and to think I used to be a vegetarian

view from my front door on a particularly foggy day

Happy early Thanksgiving! This week marked 8 months in country, and by and large it's gone by quickly, but spending the holidays here and without my family will be strange. It's pretty cold here, as measured by my very precise assessment that I can see my breath in my house at all times. Last week it snowed down the road from Azrou, but so far all we've had here is a lot of very chilly rain. My neighbors all have their little wood stoves going, but I don't have one, so I mostly just wear a lot of clothing and huddle under blankets (and occasionally invite myself into people's houses to sit in front of their stoves, which is totally acceptable here.) I don't have big plans for Thanksgiving, because we have a week-long training near Rabat at the beginning of December, and I'm looking forward to going south (to warmer regions!) for Christmas and New Year's, which is a lot of time out of site. (Side note: if you send me your address within the next two weeks, I'll send you a Christmas postcard!)

Speaking of holidays, last week was a big one here: technically called Eid al-Adha, usually translated as the Festival of Sacrifice, most people here just call it Eid l-Kbir, or the Big Holiday. (Eid l-Sghir, the Little Holiday, comes at the end of Ramadan.) Eid is based on the story in the Quran (which will sound familiar) when God commands Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismail, then stays his hand at the last minute and tells him to sacrifice a lamb instead.

To remember Ibrahim's devotion to God, every Muslim family that can afford it must sacrifice a sheep on Eid. The wealthier the family, the larger the sheep, partially because they're supposed to give some of it to poor families that can't afford their own sheep. (Supposedly some super-rich families in Fez slaughter a whole cow.) For two weeks before Eid, there were people with lone ewes and rams everywhere, even crossing city streets. (The TV news showed someone loading a ram into the luggage compartment of a bus.)

he definitely knew what was coming

I spent the holiday with my friend Kristin and her host family, since she and I were both a little nervous about all the blood and guts. The day started early, when the men said a prayer and cut the ram's throat in the field next to their house. The animal made some awful noises and thrashed around for awhile, but it wasn't quite as gross as I expected. After cutting off the head, they cut a small hole in one of the back legs and blew into it to make skinning the ram easier. After the skin came off, they hung the body from a tree to drain the blood, and took out all the organs. The women were in charge of cleaning all the organs out, which included squeezing the poo out of the colon and scooping the half-digested grass out of the stomach. Yum.

All the edible parts are cooked and eaten or preserved within a few days, usually in a traditional order that reflects how quickly each organ will go bad. For lunch and afternoon tea on the first day, every family grills kebabs of chunks of liver wrapped in fat. We also ate heart and what I think was spleen, although my internal organ vocabulary is a little limited. Most of it was surprisingly good, although I eat so little meat in general that it was kind of overwhelming. Then, for dinner, we were served the head, just cooked in oil in a pressure cooker. I ate a few bites of cheek (I think), which was fatty but tolerable, but then came the brains. I ate one bite, immediately felt like I was going to vomit, and politely declined any more, to the great amusement of all the Moroccans present. I think of myself as an adventurous eater, so hey, at least I tried it ... but no more brains for me any time soon.

Here are some pictures of the whole process. WARNING: they are a little graphic, so don't look if you don't want to see blood.

Hi folks,

It's been awhile since my last post, but not too much has changed. Work has been appearing, slowly but surely, which has been good. I've gotten a little more involved in the project I mentioned in my last post--besides the soil testing, a large component is developing a training program that will be taught by Moroccan employees of the Park Office to the owners of the land in the park to change their grazing practices. The goal is to implement a program that has been used very successfully in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and other states in the west to restore soil and vegetation quality that has been damaged by overgrazing. I'll likely be helping revise the curriculum that the U.S. Forest Service team taught to the Moroccan trainers to make it more Morocco-appropriate, and helping to organize the actual training sessions when they happen. Some pictures of the park:

the famous Atlas ceder! old one on the left, babies on the right. this is in a fenced area, otherwise babies get grazed

digging some holes--my PCV colleague on the left, our counterpart from the Park Office, Lahcen, on the right

digging more holes, in an unprotected area of the park (notice the lack of vegetation)--see the culprits in back 

I've also started working with a small cooperative based in a tiny village outside Azrou that's been working with a small business development volunteer for two years. She's about to finish her service and go home, but they just got a grant, so I'm going to continue working with them after the other volunteer leaves. Their products are medicinal herbs (rosemary, thyme, verbena, and a lot of others made into oils and waters) and amazing couscous that's dried with herbs already in it. Part of the grant is paying for a solar-powered couscous drier that's being designed by a nearby university class, and part of it will go towards product development to help them reach a broader market. They're lovely women, a small group and mostly middle-aged, and it's nice to collaborate with a group of women that has the freedom to work outside the house.

