Just Wrapping Up Site Visit

20 April

Two full days into the site visit now I feel like I can start to give a few general impressions about the place.  Bjai and I arrived at our sites on Sunday afternoon, after having spent the night in the city of Tata.  All of us new Tata PCT’s (Alisa, Monica, Samantha, Bjai, and myself) rode on a direct bus from Ouarzazate to Tata, which for some reason left in the middle of the afternoon and so didn’t arrive in Tata until almost 9pm.  This meant that for the last couple of hours we weren’t able to see anything out the window about what our new province actually looks like, other than that there wasn’t much to see.  It started to get pretty funny; we were getting texts from our friends in other provinces who had been arriving throughout the day asking what it was like, and all we could say was “um, we’re still on the bus and it’s very, very dark.” 

When we finally arrived, almost all of the current PCV’s from Tata were waiting for us.  One of them happens to live right near where the bus comes in, and she had thoughtfully planned to have dinner waiting for us—homecooked Thai food which was incredible.  They were all extremely welcoming and reassuring.  Two of them are just about to COS (finish service) and so two from our group are their replacements.  There was obviously a pretty tight bond between all of the current PCV’s, despite their being from several different sectors and several hours apart, which was really nice to see.  I hope this new configuration of the group is able to keep that going.

The next morning, following the very well though-out plan that Peace Corps had put together for us, each of us was escorted to our new site by one of the current volunteers.  Since Bjai and I are sitemates at new sites, that meant that no one exactly knew how to get there, but we managed to figure it out.  Already, I can see that one of the biggest challenges for my site is going to be transportation.  Because my village is so small and remote, getting a taxi to there from Tata is difficult, expensive, or both.  Getting a taxi out and back to Tata, I’ll probably have head over to the souq town, which is about a 5km walk along a dirt road.  We’re supposed to be getting bikes as soon as we land here for good, and Rachid promised us that we would be the first to receive them since our site so desperately requires them.

I already knew what to expect about my new host family from the data sheet I received:  an older couple (60 and 56), two older daughters (33 and 28), and two younger sons (21  and 10).  I actually think the 10-year old boy is a grandson, but I haven’t been able to figure out who his parents are if so.  My host dad is Mohmed and I could tell within the first few minutes that we weren’t going to have any problems.  Some people, regardless of whatever linguistic or cultural barriers might exist, you can just tell by looking at them that they are trustworthy.  His demeanor is very much like what I remember best about my own father:  straightforward yet modest, with a gentle good humor to everything he does.  He’s taken me under his wing from the very start, and as long I stick with him I don’t think I’ll have any trouble integrating with the men in this community.  Last night we went to a prayer dinner at some kind of community hall.  40 days after someone dies, people gather again to read from the Qur’an and mark and end to the mourning period (I’m sure I’m getting some of these details wrong), so this was an event like that with maybe 50 men and me.  They couldn’t possibly have made me feel any more welcome, and it was a great way to show my face to a lot of the community for the first time.  Mohmed was clearly enjoying showing me off as his new prized possession.

Tata is not nearly as conservative (at least from what I can gather in 2 days) as I was led to believe it would be before I got here.  Women walk by themselves in the street, men and women sit together in most houses, and most women are not fully covered.  That, plus the extraordinary niceness of the people is going to help offset the fact that is really difficult country down here.  It’s not desert like the sand dunes we think of as the classic Sahara, but very stony and dry.  The only fields for agriculture are clustered around little oases, mostly of date-palms but some assorted traditional crops underneath.  Each village has its own little oasis, and they’re beautiful.  It makes me think of some Biblical village straight out of the old testament.  The architecture reinforces that as well, with stacked stone being the preferred building material.  New structures will have a cinderblock or cement frame inside.  Those materials do manage to keep the buildings pretty cool inside.  It’s only April, and it’s already hard to do anything outside from about 11am until 5pm.  I’m really afraid to think of what it’s going to be like over the summer…