April 9, 2009
My training is finally winding down. I got a chance to go on a pretty decent hike (2 hours out, 2 hours back, 12 km total) to a pretty sweet place. I went with 3 other trainees and my host sister-in-law’s brother. We thought we had gone the wrong direction to get to a protected area that we had heard was close by, so one girl suggested stopping for a rest about a two minute walk from what we eventually found was a really great vista. I would have been so disappointed if I found out that we had barely missed seeing it. I guess ignorance is bliss, so I never would have known what I had missed. The next day I went with 4 other trainees to a big waterfall in our province. It required an hour and a half in a “grand taxi”. Those things are sweet if you are traveling with a bunch of people you’re close to. I’m imagining it’s kind of hell if you’re riding with “strangers”. I’ll find out shortly what that’s like. Anyway, the waterfall was amazing, and I can now cross off one of the things on my list of things to see before I die: WILD MONKEYS!!!!!!! We had heard that there are monkeys at this waterfall, and the whole walk down, which was a giant tourist trap, by the way, we only saw some tree’s rustling. On the way back up from the falls: yep, you guessed it, we saw 3 monkeys. The first one was a momma and her baby, who clung tightly to his/her mom’s belly as she picked through scraps that tourists were giving her. The other monkey was doing the same thing farther up the path. I guess these weren’t really “wild monkeys” but rather park-like monkeys. The ride back was tiring, and I found out that cyber café’s are sometimes open on Sundays, sometimes not. I did, however, get a chance to call home from a pay phone in my town. Pretty good weekend I’d say.
April 11, 2009
Tonight I went to the local Dar Tlib, which is a dorm for children from the surrounding areas that go to school in my town but live too far to realistically travel to and from home every day. There is a national system of these, and it is run pretty efficiently. The two local Peace Corps volunteers and a group of area volunteers were going to do a tooth brushing lesson, but a nationwide transportation strike put a hold on that. It has apparently been going on for a week now. My town was supposed to have a horse festival this Monday and Tuesday, but that has been pushed back a week. The Saturday market was also really affected. Not many people showed up to sell their goods, so it was pretty slim pickings for our weekly food. The prices have also gone way up, so we didn’t buy a lot of what was actually there. Pretty crazy. Anyway, back to my original story. All of the trainees, or teacher, and the two volunteers showed up for a possible talk by the Kaid, who’s a local official appointed by the King. He didn’t show up, so the director of the Dar Tlib provided entertainment for the night. The session started with a reading from the Quran, a religious chant from a group of three girls, and a song by 5 girls and one boy. Then we played a series of games. We started off with a version of musical chairs which was really fun. The director taught the group a song to sing. He would sing a verse, and everyone would repeat. He gave a broom to one person who would go around the room (the seats were all around the walls of the room) tapping people who would then have to get up and conga-line around the room. When the person with the broom dropped the broom, everyone would have to try to find a seat. The last person standing would have to then lead. It was a lot of fun. I’m guessing half of the 143 kids (ages 8 or 9 to 16) attended. The director then had our language teacher do an ice breaker song that we learned when we first came to Morocco. It was kind of a complicated thing, so it didn’t go over extremely well, but it served it’s purpose. The next game was my favorite. The director picked 4 people (including 2 trainees) to leave the room while he explained the rules to the rest. He had a whistle, which he put in the bottom of the back of his jacket. He would then bring one person in at a time and tell them to find the person with the whistle. He would stand with his back to a group of kids and tell the chosen person that someone in the room had a whistle. As he was talking, a child would blow the whistle dangling from his jacket. The acoustics of the room made it hard to tell where the noise was coming from. He would then point at someone across the room and say that they had the whistle. He’d then tell the chosen person to pat down the supposed perpetrator. It would happen 4 or 5 times before the chosen victim would figure it out. Lots of fun. The Americans then did a round of “Row Row Row Your Boat”. It was a mini-semi-disaster. It was too hard to teach the kids an English song, so we just did the round with our group of 8. The night ended with a group of boys leading a huge dance circle. The 5 boys had telunts, which are a round drum, kind of like a tambourine without the bells. Moroccans all have great rhythm. About half of the people got in a circle and started a slow dance around the room. Everyone else clapped. It was fun, but kind of tiring. The pace is really pretty slow, but the drumming is nice. Apparently this is the common dance at weddings all summer. The dancing starts around 8 and sometimes goes until 12. The men and women usually do it separately. This summer is going to be a lot of fun. Our teacher’s sister is getting married in May, and there’s an open invitation for all of us trainees. I can’t wait. A lot of volunteers go to a lot of weddings during the summers. I’m trying to suss out the appropriateness of some American dance moves so I can expose the locals to my horrible dancing.