There's a couple other little things that will hopefully come together soon, but that's about it work-wise. I've been doing some traveling, to Marrakech for a peer-counseling training in September and to meet my friend Kristin's parents. I'm at site now, though, and it's COLD. I don't have a thermometer, but I'd guess that midday temperatures in the sun outside are low 50s, and much colder when it's cloudy or stormy, which is often. My lovely basement house holds in the cold, and generally it's colder inside than out. I haven't woken up to frost in my house yet, but I'm told it will happen soon. Seriously.

The past few months have been very quiet otherwise; living without a computer made me appreciate a little more what Peace Corps service used to be like (okay, I still have my cell phone and occasional internet access in the city,but still ...) I'm almost embarrassed by how many books I've read, and I've also done things like make peanut butter with a mortar and pestle. But now I do have a computer again, which is a relief for work reasons and also means I can read the news and respond to emails a little more regularly. I am determined to be a better snail-mail correspondent, though, and I finally found envelopes and stamps, so write me letters!

Some pictures from Casablanca:

This is the Hassan II mosque, built by and named after the current king's father. It's the third largest mosque in the world, and the largest that non-Muslims can enter. (The largest two are in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia.) It's only about 20 years old, and has a capacity of 25,000 inside. It was beautiful.

This was touristy but worth it--the movie was actually filmed in Tangier, on the Mediterranean Coast, but someone recently build a replica in Casablanca, and we had a fancy drink there. Sadly, there was no one playing the piano.

on Ramadan and the park

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you know I'm still alive--the unfortunate demise of my computer a month ago has made it a lot harder to write blog posts in the leisurely fashion to which I'm accustomed. Here's a quick update from my past month and a half:

-The month of August was Ramadan here, which was probably the most challenging cultural experience so far. Fasting consists of not eating or drinking water (or smoking or engaging in sexual activity) between dawn and sunset. Ramadan follows the Muslim lunar calendar, so it gets about two weeks earlier every year; everyone says late summer is the most difficult Ramadan, because the days are long and it's so darn hot. Basically all Moroccans fast, and Moroccans can actually be arrested for eating and drinking in public during Ramadan. Occasionally you'll see a tourist insensitively eating or smoking a cigarette during the day, but even PCVs who aren't fasting generally don't do that. I chose to fast, to see what it was like and because I guessed, correctly, that it would go a very long way towards helping me integrate into the community.

A typical schedule involves sleeping late (until 11 or so), reading, working, or spending time with friends during the day, and breaking the fast with a family at about 7:30 pm. Iftur, which literally means breakfast, involves dates, tea, honey cookies called chebakia, delicious soup called harira, and assorted other things depending on the family. Dinner follows at midnight or 1 am, and then some people take a nap until about 3:45 am, when they wake up to eat suhor, the pre-dawn meal. Some families eat a big meal then, but most prefer some fruit, milk, tea, or bread. Then they go back to sleep. Most people (but not me, obviously) spend quite a bit of time praying or at the mosque, during the day and after breaking the fast.

The best part about Ramadan for me was breaking the fast with assorted families in my site and in Azrou. I made a few new friends and enjoyed some good food and company. The hardest things were the messed up sleep schedule, which generally meant I could only get a few hours of sleep, and not being able to drink water. Especially difficult were the days I had to wake up early to work, and couldn't eat or drink for 10 hours or so, which leads me to ...

