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

Lost in Translation

The spring camp where I’m spending the week working has a small library of French and English books.  One of the campers, Khawla, was reading an English biography about Mary McLeod Bethune in English, and she asked me to define slave.

“It’s a person who was taken from Africa to work in America,” I told her.

“I don’t understand,” she told me.

“Umm, it’s a person who has to work, but isn’t paid any money,” I tried.

“Oh,” she said, comprehension dawning.  “Like you!  Mutatwi3in (volunteers).”

*facepalm*

Luckily, another PCV knew the French for slave, which cleared things up.

working 9 to 5 (this subject is full of lies)

Back in early June last year, I went to Gibraltar and Spain for a week on vacation and came back to find that my students had taken their final exams and stopped coming to class. Which, fair, it's summer vacation. I spend a week or two sitting around the Dar Chabab (my last lesson plan is dated June 12, but I don’t think I actually taught it).  After a week or two of spending an hour every evening sitting in front of the Dar Chabab, I gave up and told my mudir I’d be back in September. The Dar Chabab was closed for July and August anyways, and I didn't see the point of walking across town if nothing was going to happen. Also, mid-June was the first of the really bad heat waves and I started spending my days in my apartment, refusing to wear pants. Pants were the worst.

I weathered the summer, mostly by refusing to wear clothes and drinking, I kid you not, about eight liters of water a day.  When September rolled around I started periodically visiting my Dar Chabab again, only it was never open.  I knew there was a regional meeting for PCVs and mudirs at the beginning of October though, so I waited until then to press the issue.

At the regional meeting, I gave my mudir a tentative schedule.  He said it sounded great and also, the Dar Chabab was going to be under construction for the next month.  Apparently, the solid walls surrounding the center, yard and soccer field were giving the Dar Chabab a bad reputation, and so the walls were being knocked down and replaced with a metal slat fence.  Come back in November.

I went to Italy at the end of October, came back with the plague (actually bronchitis and the start of four months of respiratory issues) and by the time I could stand up without getting dizzy, it was mid-November.  I drug myself out of bed and across town to Dar Chabab, only to discover that it was still under construction.  Very under construction.  Well, maybe they’ll do something about the bathroom situation (it was mostly used to store bikes), I thought.  By mid-December, I had been assured that the Dar Chabab would be opened by early January.  Or else.

My family came to visit over Christmas, and once they left I, once again, walked out to the Dar Chabab, which was no longer under construction, but was also not open.  I talked to my host family, who told me that the Dar Chabab would re-open after the Prophet’s Birthday.  A few days later, I ran into my mudir at souq and we hashed out a tentative schedule and I finally – finally – started classes February 13, eight months after I taught my last class.

Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t like I didn’t do anything during those eight months.  I worked at a camp over the summer and helped Peace Corps write a manual about language immersion camps.  I did a couple of projects at a friend’s school and helped my sitemate with her classes.  But the longer I went without working, the easier it became to just not leave my house.  I started skipping Couscous Friday and dodging invitations to tea and started to have more and more trouble speaking Arabic.  I wasn’t bored, because I don’t really get bored, but it wasn’t healthy and I wasn’t exactly happy.

I started out teaching three classes: a beginner’s class, an advanced class and a Bac class (high level grammar class for students preparing for the high school exit exam).  My core group of students from last year graduated, but I have a few return students and a whole crop of girls from the local high school who are absolutely fantastic and really dedicated.  (Of course, there’s also Fouad, a return student from last year who comes to every class, whether it’s the right level or not, asks me to teach him communication and then refuses to talk.  *sigh*)  I have a tentative schedule drawn up through early June and I’m really excited about my classes.

Then last week, two guys came up after my “advanced” class, which wasn’t super advanced (four students spoke zero English) and asked if I had a more advanced class.  Like, one that was actually advanced.  And conversation based.  And maybe not so full of children. 

“I *can* have that class,” I told them.  “Let’s ask the mudir when there’s a free room.” 

So Yassine, Abdallah and I went to the mudir’s office to schedule another class, and when the mudir started to make noises about how the Dar Shabab was too busy for another English class, Yassine took over and argued until we had a classroom.

Our first conversation class was yesterday.  I printed off an article about the effect of linguistic diversity on the Moroccan education system, wrote a bunch of questions in a vain hope of keeping the conversation flowing and hoped for the best.  I tried to teach conversation classes last year, but it was like pulling teeth to get the kids to actually talk and I was skeptical of actually getting students to talk for a full hour, much less have an actual debate, but we had an hour-long conversation about the roll of French and Amazigh in the Moroccan education system, the possibility of a secular government (Morocco is a theocracy; it’s possible to watch the King at Friday prayer on TV, I know because I watched him yesterday) and evolution (which isn’t taught in Morocco).

You can’t see my face right now, but it looks a lot like this. -->

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?