way more complicated than it needed to be

I was diagnosed with asthma back in February.  I blame Morocco's constant dust storms and the heat, but I blame most things on the heat.  I caught the plague while on vacation (I was in Florence, there was no chance I was calling it anything else), was horribly sick for two weeks and then never quite bounced back and never stopped coughing.  After five months (and friends threatening to call the doctors for me), I finally called the doctors, got to spend a few days in the capital and an inhaler, which cleared up the cough in a matter of days, and that was that.  I used the inhaler every day for a couple of months, but after a while, I started forgetting and when the cough didn’t reappear, I put the inhaler away and hoped that I was better, at least until the next time I got the death plague.

This summer, however, the dust storms were terrible, and between the lack of humidity (hovering around 15%) and the temperature (hovering around the high 130s/high 50s), the air was just painful to breath, and when I started coughing again, I wasn't surprised.   I unearthed the inhaler, but instead of clearing up, the cough kept getting worse.  It was just a dry, shallow little cough, nothing painful or distracting, but it felt like there was something in my lungs and it wouldn’t go away and I had been firmly instructed to call the damn doctor if I coughed for more than two weeks.  Finally, I was trying to sing to the kids at the orphanage and realized I was too out of breath to get through a verse.  That’s when I called the PCMOs (Peace Corps doctors, because it's not the federal government if we're not constantly using acronyms).  

The PCMOs upped the dosage of my inhaler, prescribed a steroid and told me to call them in the morning.  I ventured out to the pharmacy, but the one down the street from my house was closed, as was the one further down the street.  I ended up walking clear across town (and it’s not a small town), past eight pharmacies, but every one was closed and each one had an identical piece of paper taped to the doors. It was written in Fusha and I only speak Darija (the Moroccan dialect of Arabic), so I have no idea what it said, but I assume it was Fuck You, Sick People.

Fun story, the only other time I've been sick enough to need to go to the pharmacy, they were also all closed.

I called PCMOs back with the news and we discussed me making a trip to Marrakesh (the nearest town) for the medicine, but Kesh is an hour and a half away and it was too late in the day for me to make the round trip, plus due a screw up at the bank, I don’t have a working bank card and was going to be hard pressed to buy the medicine and make it to Rabat for training next week without throwing in a round trip to Marrakesh.  They decided to give it a day for the cough to improve with the inhaler, and when that didn’t work, told me to head for Rabat early.

My site to Rabat is a fairly easy trip (grand taxi to the next town over and from there a train straight to the capital) and it’s a trip I’ve made often, since Peace Corps is based there.  I’ve down it countless times without a problem, but this time, not so much.

I left my house around 8:00, walked to the taxi stand and caught a taxi to Ben Guerir. The woman sitting next to me said she was going to Casablanca, I said I was going to Rabat, we talked about the weather (hot) and when we got to Ben Gurrir about 20 minutes before the train left, which was not quite enough time to walk to the train station, she suggested we share a taxi. Instead of hailing one of the small taxis, though, she tried to get a grand taxi.  Grand taxi’s have set routes, usually only travel between towns and also, don’t leave until all six spots are full, so I double-checked with the taxi driver to make sure we were going to the train station.  The taxi finally filled up six minutes before the train was suppose to leave, but trains are usually late here, so I was hopeful.  We sped down the road towards the train station, and then we sped right on past the train station and out of town.

"Wait," I said. "That's the train station. I need to go there."

The driver kept on driving and said they were going somewhere else, somewhere I'd never heard of.

"But I need to catch a train," I protested.

He kept driving and I told him to stop and let me out.  There was no hope of catching my original train, but we were only ten minutes outside of town by car and I could walk back to town and catch the next train. The taxi driver kept driving and the other passengers assure me that once we reach our destination, I could catch another taxi to take me to the next train station.  I pouted for a little bit (I mean, I was essentially forcibly taken to an unknown place against my will and also, probably going to miss my doctor's appointment, I think being a little out of shape is allowed) (I should preface this by saying at no point did I feel unsafe; the taxi was full of sweet old ladies who were patting my leg and calling me a poor thing, and I truly think this was do to a misunderstand, although I'm not sure how, because I know I can say “take me to the train station” correctly).

We got to our destination thirty minutes later; a tiny town that was more of an intersection than an actual town. My fellow passengers offer to get me a taxi, but since I wasn't sure I would be able to catch up to the train, I opted for a bus.  They led me to the appropriate patch of dirt by a dude selling grapes to wait for the bus. Eventually a bus to Casablanca passed through, and I decided that I would rather deal with the Casablanca bus station than standing in the sun on the side of a road, being stared at.  (I'm 100% positive I'm the first foreigner to ever show up there and all the attention was a bit uncomfortable.)  I took the bus to Casablanca, transferred to a bus to Rabat and made it with just enough time to still see the doctor.  They gave me the appropriate medicine and my cough cleared up almost immediately.

This was way more complicated that it needed to be.

coming clean

One of the side effects to the spate of break-ins this spring was that there were a lot people in my house.  Obviously, that's implied in the name of the crime, but not just the thief.  My host family, neighbors and the police also spent a lot of time in my house, which was... messy.  Yeah, let's go with messy.  It sounds better than shitstorm.

I am not naturally a tidy or organized person.  I like living in a clean space, but actually cleaning is really boring and there are all sorts of storage issues in my apartment (mainly, there's not any) and yeah, basically, the only times my apartment has been properly clean since I moved in a year and half ago has been when I've had someone spending the night, and even then, I tend to toss all the random crap from my living room into my bedroom and shut the door, so my bedroom is always especially messy. 

After the first break-in, when it took me forever to determine what had been taken since I couldn’t tell if something was missing or just lost in the clutter, I started (slowly) unfucking my habitat, one room at the time.  (I spent the week before the second break-in taking everything out of my kitchen and scrubbing all the things.  Progress was being made!)  It's not like I can't take care of my house; I just don't, and normally I don't really care, but it was a bit embarrassing when all of a sudden, my trashed-out house was full of Moroccan housewives judging me.

The evening after the second break-in, my downstairs neighbors came to check on me and said she would come over the next day to move some furniture.  Or something.  I don’t know, it was in Arabic and it was late, which isn’t a great combination for comprehension.

The next afternoon, she knocked on my door and asked, “Do you have a rag to scrub the floor with?" as soon as I opened the door.

