An emotional roller coaster

I’ve been traveling for the last month and been able to see some amazing new places, have some incredibly meaning experiences, and spend some much needed time with friends, new and old.  From all of this I have quickly come to realize the emotional roller coaster I have been riding and will be riding for the next 20 months.  

The start of my journey took me to Agadir where I indulged in some delicious pizza (not 2 words often used in this country).  I continued to spend 3 days in a town just outside of Agadir for training for the volunteer support network. The VSN is a group of trained volunteers who are available for other volunteers to call to help them talk through problems they are having be it in site, at home, with friends, or anything.  The training was a great experience, with great food, great company, and we all were able to talk about issues we were having and work through them.  

Training ended too quickly and off Sarah and I were to Marrakech where we were staying for the night before heading to Ourzazate.  Most of that time was spent relaxing and mentally preparing for our trip over the tishka.  The tishka (if you didn't see on the news) is a quite twisty, winding, steep road that passes through the mid atlas mountain range dividing the two cities, Merrakesh and Ourzazate.  After some debate and taking into account sensitive stomachs we chose to take a grand taxi.  This means there were 4 people squashed into the back and 3 in the front (including the driver) though it's not a more comfortable ride, there is much less chance for car sickness in a car compared to a bus.  This didn't stop me from taking Dramamine, which reminds me I'm out... The drive was absolutely beautiful! Beyond anything I could have imagined and the pictures don't do it justice.  After a short half an hour break, from what I can tell something needed to be welded back onto the bottom of the car, and another 4 and a half hours we arrived in Ourzazate. 

Berber IST was held is a hotel right in the public 'garden' or square of Ourzazate. So far Ourzazate has to be one of my favorite cites in Morocco.  Though every time I go somewhere here I decide it's my new favorite place.  Ourzazate has more of a desert feel than many of the other cities I have visited lately, though that's probably because they were on the beach.  The people there were terrific and it didn't hurt that they had delicious fruit smoothies available for 12 dh.  Berber IST was a lot of hard work and information in a 6 hours a day for 5 days time period.  It was a good basis for getting to understand how the language works and for simple communication in site.   

Since there was only 1 week in between going to real IST in Marrakesh I decided to visit my friend Jared's site with with some friends, Zaana and Jon.  He lives about a half an hour past Zagora which is 3 hours south east of Ourzazate.  His site was absolutely beautiful, it was the first time I had seen an oasis, or palmery, which are areas of dense palm trees, grass, and sometimes water, usually a river.  Since his site was so far away from a large city and his site was so rural the stars were incredible.  Every night we slept on the roof under the stars.  While we were there we also got to go to pottery co-ops.  The people were so nice, they gave us tea, and we all played drums and guitar together and talk about morocco and America and Mali, where many of the people's family's are from in that area.  It was a constant reminder of just how lucky I am and how grateful I am for the opportunities I am given. 

With just a few days left until IST a friend and I stayed in Ourzazate for a few nights and met with some other PCVs and explore the area.  This led us to the discovery if Fint oasis.  We walked 10 km down a half paved, half dirt, half gravel road with nothing around until we finally arrived at the little oasis.  It's a small Berber town just outside of Ourzazate, it was absolutely beautiful.  Since we decided not to carry a camera we have no evidence of the running water, turtles, frogs, and fish that were there.  The people there were amazing, giving us water and food for free and allowing us to take a little nap on their ponj.  After we walked back to the road and our Moroccan escort picked dates fresh off of palms and gave them to us as we waded to our ankles in the cool water.  It was quite a magical day and just another day that helped me realize how lucky I really am. 

This led us into IST.  Joelle, Zanna and I braved the souk bus back over the tishka and safely arrived in Marrakesh ready to take on IST!  Though there were more rumors than I could keep track of about the hotel we were staying in for IST I was pleasantly surprised when upon arrival I was hit with COLD air conditioning, a huge beautiful pool, and apartment sized bungalows for us and our friends.  IST was filled with workshops about how to make the best of our service and 100 ideas that we could take into our dar chebabs.  What IST really was though was a great reunion after being separated for 4 month, we were all ready to be ‘American’ again for the week, and that’s what we did.  We wore t-shirts, shorts, and bathing suits, we spoke barley any Arabic, and everyone understood our English, and we spent time hearing each others battle stories gaining the courage to return to our new homes throughout the country. 