-I've finally started working a little, which is nice. I'm helping out on a project, partially funded and assisted by the U.S. Forest Service, that's working with the Park Service in Azrou to try and fix the damage done to the soil by years of over-grazing in parts of the park. I've been working with another PCV and someone from the Park Office to do soil analyses and establish baseline soil quality in a few different areas of the park, so that they'll be able to tell if the project is successful a few years down the line. Next week, a team from the USFS is coming here, and I'll be able to sit in on trainings conducted by the Park Office with local shepherds about how to graze their herds responsibly. While the work isn't exactly my specialty, I am learning quite a bit, and it's been really nice to be out working in the sunshine in the park.

-Other than that, life has been pretty quiet at home. I had company on my birthday, which was really nice, and I'm heading to Marrakech next week for a training, so I'll be able to see some friends then. Hopefully, I'll have a new computer by the middle of October, so I should be a better blogger and email correspondent by then. In the meantime, it's always nice to hear from people at home.

Love from the Maghreb,
Gussie

on late-night community

This is another post about a celebration. Unsurprisingly, many of the noteworthy events have to do with family milestones (weddings, births, etc), since life revolves around family ties. This one was of the baby shower variety, for lack of a better term. Instead of celebrating during a pregnancy, like in the States, here the party comes a week to a month after the birth, with a little tiny ugly wrinkly baby that generally doesn't look ready to be fussed over.

A few weeks ago, I went with my host mom and sister at about 10 pm on a Sunday up the hill to a very small village called Tichoute that's perched on a hill overlooking Ain Leuh. Tichoute reminds me of Idelsane (our training village) in that all the houses are in one clump, and everyone is extraordinarily friendly.

The initial part of the festivities was no surprise: waiting for hours to start dinner, then more courses than anyone could possibly actually eat. This time it was three entire roast chickens for our table of six or seven adults, followed by a huge plate of beef with eggs and prunes, followed by sffa, which is a traditional Moroccan dish consisting of angel hair pasta with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and usually some kind of nuts on top. This time it had what was more or less peanut butter on top (which does not exist here--I was SO EXCITED. Small pleasures.)

When my host sister finally gestured to me that it was time to go, I figured 1 am was practically early for something like this to end. I was sadly mistaken. Instead of leaving, we went up onto the roof of the house and sat on folding chairs for another 30 or 40 minutes waiting for everyone to come up. The women of the family were busy cleaning and bringing plates of leftover food to neighbors. Finally, two men with a violin and a drum, and two women dressed up in traditional Berber garb come up onto the roof, and the music starts.

On a chilly, totally silent June night on the roof of a house in a tiny village, it is very quiet. During the day, you can hear all sorts of animals (sheep, goats, donkeys, chickens, dogs), TVs, music from cell phones, and kids playing in the street, but at night, there's no ambient noise. That made the violin, steel frame drum, and (occasionally sort of screechy, sorry) singing seem incredibly loud, at 1:30 am, in this tiny but densely populated village where cement and dirt walls are always thinner than they seem.

I cringed a little, and thought back to the time I came this close to calling in a noise complaint when our neighbor's music at 4 am in Flatbush was rattling the change off my shelf last winter. I wondered if it was socially acceptable to be annoyed at your neighbors for being loud in the middle of the night. I also wondered if staying up all night and listening to loud music in a large group of people were the most soothing activities for a newborn and her (doubtless exhausted) parents.

But then, to my amazement, over the course of the 40-minute first song, people started to materialize out of the nearby houses. Instead of sitting inside fuming, like I probably would have done, they came out to enjoy the music. Teenagers, adults, grandparents, mostly men but some women, too, all dragged out plastic stools to their front stoops or perched on the edges of their own roofs and sat silently watching the dancing. I have no idea if they were actually happy to have some music, or just making the best out of a sleepless hour or so, but it struck me that I can't imagine a similar situation in any place in the United States that I've ever visited.

We left early, after 2 am, when the musicians were only taking a break between songs, and the young children present were finally starting to fade. The night left me wondering if I would feel differently the next time music from next door kept me up late, and if the increased tolerance would transfer back to Brooklyn. Even though the music itself wasn't my favorite, I do love a community that appreciates and gathers around music, and it made me miss my many musically-inclined friends from back home (though our late-night singing was usually of a different sort).