"Um, I have a squeegee?" I told her. 

She sent her son to go find a rag and the appropriate buckets (mine weren't the right size?), and told me she was going to clean my bedroom.

"That's okay," I assured her.  "You really don't have to," I said, but she didn't listen, and over the next two hours, her son, one of her daughters and she picked up all the crap in my bedroom (which involved her eleven year old son holding a bunch of my dirty underwear *facepalm*), threw away all the trash (which involved me running after them saying, “No wait, that’s not trash.”), removed the rug so she could scrub the floor by hand (which I have never done and, let’s be honest, will never do) and rearranged the furniture (I'm not sure why).  Then she took all the furniture out of my living room so she could mop that floor.  (I'd like to point out that my living room was actually clean.  Okay, so I had thrown most of the junk into my bedroom.  And I hadn’t mopped it in ages, but it was clean, dammit.)  Then she moved on to the kitchen, which as previously mentioned, actually was clean.  (Also, there were a half dozen liquor bottles hidden in the corner by my dishes and I REALLY couldn't let her see those, so as she mopped my kitchen floor, I wedged myself in the corner and bodily blocked my shame.)

Three hours later, my apartment had been cleaned from floor the ceiling.  It was simultaneously incredible kind because the mess, especially the bedroom, was overwhelming, but also incredible embarrassing because she was, in the kindest way possible, judging the hell out of me.  I had to keep excusing myself to another room so I could claw at my hair and wish I could call someone to flail at. 

I spent the next two weeks going through my now clean apartment and actually organizing everything.  I threw away a bunch more stuff, shoved even more stuff in my suitcase to deal with when I leave and finally hung up some artwork (okay, cut-up calendars) in my bedroom.  I also tackled (and conquered) the absolute mountain of dirty laundry (and when you have to wash it by hand in a bucket with a washboard, laundry takes a bit longer), and by the end of June, my apartment was well and truly clean for the first time possible ever.

That was two months ago (almost three, if you count from the original cleaning date) and my apartment is still clean.  I mean, I haven’t mopped the floors and I’ve only washed my sheets once, so it isn’t clean by my neighbor’s standards, but I wake up every morning to a clean kitchen, a clutter free living room and I sweep my floors every other day (thank you, dust storms), which is pretty damn spotless by my standards.

Maybe I’m finally maturing?

Anyways, now that I no longer have to ashamed of people seeing my apartment, here's a tour of my house.

The video’s actually from the end of June (I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while).  Since then, I’ve bought a fan and my wall of cards has turned the corner and is marching towards the next window.

*facepalm*

I was at the orphanage the other day, like I am most afternoons, when Troll Baby projectile vomited all over me.  It was actually really impressive that a child that small could throw up that much; it was a regular Old Faithful of formula milk.  (Troll Baby, who has only existed in this world for 13 days, has thrown up on me roughly half of those.  I think he doesn't like his nickname.  Don't worry, baby, you'll grow into your face someday.)  Anyway, I mopped up Troll Baby's little face, then went to the bathroom to clean myself.  My skirt was pretty light and filmy and would dry fast, but my shirt was drenched in regurgitated formula, so I just took it off, scrubbed it in the sink, and one of the caretakers hung it on the roof to dry.  It was 118 degrees that afternoon, which is awful on so many levels, but it does mean that laundry dries very quickly.  I had worn a cardigan to work over my T-shirt (no short sleeves in site, so I end up wearing a lot of T-shirts with lightweight cardigans that I can take off once I'm no longer outside), but it was hot, so I didn't bother to button it up.  Hey, we were all ladies or boys under the age of four; I wasn't too worried about spending an hour or so topless so long as I could avoid Troll Baby barfing in my bra.  (My life is so glamorous.)

ANYWAYS, my shirt dried quickly (thank you extreme heat and total lack of humidity), but when Bouchra brought it back to me, Abdellatif was sitting in my lap and I didn't want to to move him just to put my shirt back on, so I tossed in on the counter and waited.  It's not like anyone ever visits, right?  Wrong.  Around 6:00, right when the evening caretaker usually arrives, there was a knocking on the door, but instead of being Faiza, it was a woman I had never met before and her thirteen year old son.  And there I am, sitting on the ground, topless.  Oh, and did I mention it's the middle of Ramadan.  It's not as bad as it could have been - I was wearing a cardigan, it just wasn't bottomed, so at least my shoulders and arms were covered, and the four year old on my lap was hiding my front.  I clutched Abdellatif to my chested to hide my state of dress and hissed <i>sit</i> in his ear when he started to squirm.  Luckily, mother and son weren't there long and they left without noticing, or at least commenting, on my state of dress.  So yeah, the story of the time I was caught topless by a teenage boy.

Mural Painting at Ouled Zerrad

Remember when I use to write things here?  Yeah, neither do I. 

Last Saturday was my one year anniversary as a Peace Corps Volunteer!  I've been in Morocco for a little over fourteen months, but the first two months were spent in training and technically I was a trainee, not a volunteer.  I feel like I should be able to look back on the past year and take something away from it, some lesson or growth or change, but really, all I got is that I just washed my hair for the first time in two and a half weeks (don't judge, it's gotten really cold) and legitimately did not give a shit, so yeah, I don't know.  Maybe once I'm home again.

Anyway, I celebrated my PCVersary by helping with a mural painting project in one of the duwars (tiny rural communes) in the bled (countryside) near my site. 


Back in March, my sitemate Lucia helped an association from Ouled Zerrad write a grant to purchase art supplies for a mural painting project to decorate the middle school and the clinic in the duwar.  The event was suppose to happen in April, but ~things~ happened and the event didn't actually take place until last Saturday, which was a plus for me since I was busy during the original date.  Mike, Lucia and I got to Ouled Zerrad early Saturday morning and spent a few hours playing exotic zoo attractions for the middle schoolers while we waited for the event to start.  And look guys, I'm *used* to being stared at for being a foreigner where foreigners usually don't go, but I have never felt quite so much like an animal at a zoo before.  As we were being hemmed in on the porch of the middle school and Lucia and I were making wtf eyes, one of the association members leaned over and told us we were interesting because we were strange.

The associations invited a couple of artists from Kelaa and an artist from Casablanca to help with the mural paintings, and after introductions and breakfast, everyone walked out to the wall surrounding the middle school and watched them start to paint.  Unfortunately, there was a short rainstorm about half an hour after we started and the first few murals were a wee bit washed away. 



