Marché Maroc, 2013

Marché Maroc is an artisan craft fair that was started by Small Business Development (SBD) Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in Morocco in 2009. SBD volunteers are often assigned to work with artisans in small, rural villages who have few opportunities to sell their work, and Marché Maroc was created to provide an opportunity for artisans to sell their products directly to the consumers and cut out the middleman. It's been a mainstay of Peace Corps Morocco for the past four years (I went to the one in Marrakesh last January), but Peace Corps has phased out the SBD program, and the last SBD volunteers left in November. However, instead of letting Marché Maroc end, the artisans who had worked with SBD volunteers and attended the original marchés formed their own association in hopes of continuing Marché Maroc, and the first artisan-run Marché Maroc was held last weekend in Rabat. Yay, sustainable development!

There's still some Peace Corps presence. My friend Carrie, who was originally invited as a SBD volunteer and attended Marché Maroc with the artisans in her site, has been working with the association to help organize and promote the fair, and she arranged for twelve PCVs to come and help out. We were originally there as translators, but the fair was at the American Club in Rabat and largely attended by ex-pats living in Morocco, most of whom could speak either French or Arabic, so we ended up helping to sell goods and explain Marché Maroc's mission. (And sadly watch other people shop at the commissary and buy precious, precious American food and booze. And drink Dr. Pepper.)

The fair went really well. Both days had good attendance both days, all the artisans made a profit and the association is already planning for the next fair. Marché Maroc was full of other Peace Corps success stories too. Several of the artisans are also involved with Anou, an online e-commerce platform designed by another Morocco SBD volunteer to let Moroccan artisans independently sell their artwork. Think Etsy for developing nations.

One of the top sellers on both Anou and at Marché Maroc were the jellaba bead jewelry from the Khenifra Woman's Cooperative. The jellaba bead, or l3qad, are small buttons that are stung together and used to embellish jellabas, a traditional Moroccan outfit. A PCV in Sefrou teamed up with a Moroccan artisan named Amina to make jewelry out of the beads. There's a segment about it in the You Can Dream documentary. The former PCV in Khenifra helped a group of twenty women form an association to make and sell jellaba bead necklaces and earring, and they're now a mainstay at craft fairs around Morocco. Each item is labeled with the name of the artisan who made it, and while only one member of the association was at Marché Maroc, I watched Fatima diligently mark down who made each piece of jewelry that was sold so that each artisan would get their profit. Many of the women support their families with the profits from these sales.

We talk a lot about sustainability in Peace Corps. Peace Corps is a two year commitment, which really isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, and once we leave, what will be left to show of our time here? Marché Maroc was full of stories of sustainability. The SBD volunteers who worked with these artisans are long gone, but the skills they taught and the framework they created are still being used. Ola, a UPenn student doing research on incoming generating activities amongst Moroccan woman, came to the fair to interview the artisans, and many of them told her that is was PCVs who encouraged and inspired them to take an active roll in improving their livelihoods. The SBD program might be gone, but those volunteers helped to change the lives of these women.

El Jadida Spring Camp

Last week, the first big heat wave rolled through Morocco, sending temperatures soaring into the 100s, but I was thankfully not around to suffer since I spent last week on the beach, working at spring camp.  I walked around comfortable in jeans during the day and wore a wool hat and a hoodie at night.  It was pretty great.  The rest of camp was pretty great too.

Every April, the Moroccan schools have a two-week spring break, during which Peace Corps and the Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sports run English camps.  This year, I spent a week working in El Jadida, a coastal city about two hours south of Casablanca.  Camps are, okay, camps are crazy and hectic and non-stop and a lot of work, but they’re also really fun.  This was my third camp in Morocco, and I’ve really enjoyed them all.  The El Jadida camp was incredibly well-run and the Moroccan staff were excellent, making this the easiest of the camps I worked.

Technically, the spring camps are English camps and we teach English in the mornings, but things are pretty relaxed since it is the kids’ spring break.  I taught the advanced students, which, wow, teaching kids who already speak English is a totally different experience.

The first day of class, I propped a whiteboard against a tree next to our table and Widad wailed, “Oh no, teacher, are we the bad class?  Only the bad classes have a whiteboard.”

