I am now nearly 3 weeks into the month of Ramadan. Despite the feeling of it being more like 3 months into this special month long holiday, the minutes continue to slowly tick by, and 10 days still remain.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the holiday...it's just that life here, which is usually much slower than anything one would experience in the states, has become significantly even slower. My dar chebab, while technically open, is basically closed for me to work in, in that all the girls(who comprise most of my student body) are busy during normal class hours with cooking and cleaning, and thus cannot attend my classes. My mudir (director of the dar chebab) advised me that it would be best to just wait until after Ramadan for classes. When I dumbly asked the rhetorical question of "well what will I do instead?" he simply replied "aji hna u shrb atay maaya" (come here and drink tea with me). Sometimes I think that without tea people here would be thrust into a catatonic state of existence. Good thing for tea.
So my days of this month are spent giving myself a variety of productive(so I like to call them) tasks to accomplish during the day, and eating the lftour meal in various places at night. I am not fasting, although I have made several attempts in order to optimize my integration. These attempts usually consist of not eating much more than a yogurt packet during the day, yet drinking water consistently. When people ask me if I am fasting (which is asked so much it sometimes takes the place of "hello") I simply reply "shwya", or "sort of", and they seem to be content that I am at least putting forth an effort.
The lftour meals however, while a bit monotonous, are indeed delicious. They also provide a free way to eat most nights, in that many families are eager to invite me over for it. An example of this was last night, when waiting to buy the 13Dh(about $1.50) meal for myself at a local restaurant, I was approached by a guy I had never met before, who asked where I was eating that night. When I told him I was planning on buying food, he insisted that I come with him instead, for which I willingly obliged. The food was great, and now I have yet another friend in Tinjdad. While walking back to my house afterward, I kept thinking about the circumstances in which a stranger would approach me and insist that I come over for dinner in the states. My conclusion was an attempt of murder or seduction; that’s it. Indeed, for every frustrating aspect a culture may have, there seems to be one of awesomeness.
Oh yes, and I have now officially been in Morocco for over a year. Only a year and 2½ months to go!
Until next time...
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
A Change of Summer Pace
So many of you may have been wondering “where is Chris?” “has he given up on his blog for good?” “does he ever get tired of quoting what we may have been saying?” The answer to the first question is that I have spent the past 5 weeks up North...4 of which were spent in summer camp, and one of which was spent traveling to and from.
Summer camp is something that seems difficult to give justice to in a single blog entry, in that there is so much to cover. Like so much in the PC, it was a hodgepodge of fun, exhausting, and monotonous, yet with fun composing the majority. The following is my best attempt to accurately document the worthwhile happenings of the 4 weeks I spent there.
Each summer the Peace Corps YD program teams up with the ministry of youth and sports to conduct 4 2 week long camps in El Jadida. I was assigned to camps 3 and 4, along with about 15 other PCV’s for each session. The camp staff consists of PCV’s, Moroccan staff (Otours), and for several of the camps, Japanese volunteers from Jika, the Japanese version of the PC. For camp 3 we had a staff comprised of Americans, Moroccans, and Japanese, including a Moroccan student who is fluent in English who helped us with translation when needed.
Each PCV was permitted to give a scholarship to 5 students in his or her community, which included a free camp session, all expenses paid. Thus there were campers from all over Morocco, about half of which were from rural communities and probably couldn’t have attended if it weren’t for the scholarship, and half of which came from wealthy families in large cities like Rabat. It was certainly interesting to see the differences between these two groups of kids, and how much more aware of the world the city kids seemed to be. The were about 80 kids for the first camp, and about 70 for the second.
Each pcv was assigned either an English class or a club to teach; I taught English(intermediate low) the first session, and taught theatre club for the second. English classes were only an hour long, and clubs only an hour and a half, which left lots of time for other activities. A typical day would go something like this:
8- wake up
8:30- breakfast
9:30- morning announcements – this is where(after the national anthem was sang) we would talk about the days schedule (which was usually identical to the schedule of the previous day), and sing songs that might be fun for a kid just learning English, yet are terrible, terrible things to get stuck in your head as an adult. A favorite one among the campers was “Everywhere we goooo” (campers reapeat) “people want to knoooow” (repeat) “who we aaaare” (repeat) “soooo we tell themv(repeat) “we are the campers!” (repeat) “The El Jadida campers!” (repeat). This was sang everywhere we went...by the time we were done with camp 4 I don’t believe there was one person in El Jadida who didn’t know who we were.
