea with fresh sheeba inside, and we sat on the bank of the river in comfortable easy chairs, watching the women washing clothes, boys climbing rocks on the opposite side of the river, and making conversation with this man in Tasheheit.

 

We headed over to another friend's site (only 20 min away) for the night and made tacos and watched more…entertainment… on J's laptop. I think I got paid the highest compliment since starting service that night. We were discussing the future and what we saw people doing, and someone brought me up. J said, after a moment's thought, "I can't think of just one job that is perfect or just right for Katy, but I do know that she'll be the type of person who you want to invite to a dinner party so she can tell the best stories that start off like, 'Oh, well, when I was doing xyz in Botswana,' or 'when I was working with this non-profit in Bangladesh…'" I really respect J a lot: he's one of the most brilliant people I know, and to hear him say that was really empowering because it's exactly what I want to be doing. (http://radicaljosh.blogspot.com)  I still believe that no matter what I do, the only calling I know I have is to be a servant for social justice, directed (but not doing anything remotely missionary or religious) by God.

 

The next morning is when everything started to go downhill. We had gone to A's site for the express purpose of watching an incinerator burn, and getting answers to important questions: what do you see as the design flaws of the incinerator, what would make your life easier… etc. However, after sitting outside the sbitar for a good hour and a half from the time A's nurse had promised to come, and several text messages, we gave up and headed back to J's site where we had planned a working weekend: starting the grant proposal, etc. Of course, about six hours later, we get a text message from the nurse with a brief "I'm in the provincial capital, so I won't be in today."

 

This is when things really started to go downhill, fast. We got a lot done that day… but I started to feel weak. In the morning, I woke up with a 38-degree fever (C, not F), and unable to really talk. Strep throat. For the next 30 hours, I left one of J's ponjs (low spongey chairs/mattresses) only to go to the bathroom. Thank God my friend S was willing to run into town to pick up the antibiotics I needed and some food that could slither past my monstrous tonsils, and, J, of course, has the most extensive library of any PCV whose house I've seen, so I was well-taken care of….and was at least able to eat the pasta alfredo, and leftover soup from the night before.

 

Sunday evening, I had cabin fever and really didn't want to stay at J's another night, so I followed our game plan and spent the night in his souk town so we could get to S's early in the morning. We had a small Superbowl get-together with Pepperoni Pizza (turkey hot dogs from the provincial capital!), veggies and dip: the whole works. Unfortunately, kickoff was at 11:30 pm, and I only made it to nine and had a rather miserable night, as I described at the beginning of the blog. By morning, my fever broke, and I can swallow without any pain now, so the antibiotics are working. I was beginning to wonder if they were doing anything at all.

 

And now, I'm home, after a positive experience in my souk town (minimal harassment, lots of people remembering my name, people helping me with my purchases… my super-hanut man giving me a free handful of walnuts, and my veggie guy showing me his spinach with pride (spinach!) and, when I tried to buy two bunches, telling me to just take them). I bought cross-stitch materials so I can maybe learn some of the traditional patterns that are all the rage among the people in my area at the Neddi rather than crochet, which I'm not as excited about. I also got two new pillows for my friends who are coming in two weeks to my Anti-Valentine's party.

 

I'm making plans for my nearest volunteer friend and her tutor to come next week so we can help design some curriculum for my "mini-trips" to the outer douars that will, someday, come to fruition. I'm excited about this: my nurse is helping me find families who will host me and I'm trying to design 3-4 hours worth of education for two "workshops" at night for women in the douars, and a few lessons for the kids at the madrasas in the morning. My nurse has also promised to help me teach weekly lessons at the madrasas: there are 4 that are somewhat nearby, so I only need to design one lesson a month and then go to one a week. Fantastic.

 

I can start teaching English soon, and am exchanging Spanish lessons for Modern Standard Arabic lessons with a teacher friend of mine, starting ASAP…. I've started the ball rolling for three cultural exchange things, though two I might have to pay for entirely out-of-pocket. It's worth it, if it works out. I have my World Wise Schools class who I am corresponding with and having a ball with, and I'm trying to do the photo exchange. I've also signed up my girl's group up with a global art exchange program: we create a piece of art and send it to the place where we've been matched, and they send us a piece of art. It might not be the U.S., but any way to introduce the girls I work with to something outside their own realities is a good opportunity in my mind. I also think I'm going to try to make it a regular, once-a-week thing: every Friday, one group in the morning, one in the afternoon.