Keep the emails coming! It's really nice to hear from people. And I have a mailing address now, so email me if you would like it. Love from the Maghreb.

and the real Peace Corps begins

So now that CBT is over, I've spent about a month at my final site, where I'll be for the next two years (inshallah, or "God willing", as I am often reminded). A little about my site:

town from above, taken in April--it's much greener now

It's called Ain Leuh, situated on the north side of the Middle Atlas Mountains, in Ifrane Province. When I told people in Ouarzazate where I was going, every Moroccan person had the same reaction: "That's the most beautiful province in Morocco, and you are going to be very cold." It is indeed beautiful, in a similar way to home in northwest Connecticut, but much more mountainous. The elevation is a little under a mile, which is what makes it colder than the surrounding Mediterranean and desert climates. When I first got here in the beginning of June, I was sleeping under three blankets in a sweatshirt and long underwear, although now it's far warmer. This is in contrast to the days that almost always topped 100 in Ouarzazate, beginning in April.

sworn in!

So this is it! PST is over, and all of us now PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) have dispersed to our sites.

The last few weeks at CBT were sort of strange--the fact that we were leaving kept sort of creeping up on me, and didn't seem real until we actually left. We wrapped up our training activities in the village with two environmental education lessons at the elementary school. We conducted almost the entire thing in Darija (with help from our LCF obviously), which was satisfying, and got some good feedback from the school. The lesson focused on being able to talk specifically about the effects of trash on the environment, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. They were remarkably engaged, and much more … energetic than I remember 3rd graders being during school at home.

letting go & food struggles

One day, during the wedding week, I went home after school to find that my host family was gone, and was told to go over to Kristin's house and hang out there. Kristin's host sister, Habiba, told us we were going to get henna and then go to the big house for more wedding celebrations. Henna is sort of a big production, involving someone very carefully drawing on both sides of your hands with a syringe full of smelly paste, so we sit down on the couch and wait for Habiba's friend Aisha to do all of our hands. Normally, you just sit and let it dry, while also patting sugar water on it that helps the color set, but we had to go to the wedding and didn't have time to finish putting the stuff on my hands.

When we got to the wedding, Kristin and I went in to sit in the bride's room with a bunch of women, and are chatting (in English) about adjusting to life in Morocco. We were both agreeing about how to a certain extent it involves letting go of control over a lot of little things during the day, like eating dinner before 10:30 pm or not ingesting a pound of sugar each day. Meanwhile, the henna on our hands is still drying, and Habiba asks one of the women for sugar water. The woman comes back with a cup of sugar water, but Habiba is gone, so the woman goes to hand the glass to me, but my hands are all sticky with henna, so I put my hands up to indicate that I can't take it and could she put it on the table. However, instead of putting it on the table, she holds it up to my face and pours the water into my mouth. Habiba walks back into the room at this moment, sees the woman pour sugar water into my mouth and me spit it out in surprise, and just about dies laughing.

the wedding, cont.

So an abbreviated version of the rest of the wedding, since that was about a month ago now (oops):

Though I thought I had understood that the wedding would last three days, and I would be missing the third day since we were going to hub, we came back to find that the third day hadn't happened yet, and Kristin and I were whisked away to a celebration that lasted until at least 4 am. Unless we missed it (which is possible), there was no actual ceremony, so no particular moment at which the bride and groom became married. Instead, the party basically lasted for about ten (!) days in total.

It took me until about three days in to realize that it was actually a double wedding: my host mom's brother and sister were both getting married. I was confused because, unlike in the U.S., where the bride and groom tend to be the center of attention at their own wedding, the two couples were essentially hidden in two different back rooms. For the first half of the week, the brides each had their own room, and then another room housed the two grooms together, with a bunch of other men. I had only been sitting with my host mom's sister, and had never met the other bride, so I just didn't realize she existed. Sometimes the brides would be literally hidden, as on one night, when Kristin and I were ushered into the bride room and realized she was literally huddled in a corner, completely shrouded in white except for red gauze over her face. Unclear.