9:45- English class
11:30- beach- yes, that’s right. There was a scheduled beach time everyday. This however, was not always as relaxed as your typical beach day; a lot of it involved making sure kids didn’t drown, but was fun nonetheless.
1:00- showers
1:30- lunch- meals were pretty much the same thing for every meal, and reminded me of what Moroccan prison food probably is. However, all was free and very edible.
2:00- library- pretty much just playing games with kids, and reading to/with those that wanted it.
4:00- clubs- We had what seem to be standard camp clubs- theatre, art, music, journalism/creative writing, and for camp 3 Judo and Japanese culture club(with the help of the Jika volunteers). All of them seemed pretty successful. For my theatre club I divided thins up into 4 sections: emotions, trust, improv, and forum theatre. The first 3 consisted of a lot of games to help teach these aspects of acting(all of which were pretty easy and usually hilarious). Forum theatre consisted of breaking the kids into groups and having each act out a problem, with the audience being able to interject when it saw necessary in order to fix it. The best part of this club was successfully putting together a sketch that made fun of staff members for the final “spectacle”. Not only was it hilarious, but we managed to put it together in under an hour
5:30- snack time
6:00- sports
8:30-dinner
9:30- evening activity- These varied every night. I’m not going to list all of them, but my favorites were
-American games night (aka make the kids do very, very funny competitive things night- beer pong with water was included)
-talent show night (there was one for the kids and one for staff, in which we attempted a country style rendition of “Bingo” with me playing the guitar-very confusing for the Moroccans.
-Halloween! By far greatest thing we got to do in camp. We spent this night introducing the campers to what many of us consider our most beloved, and yet ironically our most demonic holiday, Halloween. We all dressed up before dinner in order to set an example for costume ideas- the first camp I was a nerd (which, I suppose is not the much different than how I usually dress...most Moroccans assumed was a teacher), and the second camp a gangster. What made this night amazing was the haunted house we made. Working with 8 people, a tent, and not much more than blankets, chairs and tables, we managed to put together a “house” that scared the piss out of the kids, and made me discover my new found joy for scaring children.
During camp 4 the Moroccan staff organized the campers into teams with country names, for each of which was assigned a pcv leader. The country theme seemed to be obscurity, in that the countries were Qatar(my team), Chad, Togo, Lesotho, Mongolia, Djibouti, and Chili. Throughout the entire camp these teams competed against each other for points in an olympic fashion, and earned additional ones through good behavior. It worked amazingly, minus the stereotyping that seeped out of acting as people from countries that the Moroccan staff, who was in charge of it, knew nothing about. The “opening olympic ceremony” consisted of all the campers dressing up as members of their country- all 4 African countries as kids dressed up as tribal warriors, complete with face paint, clothing made from leaves and bamboo spears. What was lacking in accuracy and respect was certainly made up for in hilarity.
Summer camp is something that seems difficult to give justice to in a single blog entry, in that there is so much to cover. Like so much in the PC, it was a hodgepodge of fun, exhausting, and monotonous, yet with fun composing the majority. The following is my best attempt to accurately document the worthwhile happenings of the 4 weeks I spent there.
Each summer the Peace Corps YD program teams up with the ministry of youth and sports to conduct 4 2 week long camps in El Jadida. I was assigned to camps 3 and 4, along with about 15 other PCV’s for each session. The camp staff consists of PCV’s, Moroccan staff (Otours), and for several of the camps, Japanese volunteers from Jika, the Japanese version of the PC. For camp 3 we had a staff comprised of Americans, Moroccans, and Japanese, including a Moroccan student who is fluent in English who helped us with translation when needed.
Each PCV was permitted to give a scholarship to 5 students in his or her community, which included a free camp session, all expenses paid. Thus there were campers from all over Morocco, about half of which were from rural communities and probably couldn’t have attended if it weren’t for the scholarship, and half of which came from wealthy families in large cities like Rabat. It was certainly interesting to see the differences between these two groups of kids, and how much more aware of the world the city kids seemed to be. The were about 80 kids for the first camp, and about 70 for the second.
