The Joys of a Moroccan Summer

So I am now into the depths of my first Tinejdad summer, and am learning why often times people in desert summer photos look pissed off. The best way I can think to describe it is that the sun has made everyone and everything under it, well, its bitch. Days are now averaging 105 degrees, which starts at 6 am and continues until nightfall, at which it only drops about 15 degrees. This leads to high levels of discomfort, and thus makes people not want to do...well anything besides avoid the sun.

The desert sun is very unlike any other I have ever come close to experiencing. It is as if a giant laser beam from space were to come down everyday, frying everything in its path. You can tell when a beam of it is touching you, in that it feels like that part of your body is about to catch on fire. It also does not help to live in a house made of cinder blocks. This has a temperature trapping effect with weather, and in effect turns my house into a refrigerator in the winter, and an oven in the summer. A day of the dealdy rays soaking into my walls leaves me to bake like a roatisserrie chicken.

There are however, tactics that one can take in sure dire conditions. I have bought 2 fans, both of which stay on me constantly, along with a nearby bottle of frozen water, which I am forever filling up and replacing in my freezer. As for sleeping, soaking a sheet in water, and wrapping it around my naked body before lying inches away from the fans, and in front of an open window helps. Another option is to sleep on my roof, which is extremlely refreshing, yet has the drawlback of the sun from hell raising its flesh eating head at 6am, at which point I must quickly run back dowstairs in an effort to keep all of my skin.


My work schedule, while still technically existent, has dwindled down to one class with about 6 students, all of whom I can expect to always be at least 30 to 45 mins late. I suppose I can't blame them, in that the heat has seemed to make everything move in slow motion, and their movement clearly ties into that. As a result I have pushed the starting time for class up a half hour, in hope that the half hour of alotted movement time will be enough to get a full hour and a half out of class. I have also kept in mind that it is their summer vacation, and can't hold it against them if going to my English class isn't at the top of their priorities.

As for the journalism club, which basically consists of the 6 remaining students, it looks like we will get at least get one issue of the Tinejdad Times out before the summer is over. This will hopefully be enough to set an example for my new students that I will get in the fall, and be enough to continue its publication. I will be losing most of my current students in the fall to the Universities they will be attending, which, while a little sad, is a great thing. I can say that everyone of my students who graduated from highschool this year will be going to college. While this is a very small sample group of students from Tinjdad, it is still a much better percentage than my highschool.

The work with the world mural still painfully drags on as well. The hardest part with its completion is undoubtably the fact that it is on the other side of town, and thus requires either a 5 mintue taxi ride or a 15-20 minute bike ride to get to. As simple as this seems, it is much harder when you have to rally up the same students who can barley make it to my class, which is no more than a 5 minute walk away for most. Last week was the second time that I had successfully gotten most of my students there to work on it. Since everyone, including myself, was in such a hurry to get it completed since doing so would mean not having to come back, the drawling of the uncompleted countries was hurried, as was the painting of them that followed. As a result of the hurriedness, and my inability to supervize everyone at once, all of Eastern Europe and half of Asia was painted the color of the ocean. Oh the joys of learning!

Well, I'm off to unstick myself from the couch and shower some sweat off. Until next time...

Care Packages

Ok, so due to popular demand(although mainly that of my mom), here is a list of things that are unavailable to me here in Tinejdad, if not all of Morocco, and would thus be excellent things to send to me in a care package if any of you out there ever have the inclination to do so (list limited to thins that could actually be sent through the mail):

-Easy Cheese
-Mac N Cheese
-beef jerky/Slim Jims
-instant Ranch/Italian dressing packets
-gravy mix packets
-friend chicken batter(the guy I replaced had some left over when I moved in and it is oh so good)
-skittles/fruit snacks
-Any books/magazines in English (preferably non-fiction, but I'll read anything)
-TV shows on dvd(Lost, seasons 3 or 4, The Office, 24, Weeds, The Daily Show, just to name a few)
-Ice tea mix
-flavored oatmeal
-Gatorade mix(if it exists- I think it does)
-Act mouth wash
-one of those hand held fan/squirt bottle things(could seriously help prevent me from melting in the summer-its already reached an average of about 105 every day)
-instant soup/noddles
-powdered milk
-dried fruit

Thats all I can think of for now, although im sure the list will continue to expand with time.

p.s.- My mailing address can be found in my blog profile

Where has the time gone?