“Well,” I said, “what do you want to do instead.”

“We just want to talk,” Maryam said.

“Talk about what?” I asked, since usually getting my students to speak is about as pleasant as pulling teeth.

“What about what we would do if we were the opposite sex?” Omar suggested.

“Well, okay then,” I said and they proceeded to have a thirty minute discussion about gender inequality in Morocco and what exactly a girl looks for in a man, a tangent spearheaded by Omar who was CLEARLY trying to figure out how to get himself a girlfriend.

The PCVs also taught clubs in the afternoon.  I taught a creative writing class, which meant I mostly had my English class again.  I had a bunch of Pixar shorts on my computer, which I used as prompts.  The first day I showed them "Jack-Jack Attack" without the audio, and the kids wrote what they though was happening.  At the end of the class, I played the video with the audio, and a bunch of them were worried that they had gotten their stories "wrong," since they were different than the audio, and I had to assure them there is no "wrong" answer on a creative writing assignment.  On the last day, I showed them "Lifted" and had them write what they thought happened the next day.  I've never taught writing before, although I've taken a few writing classes, and I mostly emphasized show, not tell and encouraged them to use dialogue and use their imagination, for the love of God, there is no correct answer on a creative writing assignment.

  My creative writing club: Omar, Sami, Ayman, Maryam, Widad (from r → l)

Like all Moroccan camps, there were also activities every evening that lasted until almost midnight.  (By the end of the week, even the kids were looking a bit exhausted.)  There were two talent shows (Moroccan youth have a lot of talent to go around) and game and trivia nights, and so many dance parties, many of them impromptu.  One evening, Carrie and I walked out of the auditorium, only to find ourselves caught in a flash mob dancing to C'est La Vie.  My new goal is to learn the dance for Logobitombo and Balada Boa before I go to camp this summer.

  C'est La Vie flashmob   Wheelbarrow race one evening   Doha building a pyramid out of plastic cups held with sticks during game night.
The PCVs were asked to participate in the talent show, and in lieu of any actual talent, we performed a short skit in Arabic, about how I threatened to draw a mustache on my more inattentive students and Sherry made her students walk around holding their chairs because they wouldn't stay seated.  It got a lot of laughs, although I suspect it was mostly our accents.

  It was a good week with a great group of PCVs

Spelling Bee Morocco

Last year a PCV down south ran a spelling bee for his region.  He got local English teachers involved, and ended up having a regional tournament in Ouarzazate for seventeen schools.  MATE (Moroccan Association of Teachers of English) loved it and what started as a small regional tournament for just a few provinces is now a Morocco-wide competition.

My host sisters started telling me about the spelling bee back in December.  MATE and Jim Dana (the PCV) sent out a packet of information to schools across Morocco, including sample lesson plans, word lists and a copy of Akeelah and the Bee.  In January, schools across Morocco held individual tournaments, and last weekend was the district spelling bees.  The coordinator of the district spelling bee asked if my sitemates and I would help out, so last Saturday I was the pronouncer for the Kelaa District Spelling Bee.  It went really well, except for the one teacher who kept complaining about my lack of a British accent (which, sorry dude, I can get the southern out of my voice, but me trying to fake a British accent isn't going to make anything clearer), and I was really impressed by how well-run the spelling bee was and how well the students did.

There were three parts to the spelling bee: the novice team spelling bee (which was limited to ninth grade students), the general team spelling bee and the solo spelling bee.  In the team spelling bee, groups of three had thirty seconds to write down the correct spelling of a word, while the solo spelling bee was a more traditional spelling bee.  The winning word was typhoid, which I can spell, but it was the only one of the final round words I could spell.  The top six solo spellers and the top two groups will go on to the regional spelling bee in Marrakesh later this month, and there will be a national spelling bee in Rabat later this spring.


  Team spelling bee

Solo Spelling Bee  
The winners of the novice spelling bee.  They got metals, a trophy and an English dictionary for their school.  
All the spellers from the eleven participating schools.  It was a pretty good turn out.

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.

