I sit down and order my usual, half milk, half espresso. The smell of burning coffee grounds tickles my nostrils. The heat of the patisserie and the sound of people chattering comfort me, a reminder of coffee shops back home. There is a ten human pile up at the counter fighting for round disks of bread, cookies, croissants and baguettes. The waiter squeezes through a crowd of people to deliver my coffee. It is almost the holiday and the shop is packed. I hear Darija spoken around me and pick up small bits of conversations. My mind refuses to absorb the words on the pages of my book as I re-read them for the third time. I set down the book and I sip my coffee, feelings of excitement, joy and motivation fill me. A high pulses through me as I realize what seems like madness fits together like a puzzle, making perfect sense. I can't say whether the high is caffein induced or just that sheer excitement of understanding. The moment I arrived in town I walked towards a brown on-ing, the word 'Patisserie' printed across it. I passed a cart full of squawking, chickens, cow heads with their tongues hanging out, stomachs and intestines in piles next to the heads. Honking and buzzing motor bikes overwhelmed my senses as I dodged the stream of pedestrians walking towards me in no apparent order. As I reached the patisserie I was welcomed by four Americans sitting around a small round table. They all looked rough, wearing bandanas, tattered clothes, and worn chaco sandals. They told me to order a sandwich but I wasn't sure how. I tried to figure out what the shop had, how to order, whether or not to pay right away and if I should wait or go sit back down. I didn't know if I should try my minimal Moroccan Arabic or revert to French. After eating lunch, one of the Americans and I walked to the family's home at which I would be staying. I didn't know where to place my belongings, how long to sit, how much to eat, what to talk about. I tried to remember all they had crammed into our brains over the previous two months. I shyly introduced myself with what little Darija I had and sipped the overly sweetened mint tea with my new family. I swallow the last bit of bitter coffee, ask for some eggs, butter and yogurt to take with me, flip my sun glasses down and walk out. People recognize me and say “Asalamu3likum.” I say hello to shop keepers as I pass. I feel confident as I walk back to my apartment. My cell phone reads 6pm. I walk out the door and across the dirt path to the youth center. I greet each person with a handshake and ask about the success of the activity we did two days earlier. Everyone agrees it went well. I joke about my cultural missteps and joke about quite possibly having forgotten to shake the delegates hand in front of a large group of people. Everyone laughs and says, “mashi mushkil,” no problem! As I crawl into bed with memories of the day, the high returns. This time it's not caffeine induced. Joking in another language and cultural context must be a sure sign of truly understanding. I think about my recent commitment to stay in Morocco for a third year, about all that I have learned in the past two years, more importantly the things I have yet to learn and I wonder what it really means to understand something.

Halloween!

Happy Halloween to everyone! This year for Halloween I invited volunteers from around the area to help out with aHalloween activity at the youth center. I didn't go into the details about what Halloween really is or how it works but rather set up a small carnival like experience. We had bobbing for apples, pin the nose on the pumpkin, potato sack races, face painting, mask making, we taught the electric slide andto top it all off we had a haunted house. There is no way I could have done it without the other PCVs so a huge thanks goes out to them! In the afternoon the PCVs got together and made decorations. We peeled grapes to serves as eyeballs, made spaghetti noodles to serve as worms and put uncooked rice in boxes to represent ants. These are all fond memories I have of Halloween activities during elementary school.We strung string across the youth center and made a divider by hanging sheets over the string. Tables were set up that kids would climb under (and PCVs would hide on), people hid behind boards, and in doorways. String was hung at the entrance to feel like spider webs as children entered the haunted house. By the end of the evening even the moms wanted to go through the haunted house, their one requirement, that they didn't have to climb under the table. I was lucky to have the help of so many PCVs, as there would have been no way to accomplish such a great event by myself. Youmay wonder what this had to dowith youth development. It was really more of a focus on the cultural exchange goal of Peace Corps. It also gave the kids a chance to experience something they hadn't before from art and dance to face painting and American games. It was a blast and I hope to do it again next year!

With over two years of homestays under my belt ranging from studying in France and Senegal to working in Morocco there are certain things I try to keep in mind to ensure building a relationship with my host family and to get the most out of the experience as a whole. Whether the duration is ten days or over one year, living with a host family is the best way to experience a new culture and learn the language of the country in which you are living. Here are ten tips to make that experience the best it can be. Before you arrive 1. Do Research Before you arrive in your host country research the cultural norms. Having an idea of what is typically accepted and not accepted will better prepare you for your homestay. Knowing, for example, if you should leave the tank-tops at home, take your shoes off before entering a room, eat only with your right hand or how to greet people will allow you to more quickly adapt, integrate and be welcomed into the host family. While you will still make mistakes, this will help with first impressions and give you a good base to start from in becoming part of the family. 2. Pack Souvenirs From HomeBefore you leave your home country, buy a few souvenirs representative of where you are from. Examples include key chains, post cards, a calender with pictures of your hometown, state or country, or small LED flashlights. These things make great gifts whether at the beginning of your stay or at the end. They will be a good introduction or reminder of you to the host family and give them an idea of where you are from. You can write notes to the family, neighbors or friends on the post cards, pictures from calenders can be used for future decoration in your host family's house and kids can't get enough of the flashlights!

During your homestay

3. Have No ExpectationsApproach the experience with as few expectations as possible. The higher the expectations are the harder you will fall. If you keep in mind the mantra, It's not good, It's not bad, It's just different, throughout the experience, it will help keep things in perspective.

4. Lock Up Your Valuables Keep spare cash and other valuables locked in your suitcase and if your host family gives you a room with a lock and key, keep your room locked when you are not in it. This not only protects your stuff but it protects the family as well. The first thought always seems to be, I don't want to offend my host family. But some families will directly tell you to lock your things up and in the end it is much less stressful to lock up your valuables in the beginning, with the slight fear that you might offend someone than to have to confront the family were something to go missing later on.

5. Develop Coping StrategiesA coping strategy is any technique used to help you relax when stressed, to help you get through challenging situations or to help you reboot when you have become exhausted. It can be any number of activities from reading, going for a walk, doing laundry by hand, or keeping a journal, to listening to music, doing artwork, taking a nap or just taking some personal time when you need it. Develop these strategies and develop them early. A good way to do this is to establish “you” time at the beginning. This will help create a pattern and help your host family understand that you wanting space has nothing to do with them. The most important thing is that you establish these techniques at the beginning, before you need them, so that they are there when you do need them.

6. Eat At Least One Meal A Day With Your Host FamilyWhether meal time is at 5pm or 11pm, do your best to adapt to your host's schedule. The time you spend directly engaging with your host family, practicing language skills and learning more about them, is some of the most important and rewarding and meal time is the best time to do this. While school or work may prevent you from enjoying every meal with your host family, having at least one meal with them a day will help you build a relationship. In certain cases they may try and feed you by yourself out of respect or other cultural reasons. If this is the case talk to them about it. If it can't be changed, find another family to eat with on occasion.

7. Contribute To Household ChoresWhile you may be considered a guest for the first few days to a week, contributing to the household chores will help you become part of the family. Choosing a simple but consistent chore is a great way to contribute and will not only make you feel useful but make the family feel like you are doing your part as well. Setting the table every evening, doing the dishes after dinner, hauling water every morning, or sweeping are examples of great chores that you are entirely capable of and your host family should feel comfortable letting you do. In certain cultures it will be unacceptable or unheard of for a man to help with these chores. In that case you may insist that you want to help, or find other ways to contribute, perhaps taking time to play with the kids, helping your host dad figure out his new piece of technology, or chopping fire wood.

8. Cook Your Host Family a Meal From HomeGo out and find ingredients available to you and cook your host family a meal you enjoyed back at home. This allows you to contribute something to your host family, share your culture, and allows them to try something new. They also get to learn more about you. There is no guarantee that they will like the food but there is a guarantee that they will appreciate the experience as a whole! Who knew the foreigner knows how to cook!?

9. Communicate Taking the time to communicate as best you can with your host family is essential to having a good experience. It is difficult to communicate with someone who speaks your own language let alone someone who speaks a different language but the most rewarding experiences will come from trying to communicate. Use your communication skills to get to know each other, solve problems, learn about the culture, get around, express the challenges you face and the gratitude you have for the family and the country you are living in. The whole point of the experience after all is to learn a new language and get to know about a new culture and the only way to do this will be through communicating with that culture and its peoples.

After your homestay

10. Keep In TouchDo not let the end of your homestay experience be the end of your relationship with your host family. They have given and taught you so much over the time you spent with them. Show them your appreciation through monthly phone calls or a visit down the line. Most of the time they just want to hear your voice, hear that everything is going well and to tell you that they are doing well too. It doesn't take much time or effort. Nothing makes less sense to a host family than having their visitor leave, never to be heard from again.

There's nothing like having a second or even third family abroad. Take the time to develop a relationship with your host family and you will be pleasantly rewarded. ____________________________________________________________________ Publications in which I'm interested in seeing my byline 1. Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like / http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com/ Guest Post Submissions policy -Must be an expat Aid Worker

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For those of you that haven't heard, I'm extending my stay in Morocco by one year! Yay! The thought of leaving one month from now was unbearable and there is still so much to do here and so many opportunities to be taken advantage of!

With the next year I hope to do more health education, teach about volunteerism and leadership, work on career development, be present for the opening of the new Dar Chebab and help Peace Corps Morocco with the transition to an all youth development based program.

I'll be going home for a month starting in mid November to celebrate the holidays and both of my parents' birthdays before returning to Morocco for my next year. While home I'll visit Washington, DC, Chicago, Michigan, Albuquerque and of course wonderful Colorado. I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family, drinking lattes, eating chipotle, snow and central heating. Five weeks at home should be just enough time for me to still love everyone at home but be thoroughly ready to go back to Morocco. I look forward to returning with fresh eyes and perspective.

In the mean time, I've started taking a travel writing class online. This will (Inchallah) increase my blog posts! They may seem random but will hopefully be interesting and if I'm lucky improve over time.

If you ever have questions or would like me to elaborate on certain topics or parts of my experience, don't hesitate to ask. It will help me be better about writing and will make this a more interactive experience, which blogging is all about!

Youth Center Activities, YAY!

Playing Chess

Ping Pong!

Art/ Green March Activity

Drawing interpretations of the Green March

"My Arabic Library"- Donated by the State Department. We have lots of English books in our library but for students that don't speak English they are useless. This was quite a treat and many students benefited from having access to educational children's books in Arabic

"My Arabic Library"

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Ceremony marking the beginning of the building of the new Dar Chebab (scheduled to be done at the beginning of 2012)

Hanging out at the ceremony- in my Moroccan Garb

It's hard to believe I haven't written since October. I guess not that hard to believe for those that follow my blog and know how inconsistent I am about updates. Today I want to take the time to update you on what has been going on for the last seven months.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words so for the month of November I will share several photos of the festivities I attended from the Big Holiday to Thanksgiving and mid-service medicals. To be reminded of exactly what the Big Holiday is, I recommend you look back on my entry L'3id Al Adha from December 2009.