After the storm, one of the artists, an art teacher from Kelaa who is one of Mike's students, led us over to the clinic, a sad, abandoned little building with broken windows and no doctor or medicine.  He sketched out some pictures in chalk, and then put us and the kids to work painting.  I painted an apple and a flower!


We ate lunch with the association (three different types of tajine and spicy couscous - the food was *really* good at this event) and finished the last of the paintings.  In all, the association painted twelve murals at the middle school and the clinic, which isn't a bad way to start the (Islamic) new year.


Happy PCVersary to us! We've made it a year!
The rest of the photos are here.

Happy Birthday, America

Happy belated birthday, America!  I celebrated the 4th of July by doing the most patriotic thing I could think of and applying for my absentee ballot.

Did you know that Morocco was the first country to publicly recognize America's independence and the first piece American public property outside the United States was in Tangiers?  I wanted to tell my host family about it at dinner last night, but there's no way my Arabic is up to that.

Also, Morocco very kindly put on a miniature fireworks display for the 4th.  And my miniature fireworks display, I mean the schoolyard across the street from my apartment caught on fire (because it's really hot, my host sister told me) and I stood on my roof at 1:00 in the morning and pretended the flames were fireworks while praying that someone other than me knew about the fire and was dealing with it.  Eventually my neighbors came out to the roof as well and I asked if the fire was a problem.  They told me no because it was contained by the school walls (which are covered in scorch marks now), and after about an hour, a firetruck showed up to take care of the blaze, answering my question of whether there are firetrucks in Morocco.

Summertime

1) It's 116° (47°) in my town today.  Just in case anyone was wondering.  I haven't bought a fan yet (and now it's too hot to walk to a store and buy one), and it's surprisingly not as terrible as you might think.  I even managed to stand over a stove and cook tortillas this afternoon and not die although, not gonna lie, I was really grateful it was a small batch.  (PC emailed a warning about the heatwave on Friday, which is nice of them, I guess, but I managed to freak myself out about the heat Friday evening, and worrying about the heat was a lot worse than the actual heat.)  That being said, I'm definitely not leaving my house before dusk and I slept on my roof in just my underwear and a tanktop last night.  (I've resigned myself to being caught in a state of undress on my roof by my neighbors.  It will be embarrassing, but more embarrassing for them than me, so there you go.)  Anyway, it's very hot, and the heat wave is suppose to last through next week.

2) I went over to my host family's house for Couscous Friday, and my host brother taught me card games.  My favorite was Xamstash (Fifteen), where we tried to make our cards add up to 15, although I'm a little worried by how much trouble he had with the very basic addition and subtraction.  I also taught my host niece to shoot a Nerf gun and how to make sound effects when you shoot a toy gun.  Zineb is two and she killed me and her aunt Layla very very dead.  It was super cute.

3) Zineb is left handed, and her mom is trying to train her to eat with her right hand (it's super rude to use your left hand to eat in Morocco), so I spent the entire meal holding Zineb's left hand so she couldn't use it.  Zineb seemed fine with it, but she kept patting my arm and my hand and my shoulder all meal, so now I need to wash mashed couscous out the sweater I was wearing.

4) My work has more or less dried up.  My students took their Bac exam (giant high school exit exam that determines if you graduate high school and what universities you can go to) two weeks ago and the rest of my students took their regular exams last week, and now that's it's summer and really hot, no one is coming to the Dar Shabab anymore.  My mudir asked me to finish my classes by July, so I'm pretty much done with work until sometime in mid-September.  Right now, I'm really enjoying the time off and the total lack of anything to do, but this is going to get very old by, say, August.

5) Regional meetings are on the coast next week.  I don't have to be there until Wednesday, but I thinking about leaving tomorrow because it's only 100° there, not 120° and it's not like I have anything going on in site.

Hell of a Welcome Home

 I’m pretty sure someone broke into my apartment today. 

I don’t think anything is missing – my camera, Kindle and both my passports are sitting on my living room table - but there are a pair of flip-flops in the doorway of my bedroom, and they are not my shoes.  I've never seen them before, and all of my shoes are present and accounted for, so there's no chance that I accidentally wore them home by mistake.

(My first thought when I saw the shoes was whoops, it's going to be really embarrassing to call the woman I just had tea with and tell her that I accidentally stole her husband's shoes, and then I saw the shoes I was wearing today, kicked aside by the front door, and it stopped being funny and started being creepy.)

It wouldn't be that hard to break into my apartment.  I keep my roof door open all the time, because it's really windy and I have to use giant jugs of water to prop the door open and it's a pain in the ass to move them, so I just don't shut my roof door if I'm in town.  Technically it's a private roof, but someone could climb over the wall between the public roof to my roof, assuming they could get into the building, although we keep the door to the building locked most of the time.

People don't obsessively lock doors here because in general things are pretty safe.  Also, it's very hot, and the one saving grace is that at least there's always a decent breeze.  It's not even like this is a cautionary tale.  Yes, someone was in my apartment, but they didn't take anything.  I even got a free pair of shoes out of the deal.  I'm just torn about what to do now.  Obviously, I'm going to start locking when I'm out, but I sleep with that door open.  Hell, I sleep ON my roof half the time, and now I feel a little unsafe and creeped out.

Hot Hot Hot

It’s gotten hot all of a sudden.  I swear, just a couple of weeks ago it was only in the high 70s/80s and I wanted a scarf at night, and then BAM! all of a sudden the week’s forecast looks like this. 

All week my students have been asking me if I think it’s hot.  I admit that yes, I’m a bit warm, usually while trying to shelter in the shade of the nearest wall, and they tell me no, THIS isn’t hot.  Wait until August.  THAT’S hot.  And then they laugh at me.

Assholes.

It’s amazing though, how fast the town has changed.  People don’t go outside during the day anymore.  Yesterday, I went to buy bread at 5:30 and the streets were almost completely deserted, but I can hear kids shouting and playing outside until midnight.  I’m spending a lot of time in my apartment because at least I can talk around in shorts and a tank top when I’m at home.  (It might be a million degrees outside, but I still have to wear a couple of layers to properly cover up.) Also, I keep having to turn my computer off in the middle of the day because I’m a little worried it might catch fire.

