Wedding season in Morocco!

Hello everyone! I am sorry for the long wait and I appreciate everyone who has still been checking up on me and seeing if anything new has been posted. These past few weeks have been a real whirlwind for me! I spent my fourth of july in Agadir with some other pcv’s. We rented out a house and cooked some amazing American meals there. I can’t get enough of the ocean. Although I had a wonderful time in Agadir, the travel to and from was very frustrating. We tried to take the 4am bus, but we were told that the bus was full. So we ended up taking a taxi all the way there, which is long and uncomfortable. And I wanted to be back in my site by Monday for a wedding, but there were no taxis going to my site, so I had to spend the night in tata city and miss the wedding. It wasn’t all bad though because when I got back to site, I went to an Ahawaj, which is basically a dance concert. Ahawaj s are a big deal here. I borrowed one of my Aunt’s dresses and I had a white dress to wear there. I met the family of the bride and I ate dinner with some new women who travelled to here. I feel like my family uses me to get meat from the meal. After the meal, we watched the ahawaj until 5 in the morning. It was such a drain. I was so tired the whole next day. Then I went to another ahawaj that night. That one didn’t get over until 6am. It is a great way to meet people, but I am just not used to staying up so late.

My host father is home on vacation now. He is really nice and a very generous person. He knows French really well and also knows Arabic as well as tashlheit.

I am finally in my home! It has been quite an adjustment for all of us. I’ve had a lot of guests come and check up on me. I am also adjusting to not having water in my house either. I have to fetch water everyday. I walk with my neighbors with these big bottles and treat my water with bleach when I get home. My neighbors say that the water is good to drink, but I don’t want to take any chances J. People here are not at all used to the idea of someone being alone, so I think it will take a little bit for them to understand that I am fine by myself. I also got some “lessons” on the meals here . I’m not suppose to eat pasta for lunch because it isn’t filling enough; I should eat it for breakfast or dinner. And I’m not suppose to eat lentils for dinner because it is heavy and makes it hard to sleep. I made lentils for dinner anyway, but I didn’t tell anyone. It is also difficult to get by without eating bread here. Even when I tell people that I don’t need to eat bread with my lentils, they give me tons anyway. And when I told my family that I ate watermelon for breakfast, they laughed at me! It is so funny to me how set in their ways Moroccans tend to be.

I really like my home. I have a wonderfully big bed and and great fridge. I really don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have a fridge for cold water. It is a nice luxury.

I’ve reached the point in my service where I am truly on my own in my community. I am living in my own house, having to cook for myself, clean after myself, and do my best to not be a hermit J My house is coming along quite nicely: I have three rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. All pcv’s who are not here as a married couple are given 5,000 D to purchase furnishings for their new homes. My big purchases were a fridge and a bed. And then after buying furnishings for my kitchen that I need to at least survive in my house, I quickly ran out of money. I have no chairs, no table, and no shelves yet. Hopefully within the next 6 months or so I will be able to make my house a decent home.

I want to tell you about weddings here. There are TONS of weddings in the summer time. I don’t quite know if I understand the whole ceremony, but I’ll do my best to explain what I have observed. So the whole wedding ceremony lasts about a week. On the first day, the women of the town all sit in a circle and sing songs, then from the roof-top of the house, someone sends down three baskets of barley, wheat, and corn. The women sort through the barley while singing and place it in a metal pot. They then top it off with some wheat and corn and someone takes it into the house to cook it. After the left-over grains are picked up, it turns into a huge dance party with drumming, chanting, and really awesome dancing. The following days are just dance-filled eating festivals. The women let me eat with them, even though I’m not married. After about an hour of dancing and drumming, they bring out a bunch of small tables that we gather around. There are usually four courses and they have been slightly different each time I have participated. The first course is usually a beef tajine, but sometimes it is couscous too. The second course is most likely another meat dish, like a chicken tajine topped with French fries. The third course is a sweet pasta dish called sfah. It is small spaghetti noodles with powdered sugar, crushed peanuts, and sometimes raisins. The last course is fruit, usually watermelon (Dllah) and honeydew melon (shlah). The dinner is usually around 8 or 9 pm, and then there is another music concert that starts at around 11 or 12am and doesn’t end until 5 or 6 in the morning!! It has been nice to participate in all of the festivities, but they are so tiring!! I am scheduled to go to at least two more weddings before my conference in ourzazateJ

A few more weeks and it will be the month of Ramadan. For those of you who don’t know of it, Ramadan is the Islamic month of fasting. From the time that the sun comes up to sunset,

First experience as a real volunteer!

So one of the things that we are told as trainees is that we won’t really do any “work” until about 3-6 months after swearing in. During this time we are supposed to focus on language and integrating into the culture. We meet the people who are in charge (authorities, presidents, principals, teachers, etc.) and establish a rapport so that they are more accepting of us teaching lessons in their classrooms and cooperating with us on projects.

