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.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Site announcement
I now know where I will be living for the next two years starting somewhere around May 23.
If you read the previous entry, you'll understand that I can't say where, here, but if I know you in real life and you want to send me goodies or you just want to google it (you won't find anything), jet me an email if you're not on my mailing list, but I don't have an address yet. Hopefully I will by the end of next week.
So, after our LPI test (on which I was amazed to score an Intermediate-Low... really much higher than I think I deserve, but it means that I won't be unable to swear-in because of language issues, at least!), we played Jeopardy a-la-PC style (which was actually a lot of fun and our team won, even though I was one person off on how many PCVs there are currently in Morocco; there are 152 and I thought there were 153), had some free time so I did laundry on the roof and went to a cafe for a nes-nes.
Oh, and I keep wanting to talk about the donut guy here (the svenj man). There is a donut shop across from the training hotel and the man there speaks Darija, French, Tamazight, and Spanish. It's kind of amazing. I think he knows a few words of English too, but we have these two-minute conversations in, like, five languages. It's a little overwhelming, but it's really fun to learn a Tam word or two by getting taught it in Spanish. There was also a man at souq when we went to souq during the last CBT phase who worked at a travelling clothes-selling tent with really nice clothes. I almost bought a skirt. But, in any case, he speaks fluent, flawless Spanish and it was empowering to have a conversation that was fluid with a stranger in Morocco. He learned it from missionaries (non-evangelical) who worked at an old Cathedral in a nearby city. Anyway. Off-subject. I'll go back to site placement and yesterday. I'm stalling.
So, yesterday, after dinner, we piled into the conference room and, once more, with one of the zween power point presentations that we see on a constant basis during training, we got our site placements. I was third to last to know... and am in an area that is very densely populated with PCVs. I rushed to a cyber to update the blog, but it was half an hour before curfew (yes, as trainees, we do have a curfew), so I skyped my parents for a few minutes but had to go soon. It was shwiya ironic to tell my parents (who, incidentally, never actually gave me a curfew while growing up) that I had to go to make curfew.
My site is a brand-new site, which was really what I wanted and I am absolutely psyched about it. I think part of that comes from hearing from certain PC people that really, as far as development goes, PC Morocco doesn't make as much of an impact as I was expecting, but that it excels with cross-cultural understanding. I'm honored and excited to be most likely the first American living there, and hope I can set the stage for volunteers who may come after.
The site is on a road that is not yet paved, but they're starting to pave it, so maybe by the end of the two years, it will have a paved road. There is electricity and brand new running water (so had I come right out of college, there'd have been no running water), and cell phone coverage. I feel spoiled, but most of us these days in PC Morocco have a lot of that if not everything. I'm about 17k from internet, and the same distance from another volunteer, though that means about 45 minutes of travel time. That town also has a main souq, so inshallah, I'll be able to go once a week to stock up on veggies and fruits and any other necessities (like email).
I talked to the program assistant (is that really his title? The person I keep refering to as the one who has been leading training this whole time) about it and he said it got cold but not cold enough to snow, it got warm but not as hot as Zagora or Tata or the real desert, it's big but not big enough to sustain two volunteers, and that he was sure I'd love it. There's already a neddi (women's center), and he said since ONEP came in and started running water, it was much more of a site for maternal and child health type education than water sanitation. Awesome. I can see myself going to the sbitar and neddi on a regular basis and really trying to get to know the women there. It's also in what he describes as sort of an oasis- near but not in the desert, through but not up in the mountains. So... again, I learn my lesson about expectations. My only expectations that I thought were given was that I'd be in the mountains or the desert. Ha! Instead I get semi-desert semi-mountain oasis.
Honestly, though I haven't been there, I think despite the fact that I feel it might be a little Posh Corps with the electricity and running water, it sounds like it's a great match. Working with women, nice-ish climate for a Tamazight site (some of the Tashelheet people are near the beach= beautiful climate), and a new site. Close to other volunteers, including one friend from CBT, but also alone in a site. No internet at my site so I will be more productive and less of an internet addict.
So... we'll see! Tomorrow I head out there for a week. Scary. I probably have to meet with officials who don't speak English to introduce myself, and I know I have to meet my counterpart in the sbitar and stay with my host family. Intermediate-low might sound like a lot of Tamazight but I can barely have a conversation with someone on the street... let alone the people I'll be living with and working with for the next two years. Scary but exciting. I can't wait.
If you read the previous entry, you'll understand that I can't say where, here, but if I know you in real life and you want to send me goodies or you just want to google it (you won't find anything), jet me an email if you're not on my mailing list, but I don't have an address yet. Hopefully I will by the end of next week.
So, after our LPI test (on which I was amazed to score an Intermediate-Low... really much higher than I think I deserve, but it means that I won't be unable to swear-in because of language issues, at least!), we played Jeopardy a-la-PC style (which was actually a lot of fun and our team won, even though I was one person off on how many PCVs there are currently in Morocco; there are 152 and I thought there were 153), had some free time so I did laundry on the roof and went to a cafe for a nes-nes.
Oh, and I keep wanting to talk about the donut guy here (the svenj man). There is a donut shop across from the training hotel and the man there speaks Darija, French, Tamazight, and Spanish. It's kind of amazing. I think he knows a few words of English too, but we have these two-minute conversations in, like, five languages. It's a little overwhelming, but it's really fun to learn a Tam word or two by getting taught it in Spanish. There was also a man at souq when we went to souq during the last CBT phase who worked at a travelling clothes-selling tent with really nice clothes. I almost bought a skirt. But, in any case, he speaks fluent, flawless Spanish and it was empowering to have a conversation that was fluid with a stranger in Morocco. He learned it from missionaries (non-evangelical) who worked at an old Cathedral in a nearby city. Anyway. Off-subject. I'll go back to site placement and yesterday. I'm stalling.
So, yesterday, after dinner, we piled into the conference room and, once more, with one of the zween power point presentations that we see on a constant basis during training, we got our site placements. I was third to last to know... and am in an area that is very densely populated with PCVs. I rushed to a cyber to update the blog, but it was half an hour before curfew (yes, as trainees, we do have a curfew), so I skyped my parents for a few minutes but had to go soon. It was shwiya ironic to tell my parents (who, incidentally, never actually gave me a curfew while growing up) that I had to go to make curfew.
My site is a brand-new site, which was really what I wanted and I am absolutely psyched about it. I think part of that comes from hearing from certain PC people that really, as far as development goes, PC Morocco doesn't make as much of an impact as I was expecting, but that it excels with cross-cultural understanding. I'm honored and excited to be most likely the first American living there, and hope I can set the stage for volunteers who may come after.