My neighbors have started sleeping on the roof (which led to a super awkward, scantily-clad late night encounter when I went to see why the lights in the hallway were on) and while I’m still sleeping in my apartment, I doubt I’ll last inside much longer.

(People back home keep asking me what I’m going to do about the heat this summer.  I tell them pray for death.  They think I’m joking.  I am not.)

The one plus to the hot weather is that all of a sudden cold bucket baths aren’t something I need to psych myself up for.  Despite never actually getting that cold outside, my apartment was a tiny little ice block all winter and there were days I would just shuffle around the house in my sleeping bag because it was too cold to face getting out.  I don’t have hot water (or a shower), so the odds of me getting naked long enough to actually wash my hair were non-existent, and I survived on by weekly trips to the hamam and just got really use to my hair being a grease slick.  And then my hair adjusted to only being washed once every week or so and turns out, all that crap about how your hair will adjust to less frequent washings is true, it just took a couple of really disgusting months for my hair to get with the program.

(True fact: I was searching through my emails for something and I found an email to a friend with the subject line So, I totally managed to bathe before it was two weeks!.  The entire first paragraph is about how my neighbors found me at the hamam and scrubbed my back for me.)

But now, thanks to the heat, all I have to do it stand outside for a few minutes, and a dumping a bucket of cold water on my head sounds pretty awesome.  Also, my pipes are exposed to the sun, so the water from my tap isn’t actually that cold anymore.  So yay, I might actually start bathing more than once a week.

(They said I’d learn things about myself in the Peace Corps.  I just didn’t realize it would be that I have no standards.)

Life

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I went to my Dar Shabab for class on Saturday, only to find the door to the building closed.

“The door’s locked,” one of my students told me.  “The mudir (director) isn’t there.”

We waited for a while, hoping the director and the keys would show up.  It was only my third day back following spring break, plus Tuesday is a holiday, and I didn’t want to have to cancel class anymore than I have to.  More students arrived, and suggested I call the mudir.

“I don’t have his phone number,” I told them.

“Don’t you have keys,” they asked.

“Nope, I don’t have keys.”

Then they suggested that maybe if I try the door, it would be unlocked.  I tried the door, but it remained firmly locked.  A couple of the boys came over and tried to pick the lock.  (Their idea of picking a lock was to try their house keys.  They wouldn’t make very good thieves.  They did, however, point out that there were no cameras to catch them.)  I held a mini-English lesson, detailing all the different ways we could try to open the door.

“We could kick the door.”

“Kick,” the boys parroted back.

“We could shove the door.”

“Shove.”

“We could body-slam the door.”

“Body-slam,” they repeated, laughing.

None of my idea worked on the heavy metal door, so instead we stood around, chatting in Arabic.  I usually use English with my students, since I am their English teacher, but we weren’t in class and I need practice too.  Plus, Saturday is my advance class, and my students’ English is better than my Arabic.  After several minutes of talking about what they did on their spring break and listening to them complain about their teachers, Ahmed turned to me and said, “You speak Arabic?!”

“I’m learning Arabic,” I told him.

There’s was a quiet chorus of she’s learning Arabic.  “Do you study in school?” he asked.

“No,” I told them.  “I have an Arabic teacher and I go to her house for lessons.”

“Who is your teacher?”

“Do you know the English teacher at Lycee Moulay Ismail (the high school next to my Dar Shabab)?  She’s my Arabic teacher.”

“She’s my English teacher!” Ahmed told me.

We eventually gave up on the mudir, and I headed home.  On the way, I stopped by my host family’s house for tea and was invited to tag along with my host mother and two of my host sisters as they went fabric shopping.  We went to half a dozen shops, looking for fabric and brocade for a jellaba.  It was surprisingly chilly, and my host mother was worried that I would be cold.

“You need a scarf,” she told me.

“No, I’m okay.  I’m Moroccan.  I’m wearing three shirts!” I reassured her.

“I’m wearing four shirts,” she told me.

“Well, you are more Moroccan than me,” I told her.

I learned the words for fabric (tub) and pitcher (gula), and the proper pronunciation for the Moroccan (as opposed to classical Arabic) phrase for good night.  I also learned bride and groom, but promptly forgot them.

Today is the end of a three-day weekend this week.  I had lunch with my host family on Sunday and today a friend is coming over and we’re making Thai or Indian, or something involving coconut milk. 

Coming back from spring camp and a couple of weeks away from site was weird, and I spent a few days feeling off kilter, but I feel like I’ve found my rhythm again.  I really enjoy teaching.  I love making lesson plans (dork!) and watching my kids get excited over games (and therefore, learning!).  One of my boys brought me a love poem to approve before writing in a holiday card covered in snowmen.  (I think I know who it’s for, and if I’m right, I hardily approve.)

I’m just really happy here.

f l-mgrib: Month Five

I started going to souq during month five. Souq means market, but that’s misleading. A souq is what happens when the farmer’s market and a thrift store have a baby, and the baby starts using steroids. Then steroid baby gets hit by the radiation of a gamma bomb and becomes a giant, sprawling behemoth that takes over several vacant football fields behind my house every Monday when farmers and villagers from the duwar (tiny villages in the countryside) and Kelaa come to buy and sell everything under the sun.

The first few weeks in my apartment, I didn’t do much cooking. My stove wasn’t even hooked up for the first couple of days, and it took me even longer to actually buy pots and pans, but by mid-January, it was time for me for to stop scavenging for food and living off bread, oranges and other people’s generosity. It was time to go to souq.

Souq can be a little intense, which is one of the reasons it took me so long to go. Kelaa’s souq is huge, and is packed with vendors and people and cars and livestock and donkeys. The first time I went, I got a little lost. I can see souq from my balcony, so my sitemate Lucia and I walked over, only to find ourselves in a maze of vendors selling used clothes, power cords, bike handles and kitchenware. There’s an entire row of stalls selling only different types of flour. There are tents with heaping bags of brightly colored spices and an entire section full of chickens, turkeys and sheep in all manner of decapitation. There are guys with music carts blasting Arabic pop music, and vendors selling popcorn, chickpeas and meat kababs. Lucia and I wandered lost for a good twenty minutes before finding what we were looking for, the produce section. The produce section is a couple of blocks large at the far end of souq where farmers from the area spread their produce out on tarps on the ground and sell them. The selection is limited during the winter, but I can’t wait to see what’s available this summer.