After a week of IST I was staring to feel the effects of traveling for so long and I ready to head home.  But first I took a small detour to Agadir to stay in a VERY posh hotel for a conference on healthy community living and how to implement public health classes into our work.  This was three days of the most helpful and useful information I had received to yet.  I learned so much about the youth in Morocco and have a better understand of where I stand in my community.  And I can’t complain about the hotel either, hot showers with real water pressure, ocean view, pools, and amazing food including omelets with cheese!  To bring all my travels full circle on my last full day in Agadir I devoured a pizza from the same pizza place my travels started from one-month prior. 

On my travels back to Tafraout I completely forgot that once again Morocco had observed a time change.  With this said I was an hour ahead of my schedule the whole morning making it much easier to get a cab from Tiznit back to Tafraout.  I was lucky enough to find on right away and had the pleasure of sharing the front seat with a woman from Venezuela.  She spoke English well and we were able to talk the whole way home mostly about religion.  She is a journalist studying religion and has traveled all over the world living in the culture of many different religions; she had such a new and interesting way to look at Islam.  It made for a very interesting and exciting taxi ride home, our side view mirror getting taken off by another car did hurt either, oh Morocco.    

Ramadan

The last month has been a whirlwind of travel, teaching, Ramadan, utter boredom, 

learning, and fun.  While challenges and unpredictability of live have shown me my own strengths and weaknesses since I have arrived. 

Most recently I have had the chance to travel to El Jadida and work at a summer camp teaching English to kids ages 10-17.  It was an awesome experience and I loved every second of it.  El Jadida was like going on a tropical vacation compared to Tafraout.  It was 75 and humid every day, compared to 110 and dry as a bone I’ll take it.  Camp was a blast, not only was I teaching but spending time with the kids and learning about them.  We introduced them to Halloween, and put on quite a scary haunted house, did American trivia, and had a pretty intense soccer game.  The kids were so happy to be there, even though it was Ramadan and they were very tired and many times just wanted to go back to bed.  Camp was just like summer camp in America though, we shared two rooms for 14 volunteers, there were 4 bunk beds in each room and one bathroom.  By the end, the 4 shirts I brought smelled like camping and everything was just a little wet. Needless to say I was happy to get back and do laundry.  The other Peace Corps volunteers I got to work with were amazing as well.  We did a lot of playing Frisbee on the beach and riding waves.  It was hard to consider this work.  After this I was lucky enough to have some good friends invite me to stay at their place in Essaouira, which quickly became one of my favorite places in Morocco.  It’s a very touristy beach town, but their Medina (city) was beautiful and the shops there were incredible.  It was a great stay and hard for me to leave.  The first time I went to catch my bus I was easily convinced to stay just one more night. 

Though life here hasn’t been all beaches and fun.  The ups and downs felt here come on quickly and can last for 2 second or can drag on for what feels like 2 years.  These moments don’t happen often but when they do they can flatten you.  Like waiting with baited breath for each e-mail update about my grandfather after his surgery, and my heart sinking each time my phone rang, just hoping it wasn’t from home with bad news.  These moments can feel like a lifetime when you’re so far away.  On top of that many of my friends in country have gone though so much more than I can ever image and it’s hard not to be able to be there with them.  We are all so spread out now that it makes it impossible to be there when people need you most. 

El Jadida at night

Being away did make me realize how much I love Tafraout.  With the amount of harassment that I got in El Jadida I can understand why it drives people crazy.  After arriving back in site I was instantly invited over to my friends house for wedding chicken (my favorite meal).  The next day I met with the rest of my friends from town.  A much-needed reunion was had for Sarah and I as well, with some homemade peach wine (video to follow, not very delicious but did the job), a pretty epic puzzle, and the Emperors New Groove we were happy to both be in Tafraout again.  And once again we can ask the question, old time or new time? Morocco has undergone another time change now that Ramadan is over.  Though I’m not sure people know.  Meeting times, store hours, I have no idea what they really are anymore.  This will all happen again in about a month then we have another time change.   