Mabrouk! - My First Moroccan Wedding

Last week, a friend and fellow PCV who lives in the neighboring town married her Moroccan boyfriend. I told my host family that I was going to a wedding, and then suddenly everyone knew about it, because I’m a foreigner and therefore interesting to talk about, and yesterday at the Dar Shabab, while I waited for students, my mudir and some of his friends asked me about the wedding.

When they found out the bride was an American who married a Moroccan, they were excited.

"Would you marry a Moroccan?" they asked me.

"Eh, maybe? If I meet the right man."

"There's three men right here! You should marry Mustafa. He has a car!"

I laughed and said maybe and the conversation moved on. This is by far one of the least awkward marriage conversations I've had, since at least I knew all the guys in question and no one was particularly serious, although my mudir did tell a story about another PCV who married a Moroccan and then at the end of her service, they went back to America, which lead to a conversation about whether I could get someone a green card, which led to a lot of me waving my hands around and telling them that I really don't know the particulars about green cards and visas into the US, seeing as I don't need them, and no, I won't look up that information for you.

Still, much less awkward that the time my taxi driver spend the entire ride asking me to marry him.

Kelly's wedding was my first Moroccan wedding.  It only lasted a few hours, so it was more of a Moroccan wedding-lite, a fact for which I'm grateful since Moroccan weddings are intense and I'm glad I got a trial run before my first real one.  (Traditional Moroccan weddings start sometime in the afternoon with parade, and then the party last all night.  No seriously, all night, the bride's family is responsible for serving breakfast to all the guests the next morning while the couple has some, ahem, alone time.)

The wedding party was mostly Moroccans, but there were a couple of PCVs in attendance, and it was fun to see friends who live across the country.  There's no real religious component to a Moroccan wedding, and the couple didn't go to a mosque or stand before the Imam or any other Muslim equivalent of a Christian wedding.  Kelly and her new husband, Karim, just signed some paperwork in the his family's living room and then we danced and hung out for a while everyone took super posed pictures with the bride and groom.  We ate cake and roast chicken and chicken and prune tajine (in that order) before Kelly and Karim headed to Marrakesh for their honeymoon and the rest of the guests headed home.  Kelly's mom couldn't make it to Morocco for the wedding, but she watched the entire party via Skype and the PCVs made a point of sitting with the computer so we could translate what was happening.

Mabrouk to Kelly and Karim.


Kelly's wedding henna and her ring.  There was also henna on her feet.


Kelly finishing her makeup at the hair salon before the car ride to her wedding.


PCVs!  From l → r: Ally, me, Bethany and Carrie.  I'm the only one not in traditional Moroccan clothes because I found out about the wedding the day before I left for Spain and didn't have time to get a caftan once I got back.  Also, this is the first time I'd worn a tank top or my hair lose since getting to Morocco.  I had to pile clothes on before I could go back to my site.


Kelly and Karim signing their marriage paperwork (I suppose it's the marriage license).  I can't believe she's married.

Under the Stars

A couple of days ago, I was lying in bed and realized that my walls were actually radiating heat.  It was late and I was so tired because the heat is making it hard for me to fall asleep.  It's only May and I knew it was just going to keep getting hotter and hotter and at 1:00 in the morning, that was a horrible depressing thought.  I got out of bed and wandered onto my balcony, and immediately felt better.  It was at least 15 degrees cooler outside, and the constant breeze made is feel even nicer.

Eff it, I thought.  I'm sleeping out here, potential awkwardness with my neighbors be damned.

I hauled a ponj from my living room to the corner of my balcony that is shaded from the morning sun, then stood in my (hot hot) bedroom and stared at my clothes options.  I had been sleeping in just a tank top and shorts, but I knew that wasn't going to cut it.  (My downstairs neighbors sleep on their roof, which is the same level as my balcony.  Technically, my balcony is private and separated by a wall, but the wall is low enough that I can see over onto my neighbors' roof.  And while yes, it's my balcony, my apartment and I can wear whatever I want, I want to avoid the horrible awkwardness of my super conservative neighbors seeing me sleeping in a tank-top.*  It was bad enough when the father accidentally groped me on the stairwell a few months ago.)  Luckily, I have a pair of light weight pajamas pants and I found a long-sleeve shirt hidden in a suitcase that was super thin and too loose to wear in public, but far and away more appropriate than a tank top.

