25 May
Apologies for not having posted in a while. Rezo (sp?) is local speak for wireless signal, which my computer also depends on to get connected to the internet. It’s been about three weeks since swearing-in and getting to site, and it’s been a strange mix of running around busy and confusingly idle. Here is a small sample of what I’ve been doing:
-Today, Bjai and I visited the l-mdrassa (elementary school) in her douar to sit in. We did this just so that this kids would see our faces and have some idea of who we are; we’re not at all ready yet to start giving lessons, and anyway school will be getting out for the summer very soon. I sat in on a class of about thirty kids (co-ed, aged around 10) for a couple of hours. For the first hour they were studying Arabic, and I was completely mystified. The primary language of instruction in Moroccan schools is classical Arabic. Then the class turned on a dime and switched to French. Not only was the subject material in French, but all of the instructions from the teacher were as well. The French was not nearly as advanced as the Arabic, so I was able to follow along a lot better. The energy from the kids in a class like that is really infectious. The stand up a sing a little song to any stanger who enters the classroom as if on cue. Apparently the children pick their own seats, so the front rows were filled the anxious kids who loved to raise their hands and had most of the correct answers, and as you gradually move to the back rows you find the kids who are barely paying attention and trying not to fall asleep. It was funny to see how some things are the same the world over. There were also a few special needs kids who were stuck in the back. The teacher said there weren’t any special programs for them.
Visits like this are part of my overall task right now, which is Community Entry. Put another way, it is to become known by as many people as possible in my douar, which you’d think wouldn’t be too difficult in a town of about 500 people. But there’s no organized way to go about a task like that. Having my host family is a great help, but as friendly as they are, they are not the most outgoing and social bunch. We get visits from the same two or three neighbors mostly. So I try to go on walks and meet people that way as well, but again, it’s a completely scattershot approach.
-This past weekend, a large group of us met up in Agadir, a touristy seaside town about six hours away. This was allegedly for a consolidation exercise (in which we rehearse how we would all meet up if there were any kind of national emergency), but everyone also stayed to enjoy the rest of the weekend there. Agadir is beautiful, but it didn’t feel like being in Morocco at all. The city was mostly destroyed by an earthquake in 1961, and when it was rebuilt they decided to focus the economy on tourism. (Some of the money to do this came from the States, which would explain why my hotel was located on Avenue John F. Kennedy.) There are large parks, street cafes on every corner that look like something you might find in any French city, and of course, the beach and all that usually comes with it. No surprise then that the town is full of European, mostly French tourists. It was a blast, but hard on the wallet of a poor PCV, and it did start to wear on me after a while. Nice to know that such as escape is nearby if I ever need it, though.
0 comments:
Post a Comment