Dealing with the heat

Life in Tafraout has finally settled down and life has returned to a normal routine.  Over the past month I have found a house, filled it up (kind of), decorated, and started to cook for myself.  It wasn't an easy transition though.  When my host mom finally had her baby, about 3 weeks ago now, I needed to leave their house immediately because so much family was coming to visit there was no more room for me.  This left me pretty much homeless.  I was all packed, keeping a suitcase at my host family's, another bag at Sarah's host family's, and carrying thing around in my backpack to live with.  We had thought we were getting an apartment so we weren't looking very hard, but quickly came to realize though the landlord said he would bring us the key, he was never coming.  This lead to a mad dash around Tafraout talking to anyone who would listen about where to find a house and how much it would cost. Luckily my host dad stepped in and within just a few days we had homes.  Now if I thought that was hard now I had to try to fill up my new house with the things I needed to make it a home, including water and electricity, all on a pretty tight budget.  It took about a week to finally get electricity, and I slowly moved in my bed frame and mattress, a bedside table, stove and gas, shelves and fridge, and tables, and my host family kindly gave me two ponjs for my living room.  About 3 days later my fridge broke and I was back on the streets looking for another one.  It wan't too hard of a search and I found one quickly in my price range.  I had some pictures printed off the other day and now my house is filled up and starting to resemble a home.
       Besides all that I've been working a bit at the youth center having some conversation classes with some advanced students who are very good at english and just want to practice and learn new words.  As of recently about 10 to 20 small boys show up everyday now, they don't really want to learn english just play games so we play frisbee, pingpong, and cards with them.  Tomorrow we are starting a summer camp for them, it's going to resemble the olympics and they will have to pick countries and make flags, but the games are like water balloon fights, and some english games.  It should be fun and as long as they don't fight too much I think it will go well.  I also work at the women's association here, 3 times a week I teach an aerobics class and twice a week I teach an english class to whoever shows up.  Attendance isn't the best and sometimes we have 2 women and sometimes we have 10.  In September that should change because right now people are traveling and it's very very hot.
       More on the heat, it's hot here.  Like can't leave the house because the sun is out kind of hot.  Sadly it makes for pretty boring days, and since there are snakes we can't hike until after the heat is gone, hopefully that will be sometime in September.  To beat the heat I shower a lot, though it's not extremely helpful because the ground water gets really hot from the sun, so my showers are usually warm.  Most of the time during the day I lay around in a sport bra and sweat.  There isn't much else to do now that I don't need to shop everyday.  Sometimes Sarah and I get invited for meals at our friends houses, I won't turn down free food, it gives us something to do during the day and means we still get to eat Moroccan food, which now that I don't have to eat it every day I'm starting to like again.  Lately everyday it thunders all day, and sometimes it gets really windy, rains for about a minute if that, and then gets sunny again.  There are no real storms just a lot of thunder.

Me modeling my traditional Berber clothing

Homemade eggplant and squash burgers 

     In celebration of the 4th of July Sarah and I made hamburgers and pasta salad, and had watermelon.  We had some of our friends over and gave them their first hamburgers.  They loved them. We told them all about the 4th of July and how we celebrate it in America.  It was a lot of fun and everyone had a good time.  Our friend even made us little American flags and another friend brought us a 4th of July cake.
     This weekend there has been a festival here.  There is a huge stage in the park, and park looks beautiful, and everyone from town and a lot of tourists are here to enjoy.  It's been fun, and we have been able to hang out with a lot of our friends there.  The music is all traditions Berber music.  It's definitely a cultural experience.  Sarah and I even dressed in traditional Berber clothing.  In black almulhof's and red Tafraout shoes.

Traditional shoes

Sleeping on the roof! 

Things I'd like from home:

Peanut butter
Goldfish
Cereal
Gum / Candy
Oatmeal
Command hooks
Duct tape
Mac and Cheese
Wheat Thins
Tea (chi, peach)
Paint (puff paint, any type)
Crafting supplies
Brown sugar
Vanilla

Becoming Amina

            There is no real way to explain my new town, but I’ll try my best.  Tafraoute is a small town of about 5000 in the middle of a bowl of mountains.  Though it is a small town there is everything I could need here is way of amenities.  The town itself is beautiful there are many new apartment buildings going in around where my host family lives, they fit in well with the look of the town and even have pink walls like the rest of the buildings.  It really is in a bowl of mountains and no matter where you turn you will see rocky peaks.  There is large park in the middle of town where everyone congregates after the sun goes down and it becomes bearable to leave the house (the weather really hasn’t been that hot yet).  The people here haven been amazing and so welcoming, though they are familiar with tourists, so it will take some time before everyone knows us for volunteers not tourists. 

            Me new host family has been amazing as well.  I have 4 new host siblings, 2 girls and 2 boys as well as a baby coming any day now.  Their house is gorgeous and I’m lucky that they will be my family for the next 2 years.  They have a big courtyard with grape vines and a pomegranate tree. I have my own room that is not really connected to the rest of the house and an English toilet!!  I’ve been trying to learn how to cook a bit from my new host mom, she 9 months pregnant and still hand making all the bread that we eat.  I found an Arabic tutor who also plays the banjo and may be lucky enough to get some banjo lessons as well.  As I write my new kitten that my host mom gave me chases a fly that is attracted to the light from my computer.  Sarah and I have started teaching a few classes at the women’s association in town right now we just teach some exercises classes but next week will be starting some English classes as well and the week after that we will start working at the Dar Shabab as well.  Summer is slow time for us because things are closed and it’s hot and there is a month of Ramadan to take into consideration. 