Our friendly sheepOn his way out Tea, Bread, Grilled Meet...mmmmmWe ate everything, including the headThanksgiving: We bought, cooked and ate a previously slaughtered Turkey- Not much different than the Big Holiday, Yak?Candlelit Thanksgiving dinner- How romantic :) I'm thankful for my friends and family and all the support they give me, the opportunities available to me, my experience in Morocco, Marjorie, my health, really just about everything in my life!

September 30, 2010 – October 7, 2010 Marjorie and I just had a wonderful little vacation in France. We went to Toulouse to visit friends I studied with in high school and to take a little break from Morocco. I was expecting to see two friends and two others came down to surprise me! I couldn’t believe it. It had been 5 years since I had seen them and we picked up right where we left off. They also invited some friends over that added to all the fun. We spent the evening enjoying “grape juice,” cheese, foie gras, and other snacks and catching up on everything we’d missed over the years. Everyone knew a little English and Marjorie knows a little French so everyone felt included and had a good time. It was all I could have asked for and more. After seeing my friends for just a few short days Marjorie and I went to Marseille to continue our lovely vacation. In Marseille we stayed near the old port. We enjoyed all of my must have meals each time I go to France: Mussels, Frites and a cold brew, Crepes and cider, steak and “grape juice,” and lots and lots of cheese and more “grape juice.” We visited the Basilica Notre-Dame de la Gard and the Cathedral de la Major. Both are beautiful buildings with an interesting pattern of lighter stone and darker stone. They both had tiled floors and the Cathedral de la Major had different colored marble swirling through the building at different points. The Basilica had a large gold plated statue of Mary holding Baby Jesus posed at the top. It was nice to be in a familiar, religious setting again, even if just familiar from all of the churches I’ve visited in past trips to Europe. I’m always inclined to light a candle for loved ones and think about what a wonderful life I’ve been blessed with. Another wonderful part of our stay in Marseille was a boat trip to the Calanques. These are cliffs that border the Mediterranean Sea and are really quite stunning. It was nice to relax on a boat and still be able to explore. We ended our trip sitting in the airport in front of a wall size photo of a field of lavender eating pork sausage, cheese, crackers and chocolate. The trip felt like it lasted a couple weeks (in a good way) despite the fact that it was only seven days. We came back feeling rested and I was even excited to be back in Morocco a feeling I was slightly worried may be absent upon our return. The trip also reminded me once again how much I love France and that I hope to spend another period of my life there at some point.

Marj and me hanging out in MarseilleBasilica Notre Dame de la GardCathedral de la MajorA few of the Calanques Me staring out at the Mediterranean Sea

Immediately after Ramadan I had the pleasure of showing my dad and stepmom around Morocco. It was absolutely wonderful to see them, share with them the experience I’ve had in Morocco, introduce them to my community (and Marj J) and climb the tallest mountain in North Africa with them!

Marj and I picked them up at the airport in Marrakech where we spent the night and part of the next day. We enjoyed snails and a nice tajine dinner, wandered around Jamm Elfna, admired the Ktoubia and of course shopped the souks. The next day we headed to Imlil where we would start our journey up the tallest mountain in North Africa, Mount Toubkal. They didn’t have a whole lot of time to rest but the kept it together. The hike itself was long and grueling. The first day we hiked about 7 hours. We spent the night in a dirty and crowded hostel, passing up the nicer one, without realizing our mistake. We were just too tired. The next day we continued hiking for about 5 hours to the summit. It was slow and I think everyone questioned their ability to make it to the top at least once…but shwiya b shwiya we scaled that mountain and showed it who was boss. After that we made our way back down to Imlil. I want to say that part of the hike was about 9 hours or so(from peak to Imlil.) We were all very grateful to be back down, sore but not broken and we were maybe less grateful to see another Tajine meal (our 4th in about 4 days.) The next morning we headed back to Marrakech and all the way back to Rosevalley. That was another 8.5 hours of traveling most of which was on a bus going down a miserable, twisting, mountain road. We finally made it back to RoseValley around 10pm and a nice gentleman helped us carry (in his cart) all of our baggage back to my house. Once in RoseValley we rested for a full 24hours. It was definitely needed after the long, nonstop travel we had been doing for the first few days. After recovering, we had a nice lunch with other PCVs in the area and from there I dragged them from one neighbors house to another. We visited four families in just an afternoon. If you know anything about visiting Moroccan families this is quite a feat! People were so welcoming, providing us with tea, cookies, fried bread, coffee, soda and other treats. I was thankful to be able to introduce them to my host family, the people I work with, my host uncle and aunt and the neighbors that took such good care of me throughout Ramadan. It was also nice for all of my neighbors to have faces to go with the American family I’m always talking about. After a couple days in RoseValley we headed to Ouarzazate from where they would fly out the next morning at 5am. We had a nice evening, enjoying some “grape juice” and sitting out by the pool to enjoy the evening. While sitting there a somewhat obnoxious guide (more than likely a faux guide –fake guide,) began to talk at us, ask where we were from, if we wanted his services, if I’d take his card for future visitors etc. This left a bit of a sour taste in my dad’s mouth but for me I didn’t even think twice. It is such common place for strangers to talk at me, harass me, and enquire about whom I am or the organization I work for. Some days it rubs me the wrong way to the same extent it bothered my father but for the most part you just get used to it and learn how to deal with. It is also a very real part of my experience in Morocco as a female PCV and I think it was good for them to see that side of the experience too, even if it was an abrasive part of it all. All in all it was a wonderful time and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to show them my life here. I think they would say it was an enriching experience for them as well. Alhamdulilah!Enjoying snails in MarrakechGetting ready to take off on our hike up Jebel ToubkalA view of some of the trail on the way upUs at the peak! We Made It! Alhamdulilah!

Ramadan Islamic year 1431 Sunset Wednesday August 11, 2010- Sunset Thursday September 9, 2010 I touched on Ramadan briefly last year as I caught the tail end of it. This year I was able to fully immerse myself in the holy month, fasting from food and water sunup to sundown, breaking fast with families in the neighborhood and thinking about how blessed I am to have all that I do in my life. Ramadan is the 9th month in the Islamic calendar and is a Holy month in which Muslims fast, pray and read the Qur’an, give charity, break fast, refrain from sexual activity during the daylight hours and maintain a state of purity throughout the month. For more information check out good ol’ Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan. Every morning for 30 days I woke up at 3am. I would eat the pre-dawn meal of suhoor. I started out eating lentils and rice with a piece of fruit and maybe some nuts. I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to keep that up the whole month despite the fact that it kept me full most of the day. I would also drink as much water as possible, usually aiming for 2-3 liters. I’d go back to bed around 4-4:30 depending on the time of the call to prayer, the Ahdan. During the day Muslims generally stick to their same work schedules and live a normal life. For most of Ramadan I spent the time inside my house, taking it easy, trying to stay cool, napping, and generally distracting myself from the idea of food. Not eating wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I did feel hungry but not TOO hungry and it was certainly doable. I didn’t even get mean after not eating for a whole day alhamdulilah! The hard part was that I couldn’t go about my normal routine: waking up, making coffee and eggs, working on my computer while drinking coffee, filling hours of boredom with snacks…who am I kidding, it was just hard not being able to have coffee whenever I wanted! Why would I fast if I’m not Muslim and I’m not becoming Muslim? One of my dear friends was accused by an American friend of just satisfying her desire for a little religious tourism, perhaps to make herself feel open-minded and experienced? I would say that this is rather insulting and quite far from the reality. There are several reasons I chose to fast. In the beginning it was in solidarity with my community, to know what they experience throughout the month and to feel comfortable breaking fast with families in my neighborhood. Something is not quite right about stuffing one’s face all day and then going to the neighbors’ house who have not eaten from 4 in the morning to about 7:15 at night where I live and then ceremoniously breaking the fast with them. The whole experience of breaking fast is much more fulfilling when you haven’t eaten all day and the sense of community and support that is created as you gather with friends, all of whom have been hungry all day is quite enriching. As the month went on I wouldn’t say it necessarily got harder or easier. Some days were just hard and others were easier. It is amazing though to feel your minds abilities decrease rapidly and your energy level plummet more and more as the month goes on and the days build up. As I learned about why Muslims fast my reasons for fasting transformed to be more inline with theirs. As I felt the sensation of hunger day after day I started to think about what people who don’t ever have food feel like. Do you ever get used to this sensation? I can’t imagine. While I was never starving by any means, while I got to break fast at the end of everyday in good company, my privilege of having access to food and clean water day after day became very apparent to me…even if only from sundown to sunup, I could take something away from these feelings of hunger throughout the day. Muslims fast for many reasons one of which, is to feel empathy for those less fortunate than them. For me this became one of the meanings of Ramadan and what I would consider an enriching experience. A second meaning of Ramadan for me was community. Both my host family and Mudir (boss) were out of town for the month of Ramadan. I didn’t really have anywhere to go but I couldn’t very well break fast by myself everyday. My neighbors however took me in completely. The invited me over every evening to break fast with them. I was also able to go to my host uncle and aunts house and visit my host family in Casablanca to share the experience of fasting and breaking fast with them. When we broke fast every night we’d start with a small glass of milk. As much as you’d like to chug water after not drinking the entire day, that is NOT the way its done. After a small glass of milk we would eat olives and dates. I love dates and would have to refrain from overindulging in the soft, sweet goodness that they are. We’d follow that in no specific order by tea, fat bread (a kind of Moroccan fried pizza,) msmn (fried bread,) hard-boiled eggs, shbekia (fried dough, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds,) and we’d finish everything with Harira (a tomato based soup with chick peas, cilantro, lentils, a noodle or two and perhaps some chicken liver.) After we broke fast we would go sit out side and enjoy the warm evenings. I played hide and seek, jumped rope and played Frisbee with the kids, which was a lot of fun. 30 days of not drinking water and not eating food during the day sounds really intimidating but I think it has been one of my most beneficial experiences in Morocco to date. I do have to note that there is no way I could have made it through the whole month without my dear Marjorie. We would get up together at 3am (her in Tiznit and me in Rose Valley,) skype together while we ate suhoor and give each other words of encouragement to get through the day. With out knowing that part of my fasting was in solidarity with her and that I couldn’t let her down I could make sure not to let myself down either.This picture is of me, another PCV and a group of Moroccan youth breaking fast at a youth conference, at which I spent a week during Ramadan. The theme was "from an idea to a project)

*Summer*Camp*! July 15-26, 2010 In July I went up to El Jadida, a beach town, equipped with cafés, ice cream, beignets, Beach spiced coffee, sand, waves kites… It was the perfect place to start my summer and spend two weeks getting to know more Moroccan youth, catch up with some PCVs I hadn’t seen in a while and relax a bit. The camp is an English Emersion camp. PCVs work as counselors, Teach English and run country clubs. For Country clubs we choose Anglophone countries and teach students about them, cooking food, playing games and doing dances from those countries. The morning is dedicated to English and beach time. After that students come back, eat lunch, have library time, go to country clubs and then finish by Moroccan clubs. They have a little break after that and then in the evening there is a theme night and a dance party. My club was Club India. I can’t say I know a whole lot about India though I think it’s a place I’d like to visit on my way home from Peace Corps. The other PCV working with me and I cut up a map of India to make it into a puzzle. Students colored it in, glued famous landmarks where they belonged and put the puzzle together. The next day we learned some facts about India and played a game called KoKo. It was a fun game of tag that all of the kids enjoyed despite the hot sun. Other activities included watching videos about India, making chai, doing Yoga, having a cultural discussion with some visiting American students that happened to be from India and learning the Slumdog Millionaire Dance (refrain from comments about the cultural accuracy of the Sumdog Millionaire Dance J ) It was a great week and students seemed to have a good time. It was a long but good week. Despite some drama between Moroccan staff and American staff things seemed to run relatively smoothly. I have to give props to our American Coordinator and her ability to negotiate, intermediate and communicate with the Moroccan Coordinators. It certainly wasn’t an easy job.

