Thursday, October 6, 2011

morocco round 2

 Hello all,
So here is my update way long overdue. To be fair, I do not have internet readily available. My host family has internet, but the concept of typing it on a French keyboard would be painful to both me and you all, so I decided it was better to wait.

This update took a lot of time I’ll have you know, mostly because the internet here at the welcoming center is very slow, especially considering there’s about 40 other pcv’s who are desperate for internet.

Things are going really well here. For those of you who didn’t know training happened in the city Fes, and while most of the other PCV’s headed off to other towns and cities in the surrounding area I got selected to be the guinea pig group for the first time in the city of Fes. Fes is a city of about 1-2 million people depending on where you look and who you’re talking too. I live in the neighborhood of zohour which is very busy. I live right off a street that has a market (known as souq) every day from about 4-12am. It gets noisy. There's a picture below with explanations so you can see the differences.  Things start picking up around 4:30- people selling vegetables and fruit out of the back of little flatbeds attached to motorcycle or these two wheeled pushed tables. The fruits and vegetables here are great. I love them so much. There are so many new things to try and taste- my favorite fruit is definitely a cactus fruit called Hendia- it’s green and sweet and incredible juicy. The only downside is there’s a ton of seeds, you just have to ignore them. In general there’s a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables here, and although the food is often based around or cooked with meat, it’s been very easy being a vegetarian here.  You, the audience at home, can make a very easy Moroccan dish! We had it last night and it was delicious; take rice, raisins, sliced apples and banana’s, and cut up dates and put them cold in the bowl then blend up 1 large avocado 2 small banana’s and a liter of milk then blend them up with a decent amount of sugar then pour that over the rice and fruit mixture. Yum. I plan on making this in the summer but adding some more stuff like nuts and maybe strawberries.

The food here is fantastic and the coolest thing about it all is that at meals everyone eats from one communal dish, more often then not without utensils. You use your right hand only though, because with Turkish toilets, you use your left hand to do your business. (I am luckily enough to have a western toilet in my house though). I am also in carbo-overload, they do not shy away from bread- known as xubz- my host mom makes ours herself, but we usually run out faster then she can make it, and it’s really easy to buy more right outside our door. Since I’ve been here I’ve helped make a biscotti type cookie, as well as help the upstairs neighbors make peanut butter ball cookies for an upcoming wedding.

My days are mostly occupied by language classes where I’m learning Dirija (Moroccan Arabic) Shwiya beh shwiya- or little by little as they say here. There’s a lot of consonants placed together in this language (take the verb to work for an example- xdm) so it’s part luck, part memorization and part slaving your mouth into making the sounds. I am really excited to be learning another language, but man was it easier when I was 16. The best part for me so far is learning the Arabic script. It’s been a dream of mine to learn Arabic since 2002- so I’m using this opportunity to at least get the alphabet under my belt. Besides language classes, there’s a lot of sitting in the living room studying, procrastinating studying and going out shopping with my host mom for dinner supplies. I’m looking forward to upcoming Sundays off where I can hopefully travel to other Peace corps volunteers sites and visit somewhere besides Fes. Don’t get me wrong, Fes is great , but it’s nice to see somewhere less urban then this big city. Last weekend going to Sefrou with my family was definitely a breath of fresh air, no car horns, kids crying or yelling neighbors below. Also getting to walk around amongst trees was an incredible soul rejuvenation.

I worked really hard to not have expectations when coming over to Morocco, which is good, but it was hard not to. Expectations are hard to live up to, and so far I don’t know if my expectations can even fit into my experience here. Morocco is way more developed then I had imagined a peace corps country would be.  I have access to  western toilets, American television, washing machines, let alone the running water and electricity. Don’t get me wrong I really love Morocco- I love the food, the music, the clothes, the colors and all the new things I’m going to get to do here, but at the same time I was hoping for something…. Quieter is maybe the word I’m going for. I’m looking forward to getting my full time site (fingers crossed a smaller town or city).  All in all, I am 97.99% excited to be here and loving it, but every once in a while, but while I sit in my bed hearing car horns- I would trade anything for the sound of sheep, donkeys, crickets or chickens. And kids, that’s why you don’t go into situations with expectations, because even though 97.99% of the time I am 110% pumped about being here and all that I’m going to do,  that 2.1% is still there.

Anyways. Moving on to pictures! Here they are, with even more words underneath. Whew.

me and my roomates from training, kim, sarah and myself

 even in a city of 1 million people seeing donkeys or horses on the street is fairly common here in fes, as is seeing people riding double on mopeds with kids babies and even german shepards.


 gary and rachel at the cafe across the street from the youth center (dar shabab) where we drink our qhwah or coffee during breaks in our language classes.

the view from our classroom, a typical day

 the view from my street at around 12  in the afternoon

 the view at 4:30- this isn't even considered crowded yet the area on the right fills in way more with guys selling fruits and veg

 my host aunt took me to her sisters house in the next town over called Sefrou- a huge difference between fes and here. Sefrou was so quiet! It was a great day! we went to her house (which was gorgeous) and had delicious food and she gave me a modern jlaba. We had a very relaxing day where we looked out over the city then went down to the waterfall. The coolest thing about my host aunt who lives in Sefrou is that she is the president of a woman's artisan partnership and has all of these looms in her basement.
loom in her basement!
There are about 42 women who participate and make all sorts of things, blankets, rugs and shawls. She makes all the dyes herself using plants. I got to try making this rug, which wasn't hard, but I couldn't imagine making a huge rug, time consuming for sure. 

me at the waterfall in Sefrou in my new jlaba. funny story: it's pretty common for men to harass women here and hamdullah (thanks god) i've been fairly lucky, almost being completely void of harassment, instead I get these crazy stares. I decided that I would be all integrated like and wear my jlaba to class the day after I got it- lo and behold, the first and only time I've been harassed. I thought that was funny. 

 my host father fouad and my host sister zineb.

zineb, she's two and adorable. I have two other host brothers, Youssef and Abdelqdr, but they occupy themselves more often then not with watching tv or playing games online, so I don't see all that much of them. They are very nice though. Also my host mom and dad are amazing. My host mother is an amazing cook and it's been fun getting to know here and hang out with her (speaking in french, not dirija. )

so.. now that i've made this blog post unbearably long, congrats if you've read this far. I promise I'll update more often from here on out, because it's time consuming for both me and you, also there's more stuff I would love to share that I have left out to spare this becoming even more rambly and long. so here's the first real update from morocco! i look forward to the rest of my time here.