Return to the Roc

My apologies for my four (ahem, five) month lapse in writing.  I’ll give you the main key points of the last five months:

1. I worked at a PCV-organized women’s health event (aptly named the Women’s Wellness Workshop), where we, the PCVs, brought women and girls from our communities to sit in on women’s health-focused sessions, led by Moroccan doctors and nurses, as well as leadership and empowerment sessions and daily exercise routines.

Does that sound a bit heavy?  We thought so as well, so a fellow PCV, my besty Crisi, and I led a “Beauty Products from Home” session, where we taught the women how to make beauty products in their kitchens, such as parsley-cucumber-yogurt facemasks for acne and sugar-lavender-pomade foot scrubs for dry, rough feet.  Oh, that sounds too easy, you say? Well, do it in Arabic and Berber, and then we’ll talk.

Crisi applies a facemask in front of eager onlookers.

2. In April, we had our annual spring camp in Taroudannt, the capital (and name) of my province.  This is technically an English camp, and by “technically,” I mean “not.”  100 kids turned into 160 kids, which meant 40 kids in my English class, and not enough counselors to tame the wild beasts.  I taught the beginners, which means that I taught English in Arabic.  It was quite a hoot, though.  

This is what 1/3 of 160 campers looks like.

My aforementioned besty and I led a cooking club, where we taught our kiddies how to make snickerdoodles (I can’t think of a more quintessentially American cookie than this that doesn’t require brown sugar, an item unavailable in this entire country).  Through snickerdoodle-ing, we taught the kids about different foods in America and turned it into a lesson about immigration and the melting pot (or the salad bowl for all you nay sayers).

On the last day, we held an English scavenger hunt.  My fellow PCVs and I hid around campus as our kids hunted us down and interrogated us for answers.  The majority of the commands were to complete certain tasks, such as “Build a tower of rocks. Take a picture (they all have camera phones).”  However, I have to say the best command was “Find the orange striped cat with white spots.”  It was the infamous cat at camp.  It was everywhere and anywhere, and let me tell you, those kids found that sneaky cat, regardless of the fact that the campus was multiple acres large...  And then we pegged the winners with water balloons, which was followed by my kids singing Justin Bieber’s “One Time” for the talent show.  Ya, we’re just that cool.

The winners of the scavenger hunt.

Besides these larger events, I’ve been teaching English as usual, helping to prepare students for their final exams, teaching yoga and aerobics and leading occasional events at the girls’ dormitory.  For example, I screened a fantastic PCV-made film, “You Can Dream: Stories of Moroccan Women Who Do,” which showcases Moroccan women throughout the country doing amazing things, like starting their own co-ops, teaching literacy classes, and creating new products.  Following the film, a fellow counterpart and I led a discussion about the girls’ hopes and aspirations for the future.  It went swimmingly.

…

Fast forward to, well, now, and I've just arrived back in site after a splendid vacation in the grand ol’ US of A. 

This morning I trekked to the post office for oh, say, the 4^th or 5^th time on a Saturday, expecting it to be open.  You know it wasn’t.  Shouldn’t posting hours on an official government building mean that it’s true?  Stupid me.  Afterwards, I decided to fill my miserably empty fridge with some fresh produce.  On my way back, I was gladly accosted by one of my favorite 13-year-old students who saw me from her third story window and came running after me.  I accompanied her home, where I was fed the most delicious fish tajine I have ever consumed in my entire life, along with watermelon, honeydew, plums, dates, grapes and prickly pears.  After consuming about 5 kilos of food, and proclaiming “Ch3bat, hamdullah” (“I’m full, thanks be to God”), her mom gave me the answer every mom gives me: “Mekliti walu”…”You ate nothing!”  I proceeded to push my fruit rinds and pits towards her to make my point, but alas, this was not a battle I was going to win.

Afterwards, my student accompanied me on my walk home, as she always does.  I had been complaining about how dirty my house was after having been gone for two months and how badly I needed to clean it – that was my excuse for leaving her house.  She kept saying that she would help me clean, but I just thought she was being nice, and quite frankly, I was embarrassed at how filthy it had become, having experienced a number of dust storms in my absence.  Inside, it was hazy and dusty, like in those old Western movies where the two gun-slinging jokers are dueling, in the exact moment when they spin around and draw their guns, kicking up dirt and dust.  Oh, and the number of dead cockroaches that I counted went into the double digits.  The high double-digits. 

Let me tell you though, not only did this girl help me clean my house, but she critiqued what I thought were already-anal cleaning habits.  I’ve got nothing on this kid.  Now I’m sitting on my ponj (sofa-esque seating, without a back to it), breathing in the clean air.  Me: 1.  Dust storms and cockroaches: 0. Victory tastes so sweet.

P.S. As an added bonus, I've included the before and after pictures of me coming in 2nd place at a watermelon-eating contest.  For those of you that don't know, I consume excessive quantities of watermelon on a daily basis.  I  thought that I had a real chance at the blue ribbon, having prepared my stomach for months on end.

 

Before: clean and happy.
 

After: sticky and dejected.