Weekly Digest

31 March

Just some assorted notes on the eve of another hub session in Ouarzazate:

-Today marks the end of Phase I of our training.  This hub visit is kind of like “midterms”; we have a language progress assessment and some evaluations.  By the time I post this, it will be one month since we staged.  I can say with little hyperbole that it’s been the longest month of my life, but it feels good to reach a little milestone.

-Though I think I’m on track to meet the minimum expected language requirements to be sworn in as a Volunteer, I’m realizing how insufficient that’s going to be.  There is so much to absorb, and there’s a big difference in what I can learn in class and what I learn out of class.  Obviously, you can’t get fluent in a language from 6 hours of classroom time 6 days a week over 2 months, but at least in that setting there is a teacher who speaks English who can answer questions, a white board and notebooks to write on, and a textbook to refer to.  I feel like I’m absorbing, retaining, and using that material.  But you can only cover so much in class, and what people speak out in the world can be very different.  In real-world settings, you can’t always write everything down or ask people to repeat themselves a hundred times, and for the stuff I’m learning that way, I’m not happy with the speed I’m absorbing it.  There is no way I’ll be fluent enough in Tashlheet to do my job (which starts in 5 weeks) as well as I would like to in the time remaining.  Today we had a session about how to describe the Peace Corps, its mission, goals, and our work in the Health sector in Tash, and the chasm between the language required to do that effectively and what I have right now was daunting.  And that’s going to be my job, essentially, to talk to people about their health.  I know this is normal and this is the process and I’m trying not to get frustrated, but it’s hard.  I’ve made more progress than I thought would be possible in the time frame, but the expectations keep rising.

-I haven’t yet taken any pictures inside my host family’s house, but I still plan to.  I didn’t during the first week because I wanted to give them a little time to get used to me before I just whipped out my camera and photographed their most private spaces.  Now I think the trust is there to do that without any issue, but I just haven’t had the chance.  It’s always dark when I get home from l-mdrassa, and (like all houses in the village) our house is very poorly lit inside, with just one low-wattage bulb per room.  So I have to wait until the weekend when I’m actually home during daylight hours if I want to be able to take any pics that will actually let you see the place well.

-The kids are just awesome here.  My youngest host brother, Khalil, is so handsome that all the girls in my CBT group have a crush on him. (He’s 12.)  Every single kid in the whole village seems to know all of our names, even the ones we haven’t met.  They seem to be in a perpetual good mood, are easily entertained by the simplest games and activities, and probably teach us as much as the adults.  I’ve never seen any kid here be bratty or give his/her parents a hard time about anything.  (I’m sure it happens, but not in public, anyway.)  It’s just impossible to be in a bad mood when there’s a group of kids around.  Tiffawt’s little sister is adorable and obviously very smart.  She’s also about 12 and apparently no longer in school, which is heartbreaking but a pretty common story around here.

28 March

Another terrific new experience today, right out of the Peace Corps textbook: I washed my clothes in the river.  I don’t actually have to do it this way; my family has a washing machine at home and my host mom has very generously been doing my laundry for me.  It’s about a quarter of the size of the machines in the States and it’s kept in the kitchen.  I haven’t yet seen in action, but it seems to do a decent job, and of course we still have to line-dry everything, which leaves clothes pretty stiff and wrinkly.  (Something I’ve used all my life and never appreciated what it actually does until now: fabric softener.)  But the other day, Mehjouba asked me at breakfast about whether I do housework in the States, and I took this as an indirect statement that I need to be doing more around the house to earn my keep. We’ve been learning in training about the direct/indirect styles of communication that distinguish the U.S. and Morocco, and I had already been starting to feel that I should do more.  It’s just been so hard with 10 hours of school each day, and more studying expected after that, I’ve barely had time for anything else.  Anyway, Njat had done her laundry in the river a couple weeks ago and was planning to go again on Sunday, so I said I’d join in as well, just to see what it’s like.

Our house is about a 10 minute walk to the river.  I had to carry all the clothes I planned to wash, plus a bucket, a large washing tub, and a wooden scrubbing surface.  It was a tough haul, and I only took a few clothes—many of the women carry all the rugs from their house back and forth, tied on their backs.  Mehjouba thought it was hilarious that I was doing this, and kept mock-offering me her rugs and her clothes as well.  And well she should; it was probably a major event in her life when she got that washing machine and didn’t have to do that anymore.  The river on a Sunday afternoon was pretty hopping.  There were maybe 25 or 30 women, all of whom also thought it was hilarious that I was washing my clothes there.  Needless to say, I was the only adult male present, and I wondered if it was culturally appropriate for me to be there at all.  Most of the women had their bottoms rolled up their legs for wading in the river,  and were generally a lot less conservatively dressed than when I see them elsewhere.  But they didn’t seem to mind me, and several actually helped show me how it’s done, and I even had to step in and take my clothes back more than once to keep them for washing them for me.  It was the middle of the day and starting to get really hot, so if you had to be outside I could think of worse ways to pass the time than wading around and splashing in a cool river.  The mood was really light and fun—everyone was joking with each other and it didn’t feel like drudgery at all.

To dry, we delicately stretch the clothes over some bushes nearby, and the sun bakes them within half an hour.  The problem is, it’s so dusty and windy in our area that the big gusts of wind deposit sand and dirt in the clothes while they’re drying.  I think a lot my stuff probably came back dirtier than it went out.  But it didn’t matter, I’m glad I did it anyway.  I think I earned some credibility, and it was a great way to meet people in an informal setting.  I’m definitely going to try this again, esp. when I get to my final site.

