This is Rose! My new puppy/Moroccan street mut.  She was found under a dumpster in Sara’s site, and braved the 40 minute cab ride back to Errachidia.  So far as I can tell, her hobbies are not sleeping between 11 pm and 8 am, biting, going to the bathroom in the house, and playing with her toy lion.

Women's Empowerment and Leadership in Errachidia: At the end of June, 50 girls Moroccan girls from around my region will come to Errachidia to take part in a three day workshop promoting women’s leadership and empowerment in Morocco. Because of a lack of p build transport for schools, and because this part of the country is so widespread, many of these girls will have stopped their schooling before high school. This workshop is an opportunity for them to learn about the empowerment and leadership of many successful Moroccan women, and how they can take hold of their futures and achieve seemingly unlikely goals. This project was organized by health volunteer Amanda Deen and will be facilitated by 7 other female Peace Corps Volunteers. Any amount helps, all you have to do is click the link above! I will be updating my blog regularly about various volunteer projects and links to donate to their causes. but remember you can always find the project websites here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate

Help PC Morocco & Women's Rights!: Larissa, a fellow PCV, and many other volunteers will be running a booth at this year’s Gnaoua Music Festival in Essaouira (home of my spring camp!). The booth will be focused on sexual health initiatives, STI/HIV/AIDs awareness, women’s domestic abuse issues, and youth empowerment for spreading the word and getting informed. This is a VERY rare occasion that a presentation about topics such as these can take place so publicly in such a conservative country, so please help and donate, every dollar counts! The volunteers will also be on site to direct people to free STI/HIV/AIDs tests and distributing free “family planning” options. This is an incredible opportunity for both volunteers and the citizens of Morocco… help make it happen!

Dance Club presentation at the spring camp spectac! (catch some memorable free dance and miming by Said around 1:20…)

Spring Camp! The last month has been a whirlwind of events starting with parents visit to helping with new PCV training and finishing the last two weeks off at spring camp.  Every year, the Ministry (of Magic) puts on spring camps across Morocco which are graciously staffed by PCVs in all sectors (Youth Development, Health/Environment, Small Business Development…) and these camps, titled “English Immersion Camps” are supposed to be for students looking to improve English skills and have a week away from home to have a “camp” experience. Considering the Summer Camp is only in one city in Morocco, the Ministry has decided to spread spring camps out throughout Morocco to reach a larger number of youth, thus improving impact and outreach.  One of the best parts about Spring Camp is that we, as PCVs get to choose where to go. We can stay in our home cities or the closest town to us, OR we can (as I did) travel to an amazing town somewhere in Morocco we’ve never visited and work with PCVs we otherwise might not have a chance to meet.  So I packed up my swimsuit, t-shirts, sandals, and sunscreen and headed off to Essaouira. It was a long trip, and when I finally got to the Dar Taliba (or ‘student house’ where we would be staying, right off the school grounds) I was initially in shock. I had just spent an extra two hours and about 30 Dirhams more than I should have finding our digs, and when I walked in the room, it was filled with rickety metal bunks, stuffed with stained and bug ridden mattresses. We would be housing 45 girls in the first week, and there were only four bathrooms and no showers (there were some spickets sticking out of the wall at about waist height, but no buckets or hot water in sight). The Essaouira paradise I had imagined was quickly starting to vanish, but of the many lessons I’ve learned in Peace Corps… when you’re down, there’s nowhere to go but up.  The campers arrived and they (and their parents) had similar reservations about the living conditions. The director of the camp assured them that this was how all camp experiences were and the girls would be just fine.  And we were! We were all fine. It may have gotten a little stinky, and the bathroom situation may have gotten a little unpleasant, but we survived, even if we may have attained bed bugs in the proccess… The campers our first week were better than we could have expected. We had a wide range of English speakers, and were constantly greeted with “Hello”s instead of “Salam”s. It was clear they knew they were at English camp and they were ready for whatever we had to throw at them.  We had English classes in the morning (I taught Advanced, and got to bring back some successful classic lessons, such as Langston Hughes and Idioms) followed by beach time. The kids would split off and either play soccer, basketball, or “games” which included things like relays and tag-like activities. We tried capture the flag at one point, but the kids didn’t quite catch on, they mostly just took all the flags and then tried to rip tem out of each others hands not really noticing what team they were on. In the afternoon we would have library or quiet game time (cards, banana-grams, etc…) and then would have some sort of big outdoor activity, followed by clubs. I initially wanted to teach theater, but it seemed that was something the Moroccan staff was really intense and invested in doing, so I instead helped out with dance club. Yusuf (our PCV coordinator) and Larissa led the kids in dances choreographed to lady gaga, beyonce, and shakira… I will post videos if possible! At night, there would be a big indoor activity, Monday was a talent show, Tuesday - movie night (‘Up’ the first week, ‘Wall-e’ the second), Wednesday - game night, and Thursday - the spectac. What is a “spectac”? It’s basically a talent show with decorations and cake afterward. As precedented, kids cried as the week came to a close. We showed a slide show with pictures to sad songs, and the kids hugged us and started chanting if we made them leave they would burn down the school. We received gifts and sad goodbyes, proud of a good first week and ready for an equally good second one. On our off days, we rented cheap rooms at a cute little riad in the medina of Essaouria and ate ice cream, falafel, drank copious amounts of good coffee and layed on the beach until we were burned. It was incredible to be able to spend our day off in such a nice place. When we arrived for week two, ready to make some minor changes, but overall hoping for the same week as the first, we were hit with a big surprise. About half our campers, being dropped off by a transport bus, were small boys (between the age of 7 and 12) who didn’t speak any English and were from the local orphanage. The trooped off the bus with their matching crocs (what??), and proceeded to have some bad attitudes and feisty things to yell at us in the first day.  After a few emergency meetings about how we were going to deal with this, we decided to set every small orphan camper up with “big brother”… an older camper who would be responsible for their “little”, help them at meal times, have a secret handshake with them, and hopefully pose as a role model for good behavior. And it worked! Amazingly, it worked. The attitudes flipped completely within the first 24 hours, and little boys were soon paying attention, helping out other campers and staff, and participating. They even had a theater skit, dance skit, and song to sing at the talent show and spectac.  Whenever I work with small children like that in Morocco, it astounds me how easy it is to communicate with them non-verbally. Making faces, playing hand games, music, even things like tickling can communicate mounds more than sitting and having a conversation. One little boy, Mohcief, and I didn’t share more than probably 10 verbal words during camp, but he soon became one of my closest campers.  We also had an extremely social orphan, Said, who was always ready to show his break dancing skills and show off his capris and combat boots. Overall it was an exaughsting week. The kids did end up respecting us, but among themselves were always getting in tantrums and fights. Unless every part of our bodies were constantly monitoring what was happening, the second we would look away one of them would have another one in a choke hold. Nights were short and days were long, but saying goodbye to them was one of the harder things I’ve had to do during service. With the first week of kids, you knew they were going off to their nicer homes, were they would take a hot shower and eat cous cous with their parents and siblings. With the orphan boys, we knew they were going somewhere probably comprable to where they had been staying and eating meals with each other just as they had with us. And although they have loving workers at their orphanage, this opportunity of camp for them was rare, if not once in a lifetime, and as they trooped on the bus, tears streaming down their faces, it was hard not to get emotional as well.

So because there is so much to write/post about, I’m going to break my next few blog posts into a series of shorter ones. I have so much to talk about the new trainees arriving/meeting them and working with them on harassment training, the two-week spring camp extravaganza that has been one of the most memorable times in country thus far, and some thoughts on Morocco/American interaction, culture cultivation, and political clean-ups. So while at spring camp, there was extremely limited internet, so when we got the chance to check email and news, it was incredibly upsetting to see that more pictures and materials have come out revealing the American solider’s treatment of Muslim soliders and civilians. The article cited that within the last 6 months, we have witnessed soliders using dead bodies as grounds for a bathroom, an open fire on dozens of innocent civilians, and now photos of soliders using severed arms and legs as props in inappropriate photo shoots while serving.  As I read allowed the NY Times article to my 5 fellow PCVs, there were simultaneous out crys of rage and palms hitting faces. Obviously, this is how any well-to-do citizen should react… we should all be aghast at this behavior. But this hits a different note of disgust for me, and before I go there, let me explain: My first reactions, as I’m sure many other people had, was to be angry at the soliders, but now I realize that is wrong. If anything I feel sorry for them, for the traumatic and complete mind-altering situations they have been placed in by our top goverment and military officials, for their inadequate training and brainwashing into “kill the one who’s different” instead of “kill the one who’s wrong”. This lies in the hands of their supervisors and, more generally, in the views and teachings of the US Army as a whole. It’s disgusting, and if anything, I hope these videos and pictures bring to light an immense change that must occur. And now for why my reactions are so strong, and possibly harsh… Imagine being placed in the middle of a Muslim country, literally 12 hours away from any sort of Westernized society. Families welcome you into their homes, cook you cous cous and make you drink ridiculous amounts of tea. They entrust you with their children and you slowly but surely build bonds and relationships and can begin to breach subjects such as politics and social issues. You teach your students about the importance of the news, about keeping up with world issues, and they bring in articles and pictures about science, art, politics, social economics, and technology. Then, one day, a Muslim student bring in an article about how American soliders were defecating on dead Muslims.  In that moment, it seemed that everything I had worked for to help my community understand not all Americans are the “bang bang, shoot ‘em up” bad guys they see on Fox Movies, all of that vanished, and I stumbled through an incredibly awkward and clumsy lesson. My students could see I was uncomfortable, they knew I was separate from this mentality, but one of my students was visibly upset. He had been silent for most of the class, so when I asked his opinion he says “the worst part is, if a Muslim solider, not even just from Afghanistan, did that to an American solider, they would be jailed and most likely killed”. I agreed with him, and he asked why. He said the act of what happened wasn’t even what made him so upset, these men were clearly messed up and needed extensive help, but that the accountability is gone. And then he said he felt bad, because the accountability was falling on me.  And I realized, he’s right. There’s been a lot of speculation lately about the “20 somethings of America trying to do pick-me-up projects in Africa” and these articles and view points have been extremely negative and in my opinion, offensive. Especially with the offshoot of the KONY 2012 epidemic, groups are using this to target organizations like the Peace Corps and certain NGOs. And what I then realized that the people writing these articles and distributing them on their facebooks are the 20 somethings of America that are watching these events go by on their fast speed internet computers, sitting on their couches and proclaiming themselves the judges. And when the NY Times prints an article about soliders playing Barbie with dead Afghanistan citizens severed limbs… the social media world goes silent. I’d like to believe it’s easier to pick on the 20 somethings working under an organization named Peace Corps than the 20 somethings with machine guns. But if these social word vomit activists had to face the actual reality of what our soliders are doing to our foreign policy, I wonder what they would say.  More recently when I get ripped off, or hear profanities screamed at me as I walk down the street, I have less of a reason to react or yell back. With the technology era comes a great deal of knowledge and education. People in the middle of the Saharan Desert are reading and watching things they weren’t 10 or even 5 years ago. Our actions matter. My next posts will be more light hearted, more about successes and happier moments, but this is something I felt the need to say.