The site is on a road that is not yet paved, but they're starting to pave it, so maybe by the end of the two years, it will have a paved road. There is electricity and brand new running water (so had I come right out of college, there'd have been no running water), and cell phone coverage. I feel spoiled, but most of us these days in PC Morocco have a lot of that if not everything. I'm about 17k from internet, and the same distance from another volunteer, though that means about 45 minutes of travel time. That town also has a main souq, so inshallah, I'll be able to go once a week to stock up on veggies and fruits and any other necessities (like email).
I talked to the program assistant (is that really his title? The person I keep refering to as the one who has been leading training this whole time) about it and he said it got cold but not cold enough to snow, it got warm but not as hot as Zagora or Tata or the real desert, it's big but not big enough to sustain two volunteers, and that he was sure I'd love it. There's already a neddi (women's center), and he said since ONEP came in and started running water, it was much more of a site for maternal and child health type education than water sanitation. Awesome. I can see myself going to the sbitar and neddi on a regular basis and really trying to get to know the women there. It's also in what he describes as sort of an oasis- near but not in the desert, through but not up in the mountains. So... again, I learn my lesson about expectations. My only expectations that I thought were given was that I'd be in the mountains or the desert. Ha! Instead I get semi-desert semi-mountain oasis.
Honestly, though I haven't been there, I think despite the fact that I feel it might be a little Posh Corps with the electricity and running water, it sounds like it's a great match. Working with women, nice-ish climate for a Tamazight site (some of the Tashelheet people are near the beach= beautiful climate), and a new site. Close to other volunteers, including one friend from CBT, but also alone in a site. No internet at my site so I will be more productive and less of an internet addict.
So... we'll see! Tomorrow I head out there for a week. Scary. I probably have to meet with officials who don't speak English to introduce myself, and I know I have to meet my counterpart in the sbitar and stay with my host family. Intermediate-low might sound like a lot of Tamazight but I can barely have a conversation with someone on the street... let alone the people I'll be living with and working with for the next two years. Scary but exciting. I can't wait.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Just wanted to say a quick hello to any PC Morocco/Washington DC staff reading this blog. In fact, leave me a comment! I'd love your insights... and sorry for being so wordy!
I realized today when we had a discussion about policies and the blogging policy came up that I've never addressed here why some things I blog about seem a bit vague or why I'm not using place or people's names or why my comments are screened. It's all for security reasons... just something I need to do in order to be able to have a public blog. So, yeah. My apologies for not being more specific, but it's a price I have to pay and I really don't mind doing it. I know PC has read my blog probably since it was posted on that Peace Corps Journals site, if not from the time that they had me send the link.
That all being said... one day until site announcements and mid-term LPIs. I'm not as nervous as I thought I'd be, but I think my anxiety about it is manifesting itself in moodiness and self-reflectiveness. Right now, all of my character flaws are becoming really apparant to me and bothering me a lot. Oh well. They come to the surface of my thinking sometimes, and I think I expected it to happen more here than at home. It's a good process.
Back to the hotel, to study, hopefully! En shufuk men bed...
I realized today when we had a discussion about policies and the blogging policy came up that I've never addressed here why some things I blog about seem a bit vague or why I'm not using place or people's names or why my comments are screened. It's all for security reasons... just something I need to do in order to be able to have a public blog. So, yeah. My apologies for not being more specific, but it's a price I have to pay and I really don't mind doing it. I know PC has read my blog probably since it was posted on that Peace Corps Journals site, if not from the time that they had me send the link.
That all being said... one day until site announcements and mid-term LPIs. I'm not as nervous as I thought I'd be, but I think my anxiety about it is manifesting itself in moodiness and self-reflectiveness. Right now, all of my character flaws are becoming really apparant to me and bothering me a lot. Oh well. They come to the surface of my thinking sometimes, and I think I expected it to happen more here than at home. It's a good process.
Back to the hotel, to study, hopefully! En shufuk men bed...
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
CBT....
I’m writing this during lunch break on Monday, the last full day of CBT phase three: the long phase. We’ve been here about a week now and are going back tomorrow or Wednesday. It doesn’t feel like this should be a long stage at all, in fact, though I’m excited to go back and go to the Hammam, I feel like I could easily stay here another week or even until the end of training.
Earlier in the week, we had our site placement interviews. This was a time to sit one-on-one with the person who is in charge of matching us all to where we’re going to be living for the last two years. All in all it was a good, informal interview and it was interesting to sort of process everything for the last almost two months and essentially try to let go of any expectations I have. I may be in the mountains, I may be in the desert. I may be with electricity and running water, I may not. I may be in a rural center, I may be in a town of 15-30,000 people. Who knows. It’s out of my control. I stated my preferences while admitting that I don’t know what’s best for me and that I trust others’ judgment. Difficult, but true. I’ll find out on the 27th where exactly I’ll be, and then next week we go to site visits so I will actually see where I will be living. Daunting but exciting, though I’m nowhere near ready.
One of my CBTmates just came into the classroom where I’m sitting on the computer and said that Buta was scrounging around in our trash. We’ve sort of adopted two dogs in our CBT group. There’s Barnabus, who used to be called Boots who belongs to Tandrout’s hostfamily but has adopted Tandrout as his master. Barnabus walks him to school every day, waits by the road for him to come back, visits during lunch, and then walks him home at night. There’ve been several near-fights with Barnabus encroaching on other dogs’ territory, especially Buta’s mother, but all in all, he’s a regal-looking but meskin dog with beautiful yellow eyes. Buta, short for Butagas (some people carried him in a souk bak lika a butagas container) is a puppy that two of the other women in my CBT are constantly de-fleaing. Poor little guy. He follows us all everywhere and gets excited because we give him leftovers and attention, something that dogs don’t often get in this small CBT town.
This is a bit fragmented, but these are little things that I wanted to talk about in my blog. Apologies for the incohesiveness. I love sleeping here; we all sleep on ponjs which are low to the ground, the way my bed was at home, and there are these wonderful heavy blankets that just smother you when you sleep. I love the weight of them: they’re so substantial that it’s comforting. These blankets are pretty colorful with weird geometric designs and each household seems to have a never-ending supply of them. When it’s cold outside, I’ll come home from school and my family will cover me while we eat bread and drink tea and spiced coffee and watch Berber music videos or crazy television shows on their black-and-white satellite tv. Sometimes the girls and I dance, sometimes we talk, sometimes I listen to them or study, but all the action happens in that room and when it’s cold I’m smothered in wonderfully heavy blankets.