I was giving a wonderful opportunity to help a second year volunteer on one of her projects in her site. She planned a field day for the grade school in her site and needed help with running the different activities. Her and another volunteer planned 6 health and environment activities for the kids that involved topics on smoking, hydration, hygiene, youth development, habitat preservation, and waste management. I helped with the hydration station. We taught the kids about the importance of drinking a lot of water, especially in the summer, and to demonstrate the amount of water they need to drink, they did a relay race where they filled their mouths with water and had to run to two empty 2-liter bottles and spit into them to fill them up. The kids loved it (maybe a little too much). Despite some really intense competitors who tried to carry the cup full of water to fill up the bottles faster, everyone played fairly. After the relay, we taught them how to make a rehydration drink with water, sugar, and salt. The kids hated the taste, but they understood that if you have sicknesses like diarrhea it is important to stay hydrated and you lose more than just water.

Helping out was really helpful with learning new words in tashelheit and it also allowed me to practice conversational speech and having to speak quickly. I also interesting to work with the Moroccan school system. We had to be ready for anything to happen; we had different plans of action of the teachers decided not to show up or if the principal cut our time with the kids down. And unfortunately all of those things did happen. We got through it though and the kids learned some good information.

As for a site update: things are unbelievably slow! It is just so hot here that people stay in their homes from around 10 to 7. I’m trying to keep myself busy with studying language and being around people as much as possible, but I am really looking forward to having my own house. My Arabic script is coming along pretty well. I can write a few words and read a bit. My only problem is that I don’t know what the words mean . The past week has been really hard as far as language goes. Some days are better than others. Sometimes it is hard to keep trying to talk and have conversations when people can’t understand my accent and I can’t understand all that they are saying. I just hope that the light bulb clicks on soon.

Some new experiences include actually making bread in the oven and drawing up water from the well. I helped my aunt draw water all day so that she could get a roof put on her new house. I also found a house! I hope to spend my first night there tonight! Again (and I know I have said this a lot) I will keep working on getting pictures up as soon as I have good internet reception. Peace for now!

Happy belated independence day!

Agadir trip! ishwa bzzaf!

First time to see the Atlantic!

So it has been a little over two weeks in my site and things are starting to have a slower and slower pace. We are still working out transportation in and out of our site. hopefully we will be able to find better contacts that we can call upon. We are starting to develop a rapport with the taxi owners around town, so that helps a lot. Because my site is so far from the main road, I have to bike or walk to the my souk town that is on the paved road that the cars drive down, about 8km away from my home. The main problem is that not a lot of people travel a lot to my nearest major city, and they only will go if they have a full taxi (6 people). It is either a long wait or we pay for all of the seats, which is a lot of money.

I’m still getting used to my family and how everything works. I am starting to really feel the cultural differences as far as sense of time goes. I have many an awkward feeling when I am just sitting down with them for hours at a time while they work on spinning their wool or making these really neat bread containers called “agunins”. But just sitting down and listening to them speak really helps me out. I tried to spin wool, but it takes some getting used to. It is amazing to see the whole proccess of how things are made. Once they shave the wool off, they wash it, let it dry, pick through it for debris, brush it, then spin it. Then they will use it to make blankets. How cool!

I went to my first “sobey” which is a baby-naming ceremony. There is a ton of dancing, music, songs, and food. And it is all of the women in the town that are there. No men allowed! I am determined to learn at least one song and play the drum by the time summer is over. There are a lot of pregnancies and births in my site, so I should be able to get a lot of practice in.

I took my first trip to Agade this weekend and swam in the Atlantic Ocean!! Agade is a nice city, but it is a little too big for me. It is nice to get a break from the religiously driven cultural norms and wear shorts and short sleeves. There are also a McDonalds and a Pizza Hut there too. Not my cup of tea, but the other volunteers were so happy!! The beach was fantastic!! The only annoying part was all of the solicitors walking by every few minutes asking us if we want to jet ski, use an umbrella, and by expensive food and jewelry. Other than that, it was so great! I definitely got my fill of sun… too much in fact, because my back is so sore from burns! I won’t see the ocean again for a while so I guess it is worth it. There is also a supermarket equivalent to Wal-Mart here. Marjan is sinful. You can buy flat screen TV’s, laptops, patio furniture, Oreos, good lotion! It is really expensive though, so it can be dangerous if you don’t keep track of what you are buying. It really makes me excited for my house though J

much apologies for the delay

It has been way too long since I last reported what has been going on here, especially when so much has happened! Much apologies to those wonderful people who want to keep up with how I am doing!