I don’t have long for a long note, but I’m currently working and English immersion camp in this amazing town in Western Morocco and while the internet is limited, this incredible experience is indescribable! I’m working with PCVs from all over the country, meeting an abundance of passionate and amazingly smart Moroccan youths, having a ridiculous amount of dance parties with girls from the bled, and consecutively peeling crying campers off me as week one of camp ends and I prepare for a new one (with a new trove of campers) to begin. I will have pictures from camel trekking, my parents visit, epic train rides, and beach/camp time coming up in the next few weeks. Thanks to all for the letters and packages recently! xxMaggie 

I have so many things to update on, but first and foremost, Mom and Dad visited! They came for a quick week which involved good food, a little taste of America at Morocco Mall (or a few tastes… Pinkberry, Starbucks, Pizza Hut…) and a remodeling of my newly swanked out apartment. I now have a sink that works, I am able to shut the two windows that I wasn’t able to shut before, and I have a bed that is now more comfortable than the floor (which is something I couldn’t have said a week ago).  What did they think? You’ll have to ask them, but I think the overall impression was a mixture of shock and excitement (as was for me when I first arrived in country). My dad could communicate a lot better with hardware store owners than I could (“Construction is a universal language” as he said) and my host mom and real mom had a pretty instant bond over what it’s like to care of me. If anything it reminded me that while our cultures and languages can be different, the idea of being able to “speak human” is an important an present trait in many of the people in my life.  It was also strange to be with people who were still in the American Dollar mindset, and didn’t see the harm in paying the equivalent to a bottle of water or soda in dirhams… which I did too when first in country. I would often cringe at how expensive things were in the bigger cities, but had to remember, if we were in NYC, we would be paying exactly the same amount. And to their astonishment, how I would get fussy over paying the equivalent of $12 for a hand made garment, which in America is a price un-heard of because it’s so low.  It made me wonder if my re-acclimation in two years to America will involved an intense culture shock of pricing? Overall, though, it was a really fun trip! They came to my English class, and witnessed/participated in a lively discussion about the differences between the American and Moroccan government systems and Moroccan social and political issues. I will post pictures as soon as they send them to me! In other news, I’m now packing up (again..) to head to the Fes region to help with new PCV training for a few days and hopefully visiting my old host family. After that week, I will straightaway travel to the beautiful beach town of Essaouira to help with a 100 Moroccan youth English immersion camp. I’m excited, yet terrified, it has been a long time since I was in a traditional camp setting, and the prospect of two weeks of English, theater, music, art, dance, and games is awesome yet tiring even at the thought. I’m sure I’ll have a plethora of stories and pictures to share with you when it’s all completed. Things at the dar chebab have been going well, and an actual break-dancing teacher has come in to start teaching the class (which has now expanded to about 40 kids!!) and I’m acting as more of a supervisor role (lHamdullah). I’m still plugging away at implementing the arts program at the hospital, which should take off when I get back from camp if all the forms and proposals are accepted! I’ve also made an exciting new contact with the Association for Development in Errachidia and the Pre-School Teachers Association and have some INCREDIBLE projects in the works. Without getting into too much detail now (because I still know so little) I will be teaching an English class to the board members of the development association (so they can better communicate with American and European NGO’s and groups that could possibly give them more funding), I will be doing a sort of “growing theater” program with the Errachidian orphans, and I will be teaching at the newly built preschool (starting in the next school year) for under privileged children and families. My site mate and I will also be putting together a teacher training program for teaching life skills through artistic skills (first stage shout out yeah!), and be doing our workshops at all 30 Errachidian preschools, and a cumulative conference with the only the teachers as the commencement to the program.  While I like teaching at the dar chebab, and I LOVE my students, it’s nice to reach out to other socio-economic groups in the region, and I’m excited to work with younger children! On a sad note, my turtle Olive has passed away. She lived a good life in her nest of palm leaves and will be remembered for her love of strawberries and green peppers. RIP Olive. Spring has sprung in Morocco and America (or so I’ve heard) and the warm weather seems to be bringing a lot of great perspective projects and activities! ALSO: The birthday fun continued due to the African postal system, and my parents arrivale… so a big thank you to Mary Alice, Eliot, the Boyers, Lauren Parks, and the Perrys for more birthday surprises! 

My computer charger, once again, bit the dust. So until further notice, picture updates and lengthy notes about my projects and activities will have to be postponed. Until then, however, PLEASE take the time to read these two articles: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17379721 http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2012/03/15/catcalls-are-not-compliments-challenging-street-harassment-worldwide/ The movement for women’s rights and respect is gaining way on this side of globe, and it’s important to stay and informed! Also, big thanks to all of the birthday packages, gifts, cards, phone calls, and notes I received this past week! Shout outs especially to Mom and Dad (best birthday package ever!), fellow pcvs (who forked over rare American novelties such as skippy peanut butter and toll house funfetti cake mix), the best site mate ever, Dipesh, and my dar chebab students (for the amazing birthday cake, soda, and party), Grandma Bridges, the Deicher/Kaufmanns, and Jessie Shelton (although your package was meant for Christmas, by true form of the African postal system, it came 3 months later just in time for my birthday!). Because it was my first birthday out of the USA, I stayed true to Morocco and rode some camels! Pictures to come soon, inshallah.

Happy Monday! xxOlive the turtle (sleeping in her food, as usual)

http://waidsworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/the-real-peace-corps/ That’s a link to a PCV from Ethiopia who wrote a stunningly truthful account of the hardships we face in country, every day. I wanted to use that as a starting point for this blog post, because after in service training, I returned to my site ready to re-evaluate the work I was doing. As I left my dar chebab last night, after a really great class and an equally great one the night before, I was ready to come home and write a blog post about how things are “really starting to take off”. But then I realized, I’d already written that blog post, about a month or so before, when I started introducing more complex ideas into my English class. And while the film club, text analysis, and current events classes seemed to last for a few weeks, they eventually went down in attendance, like so many times before. PCVs often talk about this flux in student attendance being due to so many different things. In many communities, a PCV is seen as somewhat of a novelty….people come to check us out, make sure we’re not spies (this happens more than you would think), and then they go on about their daily business, leaving us with false hopes of how many people are actually interested in our activities and how many are faking it to see what we’re all about. Those of use in bigger cities also face the dilema that the dar chebab just isn’t cool. Why go sit in a cold classroom and watch a movie when you could do that from the comfort of your own home, under blankets, and while friends? Why would you learn English in a dusty classroom when you could learn it at your nationally accredited private school, that’s clean, and where the teachers always have dry erase markers that work? So even with the most possible creative and interesting lesson plans, I was still losing interest.  When I came back from IST, my site mate and I decided to throw a HUGE party at the dar chebab. We handed out hundreds of fliers, posted posters all over town, at every hanut, cyber cafe, and school supply store. We had food, music, and information about new classes and activities…. and 7 kids showed up. At first, it was disheartening. We put ourselves out there, tried to paint the dar chebab as this hip, cool, culture spot. And yet, 7 kids, the same 7 that usually attend our classes, came.  But these 7 students were honest about what they wanted. They’re all advanced English speakers, they all get good grades and have tentative plans to apply for universities in America, but they don’t want to sit in the cold, dusty, youth center and learn what they’re already learning in school. So we made a deal… they wanted a break dancing class and a music class… break dancing something I know NOTHING about, and music something I could potentially teach, but not something that’s at the top of my list. And in return, they would try a theater club. I already have some programs in the works at different organizations for theater, but those are with small children and have more to do with development than social change. The teenage boys are my youth center love to talk about politics, about social problems, about the hardships of growing up in Morocco and their desire to travel and see the world, but the impossibility of that happening. They want an outlet to express these things, and I said if they trust me, they could do that through performance. Our first meeting is tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes. I also realized, that in the end,I would rather have 7 really dedicated students, who are looking to better themselves through extra-curricular activities than 50 students sitting in a classroom everyday yelling “teacher, teacher, teach me the present tense” and using me solely so they can pass their BAC. I don’t want to be an English teacher, I have no intention of leave the PC and being an English teacher, and in truth I believe these students need something much greater than English training. There’s a respect issue in Moroccan classrooms, but not the way you probably think. You’ve all read about my ramblings about the general disrespect of women, but in the classroom, it’s almost the opposite. Some PCVs would disagree with me, but if I enter the classroom with a lesson plan the students don’t care about learning, then i want them to tell me. However, they never do. I can sit in front of students for an hour teaching the difference between adverbs and adjectives, and they pretend like their interested, and the never come again because it’s too easy, they’re not getting challenged. Yesterday, three elementary school girls came to our break dancing club. They were TROOPERS, they did everything, tried all the moves, let the older boys help them, and then pulled me aside after and said they didn’t want to come anymore, because they didn’t want to learn breakdancing. This sort of attitude is consistent, and when I told them we could do a dance class just for them, they were pleasantly surprised and incredibly grateful… but that’s why we’re here, to build our teachings are the wants and needs of the youths of our community.  These kids want someone who will listen to them, who will do what they want, and help them on an individual basis achieve their goals.  In Peace Corps we are faced with different challenges, and one of the hardest ones for me has been: If you woke up in the morning without a schedule, with out a solid place of work or a boss/supervisor, if you woke up without a steady job or place that you had to be, and you still got paid, what would you do? It’s easy to sleep until noon, watch tv, make some cookies, teach an hour at the dar chebab, read a little and go to bed. We’ve all had those days, but it’s how many we take that creates a basis for our success. I hate those days. I hate them, they make me hate myself, and they make me look bad to my fellow PCVs and my community. In the past few months, I’ve refused to have those days. But it’s hard… to just walk out of your front door, and find something to do. Think about having to live your life that way, at least for a few months until you have a solid schedule of activities… you have to wake up, put yourself out there in another language, and hope that someone accepts you, and 9 times out of 10, they will. But then their Ministry needs a signed letter from Rabat, which is hard when you live 12 hours from Rabat. The PCV from Ethiopia wrote that Peace Corps will give you patience, and I couldn’t agree more. You have to be OK with showing up for a meeting 20 minutes outside your town and having no one be there… for four hours. Or maybe four days. You have to be OK with student-less classes at the youth center, and you have believe that tomorrow, someone will come, and they will possibly bring their friends.  And it’s not just patience, but an immense belief in the goodness of people, because there’s nothing harder then getting harassed and 30 seconds later being asked by a shop owner how you find Errachidia, and saying you love it. Or showing up for the tenth time to get your proposal signed to find the offices are closed… again… and then telling your host family that work is going really well.  This may seem a little backwards… if we praise people for their behavior, then they will keep acting that way, but we also can’t punish people because of the behavior of others. My shop owner isn’t the one harassing me, my host family not the ones who close the Ministry’s offices.  I’m positive I’ll write another entry like this one in the future… where I take a step back, and re-evaluate what’s happening, how I’m succeeding, and what needs work.  I’ve also found that a mindset that’s hard to overcome is that we’ll come in here and make a big, obvious, and quick difference. We’ll enter our community for two years and make this big BANG. But we’re not visitors, we are members of the community. We are building lives here for ourselves, and our relationships with others aren’t short-term, they’re real. We have to operate on a realistic basis and not expect to incite change, but to infiltrate our positive world views to those around us, and hopefully in the process make a difference.