The first night sleeping outside was a bit unnerved.  I have always rejected camping as a viable life-style choice and firmly believe that sleeping is an inside activity, so voluntarily sleeping outdoors is new for me.  Also, I was a little bit worried that a bird would poop on me, but, let's be honest, that's a viable worry in my apartment as well.  The call to prayer is much louder when I'm sleeping outside, and for the past few nights, I've woken up, disoriented, to the fajr at 4:30 in the morning, but I would rather be woken up by the adhan than the heat.  It was cool to be able to doze off looking at the Big Dipper above me and feeling the breeze waft over me.  And knowing that I would be able to sleep comfortably made getting through the days, when it's been hot enough to work up a sweat sitting still, bearable.

*I basically only wear Aladdin pants and a tank top around my house, and I've started keeping a shirt near the door so I can pull in on when someone knocks.  The other day, I was talking with my sitemate Mike on the phone when someone knocked on my door.

"Gimme a sec," I told Mike.  "Someone's at the door and I need to put on a shirt so I can answer it."

I dropped the phone on the table, thought about what I had just said, then grabbed my phone again.  "Wait.  I am wearing *a* shirt.  I meant put on *another* shirt so I can answer the door."

Of All the Gin Joints

When I got my invitation for Morocco, the only thing I knew about the country was Casablanca.  (At the time, I assumed Casablanca was the capital, which turns out to be false, but I was right about Casablanca being in Morocco.)  We flew into the Casablanca airport when we arrived in Morocco, but were herded directly onto a bus bound for Fes, so it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I actually visited Casa.

I went with my friends Bethany and Carrie.  I was in town because my mother was arrived bright and early the next morning (!!), and they came to keep me company and to celebrate Carrie’s birthday.  Casablanca isn’t that far from Kalaa, but travel always seems more complicated here, and I ended up missing my train because it took me an HOUR to catch a cab to the next town over with a train station.  (For the rest of the day, I answered the phone with, “GUESS HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO GET A FREAKING GRAND TAXI THIS MORNING?!” much to the surprise of whoever was on the other end.)  Luckily, there was a bus leaving for Casa within half an hour, so I wasn’t too late getting in, and I was treated to a lovely view of Casablanca as seen from the highway.  From a distance, Casablanca does, in fact, appear to be made up entirely of white houses.   Well named, 16th century Portuguese colonialists.

Our first stop was the magnificent Hassan II Mosque.  Hassan II is the largest mosque in North Africa, third largest in the world and the tallest building in Morocco.  It is also stunning.  (It also, according to my guidebook, has a LASER BEAM at the top of the minaret that points to Mecca, which is AWESOME!)  It’s perched on a promontory in the Atlantic Ocean and is covered in zellij, the tile work Morocco is famous for.  The Hassan II is the only mosque in Morocco that non-Muslims are allowed in, but they are required to be “decently and respectfully dressed.”  That wasn't a problem for Bethany, Carrie or I, since we were all dressed for site (which means wearing all the clothes), but we walked past a group of French tourists in scandalously short skirts.  Every time I go to Marrakesh or Rabat or a bigger city in Morocco, I’m astonished by what tourist wear and flutter about like a Victorian grandmother, hissing Put some pants on, you strumpet at people, but I’m pretty sure these skirts were short even by western standards.


  
After the mosque, we headed towards Ain Diab, a trendy, beachside suburb of Casa and home to the brand new Mall of Morocco.  Our taxi driver dropped us on the corniche and told us the mall was only a little far away.  We walked along the beach, and sure enough, off in the distance, we could see the mall, looking like a tiny space station on the horizon.  At first, the walk was pleasant.  The beach was lined with empty pools full of trash, and at one point it looked more like a grassy field than a sandy beach, but it was warm, we bought ice cream and I was with friends.  Plus, there was Pizza Hut awaiting me at the Mall of Morocco!  The only problem was we couldn’t get to the mall.  We walked and walked and walked, and yet the mall didn’t seem to get any closer, and after forty-five minutes of walking, we were hot and tired and hungry and, turns out, that close to the mall it’s impossible to find an empty taxi.  Our pleasent beachside walk turned into a forced march, and after an hour, we were trudging single file down the sidewalk - silent, hungry and cranky.  Next time, I'm taking a cab.