Yesterday was Sunday (remember, I’m writing this on Monday during lunch break), and our day off, or self-directed-learning. I learned about henna by experiencing it. My 20-year old sister here struggled with the syringe to put the henna on, and it was mixed with something that made my wrists and the back of my hand sting, but it’s lovely and brown. Every other henna I’ve had in the US has ended up bright orange, but after sleeping without washing my hands, it’s beautifully brown… aqhwi. I also got them to put the henna on my nails so for the next month they’ll be part-white, part orangey-yellow. In some ways it’s unattractive, and I’d never do it at home, but here I wanted to have my nails dyed as a way to mark the passage of time. Even when the henna on my hands has faded, I’ll be able to look down and see how long it’s been since I sat in my CBT family and had henna.
About an hour after the henna application, we ate bread and jam and butter and oil and olives and drank coffee. My 30-year old sister offered to feed me but when I refused, she came at my hand with a knife. I though she was kidding about cutting off a finger until she pressed the knife to my hand. I freaked out… then learned that you can scrape off dried henna with a knife. Talk about a cross-cultural misunderstanding!
My family here is magical though. Last night, we walked to the assif (lake) and skipped rocks, and there must have been something in the air, because every rock we found was perfectly flat, and my sisters were consistently skipping a rock eight or ten times before it’d fall in the lake. Even I, and I’ve never been able to skip a stone, was skipping them four or five times. With the sunset and the hill called something that sounds like migraine bright red in the shadows, and vestiges of stark white rock peeking through the red dirt, it was a moment that I have often here: is this really my life? Is this picture-perfect lake that I live on, even just for a few weeks, really my life?
I think in my family here I’m closest to my 30-year old sister. She’s single, liberal (for our small town, that is), and just really warm and a lot of fun, and she goes out of her way to make sure I’m comfortable. As an example, we were eating and I tend to spill on my lap sometimes when I eat with my hands. She put a towel on my lap a few nights ago and it made me rather embarrassed. Rather than ignore my embarrassment, she walked over, got a towel and put it on her own lap too. Small gestures like that really are just heartwarming. We also have rather interesting conversations in our sort of pseudo-language: some Tamazight, a lot of gestures. We talk about skin color: they think that the paler you are, the more attractive, and so many women here use bleach creams to make their skin lighter. She also wants to be heavier, which is to some extent considered to be more attractive than being really thin. We always joke about trading bodies, but it seems to be universal that most women are not happy with how they look. It is new for me to be somewhere that my body shape is considered almost desirable, but in some ways makes me uncomfortable as well. I can’t articulate it, but it’s an interesting interaction.
There’ve been some intense and unexpected moments so far during training. One cross-cultural session on holidays and celebrations, we started talking, as we often do in our CBT group, about religion, specifically Christianity and Islam. Our LCF asked us, individually, if we believed in Judgment Day. I was taken aback. I mean, I could have not answered, and some in our group didn’t, but I realized that it was the first time anyone had come out and asked me if I believed in something so specific and so intangible about religion. Do I, personally, believe in the Judgment Day, and if so, what does it look like? Suddenly, I was thrust into this sort of state of questioning myself and my religion and my religious beliefs and journey. Do I think that Judgment Day will happen the way it says in the Bible? And if I do or do not, what does it say about me? It’s such an innocent question but I was faced with my questions and doubts and whether or not I can really call myself a Christian. Interesting day, interesting moment. Unexpected, but beautiful.
So, yes, CBT is intense but wonderful. Our LCF is amazing… we had an unofficial LCF appreciation day this week where we gave her some silly gifts and decorated the room in posters for her. Rather, erm, interesting posters with caricatures of all of us. Erm. Yeah. You’d have to be there to get it but it’s hilarious. We also had a sleepover one night and made fajitas (with AMAZING guacamole!) and had Cokes and it was a lot of fun camping out in the classroom, using the headlamp to go to the bathroom on the roof, cleaning the LCF house because we always track in mud… it was another fun night that was just sort of a “is this my life?” moment. Amazing.
We also had time this CBT to go to souk for the first time since being in Morocco! We piled into a taxi and went the 6k to the nearest bigger town. Our group met up with another group there and ate at their LCF house and wandered around souk (weekly regional market). Afterwards, we went to the local sbitar (clinic) and met with the doctors. Let’s just say it was an eye-opening experience and leave it at that. We have our work cut out for us, but there are so many challenges as well when working with people… in some ways it made me question whether or not I can actually have any sort of an impact, but I have to come to terms with the fact that if I help even just a handful of people, it’s better than nothing. I’m not talking about low expectations, but more of a shwiya b shwiya approach than I’ve had in my mind. I cannot change the world or even one community, but maybe I can set the groundwork, or get ideas in people’s minds. Even that would be a triumph.
Outside the sbitar, the security director (I forget all the official titles) and PC person in charge of all the training in Morocco came to visit our CBT and we had an informal chat, just to see how things were going. I really feel like we’re a part of a crazy Peace Corps family here and it was almost like having uncles come to visit and check in, or something. I can’t describe it, but I felt really taken care of. The funniest part was probably when they brought me a piece of mail. Right now, mail goes to the PC office in Rabat and is eventually given to us whenever people from Rabat come visit during training. So, this card went from my parent’s house all the way to Rabat, went through customs, to the PC office, to the two people who visited us’s car, all the way to the souk town… and what did the card say? Five words on an Easter card! So much work to get to me for five words! It was a bit anticlimactic, but really funny.
Yes, so now I’m writing from coming back to the seminar site. It’s Tuesday. Funny. I don’t really want to be back here. Yesterday, after class, I was in a grumpy mood, and I think the reason is because I haven’t cried in over three months. I’ve had a few little tears once or twice, but I haven’t had a breakdown about any of it: about leaving home, about being here, about being stressed, about being sick sometimes… I haven’t been able to release any of the pent up emotions that are buried deep down inside somewhere. It’s true: I’m at peace more now than I have been in years, but at the same time I think some sort of a release would be beneficial. On my way home from school yesterday, four of us were walking and I finally actually tripped and fell and wiped out. My knee was bleeding and my hands were sore and dirty and I screamed out that my hands hurt and my knee hurt and I was grumpy, really grumpy. But going home to the family where we all act like children and I play clapping games with the youngest girl and they all laugh with me over my skinned knee and we just play and sit close to each other and eat and have fun really was uplifting. So I’m here in town now, today, and I don’t really want to be here or think about site placement or think about the presentation I have to work on for tomorrow or whether my Arabic script of Tamazight relating to birth control pills are worth it, or whether my moon chart on my pamphlet makes sense; I don’t want to worry about buying a carte de recharge for my phone because it’s out of minutes, or pick up my jellaba-shirt I had made. I just want to go back to my CBT site to my house under the rizo tower and skip rocks in the magical assif… but such is life. Our seminar site is great and I love the group and the humor that goes with our trainings and workshops. But there’s something so peaceful about the village by the lake that makes me think no matter where I end up for the next two years, if there are people as good and welcoming and understanding as my family, I’ll be set.