So as of May 5th (happy cinco de mayo!) I am officially an employee of sorts of the U.S. government as a peace corps volunteer!! We finished up our training in our village a few days before that. Our final assignment was to create a health lesson and present it to our specified audience. My PST site mates and I decided on creating a presentation on germ awareness and to speak to a classroom of 9-10 year olds. One of our site mates is a tremendously talented artist and created a wonderful poster for us. We had the kids play a game of "hot apple" and tossed around an apple that secretly had glitter on it to show how germs spread. Then we had extra apples and we practiced washing our hands and the apples, then afterwards we divided the apples and had a nice snack. Even with a bit of language difficulties, it was a really good lesson. The kids seemed to enjoy the activities and they were already pretty knowledgeable of germs and what they do. On our last evening in our PST site, we invited all of the families over for a going away/thank you party. We had no idea that we would end up hosting the whole village! people brought drums and various instruments over and our host moms dressed all of us girls up in the traditional wedding outfits. It was awesome! Fortunately we had enough cookies and fruit for everyone who came by. Leaving the next day was difficult though. The night before, my sister took me around to her friends houses for me to say good bye. There was a lot of crying and even my sister eventually broke down that morning that we had to leave. I really was blessed to have such a wonderful host family there. Luckily our PPST (another training session after 3 months of being in our final sites) will only be 30 minutes away from my PST site so I will be able to go visit them soon!

So I am finally at my site and starting to get settled in to the expectations for the next two years! My host family is really nice here, but definitely different than in PST. I have a much larger family; 2 sisters and 3 brothers ranging from 16 years old to 4 years old. My sister makes bread every day and it is soo delicious!! I have had so many different types of food here: Tagula, tasaht, tabaht, and I witnessed my first lizard tajine...and I know that I saw that same lizard alive the day before with a string tied around its waist and being played with...I'm still getting used to the way animals are treated here. I will definitely never be used to it, but maybe I will be able make a difference later on when my language skills are better.

So for the first week here in site, my site mate and I have visited the local medical clinic and the high school. The workers at the health clinic are very accommodating, which isn't always the case here. We hope to visit the other schools in the next couple of weeks. We have to do a lot of traveling for various PC business. I am going to visit Agadir next weekend!! It is a coastal city that is very modern, from what I hear!

More pictures are to come! Stay tuned!

one month in...I'm ready for more!

It has been a whole month since I've been in Morocco! I really can't believe it. It has been so long since I have written, I'll try to remember everything.

reflection on packing:

Even though I tried to do all of this research and preparation, I feel like I didn't pack as well as I should. For the most part, I feel like my clothes are more casual than what is expected here. Everyone dresses in matching clothes and is always very well kept and looking nice, even if it is to walk down to a neighbor's house. Image really means a lot here. And while I feel like I have adequate clothes to cover myself up, they really aren't pieces to make one outfit. I am given a good amount of walk around allowance so I plan on buying some clothes that are more Moroccan style. Bargaining is usually the way you buy things like clothes here and I'm still not confident to do that, so it might be a little while before I get some good clothes.

CBT site:

My Moroccan family is so great! I have a forty year old sister and her mom. My sister isn't married yet, but she knows practically all of the women and families in the town. Our house is really nice and I have a big room all to myself. I sleep on the floor on a ton of blankets so it's pretty comfortable. And I'm able to do yoga, read, and just have some time to myself if I need it, which can be quite a luxury when comparing my situation with other PCTs. My mornings for the past 3 weeks have been pretty repertory. I wake up and get ready, have my breakfast of bread, olive oil, jam, and really sweet tea, and get to the LCF's house for class. We study language until 10 and have another breakfast of bread, jam, olive oil, and sweet tea. We continue to study until 12:30 and eat lunch. It is usually a salad dish of different veggies and rice, followed by a tajine. Since the tajine always has meat it in, our cook makes a separate dish of lentils or lubia for me. She is truly an amazing cook! So we have our lunch from 12:30 - 2, which gives us a lot of time after eating to relax, maybe take a nap. We begin studying until 4, then we have another break consisting of more tea, cookies or cakes, and bread with all the fixins (jam, oil, honey). After break, we study cross culture or just study language until 5:30. I usually go home right after to talk to my sister and she usually wants me to eat again. Depending on what feels right, I may go hang out with her and her friends from the neighborhood, or go to a nearby bridge where a lot of younger kids play after school. Once it gets dark, I stay home and try to speak with my family or watch tv with them. Dinner is usually at 9 or 930, and I typically go to bed right after. So if you've lost track, I usually eat about 5 or 6 times a day. I'm getting overloaded on sugar and bread! I've started to have a little more control over what I'm eating because my language is getting better and my family and I are more comfortable with each other. I'm starting to do more things around the house too. I help with the dishes and helped make spaghetti for dinner the other night. It is definitely a step by step process (imik s imik)