April 12, 2009
So I guess this makes two pretty amazing weekends in a row. I went back out to the protected area near my town. This time I went with a pretty big group. Four Americans went out with 4 Moroccan guys (all under 20 years old). Our “guide” for this trip was a classmate of my host sister-in-law’s brother. He lives at the top of the protected area and his grandfather has a farm near the river at the base of the valley. The day was perfect for hiking, and I now realize why they call this country the cold land with the hot sun. It was pretty cool in the morning but once exposed to that sun for about 10 minutes I was pretty warm. I found out that I have been saying a pretty common phrase wrong the last 5 weeks. I’ve been saying “Mushi Mushkil“, which means “no problem”. The only problem with that is that I should be saying “Mashi Mushkil”. What I’ve been saying really is “cats (plural) problem”. Huge difference. Luckily a lot of people in my town kind of slur their speech a little, so everyone sounds like they are saying “cats problem”. Our guide took us down to his grandfather’s farm, which is near two really cool old 3 story buildings. We got to the river, where we learned we’d be crossing it 4 times to get to a point where we could head up the mountain to our new friend’s house for lunch. I was not prepared for fording the river. I was wearing my logger boots and long underwear, so I had to take off the boots and string them over my shoulder and hike up my pants and long johns past my knees. That apparently wasn’t far enough, cause my pants were soaked. I may have feet that look like long thin hobbit feet, but that’s as far as that comparison goes. I had to be helped across because I’m not used to walking on rocks without shoes. The hike up was pretty burly, and by the time I made it to the top, I was ready for tajine and some swunfu (rest). Our host gave us some mint tea with bread and fresh honey. I will probably only eat fresh honey from now on, no more stuff out of the bear shaped bottle. Our tajine was chalk full of olives and raisins, and therefore was very delicious. The 6 kilometer hike back to our town was very enjoyable, and I realized that berber people travel faster than anyone I’ve ever met. While talking to one of the local volunteers he confirmed that realization when he said that he calls it berber speed. I got a chance to talk to family tonight (thanks for answering Sarah, and sorry I missed you Adam), which always makes me very happy. I get a little motivational boost every time I talk to someone from home. That said, I’ll probably be calling some people this coming weekend (that means you mom and dad and Adam/Sarah).
April 16, 2009
The transportation strike is over. They came to an agreement last night, so it was a really pleasant sight to see all the grand taxis at our local taxi stand. That means the horse festival is on for this Sunday thru Tuesday. The town was pretty much out of chicken meat, which meant I had a couple small dinners, which suits my small stomach just fine. My teacher loves chicken, so he was pretty happy that we could have some for lunch. My training group gave our environmental educational lesson at the primary school and at the Dar Tlib. We had to change things around quickly several times. We found out we’d be presenting at the school on Monday, and presented on Tuesday. Our teacher was brilliant by coming up with a non-verbal skit to do before our lesson (two fellow trainees and I were seeds that turned into trees, two others planted and cared for us, and the last one cut us with an axe before being chased off by the caretakers). He also taught the kids a song about a little bird and a tree. We presented the lesson in front of a class of first year students (6 year olds), but they didn’t quite understand the skit, so the principal had them leave and brought in a class of 6th year students (11 and 12 year olds), who were much more responsive. We taught a lesson on how to plant little herb seeds in used yogurt, milk, and butter containers. They seemed to really enjoy the hands on demonstration (what kid doesn’t like to play in dirt, I know I STILL do). They also loved the song that our teacher taught them. After our presentation we worked on improving the lesson before giving it last night at the Dar Tlib. The second time around was great. We gave the lesson in front of a larger audience, so we brought up four volunteers to demonstrate the planting with the help of their peers in the audience. The association (community group) we worked with helped out a lot and played a quiz game with the kids after we finished our part. Today we got the feedback from the association and Dar Tlib people, which was very positive. I will be learning where I will be living and working the next two years tomorrow afternoon. I’m so excited and anxious to know.
Here are some things I’ve learned the last month and a half: I really can eat a lot of bread and drink tons of tea, two year olds are hilarious everywhere in the world, being able to laugh at yourself is key in life, sugar rice/pasta (a dish with rice or pasta, powdered sugar, and cinnamon, and sometimes raisins) sounds and looks awesome at first, but halfway through you realize eating it was a mistake, I really love hiking, not knowing the language everyone around you speaks is fine as long as you can utilize humor, and I can get by without a lot of “stuff”. Oh yeah, I still hate bananas, and monkeys are awesome, even though they tend to love the thing I hate most in life (refer back to the start of the sentence if I lost you on that one). Yeah, I can easily say I hate bananas more than anything else in life so far. Enough about that. This might be the last time I get to post before getting sworn in as a volunteer, so enjoy.