Earlier in the week, we had our site placement interviews. This was a time to sit one-on-one with the person who is in charge of matching us all to where we’re going to be living for the last two years. All in all it was a good, informal interview and it was interesting to sort of process everything for the last almost two months and essentially try to let go of any expectations I have. I may be in the mountains, I may be in the desert. I may be with electricity and running water, I may not. I may be in a rural center, I may be in a town of 15-30,000 people. Who knows. It’s out of my control. I stated my preferences while admitting that I don’t know what’s best for me and that I trust others’ judgment. Difficult, but true. I’ll find out on the 27th where exactly I’ll be, and then next week we go to site visits so I will actually see where I will be living. Daunting but exciting, though I’m nowhere near ready.
One of my CBTmates just came into the classroom where I’m sitting on the computer and said that Buta was scrounging around in our trash. We’ve sort of adopted two dogs in our CBT group. There’s Barnabus, who used to be called Boots who belongs to Tandrout’s hostfamily but has adopted Tandrout as his master. Barnabus walks him to school every day, waits by the road for him to come back, visits during lunch, and then walks him home at night. There’ve been several near-fights with Barnabus encroaching on other dogs’ territory, especially Buta’s mother, but all in all, he’s a regal-looking but meskin dog with beautiful yellow eyes. Buta, short for Butagas (some people carried him in a souk bak lika a butagas container) is a puppy that two of the other women in my CBT are constantly de-fleaing. Poor little guy. He follows us all everywhere and gets excited because we give him leftovers and attention, something that dogs don’t often get in this small CBT town.
This is a bit fragmented, but these are little things that I wanted to talk about in my blog. Apologies for the incohesiveness. I love sleeping here; we all sleep on ponjs which are low to the ground, the way my bed was at home, and there are these wonderful heavy blankets that just smother you when you sleep. I love the weight of them: they’re so substantial that it’s comforting. These blankets are pretty colorful with weird geometric designs and each household seems to have a never-ending supply of them. When it’s cold outside, I’ll come home from school and my family will cover me while we eat bread and drink tea and spiced coffee and watch Berber music videos or crazy television shows on their black-and-white satellite tv. Sometimes the girls and I dance, sometimes we talk, sometimes I listen to them or study, but all the action happens in that room and when it’s cold I’m smothered in wonderfully heavy blankets.
Yesterday was Sunday (remember, I’m writing this on Monday during lunch break), and our day off, or self-directed-learning. I learned about henna by experiencing it. My 20-year old sister here struggled with the syringe to put the henna on, and it was mixed with something that made my wrists and the back of my hand sting, but it’s lovely and brown. Every other henna I’ve had in the US has ended up bright orange, but after sleeping without washing my hands, it’s beautifully brown… aqhwi. I also got them to put the henna on my nails so for the next month they’ll be part-white, part orangey-yellow. In some ways it’s unattractive, and I’d never do it at home, but here I wanted to have my nails dyed as a way to mark the passage of time. Even when the henna on my hands has faded, I’ll be able to look down and see how long it’s been since I sat in my CBT family and had henna.
About an hour after the henna application, we ate bread and jam and butter and oil and olives and drank coffee. My 30-year old sister offered to feed me but when I refused, she came at my hand with a knife. I though she was kidding about cutting off a finger until she pressed the knife to my hand. I freaked out… then learned that you can scrape off dried henna with a knife. Talk about a cross-cultural misunderstanding!
My family here is magical though. Last night, we walked to the assif (lake) and skipped rocks, and there must have been something in the air, because every rock we found was perfectly flat, and my sisters were consistently skipping a rock eight or ten times before it’d fall in the lake. Even I, and I’ve never been able to skip a stone, was skipping them four or five times. With the sunset and the hill called something that sounds like migraine bright red in the shadows, and vestiges of stark white rock peeking through the red dirt, it was a moment that I have often here: is this really my life? Is this picture-perfect lake that I live on, even just for a few weeks, really my life?
I think in my family here I’m closest to my 30-year old sister. She’s single, liberal (for our small town, that is), and just really warm and a lot of fun, and she goes out of her way to make sure I’m comfortable. As an example, we were eating and I tend to spill on my lap sometimes when I eat with my hands. She put a towel on my lap a few nights ago and it made me rather embarrassed. Rather than ignore my embarrassment, she walked over, got a towel and put it on her own lap too. Small gestures like that really are just heartwarming. We also have rather interesting conversations in our sort of pseudo-language: some Tamazight, a lot of gestures. We talk about skin color: they think that the paler you are, the more attractive, and so many women here use bleach creams to make their skin lighter. She also wants to be heavier, which is to some extent considered to be more attractive than being really thin. We always joke about trading bodies, but it seems to be universal that most women are not happy with how they look. It is new for me to be somewhere that my body shape is considered almost desirable, but in some ways makes me uncomfortable as well. I can’t articulate it, but it’s an interesting interaction.
There’ve been some intense and unexpected moments so far during training. One cross-cultural session on holidays and celebrations, we started talking, as we often do in our CBT group, about religion, specifically Christianity and Islam. Our LCF asked us, individually, if we believed in Judgment Day. I was taken aback. I mean, I could have not answered, and some in our group didn’t, but I realized that it was the first time anyone had come out and asked me if I believed in something so specific and so intangible about religion. Do I, personally, believe in the Judgment Day, and if so, what does it look like? Suddenly, I was thrust into this sort of state of questioning myself and my religion and my religious beliefs and journey. Do I think that Judgment Day will happen the way it says in the Bible? And if I do or do not, what does it say about me? It’s such an innocent question but I was faced with my questions and doubts and whether or not I can really call myself a Christian. Interesting day, interesting moment. Unexpected, but beautiful.
So, yes, CBT is intense but wonderful. Our LCF is amazing… we had an unofficial LCF appreciation day this week where we gave her some silly gifts and decorated the room in posters for her. Rather, erm, interesting posters with caricatures of all of us. Erm. Yeah. You’d have to be there to get it but it’s hilarious. We also had a sleepover one night and made fajitas (with AMAZING guacamole!) and had Cokes and it was a lot of fun camping out in the classroom, using the headlamp to go to the bathroom on the roof, cleaning the LCF house because we always track in mud… it was another fun night that was just sort of a “is this my life?” moment. Amazing.