Rose Festival, May 5, 2010 This is quite outdated but since it was a success I want to share it with you. At the beginning of May the Annual, three day, RoseValley Rose Festival took place. This is often a great venue for Peace Corps Volunteers to do health related/community projects. Moroccan tourists come to town from across the country. Main highlights include a parade, the crowning of Miss Rose, and nightly concerts. For us PCVs in the region it would become the stage for an AIDS awareness/ testing campaign. We started planning “the Rose Festival Project” in January after a regional meeting. Our goals were to dispel myths related to SIDA (the French acronym for AIDS,) to discuss modes of transmission and methods of prevention. We were lucky to work closely with a Moroccan organization to ensure community interest and participation and in hopes of some sort of sustainability. Some of the main parts of planning included coming up with talking points, training our Moroccan volunteers and medical professionals on up to date information on SIDA, attaining a tent from which to work, and getting in contact with ALCS an organization that does testing for SIDA as well as awareness campaigns. We worked for days upon days on this project but it was well worth the work we put in. Several days before the festival we gathered our entire team of Moroccan medical professional and a doctor from one of the surrounding hospitals came in to give a training on SIDA. We prepared in advance “difficult questions/statements,” that our volunteers could expect to receive and it was followed by discussion. Questions /statements included, I’m Muslim, Allah (God) will protect me. SIDA is a foreigner’s disease. My only partner is my husband, can I still get SIDA? Etc… We felt it was important to prepare volunteers for questions they could face. Despite some arguing the training went well. The first day of the Rose Festival we got up early, marched over to the field that would be hosting tents, and set up our large, wedding tent. It had a divider down the middle so that we could have two sides, a men’s side and a women’s side. This would help us reach more people since we could man the men’s tent with men and the women’s tent with women, providing a more comfortable and culturally appropriate atmosphere. We had two Peace Corps volunteers, two Moroccan youth volunteers and a medical professional on each side of the tent at all times. The youth volunteers were really what made the whole experience. Without them we could not have reached nearly as many people and the project would not have been a success the way that it was. The students were excited and motivated. Many of them were proactive in calling people into the tents, going through different brochures and answering questions related to SIDA. We spent 3 days form 9am-to between 6-8pm reaching out to people in the community and trying to educate them on SIDA. All the while, next to our tent ALCS was providing free SIDA testing. Anyone was allowed to go get tested and afterwards they were provided with condoms. We were also handing out condoms, despite some controversy. We felt it was important if people wanted them, we should provide them. There was of course the age old argument, “if you are handing out condoms, you are encouraging people to have sex,” to which we replied with the age old response, “People will have sex whether or not we give them condoms. They may as well be educated and have a way to protect themselves.” People were far more receptive to the information we were handing out than I expected. We originally expect to reach about 250 people. Ambitious, right!? In the end we reached 2560 people! We talked to 1250 men, 476 boys (15 and under) 681 Women and 153 girls. It’s hard for us to measure how much information people retained and if there was an increase in condom usage but as far how many people we shared information with, we are very proud of the outcome.

It has been far too long since I’ve written as usual. The problem is, well, it’s just been too long since I’ve written! There is so much that has happened and as I think back over all of it and how much I haven’t written about it makes it that much harder to start. Something about today though has me motivated. It’s nice out, there is a cool breeze, it feels like fall! The town is full again as people have returned from their summer retreats. Mostly people go visit their families in other parts of the country especially during the month of Ramadan. Now that school has started back up though, “play time is over! It’s time to work.” I am very excited to start work again after a long relaxing summer of summer camps, weekend getaways, Ramadan, family visits, mountain climbing and a lovely trip to France. However, the children seem far more intimidating this year than they did last year, if that is possible. They are everywhere. Most of them are polite enough. They say hi, shake my hand or kiss me on the cheek and then giggle a little as I go by. There are a couple children that without fail, the second they see me, run up and greet me. Those are my favorites! I imagine once I get reacquainted with them I’ll feel better, Inchallah! So I guess now I’ll break this down into some things that I’ve done over the summer and post them as separate posts: Rose Festival Summer Camp Ramadan Parents Visit Toubkal France

I had a great day yesterday. I started teaching an English class to teachers from the area. I wasn’t looking forward to it because my first session with them did not go smoothly. I expected them to have a higher English level than they did and we clumsily stumbled through the hour and a half in frustration. This time I went about teaching in a different way. I had originally tried bringing in an article to read and discuss. This time I brought in a list of vocabulary. I chose the topic, primary education, because they are all primary school teachers. I figured that way, while in their own classrooms; they could glance around the room and remind themselves of the different words we went over. After class I went to my Moudir’s house for lunch. He wasn’t there but I sat for hours with his wife and daughters, dozing in and out, while watching the Moroccan equivalent of American Idol. When I felt rested I ventured into town and stumbled across a couple of trainees. I sat with them for a little while, doing my best not to corrupt, scare, or mislead them in anyway. They were good company and I appreciated sitting with them for a little while. On my way home I started to feel kind of weary. I think it stemmed from the fact that I had been around PCVs for the last few weeks straight and in good PCV company at that. As much as I love my own little, sacred, apartment I wasn’t too sure I wanted to go sit by myself there contemplating what to do with myself. When I walked up to my door, my Moudir was sitting out front. He was polishing a pair of shiny, silver, suede (?) shoes. I sat down next to him and he started telling me about this pair of shoes. They were a pricy pair of shoes ($32), from Ouarzazate. They were a worthy investment however, because he has had them for three years and has taken good care of them. That same morning he took the back pockets off of a pair of his daughter’s pants. He sewed them back on to the side of the pants. I squirmed as I watched, thinking…if you do it that way you are going to sew up the whole pant leg and she wont be to put them on. Silly me. This guy knows how to do absolutely everything. He sewed those pants right up, good as new. After he finished polishing his shoes he brought out some grapefruit syrup he had made. You mix it with water…a nice touch of flavor. He explained how I could do it with lemon as well. Next he got his guitar and started playing. Some days he takes apart computers and puts them back together. When my power goes out he shows me how to fix it. When the kids get rambunctious he whips them into shape. He went to school to be the director of a youth center with an emphasis on sports. So, I asked him, “Where on earth did you learn how to do Everything?” He explained that after he finished his studies, he was unemployed for two years. He likes learning and he held many different jobs during that time. A friend invited him to work for his company in France as a Mr. Fix It but he said he had everything he needed right here in Morocco. As he played his guitar, a neighbor woman came out and joined us. And then another and then another. It began to get dark and bats started to circle around head. As the sound of the women’s gossip grew louder my Moudir slipped away into his house. After he disappeared out came the kiddos. Little girls that wanted to draw surrounded me. I gave them each small, flash card, size paper and a pen. They copied the titles of the books they were writing on, to the paper. M_O_R_O_C_C_O. P_H_R_A_S_E_B_O_O_K. It was quite an achievement, writing the French alphabet, left to right. I tried to get them to sound out the words they were writing. MO RO SSO. I explained the difference between C and S but I don’t think it stuck. I’ll try again today. When they got bored with that…mostly because there was no light to see what they were writing, I brought down a coloring book, crayons and a flashlight. One of the older girls brought over a candle. We melted some of the wax on the slab of cement in front of my house and stuck the candle in it. How many times that coloring book almost went up in flames, I can’t say. Soon boys surrounded the coloring book too. I was grateful to have one of my young English students deciding who got to color when and with what. I jus sat back and watched. They each wrote their names at the bottom of the page they colored. Some of the kids were so diligent about staying in the lines, other were just excited about the colors and didn’t particularly care where they ended up on the page. Finally Mom’s began to Corral their children. I promised the coloring book would still be there tomorrow. I went up to my house, not feeling so alone after all. Actually, feeling really excited for the lengthening days, warm breezy evenings, and a summer full of sitting on my slab of cement, hanging out with the ladies and children, chatting with my Moudir and listening to the strumming of a guitar. I never thought I would crave hanging out with Moroccan’s and my community as a whole. Alhamdulillah.

There was one 13-year-old boy who took a liking to us volunteers. I remember the first day sitting at a table and having him ask me questions that were being fed to him by another camper. His enthusiasm, friendliness and good attitude were a blessing. He could just go and go and go and nothing seemed to get him down. Towards the end of camp he got this great idea that he should make a video of different campers, PCVs, and staff all speaking different languages and talking about their experience at camp. He worked with a PCV who did the recording to produce this little movie but it was his idea, he did all of the interviews, picked out the people to be interviewed and got the ball rolling himself. You don’t see motivation like that among youth here in general. He was an inspiration to all of us and gave us all hope that there are motivated, Moroccan, youth that can change the future of this country. We hope that we had an equally positive impact on him and that he will start going to the Dar Chebab in his town, where there is a PCV that can maybe help cultivate his talent. He is certainly worth the time.

Afternoons were spent in clubs. The students were split up into three groups and they switched clubs everyday. This made it easier on us volunteers because we only needed one lesson plan and could just improve that lesson as went through the week. I helped out a couple other volunteers to lead a health club. The leader of the club talked about general health and the importance of eating balanced meals and not putting a quarter pound of sugar in your tea every time you make it. That part lasted about 20 minutes and then we brought out different fruits and veggies: Green Peppers, carrots, cucumbers, oranges, bananas, raisons, peanuts and toothpicks and we put the students to work building different sculptures. They did a great job and were more creative than I ever imagined them being. It was rewarding to see them getting into it and building things from little people/faces, to boats and cars to beach scenes etc. Actually, the creativity and ability of the kids to entertain themselves for hours on end was amazing. They had drums with them at all times and were never short of a song or chant to keep things moving. From breakfast until bed time there seemed to be some sort of “camp sound track” being played. We went on a field trip one day to a place called Ait Benhaddou, where we had to hike around and they still had their drums and were singing the whole time. Other tourists stopped and stared, trying to figure out whom this musically inclined, group of youth was. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the experience, the ability of the children to break into song at any moment.