Souq is nothing like going to the tailgate market back home, but I love it. It was overwhelming the first time, but now I love wandering through the random sections and bartering for the week’s food and running into neighbors and students. I go every Monday morning.

I also did a community assessment for the Peace Corps during month five. A community assessment is a giant report (ours was 13 pages) that Peace Corps has volunteers fill out about their community. It’s super detailed: it starts with basic things like population demographics (that’s loads of fun in a community of 60,000), community history, geography and local infrastructure, but then gets more detailed. There are sections about gender roles, educational opportunities, health care, social institutions (also fun when you live in the provincial capital, so if these institutions exist in the region, they’re probably in Kalaa) and social issues such as child labor, homelessness and orphans.

I don’t think Peace Corps actually reads these reports: they can’t possible be interested in the recreational opportunities for youth by gender or non-traditional medicine use in all 27 sites from my staj. Mostly, the community assessment was a way to make us start examining our communities. When I first moved to Kalaa, I was diligent about trying to learn about my community. My sitemates and I visited the culture center and the language school. We met with the police and the gendarme and the local officials, and we walked into store and introduced ourselves. Then I started teaching and searching for an apartment, and between lesson planning, looking at apartments and my classes, most of my free time was eaten up. Then I was sick and then I was moving and before I knew it, I had established a nice little routine for myself. I went from my apartment to the Dar Šabab, and not much else. The community assessment forced me to get back out in the community and start meeting people again.

I went to the Dar Taliba (a boarding school for girls from the duwar) and the Neddi Newsi (a woman’s center), and talked to their mudiras (directors) about working with them. We went to the special education school and sat in on a class. We started walking around town again and talking to people, even if it was just a greeting. The report itself was difficult. Kalaa is so big and some of the topics in the community assessment are difficult to talk about, both because they’re culturally sensitive (alcohol and drug use, domestic violence) and because I don’t have the relevant vocabulary (health care and mental illnesses, geography), but I feel like I know a lot more about Kalaa now.

In late January, I went to Marche Maroc for a day. Marche Maroc is an artisanal craft fair run by Peace Corps and USAID. It’s held in bigger, touristy cities like Fes, Marrakesh and Essaouira, and gives artisans, mostly women working with Small Business Development PCVs in smaller, rural sites, a chance to sell directly to customers. I’m not SBD and I don’t work with any artisans in Kalaa (yet), but the January Marche Maroc was in Marrakesh, only two hours away from Kalaa, so I went. Technically I went to help, and I did spend a half hour hauling goods and furniture to the storage space after the fair, but mostly I helped out with my wallet. I bought a small rug, an adorable stuffed camel and a pair of earrings as a belated Christmas gift for my sister. I also spent some time enjoying Marrakesh, and got lost in the souq, bought a pair of Aladdin pants, and had a very expensive dinner at an Indian restaurant and a terrible (yet expensive) beer.


Atlantic sunset

f l-mgrib: Month Four

The big news of month four was that I moved into my own apartment and I’m now living on my own. I lived with two different host families during my first three and a half months in Morocco: two months during training and then a month and a half once I arrived at my final site. Both families were wonderful and I understand why Peace Corps has volunteers live with host families. I learned more about Moroccan culture sitting in my host family’s living room than I ever could in a classroom, and being forced to use Darija every time I wanted to communicate did wonders for my language skills. My host family in Kalaa was invaluable my first few weeks in my site. They led my around town, took me to the store and my work and the hamam, and introduced me to their friends and neighbors. I would have never been able to find or furnish my apartment without them. However, by the end of December, I was getting increasingly ready to move out. I was ready to not have a curfew, to be to be able to do what I wanted without asking permission first, to eat something that wasn’t tagine and to be able to set my own schedule. I was ready to be an adult again.

The lack of a schedule was particularly difficult, especially once I got to my final site and no longer had the schedule of CBT to structure my ever-waking moment. Life with my host family was structured around the meals, but I never knew when those would be. Lunch was served sometime between noon and three, but I could never figure out a schedule. Whenever I asked, I was told “soon,” which could mean hours, and if I tried to skip lunch, my host mother would get upset, so I ended up sending all afternoon waiting around for lunch, regardless of what I wanted or needed to do that day. I was sick for most of December, and I lost my appetite and slept a lot. I would get home from work at 8:00 and go straight to bed without dinner, only to be woken up by my host mother barging into my room and waking me up to ask how I felt and if I was tired. I know they were acting out of kindness, but yeah, by January 1st, I was ready to have my own place.

I spent my first night at my new apartment on New Years Day. My apartment was almost entirely empty; all I had was a mattress on the floor and a loaf of bread to eat, and the loaf of bread was gift from my host family, but as soon as I finished hauling over my things and had shut the door behind my host family and was finally alone in my new home, I felt the tension that had been building up for the last few months start to melt away. Over the next week, I picked up a bed, another mattress (long story), a dresser, a bedside table, a stove and some cooking supplies. My place is still pretty bare, but it’s mine and I’m slowing filling it up.

I was worried that moving into my own place would mean that I would be cut off from the community. As frustrating as living with a family was, my host family was a great way to meet people and be an active part in my community, especially since Kalaa is big enough that I’ll never know everyone. Plus, I have a tendency to be an introvert, and spent the last few weeks with my host family thinking longingly about locking myself in my apartment and refusing to talk to anyone for at least a day. I occasionally have to get dressed before leaving for work at 6:00 because it’s the first time I’ve left the apartment that day, but I’m doing okay. I live in the building next to my host family, which means I see them every day, and I still live near everyone they introduced me to in the neighborhood. I stop by my host family’s house after work at least once a week, and go over for lunch of Couscous Fridays. My downstairs neighbors have taken it upon themselves to make sure I’m fed, and I’m invited over for tea or dinner a couple of time a week. Apparently, they’ve heard that I can’t make bread, which clearly means that I can’t cook. I’ve also had a few invitations for dinner from my students at the Dar Šabab, so I’m still being social.

