Friday, February 29, 2008
quick note
After reading the commentary of Andrew and Tim's blogs (both of which have much more effort put into than mine) about their time here, I felt obligated to post the links for both of them. I encourage everyone to check them out.
Donkey Rides and Mental Health
The past few weeks have been good. I have been moderately productive with my work efforts, and have managed to get out of site a decent amount. I have to begin 2 weekends back, when a nearby PC companion and I headed down south to visit the site of another friend for what I was told was a "party". After the 5 hour commute via souk bus, and picking up another volunteer along the way, we finally pulled into the small town, which was still 2 and 1/2 kilometers from our final destination. For those of you who are not familiar with the souk bus, it is a lot like the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disney World, but stops being fun much sooner, and lasts A LOT longer. It is also my primary mode of transportation in the south, as there is no train near me, and it is cheaper than a taxi.
Once we started to make our way there via foot, as we were passing by a donkey cart, one of my counterparts had a genius idea. Without saying more than "I've got a great idea!", he ran over to the man driving the donkey cart, began talking to him in his local Berber dialect, and proceeded to ask him if we could catch a ride in his cart to our "work meeting". Judging by the mans reaction, this was the first time 3 white guys had approached him speaking Arabic and Berber asking for such a thing. Fortunately, he was able to squeeze us into his busy donkey man schedule and take us there. We made ourselves comfortable in the rickety wooden and metal cart and continued to chat with the man, jokingly asking him to take us all the way to Tata, a town about 8 hours away by souk bus, and that we would pay for his food. About 30 minutes and a 100 confused looks from locals later, we pulled into our destination, which was in front of a Berber carpet co-op...one of the 5 small mud houses that comprised the village, where we met up with 2 additional volunteers, thus completing the party attendees. Despite the small size of the gathering for which we spent half a day of traveling, it turned out to be a fun evening, and im sure gave the locals plenty to talk about.
The following weekend I attended VSN(Volunteer Support Network) training. The VSN is a network comprised of volunteers, that exists to help counsel other volunteers who are in need of it. The Peace Corps can be incredibly stressful and frustrating at times, and there are endless amounts of problems that can arise during ones service. So many that VSN was created to help relieve the PC medical counseling staff of some work...plus sometimes it helps just to speak with another American volunteer that you can relate to. The training lasted for 4 days, and was surprisingly therapeutic. We spent the majority of the training practicing counseling through role plays, in which we traded off being the counselor and the counselee. After an initial run through, I found that it was much easier to play the role of the person being counseled if I used some of my own problems, as opposed to made up ones. It felt good to talk to someone about things such as difficulty adjusting to my new hobbit-like lifestyle and being myself in a different language and culture. It was also good to see some friends from PST that I hadn’t seen in a while, and eat tasty food that was provided from our pcv host, who like many volunteers is an amazing cook. I left feeling refreshed, Zen like, and ready to pass on the feeling to anyone in need. The following day I went to the dentist in Ouarzazate to replace a filling that had fallen out a few weeks prior. I was relieved to find out that the PC dentist is good, and that I was able to describe that I had lost a filling in Arabic.
So this is everything that I can think of that is worth mentioning for this week. There are several things coming up that I will wait on to provide commentary. Until next time.
Once we started to make our way there via foot, as we were passing by a donkey cart, one of my counterparts had a genius idea. Without saying more than "I've got a great idea!", he ran over to the man driving the donkey cart, began talking to him in his local Berber dialect, and proceeded to ask him if we could catch a ride in his cart to our "work meeting". Judging by the mans reaction, this was the first time 3 white guys had approached him speaking Arabic and Berber asking for such a thing. Fortunately, he was able to squeeze us into his busy donkey man schedule and take us there. We made ourselves comfortable in the rickety wooden and metal cart and continued to chat with the man, jokingly asking him to take us all the way to Tata, a town about 8 hours away by souk bus, and that we would pay for his food. About 30 minutes and a 100 confused looks from locals later, we pulled into our destination, which was in front of a Berber carpet co-op...one of the 5 small mud houses that comprised the village, where we met up with 2 additional volunteers, thus completing the party attendees. Despite the small size of the gathering for which we spent half a day of traveling, it turned out to be a fun evening, and im sure gave the locals plenty to talk about.