 

And… this weekend we finally got the ball rolling for a future Training of Trainers: a continuing education workshop for our sbitar staff on pertinent topics to help their effectiveness as health care providers…. AND, if that's not enough, we are going to try to do a short, (health-related but with other topics) summer camp for empowering girls in July or August. 

 

I also really want to do the women's health curriculum for some women in my site. I don't know how practical it is, but I really, really want to figure it out.

 

I'm so happy because I feel like I'm working. Finally. I'm so ready to give back to the people here who have given me so much that it's just a relief to feel productive. Really, a relief. In some ways, I've almost felt like a freeloader for the last eight months, and that's not a good feeling. I didn't sign up for a 2-year long vacation. I would love to have a 40-hour workweek here… it's not practical, but it'd be wonderful. Well, okay. Maybe a 30-hour work week. J

 

 

February 8, 2008

 

I'm exhausted… and I have no time to rest. On a whim, my friend and her Moroccan friend are coming this weekend, so I have to go to bed so I can clean up more tomorrow morning.

 

It's been a fantastic and terrible day. Let me start with yesterday. I stayed in for awhile, then decided to go be social. My first stop was a friend's house where I had tea and she invited me to go somewhere with her today. I finally figured out it was one of my outer douars: one I haven't been to since June. I've been wanting to go back, and the way she described it, it sounded like it'd be another picnic'y day with fun and aheyduss and a nice view.

 

I went to a few other houses and helped one family who I like make couscous from scratch. There's something gratifying about the process of using your hands to grind water and flour into small balls that are then sifted and dried. I was shocked to hear that one of my friend's sister died. She lives in Khenifra, nowhere near me, but she was only 20 or 21 and died in childbirth. My friend seemed okay talking about it. I didn't know what to do so I gave her a hug. Apparently that's not what people do here to show empathy or sympathy, but it wasn't too awkward of a moment. I miss hugs. I hug my American friends when I see them, but it's not much of a socially acceptable thing among women here as far as I've noticed. What do you say to that situation? She was my sisters' age. I can't imagine losing my sister. I just can't imagine it… let alone smiling and laughing a few days later while people make couscous at your house. I worry about that though, with people here who I know who are pregnant. The question that always flashes in my mind when I find out someone else is pregnant is, "Oh, God… if she gives birth at home, will she be okay?"

 

I kept telling people where I was going to go today and people asked, "Oh, do you want to get married?" I didn't quite understand it, but the idea of a small wedding festival was exciting.

 

I finally, after stopping by a group of women sitting on the hill and feeling welcomed into their circle, though they're all about my mother's age, got home. As soon as I was there, the friend who invited me out came and said I should spend the night at her house so that it wouldn't be a hassle to get up so early in the morning. I find it incredibly ironic and slightly annoying that these women, though illiterate and mono-lingual Tashelheit speakers, have televisions and know more about what's happening in the U.S. Primaries than I do, even though I'm faithfully flipping through my short-wave radio every night to find the best BBC connection. "That woman and the black man from Africa are tied right now," they tell me.

 

At this point, it was dark, and I really had no choice. She helped me pack, telling me that in that douar, I had to wear a headscarf, so I grabbed it, confused, but to placate her. I was annoyed when she asked if I'd pay for her (or else she couldn't go) but there was no way out without one of us losing face. Fine. But I'm putting a stop to this now. I felt used and manipulated, but at that point, everyone expected us to go and it'd have been more problematic for me to say no than for me to just be taken advantage of slightly and say yes.

 

The night was stressful but also pleasant: I was on the floor with four women within 5 years of my age and a 2-year old girl who kept waking up crying. The matriarch, who is one of my favorite people in town, my "adoptive host-mother," made sure I had the best blanket that's extra soft and double-thick. "It's from France. It's a very good blanket. Very good. Look! It's double!"

 

In the morning, we headed out to the tobis. There was drama over the seats, but eventually, 18 women and the bus driver were off towards my farthest outer douars- about 60 k away. I was amazed on the way by the progress on paving some of the roads since June, as well as the fact that one of the douars that we passed seems to have implemented a community-wide solar power system. We didn't stop, but there was a solar power station and power wires coming from there to all over the douar; the school also had solar cells on the roof of one of the buildings. I was impressed.