For the third class students asked to look at song lyrics, learn them and then sing along. Due to poor planning, short attention spans and a general lack of organization this class failed miserably and while I certainly learned how to improve it next time…I don’t feel it is necessary to elaborate here.

My second English class went equally as smoothly. I read Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” to the students. It is a great story about a relationship between a boy and a tree. We went over the vocabulary and then the students broke up into pairs and read different sections of the story. Next they were required to act out the scene of the story that they had. We put them all together so that the class acted out the entire story and so that everyone would understand. After acting out the story we took some time to write poetry about trees, nature, really whatever they wanted and then they presented those. This was also a good class, students participated and there was an end product, which is always rewarding for everyone involved.

About six of us were teaching English and three of us ran clubs. I was responsible for an Intermediate-Mid English class and I helped out in a health club in the afternoon. We also had a SIDA/ART club, and an Environment club, we tried to tag team most classes and clubs because…well…kids are just that scary. For my first class I decided to talk about gender roles and play a “gender-bender” game. I know, I know, I would incorporate that into my English class on the first day. For the activity I had 27 note cards with different jobs/gender roles on them. Some examples were: Police, cooking, cleaning, teacher, doctor, nurse, airplane pilot…and some harder ones (at least to explain)…determines the sex of a fetus upon conception, prostate cancer, breast feeding and giving birth. I created three categories, Mostly Women, Mostly Men, Both Common. In the first round I asked the students to put the different cards in the category with which they most closely corresponded. I was working with an extremely helpful environment volunteer and both of us were surprised to see the results. Most of the students in the class were from Rabat. There were just a few from the bled (countryside.) But we still didn’t expect the students to say…Both mom and dad: cook, clean, become teachers, gendarmes and wash laundry. We both said, REALLY? REALLY? This is interesting because we both live in the countryside and…we’ve never seen a female gendarme, a female doctor, our host dads don’t cook and clean…that is for sure. The Rabatis kind of shrugged it off and re-enforced the, YES GUYS, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN DO THESE THINGS. It was certainly news to me. And I’m pretty sure it was news to the students from the countryside that got extremely quiet at about this time. The next step of the game, after discussing why certain jobs are more female specific and other jobs are more male specific, was to switch up the categories. The new categories were, Only Women Can (physiologically,) Only Men Can (physiologically,) Both Can (physiologically.) Of course when we did it this way, we found that both men and women are capable of doing just about every job. There were exceptions, Only women give birth and breast feed and only men get prostate cancer and determine the sex of a fetus upon conception but… the majority of all other jobs can be done by either males or females. A small discussion followed about why jobs are gender specific when both males and females are capable of doing them. It was a great class despite the fact that some of the language was a little over the students heads. They seemed receptive and hopefully it made them think at least a little bit.

I just completed my first Spring Camp! Spring Camp is an English emersion camp for students around the country. There were 22 camps held this year, with collaboration between PCVs and Moroccan staff, to reach approximately 1700 youth. A typical day started at 7:30-wake up, Moroccan National Anthem, Songs to help everyone wake up. Breakfast at 8:15. English class from 9:00-11:00. Sports/Activities 11:15-1:00. Lunch 1:30. Clubs 3:30-5:15. Break 5:15-5:30. “Activities” 5:30-7:00. Dinner 7:30. Games, Music, fun, talent shows, movies etc 9:00-11:00pm. This was the general schedule however everything always seemed to be running an hour or two behind. Most of the kids showed up a day late. That meant testing their language levels and getting them into classes instead of actually teaching English the first day. They had a DJ playing music as the students arrived. Close to a third of them came from Rabat on a bus. As they came into the dining hall where the music was playing, and where we were waiting for new arrivals our jaws dropped one by one, as did the students from the area that had arrived on time. Some girls had short spunky haircuts, almost no one had their hair covered, and girls were wearing short-sleeved shirts, skirts, and heels. And, Man, did they know how to dance… This was like nothing I have ever seen here…and something I would expect to see at a bar at home. I’m pretty sure all of the kids from the bled(countryside) felt the same way. They were literally drooling as these girls took to the dance floor. The boys from Rabat came in with their baggy shorts, hats, popped collars and drama. What were we in for?

I was recently asked to be on the harassment panel for the new trainees. As a representative from the harassment working group I have had time to talk to a variety of PCVs about the different kinds of harassment they face and their coping mechanisms. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this kind of thing before so I wont go into too much detail but to say that it was great for me to sit in front a big group, to help facilitate discussions and to hopefully ease the minds of trainees a little. I am, by no means, in a site with an excessive amount of harassment. I joked because it was still kind of early on my way to catch a taxi to the training site and no women were out. I felt like I was doing a walk of shame or something as I watched one man after another undress me with his eyes. Then I got to the training site and thought, well, harassment isn’t that bad in RoseValley. It is something you get used to. You don’t have a whole lot of choice. You either get used to it or go home. It is rarely threatening in my neck of the woods, if ever. It is just really annoying. On good days harassment doesn’t faze me one bit. On bad days I’d really like to sock someone. Of course I know better then that, they wouldn’t be afraid to hit back. I felt like the training itself went really well. I worked with three other volunteers and we presented different scenarios to small groups of trainees. We then discussed, how these situations could have been avoided entirely, if they couldn’t have been avoided, how could you lessen the impact? How could you respond to them? Where could you find sources of support if you can’t deal with it on your own? These are very important topics because Harassment is something that volunteers face every single day and it can completely destroy a volunteer’s service if it is not handled in a certain way. That of course is hard because there is not one specific kind of harassment, way of dealing with, or way of avoiding it. And harassment is entirely subjective. What you may see as harassment, I may not. What I may see as harassment, the man doing it may not. The important this is that if you perceive it as harassment towards you, then it is. The PCTs seemed receptive to the discussion. Hopefully they are prepared for what lies ahead of them during their service. In the mean time it gave me a chance to look back at my last 5 months in RoseValley and focus on the techniques I used to keep a positive attitude on the hard days. The worst thing you could do is become resentful and hateful towards a specific group of people. It hinders you service, makes it difficult to collaborate with people and makes it impossible to appreciate all of the amazing people that do exist and are present everyday in your community.

I took the opportunity to go to training by the Volunteer Support Network a few weeks ago. The training mostly addressed how to be an active listener. This means listening attentively, not making people’s problems about you, and not giving too much advice. Essentially how do you, “Just Listen?” We talked about different kinds of stress prevalent in Peace Corps Morocco. There is a wide range but some examples: trying to find work, integrating, negotiating cultural norms, trying to balance personal and work relationships, harassment, isolation, travel, feeling like you aren’t getting anything done, language using the Turkish toilet… the list is endless. We talked about the different times during service in which certain stresses are most prevalent, coping mechanisms and other sources of support. Some of the things I found most beneficial were getting to know certain members of my staj better, noticing the amount of diversity possible between 5 different PCVs even if they all appear rather similar on the outside, and most importantly that I may or may not have been using the squat toilet the wrong way for the last 7 months. The latter topic is up for debate. Sometimes I wonder how I still manage to splash my pant legs every once in a while after living here for this long. Is it really possible that I still don’t know how to use a Turk? We were all sitting around and a second year Volunteer said, “Hey guys, you’ll never guess what I learned this weekend! Which way to you guys squat when you use the Turk!?” If you have to go “number 2” it is obvious which way to face. There would be a lot of cleaning up to do if you faced the wrong way. Peeing on the other hand is a whole different story. Apparently it is best to face the hole of the Turkish toilet as opposed to the door of the bathroom. Splashing is significantly reduced this way. One volunteer made the point however that you have to be pretty darn sure all you have to do is pee if you are going to maneuver a backwards-facing squat. You also have to be comfortable with your back to the door, which is a rather unnatural feeling. It’s funny; the Turk isn’t that hard to get used to (weather you are using it the right way or the wrong way…whatever that means.) It is however always one of the most common topics of conversation at the beginning of a PCVs service and it often requires support. I ran into some of the new trainees the other day and they were bragging to me about how they still hadn’t taken a dump in a squat toilet as of yet. I asked how it was possible that they had been in country for a month and still not faced the Turk. They told me (basically as a collective group) that they all just put off business until getting to the classroom everyday, where they conveniently have a western toilet. All I could think was “Ah, Man! You better start practicing! You are going to have to face it at some point. Better now while there are still people to pull you out if you fall in!” I remember during my training there were plenty of times when we cheered for each other’s success in getting off of the D-train (Diarrhea,) relieving ourselves after weeklong bouts of constipation or commiserating with one another when someone else hopped on the D-train. There is no support like moral support and knowing that your dear CBT buddy is just a shart (Shit/Fart) away from being a True Peace Corps Volunteer too! And on that note, I recommend avoiding the “active listening,” when providing squatters support, for your sake and theirs.

I did a second activity related to International Women’s day about a week later. We had an outdoor movie night at the Dar Chebab where we projected the film on to the Dar Chebab for the community. The movie I chose is called “Number One.” It is a Moroccan, feature length film in Darija. The theme of the movie is the Mudawana (the family code.) It addresses women’s rights in a humorous and enjoyable way, appropriate for the whole family. In the film there is a hard, cynical man, who disrespects the women who work in his sweatshop, his wife and the people around him. His wife, exhausted by his behavior casts a spell on her husband. He becomes unable to speak disrespectfully to women even if he wants to. He tells his wife to cut her hair, wear what she wants, gets her a bank card, and he even starts helping out in the home (which really got a laugh out of the community.) At a certain point no one knows quite how he or she is supposed to behave which causes all sorts of confusion. Eventually the husband and wife reach a balance in how to sustain their relationship in a respectful way. I was very pleased because there was a descent turn out. There were not only boys and girls but also men and women present at the film. One of my boys from the Dar Chebab said that this was the first time he had seen women outside, late in the evening, participating in a community event. There was a discussion that followed the film, lead by my host father. I honestly can’t say I understood a whole lot of it but it seemed good and lots of children were participating.

