Work still kickin...more or less

It is now the time of year that I have come to refer to as the tipping point. This is the point when the weather is heating up at what appears to be a few degrees every day, and has an inverse relationship to the amount of activity that goes on in town. I am hesitant to admit that it is summer quite yet, in that I am not yet sweating bullets and forced to sleep with a soaked sheet draped over my naked body for protection from the deadly heat waves trapped inside my oven-turned house, yet it is most certainly getting there.

In one of my many efforts to counteract the feeling of worthlessness that such a raise in temperature and a drop in anything productive tends to engender, I decided to hold a SIDA (French acronym for AIDS) candlelight vigilante at the Dar Chebab last Thursday. Despite my procrastination in advertising for this event, there was a remarkable turnout, and it ended up being a big success.



With a focus on empathy for victims of HIV/AIDS, we started things out with several activities that involved having a volunteer, or volunteers, needing to accomplish a task that required the assistance of audience members for its accomplishment. I always enjoy such activities in that the message pretty much speaks for itself and requires little explanation and analysis in Darija. My favorite of these activities entails taking 3 volunteers from the audience out of the room, and asking the audience members to pick an object in which the volunteers must locate as they come in one by one. When the first volunteer enters, the spectators are instructed to “boo” loudly and obnoxiously (was glad to help with this part) when he/she gets farther to the object, and do nothing when he/she gets farther away. With the second person, people are instructed to “boo” when he/she gets farther, and applaud when he/she gets closer. Finally, with the third person, people are told to cheer him or her on when going towards the object, and provide no negative feedback when going away from it. Gotta love an activity that involves being noisy to make a point.

This was followed by an incredible presentation from my favorite counterpart Merium, the Mudira (principle figure) the Dar Taliba (girls center). Entirely on her own she made up a game similar to “hot potato”, which involved passing a ball of multiple sheets of paper, each with a trivia question about an AIDS/HIV fact (i.e. “How can HIV be transferred?) around in a circle with music playing. Whenever the music stopped, whoever was holding the ball at that time would have to read a question out loud and attempt to answer it, with the audience adding to and critiquing the response as needed. It was probably the most captivating and information heavy activity I have witnessed since being here.

As for the candlelight vigilant itself, it all went according to our last minute haphazard plan. We created an AIDS ribbon in the gravel outside the Dar Chebab, handed out the candles, lit them for the kids, and walla, instant AIDS memorial. Despite it being short lived, it made for a great photo-op and the seemed to be rewarding for the kids. Inchallah, this can be something that future generations of PCV’s and community leaders can continue in the future.



Aside from the vigilante and occasional classes (which have been increasingly wearing thin given the time of year, and the cramming for the high school exams being carried out by my students), the past month has been pretty laid back. Indeed, it is the time of year that for me consists of the accomplishment of personal tasks, continued exploration of my surroundings here (which will not come to an end until my service does), and excessive amounts of relaxation. It is also time for me to begin finalizing my plans for summer travel to Spain, along with post PC travel through West Africa.

Oh, how I will miss my Moroccan summer schedule (along with my Moroccan life “schedule” for that matter). Until next time...

Strange Comfort

I have now been in this country for more than 20 months. I know this because I have a calendar that helps remind of what it’s like to have a real schedule, and to live in a world where time is more than just a concept, indicated primarily by calls to prayer and the rising and falling of the sun. Yesterday, while I was leading stretches (in Arabic) for a group of 20 young women as part of our basketball practice warm up, I was hit with a realization. It struck me that at this point in my service I have become so comfortable with the foreign milieu that encompasses me that it has reached a point of sub consciousness, in which I pay no mind to just how different my life is to that of the average American. Allow me to illustrate with the other events that made up yesterday for me:

I wake up at 8:00 to a donkey braying right outside my window. I turn to my side, doing my best to go back to my now-hazy dream involving a Boy Scout camping trip from my childhood. Just as the wood-licking flames of the campfire begin to cascade into view, the fly arrives. That fly. The one that always lands on the most inconvenient place possible, at the most inconvenient time possible, and is just as adamant on staying there as I am on killing it. After doing my best to cover my head and other parts of my body, my efforts are deemed futile against the incessant fly asshole, so I figure it is time to get up.

After a breakfast of eggs, cheese, and instant coffee, I get my papers together for the computer grant I am working on and head out to the post office to send them off to PC headquarters in Rabat. After a final meeting with the association I am working on the grant with the previous evening, it appears as if I finally have all the materials together for grant approval. This is good because it means all I have left to do for this project is wait; something I have gotten very good at in my time here.