We also had time this CBT to go to souk for the first time since being in Morocco! We piled into a taxi and went the 6k to the nearest bigger town. Our group met up with another group there and ate at their LCF house and wandered around souk (weekly regional market). Afterwards, we went to the local sbitar (clinic) and met with the doctors. Let’s just say it was an eye-opening experience and leave it at that. We have our work cut out for us, but there are so many challenges as well when working with people… in some ways it made me question whether or not I can actually have any sort of an impact, but I have to come to terms with the fact that if I help even just a handful of people, it’s better than nothing. I’m not talking about low expectations, but more of a shwiya b shwiya approach than I’ve had in my mind. I cannot change the world or even one community, but maybe I can set the groundwork, or get ideas in people’s minds. Even that would be a triumph.
Outside the sbitar, the security director (I forget all the official titles) and PC person in charge of all the training in Morocco came to visit our CBT and we had an informal chat, just to see how things were going. I really feel like we’re a part of a crazy Peace Corps family here and it was almost like having uncles come to visit and check in, or something. I can’t describe it, but I felt really taken care of. The funniest part was probably when they brought me a piece of mail. Right now, mail goes to the PC office in Rabat and is eventually given to us whenever people from Rabat come visit during training. So, this card went from my parent’s house all the way to Rabat, went through customs, to the PC office, to the two people who visited us’s car, all the way to the souk town… and what did the card say? Five words on an Easter card! So much work to get to me for five words! It was a bit anticlimactic, but really funny.
Yes, so now I’m writing from coming back to the seminar site. It’s Tuesday. Funny. I don’t really want to be back here. Yesterday, after class, I was in a grumpy mood, and I think the reason is because I haven’t cried in over three months. I’ve had a few little tears once or twice, but I haven’t had a breakdown about any of it: about leaving home, about being here, about being stressed, about being sick sometimes… I haven’t been able to release any of the pent up emotions that are buried deep down inside somewhere. It’s true: I’m at peace more now than I have been in years, but at the same time I think some sort of a release would be beneficial. On my way home from school yesterday, four of us were walking and I finally actually tripped and fell and wiped out. My knee was bleeding and my hands were sore and dirty and I screamed out that my hands hurt and my knee hurt and I was grumpy, really grumpy. But going home to the family where we all act like children and I play clapping games with the youngest girl and they all laugh with me over my skinned knee and we just play and sit close to each other and eat and have fun really was uplifting. So I’m here in town now, today, and I don’t really want to be here or think about site placement or think about the presentation I have to work on for tomorrow or whether my Arabic script of Tamazight relating to birth control pills are worth it, or whether my moon chart on my pamphlet makes sense; I don’t want to worry about buying a carte de recharge for my phone because it’s out of minutes, or pick up my jellaba-shirt I had made. I just want to go back to my CBT site to my house under the rizo tower and skip rocks in the magical assif… but such is life. Our seminar site is great and I love the group and the humor that goes with our trainings and workshops. But there’s something so peaceful about the village by the lake that makes me think no matter where I end up for the next two years, if there are people as good and welcoming and understanding as my family, I’ll be set.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Back!
Back from another CBT phase... short but sweet! We were only there four days, but what fun!
I'm beginning slowly to be able to form sentences in Tamazight, which is nice, but at the same time I really do feel like I'm learning really slowly. Some of the frustration comes from verb conjugations that change the prefix AND the suffix...so it's hard to hear exactly what the verb is between the prefixes and suffixes. In any case, we're all learning at the same sort of pace more or less, so I'm not really behind, I just am dissapointed in myself for not being able to speak it better after the last few weeks.
That being said, I love, love, LOVE my host family. They are quite liberal for rural Morocco, but I feel right at home there. The sense of community in our CBT site is great as well... the next door neighbor heard that I don't eat any meat but fish, and lo and behold, one night, as we were finishing up dinner, she comes to the door with a plate of fish cooked in a delicious cilantro sauce. Amazing. That's the kind of people I'm living among, and I can only hope that my final site has such giving people. I think it'll ease the transition a lot if there are people like that around.
My little 8-year old sister enjoys teaching me Tifinagh, the writing system of Tamazight. It is a new version of an ancient script that was recently introduced into the school systems, so the only people who know it are mostly kids and teachers. It's not practical at this point, but it's a lot of fun to write.
I'm wondering what questions you have about my experiences here. I'd love to answer them, but there's so much to say and so little time at a cyber that I don't know what's interesting to people. Let me know. :)
That all being said, what else is there to say? I have a lot of homework-ish projects to do... and it always feels like there's something else to work on without being so overwhelming that I feel like it's too much. Right now my biggest projects are drawing a diagram of a bit l ma (hashek) (latrine) and labeling and writing instructions on how to build one in Tamazight, and then the big project on birth control pills. It seemed easy at first because of my previous job in the States, but I have 3-4 minutes to present "Birth Control Pills" in a culturally sensitive way (difficult!) in Tamazight (even harder) with some sort of a poster or pamphlet (and my lack of artistic ability)... then write a paper on the process. Erm... a bit daunting but it'll be empowering when I'm finished.
I often forget that other people outside Morocco who know about me being here are really focused on me being in an Arab country. Let me say a few words about that: I have only felt uncomfortable as an American once and have never really felt uncomfortable about being a Christian. The LCFs and I often discuss the similarities between Islam and Christianity, and though some of the people I spend time with who are not PC staff do try to convert me, it's always done from a place of love and never with pressure attached. The only time I felt uncomfortable as an American was in a djelleba shop when the news was on and it was about Iraq. There is probably anti-Americanism in some senses that I don't see or feel, but in communities where you get to know people, they see you as a person, not as someone who is against Islam or a part of what they see on the news.
I was a bit afraid a few nights ago when someone in my CBT group text messaged me and said the American Embassy had been blown up in Algeria. Of course, it ends up that it didn't happen, but it was kind of an interesting wake-up call, and I fully expected at the time to be sent home. Thank God it wasn't the case, but it seems like all of that is a million miles away. Moroccans tend to be gracious people (a generalization, I know), and I feel close to them.
(And as an aside, nighttime at CBT turns into a text-messaging frenzy catching up with people in other CBT sites. It's a fun little ritual).
And... I suppose that's all for now. I'm about halfway through training, which is strange, because I do NOT feel half-prepared to go to site alone. Oh, well. I wanted a challenge. I have a feeling this is probably going to be the biggest I've ever taken. Bring it on. :)
Peace!
I'm beginning slowly to be able to form sentences in Tamazight, which is nice, but at the same time I really do feel like I'm learning really slowly. Some of the frustration comes from verb conjugations that change the prefix AND the suffix...so it's hard to hear exactly what the verb is between the prefixes and suffixes. In any case, we're all learning at the same sort of pace more or less, so I'm not really behind, I just am dissapointed in myself for not being able to speak it better after the last few weeks.