I started travelling around Morocco during month four. During PST, I didn’t have enough time for a decent night’s sleep, much less to do any sightseeing, and we were encouraged to stay in our sites for the first few months of service. I spent Thanksgiving at site, but Christmas is more important, and I celebrated by going to Marrakesh with my sitemates and some other volunteers from my staj. It was my first trip to Marrakesh, which is an hour and a half south of Kalaa, and I loved it. We stayed in the medina, just off the main square, and it was a riot of people and performers and back alleys full of tiny stalls selling everything under the sun. It reminded me of Seoul, especially the warrens of Namdaemun or behind the main strip Gangnam, only with less neon. (Most of my comparisons to Korea end with “only with less neon.” This restaurant reminds me of one in Seoul, only with less neon. Trash pickup in Morocco reminds me of trash pickup in Korea, only with less neon. There’s a lot of neon in that country.)

Then, two weeks later, I spent the weekend with my stajmates Carrie and Bethany in their site, Boujad. It was my first time travelling alone in Morocco, and my first time taking the bus. There are a couple of different types of busses in Morocco. There’s CTM and Supratour, bus lines similar to Greyhound or Megabus in the US. They’re more expensive, but the busses are nicer, the routes are more direct and you’re guaranteed a seat. Then there are the small intercity busses, which are called kar by Moroccans (no possibility for confusion there) and souq busses by PCVs. They’re smaller and less comfortable – more like a school bus – and they take longer because they stop at every little village or random pile of rocks by the highway where someone wants off. They are, however, cheaper, and run more frequently.

My plan was to take Supratour to Beni-Mellal, a large city near Bejaad, and meet Bethany there. I knew there was a Supratour station in Kalaa, Bethany knew where the Supratour station was in Beni-Mellal and I could look up the bus schedule online. Plus, I’d stories from other volunteers of standing for hours among vomiting children and livestock on souq busses, and Supratour wasn’t that much more expensive. Of course, like many things in Morocco, finding the bus station took a committee and many, many more hours than something as simple as finding a bus station should.

First, I asked Hanan, one of my host sisters, if there was a Supratour station in Kalaa. It took Hanan a while to figure out what I was saying, because I say Supratour like an American and I should be saying like the French, but she confirmed that there was a station and even gave me vague directions. Then, during Couscous Friday, I asked the rest host family if they knew where the Supratour station was, but they did not. In fact, they weren’t even sure that there was a Surpatour station in Kalaa. On Saturday, the day before I was suppose to leave, I asked some of my students at the Dar Šabab if THEY knew where the Supratour station was, and finally found a friend of my friend Hayat who was in the drama club and not even one of my students and knew where the station was. The only problem was the station was on the edge of town.

HAYAT: You can’t walk there! It’s too far.
CAIT: I don’t even know where it is yet.
MUSTAFA: It’s very far away. It’s too dangerous to walk there. And you need to buy your ticket in advance.
CAIT: Still don’t even know where the station is, so kinda a moot point.
MUSTAFA: The station might still be open.
HAYAT: I will drive you there now! We can buy your ticket.
CAIT: Hurray! Someone’s going to tell me where the station is.

I stopped to tell the mudir (director) that I was leaving, and Hayat told him about my trip.

MUDIR: You’re going to travel alone?
CAIT: That’s the plan.
MUDIR: You can’t do that. It’s too dangerous.
CAIT: Right, this is Morocco and doing anything alone, including walking next door, is considered to dangerous. Thank you, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine.
HAYAT: He’s right. It could be dangerous.
CAIT: Okay, potentially dangerous travel would be that time my tuk-tuk was waved down a deserted dirt path by Cambodian soldiers carrying machine guns at 4:30 in the morning. Taking a major bus line and being met by a friend at the bus station in a country where I can speak the language isn’t dangerous.
EVRYONE: You can’t speak Darija.
CAIT: This ENTIRE CONVERSATION has been in Darija. I know my Darija isn’t pretty, but it’s more than sufficient to buy a bus ticket. Plus, I’ve only been studying for four months. I think I’m doing pretty good.
MUDIR: It’s dangerous. My brother-in-law is going to Beni-Mellal tomorrow. He will drive you.
CAIT: Really, that’s not necessary. So close to finding out where the bus station is.
MUDIR: I’ll call him now.

Luckily, the brother-in-law was at the mosque praying, and I was able to convince Hayat that, no really, the bus was the better option. The bus station was closed, but Hayat drove me back the next morning to help me buy my ticket. According to the website, the Supratour bus to Beni-Mellal left at 11:00, but when we showed up at 10:30, the ticket seller was shouting “Beni-Mellal, Beni-Mellal!”

“Why yes,” I said. Hayat bargained for my ticket, told the bus driver exactly where I was going and to make sure that I got off at the right stop, and made me promise that I was being met in Beni-Mellal and would call if I had any problems. After the drama of finding the bus, the ride itself was uneventful through some truly gorgeous countryside. I had two seats to myself, and there were no chickens or vomit anywhere to be seen, although I did see a group of camels being herded down the highway It was only when I arrived in Beni-Mellal at a completely different bus station than I thought I would that I realized that after all that trouble to find the Supratour station, I had ended up taking a souq bus. Oh, Morocco.

The rest of my trip was also fun. I more or less tagged along as Bethany and Carrie went about their normal weekend. We split a roast chicken and bottle of wine for dinner and stopped by what Bethany has dubbed the sugar carts, wheeled carts full of sugary pastries from a local bakery, for desert. Breakfast was miliwi, fried bread, slathered with cheese in their courtyard, then we went to the hamam for our weekly bath and to their tutor, Lamia’s, house for a lesson. I sat in on the lesson, taking notes, and answering the occasional question. At the end of the lesson, we were talking about regional dialects, and I mentioned that even though Kalaa was only about 100 km south of Boujad, I could tell a distinct difference between the way people speak, much to Lamia’s confusion.

LAMIA: Where?
CAIT: Kalaa Sraghna. Big town on the road between Beni-Mellal and Marrakesh.
LAMIA: You’ve been to Kalaa Sraghna.
CAIT: Why yes I have.
LAMIA: … Why?
CAIT: I live there.
LAMIA: … Why?
CAIT: We don’t really get a choice. Peace Corp throws darts with our names on them at a map of Morocco and we go where our dart lands.
LAMIA: Peace Corps?
CAIT: I’m in the same organization as Bethany and Carrie. That’s why I live in Kalaa.
LAMIA: Oh, I thought you were visiting from America.
CAIT: Nope, just up for the weekend.
LAMIA: That explains why you know Darija.
CAIT: Yeah…

Bejaad has a large medina, the old walled part of the city, and Bethany and Carrie live in the middle of it. Their neighborhood is cool – full of history and traditional and the potential to make a wrong turn and get hopelessly lost forever. It was great to see Bethany and Carrie, and now that I know where the bus station is (I walked home, and it is neither dangerous nor that far), I’ll keep traveling!