The walk was totally worth it though.  The Mall of Morocco is amazing, like a little slice of America.  We ate at Pizza Hut and shopped at H&M and the Gap and marveled at the American Eagle Outfitter.  Carrie bought a coffee at Starbucks and Bethany and I got yogurt at Pinkberry.  We also rode on an escalator, which might not seem that exciting to Americans, but was a treat for the girl in front of us who was clearly using an escalator for the very first time.  There were even attendants stationed at either end to help people get on and off.  We took a bus from the mall to our hotel, and met a Moroccan guy who was impressed by our baby Arabic and that we lived out in the country.  He wanted to know how we did all sorts of basic things, like shopping.

“I go to souq every Monday,” I told him.

“What do you buy at souq,” he asked.

“Vegetables, lentils, couscous, other food,” I told him.

“No, which vegetables do you buy at souq?”

And so I stood on a crowded Casablanca bus, listing vegetables in Arabic.  “Matisha, xizu, shiflur, dnjal, jilbana, lful, korjit….”  The guy behind my new friend was clearly baffled about why this white girl was standing on a bus a rush hour, naming vegetables, and all I could do was shrug at him.  You and me both, buddy.

We stopped at Rick’s Café on our way back to the hotel.  Or rather, we stopped at a Rick’s Café.  It’s about eight years old and looking nothing like the iconic watering hole that spawned a thousand quotes.  There’s even dedicated parking out front.  There was a flat screen TV showing Casablanca, a menu with some very expensive drinks and a roulette wheel, but it felt cheesy and touristy.  We had a drink and quoted the movie a bunch, then scurried back to our hotel.

All in all, Casablanca was okay, but its charms are in how unlike the rest of Morocco it is.  You can wear whatever you want and buy alcohol and pepperoni and Starbucks, and walking into the Mall of Morocco felt a lot like walking into Southpoint Mall in Durham, but as much fun as that was, I much prefer Marrakesh.

Home Sweet Home

Last week, my mom came to Morocco to visit me! It was super exciting, and not just because she brought me some damn pants that fit. She was in Morocco for a week and we spent the first half to the trip in Kalaa so she could meet my host family and my students and see my souq and my medina and my Dar Šabab. That meant Mom would be staying at my apartment, and when she booked her tickets in January, I said something about huh, maybe I should furnish my home before then. We both laughed.

Fast-forward a month and a half to last week, when we were talking about her trip and I again mentioned my need to buy some damn furniture already. She stopped me and said she didn’t want me to do anything in preparation for her. She didn’t want me to dread her visits because they meant cleaning or other work. Translation: I know you’re a failboat at being a real grownup and keeping house. I love you anyways.

I reassured her that I would never dread her visiting because that meant cleaning because, well, I will just not clean. (We all remember the first time my parents visited my first post-college apartment, which was a) still unpacked, despite having moved in two months prior and b) a crazy junk everywhere, path through the living room, can’t see the table style mess. In my defense, I moved, started work, immediately caught bronchitis (from my boss) but didn’t have any sick days so had to continue going to work, and by the time I had the energy to possible unpack a month later, my apartment had reached daunting levels of mess. My parents spent the weekend helping me clean and unpack, so clearly I feel no overwhelming compulsions to clean before a visit. Maybe I should.) However, I told her, as you can see by looking as this picture of my apartment that I drew for class last week, the only place to sit in my apartment is on the bed. If you want to eat breakfast sitting at a table, I have some furniture to buy.

I have been slowly filling up my apartment since I moved in two months ago. I started with my bedroom and then moved on to my kitchen, but I left the living room empty because I didn’t know how far my move-in allowance would stretch and living room furniture is below a bed and dishes on the list of necessities. Plus, my empty living room made a great place to dump crap when I walked in the door. Also, I’m really lazy. However, last Monday, less than a week before Mom arrived, I told my host mother that I needed to buy some furniture. She immediately leaped into action.