That being said, I love, love, LOVE my host family. They are quite liberal for rural Morocco, but I feel right at home there. The sense of community in our CBT site is great as well... the next door neighbor heard that I don't eat any meat but fish, and lo and behold, one night, as we were finishing up dinner, she comes to the door with a plate of fish cooked in a delicious cilantro sauce. Amazing. That's the kind of people I'm living among, and I can only hope that my final site has such giving people. I think it'll ease the transition a lot if there are people like that around.
My little 8-year old sister enjoys teaching me Tifinagh, the writing system of Tamazight. It is a new version of an ancient script that was recently introduced into the school systems, so the only people who know it are mostly kids and teachers. It's not practical at this point, but it's a lot of fun to write.
I'm wondering what questions you have about my experiences here. I'd love to answer them, but there's so much to say and so little time at a cyber that I don't know what's interesting to people. Let me know. :)
That all being said, what else is there to say? I have a lot of homework-ish projects to do... and it always feels like there's something else to work on without being so overwhelming that I feel like it's too much. Right now my biggest projects are drawing a diagram of a bit l ma (hashek) (latrine) and labeling and writing instructions on how to build one in Tamazight, and then the big project on birth control pills. It seemed easy at first because of my previous job in the States, but I have 3-4 minutes to present "Birth Control Pills" in a culturally sensitive way (difficult!) in Tamazight (even harder) with some sort of a poster or pamphlet (and my lack of artistic ability)... then write a paper on the process. Erm... a bit daunting but it'll be empowering when I'm finished.
I often forget that other people outside Morocco who know about me being here are really focused on me being in an Arab country. Let me say a few words about that: I have only felt uncomfortable as an American once and have never really felt uncomfortable about being a Christian. The LCFs and I often discuss the similarities between Islam and Christianity, and though some of the people I spend time with who are not PC staff do try to convert me, it's always done from a place of love and never with pressure attached. The only time I felt uncomfortable as an American was in a djelleba shop when the news was on and it was about Iraq. There is probably anti-Americanism in some senses that I don't see or feel, but in communities where you get to know people, they see you as a person, not as someone who is against Islam or a part of what they see on the news.
I was a bit afraid a few nights ago when someone in my CBT group text messaged me and said the American Embassy had been blown up in Algeria. Of course, it ends up that it didn't happen, but it was kind of an interesting wake-up call, and I fully expected at the time to be sent home. Thank God it wasn't the case, but it seems like all of that is a million miles away. Moroccans tend to be gracious people (a generalization, I know), and I feel close to them.
(And as an aside, nighttime at CBT turns into a text-messaging frenzy catching up with people in other CBT sites. It's a fun little ritual).
And... I suppose that's all for now. I'm about halfway through training, which is strange, because I do NOT feel half-prepared to go to site alone. Oh, well. I wanted a challenge. I have a feeling this is probably going to be the biggest I've ever taken. Bring it on. :)
Peace!
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Waxa
Waxa. This is just a shwiya update before heading out for CBT again tomorrow morning! Happy Easter! To sort of celebrate, some trainees got up early and made a huge American breakfast, and a few others hid candy and toy eggs around our hotel. It was a fun way to celebrate and some of us plan on having a sort of informal sunset service so to speak tonight. A fun and restful day for sure.
Being back at the seminar site is really nice. The group feels like a big strange dysfunctional family and it's really comfortable... spending so much time and so many new experiences with people certainly brings a sense of closeness that I didn't expect, and all in all it's a really good bunch of people. That being said, I also love the small group feel of CBT. Training is an interesting balance, for sure.
Something I haven't mentioned are the informal "tea talks" that we have some nights. Any of us who want to come and the LCFs get together in our conference room and have a discussion about a topic not covered in training. Past sessions have included things like the Hammam, jellebas, how to use the bit lma (Turkish toilet), and most recently, Islam in Morocco and romantic relationships. They're all interesting and really good information. Last night, after the tea talk, a bunch of us crammed in the conference room with sleeping bags and we watched The Princess Bride on a projector on the wall. Fun, but not what I expected in the Peace Corps. Hey, I'm not complaining.
I'm sick with a bad cold or sinus infection but I've been on medication so hopefully it's on its way out, inshallah. It's made me quieter and less energetic but I've been able to keep going to class and getting things done. The coughing is getting on my nerves though, but at least it's just a cold.
And... hamdullah! The taxi strike is OVER! With the taxi strike, we had to have the person in charge of our training pick up each group in the zween white 4x4 truck... and it took him all DAY! It also means that even in this small city it's hard to get fresh veggies and there's been no souk! We've been in country for a month and still have not really been to the souk, or big weekly market. Now that the taxi strike is over, it'll make transportation much easier.
There's always so much more to talk about: the PCT kawkaw man strike, hilarious dinner conversation about pineapples, our obsession with Coca Lite, the frustrations of trying to upload pictures in cybercafes, our hanut man Aziz, the bit lma competitions (I just about died laughing... yesterday we went over latrine building and had a sort of bathroom Olympics competition. I won the "get the dirham in the hole" (use your imqginqtion) contest and won a Snickers bar... we also tried to find out zho could hold the squat the longest, the best bitlma story, the zweenest...well, you get the idea), belly dancing with other trainees, the mshta story... and typing all thqt out makes me realize how so many of us have regressed as far as sexual and bathroom humor are concerned. It's fun though, practicing explaining the importance of using a latrine using a pile of trash as props, or stealing a sweater from one of our trainers and leaving a ransom note. I see training as part freshman-dorm, part summer camp, and part sort of laid back school. I think if I could just train with the Peace Corps in each country for the rest of my life, it'd be fun, fulfilling, entertaining, and, well, just amazing, honestly.
Okay... I need to use part of this self-directed-learning day to study some Tamazight. Righ ad-gngh imiq welani dugh ad-kra d ad-ulugh. I still need to memorize the parts of the body and I should do it before tomorrow. To the roof or conference room to make flash cards! OH- if you are thinking about PC, a word of advice- bring lots of flash cards pre-cut into really small cards. We don't have ANY here and it takes longer to cut them out of these fiches cartoniques than it does to actually write on the flash cards themselves!
In any case, I should be back on Thursday!
Much love...
Being back at the seminar site is really nice. The group feels like a big strange dysfunctional family and it's really comfortable... spending so much time and so many new experiences with people certainly brings a sense of closeness that I didn't expect, and all in all it's a really good bunch of people. That being said, I also love the small group feel of CBT. Training is an interesting balance, for sure.
Something I haven't mentioned are the informal "tea talks" that we have some nights. Any of us who want to come and the LCFs get together in our conference room and have a discussion about a topic not covered in training. Past sessions have included things like the Hammam, jellebas, how to use the bit lma (Turkish toilet), and most recently, Islam in Morocco and romantic relationships. They're all interesting and really good information. Last night, after the tea talk, a bunch of us crammed in the conference room with sleeping bags and we watched The Princess Bride on a projector on the wall. Fun, but not what I expected in the Peace Corps. Hey, I'm not complaining.
