The Desert is Sopping Wet. Oxymoron?

And now for the big news...

I am no longer a PCT (trainee), but have officially been sworn in as a PCV (volunteer).  Please, no applause necessary... 

Me and my fellow YD PCVs after our swearing-in ceremony.

I arrived at my final site late last Friday night, after two long, hot and sweaty days of travel by train, taxi, bus, pick-up truck and foot.  I some how misunderstood my host dad's instructions to "wait at the bus station" and ended up being graciously kidnapped by a Berber speaking family, with all of my stuff in tow - lugging around two years worth of stuff is no small feat.  Suddenly, my "Intermediate-High" Darija language skills plummeted to zilch.  Thankfully, I was eventually able to figure out that this family was going to babysit me and force-feed me immeasurable amounts of couscous and sweets until my dad got off work - 8 hours later.  

I'm now living in Taroudant Province, 1 1/2 hours south east of Agadir.  This is where I'll be for the next two years.  There is one main road that goes through town - so far its the only paved road I've seen.  Otherwise, there's about 3,000 people in the town and an unknown number of surrounding villages.  It's uber-conservative here.  Most women in my town wear a loose outer garment and cover their hair Arab-style with a fulwar (veil, hijab), and the Berber women swaddle themselves in these beautifully dyed and printed lizars (sheets).  To be fair, school-age girls generally wear non-fitted jeans and tunic to knee-length tops and cover their hair.  Some men wear jelabas (long robes with hoods dangling in the back), but most of them wear jeans and t-shirts/button-ups, Western-style.

In other news, it's been pouring buckets non-stop for a week now.  I have to say, I was quite taken aback when the rain would not relent;  I naively assumed that it didn't rain much, if at all, in the desert.  Little did I know...  However, the sun decided to peek its head out today, but that doesn't make the muddy roads any more fun to trudge through.  I'm also apparently the only one in town who wasn't in on the joke, and thus do not own rain boots.

Things move at quite a slow pace here, which is definitely going to take some getting used to.  My first full day here I decided to venture out into the big, bad world to make photocopies.  It took me an hour to make twenty.  That was the only activity I accomplished that day.   I have spent this first week getting wlft, or accustomed, to my site.  I visited my gendarmes, khalifa, and basha (local government officials), and I was somehow able to communicate to them why I was there (At least I think I did.  There's a large chance that they took pity on my broken Darija and just "smiled and nodded" for my benefit).  

Otherwise, I've spent some time at my Dar Chabeb (DC) and Nedi Neswi (NN).  There are zero-to-five kids yet so far at the DC, but I'm hoping that's due to the torrential downpours and flooding of the past week.  Today, I spent three hours at the DC and a few lycee (high school) students showed up so I was able to talk to them about possible classes/activities.  We had an impromptu English session, and we finished the day with a healthy dose of ping pong.  I also met some of the ladies at the NN, and they have been lovely.  They have graciously attempted to teach me how to crochet, all the while making fun of my lack of ability in anything that has to do with yarn or thread.

As they say here, l'awn (good day).

Must. Eat. More. Howli....I mean sheep...

First things first, I survived Aed el-Kbir, the biggest holiday in Islam.  This holiday commemorates the story of Ibrahim and Ismael in the Quran; the same story is told in the the Torah and the Bible with Abraham and Issac.  Basically, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his only son to demonstrate his faith and submission to God when a goat/sheep appeared "in the thicket."  God told Ibrahim to sacrifice the goat/sheep instead.  Alas, we have Aed el-Kbir.

Now, you may be wondering why I chose the term "survived." Well, let's just say there was a lot of animal sacrifice going on.  My family slaughtered nine sheep - one for every married male member of the household.

These are the first few sheep that arrived...if only they knew what was coming.

This one knew all too well...

The open sewer full of blood must have alerted this one to his impending doom.

 We ate every single part of that sheep for five days. I ate kidney, intestine fat, liver, heart, stomach, head, eye sockets, legs, etc.  Every morning for breakfast we ate liver kabobs swathed in intestine liver.  Mmmm, scrumptious.

These cutie-pies are my twin 10-year-old host siblings, Simo and Mouniya.  Those legs were our lunch the next day.

L'Aed is also a time when everyone gets dressed-up and receives presents - usually presents of clothes, but I thought I'd do it American style and give "stuff." The day was quite exciting, what with all the slaughtering going on and the hoo-ing and haw-ing over all the meat and how zwinin (beautiful) we all looked in our l'Aed outfits.  Just to clarify though, our family only made us, the foreigners, wear traditional, Moroccan clothing.  Everyone else was wearing suits and dresses.

 I must thank my dear cousins for this beautiful bubble-gum look.  Note the red sequined headband.

