Tuesday, February 21, 2012

it's been a long time coming

evidently, i am bad at this whole updating my blog thing.

the past few weeks have been less than ordinary, and i've had less frequent internet access then usual ( i know, excuses, excuses)

the beginning of the month i went to a fellow pcv's site and observed/helped out with a highly successful GLOW camp (girls leading our world). it was really fun to meet a whole bunch of pcv's (peace corps volunteers) that are here in their second year and get to witness a wildly successful pcv initiated camp! i had a lot of fun doing things like dance parties, henna and pretending i understood all the sessions in arabic about girls health. One of my favorite personal experiences was when i tried to explain my smokey the bear sticker on my water bottle to the girls in my group- i do not know the words for fire, bear, forest or environmental campaign- so it was a bit complicated. i drew a picture of a fire, said the word for tree, then drew a bunch of them, said, no, pointed to the fire, bad, pointed to the trees, then said publicity. the girls looked at me, and said "ok, thanks". it's good to know i can confuse children equilaterally across all cultural and geographical boundaries. the coolest thing is there was a lot of media coverage, a suprising number of people in my town have said they saw me on tv! here's the link.

after the week long camp i started the arduous journey up over the high atlas mountains to my IST (in service training). My staj was lucky enough to be in the beautiful beach town of Mehidia, near Rabat, it took about 12-13 hours total to get from my tiny town to Mehidia. I was able to break it up over 3 days or so, spending the night in Ourzazate, then another near Marakesh before arriving on the coast on the other side of the county. I realized in speaking with other volunteers just how difficult it is to get in and out of my site. I'm really thankful for it actually. Because Morocco has such great systems of transportation in place it makes travelling a lot easier then i was expecting when i signed up for the peace corps. PC Morocco has a different culture then i had anticipated when joining the peace corps; its proximity to europe and transportation infrastructure makes it not only easy but almost expected that pcv's will travel around, to either the bigger cities in country or to europe, the only place that's not easy to travel to is africa (moroccan's do not consider themselves part of africa, and most days i don't feel like i'm in africa either).
 IST was hard for me in a few ways. I found myself faced with problems i wasn't expecting to have to be dealing with when i was in the Peace Corps. The one thing people always tell you before doing something like this is to have no expectations. As much as we all try it's more or less impossible to do that, and i had thought the small number of expectations i had in my brain were more or less reasonable for a peace corps volunteers; isolation, lack of amenities, difficulty cooking, daily comforts being adjusted, and not seeing/talking to americans for months at a time. None of these things have panned out to be true at all. Honestly adjusting my expectations UP has been one of the hardest things for me. I feel like I'm cheating, and i feel like you all feel the same way too (speaking to you few readers). some days i feel like im in a study abroad program, not the peace corps, and i think you all feel the same way, whether or not you tangibly recognize it. I didn't choose to be in peace corps morocco, with constant water and electricity, propane stove, 'free' cell phone, easy internet access, ease of travel, comforts and supermarkets with cereal and french and american foods (expensively) lining the shelves. I didn't ask for any of it. honestly, most days i wish i had that other set expectations. It's easy to adjust to that stuff, the adjustment here is different, and I don't know how to put it into words, maybe part of it is guilt, maybe part of it is the more "first-world"/american problems i find myself facing, maybe part of it is i haven't exactly figured out what i'm doing here, but whatever it is IST stirred those feelings all up. Nothing like putting 39 uncertain, adjusting, peace corps volunteers in a hotel together for a week to shake things up, throw things in your face, and make you laugh and smile all at the same time.
Long story short IST was actually really helpful, and i'm really glad we had it. The craziest thing is that IST is possibly the last time i will see some of those people before we all are convening in rabat for our close of service conference. That's pretty crazy to me.

Being out of my site for so long, made coming back such a relief. It was great to sleep in my own bed, cook my own food, see my host family and start up my english classes again. Having been a nomad/gypsy for so long, it's awesome to be here, in one place, and it's crazy how quickly i've nested in. I bought a new ponj (essentially a long rectangular couch cushion that you put on the floor) yesterday, and i've started decorating my house, finding places for things, and making this place a home. it's a good and new feeling.

i did my first big cooking adventure yesterday! it took 3 hours, and a bit of creative thinking, but i was able to make a pretty decent batch of pumpkin curry! my first hurtle was my mis-reading of the can the previous volunteer left me, what i thought was coconut milk, was, in fact, upon further inspection creme de coco, which is a lot sweeter, and thicker then coconut milk. I did some spontaneous thinking and scooped a big old spoonful of it  into my milk from a box and then added a bunch of salt and tomatoes- not your conventional curry, but it came out pretty good.

what else. i had a pretty moroccoed week too.
in marakesh, i was stupid and wasn't paying attention and i more or less watched a man steal a substantial amount of dirham from my backpack, that i had thought safe on the floor of the bus. not so! Moroccoed! (luckily all he got was money, i had a lot of other stuff which is much more valuable to me, so in the end, im almost grateful, because it could have been worse. I also made friends in the marakesh police, so that was fun. Morocco adventures!)

also in my attempts to get home after IST i was waiting in ourzazate for a taxi that would probably  never come, i was prepared to spend the night there and make my way back in the morning, but then i saw my tutor i said to him: (inshallah means god willing)

me: rachid! are you going to get back tonight to n'kob, it's getting late?
rachid: yes, inshallah, we will go to agdz first then we will get a taxi to n'kob
me: i was told that after a certain time there aren't any more taxi's to n'kob, are we really going to get back?
rachid: yes, inshallah
me: no, look, i need a solid, nishan (direct) yes or no, not inshallah, because i can sleep here for free, and i don't want to pay for a room somewhere else if we can't get back.
rachid: yes we will get back to n'kob tonight............. inshallah.

we did get back, but it was definitely more inshallah then nishan.  moroccoed

so.  that is all for now. i'm getting back into the groove of it. here's some pictures from the weeks past.

looking all integrated, with my new scarf! it is significantly warmer when you do this, i think i've found a new winter look! 

a view from the top one of the descents along the tishka pass. 

the tishka

one of the views of the tishka pass. that's the view of one of the worst parts of the voyage. around 45 minutes of climbing up and up and hairpin turns. 

why hello big truck filled with hay. 

a very moroccan over loaded truck. this happens with all sorts of supplies. 

the view from the beach. 

i like is. we make art. 

putting my nature's classroom skills to work for the beach fire. 

my friends lauren and sarah, im not usually very good at taking pictures of people, so im really proud of this one. i love these two people. 

i love this picture bc of the americn flag pants, i also love making fires, i totally commandeered this from mr shannon, thanks! 

everyone enjoying the fire

a group of pcv's hanging out on the beach

the view of my room to the right, i was surprised that i could hammer some nails into my concrete walls to hang up my scarves and flags. 

the decorations in my room. they keep falling down, so if anyone wants to send me poster putty, and a bunch of it , i would be much obliged. . 

where all the cooking magic happens! my wonderful kitchen. to the right is my current 'fridge' where i keep my veggies and yogurt, the middle is for everything else, and the left is for cleaning stuff, i have a map of morocco on the wall, that i have plans to fill in with pins for where all my friends are in morocco. 

this is the other side of my kitchen.  my precious few ziplock bags drying, and my kp calendar that was lovingly sent to me all the way from maine! that jug of water is for when the water goes out, which it inevitably will again.  

the view of my sleeping/clothign area of my room. the pink things on the wall on the right are my calendars, that im trying to make for every month i'm here, ill post a close up picture later, i've been trying to be creative with them. it's finally starting to feel cozy and homey here.