Two years ago, I started poking around (again) on the Peace Corps website over the Thanksgiving holidays. I started my application sometime that week. I spent last Thanksgiving at the dentist, having cavities filled as part of the medical exam for my Peace Corps application. I didn't even eat dinner that night because my mouth was too numb from the Novocaine to manage something as complicated as chewing. This Thanksgiving, I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer, and it's easy to be thankful.
I'm thankful that the long, frustrating application is over and that it I'm finally a PCV. I'm thankful that I'm in Morocco, with all its crazy charm. I'm thankful that I spent my Thanksgiving evening at my Dar Shabab, making awkward conversation in broken Darija with my mudir and then watching a Moroccan scout meeting, which involved a lot more singing than I imagine goes on at American scout meetings. I'm thankful that I ate chickpeas seasoned with salt and cumin that I bought from a roadside stall as part of my Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm thankful that I have Internet so I could Skype home after dinner and talk with my parents. I'm thankful for everyone I've met in Morocco: my government-appointed family, my two host families and all of the wonderful Moroccans who have gone out of their way to welcome me to their country.
I'm thankful I am getting to embark on this crazy, two year Moroccan adventure, and while things are still a bit lonely and difficult right now, I'm thankful for the opportunity to get to stick around and make this home.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Site Annoucements
Site announcements were last Wednesday! Most of PST is spent at our CBT sites, but every few weeks, the entire staj comes back to Fes for a few days of group sessions, and this trip Peace Corps announced the permanent sites we’ll spend the next two years living in, i.e. the one thing I’ve been dying to know since I first got my invitation.
On Wednesday, the day of the announcements, Peace Corps drug the process out, and we spent all morning in sessions that no one paid any attention to because we all just wanted to know where our sites were. After lunch (which was half an hour late *insert face clawing*) we had yet another session with Abdelghani, the Youth Development program manager, introducing the regional managers, their duties and the regional system (a new introduction to Peace Corps Morocco) and other probably important things that I didn’t really pay attention to because I just wanted to know where I was going to be living. *insert more face clawing*
After the session, we were divided into our regional groups, which was a cruel tease because know we knew the general area we would be living in and who our neighbors would be, but still didn’t know our site, our home for the next two years, and we still had to sit through another ten minutes of talking. After region announcements, the groups met separately and our regional manager gave everyone a folder with the name of our site, a form about our new host family and a couple of pages of information about our the town. (People who are replacing or joining a current volunteer got a site journal written by the PCV, but since I’m the first volunteer in my site in a while, I got a generic form filled out by Peace Corps staff.)
My immediate thoughts were along the lines of OMG, I’m so excited, I can’t wait to see it, I love this place and am invested in its well-being ALREADY, must Google immediately, followed by Wait, Sra-what? I don’t even know how to say that! and Hmm, so I wonder where this is? It was a surreal moment.
My home for the next two years is Kelaat Sraghna (I can still only somewhat say that), a city about an hour and a half north of Marrakesh. Kelaat, or Qlaat or El Kalaa des Sraghna (there seems to be some confusion about the proper name and spelling) is big, about 65,000 people, and the economy mainly revolves around olive agriculture. There’s a high school, two Dar Šabab (youth centers where YD volunteers work), a sports center and a Marjan (think Wal-Mart, only nice and with an entire aisle devoted to cheese). I have a sitemate, Lucia, from my staj who I like a lot and think will be great to work with, there’s a Environment volunteer named Lena who lives 40 minutes away and Kelly, my current CBT sitemate and Peace Corps twin, is only an hour away. Kelaat is at the base of the High Atlas Mountains, just a couple of hours from the beach and close enough to Marrakesh’s transportation options that I’ll be able to travel easily. It sounds like an amazing town and I can’t wait to get there!
On Wednesday, the day of the announcements, Peace Corps drug the process out, and we spent all morning in sessions that no one paid any attention to because we all just wanted to know where our sites were. After lunch (which was half an hour late *insert face clawing*) we had yet another session with Abdelghani, the Youth Development program manager, introducing the regional managers, their duties and the regional system (a new introduction to Peace Corps Morocco) and other probably important things that I didn’t really pay attention to because I just wanted to know where I was going to be living. *insert more face clawing*
After the session, we were divided into our regional groups, which was a cruel tease because know we knew the general area we would be living in and who our neighbors would be, but still didn’t know our site, our home for the next two years, and we still had to sit through another ten minutes of talking. After region announcements, the groups met separately and our regional manager gave everyone a folder with the name of our site, a form about our new host family and a couple of pages of information about our the town. (People who are replacing or joining a current volunteer got a site journal written by the PCV, but since I’m the first volunteer in my site in a while, I got a generic form filled out by Peace Corps staff.)
My immediate thoughts were along the lines of OMG, I’m so excited, I can’t wait to see it, I love this place and am invested in its well-being ALREADY, must Google immediately, followed by Wait, Sra-what? I don’t even know how to say that! and Hmm, so I wonder where this is? It was a surreal moment.