The haze in this picture is due to the common practice of grilling inside the home.  Don't ask why.  Never, ever ask why

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Five days of eating meat, and only meat, three meals a day, does not help with digestive issues.  This was definitely a great holiday to experience, but if I miss it in the future, my stomach will thank me.  L'Aed concluded our first home stay experience, so now I'm off to my new and exciting adventure in the South.  Wish me luck.

I have a permanent site!!!

  
Two weeks ago, on a late Friday night, we all found out where we will be spending the next two years.  After a blitz orientation to our new sites thanks to our stellar program managers, we were promptly set free to figure out how to get there on our own the very next morning.

I’ll be serving in a small town in southern Morocco.  If you look at a map of Morocco, look for Agadir near the southern coast, and then I’m about an hour and a half SE of that via taxi.  It takes two days of traveling overland to get there from Fes.  It’s hot, super-conservative, and there’s a large chance that if I end up working in certain places, I’ll be learning Tashelhit (Tash for short), one of the three Berber dialects spoken in Morocco.

Me and my new site in the deep South.

Interestingly, I’m already learning what’s considered the hardest Peace Corps language, Darija, and then I might be learning another crazy-difficult one, Tash.  Did I also mention that my site is now experiencing “winter,” meaning that during the days, its about 85/90 F. IN NOVEMBER. 

On the plus side, laundry takes about an hour to dry, and I won’t be racking up a high electricity bill because it’s too hot to take a hot shower. Score!

All ranting aside, my new host family is wonderful.  My mom and dad are lovely and we already joke around quite a bit…at least I think we do.  My Darija is still a work-in-progress, and I’m never quite sure if I fully understand what’s going on. Ever.  Otherwise, I have one younger brother, Youssef, and he is a ninja.  Seriously, he is the craziest 5-year-old I’ve ever met, but also the sweetest. 

Otherwise, during my weeklong visit to my new site, I toured the central area quite a bit.  There are about 3,000 people in my town, and a main road goes through the middle of town.  This is wonderful because the closest taxi hub is about an hour due West, and you can only get to there from that hub if you hop in a cab going towards Taroudant, (a pretty, touristy place 20km East of me) and if you suck up and they are gracious enough to drop you off on their way.  It’s a bit complicated, to say the least.

I visited the Nedi Neswi (Women’s Club) and the Dar Chabeb (Youth Center), two places that I’ll most likely be spending a lot of my time.  As I previously mentioned, Sebt is very conservative.  You rarely see women unaccompanied outside, except for packs of girls going to and from school.  Only men hang out at the cafes, and in public in general, so I’ll have to figure out how to deal with not having a place to spend my free time besides my house, while still being “culturally appropriate.”  Thankfully, Taroudant is only 20km away and I can go to any café I want there, woohoo!

All the tajines you could ever want at our self-described "Pottery Barn" in Taroudant's souk.

Otherwise, I’m almost finished with my 2½ months of training.  We only have a little over a week to go.  We just spent the last 6 hours with over 100 kids having a belated Halloween party at the Dar Chabeb.  We made masks and origami, played pin-the-nose on the pumpkin, and bobbed for apples.  My fingers are basically bleeding from cutting out 200 eye holes in those masks.  Thankfully no one got hypothermia from bobbing for apples in the freezing weather! 

Some of my kids at the Dar Chabeb.  This is what happens when you attempt an activity with shaving cream.

                                      
Next week is our last week of studying Darija intensively with our CBT groups, and then we have our language proficiency exam (LPI) the following week.  If we don’t at least get the “Novice High” ranking on our LPI, we get sent home.  No pressure or anything.  

Love and hugs from Ras el-Ma, i.e. “Head of the Water,” where the water shut off today.  How ironic.

Hannah

One more thing...

And I just HAVE to tell you all how amazing my host mom was during my ordeal.  Not only did she bring me every meal on a tray, but she also would literally roll a table into my bedroom so we could all eat as a family, just so that I wouldn't feel left out.  And the piece de resistance was on Thursday, when I was bathed like a baby fresh from a mother's womb.  No boundaries exist between us anymore. 

Not a single one.

The saga OFFICIALLY begins!

I officially arrived in Morocco on September 15, 2010.   We took a bus from Philadelphia to JFK, flew from JFK to Casablanca, and then took a two-hour bus ride to the small beach town of Mehdiya, just north of Rabat (the capital), for orientation.  Those first 4 days were jam-packed with safety and security measures, a crash course in Darija (Moroccan Arabic), cross-cultural sessions, and indigestible loads of medical information.  There was barely time to sleep. Oh, and I learned how to eat couscous with my hands...

Step 1: Morph your hand into a claw.

Step 2: Use mushy, overcooked veggies as a bonding agent.

Step 3: Shake couscous in your hand until you've lost a sufficient amount of it on the table and stained your clothes.

Step 4: Display the fruits of your labor...Attempt to eat your ball of couscous without touching your mouth to your hand and without dropping it on the table...I think I'll eat with a spoon.