Though there wasn't a real ceremony, there were a few different rituals that happened at different times. On the third night, the two grooms were dragged out of their room completely covered with a hooded robe that came all the way over their face and made to kneel on pillows in the middle of the big room. My host grandma then washed each of their heads and put what I think was kohl on their eyes, which apparently burns a lot, since they looked like they were both sort of crying. The grandma also did the same washing and applying kohl thing with two other young men, but no matter how many times and different ways I ask my host mom, I can't for the life of me figure out what it means.

Another tradition I saw was that every night for the last week of the festivities at 9:30 or 10, tons of women would show up for dinner. First everyone would get tea and these sweet wafers that I haven't seen anywhere else here, and then the brides would go around and greet every woman in the room. Greeting in general in Morocco is no joke, and for women generally entails at least three kisses on the cheek, but wedding greeting was particularly intense, so the brides would spend about half an hour stooped over and kissing every woman about seven or eight times. On the last night, my host grandma spent about two hours getting the two brides dressed up. Each of the brides had on several undergarments, followed by a fancy white caftan, several sparkly and gauzes shawls, a regular head wrap, the traditional Berber red and yellow head scarf, metal bangles that go over the scarf, and a white sheet that went over everything and affixed a small mirror to the forehead. (See picture below!)

All of this was to get ready for a literally 5 minute long parade from the back room to the street, just outside the front door, where someone washed their feet and everybody sang. Then as they walked back inside, their new husbands threw water on them, and then they went back to the room and changed. It seemed like a lot of work.

Anyways, the wedding was fun because I got to meet a ton of people (mostly women) and hear a lot of traditional music. I was sort of glad it was over, because it was exhausting constantly being around so many people that I didn't really know, and I never had any time to study or do homework we were supposed to do for class. I kept thinking how different it was from the two weddings I went to this year, that of a close family friend in the Adirondacks in September and my cousin's in Jamaica in November.

Some pictures:

traditional Berber dancing

Kristin's grandpa and the father of the bride and groom 

one of the brides being dressed by my host grandma

the brides in full get-up for the last night of the wedding

the short parade into the street on the last night 

some of the extended family, with the two brides in the middle

the wedding

So far a lot of CBT has been boredom interspersed with intense activity: sitting with my host family and watching Turkish soap operas or Japanese cartoons dubbed into Darija that I don't understand at all; endless hours of drilling numbers or verb conjugations; waiting several hours for someone to show up to meet with us (we have to adjust to "Moroccan time"); followed by 10 hour days at hub packed with information, our weekly trips to the insanely overwhelming souk (market) in Skoura to buy vegetables and fruit, meeting tons of people who all want to greet us and try and speak to us.


Nothing has epitomized the mixture of excitement, confusion, and boredom more than the wedding. The first week we were here, Kristin and I were inexplicably taken along to with Zahara (technically my host mom, but she's only 28, which is my sister's age) and Habiba (Kristin's host sister, 27), to this big house on the other side of the village to make cookies with about five or six other women. No exaggeration, we went three nights in a row, and each night they made a few hundred cookies, mostly varieties of sugar cookie, some with coconut, almonds, chocolate, all different shapes. We were utterly confused, thinking maybe the women were selling them, but we weren't sure where, and there were solidly a thousand cookies.


Finally I heard a word I vaguely remembered from my college class four years ago, and we realized there was a wedding coming up. One Thursday, Zahara somehow communicated to me that Zakaria, her 10-year-old son, would pick me up from school at 5:30 and take me to the big house, because the wedding was starting. I went straight to the big house, which turned out to be her parents' house, where her older sister also lives with her husband and three kids. From 5:30 until about 11:30, I just sat surrounded by dozens of women, either in the big main room (which has trees and no roof in the middle, or in a side room with the bride and whomever was keeping her company at the moment. No one speaks any English, and my Darija wasn't good enough to ask useful question yet, so I was just perpetually confused.


The festivities seemed to consist mostly of food (couscous, hunks of beef with dates and sesame seeds, tea, and the endless cookies), talking, and singing and dancing. The music consists of one massive cow's hide bass drum that gets whacked with a hollow pipe, and a bunch of tambourine-esque hand-held drums, with chanting and singing over it. I went home straight after dinner (which was served at about 10:45 to the approximately 40 or 50 women there) and went back the next morning at 8:30, since we only had school in the afternoon. Zahara and her sisters, cousins, and assorted female neighbors seemed to have all been there since dawn, making batch after batch of bread from scratch, constantly preparing platters of tea and cookies, and washing used tea glasses coming back into the kitchen.