Crystal Gomes, a close friend to me and so many others at CMU, passed away two days ago due to heart problems. Apart from the immense shock of the situation (she was 28), it’s absolutely heart breaking to all of us to have lost someone like Crystal. I’ve written and re-written this entry so many times, mainly because I’m not quite sure what I should say or what is appropriate to say right now. My heart goes out to her family and to Hunter, I would say I can only imagine what you’re going through, but I can’t even do that, I can’t even imagine.  What I do know, though, is how she impacted my life, my time at CMU, and specifically our last year together at school and how that’s carried through to how I live my life on a daily basis. She had so many quirky phrases and nuances that I often find myself mimicking… like finishing questions with a direct and dominant “yes or no?!” such as “Do you support the royal wedding, yes or no?!”  She was also an avid supporter of Kate Middleton, which was an obsession she sparked within our group of friends. But something about her that I’ll never forget was that she was really, truly, at the bottom of it all, one of the best natured people I’ve ever known. At a place like CMU drama, there are certain behaviors and attitudes that run rampant because of the high stress of our academics. We’ve all been guilty of being selfish, jealous, and sometimes just mean, but Crystal was never any of those things. She treated everyone with such respect, never leaving people out or putting anyone down. She took her work both very seriously and at the same time not-to-seriously… I almost never heard her complain. She loved what she did and emitted that attitude to so many people around her. Even if someone in the school wasn’t her friend, they knew who she was, through her beautiful designs and her incredible personality.  She was a costume designer, and an incredibly talented one at that, but what I will remember her for the most was that she was a woman that, in my opinion, all women should strive to emulate. Living in Morocco as a woman is really difficult, and I get upset about how I can change and often think that sometimes I can’t. But then I think about the way Crystal inspired people, and it was never by direct and outright statements, but by leading by example. I think if we all put a little Crystal into our daily lives… into the way we do things and the way we treat other people, I think we would all be a little happier and the world would be a little bit better. So to wine nights and royal weddings, to a beautiful soul and an incredible woman. You are so wonderful, we will all miss you more than you could ever know. 

Hello from back in Errachidia where I am sitting on my roof in the beautiful sun next to my two new turtles. Yes, turtles. Well, one is mine and the other is my friend Sara’s who is still in Rabat, but yesterday I made the 10 hour bus ride back with our new friends, yet to be named. So before I get to the more Peace Corps-related part of this entry, yes, you read right, I did spend the majority of my Valentine’s Day on a bus with two turtles. I’ve never been a cynic of Valentine’s Day, never been one of those people who call it a “halmark holiday” or “singles awareness day”. I’ve actually found that most of the people I know who are really down on Valentine’s Day have a lack of loving relationships in their life. And while I’ve never actually spent Valentine’s Day with “someone special” (unless you count my skype ‘date’ with Eliot yesterday!) I’ve always seen it as a day to really remember how special all the special people are in my life. Sara and I went out to dinner with someone from Peace Corps staff the night before Valentine’s Day and she said that she uses the day as a reminder to tell people that she loves them… Moroccans tend to keep in excellent contact with their family, calling them up to 4 or 5 times a day, but this woman said that even though she talks to her mother often, she sometimes forgets to tell her that she loves her. And the people we love in our lives know it, but it’s important sometimes to say it. It’s not about reassurances or reminders, it’s just about basic human emotion, it’s words we all need to hear sometimes. So while I may have spent yesterday on a bus with two turtles and not out to a fancy dinner, I couldn’t have been happier. Moving on…. I just returned from our In Service Training (or IST) in Mehdyia, a small beach down just north of Rabat. Unfortunately it was still quite cold, but that didn’t keep of from going in the ocean at least once. We had a week filled with sessions about grants, the new curriculum being introduced by the Ministry of Youth and Sports (what I also like to call the Ministry of Magic), spring camps (oh jeez…), and updates from all the ofice departments. Most of the sessions were information packed, some very helpful and others filled with some angry yelling, but if anything our group is good at is letting Peace Corps know what is working and what is not.  Above all, though, the best part of the week was seeing the rest of the group, most of which I hadn’t seen since November. We spent afternoons on the beach, soaking up any available sun and eating as many of the street-vendor donuts we could stuff in our mouths. We frequented a beach-side bar awkwardly named “Titanic” and spent a lot of time reconnecting, taking about our sites and projects, and making connections for possible projects with eachother. Something a lot of people said upon leaving was that they had a new found determination to make their service successful, and a newfound readiness to get things done. I definitely feel the same way, and made a list of goals for the next month or so. Some of them are work related and some are personal (such as finishing painting my apartment, buying a pressure cooker, and spending more time outside).  We then went back to Rabat to celebrate Sara’s 25th brithday! And had a really wonderful day. We ate bacon cheese burgers at an “Irish Pub” or as Irish-pubby as Morocco can get and walked around the city a bit. It felt good to get to know Rabat a little better, and it’s always crazy to see how different it is from the rest of Morocco. We went to a falafel place for dinner which was delicious. We also stuffed about 8 people in a small hotel room which ended up coming out to about the equivalent of 5 dollars a person. It was definitely and interesting end to the week. I stayed with Sara until yesterday morning because she had to stay in Rabat for a few days. We went to the old medina, which is where the turtle purchase happened, and I also bought a new leather bag and Sara bought a guitar! Her bargaining skills are much better than mine, but we both came out with some great new purchases. I also got a chance to visit the National Library (which you unfortunately need a membership to to enter the part with the books) and saw an interesting photography exhibit of schools throughout Morocco throughout the 1900s. The library, which was two or three stories, all white tile and glass, immaculately clean and almost futuristic looking, was definitely different from the large marble and wood libraries in New York with their big oak tables and old-time feel I used to spend numerous Sundays at when I was living there. We also went out to dinner with on of our favorite PC staffers, Fatima, and had an amazing seafood pasta dinner in a really cool cafe near the flower district. After all the moving, however, I was excited to get back to Errachidia and start some new projects and make some new connections in my community. Over the next two weeks I’m going to be advertising and hosting and “open house” in the dar chebab to get more kids interested in the clubs and classes I’d like to teach. I’m going to reach out to the woman’s center more determinedly and get my project with the pediatrics ward at the hospital going. My biggest struggle thus far has been finding where i”m needed in my community and what I realized at IST is that I have to put myself out there to every available source and see who wants or who needs my help. It will hopefully be a really busy next two weeks, and I can wait to update you on my progress! (Pictures of the turtles and IST to come soon) 

Protest Culture and A Different Look at the Egyptian Revolution On January 25th, 2011 a revolution began in Egypt. Exactly one year later, people gathered for one of the largest protests to ever see Tahrir Square. The picture above was taken at 4 pm Egyptian time (about 9 am in NYC, 8 am in Milwaukee, and 6 am in LA). Around this same time, these images were ablaze in the media across the world. People had been gathering since midnight, and finally at 4 pm, when they had their highest capacity, the world was struck with these powerful images of change. We see images like this throughout the world every so often, and they always tend to stir controversy. Most recently in America with the Occupy movement and across many Muslim countries with demands to change corrupt government and workers rights. And although not everyone may agree with these protests, gatherings, chantings, and people holding signs with bold and powerful statements, everyone at least feels the immense energy they generate. To see such a large group of people gathered together for a cause that’s important to them leaves even the most unbelieving of unbelievers a little bit touched.  While this protest a few days ago in Egypt may not have really struck a chord for people in the US, people here watched their television screens all. This poses a lot of questions… will other Middle Eastern and Northern African countries follow in their lead? Will these protests have a snowball effect, and if so, Morocco is sure to be close to the top of the line. Especially for PCVs, this could mean civil unrest, consolidation, or possibly evacuation — which would suck. There’s no eloquent way to say that being evacuated from the Peace Corps would just suck.  There were hourly updates on the protest, and it became clear as the day went on that it wasn’t just an homage to the beginning of the revolution, taking place exactly a year ago to the day. These citizens were reigniting what they felt had been lost over the last year. They were stating that while they’ve come a long way, they are not satisfied with their change.. they want more.. more rights, more freedoms, and penalties to all government officials that have ordered the revolutions leaders to be harmed or killed.  Social media has helped this cause in so many ways… many of the updates on the news were coming from people facebooking or tweeting inside the square. There was another twitter, however, offering a not so revolution-friendly account of the days events. I said before that most of the world was finding out about this protest around 4 pm Egyptian time, my twitter however started blowing up at about midnight exactly.  I’ve recently discovered, thanks to a Peace Corps newsletter, a social media tool developed by an American in Egypt called Harass Map. Harass Map encourages women in Egypt to call, text, facebook, email, or tweet any harassment activity to this website with as many or as few details as they feel comfortable, and the website consolidates the information and puts it on a map so the people of Egypt can have a visual description of all the different harassment cases in their country (from cat-calling to rape). I helps women to know that it’s OK to speak out about this type of behavior, especially because they’ve been forced to silence it for so long. Sometimes, when there is a particularly heinous crime, Harass Map will re-tweet or anonymously tweet the issue to warn women about different areas in different cities or different  establishments where they could potentially be in danger. On January 25th, there were hudred of “re-tweets” from Harass Map, beginning at midnight and continuing throughout the day of sexual assault in Tahrir Square during the protest. And these weren’t just cat-calls and hisses, these were extreme cases of groping and in some cases, groups of men targeting a single women and trying to drag her away or force her somewhere, hoping to get lost in the chaos of the crowd.  This is disturbing on two fronts. The first being that the people in the square were fighting for change. They wanted their country to grow, to be to prosper and enter into a righteous and un-corrupt state. But clearly, these passions only apply when it’s convenient. They want higher pay checks! Freedom of speech! Less government interaction with their personal media! But they don’t want anyone interfering when their trying to abuse their women. Is that change? Do that paint a picture of a country you would be proud to be apart of? I hope not.  The second thing I question is how many men in the crowd were actually there in support of the revolution, and how many were there to attempt assault? Clearly hundreds of men heard wind of the gathering and flocked for this purpose only. They say thousands of people were there. So while it may not be a small percentage, it is a percentage.  I think it’s outstanding that Egypt has a media tool like this, and I hope it expands to other countries around this side of the world soon… and every country eventually. Although countries like Egypt and Morocco may be difficult to live in as a woman because of these circumstances, we all know it happens everywhere, in every country, even the ones like America where we think it’s absent. And doesn’t that make you think twice about all the protests? In the Middle East or the Americas, whether it’s in Tahrir Square or on Wall Street… does it make them a little harder to stand behind?