As I pull up to the post office on my bike, I see one of my hanut(small store), Tijani, and walk up to greet him. Him being one of my better friends at the local market, I decide to go in for the classic cheek kiss greeting, starting with the right cheek “Allah aslamtik!” (Praise be to God for allowing me to see you again). Move on to the left. “Labas alik?” (Is everything good with you?)Move back to the right “Labas” (it’s all good. Back to the left again, completing the 4 kisses, which completes the standard greeting. “Wesh unta labas?” (is it all good with you?) “iyea, labas, lhumdullah” (yup, its all good, praise be to God).

Once we had finished our minute long greeting, Tijani was quick to remind me that later that day, in fact just a few hours from then, was going to be a soccer practice that he had been trying to get me to come to for months. Despite the fact that I hadn’t played soccer in 10 years, I had promised him that I would come out and practice some time just for the fun of it (or, moreover, to provide entertainment for the others who I would be playing with).

After killing the hours in between with reading on my roof (an aspect of just about every PC work day), I threw on some shorts and sneakers and took off. When I arrived to my towns soccer field (which is essentially a giant field of dirt, yet one of the best in the region nonetheless), I quickly realized that this was going to be no picnic. Once greeted by the coach, who was followed by a dozen other athletic guys in their early 20’s, it occurred to me that this was actually the practice of my town’s official soccer team, who, it turns out, is one of the best in the region. Despite the town’s size, this team often competes against large cities like Meknes, Fes, and even Rabat, so they indeed mean business.

Before getting a chance to back out, the coach threw some cleats and a jersey at me, and insisted that I get dressed immediately. I reluctantly did as he said (not that I had much of an option at that point), and started running laps around the giant dirt field with the rest of the Berber muscle machines that composed the team. The hour and a half that followed consisted of what was most certainly the most physically intense workout that I have experienced here in Morocco. Like basic military training with a soccer ball. Never while in this country did I expect to do so many pushups, sit-ups, stretches, and ball busting drills while being yelled at in French. However, once the soccer ball drills began to get beyond my point of feasible completion, I had to check out. As I said I was leaving, and turned toward to the grimy locker room, the whole team communally turned to me and said “bsha!” (to your health!), and the coach yelled after me to come back again next practice.

After taking a cold shower and making a tuna sandwich for lunch (tuna makes up about 90% of my lunches here) it was time for basketball practice with the women from the neddy (women’s house). I rode up the front door on my bike, walked inside, and found all the women in their sweats and sneakers, ready for athleticism. This is always a great site to see, in that before my presence working with them, many of these women never got a chance to play sports or do anything athletic at all, given that all the sport areas in my town are very male dominated. The mudira (neddy director) greeted me and asked if I could lead some stretches for the women before heading out to the basketball court. This kind of request leads me to believe that the women I work with here see me as more than just a regular guy, in that normally doing stretches of any kind in front of men is considered to be highly shuma (forbidden). Perhaps they see me as the awkward adopted American brother they’ve always wanted.

After the brief aerobics session, which they appeared to be very receptive to (fortunately, given that I had just been led in stretches earlier that day, knowledge of what to do was still pretty fresh in my head) we meandered over to the basketball court. I know about as much about coaching basketball as I do about coaching rugby...not much. Fortunately, given that the neddy women are all neophytes to the world of sports, this is pretty easy to cover up. My usual drills consist of lay-up lines, dribbling, passing, and shooting exercises, followed by a brief game. Despite the fact that the exercises vary, at any point these girls are viewed during practice it looks about the same: loud, giggling, head- covered girls running around aimlessly like chickens with their heads cut off. Clearly, this makes it difficult to be taken seriously by the hoards of guys who flock to watch like a heard of hungry and critical hyenas. Yet fortunately the point is not to be taken seriously, yet for the girls to enjoy themselves and get a workout that they otherwise could probably not obtain.

Basketball practice was followed by my English class for beginners. Without time to change out of my then sweat covered clothes, I had no choice but to carry on and teach parts of the body, starting off with “head, shoulders, knees, and toes” as a warm up.

Class was followed by a meat sandwich, which was then followed by reading the rest of the night away. And so it goes. This day, despite the irregularity with the boot camp soccer practice, was not different from most days I spend here. It is what I have come to know of as life at this juncture, and, as with all routines, I have come to go through these motions without really thinking about them. If it weren’t for the point of reference given to me by the internet and speaking intermittently with friends and family back home, then I might even forget just how unusual my life has become shwya b shwya (little by little).

Until next time...

Spring Camp 09!

I cannot remember the last time I have been so excited to write a blog entry. Given the recent success of the spring camp coordinated by yours truly, I cannot help but boast.