Besides being at school from 2 until 5:30, I stayed at the big house until about 12:30 am. This time, dinner was served at maybe 11:30 or midnight, and there were about 70 or 80 women and children. This doesn't even count the men, who I think were in the sort of courtyard section of the house away from us. The amount of food required is unbelievable; the one saving grace is that there aren't too many dishes, since groups of 8 or 10 people all eat out of a communal plate using bread instead of utensils.


This night was particularly overwhelming and confusing; I was introduced to the inexplicable tradition of spraying every person in a room with bad perfume. Zahara's sister-in-law is really into this tradition, and used several different bottles, which filled the entire room with a mixture of awful perfume. I happened to be coming down with a cold at the same time, and the perfume induced this coughing fit that wouldn't go away, to the point that there were tears running down my cheeks. Everyone was VERY concerned, and were trying to get me to drink sugar water to make my cough go away. (This is typical that they would think sugar was a solution, and is also important for a later story that I'll post.) 


I felt bad at this point, since I had been told that weddings last three days, and the next day was a hub day (meaning we were leaving for Ouarzazate), so I would be missing the last day of the wedding. I tried to apologize to my host mom, who just looked confused.


.... to be continued later when I have more time to write!

lost in translation

I've spent the past week at the double wedding of my host mom's brother and sister. Wedding festivities started last Thursday and will still be going on when I get back from hub tonight. I'll write a full post about it another time, but let's just say it's insane and awesome and pretty exhausting (I haven't been able to study at night or really sleep since it started.) I'll write a full post about it later when I have some time and post some pictures of the brides and grooms.

Our CBT group: Alex, Lena, Kristin, me, Conor, and Ikram

Anyways, here's one story that exemplifies the many difficulties of communication here, even with our designated educators and English speakers. Last week in class, Kristin asked our LCF (our language teacher, who grew up in Tiznit and has never left Morocco) how to say chapstick in Arabic. Ikram didn't know the English word, so Kristin pulled out her chapstick. Ikram told us the word was "l-saq", and we spent a few minutes practicing pronouncing the Arabic q, and comparing it to "l-sak", which means purse. We all diligently wrote the words down in our notebooks.

About a week later, we were on break and Kristin couldn't find her chapstick, and said so out loud. Ikram immediately searches around in her office supplies bag and hands Kristin a roll of masking tape. We just stared blankly at her--Lena pulled out her red shimmery chapstick and Ikram writes a new word on the board that we haven't seen yet. Finally we realize that Ikram thought Kristin was showing her a gluestick, and "l-saq" just means "adhesive". In the meantime, Lena's practicing her new vocabulary at home and her whole host family thinks she's putting glue on her lips. Just one example of the many, many miscommunications, even with the people that it's supposed to be easiest for us to communicate with ...

CBT

Yesterday was our first hub day, which means the first day back from our training site. We're not allowed to post the exact name for security reasons, but it's about half an hour east of here off the main road. It's very sleepy and small. My host family is a couple in their 30s, the dad's mother (who's the same age as my mom, but looks about 80), and three boys, age 3, 8, and 10. The level of hospitality is completely overwhelming sometimes--they stuff you full of food at every meal, and if you walk past someone's house and say hello, they will probably invite you in for tea, even strangers.

Language is going pretty well, but it's still frustrating to be back at such a basic level of communication. My family speaks no English at all, but I have been able to communicate some amount of information through a combination of my limiting Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and hand gestures. There's a lot of laughing (mostly at me).

I started helping out in the house right away, partially because I wanted to and partially because silence is less awkward when you're doing something. My mom would be proud--I've become the designated dish-washer for every meal that I'm at home. There's no running water or drain or sink in the kitchen, so dish-washing involves sitting or squatting on the concrete floor with a bucket of soapy water and a bucket for waste water. I consider myself pretty competent at domestic tasks like cooking and dish-washing at home, but my host mom looks at me like I'm an idiot when it takes me more than three minutes to wash all the dinner dishes.