Top:Bright teal ovens stacked in front of one of the stuff shops in town; Middle: The day after Christmas at the Madrasa Ben Youssef in Marrakesh (left); Cranes nesting in the minaret of one of the mosques in the Boujad medina (right); Bottom: Hanging lanterns in the Marrakesh souq.

Don't Trust That Map

Last week, my English classes made community maps. Community mapping is a Peace Corp community assessment tool where different groups (in this case, boys and girls) draw their community and label the places where they go regularly, occasionally and other important locations. The idea is to get an idea of how people see their community. The girls drew a highly abstract representation of Kalaa, while the boys got in a heated argument about the exact layout of the roads in Kalaa and then begged to be allowed to use the computer so they could look up a map of the town. One of the girls, Ibtissam, who would have been happier in the boys’ group, was frustrated by how imprecise the other girls were being.

IBTISSAM: Teacher, this is a bad map.
ME: It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
IBTISSAM: No, it is a lie.
ME: There’s no right way to draw a map. I just want to know how you see Kalaa.
IBTISSAM: Don’t follow this map. You’ll get lost. Where do you want to go?
ME: No, no, I’m not trying to get a map of the town for myself. I’m not trying to find anything.
IBTISSAM: This map isn’t true. I will take you where you want to go.
ME: No really, I’m good.
IBTISSAM: Are you busy this weekend.
ME: No?
IBTISSAM: Good. I will show you Kalaa. I will show you everything. Ignore this map.

So, this weekend, Ibtissam and I explored Kalaa. First, she took me to her house for harira and to introduce me to her family. I met her sisters (one of whom I know from a different English class, but had no idea was related to Ibtissam) and made awkward conversation with her father (who I could mostly understand) and her grandmother (who I couldn’t – Darija without teeth sounds way different from Darija with teeth). Then Ibtissam and I headed out. We walked through the medina and stopped by the culture center where the PJD was having a celebration of their recent victories in November’s elections. Then Ibtissam took me through a back alley into a part of town I’d never seen before. There were a herd of goats and sheep munching on trash by a mosque, and Ibtissam laughed at how delighted I was.

“My grandfather has goats and sheep and chickens on his farm,” she told me.

“Mine… does not,” I responded while making clucking noises at the lambs to get its attention.

She pointed out a bunch of buildings I didn’t know Kalaa had and showed me where other buildings were. I now know where the hospital is, not that I’m sure I could find my way back, and the Moroccan equivalent of the DMV. I now know that we have an art exhibit across the street from the old medina and that there are dormitories for kids from the countryside who attend middle and high school in Kalaa.

Ibtissam was right – it was a lot more useful than the community maps my students drew.





Top: Fruit sellers at a small souq (market) in the medina; Middle: Continuing with my theme of Doors in Morocco, the back door to a mosque in the medina (left), Party sign of the PJD. A lot of walls in Morocco have a designated area for political messages and graffiti (right); Bottom: A real life Twitter conversation about lambs in my site. @til_midnight: Walked past lambs frolicking in a field on my way home. Frolicking. Lambs. @bethyafarrell: did you remind them of their future 3id kbir fate?! @til_midnight: It's good to know people will be able to eat sheep face for many l3ids to come.

Teatime

I was kidnapped for tea (and by tea, I mean an afternoon tea, not just the drink) on my way home today. As I was walking up the stairs to my apartment, my downstairs neighbor rushed out of her apartment, grabbed my hand and pulled me into her apartment. “Come in! You’re welcome in my house! Come and sit. Drink some tea!” she told me as she drug me into the salon, barely giving me enough time to toe my shoes off. Moroccans are incredible hospitable and they love to eat, so the only surprise was that it took my neighbors a week to catch me.

They had just had tea and there were already two types of bread, a plate of cookies and a plate of msemen on the table, but the mother and eldest daughter immediately went about brewing a fresh pot of tea and bringing out a plate of cake wedges, something that tasted like friend wontons, cheese and oil for the bread. Then we sat in the salon and watched TV while I had tea. The wife watched me like a hawk and every time I stopped eating, whether it was because I was drinking the tea or because I WAS CHEWING THE FOOD ALREADY IN MY MOUTH, she would urge me to eat more. “Kuli, kuli!,” she demanded. Eat, eat! When I left, she told me that whenever I was hungry, just come downstairs and she would feed me.

It was incredible kind, and I always appreciate a free meal, especially since my kitchen it still distinctly non-functional (tomorrow, I will buy a frying pan!), and there are certainly greater trails in life than being fed hot fry bread with cheese (seriously, msemen is so. good), but captive hospitality (to steal a phrase from a fellow PCV) can be exhausting. It’s not that I don’t want to get to know my downstairs neighbors who, except for their occasional habit of deadbolting me out of the building in the evenings, have been good neighbors, but between my downstairs neighbors and my host family, who lives next door, I’m almost guaranteed an invitation to socialize every time I leave my house, and unlike in the US, there’s no real way to get out of it. I was lucky today was a holiday (Happy Moroccan Independence Day!) and I didn’t have work, although, come to think about it, in Morocco, “I was invited to tea at the neighbors” might be a legitimate excuse for being an hour late to work.

f l-mgrib: Month Three

wllf means to adjust, become accustomed to or get used to, and it’s been the watchword of month three. All month long, my host family, my mudir, the mothers of the children at my Dar Šabab, the women at the hamam – everyone - would ask me, “Weš wllfti?” Have you adjusted yet?

“Lla mazel,” I tell them. “Šwiya b šwiya, kan-wllf.” Not yet. Little by little, I’m adjusting.

We were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers on November 17th in Rabat, the capital of Morocco. That morning, we visited the Peace Corps offices (which are in a beautiful converted French style villa surrounded by a huge garden) and met the entire staff before being walked to to the Ministry of Youth and Sports (the government agency YD volunteers work with) to be sworn in. The Peace Corps Country Director, Minister of Youth and Sports and the American ambassador to Morocco all spoke, and Sairah, the best Darija speaker in our staj, gave a speech in Arabic. And then we were volunteers and after two months of being coddled by Peace Corps staff, we were on our own.