*WARNING* This post has very little to do with my Peace Corps experience Idols, role-models, and the people I look up to have always been a very important part of my life and have, in my opinion, shaped me into the person I am today. While it’s always been known that my parents, grandparents, family members and many women and men I’ve worked with have fallen into this category, it’s not often that I talk about a celebrity as a role model. I don’t want to go so far as to say there aren’t many women to look up to in the world, because everyone knows that’s simply not true, but I always had a hard time pinpointing someone in the media that I ever wanted to emulate. Mostly because they were in the media, and being in that position is never something I’ve envied.  Now I’m sure most people look at the picture above, of Dutchess Kate Middleton, and ask “really?”. And yes, I understand how fickle this may seem… Someone married into English royalty, with no deserving actions to gain the media’s attention besides her husband. Many argue Kate Middleton hasn’t done anything to gain such importance in the public eye, and as a professor of mine in college said on the day of the royal wedding: “there are dying children in Africa, so why does anyone care about Kate Middleton?” Well, I stand, now, among the people of Africa, and I can tell you that it’s in times like these where a woman like this is as important as ever to be featured in the eye of the media. While many girls fancy the Dutchess for her incredible style and bold choice of hats (and I confess, I do love her style and gawk over it often), it’s also nice to see a woman in the spotlight that dresses in such an appropriate fashion. And don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of celebrities that dress scantily clad that deserve (and have) mounds of respect and intellect, but it’s not very often you see a woman in a sharp business suit that is also making the news (that of course isn’t a presidential candidate or political figure). The media has so often chosen to give their attention to women for what they wear (or what they don’t wear) and focus on the aesthetics rather than anything else, and because our civilization has evolved in such a way, women who bare more receive more attention. And whether or not people want to admit this, Kate’s style is important, people watch it, and I believe it’s bringing back a lost sense of class and elegance. I’m also a firm believer of doing research before making any bold statements or forming intense opinions, and I think a lot of people have jumped to the conclusion that because Kate Middleton is part of the royal family, she doesn’t deserve our attention. After all, the royal family has proved to be the center of controversy and gossip, following in the footsteps of those American celebrities who are simply famous for being famous. But what I don’t think a lot people realize is while her only act of accomplishment was falling in love with a prince, she can use this “face” to really make a difference. The small differences she made in her wedding, even, were a notable step for a woman’s role in marriage and the woman’s role in leadership. I’m currently living in one of the worst countries for women to live in in the world. And it’s upsetting, at times, that the girls here follow certain pop stars who sing about mourning over a broken heart, needing a man, and just wanting to find love to make their life complete. Kate Middleton has used her marriage as a way to show the world that it will not be a one-sided commitment, and while people in America may look at that statement and scoff, that could be really valuable lesson to the female youth of Morocco. She has also used her “fame” to promote charity and well-being in her country and in countries around the world. As someone currently working in a service and volunteer sector, to watch another individual doing this for the goodwill of their country is always encouraging. Some people argue that she’s doing this to promote a positive image, but if that’s the case, then great! Because it is!  It promotes such a positive image. And while she may not be doing these things if she weren’t a Dutchess, a big reason she’s been given the opportunity is BECAUSE she’s a Dutchess. Her “fame” has the ability to highlight organizations that are really doing good things for the community, helping programs that are helping the underprivileged.  In my last year at CMU, I read an article for a class that stated people, especially Americans, love to believe the negative. In the early 2000’s a report came out that said eating more fruit in your diet would help to prevent cancer. There were mounds of paperwork and studies proving this theory, and then a group of scientists got together and tested this only on people that had eaten a lot of fruit in their diet their entire lives. These people, obviously, had already introduced their body to the cancer-fighting vitamins, so when they introduced basically the same amount of nourishment, the test obviously failed. This ONE study appeared in the media, and the universe grasped it and stopped believing fruit helped to prevent cancer. Because of this one piece of paper, hundreds of hours and hundreds of people’s attempts at helping the medical community failed.  I always think it’s interesting when people disregard to royal family as “un-important” simply because they’re labeled royal. If given the power, one can choose to make it worthwhile or to make it useless. Westerners are so conditioned to follow those in the media that make it useless. We buy the products celebrities buy, we wear the clothes they wear (and I confess, I would wear anything that Kate Middleton wore), we tweet their tweets and repost their facebook posts. We look at them for face-value, for the latest trends, and the important aesthetics—the things, at the end of the day (in my opinion) don’t matter. And while I may be biased at this moment in my life in the Peace Corps, isn’t it better to value these people for their actions? So how dare we judge them for doing good and worthwhile things with the “fame” they’ve acquired, deserved or not? I think Kate Middleton is an amazing role model for women and girls, royalty or not. Do your research, I think you’ll agree.

Taylor and I leaving Rabat, on our way down south (don’t be fooled, I have no idea how to play that guitar). Rabat, Morocco. November 2011. Photo credit: Meredith Stilwell!

Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Photo Contest: No photos from Morocco, but wonderful shots nonetheless!

Hello readers! I created some links at the top of this page for anyone A)looking to send me a letter/package and B)any future Moroccan PCVs… I noticed I was getting quite a few hits from the Peace Corps Journals website, so I included a packing list which could be helpful. Hopefully this will help for easy access for anyone interested. So here they are, and the direct links are at the top of the page: Packing List!: http://maggieinmorocco.tumblr.com/packing  Address: http://maggieinmorocco.tumblr.com/myaddress

**note: unless you saw my senior thesis production, the connections in this blog post will be most confusing** I was expecting to receive a couch surfer this past Saturday, a man from France who was traveling Morocco by hitch hiking and trading bracelets/other various art things for rides. To my surprise, I ended up with three French travelers, but only two to begin with. They called me around 8 am and we met up so I could show them to my apartment. I’ve always been horrible with names, and while I knew Damien from our correspondance on the internet, I completely glossed over the girl’s name, partially because of her heavy French accent. She didn’t speak very good English, and I speak basically no French, so it was interesting to communicate mostly in arabic (she had been living and working in Morocco for a few months as well). Her and Damien were traveling, sometimes splitting up to see their own sights and sometimes meeting up to go at it together. They also told me about another girl, to be explained later, that was much more of a free-spirit, taking invitations at a whim and sounded like much more of a “commander” or “captain” of her own travels. This couple seemed happy and eager. I took them hiking through the olive groves near Errachidia, and showed them the local market. We escaped the frigid drafts coming through my big, empty, white apartment (that, as I notice now about my apartment, only seems to have one of everything: plate, mug, pan, pillow….) and had a delicious and colorful salad on the roof. We spent the afternoon talking about traveling and the future. We talked about the idea of home, and making a home wherever you are (I try not to think it was a stab at my less-than-homey apartment), and enjoyed the Errachidia rays.  Because of the general lack of things to do here at night, we decided to make fajitas and the girl stated: “I’m thankful to be eating my first mexican food made my an american while in Morocco.” She was eager to show me pictures of her other travels, and show me bits and pieces from her home (small trinkets and various pictures and videos) and we finally said our goodnights. I awoke the next morning to yet another French person in my apartment (mentioned earlier) and upon first glance knew she was friends with the couple. She wore baggy brown pants that were tattered at the bottom and a large scarf around her head with hoop earrings giving her the appearance of a pirate. She had just come from spending time on the beach with a Moroccan friend and talked constantly about her love for the water. She was passing through Errachidia and wanted to have breakfast with us, and I was happy to host. As the trio left, we wished each other well and exchanged contact info. They wrote theirs on a piece of paper which I left on my table without looking and walked them down to the main door of my apartment. The first girl gave me a sweeping hug and told me she’s not sure where her travels will take her next, but if I ever find myself in Nantes, France to call her, and she hopes we meet again. I closed the door, returning to my apartment, and looked at the piece of paper on my coffee table only to discover her name was Iris.