March 8 was International Women’s Day. It was the perfect excuse to bring up gender roles and gender issues in my Dar Chebab. I went to class with the intentions of making mother’s day cards with my 13-year-old girls. The idea behind this was to give the girls the opportunity to think about all of the things their moms do for them and all of the work women do in general. This would hopefully give them the chance to really appreciate their mothers. I brought stickers, colored paper, pens, markers, scissors etc. It was going to be an extravaganza. Class was supposed to start at 6 but 6:30 rolled around and no one had showed up. I was standing there stewing and relatively disappointed because I was really excited about the project. In the meantime there were two 17-year-old boys hanging out in the room. As I paced back and forth they stopped me and said, “Miss Fauve, what is it you were going to do with the girls?” I lethargically dragged over the supplies and began to explain the point of making cards for one’s mother. The boys picked up the paper and started drawing and writing messages to the important women in their lives. As they began their art projects more and more boys began to show up. With complete disregard to the fact that all of the stickers I brought were intended for girls (hearts, stars, flowers, humming birds, rainbows) the boys decorated their cards (and cell phones) with stickers and colorful designs. Most messages said something along the lines of , “I LOVE YOU MOM!” One card was particularly moving. It said, “Thank you mom for everything you do. I remember when I was little and you slept next to me when I was sick. I love you.” I was practically in tears, be it from the messages the boys were writing or the fact that the boys just ran with the project and didn’t feel too cool for it. The real thing this showed me was all of the preconceived ideas I have about gender and gender roles myself. I brought stickers for girls and thought of card making as a girl’s activity. The fact that the boys would just as readily participate, use the supplies provided to them no matter what colors and images they were, was inconceivable to me, despite the fact that it is just as important, if not more, for the boys to think about the appreciation they have for the important women in their lives.

On a different note I moved into my new place at the beginning of January. It is a small, concrete apartment. Most of the rooms are a sky blue except for the hallway, which is covered in tiles. There is a living room, the only room with real windows, which I hang out in all the time. There are two other rooms, one, which acts as a bedroom, and the second, which is currently a storage room. It may or may not be transformed into a real room at some point. In addition to the other three rooms there is kitchen with very low counters and a shower/squat toilet. I say shower/squat toilet because it is one and the same. I have a learned the hard way to put a water bottle in the hole of the toilet when I shower to avoid dropping bars of soap down the hole. The house, other than being at an average of 45°F, is awesome. No one can quite understand why a young, unmarried girl would want to live on her own but I am thrilled to have my house. As long as I don’t make a habit of using the house as a hiding place, I think it will work out perfectly. Although I may have to put a sign on the inside of my door that says, “GO OUTSIDE FAUVE.” Other than that, being able to cook what I want and eat when I want is amazing. You would think having someone cook for you all the time would be nice (and it is) but alas… Other highlights in the house are the ability to blast music, the heated blanket and down comforter (thanks dad J) tiled walls, roof upon which to do laundry, skylight that leaks when it rains, and the fact that it is a safe place where I don’t have to put on a show at least a few hours a day.

I’ve been teaching an English class once a week. The first couple times were very impromptu but they went okay. It really just made me realize how much more I have to learn. After that I started doing more formal classes and had about 15 students coming regularly. At this time I also had an hour dedicated to doing art with the kids, an evening dedicated to games and hanging out and a couple evenings dedicated to a journalism club. The moudir however started enforcing the enrollment fee of 25Dirhams. I now have about 7 students that come regularly. Right now I am at my Post-Pre service training and hoping that when I go back to RoseValley I can just start over. It is time to get a class going for the BAC students in the area. (the BAC is the end of the year exam for high school students that dictates whether they graduate or not. They have two tries to pass the exam at which point they either graduate or are kicked out of school. ) Women in the area have been asking for both an English class and an aerobics class. Inchallah. I am getting excited about teaching English though because I am starting to understand the concept of content-based training. Through teaching English you teach about different topics that can also create awareness about important things. For example something as simple as teaching the conditional: would, should, could and asking students to create a sentence using “If I was a boy, I would _______________________” and “If I was a girl, I would___________________,” you can create a discussion about men’s and women’s roles in society. This works with introducing lessons about gender, environment, health and any number of other issues. Again, Inchallah.

My main project right now is a SIDA/VIH (AIDS/HIV) awareness project. I am currently collaborating with about ten other volunteers and a local SIDA organization just outside my town. The Organization with which we are collaborating does SIDA education in the several towns near mine. Their main focus is on educating prostitutes, boys ages 14-21 and truck drivers on different aspects of SIDA including transmission, ways to protect oneself, and the impacts SIDA can have on ones life. A recent and primary role of ours, while working with this organization, has been to share ideas and techniques of transferring information in a way that people can be receptive to it. We first sat in on a presentation to high school students about the topic of SIDA. The lecture was a few hours long, it was a PowerPoint and kids were coming and going at their leisure. From our perspective, no one wants or has time to sit for that long. No one wants to be talked AT about a subject that makes him or her uncomfortable, with three people to a desk, in a small classroom of 70ish people. From here we were able to have meetings with the organization and discuss some of our ideas. For example, come up with a one-hour presentation that can be repeated over and over. This way students have time to stay for the presentation, it keeps their attention longer, and they get all of the information. Another idea was to include an activity to get the students involved in the education. Of course we as PCVs have a hundred games related to SIDA education up our sleeves. We shared some of these with the organization and did one of the activities together. Even if there is a class of 70 you can bring 10 kids in front of the class and have them do the activity in front of everyone. It helps keep people’s attention and keeps it interesting. I’d like to think even just sharing little ideas like this makes some sort of difference. Now…the next part of our project has to do with the Rose Festival that takes place in RoseValley every May. PCVs are known for putting up a SIDA booth to help make people aware of the impact SIDA(and other STIs) can have in their lives . There are also a high number of prostitutes in RoseValley (Though by no means unique to RoseValley) and their work increases tremendously during the Rose Festival. People come from all over the country to visit the Rose Festival and it is not unlikely that many men will take that opportunity to visit prostitutes. We are working with this same organization to do training with the prostitutes and their Madames and Pimps about two weeks before the festival in an effort to increase their knowledge of diseases and the benefits to protecting oneself. We are hoping that by putting a financial spin on it and an emphasis on the fact that a sick sex worker cannot continue to work and make money that they can benefit from protecting themselves. I would like to think that just talking about the fact that protection is important for their own health and for the sake of their own well being, would be enough but…its not. And currently a person pays more to have sex with a condom than without. Another facet of the Rose Festival SIDA awareness campaign will be directing our energy towards women. We have always had one booth to talk about SIDA but clearly women and men will not feel comfortable coming to the same tent. Our goal is to get an extra tent or make our own under the pretense that we are doing a women’s wellness campaign. This will allow us to not only speak about SIDA but the mudawana (family code,) STIs, maternal health among a variety of other subjects. It also gives some anonymity to the women that are taking advantage of the booth to educate themselves about SIDA and other STIs.. A third facet of this SIDA project is our goal of securing an ALCS (association de lutte contre la SIDA, The Association to Fight Against AIDS) vehicle to be present at the festival. They bring a bus in which people can get tested for SIDA, similar to the way we have buses that go to different events in which we can donate blood. So, why SIDA/STIs? Is SIDA really prevalent in Morocco? Are people uneducated about SIDA? We are focusing on SIDA for several reasons. For one when we are talking about SIDA we hope to include other STIs in our education. People in Morocco know what SIDA is and know that it can result in death but they are uneducated about other STIs and the fact that they can be equally as detrimental to their lives and their families. Secondly, marriage in Morocco tends to be a contract between two people to make a family. There is no real sexual exploration and women in general don’t get a lot of say in how sexual relations play out. If men want to have a baby they have sex with their wife. If they want anything else they often go to a prostitute. Thirdly a woman doesn’t have a lot of power in the bedroom when it comes to whether or not their husband uses a condom. Asking them to use a condom implies that the wife thinks the husband is “dirty.” And a wife doesn’t necessarily know if or how many prostitutes her husband may be sleeping with. In addition sex and sexuality is taboo and there is no formal education on the topic. People learn about it predominately from friends, porn, or visiting prostitutes. If all of your knowledge about sex and sexuality comes from porn and prostitutes it is bound to be a little twisted. In Morocco(2007) , according to UNICEF, there is a prevalence rate of .1% and approximately 21,000 living with HIV/AIDS. It is expected that the number has increased since then. This is relatively low but when diseases grow exponentially each year the scale can tip rapidly. And in addition the amount of people with STIs are likely significantly higher. Anyway, As we do this work we are in full collaboration with different members of Moroccan society. Moroccan counterparts give lectures and will be at the booths disseminating information at the Rose Festival. Our role is to find people to distribute information and with whom we can share activities and ideas. We rely on Moroccans to spread the word. People are way more likely to be receptive of this information when it is coming form their peers when it is coming from a strange foreigner. Anyway… all that to say…Inchallah …wait… NO, not god willing, just protection protection protection!

Not long after the New Year I had a nice meeting with my region mates. I live in the Ouarzazate region of Morocco and all the volunteers in the area (Health, Environment, Small Business Development, and Youth Development) got together to discuss regional projects and plans. There were around 16 people including several volunteers from other regions joining us to get an idea of how these meetings work. Regional meetings are entirely volunteer driven and while encouraged by Peace Corps Morocco, the volunteers are responsible for making it happen. Our goals were to share project ideas, best practices and offer help to other volunteers when possible. It was helpful to me because I not only got ideas about how to get Dar Chebab students active, ideas for SIDA (AIDS) and environmental projects to do at site, but I was also able to meet the different people in my region who are my ultimate support and go to people. This meeting was also beneficial because it was the beginnings of a large SIDA project as well as planning for the Rose Festival that takes place in RoseValley every year. It is really nice to have a large group of volunteers to work with because the work can be divided and it is possible to reach a wider audience when we work together. I also really like this project because I can be more involved with some of the planning aspects and logistics but the attention is never directly on me (I will tell you more about this project in the next post.) Hopefully these regional meetings will continue and allow us to keep up the regional collaboration. Each person has their specializations and it is advantageous to all of us to be able to share the resources and knowledge we have.

It has been brought to my attention that I am a little behind on this blog thing. I could enumerate all the excuses I have but I think I’ll just get to writing instead. Lets start with New Years. It is hard to believe that New Years was two months ago already! To celebrate I went with a group of volunteers to the Merzouga Desert. Merzouga is seven hours from where I live, on the edge of the desert, in the southeastern part of Morocco. We took 4X4s from a nearby town to get there. As they weaved between one another, at high speeds, my stomach was filled with butterflies. It felt like a race and as we would pas each other’s cars we would stick our tongues out or wave. When we stopped we were close enough to the dunes that we could walk into them and enjoy the cool sand but not far enough in to get lost. We slept in Berber tents very much the way I did at the music festival in Mali a few years back. The tents had three walls with the open sides facing a campfire. They were connected in a rectangle, which created the feeling of our own little commune. To send out the year 2009 we walked into the desert and watched the sunset. At the very moment the sun was setting, the full moon was rising from the other side. The place that we were staying prepared us a fantastic Couscous dinner and served us mint tea (both staples in this neck of the woods.) We couldn’t send out 2009 without being slightly Hshuma (something between inappropriate and shameful) So we got out the champagne (or more accurately Jack Daniels,) danced around the fire, got lost in the dunes and passed out in time for at least a couple hours of rest. Despite roomers, no Pagans were involved and there were no sacrifices of virgins, although there may have been attempts. The sand did manage to eat my shoes among other things but who needs shoes anyway!? The next morning we all got up and did a camel trek into the dunes to watch the sunrise. I just walked along and spoke Darija with the man leading the camels since I got my camel fix in Egypt this summer. My feet were frozen by the time the sun rose, due to the lack of shoes but I couldn’t have asked for a better way to bring in 2010. After breakfast we got back in the 4X4s that lead us out to the desert and raced back to town, a couple hours away. Needless to say we were all less lively and enthusiastic about the race out of the dunes than we were during the race into the dunes.