September 2011 YD Staj, just before swearing in
It was up to us to figure out how to get to our sites. I was lucky; I have sitemates, so I was wasn’t alone, and we could take a direct train from Rabat to Ben Guerir, home of my fellow PCVs Kelly and Bryant and only a 35 minute taxi ride away from Kalaa. We were accompanied to Ben Guerir by Bryant’s host brother, who helped us catch the train, walked us to the taxi stand and even negotiated the price of our tickets, but things were a bit more difficult once we arrived in Kalaa. I called my new host sister, Olayya, when we arrived, but the conversation mostly consisted of me saying, “Audi, audi. Smhi li mafhmš.” Repeat that, repeat that. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Turns out, speaking Arabic on the phone is much more difficult than in person. I eventually understood that Olayya wanted me to take a taxi to one of the local high schools and call her once I got there, but when I was dropped off at the front gates, my phone was out of credit. I was alone on a small, mostly deserted back road at dusk, weighed down with luggage, with no way of reaching the only person who knew where I was.

I considered sitting down on the curb and crying, but that would have gotten my pants all muddy, so my luggage and I walked until I found a hanut that sold recharge credit for my phone. And okay, so the haunt wasn’t far, and thanks to the Peace Corps phone plan that allows me to call staff and other volunteers for free, I wasn’t actually cut off from help, but at the time, the situation was horribly overwhelming.

The first few days at site were similarly difficult and overwhelming, much more so than I thought they would be. My host family, while wonderfully kind people, were little help with the innumerable official things I needed to do to establish myself in Kalaa, and I spent the morning of my first full day in Kalaa wandering around by myself in a futile attempt to find the correct police station to present my residence papers, trying desperately to blink back tears because, dammit, I was not going to be the foreign girl crying on the side of the road. My mudir proved similarly unhelpful and didn’t even show up at the Dar Šabab my first day Kalaa. The accent and some of the vernacular in Kalaa is different from the Fes area, and when I first arrived, I couldn’t understand anything. I spent a lot of my first week in Kalaa on the phone with friends in other sites and going to bed ridiculously early.

And then, slowly, I started to wllf.

I went to the Dar Šabab every night to meet the youth and learn the schedule. I sat in on the music club and the scout meetings and tried to talk to the kids who showed up for clubs or to use the soccer field behind the building. My fourth or fifth day at the Dar Šabab, I was sitting in the auditorium with the music club and one of the members jerked his head in my direction and asked, “Who is she?”

The girls I was sitting next to said, “She’s an American who lives in Kalaa.”

“Does she speak French,” he asked.

“No,” the boys I had been talking to before class told him. “She speaks English and is learning Arabic.”

I coughed to hide my grin. At least the youth at the Dar Šabab are starting to learn who I am.

I’m slowly getting to know people in my community. My first night at the Dar Šabab, Naoel and Hayat, two girls I met at the Dar Šabab (and I use girl lightly, since they’re my age) invited me to their grandmother’s house for dinner, and I spent the evening being force fed dates and harira by a woman who instructed me to call her my black Moroccan grandmother. Hayat and Naoel both speak decent English, their uncle speaks fluent Spanish (and while my Spanish is pretty jacked up, especially after a few months in Morocco, my Spanish comprehension is still pretty high), and for the first time since I arrived in site, I was able to actually have a real conversation and understand people without difficulty.

I’ve started teaching at my Dar Šabab, which is a government run youth center. The government maintains the building and pays for one staff member, but volunteers run most of the programs. Peace Corps warned us that most volunteers don’t have much activity during the first few months in site. In fact, we are encouraged to not commit to too much, because we need time to intergrade with our community and settle down. My mudir, however, had other plans, and as soon as I (finally) met him, he wanted to know how often I could teach.

“Well,” I said, "I suppose to work five days a week, but right now I'm actually pretty busy so maybe in a few weeks...."

“Good, you can teach five classes a week,” he said, and before I knew it, I was teaching pretty much every moment the Dar Šabab was open. Well, I thought to myself, there probably won’t be that many students. Everyone says this is a bad time of year to start an activity. My Dar Šabab, however, is right next to a high school, and thanks to advertising at the high schools, my classes are popular. A little too popular, and I wish I'd had more time to think through what I want my schedule to be, but I’ll have time to rearrange things in the new year, and I’m glad I have enough work and students to keep me busy.

My first Friday in Kalaa, November 25th, was Election Day. On February 20th, as part of the Arab Spring, there were (mostly peaceful) mass demonstrations in Morocco calling for government reform, democratic change and Berber rights. On March 9th, King Mohammed announced “comprehensive constitutional reform” and then on July 1st, a series of constitutional reforms that limited the power of the monarchy were announced. Parliamentary elections were set for November 25th, and for the first time, the King would be forced to choose a Prime Minister from the winning party. (I am obviously simplifying things greatly.)

On Election Day, my host mother and sister invited me to come along when they went to vote. Even though the high school behind their house was a polling place, and several of my host siblings and my host father were assigned to vote there, my host mother and Olayya were assigned to vote at a different school that was much farther away. The polling booth was disorganized; there were six rooms dedicated to voting and each room had a list of residents who were suppose to vote there, but there were no signs to help people figure out which room was the correct room for them to vote in. My host mother and Olayya had to wait in line in each room so they could ask the voting officials if this was the correct room. My host mother found the correct room fairly quickly and voted. She showed her ID, was given a paper ballot, which she took to a table that was hidden by a curtain, made her vote and then dropped the ballot into a locked glass box sitting on the table with the voting officials. Olayya, however, wasn’t able to find the correct room. She talked to the officials in each room – twice – but there no one had a record of her and eventually she gave up and we left without her getting to vote. However, despite the occasional screw-ups, the election was widely considered to be a success and it’s heartening to see at least one Arab country making change without widespread violence or destabilization.


My new host family is big, which is good because I like families. This is Zainab, my almost two year old host niece who is over at our house almost every day. She is a adorable, and was a great ice breaker when I first arrived, because you don't need a common language to play with a toddler.


My neighbors were married a few weeks ago, and while I slept through the actual wedding, I went to the moving-in ceremony the next day. While the wedding guests and neighbors helped the new couple move the cartloads of presents into their new house, a band played music and other guests danced outside of the building. The nafir player especially was a character.