Errachidia spring camp 2009 was indeed disaster free and full of positivity. I can't say that everything went as expected(this is Morocco after all), yet I can state that out of the 4 camps that I have now worked at in Morocco, it was by far the most cohesive and well put together. With a killer staff of pcv's (most of whom had never worked a PC camp before, yet seemed to make up for their lack of experience with an extreme eagerness to help) and a highly devoted Moroccan staff, we managed to create a rewarding experience for the local youth (and ourselves)that only comes around once and awhile.

Perhaps part of the appearance of success has to do with the fact that the camp began with conditions that upon first glance seemed pretty problematic. The staff(Moroccan and PCV) was short 5 people for 96 kids, and 4 of the 8 PCV’s helping had no knowledge of Moroccan Arabic, and could only rely on the chance of kids attending who understood the respective Berber dialects they had been trained in in order to communicate. Given the short staff, every PCV had to both teach an English class and help to lead a club(we had guitar, leadership, theater, art, and journalism) despite the potential problems in communicating abstract concepts. Luckily for us, PCV’s are some of the best charades players on the planet. As the only 2nd year youth development PCV I was put in the position of having the best Darija skills out of our group, which is something I have never experienced before, in that I was one of the slower language learners in my stage. This gave me the daunting obligation of translating everything that could otherwise not be interpreted. Needless to say, it was incredibly tiring for everyone, breaking from our typical lackadaisical and diffuse PC lifestyles and being on the go from 7am until about midnight every day.



Another factor that contributed to my initial concern about the camp’s well being was the planned field trip to Merzouga, a.k.a. the Sahara Desert. When I first heard the plan for this day it consisted of nothing more than taking 4 busses of kids into the desert and releasing them. However, to my relief, the day before the trip I learned that the plan was in fact more organized than this and thus less likely to result in lost, cannibalized-turned children in the arid vastness that is the Sahara. While the trip did in fact involve taking 4 buses of kids into the desert, it was surprisingly smooth(despite the incessant drumming and singing that followed us everywhere- yes, kids here carry drums with them everywhere, and yes, the human wave can be done in a moving vehicle). With the additional stops added to our trip by the Moroccan staff we were given only an hour and a half to roam the dunes, which turned out to be a perfect amount of time for kids to burn off energy by climbing a massive dune. We naively thought it would be a good idea to race up this dune, and were quickly humbled by Mother Nature’s intensity. As it turns out, running up a sand dune is comparable to running up a mountain with water pouring down in the opposite direction...difficult, yet an excellent outlet for youthful energy. Just to ensure that every last breath had been taken out of me, on the top of the dune I was challenged to a wrestling match with a member of the Moroccan staff who just so happens to be a 3rd degree black belt in Tai Kwon Do, and has been teaching the art for 15 years. Again, a humbling experience (yet apparently very entertaining for the kids-I do what I can).



The dunes were followed by a trip to the Dar Chebab in a nearby town, where we had a lunch consisting of a boiled potato, a small cheese packet, bread, and tea of course...probably my first and last potato and cheese sandwich. This was followed by a trip to a fossil museum, which was then followed by a failed attempt to visit one of the kings palaces (we were promptly kicked out), and then followed by a visit to the nicest hotel that I have ever seen in Morocco.

Another aspect that contributed to the success of the camp was the amazing relations between the PC and Moroccon staff. While in other camps I have attended, relations between these two groups has never been more than functional and professional, this time around the feeling was more of that of a family. This became evident during our stop for lunch during our field trip, when two PCV’s asked some campers of the price of a giant pizza-like food that we discovered in a town store- something that we had never seen the likes of in our southern region. After informing us of the price(which was pretty steep given our PC budget)and reassuring us that the store owner was not trying to rip us off, one of the Moroccan staff members rushed up to us and insisted that we didn’t buy it. While this confused us initially, it all came together later when I was approached that night by the Moroccan camp director and asked when we wanted to eat the pizza-like feast they had bought for us. Accustomed to typical Moroccan frugality, it was hard for me to make sense of this at first, before it hit me that they really liked us. We reciprocated the act of kindness of the end of camp when we had copies of the whole staff together made for everyone.

So all in all, it was a great week. Now I have time to rest, have my voice catch back up with me, and look onto my next big project which is getting a grant for 6 computers for a local association in my town (inchallah). Until next time...

International Women’s Day!

Last Sunday was quite possibly the greatest developmental work experience I have undertaken since being in the Peace Corps. Sunday, March 8th was International Women’s Day, and I decided to seize the opportunity for a project given such a day celebrating such an objectively important cause.

