Finally, a blog post from Morocco

March, 17th, 2009

Well, I’ve finally gotten around to writing for this blog. What a crazy couple weeks it’s been. First, I missed staging in Philadelphia due to a bad snow storm in the northeast. I had to fly to NY La Guardia first, then caught a bus to JFK, making it with about 3 hours to spare. The flight was good, Richard Gier (don’t care how he spells it really) put me to sleep with a boring movie, and Nicolas Cage entertained me with how bad he acted in Bangkok Dangerous. The airport in Casablanca was interesting. I realized I was in a different country when I could smell the smoke in the building. The bus ride was probably the highlight of the day, because everything was so new.
I will sort of gloss over details of the first week. I don’t think anyone really wants to hear about the “welcome to Morocco” training process. The highlight of the week’s talks was probably the one hour talk about diarrhea. The hotel we stayed at in Beni Mellal, a town of about 200,000, was nice. We had the pleasure of having the police watch out for us every afternoon when we went out to walk around. There are 61 of us so far, raging in age from 23 to early 80’s. There’s one guy who’s on his third peace corps assignment. The end of the week was pretty exciting. We received our language group assignments on Saturday, and met our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator Haddou. Our group is 3 girls, 3 guys, and I couldn’t be happier with how the group turned out. We are all pretty even-keeled, and we get along great. This is me at 8 days with the same 5 people, hopefully it stays this way. We are learning Tamazight, which is a berber dialect. It is an old language, dating back some 3200 years or so (don’t quote me on this, I’m pretty tired right now).
The start of my community based training did not go how I thought it would. First off, we had to rearrange our luggage (2 bags at first). They told us to put what we’d need at our host family’s house in one bag, and put less required items in the other bag, to be put in storage at a central hub site that we’d have access to once a week. Each group would be going to a different site, and their would be 5 different HUB sites, where the groups would meet for lectures and technical training. Ok, that wasn’t very hard. To get to our individual communities, we’d be taking local transportation, which in this case were grand taxis. The grand taxi is a wonderful thing. They are old Mercedes Benz sedans, which have seats for 5 people, including the driver. The thing is, you pay for each seat, and the taxi does not leave until 5 seats are paid for, not including the driver’s seat. You may be saying, well, that means that the taxi would have to hold 6 people. You would be right to say that. A normal grand taxi ride is a cramped affair. Well, we had to also fit 6 bags into the taxi. That’s where my day started to turn south. They fit 5 bags in the trunk and on the roof rack, but didn’t have space for a sixth. Since I was wearing an undershirt, shirt, fleece, sweatshirt, and jacket as well as underwear, long underwear, and jeans, I figured I could give up my bag, since I was reassured it would make it to my hub and I’d have it in two days. The 2 hour taxi ride was definitely a bonding experience.
When we made it to our community (which I can’t say the name of for security reasons), we headed to our LCF’s (that guy Haddou I mentioned earlier) house. He taught us some phrases of Tam to use during our first lunch, which was going to be with our host families. We waited until a member of each family showed up, then split off for lunch. Well, my host family did not send a member, so Haddou walked with me to their house, which was about 15 minutes out of town. The place was inside an old French fort, which they had turned into a sort of barn for goats and sheep. Apparently when setting up the host family, the Homestay coordinator got an ok from the mother and sister, but not the father. The father was not happy about possibly taking in someone for 2 months. The reason for this was because the family was staying there for free (squatting, if you will), and he did not want the local authorities to come around asking about why they were getting paid by the peace corps to host someone at a house they did not own. That was strike two for the day. I had a quick bite to eat with Haddou as the others had lunch. When they came back Haddou took me to meet my new host family. I met the host mother, who was very nice, and I put down my computer bag, sleeping bag, and jacket, and then headed back to “class”.
The first night with my host family was AWKWARD. I knew how to say hello (which is a long greeting that is used pretty much every time you see someone in a small town) and “what is this?” My host father sat with me while I had tea and bread and answered all my “what is this?” questions about everything I could see around me. Later that evening the family invited me into their second sitting room, which is where they watch tv and sometimes sleep. The father pointed at the mattress he was sitting near and gestured for me to sit down. He then pointed further down the mattress towards a blanket, and I assumed he meant to sit down, but on the blanket. This turned out to be my biggest, grandest, faux pas. Underneath the blanket was the father’s son’s one month old baby!! No one told me that they had grandchildren running around, or even laying around hidden under blankets. I guess that was the third strike for the day. I’m glad I’ve gotten the most embarrassing moment (I hope) out of the way quickly. Things have gotten better since that moment.
My only complaint so far during these first 2 weeks is that I have been missing one of my bags. It was not at my hub site hotel two days after giving it up. This is a real lesson in getting by with what you have. I’m glad I put some excess clothes in my second bag, so I have a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis, and a pair of carhart pants, and some extra underwear and socks. We’ll see how it goes the next week or so I guess. I think I can get by without the things in that bag, but I have a lot of clothes in there, plus a really expensive dental appliance that I would like to at least have around to remind me of how expensive it is. Oh well, mashi mushkil, as the berber’s say (it’s no problem). I’ll live.
Well, I think I will sum up the rest of the time by saying that it is definitely a wonderful experience. I’ve witnessed two souks, or weekly markets, in two different towns, a fight between a drugged out woman and another homeless man, experienced the frustrations and rewards of living in a household that speaks almost no English (the 36 year old son speaks pretty good English, but he’s not around because he runs the local game room, which gets a lot of business), am slowly mastering the Turkish toilet, bucket bathing, and eating copious amounts of freshly baked bread with 3 to 4 cups of sugary tea, and am soaking up as much language as I can. I am also getting quite good at playing with a hacky sack. The rest of these first two months is gonna be quite the trip. I can’t wait to get better at speaking Tamazight. Well, hopefully I will have this posted by the end of the week, when I get access to an internet café. Hopefully I can have some pictures uploaded as well. Until next time I guess.

Side note, it's currently March 19th, and I'm in a cyber cafe with 3 other trainees with laptops. We are all frantically typing away during a break in our training. The wireless doesn't work, but the guy was nice enough to let us commandeer 4 cables from computers in the cafe. Still no word on my bags, but I'm gonna talk to someone about it later today. Hope everyone is doing well. Until next time.