“My Friend (that is a girl)” or “My Friend (that is a boy-more like a boyfriend)” When I first got to Morocco I was writing a couple post cards to some friends. I told my family I was writing to a “Sahbi,” a guy friend. “Sahbi?!! Or Sahbti?” my little sister asked me. I said Sahbi because I was writing to a guy friend and that seemed the most logical response. She put her hand over her mouth with a big smile. That was followed by HSHUMA J. Hshuma means shame, shameful, or shame on you. In Morocco girls DO NOT have guy friends. It is that simple. To say you have a friend that is a boy immediately implies that you are A) in a relationship (which is HSHUMA BZZAF- very very shameful) or B) that you are just having sex (which as you can imagine equally as HSHUMA.) As for men if they refer to you as Sahbti it will be interpreted that you are their prostitute not just their friend that is a girl. All of that said, every friend I have is now a “girl friend” and not “boy friend,” no matter what his or her gender actually is. This makes it kind of difficult when learning the language. I am trying to correctly use “he” and “she” when telling a story and conjugate the following verb correctly. However I am picturing the guy friend I am talking about, referring to him as a she (because I obviously don’t have boyfriends and am not a prostitute,) and trying to conjugate what he is doing with the feminine form of the verb. It is kind of like when you take one of those tests where different colors are written out in a color that they aren’t. Blue. Red. Red. Green. Green. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. You have to say the color the word is colored and not the color the word spells. It gets kind of tricky. So my sentences come out completely jumbled and I forget whether I am actually taking about a guy or a girl and my family just strains their ears to figure out who or what the heck I am talking about. This whole not being “allowed” to have guy friends makes things other than just talking about the non-existent guy friend hard. It makes it difficult to socialize without getting a reputation. It makes it difficult to explain something that happened to a guy friend because people’s minds automatically go to the idea that you must be sleeping together and not what actually happened to that person. Any story you tell or person of the opposite sex you talk about is completely devalued. I am learning to work around this but for example a friend of mine lost someone very close to him. He cannot share that with any Moroccans because they would never understand that he could have a girl that was a friend and how much pain it has caused him to lose her. They would ask if she was his prostitute, which would cause even more pain than not being able to share with them that he lost someone important to him, in the first place. As you can see this is quite a phenomenon and one of the things that will be a struggle to work around for the next couple of years. And this is just talking friendships let alone anything else.

The most recent news is that I have been going to the gym with my host dad and two host sisters. Who would have guessed? The gym is pretty much all weight lifting devices and posters of body builders in Speedos hung up all around the room.

My host dad is friends with the owner, Nordine. Nordine is a 5ft body builder, with a large personality. When we show up he moves all of the weight machines to the edge of the room and he usually runs us through some stretches and then goes into some kind of aerobics workout. This is good for me because I am trying to get a routine together to start doing aerobics with the women in my town.

Nordine gets mad at me when I can’t touch my toes, I don’t want to do summersaults, or I refuse to do the old fashioned sit-ups. The fact that I have a lot farther to reach and a lot further to fall doesn’t seem to cross his mind. While we listen to the song “Blue” by Eiffel 65 play over and over and over I have to explain to Nordine why I wont do these acrobatic moves while he argues with me that I just can’t. How do you explain to a very confident, gym owner that some of the exercises he is trying to get you to do are A) out dated and B) bad for you. He certainly doesn’t want to hear it from a woman (who obviously doesn’t know what she is talking about) and in broken Arabic, nonetheless.

However I think we made some progress because the next time we met we made the transition from sit-ups to crunches and from the one song on repeat to a compilation of at least 5 songs. And I can honestly say I don’t know the last time I worked out as hard as we do at Nordine’s gym. Now all I have to do is transition from this work out session to leading my own. I knew those years of jazzercise in high school would come in handy someday!

And then there was l’3id al Adha, L’Eid Kbir, Tabaski…whichever name suits your fancy… L’Eid Al Adha is the festival of sacrifice. For my family it meant the sacrifice of three sheep, one for the family, one for grandma and one for baby Aya. L’Eid Kbir follows the end of the Hajj, where Muslims around the world trek to Mecca.  The sacrifice of the sheep represents Abraham’s willingness to submit to God and sacrifice his eldest son. The sacrifice of sheep on Eid Al Adha represents the ram given to Abraham by an angel to sacrifice in place of his son. This is a time to share food with family, friends and the poor. It is also a time to reflect on the sacredness of life as we take the life of an animal, over which God has given us power.  Lastly it is a time to make sacrifices and remember that we all have to make sacrifices to stay on the correct path in life. We got up early and all of the men went to the mosque to pray. The women got breakfast ready and we all ate together when the men returned. After that the men cleaned the roof where the sacrifice was to take place. We did not kill the sheep in front of one another.  Two men held the sheep down while the third slit the sheep’s throat in just the right spot. A spurt of blood would shoot out, all of the men would jump back, and the sheep would flop about. The men would then pour water over the throat, which seemed to put a stop to any movement. Next they would blow the sheep up through a slit on the leg between the bone and skin. The sheep’s legs were broken, slipped through a rope hanging from the ceiling and then the skin was peeled off. It is actually pretty incredible how they can just pull the whole pelt off, kind of like a tight sweater you have to squirm to get off. But it comes off all in one piece. They then blew out the intestines as little pelets of poop went round in round. It sounded something like a balloon with beans in it being shaken about. The women had the responsibility of cleaning out the insides and preparing them for dinner. I was slightly amused, however morbid, to see lungs, liver, and the esophagus hanging out to dry on the laundry line with some of yesterday’s laundry. I was relieved to eat Chicken for lunch that day but ever since we have had grilled meat for just about every meal. We had grilled liver, heart, lung , shish kebabs. The lungs had the best flavor but the worst texture, slightly spongy. I liked the heart best and the liver least. We also had sheep skull for dinner one night. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there were anything on the skulls other then fatty, mushy, slimy flesh and teeth. Last night we had sheep brains fried up with eggs. They were spongy but with a ratio of 2:1 bread to braineggs I couldn’t taste them much. In between all of these meals have been some very satisfying kebabs of grilled meat. They always taste a little gamey but hey its grilled meat, I’m not complaining. As the Eid celebration has started to come to an end the meals of sheep parts have not. 

This has been an eventful week! It started off with the birth of a new member of the family, Aya. It ended with the slaughtering of three Sheep in celebration of the Eid Al Adha, and the arrival of family members galore. To start I went to visit my host mom in the hospital where she stayed for 3 days after she gave birth. It is only about a three-minute walk across a huge dirt field to get there from my house. On the way I thought to myself, I wonder if I should turn my cell phone off…You know hospital rules and all. I decided to wait and see what the set up was. We walked in as though we owned the place, carrying hot tea, otherwise known as sugar water with a dash of tea, soup, fruit juice and a tajine. I imagined the uncomfortable sterile feeling of hospitals, rubber gloves, scrubs, and the ceaseless beeps of machines monitoring ones heart rate.  In front of me was a bed with a woman looking uncomfortable and slightly disturbed to see these new guests. On the bed next to her appeared to be another woman buried beneath a pile of blankets. There was a third bed with a gray, foam/plastic mattress covered in stains. Lastly against the wall lay my host mom under the blanket we brought from home, tired, but happy to have company. Sitting next to her was the new healthy baby girl. I sat on the plastic stained bed while my host grandma, Hadja, force-fed my host mom tajine and juice. The families have to provide any food, blankets, clothing etc…for the patient in the hospital.  Hadja went to the hospital several times throughout the day to bring food and keep Amina company. I was just grateful she finally had the baby. I was starting to worry. As I sat on the bed I laughed at the fact that I had even wondered if I should turn my phone off. From where did I think they would get fancy heart monitoring machines?  A calico cat strutted in, eyed up the bed with one of the sleeping women, before he decided to just sit under the bed. A white cat followed him in and circled the room; I thought maybe he was the doctor. It all made sense though, when a visiting little boy came in and threw food under the bed to the cat. No wonder they think they own the place.   Three days later my host mom came home. They have since put Henna on one of the baby’s hands and black eyeliner under her eyes. I haven’t quite figured it out. They have been very careful about not letting anyone get too close to her yet and Amina is very careful about sanitizing her breasts before feeding Aya and washing her hands regularly. I don’t know what damage Henna or eyeliner would do but it seems like a silly contradiction to smother these eyes, that are barely opened as it is, in black goop, but to make sure no one but her mother goes near her.  It is funny, some days I feel like Morocco really isn’t that different …Then I watch my grandmother wrap her grandson in a white cloth, followed by an ace bandage, spinning him around and around until you can’t see anything but his little head. He literally looks like a mummy. He is then placed on his back, on his mom’s back, and tied on with a long colorful cloth…and I remember, no, I’m really not in Kansas anymore. 

As volunteers we are expected to work with a community in helping to identify assets within and difficulties surrounding said community. To accomplish this we have started to collect a repertoire of different tools, especially useful in creating discussion. One of the first tools we experimented with, as a CBT group, was community mapping.   One of our first days at the D.C. we divided the students in into one group of boys and one group of girls. Each group was supposed draw a map of their community and identify which places they spent the most time at.  This week we got the maps out to compare them with one another. The girl’s map had the high school, the dar chebab, the hammam, the mosque, the hair salon, the market, the s-suq and a coffee shop. The boy’s map had many of these things but also included the soccer field, a swimming pool, a night club and as you can imagine didn’t include the hair salon. We asked the students to look at the main differences and first asked the girls if they played soccer. They did play soccer, but only at school. We asked them if they swim. They said they do swim but they only swim in other towns. They would not swim in there community.  Why would the girls be allowed to swim outside their community but not within their community, however the boys could?  As the discussion unfolded this is what we found: The community that we live in is rather small and everyone knows everyone. The girls said they felt more comfortable going to a club or the swimming pool elsewhere. They said that if they go here (in what will from now on be known as CBTville) everyone knows their business and they are harassed about it. They said they felt more respected by people that didn’t know them than the ones that do. This also opened up discussion about another topic. One, 17 year old, girl pointed out that in CBTville the number one problem is prostitution. She has 5 friends that she could think of, off the top of her head that prostitute themselves. You can make $2.00 every time you have sex with someone. The prostitutes in CBTville have created a bad reputation for all women in the community. The girl pointed out that if you go out at all it is assumed that you are a prostitute so it is better to go to a city ten or 20 minutes away (to go dancing, swimming or whatever it may be) where you can avoid the situation entirely.  It was a very interesting discussion. The gravity of the topic however did not bring anyone down, in fact it also created a forum to discuss solutions. Some ideas were to create a training center for men to give them skills, keep them in work and off the street where they can get in trouble. And more importantly create a girls center where the girls could learn different crafts such as weaving, so that they could support themselves. It is fascinating how just by asking these kids to draw maps and then by asking the right questions a whole debate can be started. We didn’t tell them that prostitution was a problem or how they should attempt to fix it. They told us. And essentially it is our role to give them a safe space to have those discussions. 