You’re probably confused by this title. So to shed some light, I did some hard thinking with the New Year. Let me explain: While in training, our groups would often complain how difficult it was to teach an entire group of students all with varying levels of English. We would get a group of kids that thought the class was too easy, a group that thought it was too hard, and a group that thought it was just right. We would often say how nice it would be to be in our own youth centers where we could create a schedule and break our students up accordingly. After a few weeks in Errachidia I realized this dream was nothing more than just that. I made schedules, posted them in the youth center and handed them out to interested kids. I would ask students as they entered my class if they understood the class was advanced or beginner, and they would nod. I was trying to be tough, to instill a schedule, and to show I was dedicated to it.  And yet as I explained to my advanced class the difference between past perfect and past continuous, I would scan the room to see a handful of glazed looks and confused glances to fellow classmates. And as I slowly explained the uses of a possessive pronoun to my beginner class, I would see a plethora of eye-rolls at just how “beginner” my lesson was. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, kids would come to my classes as they pleased, and teaching English was becoming not only frustrating, but I was dreading it more and more every day. I was also confused. Why were these kids coming to the wrong classes? They understand what a schedule is, they go to school and I’m assuming they make it to the right classroom for that. So I thought back to CBT and remembered how the kids really opened up and starting enjoying themselves when we started teaching English through different vices. I even remember writing my blog post about my environmental day more enjoyable than writing about teaching basic grammar classes. And when we asked the kids why they didn’t come to the youth center all year long, they said it was because we weren’t there… there was no one there to do activities with them. It’s not that these kids don’t want to learn English, but during a class I was attempting to teach a few weeks ago, a student stopped me and said: “Excuse me, but could maybe talk about Christmas instead?” I could tell his fellow classmates were slightly embarrassed and they had coaxed him into it, scared of my reaction. I was surprised, yet happy. I didn’t have pretend that I knew what the present simple participle was (is that even a thing?) and could talk openly about something I loved, and I could tell they loved it too. We had a discussion, it wasn’t just me talking at them. They asked what Americans ate and laughed at the idea of a big, fat white-haired man dressed in red coming down the chimney to give out presents.  So I sat down and decided if I was going to last for 2 years in Errachidia, I had to stop teaching what I dreaded and started teaching what I loved. My weekly schedule changed from switching between a beginner and advanced class every other day to an English Film Club, a grammar class (had to keep that in there), a Communications and Media class, and a Text Analysis class for my really advanced students.  I began my first film club by showing Willy Wonka (the old one, of course) and at the end, one of my students said he thought the movie was about optimism and truth. He said the message seemed to be that good things happen to people who do good things, and the rest of the boys (because I basically teach all boys now) were silent (which was a first) and pondered this for a few moments before packing up and leaving, but before closing the door turned and asked if we could be watching another movie next week, and when I said yes, they all responded positively. For my grammar class instead of covering verb tenses, pronouns, or vocabulary, I decided to teach them about idioms. We covered some basic american idioms, and talked about common themes in idioms: color, body parts, elements, and command verbs, and then I had them write their own idioms. Usually when I ask students to share in class I wait a solid 10 seconds (and it’s a LONG 10 seconds) before someone meekly raises their hand. With this exercise, the hands SHOT up, and we went well over time as the students shared, discussed, and debated their idioms.  And for my analysis class, I found a nifty lesson plan online about how to teach the poetry of Langston Hughes. The boys who come to this class are in their last year of high school, and have to take a difficult test at the end of the year in which there will a long essay or some sort of writing in English with follow up questions… in English. I’ve read samples of these questions, and they are SAT level, and this for people whose English is their third, and sometimes fourth language. Also, if they don’t pass this test, they don’t graduate high school. I decided to help them with text analysis, and this is the same group of boys who had asked me about Christmas, so I knew American culture was something they were interested in. I picked out an assortment of poems, which they read while listening to recordings from Birdland. After each poem we would discuss themes, imagery, and overall meaning. The boys were particularly hung up, however, on a particular line from the poem “Democracy” in which Langston Hughes writes “I have as much right/ As the other fellow has/ To stand/ On my own two feet/ And own the land”. They were at first confused by what this meant and we talked about what defines ownership and citizenship. From there the debate grew to Moroccan independence (and I was surprised they all agreed Berbers were the first natives of Morocco) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The discussion followed them out of the classroom, poems in hand, and for the first time since beginning teaching in my youth center I felt like I had accomplished something.  It’s not about learning English grammar or adhering to schedule, it’s about being challenged. If these kids REALLY wanted to learn English, they could do it at school, they all have English classes and extra hours. And that’s part of the problem, they go to school most hours of the day with no extra-curricular activity, and most of these boys are getting to the age where they are wondering where their language learning goes next. They can tell you what a past participle is, but they want to apply it. Today was the second week of film club, and we watched Rudy (in lieu of the upcoming playoffs, of course…) and as the coach screamed in one of the Notre Dame players face “Do you want the shit kicked out of you?” one of my students turned back to me and said “That was an idiom.”

Luckily ran into a friendly farmer who lent us his donkey to cross the river! Errachidia, Morocco. January 2012.

Think about your daily routine. Going to your work and stopping to buy breakfast along the way, or even a cup of coffee? Going to a market or grocery store to pick up lunch? Maybe after work picking up some things you need for dinner, maybe doing a little shopping or going to Walgreens to get those every days things you always seem to run out of: pens, paper, ink, film, shampoo? I can remember driving home from work in the US and being annoyed at having to pull off the road 500 feet and spending less than 5 minutes going into a store, finding what I need, and waiting at the cash register when all I really wanted was to be home.  Sometimes in Morocco I think about my cultures vast differences with this country and wonder who is getting it right? For example, the public transportation system in this country between cities is amazing. You can take plane, train, bus, or taxi anywhere and all for relatively cheap. Granted in the US we have Megabus, Bolt bus, etc… but getting that $1 ticket involves booking months in advance. Here, I can walk up to the taxi stand or the bus station and be on my way usually in less than an hour usually for about 6 or 7 dollars. There are different kind of taxis with different rules and if you have any sort of competency of the language you won’t get ripped off. I think in this instance Morocco is getting it right.  When it comes to shopping, however, I’m still on the border, because while shopping in America means going into a store, picking out what you want, and paying for it while usually realizing everything is overprices because of consumer inflation, it’s vastly different here. When I go to the market to buy my food for the week, my “game” begins before I even leave the house. I make sure not to wear anything too nice or tight fitting. While I don’t wrap my head, anything kind of shabby or a little dirty usually works better, anything basically to indicate I’m not a wealthy tourist. I first look for a man (always a man, there are never women food sellers) who looks content, someone who will make eye contact with me, and someone smiling is a big plus. When I find my target I slowly approach and begin by observing the vegetables, usually always looking at them with a “stinky” look on my face as to indicate they are of bad quality (even though they usually aren’t) If I catch the sellers eye I always try to initiate conversation with the standard arabic greetings to let him know right off that I can speak his language and, again, am not just a tourist milling around the market as if it’s a foreign sightseeing location. I make sure to have my reusable plastic shopping bag, standard for any Moroccan food shopper, and try not to look at any sort of list I might have made as if, like a regular Moroccan, I always buy the same foods in the same amounts. Usually after greeting this man, he looks surprised at my use of the language and will engage in some sort of conversation, asking if I live here, work here, am a student or a teacher, how long I’ve been here and assessing my arabic skills. This is always a good sign, conversation is always a good sign especially when the market is busy because much like I am interested in this man’s foods he is interested in what kind of people are buying them. After mulling around the booth, picking up various vegetables and fruits, squeezing them and making sure he knows that I’ve found some rotten ones in the mix and am not happy about it, I ask how much certain vegetables are per kilo. This is where the real game starts.  Sometimes I get lucky and I get a good price right off the bat. If this person knows me, maybe has seen me before, sees me conversing with a fellow Moroccan member of the community I run into, or is impressed with my language skills they know not to try and rip me off. But usually the price I ask for is about double what I know it should be paying. If it’s anything more than double and the man isn’t making eye contact with me, I immediately walk away and find another seller. People like this usually are not only trying to make more money off me, but doing it because they don’t like me. They don’t like I’m there, living in their country, buying their food, and therefore I’m not interested in giving them business. If it’s double or less I know I can usually work my way down. I begin by immediately looking offended and ask him to repeat himself as if I’ve heard him wrong. If he gives me the same price I cut him off, saying “no no no, this is way too expensive” and giving him the price I know it should be. Sometimes this works, but sometimes it doesn’t. They explain to me the beautiful quality of the food, it’s expensive “just today” but if I come back tomorrow maybe the price will go down, and offering for me to taste it. This is where my previous observation skills come in handy and I pick out a few of the vegetables or fruits with giant bruises or mold. I explain these foods are dirty (musxin) or bad quality (mazwininsh). If he still won’t buy it (no pun intended) I have two choices. I can begin to walk away with hopes that he’ll call me back and give me a good price, or I can explain that I’m not a tourist, I live here without a lot of money, I buy food all the time and I know he’s ripping me off so he needs to give me a good price. The later of these two options can have extreme consequences. If it works, it works well and they will give me the food for a good price, shaking my hand and saying I’m welcome in Morocco and welcome to shop at his food stand whenever I need something. Sometimes they’ll even offer to help me buy spices, things for my house, anything to make sure I don’t get ripped off like he just tried to do to me. Morocco can be funny that way. The other option of a reaction is that he will be really offended and shoo me away from his stand. Whenever I pull out the “oh poor me” excuse (or in arabic “muskina”) it inevitably embarrasses the seller. Sometimes, they take it like a champ and sometimes the idea of being embarrassed by a woman is unacceptable, especially a foreign woman. How dare I infer that they are ripping me off? How dare I infer that they are lying about the price of their foods? They are honest men! It is a sin to lie, but I wouldn’t understand that because I’m not Muslim and I don’t understand the same morals that they live under. These are all things they say to me in a raised voice, usually drawing the attention of bystanders, and in turn of my embarrassment of them, they embarrass me.  In America I can’t imagine standing for this. If I could, I would fight, explaining they aren’t being a good Muslim because I know for a fact they are lying to me and shame on them for pulling their religion into it. But, because I work for an American organization in which I am supposed to be representing a positive attitude towards the community, not picking fights, and turning the other way when it comes to harassment (because in a way, this is a form of harassment), I just shake my head, say “hshuma” (or shame on you) and walk away. Sometimes, I think this hits harder, but I’m never too sure. So after all this, I hopefully walk away with some assortment of foods for the week ahead. But this is the easy part. Yes, you read right the EASY part. Buying “things” is always a much bigger struggle. There is no “possibility” of them giving you a good price off the bat, it’s always at least 3 times inflated from what I know it should be. There also isn’t the variety of sellers like with food. There are a multitude of food stands to chose from, always having good quality foods, but sometimes there is only one stand open that sells rolling pins. The bargaining conversation over “things” always ends with me singing the “oh poor me” song and often telling the seller that his things are bad quality (which is never something you want to have to say to someone whose life work is selling rolling pins… that their rolling pins suck), and if there was anyone else that sold rolling pins you would go buy it from them. Sometimes you have to play the game of pretending to be interested in something you don’t want, bargaining it down, and when the seller won’t give you the price you want, picking up the thing you secretly want and saying you’ll “settle” for it, even though it’s much worse that the first item. This tactic can be a lot harder because sellers often anticipate it.  One tactic I have learned doesn’t work is walking away and coming back. Often in this situation, saying you’re going to go look for something better and returning only yields a higher price than the first time you asked and posses an even harder challenge to get the price where you know it should be. You’ve insulted this persons goods and then let him realize that you couldn’t find it anywhere else and now have no other options, showing him you NEED it. If you ever expressing NEEDING something to sellers, you’re done for, and the price will usually not budge at all.  An then there are the days when the fight just seems like too much work. As Peace Corps volunteers we make the same amount as the people in our community, which is much less than the poverty line in America. So while I have to look at the prices here through the eye of a Moroccan, I realize paying the equivalent of $3 for a good quality rolling pin instead of $1.50 sometimes isn’t worth the fight. Especially when I just want to make tortillas and if I just give the man the money instead of ensuing in the bargaining game, I will make it home quicker and be eating my tasty mexican feast sooner. 