27 March

Perhaps I have a tendency to romanticize my own experiences even while they’re happening, but I can’t read this below without getting a little misty.  From President Kennedy’s statement regarding the creation of the Peace Corps, 1 March 1961 (to be read aloud with your best inner JFK voice):

The initial reactions to the Peace Corps proposal are convincing proof that we have, in this country, an immense reservoir of such men and women—anxious to sacrifice their energies and time and toil to the cause of world peace and human progress. 

We will only send abroad Americans who are wanted by the host country—who have a real job to do—and who are qualified to do that job.  Programs will be developed with care, and after full negotiation, in order to make sure that the Peace Corps is wanted and will contribute to the welfare of other people.  Our Peace Corps is not designed as an instrument of diplomacy or propaganda or ideological conflict.  It is designed to permit our people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world development.

Life in the Peace Corps will not be easy... Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals in the country in which they are stationed—doing the same work, eating the same food, and talking the same language.

But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying.  For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps—who works in a foreign land—will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace.

26 March

Back yesterday from a 2-day hub session in Ouarzazate.  The presentation of our community assessment project went pretty well, even if was pretty much the same as everyone else’s.  Send 9 groups of about 5 people into various villages around the province with the same set of instructions and—surprise—you wind up with 9 pretty similar PowerPoint presentations.  But it was good, a useful exercise.  It will be harder when I have to do the same thing by myself at my final site, though my Tashlheet should be a lot better by then.  Of course, I’ll also have three months to do it as opposed to twelve days.  I’m starting to understand what they tell us about the period of initial community entry really being the make-or-break period for our service.  If you don’t establish credibility and start to build strong relationships in your community from the start, it’s very hard to have an effective 1.75 years after that.  I have learned the lesson; the question is, can I now apply it?

It’s always nice to get away to Ouarzazate, see the whole group and socialize like a bunch of high school kids on lunch break (and shower, did I mention shower?) but it’s also very disruptive to the acclamation process.  After a day and a half, no one really feels like going back.   There’s a pretty somber mood in the air as those grand taxis pull up to take us all back to our villages.  And from a language standpoint, going almost two days without practicing or even listening to Tashlheet (being yanked out of total immersion) is murder.  It makes me realize just how weak these new mental muscles are and how much I have to be constantly working them just to retain what little I’ve learned so far.  I would say it’s taken the last 24 hours to get back to where I was before the hub.  Again, I get the point:  immersion and practice, practice, practice are the only way to get this done.  It’s just so mentally exhausting, and there’s so much temptation to find little spaces where you can escape, but ultimately that’s just holding you back.

On the lighter side, we have a rabbit in our LCF house at the moment.  Unfortunately, he’s supposed to be lunch tomorrow.  I guess with some of the smaller animals that you can buy to eat around here (like chickens) it’s not uncommon to keep them at home for a little while before eating them, even for households that don’t keep livestock.  You can take it to the butcher and he’ll do the deed for you in the proper halal fashion (facing Mecca, Qur’an verses read, jugular slit in one motion, etc.) for a fee, and on certain major holidays people even do it themselves at home.  The problem is, it’s pretty easy to get attached to a cute fuzzy bunny, so I’m trying to stay away from it. (The even named it Tariq after me.)  We also have one vegetarian in our group, and even though she’s very cool with our meat consumption, she has the same unease about this situation that I do.  I realize that the meat situation here in Morocco is a million times better than in the States.  Animals are, for the most part, raised humanely, fed appropriate food, given an appropriate amount of land to roam on, not given drugs or other nasty things, and basically allowed to live a decent life up until the moment they are killed.  I like all that.  The hard part is, you also are faced with the reality that you have to look your dinner in the eye before (and sometimes while) you eat it.  As Americans we’re used to sentimentalizing the experience of animals because most of us only ever see them as pets, and all that other stuff is intentionally hidden from us.  The people here just see animals in a different way.  They’re property, assets, food, resources—something to be respected and treated with care, definitely, but not something you get attached to or worry about its feelings.  That’s going to take some getting used to.

One of the questions I get asked the most by people is what do Health Educators actually do?  I haven’t had much of a detailed answer because I haven’t really understood myself.  So far, almost all of our training has focused on language and culture acquisition without anything very specific to the Health Sector, but that’s starting to change.  We learned a bit about the project goals for our whole Sector over the next 2+ years, and in the next few weeks we’ll really get into it.  I’ll piece it out over time because it’s long.  Here are some of the objectives for educating community members (keep in mind this is all happening in rural and often remote small communities like the one I’m currently in):

-By December 2012, educate 40,000 men and women of childbearing age about the importance of prenatal care…and as a result, 2,000 pregnant women will complete 3 standard pre-natal checkups at the local health clinic before giving birth.

-Educate 30,000 students (boys and girls 5-14) regarding nutrition and personal hygiene.

-Provide STI and HIV/AIDS education sessions for 30,00 people and organize life skills training for 2,500 community youth.  As a result 20,000 individuals will demonstrate increased knowledge about transmission modes and prevention of HIV/AIDS and 1500 youth will declare their intent to adopt at least one preventative measure to reduce their risk of contracting HIV.