            My new Moroccan name is Amina and I’ve really tried to embrace it.  I’ve learned to de-flea a cat with nothing more than some soap, water, and my hands, (I’m coved in flea bites) I’ve bought the traditional wrap that the Moroccan women here wear, I’ve started showing up late to things, not that I already didn’t, and expecting people to be late as well, and as of right now I’m pretty sure I’m renting a house I’ve only seen the outside of.  I’ve also become pretty scared of dogs, and have had to remove a large frog from my bed in the middle of the night.  Though I’m not afraid of frogs my reactions surprised even me and I preceded to lightly sandwich the frog between two sandals and get it our of my room.  The house that was offered looked perfect though we haven’t been able to see the inside of it.  It’s one big building with two apartments in it and we would have both of them.  This would mean we would have a private roof and our cats, which are sisters, can play together when we are gone.  So all in all things here are going pretty well!  I definitely can’t complain and I’m excited to get more work started.  This summer we have the opportunity to have summer camp at our site, go to summer camp in Agadir, and help at S.O.S camps, which is like a compound where orphaned children live in families together and a surrogate mother.  Hopefully I’ll be able to help with a few of those things and get to see some of my friends.      

 My new kitten! Her name is still to be determined, I guess she loves rainbows as much as I do

View from Tafraoute 

Taking a good tourist picture in the entrance to Tafraoute 

Mentally preparing for the HEAT

It’s been quite the whirlwind of events the past few weeks.  With classes, work in the Dar Shabab, and spending time with my host family I didn’t have much time to myself.  Most mornings I woke up at 6:50, went for a quick run, had some breakfast, and went to class for 8:30.  I would have class until 12:30 have lunch then head to the Dar Shabab to do activities for the kids after school got our around 5:30.  We were able to put on about 6 days of activities for the kids.  I taught a class on nutrition to the girls in my community, and also had a day of soccer for just girls and a day for just the boys.  My other CBT mates did classes on art, English, not smoking, basketball, and yoga.  Overall it was definitely a success and I just continue to understand more about what I’ll be doing the next 2 years and how to be successful in doing this.  We always had Sundays off so I took this time to go into Fez and check out the old medina (city).  It’s absolutely beautiful and so different from anything I’d ever seen.  It’s massive, and there are no cars, just small streets of shops and cafes.  There are 7 entrances to the medina but I only was able to see 2.  It’s so easy to get lost inside and just wonder until it’s time to leave.  That’s usually what we did.  We also got to see the tannery, which was amazing.  You can look down and see people doing each different process of making leather. 

            Unfortunately our life in our little town had to come to an end and the last few days after our LPI (language test) were spent throwing parties for the kids in the Dar Shabab and our host families and different people in the community who were helpful to us, including our cook, and the taxi driver who would cart all 6 of us around.  There was a heat wave before we left Fez and the temperature reached about 100 for a week so our party was outside, it was one of the greatest experiences I've had yet.  It was like a backyard BBQ but with Moroccan food.  It was very fun.  On the last night I gave my family a photo album with pictures I had taken of them and us during the 7 weeks I lived with them and some post cards of Boston and New Hampshire.  They loved it and were so grateful.  They gave me henna and we had a tearful goodbye. 

            Saturday morning we headed to Fez than back to Rabat. Once back in Rabat and reunited with everyone it was time to find out our final sites.  So I finally know where I’ll be spending the next 2 years of my life.  I leave here to Thursday morning and travel to Agadir, about a 7 hours trip, and on Friday I go to Tafraoute, about a 2 hour trip.  You can probably look up more information about it than I know right now, but from what I understand it’s a small town that is surrounded by even smaller towns.  It’s the biggest one within a few hours.  It is a tourist destination though because of its’ beauty and availability of rock climbing, mountain climbing, and mountain biking.  There are colored rocks and the buildings are pink.  This is all I know about my site for now but I’m extremely excited.  It sounds amazing and just can’t wait for Thursday.  I also have a site mate, which I am excited about.  So if you are planning on coming to visit plan on hiking and being HOT.  Though I’m in the mountains it’s going to be hot.  I’m in the second most southern site available.  I thought it was hot in Fez when it was 100 but that's nothing compared to where I'm headed, exciting!  Next time you see me I’m going to be melted into the Moroccan sand.

