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.

Ridiculous Peace Corps Injuries

During the winter, I only bathe at the hamam because look, it is cold enough in my apartment that I'm writing this from inside a blanket fort so kudos to volunteers who are brave enough to strip for more than the five seconds it takes to get dressed, but I am not one of them, especially when once a week I can go to a bathhouse and have unlimited hot water and warmth and offers from strangers to scrub my back.  And sometimes oranges.  I love the hamam!

So, the water at my hamam is heated by a massive wood fire under the building.  (The fire also heats the public oven, so there's always the smell of fresh bread wafting out from under the hamam.)  Inside the hamam, there is a hot and cold tap in each room.  The cold water tap is hooked up to the town's water supply and the hot water is hooked up to the boiler under the building, with the pipe running along the outside of the wall.


Wood for the fire piled in front of my local hamam.
So, on Tuesday, I was at the hamam, waiting in line to fill my buckets.  The area next to the taps was really crowded and in a shuffled attempt to get out of the way so someone could get to her bucket, I accidentally leaned against the hot water pipe.  TURNS OUT, metal with near boiling water running through it is VERY VERY hot.  I only touched the pipe for a second or two before the SEARING PAIN IN MY ARM caused me to jerk away, but that was long enough to do some damage.  I poured cold water on it immediately and avoided washing the entire area, but by the time I was done, there was a decent sized blistered burn on my upper arm.

So yeah, that's the story of the time I injured myself BATHING.

Anyways, I've been really careful to not touch the burn and rubbing argon oil on it (at least that's plentiful here) and the blister had started to go down, and then last night I was flopping around in my sleep, as I am wont to do, and apparently I rolled onto my burnt arm and popped the blister and when I woke up, my entire upper arm hurt and the burn is red and angry looking.

So that's the story of the time I further injured myself sleeping.

So yeah, I don't even know.  It looks not great and it's partially an open wound at this point and I'm leaving town tomorrow and going to the desert and there's going to be sand everywhere and yeah.  Who injures themselves bathing?

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.

Updates

Hi!  So, it's been a really long time since I wrote anything here.  I'd say I was busy, but that would be a lie.  Really, I was just lazy.  Pretty much all of these deserve their own entries, but since that's unlikely to happen, here's the past three months.

So, since I last blogged, I:

-- spent two weeks working at a camp for orphans in Rabat

-- fasted for Ramadan, which was long and hot

-- went to England and Wales to see Pru for a week and a half

-- went back to Rabat to help Peace Corps write a manual for spring camps

-- went to a moussem and a fantasia.

-- fielded a lot of worried phone calls from people back home who were worried about the protests in North Africa.  There have been a few, non-violent protest in Casablanca and Rabat, but things have otherwise been calm in Morocco.  I managed to freak myself out when the new broke about Libya, but then I sternly told myself to get it together because it's not like this was my first experience with sudden political tenseness.

-- had my one year anniversary in Morocco.  I spent the night at a party with some of my stagemates.  We drank a lot, and cooked dinner and talked about our summer vacations and our plans for the next year. We made a rule that anytime someone spoke in Arabic, they had to take a drink, which was really hard. I hadn't realized how much Arabic had slipped into my English conversation until I started trying to avoid it. We ended up just translating the God phrases into English and walked around the house shouting, "To your health!" and "My parents and yours!" and "If God wills it!"

-- had a tiny bit of a meltdown about the situation with my mudir (which is not... great) and oh God, what have I accomplished in the past year, what am I even doing here?  And then I pulled myself back together, because there's no crying in Peace Corps.  (That's a lie, there's definitely some crying in Peace Corps.)

Ramadan Kareem

It’s Ramadan, the most hungriest time of the year! (Apologies for that.) So, you ask, what is Ramadan? The holy month of Ramadan, which started on July 21st (in Morocco), commemorates the month when the Qu'ran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. During Ramadan, all healthy adult Muslims abstain from food, water and sex from the Fajr (morning call to prayer, about an hour before sunrise) to the Maghrib (fourth call to prayer, just after sunset). Today, that means fasting from 4:12 AM to 7:26 PM, not that I’m counting the minutes or anything. That’s a little over fifteen hours, in the desert, which is rough. Children, the sick, pregnant women and travelers are exempt from fasting, although many travelers continue to fast, which can lead to some painful train rides, let me tell you. Fasting for Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, and in Morocco, it’s the most important.

People have been telling me about Ramadan since I got back from Spain in June. No one was pressuring me to fast (except my host mother, who informed me I would be fasting all month, but I'm secure enough in that relationship to know that I could eat as much as I like during the day and still have a standing invitation to dinner every day of the week), but people wanted to make sure I knew that Ramadan was coming and what the rules were. And when I say everyone, I do mean everyone. The guy at my local hanut. The guy at the other hanut where I buy bulk goods. The man who sells me tomatoes at souq. My mudir and his friends guys who sit with him at the Dar Shabab. My sitemate's mudira. My host family and my neighbors and my friends and random people on the street. Hey look, it's the Italian girl*. Let's ask if she’s fasting.

People told me that Ramadan was a spiritual month and that they felt stronger and peaceful after fasting. They also told me fasting would make me thinner. Luckily, two years in Korea means I'm pretty much inured to incredible blunt comments about topics that are taboo back home. (I was looking at pants in the Marrakesh souq a few months ago and the shopkeeper took one look at me and said, "For you, big size!" before scurrying off to find a larger size. I just laughed and laughed, because hey, it's true.)

I’m fasting for Ramadan, even though I’m not Muslim. Ramadan is so important in Morocco and I wanted to experience it with my community. Religion is so important on such a basic level in Morocco, and as a non-Muslim, I usually can’t participate. Fasting for Ramadan is one of my few chances be involved, however tangentially, in that part of Moroccan culture. It’s also about respect for Moroccan culture. Everyone fasts during Ramadan. In fact, it is illegal to serve food to Muslim adults during Ramadan. Most restaurants are closed for the month of Ramadan, and the few that are open have signs posted saying they won’t serve adults Moroccans during the day. As a foreigner, I’m not required to fast, but I feel like fasting is the only respectful thing to do, especially while I’m in site.

Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to in the past two weeks has asked, “Wesh saiyma?” (are you fast) and been thrilled when I respond, “Ieyah, kansum f Ramadan.” (Yes, I’m fasting for Ramadan.) No one has doubted my answer, which I guess means I look just as fried as everyone else. Then we take a moment to commiserate about how we are ji3anna (hungry) and 3tshana (thirsty), but they always make sure to end by saying how fasting is good, and you know what? They’re right. It is good.