The following weekend I attended VSN(Volunteer Support Network) training. The VSN is a network comprised of volunteers, that exists to help counsel other volunteers who are in need of it. The Peace Corps can be incredibly stressful and frustrating at times, and there are endless amounts of problems that can arise during ones service. So many that VSN was created to help relieve the PC medical counseling staff of some work...plus sometimes it helps just to speak with another American volunteer that you can relate to. The training lasted for 4 days, and was surprisingly therapeutic. We spent the majority of the training practicing counseling through role plays, in which we traded off being the counselor and the counselee. After an initial run through, I found that it was much easier to play the role of the person being counseled if I used some of my own problems, as opposed to made up ones. It felt good to talk to someone about things such as difficulty adjusting to my new hobbit-like lifestyle and being myself in a different language and culture. It was also good to see some friends from PST that I hadn’t seen in a while, and eat tasty food that was provided from our pcv host, who like many volunteers is an amazing cook. I left feeling refreshed, Zen like, and ready to pass on the feeling to anyone in need. The following day I went to the dentist in Ouarzazate to replace a filling that had fallen out a few weeks prior. I was relieved to find out that the PC dentist is good, and that I was able to describe that I had lost a filling in Arabic.
So this is everything that I can think of that is worth mentioning for this week. There are several things coming up that I will wait on to provide commentary. Until next time.
Friday, February 8, 2008
So the last few weeks and been relatively uneventful, but in compliance with my attempted blogging loyalty I shall enter reguardless. One event was that I had my 25th birthday, which was my first 3rd world bday celebration. I met up with 2 fellow pvc’s and went on a bike ride through the nearby desert. The most eventful part of this day would have to be me getting hit by a motorcycle, and not getting a scratch on me.
It was amazing. I was riding in between the two other volunteers, going around a corner, when a motorcycle came flying towards me and hit me dead on, dragging my bike about 100 feet. Somehow, a millisecond before impact, I managed to jump off my bike, land on my feet and watch as my bike was dragged. The chain on the bike was knocked off, but was fixed relatively easily, and that was it. I wish there had been a Berber village person nearby with a video camera, as it was probably one of the most athletic things I’ve ever done.
As for productivity, I am currently working on getting several projects off the ground, the first of which will be a mural of the world painted in the Dar Chebab. My SBD counterpart has an art background, and wants to use her expertise in facilitating this. The second is more of an event, which would be a career day, in which we would have people from different professions in the community come in a talk about what they do. My only concern about this is that we will only have access to a limited amount of careers. It would be great to expose my students to professions that don’t necessarily exist in the dirty south, like law or journalism. The project that I am most looking forward to is the making of a documentary video, with my students as actors, about growing up in Tinjdad. I will make sure to post it up on U-Tube once it is complete, InShaallah.
The most exciting aspect of the last 2 weeks is the fixing of my toilet. Finally! LHumdullah!(praise be to God). After about 3 weeks of waiting, using the Turkish toilet which is oddly located right in front of the front door to my apartment, and bathing by bucket on my roof, a plumber finally came and fixed the problem. He used on interesting technique to get rid of the clog by filling up all the drains in the bathroom with cement, and forcing water down with a hose which was sticking down one of them, also buried in cement. Not sure if they teach that one in plumber school in the states. It also served as good language practice in that I learned the Arabic words for cement (seamen…took me offguard when he initially asked me for some), screwdriver, hammer, and shit. That’s all for now. Peace.
It was amazing. I was riding in between the two other volunteers, going around a corner, when a motorcycle came flying towards me and hit me dead on, dragging my bike about 100 feet. Somehow, a millisecond before impact, I managed to jump off my bike, land on my feet and watch as my bike was dragged. The chain on the bike was knocked off, but was fixed relatively easily, and that was it. I wish there had been a Berber village person nearby with a video camera, as it was probably one of the most athletic things I’ve ever done.
As for productivity, I am currently working on getting several projects off the ground, the first of which will be a mural of the world painted in the Dar Chebab. My SBD counterpart has an art background, and wants to use her expertise in facilitating this. The second is more of an event, which would be a career day, in which we would have people from different professions in the community come in a talk about what they do. My only concern about this is that we will only have access to a limited amount of careers. It would be great to expose my students to professions that don’t necessarily exist in the dirty south, like law or journalism. The project that I am most looking forward to is the making of a documentary video, with my students as actors, about growing up in Tinjdad. I will make sure to post it up on U-Tube once it is complete, InShaallah.
The most exciting aspect of the last 2 weeks is the fixing of my toilet. Finally! LHumdullah!(praise be to God). After about 3 weeks of waiting, using the Turkish toilet which is oddly located right in front of the front door to my apartment, and bathing by bucket on my roof, a plumber finally came and fixed the problem. He used on interesting technique to get rid of the clog by filling up all the drains in the bathroom with cement, and forcing water down with a hose which was sticking down one of them, also buried in cement. Not sure if they teach that one in plumber school in the states. It also served as good language practice in that I learned the Arabic words for cement (seamen…took me offguard when he initially asked me for some), screwdriver, hammer, and shit. That’s all for now. Peace.
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