 

After about 3 hours and dancing in the back of the tobis, lots of joking, singing, and carsickness as well as some truly terrifying forays over the "dirt road" that sometimes is just a dry riverbed and other times has huge rocks that cause the tobis to literally lurch from side to side, inducing murmured prayers from all sides, we got there. The ride was one of my favorite parts of the day though; we passed through nomad-land with tents, fields with white flowering almond trees, and even just seeing things from a new perspective 8 months after that equippe-mobile run was really enlightening.

When we stopped, I was surprised. I was expecting some sort of a park or creek with fields or some nice picnic area. We stopped in the middle of nowhere with two houses, a falling down building, a well, and a one-room building.

 

It all made sense a few minutes later.

They weren't telling me the name of a douar, they were telling me the name of a man who is an Ait Atta (the supertribe in the area) saint. Once a year, women rent out the big monster yellow tobis (not my normal one) to go and pray at the saint's tomb. My headscarf was so I could enter the tomb; the questions about marriage is because most of the women who go from my town on this pilgrimage go pray for a husband.

 

Of course, nobody explained any of this to me yesterday. And it's not that they explained and I didn't understand. I had no idea until I got there.

 

I was able to enter the tomb. I don't know if I was supposed to or not, but everyone there, including the male tobis driver, told me to go in, so I did; at first I didn't even know what it was. I took off my shoes and walked around the actual tomb itself on the dirt floor. At first, I had no idea what was in the center of the room; it looked like a raised platform draped in lace. I realized later that it was the actual body itself, buried, then covered in cement painted with some sort of green pattern or words that I couldn't see. The rituals that the women performed included incense; then, when I went in later, raising and lowering a big stick into a groove in the cement area while in a position similar to child's pose in yoga. They tried to get me to convert right then and there, "so you can go straight to heaven when you die, and so you can pray for a husband right now," but, obviously, I declined and left the tomb.

 

There were a few local kids. My friend told me to put a dirham in a hole in the ground and I did. Immediately, the kids grabbed for it. I don't understand the significance of that either… was it an offering? I made sure that in my own way, I let God know that my intentions were pure and if I did anything offensive either in Islam or Christianity, it was only in my naiveté and not disrespect.

 

After everyone who wanted to had alone time in the tomb, and we had a lunch of sardines and bread, we headed back.

 

In one of the douars on the way, we stopped outside a house and asked for water. I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but in at least my part of Morocco, water is considered a shared commodity. What this means is no matter where you are or who you are, if someone asks you for water, you're obligated to give it to them. This is great on a lot of levels, except when you're on a bus in the middle of summer with a Nalgene bottle and the stranger who has been coughing and sneezing next to you with a sick kid in her lap asks you for a sip of your water, which is a health educator's nightmare and reality. 

 

She brought out water for us, then invited me to spend the night at her house. "We'll make sure you get to the big town tomorrow morning so you can be back home by tomorrow afternoon." If I didn't have people coming over tomorrow, I would have been sorely tempted, but she said I was welcome back any time and she'd help me go around and talk to women about health issues. Fantastic.

 

By the time we left, I was exhausted. Utterly exhausted. I took a few pictures of the douars as I we drove by, but we ran into a snag when the dirt road was blocked by another transit bus, as well as when we got lost on one of the dirt road networks by a larger town. It still boggles my mind the way my site is defined: I can go to any of my outer douars without permission from Peace Corps, including these douars that I went to today… but to get there, I had to travel 60 k each way and drive through a larger town that's not quite the size of my souk town but probably has 20,000 people. To go to my souk town, however, I have to have the day of the week approved by Peace Corps and if on another day, call and get permission.

 

We were almost back and I was relieved. It was a stressful day; a good day, but a stressful one. I felt taken advantage of by my friend by some of her other actions, felt pressured about conversion by pretty much everyone there, and also felt like I had to be on the defensive about not wanting to marry yet or marry a Moroccan and convert to Islam and live in Morocco for the rest of my life. One woman even said, "If you don't want to stay for the rest of your life, go home!" She was kidding, but I'm not sure how much. It sounds bad; it's not that bad. In general everyone was kind and welcoming and wonderful. It's just that sometimes things build and some days I can handle it well and others I can't. I had been surrounded by people literally for the last 30+ hours and just needed some alone time and rest.