Wonderful video articulating how educational inflation is diminishing the importance of the arts in education. Watch!

I remember in high school doing the math for when I would graduate college, and upon realizing it was in 2011 thinking 2011 sounds like an awkward year. It’s hard to explain but it doesn’t have quite the ring of 2010 and the strange combination of 20 (an even number) and 11 (an uneven number) just seemed so strange. And while I write this, I realize that having had these thoughts at all is also extremely strange, but I’m someone that get’s excited at the prospect of those days where the numbers match up (01/01, 02/02, etc…). So with this understanding, I was sure 2011 just wouldn’t cut it. Safe to say, that statement is not only wrong, but 2011 has been one of the most favorably memorable years thus far.  If I look back a year ago today, I was making plans to spend New Years in Chicago (with Hannah!, and remember it being strangely 60 degrees…) having no idea where I would be after graduation or even what the year would bring. I knew I would be directing a production for the CMU school of drama, I would be participating in showcase, and I would be hopefully walking across the Chosky stage in May to collect my diploma. All of those things happened, but for the first time, after I walked off that stage, there would be no one on the other side directing me to where I should go next. No more class schedule, rehearsal schedule, required meetings or papers to write. And while I’ll always have the guidance of my teachers and mentors, there was no one giving me advice as to what the next steps would be. 2011 was a terrifying prospect, and I’m glad to say I’m coming out of it with a head held high and able to pat myself on the back for what I believe is a job well done. I did accomplish all the things I listed before. I directed a production of “Still Life with Iris” for the CMU season, and learned whole heartedly that I really enjoy working in theater and entertainment for young audiences. If there’s anything that production gave me, it was watching the faces of the children who watched my show, listening to their amazing insight, and receiving satisfaction from their parents that Iris’s story had impacted their lives. One particular mother emailed me that her daughters often play-acted the Still Life story together and would ask their parents to do the “Great Goods kiss” before bed (something hard to understand if you didn’t see the production). Children watch our art with the most critical eye imaginable, but not for the things we learn about in school. At Carnegie Mellon we learn how to compose a good stage picture. How to use color and architecture to tell a story. How to help actors recreate good moments every night on stage. And those are important things, all of them, but we forget sometimes that these things don’t matter if they hold no bearing on the message we’re sending. The “pretty things” in theater, the nice stage pictures, dramatic costumes, beautifully painted floors, satisfying music, and well spoken lines… those things mean nothing to children if the story can’t open doors for their own imagination and help them connect what’s on the stage to their own lives.  The next big piece of news for my year came in April when I was invited to serve with the US Peace Corps. I received a phone call asking me for some preferences… If I would like to teach English in the horn of Africa or work at a youth center, completely unstructured, in North Africa. I knew immediately that I would rather be working in the youth center and after realizing the only open country in North Africa was Morocco, and enormous weight was lifted. While I had originally wanted to work in the horn, the idea of working on a free-lance basis was much more interesting and exciting. So after traveling coast to coast for interviews, graduating, leaving my Pittsburgh home, and moving back to Milwaukee for the summer did I find more unexpected wonderful moments in 2011. I worked for the summer in the Summerfest Production office spending long days and long nights working with some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. And in the mix of all this craziness meeting Eliot. It was, safe to say, a bang of a beginning to what would be one of the best summers on record. After spending so much time with my family and friends, and as my departure date for Morocco in September grew nearer, it became harder and harder to say goodbye to the comfort and love I had found in my home. I have been in Morocco for just over 100 days, and as I look to enter 2012, find myself in somewhat of the same place I did a year ago. While I know that there will be certain formalities… camps, meetings, work related traveling, etc… Whatever happens to me in this next year is very much up to me. The impact and service I subject myself to will depend very much on my motivation. Continuing my service takes, at the very least, an immense will to accomplish.  Happy New Year! Onward to 2012!

View from my roof & drying my socks! Errachidia, Morocco. December 2011.

A graveyard near the old medina. Fes, Morocco. November 2011.

Going away party. Immouzer, Morocco. November 2011. (top: with my hoste sisters, mid-left: Meredith&Doha, mid-right: Doha, bottom: just playin’)

I made a tree out of cardboard and wrapped it in some decorations I found at a local shop. Merry Christmas from Errachidia, Morocco!

Hello America/blog world, I have not been keeping you up to date! And for that I am sorry, however, not until receiving a wonderful package from my mom and dad have I been able to get on my computer/blog because I was without a charger. But yesterday, after checking my post box and receiving two wonderful holiday cards from Grandma and the Clark/Kaufmann’s did I realize the small slip of paper stuck between them was my package notice! My parents graciously sent me an abundance of things (candy, brown sugar, vanilla, coffee) and most importantly, a computer charger. I have been in Errachidia now for just over three weeks and things are going really well. Upon arriving on a cold and rainy night (although, not as frigid as the numbing cold of Immouzer), things here have only become brighter and much more dry.  I’m staying with a WONDERFUL host family about a 15 drive from Errachidia, in their beautiful house near the university in town. I have a host mother, host father, brother and sister (brother is 12 and sister is 18). My host sister spent a year with the YES program in America, living in Hawaii and going to an American high school, so she is fluent in English and can appreciate some American-isms that I have yet to find in other Moroccans (such as listening to loud music with doing the dishes, and baking brownies). My brother is also very proficient at English, and we’ve come into a kind of interesting dialogue where he speaks to me in English and I to him in Arabic, and we correct each other when need be. My host mother is a math teacher and my host father a sports teacher, and while this family seems to be much more religious than my last, they are extremely progressive. Living with them has been one of the best experiences I’ve had so far in learning about how Moroccans keep their traditions, yet progress in the technological and scientific world (a blog post soon to come). At first I was a bit apprehensive to stay with another host family, as I feel I’m ready to be on my own and really dig into to living the Moroccan life, but this homestay has been crucial, not only into my immersion into Errachidia, but into Morocco as well. The Peace Corps is inevitably filled with ups and downs, we are given a chart at the beginning of service that “predicts” when we’ll be at our happiest and saddest moments. While CBT was definitely filled with some of the most intense ups and downs I’ve experienced in adult life thus far (ranging from ‘what the heck am I doing here’ to ‘joining Peace Corps has been the best decision I’ve ever made’), it’s difficult to put into words the feeling that came with moving to Errachidia in my first few days. I would wake up in a panic, half not knowing exactly where I was (considering we had moved around to four different locations in the past week) and half having absolutely no idea what my next two year were going to entail. This feeling was, of course, very dramatic. I had just spent two months preparing for this with language and technical training, however, I had never felt more unstable, excited, terrified, curious, and confused not only in my adult life, but in my life EVER. I had ricocheting feelings consistently between wanting to quit and being extremely elated to be placed in a town such as Errachidia. Nevertheless, I put on my best game face, and tried to being my immersion as soon as possible. In the first few days, there was a hip-hop workshop being held by the New Jersey/NYC based band ‘Legacy’. It was really inspiring to watch the band working with Moroccan youth. They initially wanted translators, but soon found out they didn’t need them, as their non-verbal communication was incredible with the kids. They taught them basic hip-hop and rap structures, worked on beat boxing and rhythm, and the lead singer (who has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard) took a group to work on song writing and lyrics. The band is doing an African tour, down the horn I believe, to promote music and leadership. Tabarkallah (congrats) to them, it sounds like an amazing project.  So after the constant run-in with the various PCVs who were in Errachidia for the workshop and other travel reasons, I was soon left somewhat alone. After spending a few days at my homestay, reading, watching tv, and walking around the neighborhood, I decided I needed to start something… whatever it may be… to keep my mind off the crazy emotional changes it was going through. So I began coming into the centre every day in the morning and staying until relatively late in the afternoon, walking around shops,  meeting shop owners, and getting a feel for the city. I was lucky enough to inherit a (slightly) furnished apartment, with a stove, butagaz, (not-really-working) fridge, and some sad ponges, but this was nevertheless where I would be living, and there was a lot of work to be done until it began to feel like home. I’ve begun buying things (some better ponges, a new mattress, a nice desk, and some tables and decorative touches). But my number one project, was cleaning. There was a few week gap in which the old PCV moves out, and I moved in, numerous other PCVs were using the apartment to stay in while it was “empty”. Therefore, there was a thick layer of grime in every corner and on every inch of tile all over the apartment. There were dirty dishes left in the sink, the leftovers of the other PCVs ransacking my apartment for anything they might want before I arrived (medicine, papers, foam, cardboard, clothes, even some moldy food…) and nevertheless, a lot to be taken care of. After about three weeks, safe to say I’ve almost finished, and learned a valuable lesson about being respectful to the volunteers in groups which come after mine.  About five days into my stay in Errachidia, I began teaching at the dar chebab. I had my first English class of two girls (you have to start somewhere!) and my classes have now grown to between 5 and 15 kids a lesson. My mudira is really great, and is definitely helping with my success. There are very few kids who come to my dar chebab, so that will definitely be a challenge. I was approached by some kids wanting to start a film club to watch American movies, which we’ll be beginning next week, and I’ve had some interest in arts and theater classes as well. I’m hoping to be in contact with the woman’s association soon as well and the grade school to see if I can recruit students for more classes that are art related. Along with being in such a great city also comes the downfalls. One of the biggest issues in Errachidia I’ve faced thus far is harassment. It really runs rampant, and there isn’t an instance I don’t leave my house when men are yelling things at me in arabic, french, english, spanish, and probably other languages as well. So far I’ve ignored it, shooting a few piercing glances every here and there, but that’s mostly because I don’t yet have the language to combat such instances. I’m convinced these boys aren’t truly trying to make a romantic impact, because the ones that are have wildly different tactics, these boys are trying to make me uncomfortable. And truth be told, I does make me uncomfortable. But my biggest question has been why? Why do I get so agitated when these boys say things? Most of them are wildly uneducated, having not passed their BAC and living off their parents still at the young age of 25. In my eyes, they are literally scum, so why let it bother me? Because no one does anything about it. In CBT we had an argument once about what cops would do in the USA if someone were being harassed. There was a mixture of opinions between saying they would step in and saying they would just walk by, but I truly believe if the harassment was as bad in America as it is here, law enforcement would absolutely take a role. There’s a difference between getting cat called as you walk down a street every once in a while and having a constant, daily issue while on your way to stores, work, school, or home. Here, there are two types of law enforcement… the police and the gendermes. What the gendermes do, I’m still unsure, but what they do in Errachidia is pretty clear. If they aren’t turning their back to the harassment in town, they are the ones doing the harassing. It’s a strange thing to accept, that a government agency would act in such a way, in uniform. It’s also astonishing the lack of response from local townspeople, and something I ran into which shocked me the other day, was harassment from a boy who was with another Moroccan girl. And she laughed. Now I understand this harassment generally stems from the fact I’m a woman, but also the fact that I’m a foreigner. A lot of these people feel the need to make uncomfortable, when I stand for something they envy… a life outside of Morocco. They are confused why I’m living here, and jealous that I’m not living here forever. They don’t know if I’m American, French, Spanish, or Antarctican, and as I said before, this small percent of the population, is usually highly uneducated and choose not to see the value in their country, only the want to live in a different one. And what they DO see of America or any westernized civilizations is what’s on the surface… money, wealth, success, and freedom. Which is true, in some cases. Some Americans are wealthy, successful, but so are some Moroccans. The idea of poverty in America is unfathomable to these people. So while they yell down the street for me to marry them, I know it’s not because I’m the object of desire, it’s because a life outside of this country is the what’s enticing. It’s a difficult attitude to be around, I think that’s at the base of what makes me so uncomfortable… the attitude. Everyone wants to live somewhere where people are happy, live is thriving, and spirits are high, but I have to remember that comes with joining the Peace Corps… integrating into a community where that is not necessarily the case.  Other than this hiccup, however, I’m finding Errachidia to be a great place to spend my service. There is a lot happening and a lot to work on, and I’m excited to start learning what I can do to help. While English teaching is definitely one of top wanted and attended classes at the dar chebab, I’m learning slowly that I don’t want to make English teaching my service. I’m sure I will teach English for a large majority of my two years, but I also hope to really find my niche… which I’m sure will happen with time. Apart from teaching I’ve also been spending time with my awesome site-mate, Dipesh, who’s been here now for a year. We live in the same building and can often be seen gorging ourselves with delicious pastries from a local restaurant… a great cafe which I’m sure will fill my stomach and empty my wallet numerous times over the next few years. Dipesh has really helped me to learn the lay of the land and has shown me some great spots for shopping for things for my house. Settling into a new life is always difficult, but I’m happy to make Errachidia my home.  I hope everyone is enjoying the hustle and bustle of the holidays! I am definitely missing America (and especially Milwaukee) around this time of year. 