So I just looked at a calender, and its apparently June 12th! An entire month has passed me by, and in the best of ways when one has reached the point of needing a break.

The paid vaca (aka eye infection)- This break I speak of was unexpected, and came with the price of bearing with what was probably the worst pain I have ever experienced in my face. It began very randomly; with waking up one Saturday morning and immediately realizing that I could barley open my right eye, and that to do so was horribly painful. Assuming that it was just another temporary irritation (those of which are ever so common here in the desert), I proceeded to spend the day walking around outside, which now, in retrospect, was a very stupid decision. Tinejdad is probably one of the worst places anyone could be outside with an infected eye, what with the blazing sun and sand storms. After a full day of the pain increasingly getting worse, and my eye feeling increasingly reminiscent of a tackle box, I was told by PC medical staff to make the God forsaken 12 hour souk bus trip to Rabat to see the doctor there.

After somehow managing to make my way to the bus with a makeshift eye patch made out of a bandanna, I found a seat and the journey from hell began. Although it was only my right eye that was infected, it was painful to have just the left open, so my trek was spent with both eyes closed, occasionally having to feel around like a blind, out of place pirate in order to exit and get some air. Once arriving in Rabat and successfully avoiding being hit by a car while blindly making it to headquarters, I was driven straight to an eye doctor who took one look at my eye and said something along the lines of "there is a chance you will not go blind." My immediate thought: "a glass eye wouldn't be so bad would it? I mean, i'd always have a killer Halloween costume, be able to provide endless entertainment for children, would have the ability to look really scary if need be, and it would cut the price of contacts in half, right?"

Needless to say, it was thus determined that I be medically evacuated (med-evaced) and sent to the PC medical headquarters, which just so happens to be located in Washington, DC, about 4 metro stations from my house. Just as quickly as my condition got bad, it got better, as did my overall situation(karma perhaps?). The med-evac thus became a paid vacation, in which I was able to spend time with family and friends, and do as many things American as I could possibly fit into the time I was there. My eye was said to be fully healed about 2 weeks after I arrived there, although the doctor said I did "dodge a bullet", and was lucky to return to Morocco with nothing more than a small scar in my eye. Lhumdullah(praise be to God). To top it all off, I was bumped up to first class on the flight back, which was a luxury that words can not do justice, and a realization as to why rich people love money so much.

IST- To further add to my wave of good karma, I was able to return back to Morocco just in time for in service training(IST), in which everyone from my PC group, or "stage"(about 58 of us) got to spend a week on the beach in Agadir. Agadir is a large beach city in the south, with a very cool 60's beach town vibe. In 1960 it was the site of what was the worst earthquake in Moroccan history, killing 15,000 people. The city was re-built about 3 k south from where it was originally, and with a very un-Moroccan 1960's beach town architectural style. Hence, it felt a lot more like I was somewhere in Southern California than in Morocco...definitely a good way to gradually re-integrate. There were long days of training involved, yet most of it was practical stuff that was good to know, and much of it was taught by pcv's in the classic PC skills sharing way. Beach time certainly made it all well worth while. Afterwards, some fellow pcv's and I went to Tagazout, which is a small surf town about 35 k north of Agadir...it was apparently well known by beach dwellers world wide in the 1960's and was where many American hippies came to hang out, including The Doors. We got a perfect condo for a night right on the beach, for the equivalent for about 6$ a person...the experience could not have been topped. One of my favorite thins in this town are the shirts they have for sale with the image of a man in a jellaba(traditional Moroccan clothing) holding a surf board. This is definitely a good portrayal of the town...Islam meets surfing.

So I am now back in Tinejdad, getting back into the swing of things after being out of town longer than I had ever anticipated, and loving it. After some time in America and a week on the beach, I am recharged and ready for some volunteering action. Some time away was good to put things in perspective and realize just how incredible and unique an experience this whole peace corps thing is. Furthermore, walking around town yesterday and seeing how excited people are to see me back reassures me that I am in a good place right now, for me and for those around me. It is now summer, which means school is out, things are slowing down, and getting very hot and uncomfortable. Despite this change of pace laced with overshadowing gloominess, I am ready now more than I have been thus far to seize my time here and go full force with all development help I can provide, and to become even more integrated in my home away from home.

That is all for today, however, updates on projects are soon to come. Until then...