I'm sick with a bad cold or sinus infection but I've been on medication so hopefully it's on its way out, inshallah. It's made me quieter and less energetic but I've been able to keep going to class and getting things done. The coughing is getting on my nerves though, but at least it's just a cold.
And... hamdullah! The taxi strike is OVER! With the taxi strike, we had to have the person in charge of our training pick up each group in the zween white 4x4 truck... and it took him all DAY! It also means that even in this small city it's hard to get fresh veggies and there's been no souk! We've been in country for a month and still have not really been to the souk, or big weekly market. Now that the taxi strike is over, it'll make transportation much easier.
There's always so much more to talk about: the PCT kawkaw man strike, hilarious dinner conversation about pineapples, our obsession with Coca Lite, the frustrations of trying to upload pictures in cybercafes, our hanut man Aziz, the bit lma competitions (I just about died laughing... yesterday we went over latrine building and had a sort of bathroom Olympics competition. I won the "get the dirham in the hole" (use your imqginqtion) contest and won a Snickers bar... we also tried to find out zho could hold the squat the longest, the best bitlma story, the zweenest...well, you get the idea), belly dancing with other trainees, the mshta story... and typing all thqt out makes me realize how so many of us have regressed as far as sexual and bathroom humor are concerned. It's fun though, practicing explaining the importance of using a latrine using a pile of trash as props, or stealing a sweater from one of our trainers and leaving a ransom note. I see training as part freshman-dorm, part summer camp, and part sort of laid back school. I think if I could just train with the Peace Corps in each country for the rest of my life, it'd be fun, fulfilling, entertaining, and, well, just amazing, honestly.
Okay... I need to use part of this self-directed-learning day to study some Tamazight. Righ ad-gngh imiq welani dugh ad-kra d ad-ulugh. I still need to memorize the parts of the body and I should do it before tomorrow. To the roof or conference room to make flash cards! OH- if you are thinking about PC, a word of advice- bring lots of flash cards pre-cut into really small cards. We don't have ANY here and it takes longer to cut them out of these fiches cartoniques than it does to actually write on the flash cards themselves!
In any case, I should be back on Thursday!
Much love...
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
CBT - phase one!
I'm back!
We just got back from our first phase of CBT- what fun! We broke into groups of five trainees and one LCF (my LCF is really sweet and a lot of fun and spread out into seven sites in the area. Mine is a small village of probably under 200 people on the shores of an enormous lake that is straight from a postcard. Literally. Every day, several times a day, I'd look at the reddish mountains and the bright blue lake and wonder "am I really here?"
All six of us got into a taxi (three in front including the driver, four in the back)and went about an hour away to our site. When we stopped, I didn't know we were there; it looked like we just pulled over in a driveway... but that's our cbt site. The entire duwar has two hanuts (small shops), a madrasa (primary school) and houses. And I can't forget the Maroc Telecom cell phone tower that is the sort of beacon for my house. We live maybe 100 feet from it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We all met in what we jokingly refer to as our madrasa, the LCF house where she lives and we have classes while at CBT. Our families came to meet us, or should I say a representative. We ate bread (tish agrome, Tandrout!) and drank tea and finally headed off to our respective homes.
My family is slightly untraditional: there's a mother who is probably in her 50s, her daughter who is 8, her son who is 14... then the two kids (15 and 20) from her deceased husband's previous marriage AND the 30 year old cousin who is related through her deceased husband. All are women except the 15 year old... and it means that it is a very relaxed and fun environment. We have informal impromptu dance parties to Tamazight music pretty much every night. The first night, we also walked to Tandrut's house (the nickname of the one guy in our CBT group) and ate bread and drank tea. As far as small glasses of tea and fresh homemade bread go...well... think bread and tea (sugary, sweet, minty tea) for breakfast, at about 10 am, with lunch, at four, as soon as I get home, and whenever you go to someone else's house. Yeah. It's pretty big here in Morocco.
Anyway, we walked to Tandrut's house, with my "cousin" making sure I don't fall. She's so motherly, it's endearing and has actually come in handy. Anyway, that night is kind of a blur. My Tamazight was terrible so there were lots of gestures, but I was able to communicate pretty well to two of the girls.
I don't even know where to begin with describing the homestay. Comfortable. I've done homestays before, but the two I've done in Morocco have been the most comfortable as far as feeling welcomed. Everyone calls me their sister (to which I reciprocate, of course). I have my own room, per PC policy, but usually four or five people sleep on these sort of cushiony couch things called ponjes with these big heavy blankets. There are a lot of wild dogs (thank God for the pre-rabies shots!) that howl at night but just lay around during the day. My family has a mule, 9 baby chicks, 6 chickens, 2 rabbits, and a cat. There are lots of sheep in the community, and, yes, electricity and running water (but not hot water).
Food is communal: we sit on the ponjes or on short little stools and eat with your right hand using bread usually as a tool. There's usually a tajine (or on Fridays or holidays couscous)and maybe a few saucer-sized plates of salads. I told my family I was vegetarian after some careful soul-searching and I think that was a good choice- everything has been delicious and I'm slowly but surely learning the Tamazight words for foods. Matesha, xisu, ksksu, agrom, zit, zitune, frmj... The olive oil is homemade (and even though it was bitter, I tried an olive fresh from one of the trees), the bread is homemade, and the almonds taste like almond paste or almond extract- more potent. There are almond trees too and when you break off a little green pod there's a 'baby almond' inside that has sort of the taste and consistency of a grape. My little sister likes to pick them for me when we go on walks.
As far as bathing, I took one bucket bath since Thursday and that's all! But the Hammam today was so wonderful it didn't bother me that I was literally stinky yesterday. I think I have to be more assertive next CBT phase and see if I can get a warm bucket bath every other day, or at least twice during the stay.
I got sick once but I think it was food poisoning and that's all. For that night, I thought it was giardia but it seems to have subsided. Hamdullah.
Class is fun but a lot of work: four hours of language a day (!) and then cross-cultural class or activities in the afternoon. We get to set our own lunch menus and shopped for it last Wednesday and let me tell you- during training we've eaten like royalty. Really. Fruit after every meal, three or four salads with the main course... coffee and tea whenever we want it, and fresh baked bread with nutella or oil or fig jelly. Yum. We laugh a lot during class and as soon as I think I can't take anymore, we have a little break, so the pace is really nice.