So after further investigation, this is actually my address. Not to worry, if you had sent something, it will most likely make it, but just to be exact here it is: Margaret Bridges BP 271 Errachidia 52000 Province de Meknes Morocco Portable #0671832342 (if it’s a package) Sorry for the confusion! Hope you’re enjoying the snow!

on being a "working woman"...: Morocco slated as one of the worst countries in the world for female equality in the work place and society (and Ireland and Lesotho as two of the best!)

on being official....: Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

A Stick Man Adventure!: noteasybeingmean: Draw a stickman. Have oodles of fun. (thank you Taylor!)

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to update because my computer is sans charger, but once it comes I will show you all bits from Errachidia! (pictures, words, and all)

Margaret Bridges BP 271 Avenue Moulay Ali Chrif Centre Errachidia Morocco and if it’s a package or envelope bigger than would fit in a small PO box, write : Portable # 0671832342  (a few spaces underneath morocco) Looking forward to your letters! And I’ll update about Errachidia soon!

Sorry for lack of posts of all kinds BUT I’ve been a very busy volunteer this past week. Upon my return to Immouzer, we celebrated the Moroccan holiday 3id kabir. This is their biggest holiday and is celebrated across the country (and the Muslim work, actually). Each family buys a sheep (or in the case of my family, 5 sheep) and after the morning prayer, slaughters the sheep(s). The father of the household is always the one to do the slaughtering, and in some instances they may hire a butcher. Being able to slaughter the sheep for the family is a prominent step to be seen as a man in the eyes of his community. The streets are running with blood, and many families hung their skinned sheep in the doorway to show off to the community (and let the blood drain). From there, the women proceed to prepare the meet. A big tradition in Immouzer (and I’m assuming everywhere) was to barbecue the organs, cut them up, wrap them in fat, and barbecue them again. This seemed to be a favorite of Moroccans, however, not a favorite of mine. The head is often burned and the hooves chopped off. For days after 3id, I would see dogs running around the streets with either hooves or sheep lungs in their mouths. Families ate various organs for the first few days, and then proceeded to the meat. Safe to say I was eating sheep meat until my very last meal in Immouzer. 3id was a very interesting experience for me. I had paired up this Moroccan holiday with our largest holiday in America… Christmas. 3id kabir, in my experience, was nothing like Christmas. And not in a bad way, but in a culturally different way. I feel like I have a much better understanding of the values Moroccans hold important. I understand a little better how their culture and their religion merges (or lack thereof). But on the other hand, there were many similarities. Dressing up, family, food, and the teenagers sneaking off to use facebook or play on the computer at any occasion. To say I was confused for most of the day is an understatement…while we had a short explanation of what might take place on the day, I found it difficult to keep up with the small traditions or events that would take place and had to remind myself not to feel bad for not knowing exactly what was going on at every second. Overall, the holiday was exhausting, yet a good insight into Moroccan culture. Right after the holiday we had our final project at the youth center. We held a three day “camp” with each day focusing on a different topic. The first two days were linked to American sports, exercise, healthy living and eating. I helped to organize the final day which focused on the environment. For my activity I organized a trash pick up (and turned it into a game!) It went extremely well and I highly recommend this to someone trying to organize a similar activity. We split the kids up into to groups of two or three and their “leader” was a PCV. They were given one small bag at a time and had to go run, fill it up with trash, and bring it back to receive a new bag. For every bag they received one point, and at the end, the team with the most points received a prize (I used candy and apples). If I had thought about it more, I would assigned certain trash items to certain point levels. For examples, in Immouzer there is an abundance of empty yogurt containers laying around… so if they filled an entire bag with yogurt containers, that might have been different points than just miscellaneous trash. Overall, though, it went really well and the students picked up 45 bags of trash in under 10 minutes. Afterwards, we asked them if they would be interested in doing a similar activity in the spring with their abandoned natural spring pool which is now filled with trash, to help clean it and get it up and running as a pool again—they seemed immensely interested. After the trash pick up, I took a group of girls, and we painted empty yogurt containers, filled them with dirt, and planted seeds as an exercise to show how you can reuse what may seem like garbage. A bunch of other kids joined in, and we painted about 25 planters in all. Some of the students brought them home, and we lined the remaining ones up around the youth center for decoration. Overall the camp went really well, which we were a bit worried about at first. Because of the holiday, only three kids showed up the first day, but because we were playing sports outside, a lot of kids ended up just coming up off the street and we got about 30 by the end of the day, and most of those students ended up coming all three days. As we were leaving the last day, Meredith and I were approached by a group of girls asking when we would be back, doing more activities like we had been doing. While we couldn’t give them a straight answer, it was definitely a good feeling knowing we had somewhat succeeded in capturing their interest. We had our goodbye party the day before we left, inviting friends and families. Because of a wedding the previous night, there was a sound system set up at the house we were at. Everyone was eventually dancing and music shifted to Moroccan berber music near the end of the night. As time went on, women began taking their headscarves off and whipping their hair around as if it was a Willow Smith music video. But realistically it was incredibly liberating to see these women in such a light, owning their beauty and literally letting loose. The day we left brought an abundance of tears from my host sisters and mother, while my host father scolded us telling me there couldn’t be tears until I left Morocco. It was a pretty accurate summation of my time spent with the family. I will miss my sisters and my mother immensely, and will definitely visit them over the next two years. Immouzer really was a wonderful place to go through training, and I was lucky to have the experiences I did with my awesome training group. For the past few days I’ve been in Fes, getting things together and tying up odds and ends. We took another trip to the old medina and I have a beautiful Moroccan outfit to show for it, as well as a very satisfied stomach. We ate at a Peace Corps hot spot called Café Clock, a culinary school in the heart of the old medina. They had everything from camel burgers to fresh falafel and hummus, which we gorged ourselves of while sitting on the rooftop deck and enjoying the city. It was a perfect last night in Fes. We awoke early this morning to load the bus and head off to Rabat. Rabat is such a modern city, and it’s been nice to be in a civilization somewhat close to America for the past few hours. We toured the Peace Corps headquarter, a beautiful renovated estate with gardens, lounges, and a library. After that we headed over to the embassy for our official swearing in. It was a much fancier ceremony than I expected with the Ministry of Youth and Sports in attendance as well as the US Ambassador. It was short and sweet and was followed by a tasty reception of finger foods, fruit smoothies, and espresso. I am now and official Peace Corps Volunteer. I will leave for Er Rachidia tomorrow morning at 9:30 am with three other volunteers, meeting my new host family by night and beginning integration into my new home for 2 years. I feel accomplished and ready, and I’ll be sending my next blog post from the desert!