“Because you mom is coming, inshallah?” she asked.

I nodded. “America is very far away. I need a sofa when she comes.”

“Today is souq day!” she told me. “You can buy all your furniture at souq for very cheep. When do you want to go? Let’s go now!”

We walked to souq, my town’s weekly market, where in rapid order I bought two ponjs (giant cushions that serve as couches), two plastic rugs (those are a thing here) and a table. My host mom kept asking me if I wanted to get anything else, and I kept telling her I can’t, I’m out of money. We loaded my purchases onto a horse cart and rode back to my apartment, sitting atop the ponjs like a super comfortable hayride.

I spent the rest of Monday sweeping and mopping and generally organizing, and I’m so happy with how my apartment looks. I’m not done furnishing the apartment. There are a lot of things that fall into the I-don’t-know-where-this-goes-so-now-it-goes-here category, and I want somewhere to dump the piles on the floor. I want an oven and some shelves for my kitchen, and a chair for my roof, and dear God, I need to decorate, but now my apartment looks like someone actually lives here instead of just squatting in the back room.


My kitchen. The gas tank fuels the stove and the blue bins hold food and dishes. Also, a close up of my spices and dry goods. I mostly keep them in old jam jars my tutor gave me.


My living room. The cushions are called ponjs and I need to buy covers for them so they don't get stained. My apartment has a private balcony/roof (it's a balcony for my apartment, but it's the same level as the public roof for the building). Right now, I mostly do my laundry out there, but I want to get a table and a small garden.


My bedroom. The bed is a loan from my host family. The small rug next to my bed is the handmade rug I bought at Marche Maroc. My bookshelf/dresser is the only part of my apartment that is currently decorated, and that fan will cease to be decorative real damn soon.


The bathroom. No toilet, no shower, just a tap, a bucket and a hole in the ground.

Observations Made While Doing Laundry:

-- Morocco is dry. I mean, I don’t live in the desert and there are no sand dunes outside my door, but Morocco is dry. It’s rained three times this year, and this is the rainy season. There’s a fine layer of dust over everything in my life, including me, and my skin is so dry it burns when I put lotion on, but I didn’t realize just how dry it is until I pulled my sodden, soaking wet jeans out of a bucket of water, hung them on the line without bothering to wring them out, and they were completely dry three hours later.

-- Doing laundry by moonlight is not as interesting or fun as it sounds.

-- So, when you do laundry in a bucket, it takes for-freaking-ever for your clothes to be really clean. Rinse after rinse after rinse, and the water is still a dingy grey. I don’t actually know how long it takes for the water to run clean because I’ve never had the patience to find out. Usually I call it a day when the water is no longer sudsy, but there’s always a moment when I look at the grayish water my clothes are soaking in and think to myself, “That’s really gross. You should keep washing.” Turns out, it’s much easier to ignore that moment that when it’s 11:30 and I’m tired.

-- Because I am a crazy person, I like my socks to match when they’re hanging up to dry, but this time when I was hanging my socks up, I ended up with 5 mismatched pairs. I searched my bedroom and dirty clothes basket in vain until I checked the bottom of my sleeping bag and found all the lost socks, plus another complete set. I always wear socks to bed because it is cold, but then my feet get warm and I end up toeing my socks off in the middle of the night and forget to empty out my sleeping bag. Still, that’s a whole lot of socks in my sleeping bag.

--Man, I really do not own non-crazy Korean socks. Makes me nostalgic for weekends in Seoul when I would inevitable come home with at least one pair of new socks that were meant for a nine year old.


-- Dear God, I just wrote 400 words about doing laundry. The exciting lives of Peace Corps Volunteers!

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

Things I've Learned in Peace Corps

My first thought upon losing power this evening was, "Noooo, I don't want to use a Turkish toilet in the dark. Think of the potential for things to go horrible wrong." The problem was solved when my downstairs neighbors brought me a candle (and admonished me not to light my clothes on fire), but it turns out not everything is more romantic by candlelight.

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.