Each pcv was assigned either an English class or a club to teach; I taught English(intermediate low) the first session, and taught theatre club for the second. English classes were only an hour long, and clubs only an hour and a half, which left lots of time for other activities. A typical day would go something like this:
8- wake up
8:30- breakfast
9:30- morning announcements – this is where(after the national anthem was sang) we would talk about the days schedule (which was usually identical to the schedule of the previous day), and sing songs that might be fun for a kid just learning English, yet are terrible, terrible things to get stuck in your head as an adult. A favorite one among the campers was “Everywhere we goooo” (campers reapeat) “people want to knoooow” (repeat) “who we aaaare” (repeat) “soooo we tell themv(repeat) “we are the campers!” (repeat) “The El Jadida campers!” (repeat). This was sang everywhere we went...by the time we were done with camp 4 I don’t believe there was one person in El Jadida who didn’t know who we were.
9:45- English class
11:30- beach- yes, that’s right. There was a scheduled beach time everyday. This however, was not always as relaxed as your typical beach day; a lot of it involved making sure kids didn’t drown, but was fun nonetheless.
1:00- showers
1:30- lunch- meals were pretty much the same thing for every meal, and reminded me of what Moroccan prison food probably is. However, all was free and very edible.
2:00- library- pretty much just playing games with kids, and reading to/with those that wanted it.
4:00- clubs- We had what seem to be standard camp clubs- theatre, art, music, journalism/creative writing, and for camp 3 Judo and Japanese culture club(with the help of the Jika volunteers). All of them seemed pretty successful. For my theatre club I divided thins up into 4 sections: emotions, trust, improv, and forum theatre. The first 3 consisted of a lot of games to help teach these aspects of acting(all of which were pretty easy and usually hilarious). Forum theatre consisted of breaking the kids into groups and having each act out a problem, with the audience being able to interject when it saw necessary in order to fix it. The best part of this club was successfully putting together a sketch that made fun of staff members for the final “spectacle”. Not only was it hilarious, but we managed to put it together in under an hour
5:30- snack time
6:00- sports
8:30-dinner
9:30- evening activity- These varied every night. I’m not going to list all of them, but my favorites were
-American games night (aka make the kids do very, very funny competitive things night- beer pong with water was included)
-talent show night (there was one for the kids and one for staff, in which we attempted a country style rendition of “Bingo” with me playing the guitar-very confusing for the Moroccans.
-Halloween! By far greatest thing we got to do in camp. We spent this night introducing the campers to what many of us consider our most beloved, and yet ironically our most demonic holiday, Halloween. We all dressed up before dinner in order to set an example for costume ideas- the first camp I was a nerd (which, I suppose is not the much different than how I usually dress...most Moroccans assumed was a teacher), and the second camp a gangster. What made this night amazing was the haunted house we made. Working with 8 people, a tent, and not much more than blankets, chairs and tables, we managed to put together a “house” that scared the piss out of the kids, and made me discover my new found joy for scaring children.
During camp 4 the Moroccan staff organized the campers into teams with country names, for each of which was assigned a pcv leader. The country theme seemed to be obscurity, in that the countries were Qatar(my team), Chad, Togo, Lesotho, Mongolia, Djibouti, and Chili. Throughout the entire camp these teams competed against each other for points in an olympic fashion, and earned additional ones through good behavior. It worked amazingly, minus the stereotyping that seeped out of acting as people from countries that the Moroccan staff, who was in charge of it, knew nothing about. The “opening olympic ceremony” consisted of all the campers dressing up as members of their country- all 4 African countries as kids dressed up as tribal warriors, complete with face paint, clothing made from leaves and bamboo spears. What was lacking in accuracy and respect was certainly made up for in hilarity.
Overall camp was definitely a blast, and as I mentioned after spring camp, is a solid reminder of how lucky I am to be in the YD program.
On my way back me and some friends went to the Ozoud cascades, which has got to be the prettiest place I have been to in Morocco thus far (a very bold statement). The place consists of a giant waterfall, engulfed by vines and other vegetation. There are places to eat and stay surrounding it, yet are built in a way that does not take away from its elusive appeal. We stayed in a quaint hotel made of bamboo directly across from the falls, and awoke to APES, which we at first viewed from afar, and soon realized were everywhere, including right on top of our bamboo roof. We spent the day hiking a trail that led to various pools, many of which had smaller waterfalls and cliffs that we could jump from. It was the kind of place that makes you stop and think “am I really in the Peace Corps right now?”
So that’s it for the moment. I am now back in Tinjdad, and working on my plan of action for the next few months. On a work note, I have finished(fiiianlly) the first issue of The Tinjdad Times, which I will post on here shortly. Until next time...
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