A Dar Chebab is a youth center run by a Mudir (the director.) Mudirs contribute to their Dar Chebab’s to varying degrees. Some Mudirs feel their responsibility is solely to unlock the Dar Chebab at the hour of opening and to lock it up in the evening.  Others feel more inclined to organize activities. Associations in the area take on the responsibility of organizing most activities. If there are no associations collaborating with a D.C. to set up activities, then there aren’t any.  

The Moudira (female Moudir) at our Dar Chebab has been very friendly and forthcoming with information, although it seems inflated with positive characteristics and bled of any negative characteristics that might exist.  That said she has been very cooperative in letting us take charge of the activities we wanted to do in the D.C. in spite of the knowledge that we would only be there for a couple months. Our main activity so far has been to establish a Friend’s club. Our goal was to create a safe space for both girls and boys to hang out, work on homework, play games, practice English and make friends. For us it was an opportunity to learn Darija, explore the culture of Moroccan youth and to get some experience teaching and interacting in such an environment.  There have been several diligent students that actively participate and others that just come to play and check out the new Americans.  An average of 20 people come a day, a nice number easily distributed between the 6 of us trainees.  We start with an energizer, some kind of game to “energize” people and get them excited to learn. Recently it has been tossing a ball around and introducing ourselves, or saying our favorite subjects in school. After that we usually break into smaller groups of 5 to 10 and talk about culture or work on homework. At the end of this week we hope to facilitate a discussion about Maps we had the youth draw the first day we were at the D.C. That explanation will follow. 

Tonight I had henna done for the first time.  Usually women have their hands decorated in Henna before holidays or weddings. There was no particular occasion for my henna but the family was very insistent and it was quite fun to partake in.  Henna starts out as a green powder and is mixed with water and perhaps some other ingredients and mixed until it makes a pasty consistency not quite as thick as toothpaste. They put the henna in a syringe and then paint lace like designs on the backs and fronts of hands and sometimes feet. After the design is painted on you have to sit for about 2 hours for it to dry and really soak into the skin. After two hours you can scrape off the dried henna and underneath is a beautiful pattern. It starts out bright orange but quickly fades to a light brown. Henna is really pretty but it lasts up to 2 months. I think most people really like it for about 2 weeks and then tolerate it for the next 6 weeks.  When I had it done I sat on the couch with my arms above my head for a couple hours. I was trying to take a nap but every time I was about to doze off my host sister would yell at me and say that if I fell asleep my hands would fall down and hit the couch or my clothing staining them and destroying the artwork that was my hands.  It actually turned out really well and my family wants to add more for swearing in, in November, when I become a legit PCV. I have a feeling however that this henna will still be there.

This afternoon was another cultural experience that was enjoyable or at the very least interesting. I sat around a table with a friend, and several women from my extended host family. We had a huge red sheet spread over our laps with a table in the middle of us. On women would pour a pile of grain onto the table and we would knock the good pieces into our laps and onto the sheet. We would take out all of the mouse poop, little sticks and other miscellaneous materials that were mixed in with the grain, that we probably wouldn’t want to eat later.  Later the women will take all of the grain that we sorted to a mill where they will grind it and then use it to make bread at the house. When we were done with sorting the grain my friend Courtney and I met up with another girl from our CBT group so that we could go to the mini souk (market) to get vegetables, fruit and meat for the next week. It was all pretty standard until we got to the chicken market. We usually just buy a dead chicken from a store but this time we got to pick out our very own live chicken! We went into a big garage that had chickens just hanging out. We picked the one we wanted and the butcher slit the chicken’s throat right in front of us. He threw the chicken in a big bucket for a minute so that it didn’t have any room to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, LITERALLY.  He proceeded then to throw the body against a machine that appeared to beet whatever living daylights were left in the poor guy. Or more specifically, the machine was responsible for de-feathering the chicken. From there the body was dipped into hot water to get the left over feathers off, plopped in front of us where its internal organs were ripped out and then it was tossed in a clear plastic bag and handed to us ready to cook. It all sounds slightly violent but this entire process maybe took 5 minutes and it costs half as much to buy a fresh chicken like this than it does to go to a shop and buy one that has been dead for who knows how long.  

  This morning I found a new coping strategy.  Believe it or not this whole experience has been slightly stressful. There is not a lot of alone time and I get overwhelmed being around people 24/7. When the Peace Corps asked me during the interview what my coping strategies were for dealing with stress I said writing in my journal or reading. Unfortunately there isn’t time to write and all the books I brought seem to be downers, which are hardly stress relievers.  The good news! Is that I found a new strategy.  I go to the roof and was my clothing by hand. We have a little washing machine but doing it by hand seems just as efficient if not more so. Lately it has been really hot and the water we wash clothing with is nice and cold. I just sit on the roof, bask in the sun, and scrub my clothing as deliberately but slowly as possible while enjoying music on my ipod. It is about the one hour a week I can sit down and take the time to think and process, which I can’t, do while trying to speak darija or hanging out with the kids at Dar Chebab (youth center.) Maybe I can also use that time to come up with another coping strategy for when in starts snowing and I can’t just hang out on the roof anymore.

I finally went back to the Hammam again. This time I went with my host mom and there were significantly less people in the Hammam. The room that we were in was covered in white tile with an arching roof. There was a grey tile floor (probably so that you couldn’t see all the dead skin.) There were two water pipes / spouts that lined the room. One pipe carried scalding hot water and the other cold water. My host mom and I both paid (under $5) to have someone scrub us with the infamous, black, sandpaper mitt. The woman that took on the job was probably in her late 60s , wore a maroon bandana and a yin yang ring on her ring finger.  She started out scrubbing the dead skin off of one arm and my back, which wasn’t too bad.  Then she made me lay back with my head on her thigh while she scrubbed my chest, under my arms and on my sides (OOUCH!)  She proceeded to reach across my body and scrub my other arm and sides which was not without the slapping of the face by breasts and stomach roles.  If this wasn’t traumatizing enough she made me role over on my stomach and scrubbed my butt cheeks.  There were some positive outcomes from all of this. First of all, I don’t think I had showered for a week or so and the combination of sweating the grossness out, getting all of the dry, dead skin off and then actually washing my hair and body was surprisingly refreshing. It was also a chance to just sit and enjoy the quiet without having to really talk to anyone, a nice break. While I sat there I stared at the floor and thought, Ah man, I could be at home right now, in a coffee shop, reading or just hanging out…OR I could be in Morocco, getting scrubbed down in a slightly awkward bathhouse by an odd little old lady who has probably scrubbed down 1000s of women and thinks nothing of it.  Besides in all actuality I can probably find a café and some friends to sit with, if I really need to.

salaam all,

I'm sorry these updates have been sparse. I am counting on more internet when I finally settle in in a few months. Tons is going on and I wish I had words to describe all of it. I am in a little mountain town for training. It is chilly during the morning and significantly warmer come 3:00-4:00pm. There are afternoon thunderstorms but it all passes through pretty quickly (Sound Familiar?) 

I got to go on a hike the other day with several PCVs. It was a pretty easy trail with a little stream running next to the path. About half way through it started pouring rain, conveniently, right when we arrived at the top of a big hill where there happened to be an abandoned shack. We waited there for about 10 minutes for it to clear up. We could see the whole town which was sparkling form the reflection from all the water. As we started to hike down there was a double rainbow over the trail and over the town. That night we made spaghetti and real garlic bread! mmmm. There has since been a rule put in place that we aren't allowed to interact with PCVs until after we are sworn in as pcvs, so that they don't interrupt our training. Its too bad because they are such a wealth of knowledge but so it goes.

My family has been nice despite a few recent developments.The family is made up of a dad who is a principal at a school, the mom is the president of a co-op and they have three daughters. The oldest daughter, SouHaila is 15 and we have really hit it off. She is really patient with me and is pretty good about only speaking darija to me most of the time. The middle daughter is Oumaima and she is 10. She is a little shyer around me but equally as nice. The youngest daughter is DoHa and she is one year old.  With SouHaila and Oumaima we put on music or wedding videos and dance every time the parents leave. They always give me a scarf to tie around my waste and try and teach me how to shake my hips…It may just be a lost cause. I have been spending lots of time in the kitchen with SouHaila learning to cook and more so learning all of the names of different foods and cooking utensils. My house has three floors and we live in the middle floor. On the top floor is where my language teacher lives and where I have classes during the day.  We have four hours of language classes in the morning then lunch and after that we have four hours of cultural training. Starting after Ramadan we will have a cook cooking for us and will be allowed a coffee/ tea break half way through each session. In the afternoons after the break we now go to the Dar Chebab (youth center) to get to know some of the youth in the area. Many parents don't like to let their children go to the dar chebab because they think it is just a place for boys and girls to go to hang out with one another which is unacceptable. It will be interesting to see how many people actually start showing up. On friday there is going to be "Peace Day." we are going to get together with another organization and some musicians to celebrate Peace. It will be the first time that we really get to interact with kids and we are all looking forward to it. Ramadan came to an end about a weak ago, but during Ramadan our schedule was a little off.I will explain more about Ramadan next year when it comes around but it is the 9th month on the Islamic calendar and the most holy of months because it is when the Koran was revealed to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. One of the 5 pillars of Islam is to fast from food and water, from sun up to sun down, during this month. I decided not to fast because of adjustment purposes and because of the current workload that we have. I am almost fasting by default because there is not anywhere open to buy food during the day. At sun down we have lFtour (breakfast) or in other words, the breaking of the fast. When we break fast we would eat a tomato-based soup with noodles and vegetables called Harira,  tmar (dates), Shbekia (a fried pastry drizzled with honey,) lzitune (olives,) and then we usually eat some kind of larger meal shortly after.We also went to the Hammam recently. The Hammam - take one, Probably deserves an entry all of its own.  Hammams are public bathhouses.  You walk in, strip down to your underwear, and go sit in hot sauna like rooms.  All around the room are waterspouts with hot water. You bring your own bucket, stool to sit on, and special concoctions of soaps and creams. I don’t know if it was just because of Ramadan or what but the place was packed. I could hardly move around without stepping on someone.  There were tons of little kids accompanying their mom’s and I’m not sure how they didn’t just pass out from the heat. We started in a hot room and my host sister gave me a black, sandpaper like glove to scrub my skin. I scrubbed my arms, legs and chest for at least 20 minutes and it didn’t seem like much was happening. Then my host sister took the glove from me and started scrubbing my arms and back and huge rolls of gray, dead skin, began peeling off of my body. Apparently I wasn’t doing it hard enough. After that we went to a little cooler room to wash off. While we were there a couple of my host sister’s friends were there and kept trying to talk to me. My host sister got really defensive and told me not to talk to them. Apparently one of them is in love wither her “love” and so obviously I shouldn’t be taking to her. I think I will have to wait until Hammam – take two, before I know what I really think of it.I think that is mostly what I have for an update this far. Tomorrow we get to meet up with all the other trainees. We haven't seen them in a couple weeks and it is always fun to get together and exchange stories and experiences. Other than that I think we have about five weeks left before we swear in and become official Peace Corps Volunteers. It is all very exciting. I hope you are all well back home. I'm thinking about you!  