 

We stopped at a café that I have seen every time I've been on Equippe-Mobile. It's this tiny stop on the side of the road, again, in the middle of nowhere. I've been really curious about it and wanted to stop. We did, and I was excited… until the tobis driver pulled about 200 feet past the café and stopped. We all got out and broke out bread, tea, and mandarin oranges on large boulders. He turned around and drove back to the café.

 

"Why aren't we going to the café?" I asked.

 

"If we go, all the men will look at us, so we can't go."

This was too much for me. I get this a lot; I know women don't generally go to cafes here unless they want the reputation of a prostitute, but I also know that groups of women from my town can go together in my souk town and it's not a problem.  I figured a group of eighteen women would probably be safe, especially after just coming back from a small pilgrimage. I was wrong, and that was the straw on the "stressed out and culturally exhausted" camel's back.

 

It doesn't help that I'm reading The Feminine Mystique right now and that all Freidan's critiques of 1950s America are doubled when applied to the culture here. It's really hard for me, being such a feminist, to see women defined by motherhood, daughterhood, wifehood. It's hard for me to explain to people that my frustration with the "Ca va, gazelle?" comes from the fact that I reject being a sexual symbol to men here who I don't know, and doubly reject the idea that I'd be flattered or pleased with being boxed in by nature of my gender. To spend the day with a group of people who travel three hours each way to pray for a husband, be told by them that I should marry a Moroccan man and live their lives, be pressured to convert, and then be told that I can't do something as simple as order a coffee from a café was so impactful to me because I'm at a loss: what is my role?

 

I can't try to change culture, or say that our culture is superior. I can understand their embarrassment around women in Western culture who parade around in bikinis or walk the runway in little more than underwear and the societal pressures to dress provocatively. My goal here is to do development and cross-cultural work, not destroy or change tradition. But how can I empower women here to establish more of a sense of self or self-worth by nature of being human instead of just their role in the family? Or should I? I know what I want to do, but I don't know my place, and that is difficult.

 

I don't know the line between human rights and tradition. Take, for example, the part of my job that encourages women to give birth in a clinic rather than at home alone; it is a source of pride for women here to give birth at home, "Just me and God." Is it my place to discourage this practice? I think it is, but where does that end?

 

Many questions and no answers… or lots of answers. I don't expect to ever have a perfect answer, but the struggle… its's hard. Important, but hard.

 

 

February 12, 2008

 

It never fails: just when I get to the point where I'm unhappy here, socially in my town, as well as with work, things start to swing upward.

 

Yesterday was a hard day for me. I stayed in a lot, but when I left, I felt like I was intruding with the people who I visited. The blow came as I was walking home with groceries. I fell flat on my bottom in front of about 30 women, which was fine. I can laugh at myself. But then, as I was walking towards one group, I saw one of my neighbors with a baby tied to her back.

 

It was her 2-week old. She lives just a few houses away, and I had no idea that she had even given birth. It really made me consider how much I don't know my neighbors, and how though in some ways, I have friends… the language barrier is so hard that I don't know if I'll ever have true friends here.

 

Today, I went to the sbitar to get some information from my nurse, and we set up something that will make me much more likely to teach there on a regular basis: a room for me to do lessons in. I also set up, finally, my first advanced English class for tomorrow (!). Hopefully, that'll go well. There are some young women here who want me to teach English to them as well, so I'll start that in the next few weeks. I set up, today, another lesson at the pre-school, and so I feel much better about actually doing something.

 

I also felt welcomed places today; on the way back from the sbitar, I ended up having a few conversations with people who I like but don't know well, getting an invite for lunch tomorrow at my host family's house, had tea with two families I like but don't know very well, and ate young alfalfa with garlic, onion, and tomato at a friends' house. I felt much better about my social life here today than I have in awhile.

 

I'm going to see the new "multimedia center" in the Neddi this afternoon; the commune apparently set up a room there with a few computers, DVD player, and a projection system.

