Goats For Gals Is On The Air

Last week, after much anticipation and many delays, the goats were received in Akka Ighane.  I made a visit to them and their new pen area (maintained by the Association) just to peek in and have a look and take a few photos.  We got:  1 buck, 9 mature females (3 of which are now pregnant), and 3 babies.  Quite a bit more than the original grant money was supposed to cover, so I'm very pleased.  The Association has really done an excellent job so far of fulfilling their end of the agreement, of which providing the pen area and food was a major part.  Right now they're eating a combination of barley (from the local fields), alfalfa (from local fields), some kind of prepared food mixture, and of course everyone's household food waste. Several of them also tried to eat my shoelaces right off my feet.  I have full confidence that the project is going to grow and thrive in the coming months and years.

Again, these are Alpine dairy goats, which look nothing at all like the native goats you see everywhere in Morocco.  They're much bigger, have horns (both sexes), and a much lighter, smoother coat.  And they produce a lot of milk, about 3 liters/day.  After I mentioned that I would like to sample some of the milk sometime, one of the women responsible for looking after them insisted on immediately milking the 3 goats that are currently producing and sending me and Bjai home with a bottle.  It was delicious, not nearly so heavy as straight cow's milk, and very sweet.  White gold!

The Buck (note his gruff)

When I have a faster connection soon, I'll also post the rest of the pictures on my Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eriksyngle/

Classroom Project Update

Before Goats For Gals, the other major project I worked on in my site was get a new classroom and bathrooms built for the Community Association of the village.  In a nutshell it's this:  the Association, which until a couple years ago had been fairly inactive, opened a new preschool building (occupying a small part of the Association grounds) a few months after I moved here.  The preschool has been successful, but like all public and most private buildings in the village, it lacks latrines.  As a Community Health Volunteer, one of my primary tasks is to improve community sanitation standards, often by building new latrine facilities and educating about their importance, hygienic use, and care.  At the same time, the members of the Association were coming to me with ideas for expanding their campus to build a new classroom for a women's literacy group, which was just beginning to form but didn't have a proper place to meet.  Eventually, these two projects got rolled up into one, and we got funding from USAID for constructing a new building that will house a dedicated classroom for the women's literacy group, and two new bathrooms which will serve both the preschool and the women's classroom.  We hope to have construction finished before the beginning of February.  Here's some snapshots along the way.

Front view of the Association complex

The site before construction began

Inside the preschool classroom

During construction, recently

Some Old News

Back in September, I was fortunate enough to get to help out Maureen, a PCV friend of mine, with a project in Ouarzazate, co-facilitating a 4-day workshop teaching basic journalism skills to a group of (mostly) high school age students at her Dar Chebab (youth center).  The project was a great success and got highlighted by official Peace Corps and US Embassy Press, as well as filmed for part of new series of short films called Peace Corps Postcards (though that particular postcard apparently hasn't been edited or uploaded yet, it should be coming soon and the others are worth checking out).  It was great fun, and from what I've heard, the kids involved have really been following through on the project, creating and sustaining their own journalism club that posts original reporting, in English, online.  I'm hoping to replicate the project in miniature for the Tata Spring Camp in a few months.