    As of right now I don’t know my new address but I know it will be changing so hold off on letters and all those packages you will be sending until I figure out my new address.  I should have this figured out within the next week though.  Once I get into my new site I will be living with a host family and doing my best to integrate into the new community.  I’ve heard that my town is rather conservative so it will be interesting to be make sure to my dressed correctly when it’s 140 degrees, but I’m just so excited to get to know everyone and become part of a community that I can stay with and see change happen.  As I mentioned I have a site mate, we are very excited to have each other since there aren’t many other volunteers within a few hours.  I’m extremely excited for the different lifestyle that I’ll be entering; it will even be different from living with my host family near Fez.  I hope to hear from everyone soon!!    

 This is a picture of the tannery. It smelled terrible but you could see them soaking the skins and dying them, it was pretty amazing. 

        This is my CBT group and I.  We all just got ready for a wedding and decided to take some senior photo style shots! 

Livin It up in Rural Morocco

Community based training is going really well, my host family is extremely nice and they try to accommodate me the best they can, though I’m learning a lot of language skills every day I’m still struggling to communicate with my family like I would like to. I’m in a tiny town just outside of Fez that can only be defined as rural.  With one paved road and a population of about 1500 people we are already local celebrities.  The population is by far more than 50% children, and they tend to run to us in the street and follow us around.  It’s rather endearing but gets tiring after awhile.  Our training group has a lot of fun and we get along really well, though we spend about 10 hours a day together we haven’t gotten too sick of each other yet.  We are all hooked on a Turkish soap opera, and we talk about it every morning, trying to figure out what’s going on.  Our teacher is already sick of our shenanigans in class and continually makes up new rules for the classroom to keep us in check.  It keeps us sane and he loves it though he would never admit it.     

            Our usual schedule from Monday to Friday is class starting at 8:30-12:30 lunch then back to learning from 2-6, and Saturday we have half days.  It’s very tiring but I’m learning the language quickly and enjoying doing it so as tired as I am it’s worth it.   We are already forming sentences about what we have done and what we like to do.  Though this week has been a bit of a change, we have been helping run a spring camp for the kids in our town while they are on spring break.  In the morning we teach small English lessons to a group of about 30 kids, then play games with them.  We are there until 12:30 then we go back to school for lunch and a few hours of language lessons.  This week has been far more tiring then I thought possible.  It’s so much fun though, the kids are great and they are so invested in learning English it makes it easy to teach them.  On the other hand, the language barrier does not make it easy.

            This weekend we all went to a wedding.  It was amazingly long and quite a production.  On Friday we had a half day of class, we were all invited to lunch at the grooms house.  After that we went to the Hena party.  During this we ate cookies and watched the bride get henna.  It’s definitely a different experience than a wedding in America.  The bride and groom don’t interact with the guests and are there to be looked at more than have a good time.  After the Hena party were went back to have dinner and dancing at the grooms house.  Most of us left around 11 that night though the party lasted until 3.  The next day we went back to the grooms house around 8 to get ready before the wedding.  At 10 we went down for dinner, one tradition I love is the wedding chicken, it’s one of the most delicious dishes I’ve had here so far.  After dinner it was time to dance, I definitely can’t dance like the Moroccans; we tried to bring some American moves to the floor.  The wedding that night went until 5 in the morning.  We were exhausted by the time 3 came around and started to go a little crazy around 4.  It was quite the experience but I’m not too eager to repeat it in the near future.   

Besides that I’ve pretty much just been eating a lot.   I don’t get how the people here do it they eat like 6 times a day.  There are the three main meals then three ‘snacks’ that are the size of meals but with tea.  Most of the time I try to not eat too much but the women always tell you to eat more and it’s hard to say no. 

            My living accommodations here are pretty great considering I’m in the Peace Corps.  I have my own room, electricity, I can drink the tap water, and our bathroom is inside.  I do bucket bathe, there is a shower but it’s only cold water, I do my laundry on a wash board but was told the other day that I was no good at it and it was taken over by my much more capable sister.  I use a Turkish toilet, which isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  It’s a new experience but I’m loving it.  The town we are in is absolutely gorgeous, hills and mountains surround it and the town is filled with poppy fields.  Every time we go to the Suke for food I can’t believe how different it is from America.  The Suke is like a huge farmers market.  There is stand after stand of fresh vegetables, fruits, spices, and meats.  You can order 2 kilos of chicken pick the live chicken you want and come back in 10 minutes and it will be killed, plucked, and ready for you to take home.  The other thing about Morocco that I love is their since of time.  No one cares if they wait in line for 10 minutes or an hour.  They’re never in a rush.  They are never on time, and can spend all day doing the same thing and not care.  It’s such a change from our fast pace lifestyle.  It’s also a great excuse when we’re late for class, sorry but we’re on Moroccan time.