Ramblings

I wake up in the morning to the unremitting noise of the 3rd world doorbell box attached to the wall above the stairs. Before my eyes open for the day, it hits me: I’m still here…and I’m about to spend yet another day in this desert town I now call home. A donkey brays outside of my window, as if to fill in as a Moroccan substitute for the rooster. I prefer the rooster. After 5 minutes of doing the best I can to go back to dreams of the comfort of a former life, I give up and open my eyes to look at the clock on my cell phone.

6:30 AM

It’s a Saturday morning; about 3 hours after the time that I would have passed out after a fun night out in the 1st world. I would have had at least 6 more hours left of sleep and would not have already begun to ponder about how I would deal with the day’s inevitable frustrations, which, since I was now awake at 6:30 in the morning with the inability to go back to sleep, had already begun.

I let out a groan, close my eyes back shut tightly, and roll onto my side, trying to remember if I had any milk left for cereal. Another minute goes by until I decide that I don’t, and curse myself for finishing it the night before. This means that I’ll have to go to the hanut down the street and deal with the Saturday morning hanut(box-like convenient store) guy, who is my least favorite of hanut guys. Once the reality of the day is starting to set in, several flies land on my face and confirm its presence. It’s looking like a long one.

I throw on some clothes and stumble down the stairs, passing underneath the doolbell from hell and begin my door opening process by slamming my body against and turning the lock. Despite the freshness of the day, the sun hits my face like an open-palmed smack , as if it were to say “Wake up man! Your in Morocco!”



And so it goes...









The last three weeks here have been relativley uneventful, but good. I have started up my first club; a journalism club in which we will come out with a monthly newspaper called The Tinejdad Times. It will start out as an online publication, until I can get funding for it (InshaAllah) in order to make hard copies. It will be in both Arabic and English, and will have sections on the enviornment, education, sports, current events, and local culture. The first issue is scheduled to come out on May 18th, and I will obviously post a link for it on here once it's ready.



I am now the busiest I have been as far as objective work goes since I have been here. Objective meaning work other than time spent drinking tea and hanging out with locals, which can still be called work here. I am teaching English in 4 different locations (not including a friend who I tutor a few times a week), working on two projects, and am still facilitating girls basketball. The locations for English class include the 2 Dar Chebabs(youth centers), the Neddy Neswi(woman center), and The Dar Taliba(girls center). My English teaching methods have altered slightly since upon working a busy schedule, classes have varied enourmsly in size and the English level of students. I can have a Dar Taliba class one week with 40 young, hyperactive, giggly girls who don't know a word of English, and the following week have only 3 girls show up for the same class, who have studied the language for 2 years in highschool. Hence, my new method consists of not over preparing for a specific lesson, yet having a few options to choose from, all of which are easy to improvise off of in class. The girls do not seem to care that I am a man and that I wear shorts to class (something that many men do not do in my town, despite the blaring desert sun). These classes also require more animation on my part since I teach them almostly exclusivley in Arabic and often times need to act out words I do not know. Me acting ridiculous does seem to be an effective temperory cure for their apparant ADD, since despite their energy, I always seem to hold their attention.

The world mural project is comming along slowley but surley. A few weeks ago I managed to get about 15 students to help out with the outline at once. They all seemed very into it, and appeared to be enjoying learning about all the countries that exist in the world- many of which they had never heard of before. The only problem was that I had a little too much confidence in their ability to follow the grid correctly, and countries ended up in interesting places(ie-The Czech Republic and Morocco are neighbors). Oh well, all part of the learning process (somthing I must tell myself about everything here).

In my free time I have been riding my bike a lot. A few weeks ago me and some pcv neighbors went exploring in the mountains behind my house and found several old, tiny Berber villages. Along our way we stopped to examine the crystalized rocks and fossilized trillabites, and were approached by a man who was eager to show us his fossil collection and try to sell us some of his goods. Instead of buying anything anything, we went with him to his village for tea (you can never drink enough tea in Morocco). In his village we were able to check out a pond with giant carp, which was an amazing site in the middle of the desert, and were also showed the primary fossil dig site, which appeared to be the only source of income for the small community of about 100 people. He even let us dig with his equipment and search for ourselves. It was amazing to see how many prehistoric shells and crustations could be found in a place so deprived of water.

Another good note is that I have finally found someone nearby to jam out on my guitar with. He is a young yet very experienced painter and guitarist, and oddly enough we have almost the exact same taste in music. I shall keep you posted on the release our first album.

Until next time.