Hello again from Fes! The past two weeks have been absolutely crazy with English classes, Halloween parties, cold weather in Immouzer, and our site announcements. I found out yesterday I will be placed in Errachidia in the Errachidia province! It’s on the brink of the desert and my packet said it gets unbearably hot in the summer (and if you know anything about me, you know this is amazing news… I love the heat!) I’m a few hours away from the atlas mountains and also near the country’s largest oasis. I have two other volunteers from my stash in my region, Jen who will be an hour or so away, and Hubble who will be about 5 hours away (it’s the largest region). I’ll be replacing another youth development volunteer who is leaving in November and will be joining a volunteer who is just beginning his second year of service. I’ll be working at my own dar chebab, and from what my packet says, they have a lot of associations involved with theater and art. I couldn’t be happier or more excited about the next two years in Errachidia… it sounds like exactly what I asked for (inshallah). These past few weeks became extremely cold in Immouzer. We started teaching English at the dar chebab and had an outstanding turnout of about 80 kids a night. We split the groups into advanced and beginner levels and then each CBT would teach a group. We got experience teaching in pairs and by ourselves and we ended the week with a Halloween party for the kids involving a scavenger hunt, apple bobbing, mad libs, and face paint. We couldn’t find any pumpkins to carve, and we didn’t have costumes but it was still a lot of fun. My host family is getting excited for a big upcoming holiday in Morocco, 3iyd kabir. It’s one of the biggest celebrations, the pinnacle being every family slaughters a sheep (or some other animal of their choice). It’s usually the father, but sometimes the family will hire a butcher to do it. Then, the women cook the animal and each day they eat a different part. Day one is mostly organs… the heart, liver, stomach, etc. They also eat the head, and last is the meat from the body. My sisters told me there is no “other course” that comes with the meat… we just eat meat. No bread, no vegetables, no sauce. Just meat. I can’t say I’m looking forward to this holiday in the same way the Moroccans are, however I’m looking forward to seeing the country celebrate something important to them. Considering I haven’t yet been to a wedding or any party other than the ones the volunteers have thrown at the dar chebab, I’m excited for my first Moroccan celebration. As I’m about to enter my last week with my host family, it’s hard to believe I’ve been here for almost 7 weeks, not too short of 2 months. I can communicate to locals in darija, I can make an assortment of Moroccan dishes, I’ve taught English and interacted with Moroccan youth, and have (what I believe to be) a good understand of the prospects of my next two years. I will return again to Fes in 8 days, stay for a week, then go to Rabat to be sworn in as an official volunteer (which is technically when my ‘two years’ begins). I will leave the next day on a bus to my new city with only my bags and a telephone number for my new host family. No Moroccan will accompany me, no one will be there to translate for me. The grip has been released. I’ll finally be able to begin my work, and I can’t wait.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, it’s been a very busy week since getting back from Fes. I’ll elaborate more later, but here’s my (late) food Friday post! My host mom taught me how to make these potato/hash brown balls, which are absolutely delicious. I’m not exactly sure what they are called, but I know you should make them ASAP. Ingredients: 3 large potatoes Olive oil Salt Pepper Paprika Cumin Ginger Cilantro 3 eggs Shred the potatoes into hash brown consistency which s cheese grader or grinder. Put them in a large bowl and add about a half a cup of olive oil and mix in to coat the potatoes… Use your judgement (as always). Add about a tablespoon of salt, half a tablespoon of pepper, half a tablespoon of paprika, and half a tablespoon of cumin. Finish with a dash of ginger. Mix well to coat the potatoes. Finally add the three eggs, again, mixing well to coat the potatoes. Heat up a frying pan and coat the bottom with vegetable or olive oil. Pat the shredded potato concoction into small balls…if you coat your hands in water first, it makes it a little easier to get them to stick. Place them in the frying pan, as many as you can fit and let them fry on each side until they start to brown. Turn them over as needed, and leave in as long as you feel is appropriate. I like them to be crispy! Let cool and enjoy! My family likes to dip them in mustard, although I’m sure they would be good with ketchup as well.

Happy Friday! Two days ago, my host mom taught me how to make a type of corn bread for kaskarut (the early dinner Moroccans eat around 5 or 6 pm) called hrrsha. This is a lot easier than the tagine, but again, my host mother doesn’t use measuring cups, so this is based highly on your personal preference of taste. You need: Cornflour Olive Oil Baking Powder Salt Water Put about 2 or 3 cups of cornflour in a bowl and add about a half a cup of olive oil. Mix well (with your hand! Moroccan style!) Add a few pinches of salt (if you like salt, add a lot, if you don’t, add a little… not too complicated) Add about half a tablespoon of baking powder and a cup to a cup and a half of water and mix everything together. The consistency should be sticky and malleable, but not tough. You shouldn’t need to kneed it, you should be able to run your fingers through it.  Add water or cornflour as needed. Next, set a skillet on the stove and turn in on medium/high heat. Coat the bottom of the skillet with cornflour, sprinkling a generous amount around evenly. Plop the batter into the pan and work in with your fingers until it’s about a half inch thick, evenly distributed. Score the “dough” with a fork throughout. Let it cook for a long time probably 10 or 15 minutes) checking it to make sure it hasn’t burned. After the bottom has been thoroughly cooked, flip it and cook the remaining side (this shouldn’t take as long, only about 5 minutes). My family eats this with jam, butter, spread able cheese, or olive oil sprinkled on top! Enjoy! ALSO! A big, huge thank you to my Mom and Dad, Grandma Bridges, Skylar Bee, and Cate Deicher and Clarke Kauffman for their wonderful and warmly written letters.

Since my last “informational” blog post, I thought I’d give you an update on what my CBT has been up to in Immouzer.  A little over a week ago, we held a public viewing of an empowering woman’s video for (primarily) youth at the culture center. The video followed five women in Morocco who had given back to their community in some way. Afterwards, we held a discussion, focusing primarily on girls who choose to go to school yet end up not utilizing their education because of young marriages. This event was in observation of National Woman’s Day in Morocco. We also held our first PACA assignment event with about 30 or 40 students from the high school. We did various activities with them, outlined through Peace Corps guidelines, mandated by the PACA assessment of community needs. The most interesting part of this event, aside from the mandatory activities, was the conversation afterward. We learned about the stark availability of leisure activities for girl. Most girls go straight from home to school and back to home. Their free time is spent helping their mothers with housework and eating/conversing with their families. They are extremely dedicated to their studies, and when asked what is missing from their community many replied a library. Paired with the discussion from Woman’s Day, my main question is what happens in the gap between education and married life? What changes these girls perspectives so drastically? The role of a housewife in Immouzer is very respected, however, they are using little of the skills they learned during school. Why does this dedication switch so intensely? On another note, things at my host family have been great. I had my first unfavorable meal… cous cous and buttermilk soup. Other than that the various vegetable soups, apple pies, pancake like cakes, and rice dishes have been wonderful. Meredith, my best friend in my CBT group, came over to cook dinner with me for my family. We cooked a basic pasta sauce with onions, green pepper, garlic, and meatballs spread over pasta. My host mother liked it, however the same can’t be said for the rest of the family. I can’t complain really though, they drink cous cous and buttermilk soup by the litre… our taste buds have wide variations of acceptance. My newest point of interest has been the liter of three kittens living under my host house. They still haven’t opened their eyes all the way and can’t quite walk yet but I try to feed them bits of bread and water whenever I come and go. Their mom, who is sometimes lying on top of them to keep them warm, lets me pick them up and play with them every so often. The past two weekends I was supposed to go to a wedding in my host mom’s home town (Midlt), but the wedding has been postponed because of a confusion with papers. Hopefully the wedding will happen while I’m still in training so I can attend… seeing a Moroccan wedding is near the top of my list. Doha (my seven year old host sister) has been helping me with darija and I’ve been trying to teach her bits of English. I was attempting to teach her “wake up” and when I asked her in darija “kifash katguli ‘kanfaq;’” (how do you say ‘wake up’) she replied in perfect English: “I like to sleep in.”

The family dynamic in Morocco is very intense. From the moment I wake up to the moment I sleep I am surrounded by people immensely interested in my well being and every minuscule thing I do. In America it may be normal to sit in a room with another person while you work or relax separately, without talking…here it is not the case. My family, luckily , understands the concept of America solidarity and accepts when I need an hour to sit in a room and read alone. This hour, however, is quite different for an American who is not only an only child but spent the last year living alone. It’s a difficult concept to embrace - but little by little I’m learning. I’m realizing why my family lives literally on top of each other. My two host aunts live one above and one below in the same house. They are a routine part of my daily life. And in an “indirect” society, so to speak, proximity is a definite way of knowing someone is there.  When Moroccans walk down the street there is constant physical contact between members of the same sex, a constant reminder the person is there, still walking, still with you. And while many Americans may see that as over exaggerated or unnecessary, it’s actually really beautiful. Moroccans read between the lines - to spend an afternoon in conversation speaks mountains to the admiration you have for a person. Those words that we often use adamantly in the English language (you are my best friend, I’m glad we are friends, I admire you, like you, love you) are unspoken here, but they are definitely understood. And while that culture difference may be vast, the idea from which it permeates is the same. The way we communicate loneliness to people doesn’t change the way in which we are lonely. Whether it’s through an email, a text message, stopping by for tea, or buying a house connected to the ones you love…whether it’s through words or actions, inches away or across the ocean, we want somebody to watch over us.  

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]October 2011. Immouzer, Morocco.

Henna from my host mom. If you look closely my name (Magi) is on the bottom of my palm. October 2011. Immouzer, Morocco.

Happy First Food Friday! About two weeks ago my host mother taught me how to make a traditional Moroccan dish called tagine. Tagine can be cooked with a variety of ingredients and often varies from family to family and region to region. I was taught how to make kefta tagine (beef) and it is DELICIOUS. Here’s the catch: part of cooking tagine is cooking it IN a tagine. Yes, tagine is the name of the device as well as the dish. In Morocco, these tagine dishes line the street to be sold or outside restaurants to indicate they make this Moroccan specialty at their shop. Every family I have encountered has one in their kitchen. They are made of clay and go directly on the stove. The food is placed systematically in the basin, and then a large cone-like top is placed over it to let it cook. To attempt a similar method in America, one might use a pan and just place a lid over it… who knows what the real difference is.  Another note before I start… Moroccans rarely use precise measurements. Everything is to taste… so if you like a lot of peppers, add them! Onion, cumin, garlic, oil… anything can be to the cooks disgretion. You begin by lining the bottom of the basin with vegetable oil and letting it simmer. Add 1 onion, chopped into long thing pieces and let it cook in the oil. Add two small green peppers, chopped same as the onion once the onion starts to become clear. Once the peppers start to soften in the oil, add 1 large tomato. You can cut it up however you like… if you prefer big slices, just make sure they’re relatively thin. SPICES! My family adds salt and pepper, ginger, cumin, and a spice called tHmira which I’m still struggling to find an American equivalent to… something a bit like red pepper and paprika. Add these after the vegetables have a good softness to them, and place the lid over to basin to let it cook for a few minutes. Add as much spice as you like… a lot of Moroccans add garlic to their tagine, some add tumeric. Moroccans also often cook based on smell (or smile, as my host mom often mistakes). So once the smell of the veggies and spices starts wafting strongly, it’s time to add the meat (or after about 5-7 minutes if you want something more exact). If the concoction begins to dry out, just add a bit of water to the center of the basin and will even out as it hits heat. While the vegetables are cooking, prepare the meat. For beef, you want to use ground beef and roll it into small nuggest or meatballs. Don’t make them too big, because they’ll be cooking on top of the vegetables. We rolled them about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Use olive oil while rolling to help the beef stick together, and then place them in a circle on top of the cooking vegetables vertical between the center and the rim. To top if off, pour a ring of olive oil over the beef and replace the lid. Let it cook about 10 to 15 minutes, but most importantly until the meat is cooked all the way through. The traditional way to eat this dish is with bread as your utensil. Use the crust to scoop the vegetables and meat out, and the soft part of the bread to sop up all the delicious oil. You can cook this with any meat, any vegetables, and any spices you’d like. However, this recipe comes highly recommended from the best cook I’ve encountered in Morocco so far… my host mom.