My home for the next two years is Kelaat Sraghna (I can still only somewhat say that), a city about an hour and a half north of Marrakesh. Kelaat, or Qlaat or El Kalaa des Sraghna (there seems to be some confusion about the proper name and spelling) is big, about 65,000 people, and the economy mainly revolves around olive agriculture. There’s a high school, two Dar Šabab (youth centers where YD volunteers work), a sports center and a Marjan (think Wal-Mart, only nice and with an entire aisle devoted to cheese). I have a sitemate, Lucia, from my staj who I like a lot and think will be great to work with, there’s a Environment volunteer named Lena who lives 40 minutes away and Kelly, my current CBT sitemate and Peace Corps twin, is only an hour away. Kelaat is at the base of the High Atlas Mountains, just a couple of hours from the beach and close enough to Marrakesh’s transportation options that I’ll be able to travel easily. It sounds like an amazing town and I can’t wait to get there!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Amazing Moments in Stupidity
Part of being a foreigner somewhere is putting up with unwanted attention because you’re different. People stare, children shout things as you walk by in what they think is your native language (in Morocco, they all shout in French) and sometimes, you don’t get the same treatment that a native would receive because you’re different. It can also work the other way, and expats get away with all sorts of cultural faux pas because they’re foreign and people assume they don’t know any better. Either way, it can feel like people only react to the fact that you’re different and not to you as an individual, and it can be difficult to remind myself that sometimes it’s my actions that are causing the commotion, not my nationality, ethnicity or inability to speak the language.
Case in point: Last night, one of the innumerable cousins (I assume, I never did get a straight answer to who this guy was) came over. He spent the evening on the computer, which is in the living room and has a direct line of sight to my bedroom, where I was sitting on my bed, trying (unsuccessfully) to memorize adjectives. Every time I looked up, the cousin was staring at me, and after a bit, I started to get hostile. Why’s he looking at me? I fumed mentally. Hasn’t he seen a foreigner before?! I’m dressed appropriately, I’m minding my own business and I’m in the safety of my home. I’m not Moroccan, woop-di-freaking-do. I have to put up with enough attention all day. I shouldn’t have to deal with this at home too! What a creep! I spent the better part of the evening annoyed at the guy and sending him a covert stink-eye whenever I caught his glance.
And then, hours later when I got up for dinner, I realized that hanging right above me head, in plain view to the entire house, were a row of underwear that had still been damp when I took them off the line this afternoon.
Dude wasn’t looking at me. He was trying to figure out why I was displaying my undergarments so wantonly, especially when there was a male guest present. This had nothing to do with me being foreign and everything to do with me being kinda dumb. If I hadn’t immediately jumped to the conclusion that his attention was because I’m American and not because of something I had done, I would have looked around and noticed my laundry and could have saved myself some embarrassment when I had to sit down, red-faced, next to him for dinner.
Case in point: Last night, one of the innumerable cousins (I assume, I never did get a straight answer to who this guy was) came over. He spent the evening on the computer, which is in the living room and has a direct line of sight to my bedroom, where I was sitting on my bed, trying (unsuccessfully) to memorize adjectives. Every time I looked up, the cousin was staring at me, and after a bit, I started to get hostile. Why’s he looking at me? I fumed mentally. Hasn’t he seen a foreigner before?! I’m dressed appropriately, I’m minding my own business and I’m in the safety of my home. I’m not Moroccan, woop-di-freaking-do. I have to put up with enough attention all day. I shouldn’t have to deal with this at home too! What a creep! I spent the better part of the evening annoyed at the guy and sending him a covert stink-eye whenever I caught his glance.
And then, hours later when I got up for dinner, I realized that hanging right above me head, in plain view to the entire house, were a row of underwear that had still been damp when I took them off the line this afternoon.
Dude wasn’t looking at me. He was trying to figure out why I was displaying my undergarments so wantonly, especially when there was a male guest present. This had nothing to do with me being foreign and everything to do with me being kinda dumb. If I hadn’t immediately jumped to the conclusion that his attention was because I’m American and not because of something I had done, I would have looked around and noticed my laundry and could have saved myself some embarrassment when I had to sit down, red-faced, next to him for dinner.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Fkkr
(Sorry Mom, there's a bunch of swearing in this entry. In my defense, it's most as a pronunciation guide.)Darija can be an incredible dirty sounding language to an English speaking. I know there are examples in every language of perfectly innocent words being dirty or offensive in another (my college Latin professor loved to remind us that we can’t decline sex in Latin), but in all the languages I’ve studied, Darija is the worst (or best).
“I ate” is klit. “Please” is afak, which sounds a lot like “oh fuck” and promptly became a swear word around Hub. (I left my notebook in my 5th floor room, afak!) We’ve started threatening to cut a bnt (girl) instead of bitch and last week, I asked Jenn the name of her hooha (brother). (That one was mistake. Hooha means "her brother" and I should have asked about the name of her non-dirty sounding hook (your brother).) If you woke up this morning, you fqt (which sounds very similar to fucked), but my favorite work is “to think,” which is fkkr, pronounced exactly like you think it is. (There are actually two works for “to think, dnn and fkkr, which has lead to us saying dnn-fkkr a lot.) We’re not exactly mature about it, and poor Fatima spends a lot of time rolling her eyes as we titter over things like Kat-fkkr (you think). The best moment came when Kelly, frustrated over forgetting a word, tapped her head and said, “Fkkr, fkkr, fkkr,” in a horribly obscene reference to Winne the Poo.
I really love my CBT group sometimes.
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