New experiences:

Although my village has electricity, very few households have washing machines. I'm fortunate to have one in my house, but I figured it is good to learn new skills that I may need later, so I learned how to wash my clothes in the river. It was such a great experience! All I need is some tide, a couple of buckets of different sizes, dirty clothes, and a frraka, which is a long wooden board with ridges on it. I would hawl all of my stuff to the river, fill up my bucket with some water, add my clothes and some tide, let them soak for a bit, then get to work on the frakka. There seems to be a certain method when washing clothes this way, because I was constantly getting advice on how to do it. Some girls even offered to step in and do the washing themselves. I gave in because it was faster and we were getting a lot of wind that day, but it would have been nice to figure it out on my own. I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunities though. mashi mushkill. The really hard thing for me was making sure that all of the detergent was rinsed out of the clothes. If not, they dry really stiff. Not fun. It takes a long time (obviously) but it is a great way to socialize with the women of the community. And everyone seemed pretty impressed with me too.

Another interesting experience has been going to other peoples' houses for dinner. Us 5 PCTs at my CBT site have been the talk of the village since we got here and all of our host families are wanting us to come to dinner. Observing dinner customs is such a good way to gain insight into their lifestyles and practices. There was one particular dinner that was really different from all of the others. Islam is the largest practicing religion in Morocco, and like all religions, some families practice slightly different customs of the religion. With this family, males and females were completely segregated the whole night during dinner. I only saw the males in our group when we first got there and when we left. That was the first time that I went to a dinner like that.

As part of our cross cultural training, we learn about the religion of Islam. One thing that we discussed is the way animals are killed for food. Some of my site mates were able to witness this first-hand. They bought a live rabbit and kept it at the LCF's house for 2 days. On the morning of the second day, one of the local butchers came over and three of the five of us (me not included) witnessed the slaughter of the rabbit outside the front door of the house. It is interesting to see the differences in how most people here view the death and eating of animals. It is still a hard topic to discuss here, but I'm getting better at voicing my opinions. I don't want to take away an experience that someone feels they should have, even if I don't agree with it. It is still tough to witness the treatment of animals here though.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in the last blog, but I experienced a hammam! It is basically like a steam sauna. There are public hammams, but I have only gone to private ones where only a couple of other people are in them and I know who they are. At first it is really gross to be able to physically see how dirty your skin is, but you get used to it.

Hub site:

About every week or so, all of the health pcts gather in the big city for technical training, debriefing, and western toilets :) It is always a ton of information, but it is really helpful and certainly useful. I feel like we won't truly understand the importance of it all until we are at our sites and experience things first hand. It is hard to stay proactive and attentive because the weeks have been so tiresome. It's just a constant flow of information and being at this place at this time, and not having time to get all of the fun errands done. I am getting better about managing my time, though. And this won't last forever, so that is good to know.

What's to come:

I have a meeting with the site director next week about my placement. I won't know about my site for a couple of weeks, but will be able to visit it for a week before I get stationed there. Because of the language that I am learning, I will most likely be placed in the southern part. I am hoping that it is near the ocean (only an hour or 2 away)! I'll keep you updated on it as soon as I am able!

til next time!

Najat

only two days...feels like two weeks

Hey! I'm sorry I don't have a lot of time, but just a quick update! This is so hard because so much has gone on! I hope that tomorrow, I will be able to go to a cyber cafe and have more time. So my training site is a small town by Ouarzazat. I am learning Tashelheet, which is one of the three berber languages. My host mom and sister are really nice. My sister is 40, so I have a more sophisticated look at moroccan life. My language and cultural trainer is awesome!! We are at school from 8 to 530 with lunch and two breaks. I am constantly stuffed with bread, oil, olives, rice, and some fruits and veggies. WHen my LCF told my host sister about my diet, I could just tell she was having a hard time accepting that. I told him to tell her that I am flexible and that we can work on this together. As far as vegan acceptance goes, people have been so kind and open to it. Our cook for lunch is so great. She cooks a variety of beans in a special dish just for me and I think she talked to my sister about it too. And yesterday at a ceremony I went to, they brought out tea for me while everyone had coffee. I got henna yesterday!! Oh it is so great. OH and for the concerned family members, I HAVE t.v (a.k.a. electricity) and a cell phone that will pretty much work anywhere I am at in Morocco. Mashi mushkill (no worries!) :)) Thats all I can think of for now. Language is intense and difficult but I'm getting it pretty well and technical training and preparation for our assignments is really good too. I forsee many good things coming from this experience (ensha-alah)!!

Blsama!!

Najart (my tashelheet name - it means secure!)