Monday, March 24, 2008

Are you my dad?

So I’ve been making friends with one of the shopowners here in town who speaks decent English. He’s been a huge help with my pathetic attempts at Arabic and today he invited me into his shop to share a tagine (meat and vegetable stew slow-cooked) with him and his friend which was delicious. I don’t know if people around here are just used to dealing with Peace Corps volunteers or if all Moroccans really are this nice and patient? The kids here are also super fun and always eager to get involved in the frisbee, football, soccer game that we’re playing. If the sport of frisbee takes Morocco by storm I will happily take credit:)

In exciting news, I found out today the area that I may be working. Probably near the central area of the country in the High Atlas (around Fes) or up in some of the parks in the Northeastern part of the country. We’ll see?

A big development is the cell phone that I purchased today. I’m still working figuring out voicemail but if you want to give me a shout-out please do. You’ll probably need to dial 011 to call outside the United States and the country code for Morocco is 212. My number is then 059154291. Morocco is 4 hours ahead of Eastern time. Calling via Skype should be pretty easy and incoming calls are free for me (lucky me!).

Another important purchase was the knock-off adidas pants that I bought at the souk (market). Apparently its somewhat socially questionable for anyone (even males) to wear shorts so I guess I was being a bit scandalous by running in shorts and showing off my calves. The warm-up pants are a nice blue velvet-like material and will be great to run in once temps get to 100. I guess I’ll just run at 4 in the morning?

On Sun I head of to my community based training site. Since I pretty much exhaust my Dariya vocabulary in about 5 minutes, I can imagine some awkward silence. I guess thats the best way to learn though? I’ll be there for a week and then back to Ouarzazate which is starting to feel more and more comfortable.

So I’ve been teaching my Darija teacher some American slang and when I asked how she was doing she just told me that she’s been “busy as a beaver.” My response, “No its busy as a bee but beavers are also very busy.”

03-24-08

Well......its been an interesting week. We just returned from our CBT (community based training) sites. 5 of us from my Darija (Moroccan Arabic) were at Magraman which is a tiny little village about an hour from Ourzazate. There we lived with a host family and focused mostly on language.

I don’t know if there is anything quite as awkward as living with a family with whom you cannot speak to. All in all though a great experience. There was some confusion at first. Mostly due to which toilet I would be using. The confusion was mainly do to the fact that there are certain specific times for men and women to use the bathroom. After an entertaining discussion which involved my father drawing stick figures of men and women in the dirt on the ground I finally decided that I would just use the toilet at the school. It wasn’t until the next day that it all became clear. My toilet is also the community hamman (bathhouse) and I just wouldn’t be allowed to use the toilet from 8am till 6pm because thats when its reserved for women. Well....Ok?

Getting used to the turkish (squat) toilets has been a bit of an.....ummm..... well......adjustment? I’ll spare you those intimate details.

It was during the aforementioned ridiculous conversation that I was laughing hysterically in my head and decided that I must on one of those hidden camera TV shows and at any moment the camera crew would pop out. However, no such camera crew appeared.

My family has 6 children ranging from age age 1 to 12. They’re super fun and all seem to enjoy climbing on me. From the moment I come home from class till the moment I go to bed, I become a walking talking jungle gym. I also think I am a great source of comedy relief as my brothers and sisters erupt into hysterical laughter whenever I butcher a Darija pronunciation. There’s 3 adult brothers who live in the house and it wasn’t until day 4 there that I realized who my official host dad is. Fortunately, Lahcen (my host dad) speaks a little English and has taken it upon himself to make sure that I am the best student in the class. I’m afraid he may be sadly disappointed. Because of those high expectations Lahcen has taken it upon himself to quiz me in the evenings on what I learned in class that day. Just what I want after 8 hours of language classes.

While I knew it was going to be different........the gender separation is astonishing. The women here do everything and receive very little if any credit. I have never shared a meal with my host mom and haven’t really even had a conversation with her. It is also somewhat questionable for a man to even enter the kitchen. Interesting?

The food has been incredible if a little overwhelming. There were times eating with my family where I thought if I heard kul, kul, kuI! (eat, eat, eat) I may vomit on someone. At one point I was quite happy with myself for finishing my meal and my host dad ripped a piece of bread out of my little brothers hand and put it on my plate kul kul kul!. Mostly the food has been either tagine (a veggie and meat slow-cooked stew) or couscous along with copious amounts of delicious homemade bread. One of the members of my group was treated to a dish of sheep brains but unfortunately I haven’t had the privilege.

Friday, March 14, 2008

1st Week

Well, its now been 1 week since I’ve been in the country and all is going well.  Currently in Ouarzazate which is a mellow, medium-sized city on the Eastern side of the High Atlas in Southern Morocco.  The hotel we’re staying at will be home for the next 2 months.  All the training takes place here and in our Community Development Training sites where we will be staying with host families.  The hotel sits right on the town square so its easy to get a game of soccer going with the locals.  


The group of 60 that gathered in Philadelphia has been split up between the health and the environment volunteers.  The group is good, though much younger than I’d expected.  I’d say the average age is 23-25 with most folks having graduated college within the last year.  I guess I’d expected more folks to be my age in the mid to late 20’s crowd.  But there’s a lot of positive strong energy from this group


We’ve done a few days of Arabic (darija dialect) and I expected to switch today to one of the three Berber dialects since that is what is spoken in the Atlas Mountains, where most of us will be placed.  Much to my surprise though, I found out today that I will be one of the few who will continue to study Arabic.  I can only assume that the trainers had recognized how quickly I was mastering the language (ha, ha) and wanted me to continue my progress.  No....in all seriousness learning Arabic is incredibly challenging and is going to be an ongoing struggle.  Yet, I’ve started forcing myself out into the community and its amazing how friendly and patient people are in helping me with my pathetic attempts at speaking their language.  Sweya b’ Sweya (slowly, slowly) I’m learning.  


So far I’ve yet to find an internet place that has decent speed.  Trying to send an email is ridiculously frustrating between the Arabic keyboard and the computer freezing up.  In the next few days I hope to purchase a cell phone so I’ll let you know when that happens.  


Well.....thats all for now and Inshallah (God willing) I’ll be able to post this soon.