Stepping off the plane into Morocco, we were welcomed by the smell of freshly cut grain and humidity, the kind that clings right inside the nostrils. The country director of Peace Corps Morocco and other staff were also there to greet us. I introduced myself to the Director and immediately he said, “Ah Fauve, we have some volunteers who want to talk to you about your volunteering at the Village SOS in Senegal. They are planning a trip there and want to visit.” I was completely taken aback that he knew so much about me before I even left the airport. He seemed to know just as much about every other volunteer and how he kept the names and facts straight is beyond me.

To continue on with part of that story:

A panel of current PCVs(Peace Corps Volunteers) came to talk to us today and one of them was one of the PVCs that wanted to talk to me about the Village SOS. The village SOS in Senegal was an orphanage divided into “families.” There were different building that all had a mother figure and about 10-13 children living in each one. The other children were like siblings and the “mother” would do the cooking and cleaning while caring for the children. Village SOS’s are quite widely spread and it turns out there is one in Morocco as well. The girl that was seeking me out was planning on traveling from Village SOS to Village SOS to see the different places and to volunteer while staying there.

This was very exciting to me because not only was I able to talk to her about Senegal and Mali but it made me realize that, the short experience that I had volunteering for the Village SOS in Senegal could open a door for me here in Morocco and perhaps be a future project or organization to work on/with. It also made me realize that all of the little experiences add up creating other opportunities in the future that you may not even realize. It never crossed my mind that I would have a chance to work at another Village SOS but it sure seems fitting now working in Youth Development.

As far as this first part of training goes, a supportive and helpful staff surrounds us. We are staying, 4 to a room, in a little beach town near Rabat. There is not much time to surf or swim but we make it for a little walk every night from about 6-7. We venture back as the sun sets and the call to prayer hums in ocean breeze. It is slightly overwhelming to be surrounded by 63 people constantly but we only have a few days left together.

During this part of the training phase we are mostly trying to get a grasp of Peace Corps Morocco Policies and gain an understanding as to how training will continue for the next 9 weeks and ultimately how we will be evaluated.

On Tuesday we will move in with our host families but we will reconvene in groups of 6 during the day, from about 9 am-8pm, for both language and technical training. After that we will go home to the families, practice our language skills, and try to gain an understanding of the culture before doing it again the next day. I am slightly intimidated by this but very excited about all of knowledge I will gain in the weeks to come. I have the impression that I will be well prepared when the time comes to go to my own site and begin working with the community.

So, we just finished staging and leave for Morocco tomorrow.  Because I arrived early I was able to go visit the liberty bell and independence hall in addition to enjoying a Philly cheese steak with some other early arrivals. There were about 16 of us that arrived yesterday and it was nice to get to know a little group of people before another 47 people showed up.  The best part about this staging (besides that I got significantly more out of it than expected) is what a blessing it is to be surrounded by a group of people that is so excited to be here. There are about 4 married couples, 10ish  people who have been in the Peace corps previously (aka RPCVs,) and age ranges form 21- at least late 60s. There is an interesting story to go with each person and everyone is on the verge of exploding with excitement.   We seem to have similar anxieties and aspirations and all of those things can be shared without anyone questioning, “Then why are you going into the Peace Corps?”  At this point we have all shared the experiences of the never-ending application process, jumping through hoops, taking surveys, filling out paper work and now staging. From here our experiences will all diverge but we will always be connected by the common link that is the Peace Corps. How Cool!  It was interesting to talk about how many people hear, “yeah, I thought about doing that once,” when they talk about the Peace Corps with someone. A sign in the Philly airport that read, “PEACE CORPS, never have to say I Should’ve,” just reminded what a great opportunity this is.  I’m wondering if that same sign is conveniently placed in the airport in DC and the other staging cities as well.  It’s  certainly enough to get ya pumped up!  

I thought I would post my address during training so that no one has any excuses not to write!The Peace Corps asks family and friends not to send packages during the staging/training period but letters and post cards are highly valued. My address for approximately the next two months is:

Fauve Johnson, Trainee

s/c Corps de la Paix

2, rue Abou Marouane Essaadi

Agdal, Rabat 10100, MOROCCO

After the initial training period when I know my permanent address I will pass the word along. At that point packages, letters, The Economist and all other mail is welcome. 

The Peace corps warnings and suggestions about mail:Air Mail usually takes 10-12 days, while surface mail may take up to four months to reach me. Don't send cash it rarely reaches its destination. Mark gifts on any customs labels when sending packages to avoid the imposition of fees. Mail may be sporadic so don't worry if mail is not received regularly etc... 

I look forward to hearing from you! 

I received an e-mail today with more specifics of my departure and pre-service training.  I will leave Denver on September 8, spend 24 hours in Philly before flying to Casablanca and beginning my Pre-Service training in the region. During training we will cover the background, history, mission and goals of the PC as well as how to manage personal risk responsibly, review policies and reflect on our commitment to service. Upon arrival I will begin learning one of the berber dialects (Tamazight or Tashelheet) spoken in Morocco or Darija(Moroccan Arabic). Over the last couple months I have watched friends head all over the world to places as diverse as Togo, Niger, South Africa, Mongolia, Belize, New Zealand and Japan. I am now officially ready to go!   I may have mentioned before that I will be a Youth Development volunteer. I thought I would explain what that implies. At the beginning of my service I will focus on learning the language and integrating into the community by living with a family and teaching English classes.  This will expand into the implementation of activities such as sports, clubs, gender development, culture exchange, etc. I will work in a Dar Chabab (Youth Center) and collaborate with the director of the Youth Center and the community to focus on issues identified by the community. As the PC describes, YD Volunteers serve in several main capacities:      Working directly with youth through content-based English classes and facilitating activities for youth.     Working to increase the capacity of those who affect youth through projects and workshops with local youth serving organizations.     Working with parents to engage them and others to be supporters of youth. This of course is all theoretical and the actual Peace Corps experience will be more complex and will include many more activities that may or may not be so clearly defined.  While the Peace Corps assignment may be rewarding (and I am sure that it will be) many RPCV (returned Peace Corps Volunteers) describe the secondary projects that one takes on as the more rewarding experiences and the ones that really allow them to integrate into the community.  I just can’t wait! 

WOW! 15 months ago I began filling out my application for the Peace Corps.  Almost a year to the day of my nomination for a youth development position in North Africa/the Middle East I will start on my journey to Morocco. On (or around) September 6, I will fly to Philadelphia where I will have a brief introduction to what lies ahead of me before I leave for Casablanca to begin my Pre-Service Training (PST) For those who do not know, The Peace Corps is a governmental institution that was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy. Its mission is three fold: ·      Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women. ·      Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served. ·      Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. I have started this blog primarily to address goal three listed above as well as to share with you my adventures, growth, trials and tribulations throughout my 27 month Peace Corps service in Morocco. As a privileged, white, middle class American, who has been given many opportunities to interact with and benefit from the generosity of people around the world, I have found that this is now my chance to give back. From France to Senegal, Western Africa to Egypt and through America’s own diversity of peoples I have discovered the importance of human interaction and the fact that differences can unite people in the same ways they are often used to divide people. As interactions expand and relationships form there is no denying humanity to people who are different from you. There is no better way to understand that, than to confront ones fears of differences by being immersed in a culture that is different than your own, and realizing that humans have the same needs everywhere: Clean water, food, shelter, love, family, education and opportunities for personal growth, etc. Some people are born with these things laid out in front of them, however this does not mean that those that are not, are not entitled to these same benefits and should in no way be deprived of them. Unfortunately not everyone feels this way. I am hoping through this blog and through my experiences I can prove to at least one American, whom would not understand otherwise, that people in Morocco (and in other places around the world) are no less intelligent, thoughtful, or important than anyone at home due to their religion, education level, culture, or history. While Morocco may be one of the few countries in which the Peace Corps serves, with amenities such as running water, electricity and possibly even Internet, I am under no illusion that it will be easy. In fact those are the superficial things that give an appearance of difficulty or ease to a situation that goes much deeper. From learning the language and how to communicate to understanding and being accepted into a community there are hurdles to be jumped, potholes to stumble through but of course rewards to be had. I think of my first experiences living abroad, ten months in Bretagne, France, and the high I would get when I would have the realization of the communication that was taking place. “Oh my goodness! They understand me and I understand them, we are both speaking French and we are even joking with one another! Who would have ever thought.” This was after months of wondering when I would ever understand, months of sitting at lunch tables with my head spinning, trying to follow the conversations at hand. And then one day I woke up and realized that while I would never be French I could finally communicate, participate and be accepted in a way that was never before possible. I also remember the high I would get after an hour and a half of teaching English to a group of predominately Hispanic adults, in Boulder. That same feeling of excitement in watching a person progress in a language and understanding their elation after so much frustration of trying to understand a silly grammatical rule, when all of a sudden it finally makes sense. And it is funny how languages work like that…you don’t get it…you don’t get it…you don’t get it…and then BAM it hits you out of left field that you are actually understanding. And the doors that understanding actually opens, is what I find so exciting. The first wedding you go to in another country/culture is always fascinating even when you don’t understand the language and what is going on around you. But when you finally understand the language and someone can explain what the traditions are all about, it becomes an entirely different experience. And when a person can express themselves in their own language, there is a side to them that you would never see if they are constantly trying to appease you by speaking your language (ie speaking English to make it easier for you despite the fact that they are significantly more comfortable speaking their own language be it Spanish, French, Wolof, Xhosa, Arabic or Chinese.) Something is always lost in translation. It reminds me of one of my best friends Claire. She moved to France, and speaks perfect French because she was raised speaking both French and English, but says she feels like she has lost half of her personality in France, when speaking French because she cannot express herself in the same way and with the same amount of comfort she could in the United States. All of this said, I think it is important to learn the languages of the countries you go to because it opens a door into the culture that will be entirely missed otherwise. It is like walking through a neighborhood and seeing what all of the houses are like but never actually going inside to see how the people decorate, what they eat, how they interact with one another and most importantly, what all of these things signify to them.  In any case I realize this first post has gotten away from me (just a littleJ) but I hope that it gives you some insight into my motivations for joining the Peace Corps and my excitement at the 27 months ahead of me. And maybe, just maybe, at some point it will be able to provide you with a little window into Morocco for those who may never have the opportunity to venture there themselves.