I spent about a month and a half preparing for the event, which entailed rounding up many women’s organizations in my community, along with several speakers for certain topics, through fliers and word of mouth. It quickly became apparent that completing this task would not have been possible in my first year here, in that my language and credibility were key components in selling the idea to so many people and working out the logistics. I did receive some help from my new site mate during this stage, which I can imagine only added to the anomaly of not only one, but two white guys riding all over town on bikes in an effort to promote women’s rights. Yet at this point, I have come to the understanding that diverging from the norm is an essential component in the accomplishment of my work here, so I’ll go ahead and interpret that to mean that we were doing our jobs well.

The event turned out to be a huge success, and was the type of project that makes one proud to do development work, in that it engendered a real sense of accomplishment. Three PCV’s from neighboring towns came to help with the event, along with my (former) Arabic tutor, the mudira(director) of the Dar Taliba (girls center), and a midwife from the local hospital.



We started the day out with a warm up activity relating to team work(and waking kids up), followed by a hero’s activity in which discussed female hero’s in Morocco and Islam, and gave the girls an opportunity to talk about what it means to be a hero, and elicited examples of personal hero’s from them. I think that this was probably one of the most important activities we did, in that it seems that what many of the girls here need is simply an example of what can be done when hard work and determination connects with idealism. The hero’s activity was followed by a tea break (an essential element for any Moroccan event), which was then followed by a discussion of the muduwana act, which is a set of laws that outline the rights of women and families (i.e. a women has the right to choose who she wants to marry). Although this discussion was hard for me to follow in that it involved very fast and technical Arabic, I also viewed it as an extremely important one. After spending some time in rural Morocco it becomes very apparent that there is a huge difference between what one is allowed to legally and what one is allowed to do socially. I believe that reminders of what the law entails are important in order for people (women especially) to be unfettered in the accomplishment of their goals.

After lunch we held a brief opinion activity in which statements pertaining to women’s independence and equality were read (ie “I would rather go to get married then go to university”), and participants would walk to a designated area indicating weather or not they agreed, disagreed, or remained neutral on the statement. Of these, by far the most interesting one was “I believe that boys are treated better than girls”, in which all the boys participating agreed, and all the females, aside from the women professionals who were helping with the event disagreed. This indicated that the boys are very aware of their advantages, while the girls either possess a different definition of what it means to be equal, or are in denial of society’s preferential treatment of males. Definitely something that would be interesting to look into further...

This was followed by a SIDA (AIDS) and general health activity, during which the midwife from the hospital spoke to the girls, and the male staff managed to wing a SIDA presentation for the group of 30 or so boys that meandered in after lunch. Fortunately, along with the boys that randomly showed up, so did a male English teacher who I had previously run into and mentioned the event to, and who eagerly offered his help in translating the points on the spreading of the HIV, and the use of contraceptives. The only part of this presentation that made me nervous was when I gave him a condom in order to talk about how to use it, and he began his demonstration by sticking his entire fist inside of it and using it as a sock puppet. Very funny, yet slightly horrifying.


After another health presentation in which a female PCV discussed the spreading of bacteria and the importance of washing your hands with soap, we kicked the boy out and had the same girl lead a brief presentation on stretches for women. Of course, all males had to leave the room for this, so I can only assume that it went well. Afterwards we held a poster competition for the girls. This served as an opportunity for them to illustrate what women’s rights means to them, along with what they got out of the day’s events. The result was incredibly rewarding, and demonstrated artistic talent and creativity form the girls. My favorite poster was that of a huge lit candle, which, according to the group that drew it, represented women as the “fire of life”, and that without them there would be no light on earth...something undeniably true.


Towards the end of this activity, we were forced to switch buildings in that there was no electricity in the building we had been using all day and we were quickly losing the sunlight seeping in from the windows, which was our only source of light throughout the day. The absence of electricity also made it impossible to use the projector that I had put so much effort into hauling over from the Dar Chebab(youth house), but I suppose that overcoming minor obstacles is all in a days work.

We concluded the days events with a presentation of all the posters, which was accompanied by cookies, soda (essential for any Moroccan party- similar to booze in America), and music. Dancing even took place after the guys left the room (dancing in front of men is of course incredibly forbidden here). All in all it was a great day, and helped to restore the confidence in me that effective development work is indeed achievable.

Following this event, I moved right onto my next project, which is the coordination of spring camp. This entails me planning out all the logistics of this week long English immersion camp, along with delegating tasks to the 7 PCV’s who will be helping with it. I just returned from a coordinators meeting about it, in which I met with the director of the center where we will be holding the camp, and everything appears to be falling into place. Updates on this, along with my other near future endeavors are soon to come. Stay tuned, and until next time...