On Sunday the 19^th we were shipped off to our host families for what is called Pre-Service Training (PST) in our Community Based Training (CBT) sites.  I’m now officially a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT)!  We will be here for the next ten weeks, where we will learn the skills and techniques that we will employ at our future permanent sites in order to become successful volunteers.

There are 5 other volunteers in my CBT site and we spend pretty much every waking moment together.  I am living in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny town, 8 miles SW of Fes.  There is one pharmacy, two coffee shops, two yogurt shops, 3 hanuts (a very rough version of a 7-11), two elementary schools, a Dar Chabeb (DC – youth center), and the local police station.  I live on the northern end of town and I walk twenty minutes to the complete opposite end of town for training six days a week, from 8:30am to 6pm. Darn French schooling system.

My PCV faves.

We’ve spent the past few weeks studying Darija and doing a community assessment to figure out what it is that this community wants for its youth.  This has included: interviewing members of the community, gathering local youth to map out where they spend their free time (boys vs. girls due to the separation of genders past the age of ten), figuring out time schedules for activities (because there are only two schools in town, the kids are on a rotating schedule), and gaining respect in the community by making ourselves visible and informally chatting up its members.  It’s exhausting.

"Studying" in our self-directed learning time.

Then we all go home to the wonderful craziness of our host families.  Four of the six of us live in a compound with 73 extended family members, so it really is non-stop stimulation.  ALL. THE. TIME.

Besides the craziness though, I really lucked out.  I have a fantastic family.  I have a mom, a dad, and 4 younger siblings: a 13-year-old sister, 10-year-old twins (a boy and a girl), and a 7-year-old special-needs sister.  They are all incredibly welcoming and nice, and they put up with me, with my numerous cultural faux pas and my lack of language skills and everything.

Me and my siblings with a fellow PCV.

Now onto the ridiculous part of my adventure...

I’ve been in Morocco for just over three weeks, and I’ve already managed to injure myself.  On Sunday, October 3^rd, my very first day off, my sisters and I went for a leisurely walk.  We explored the olive groves, the pomegranate and fig trees, and imitated the cows and sheep grazing around us.  On our way back to the house, my 7-year-old sister fell in front of an oncoming car.  I lunged to pick her up, and in the process, I managed to pinch my cyatic nerve.  Alas, I was on bed rest for 5 days, where I could only get up to go to and from the bayt el-ma (that’s bathroom for all you foreign folk) as per the doc’s instructions.

Me and my 7-year-old sister on our way to school.

After talking to the PC medical officer (PCMO), my biggest struggle was explaining to my host family what had happened.  Let me just say that two weeks of studying Darija did not equip me with that kind of vocabulary.  To make matters worse, I had yet to receive pain medicine, and it was incredibly difficult to focus on the pain and my family trying to give me advice (even though they weren’t sure what was wrong due to my inability to explain it to them).  I’m fairly sure that my face turned ghost-white when my mom brought in a knife and said we could “scare” the nerve with it… 

Later that day, the pain increased, and we had to call upon my LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator – my language and technical trainer).  Said is a godsend.  That man needs a raise. 

Not only did he diffuse the situation by explaining the problem and the protocol, but he also traveled to another town to retrieve pain medicine for me (The pharmacy in a 200-person town isn’t open on weekends – just my luck).

Since Sunday, I’ve had more company than I could ever imagine.  In Morocco, the custom is for able-bodied persons to come and visit with “the sick.”  Due to this custom, and the fact that there are 73 people in my extended family, I have had non-stop entertainment.  The American notion of letting someone rest and get better is non-existent here.  It’s all about good company and laughter – even when it hurts to laugh.

On Monday, all of my fellow PCTs descended upon my home for a visit after a long day of training, which turned into teatime and then became dinner.  Rachel and Molly, two fellow PCTs, helped me to the hammem (wash room) and washed my hair.  It was very “Out of Africa.” 

We all like to joke that we’re like babies for a number of reasons.  We can’t speak the language well, we struggle to eat with our hands (right hand!), we make numerous faux pas, we’re still learning about how to correctly use the Turkish toilets, figuring out how to do our laundry without a machine, and we just don’t seem to know how to do anything yet in true Moroccan fashion.  But now, the new joke is that I actually am the baby. 

But seriously, I am. 

I was able to make it to Fes on Friday for two days of training (and to see the doctor).  Fes is only eight miles away, which may seem quite close, but when jamming 7 people into a “grand” taxi, which is actually the size of a small sedan, and driving on roads that were paved eons ago, it is quite a terrifying process – even when you’re in tip-top shape! Thankfully, I made it in once piece. Now its back to my CBT site to study Darija and to learn how to be a kick-ass teacher.

I keep trying to tell myself that this is all part of “the experience.”  Here’s hoping.