One of our tasks this week was a community walk and creating a map with the resources of our duwar, which turned into a bonifide three-hour hike. The day before, we had walked along the lake shore for two hours or so, so I've certainly been getting my excercise! I can't upload pictures for some reason, but I'm trying. Truly an awe-inspiring place with old kasbas to explore, gorges, mountains, the river, cacti, flowers, olive trees, wheat fields...
Our self-directed-learning day (read= no class) was quite productive with my family. I took my bucket bath, I helped make couscous, helped make bread, washed my clothes, walked along the lake, took a nap, watched Gilmore Girls on their sattelite tv, and ate dinner at Tandrut's house, thanks to my host-sister. She was invited over there to eat but said "Not without Katy!" and got me an invite. She really does take good care of me.
And so life goes. Even though I'm using squat toilets in an adobe house without hot water or central heating and eating on short stools with my hands with people I can't really talk to, it feels comfortable and right. It doesn't feel strange or foreign or exotic. It feels like a community I'm excited to be a part of for the next two years. They say I should build a house right next to theirs. When I think of some of the stuff that goes on in the US, it's tempting to want to lead a life like that sometimes, in such a close-knit community. It's not perfect or ideal, don't get me wrong, but CBT is a lot of fun and though it's good to be back in a small city for a few days, I'm glad to be able to do CBT in such a welcoming community.
We just got back from our first phase of CBT- what fun! We broke into groups of five trainees and one LCF (my LCF is really sweet and a lot of fun and spread out into seven sites in the area. Mine is a small village of probably under 200 people on the shores of an enormous lake that is straight from a postcard. Literally. Every day, several times a day, I'd look at the reddish mountains and the bright blue lake and wonder "am I really here?"
All six of us got into a taxi (three in front including the driver, four in the back)and went about an hour away to our site. When we stopped, I didn't know we were there; it looked like we just pulled over in a driveway... but that's our cbt site. The entire duwar has two hanuts (small shops), a madrasa (primary school) and houses. And I can't forget the Maroc Telecom cell phone tower that is the sort of beacon for my house. We live maybe 100 feet from it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We all met in what we jokingly refer to as our madrasa, the LCF house where she lives and we have classes while at CBT. Our families came to meet us, or should I say a representative. We ate bread (tish agrome, Tandrout!) and drank tea and finally headed off to our respective homes.
My family is slightly untraditional: there's a mother who is probably in her 50s, her daughter who is 8, her son who is 14... then the two kids (15 and 20) from her deceased husband's previous marriage AND the 30 year old cousin who is related through her deceased husband. All are women except the 15 year old... and it means that it is a very relaxed and fun environment. We have informal impromptu dance parties to Tamazight music pretty much every night. The first night, we also walked to Tandrut's house (the nickname of the one guy in our CBT group) and ate bread and drank tea. As far as small glasses of tea and fresh homemade bread go...well... think bread and tea (sugary, sweet, minty tea) for breakfast, at about 10 am, with lunch, at four, as soon as I get home, and whenever you go to someone else's house. Yeah. It's pretty big here in Morocco.
Anyway, we walked to Tandrut's house, with my "cousin" making sure I don't fall. She's so motherly, it's endearing and has actually come in handy. Anyway, that night is kind of a blur. My Tamazight was terrible so there were lots of gestures, but I was able to communicate pretty well to two of the girls.
I don't even know where to begin with describing the homestay. Comfortable. I've done homestays before, but the two I've done in Morocco have been the most comfortable as far as feeling welcomed. Everyone calls me their sister (to which I reciprocate, of course). I have my own room, per PC policy, but usually four or five people sleep on these sort of cushiony couch things called ponjes with these big heavy blankets. There are a lot of wild dogs (thank God for the pre-rabies shots!) that howl at night but just lay around during the day. My family has a mule, 9 baby chicks, 6 chickens, 2 rabbits, and a cat. There are lots of sheep in the community, and, yes, electricity and running water (but not hot water).
Food is communal: we sit on the ponjes or on short little stools and eat with your right hand using bread usually as a tool. There's usually a tajine (or on Fridays or holidays couscous)and maybe a few saucer-sized plates of salads. I told my family I was vegetarian after some careful soul-searching and I think that was a good choice- everything has been delicious and I'm slowly but surely learning the Tamazight words for foods. Matesha, xisu, ksksu, agrom, zit, zitune, frmj... The olive oil is homemade (and even though it was bitter, I tried an olive fresh from one of the trees), the bread is homemade, and the almonds taste like almond paste or almond extract- more potent. There are almond trees too and when you break off a little green pod there's a 'baby almond' inside that has sort of the taste and consistency of a grape. My little sister likes to pick them for me when we go on walks.
As far as bathing, I took one bucket bath since Thursday and that's all! But the Hammam today was so wonderful it didn't bother me that I was literally stinky yesterday. I think I have to be more assertive next CBT phase and see if I can get a warm bucket bath every other day, or at least twice during the stay.
I got sick once but I think it was food poisoning and that's all. For that night, I thought it was giardia but it seems to have subsided. Hamdullah.
Class is fun but a lot of work: four hours of language a day (!) and then cross-cultural class or activities in the afternoon. We get to set our own lunch menus and shopped for it last Wednesday and let me tell you- during training we've eaten like royalty. Really. Fruit after every meal, three or four salads with the main course... coffee and tea whenever we want it, and fresh baked bread with nutella or oil or fig jelly. Yum. We laugh a lot during class and as soon as I think I can't take anymore, we have a little break, so the pace is really nice.
One of our tasks this week was a community walk and creating a map with the resources of our duwar, which turned into a bonifide three-hour hike. The day before, we had walked along the lake shore for two hours or so, so I've certainly been getting my excercise! I can't upload pictures for some reason, but I'm trying. Truly an awe-inspiring place with old kasbas to explore, gorges, mountains, the river, cacti, flowers, olive trees, wheat fields...
Our self-directed-learning day (read= no class) was quite productive with my family. I took my bucket bath, I helped make couscous, helped make bread, washed my clothes, walked along the lake, took a nap, watched Gilmore Girls on their sattelite tv, and ate dinner at Tandrut's house, thanks to my host-sister. She was invited over there to eat but said "Not without Katy!" and got me an invite. She really does take good care of me.
And so life goes. Even though I'm using squat toilets in an adobe house without hot water or central heating and eating on short stools with my hands with people I can't really talk to, it feels comfortable and right. It doesn't feel strange or foreign or exotic. It feels like a community I'm excited to be a part of for the next two years. They say I should build a house right next to theirs. When I think of some of the stuff that goes on in the US, it's tempting to want to lead a life like that sometimes, in such a close-knit community. It's not perfect or ideal, don't get me wrong, but CBT is a lot of fun and though it's good to be back in a small city for a few days, I'm glad to be able to do CBT in such a welcoming community.
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