 

… I'm back, and wow. The multimedia center is like a dream conference room in a university library. 4 brand-new flat-screen computers and a laptop, a whiteboard, a projector, a digital video camera, a digital camera, probably 300 or so books on new bookshelves in Arabic and French, huge speakers, microphones at a large wood conference table, a DVD player, a sound system including a sound board and large speakers. In all honesty, I don't know how much these things will be used here, but I'm impressed. Shocked.

 

It's like going to the home where I had bread and tea today and seeing a marble countertop in the kitchen that they told me (without my asking) cost $5000. This is the same house, during the summer, every room is covered in flies. Covered. "Development" confuses me sometimes. There's no more than a primary school in my town, and it was off a dirt road until last July, women don't get pap smears because they're ashamed, 17-year olds have babies on a regular basis, most women give birth at home and most women over 20-ish are illiterate… but a kitchen has a $5000 marble countertop and we now have a multimedia center with a projector and soundboard.

 

A friend (my nearest volunteer) and her tutor came to Tamazitinu this weekend, which was fun, though uneventful.

 

As an aside, a few weeks ago, on my "tobis," there was an old man who kept telling me to get off, that they didn't want me in Tamazitinu, that I should just stay in my souk town or go back to where I came from.

 

I was a bit shocked, and wasn't sure whether or not he was serious, but didn't let it get to me because it was just one old man.

 

The other day, he was there again. "Go!" he said. "Get off the bus!"

 

"Why, do you not like foreigners? Are foreigners bad?" I asked him.

 

"Just go. Stay here. Don't come to our town," but he started smiling.

 

"Tell me, are foreigners bad? Do you not like me?" He smiled harder.

 

"Do you not like Muslims?" He asked.

 

"Of course I like Muslims! I live in Morocco! I have friends in Tamazitinu. I have the same God, so I think Muslims are like my brothers."

 

He studied me. "Well… okay. Then you can stay on. We like you foreigners too. But do you know how to bake bread? You must know how to bake bread."

I told him about the follies of my bread baking.

 

"Can you make couscous?"

 

"I have twice," I told him, truthfully. "But it hurts your hands because the couscous is really hot when you have to fluff it so I don't like to cook it."

 

He laughed. "You know!"

 

I nodded and smiled. He turned to the person next to him. "Look, look, she knows Tashelheit," he told the man next to him, "Check this out," (loose translation), "Hey, girl (not rude), do you know how to make couscous?"

 

"Check this out!" I echoed, mock indignant that I was the newest form of entertainment so blatantly, "Check this out? He knows I speak some Tashelheit…" and so it went.

 

So, no. He wasn't serious. He was just a funny old man.

 

And it's hard to let things like being the newest forms of entertainment get to you. In fact, it's interesting the things that people point out that you have to just take with a grain of salt or be miserable:

 

"You're too old to not be married! If you don't get married soon, you'll never find a husband!"

"You're big. You should exercise more." Or "Oh, good, you know how to eat!"

"You don't go to the sbitar much."

"You don't speak Tashelheit."

"You don't know anything."

"You should be a Muslim so you don't go to hell."*

"You're sunburned."

"Your clothes have a (tear/bleach spot/stain/dirt) on them!"

"That's a man's (hat/pair of pants/shirt/pair of shoes)."

"Are your parents still alive? Really? And you still get along with them?"**

"You don't know how to wash clothes."

"You don't know how to cook."

"You don't know how to clean."

"This health education thing you are telling me is crazy: you don't know what you're talking about."

"Why do you keep moving your legs? Are you tired?"***

"Why haven't you come to my house!"

"Why don't you remember my name?"

"Are you sad?"

 

* I don't believe it's actually in the Koran that non-Muslims go to hell; my understanding is that Christians are considered People of the Book who, as long as they love God and do good works, can get into heaven come judgment day.

** The implication is that no parents who love their daughters could bear to see them go to another country alone for two years (or trust them or the men around them to not get in trouble).  People ask me at least once or twice a day, "How are your parents? How is "ait ghurum?" (the people of your place: family).

*** This is true at weddings or any other occasion where we sit on the ground for more than, say, ten minutes. My legs fall asleep easily or sitting on the ground with no support hurts my back, so I'm constantly changing positions. Most people here, however, have grown up sitting on rugs or carpets on the floor the majority of the time and have no problem sitting still.