I'll post more about the house and family later, and once I feel comfortable I'll take pictures of them. (The little boy especially is so adorable.) We're going back to CBT today, which means no internet for another 10 days or so--a strange adjustment.

orientation/PST

I can't believe it's only been a week since I left New York! It's trite, but so much has happened since last Monday that it feels like at least a month. I'm now sitting on the roof of our hotel in Ouarzazate, where we've been since Friday night. After one day and night in Philadelphia, where we did intense but very general orientation with PC Washington staff, we took what was luckily a direct overnight flight to Casablanca. We got to Casa at 6:30 am local time (2:30 am EST) and got straight on a bus to Marrakech, and immediately started a full day of training. They definitely don't joke around with stuffing as much into these days as possible. This afternoon was the first time we've had free since we got here.

We're now officially Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) and are almost a week into Pre-Service Training (PST). (They do a lot of acronyms.) There about about 60 of us, split between Health and Environment, including 4 married couples and about 6 or so over the age of 50. There's a man here who's coming for his second stint in PC, and a woman for whom this is her third. It's definitely the most diverse crowd I've ever been in as far as geographic origins in the U.S. Talking to the other environment trainees has been particularly exciting, since some of them have some really awesome technical experience. After a lot of general training, we finally split into sectors yesterday to talk about the actual projects that PC Morocco does, which got me more amped about the rest of training and work. Sometimes it can be easy to get lost in the overload of information they throw at us, so the reminder was nice.

This morning we finally got our assignments for Community Based Training (CBT). For the next two months, we're split up into groups of 4-6, each in a different village outside Ouarzazate. In our CBT sites we work with a Language and Cultural Facilitator for up to 8 hours per day, learning the language and working on specific skills for our future work in sector. Of the 11 different CBT groups, some are learning Tashelheyt or Tamazight, which are Berber dialects that are spoken in specific regions of Morocco, and some are learning Darija, which is Moroccan Arabic. I was placed in a Darija group, which is exciting, since it means I'll be able to use a little more of the Arabic I learned in college.

We leave tomorrow for our CBT sites and go almost straight to our host families' homes, which should be interesting, since no one can say more than a few words in their assigned language. We come back every ten days or so to Ouarzazate for "hub days" where we debrief with the other trainees in our sector and occasionally get a few hours off. I'm sure the next few days before our first hub day will feel like ages as well.

The square in Ouarzazate from the roof of the hotel

The Atlas Mountains, seen from Marrakech

The mountain pass through the Atlas (yes, that's snow)

tomorrow!

What a crazy two weeks. I've been in DC, New York, and Connecticut, seeing lots of close friends. It was really nice to catch up with some people I haven't seen in a long time, and it reminded me of hard how I'm going to try to keep in touch while I'm abroad. As is totally typical, I've had six months to pack for this trip, and still found myself waiting until the last minute to actually put everything in a bag. It's tougher than you might think to choose seven shirts to wear for the next two years. (Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.)

Now that I'm finally all packed, I'm driving to Philadelphia tomorrow. We have about 24 hours there for Staging, which seems to just consist of a bunch of speeches. Then we fly to Casablanca, spend a few days in Marrakech, then go to Ouarzazate, which will be our "hub" training site. (They film lots of movies there! And it's really pretty. But that's true of most of Morocco.) I'll be training in a small group with other environmental education volunteers who are learning the same language as me (which could be Moroccan Arabic or one of two Berber dialects) in a nearby village, then coming back to Ouarzazate occasionally for more group training. I don't know where my actual training site will be, and I won't know where my final placement will be for another two months or so. Still so many things up in the air ....

People keep asking if I'm nervous--I don't think reality has set in enough for me to be nervous. Mostly, I'm just really excited to meet the rest of the trainees, and head out! So that's about it. Next update will be from the Maghreb!

the next two weeks

March 1-4: NY (two more days of work, pack, Behind the Scenes at Hot Bread Kitchen, New Blue alum dinner, pack ...)
March 5-7: DC (see as many people as possible)
March 7-12: CT (unpack, pack, etc)
March 13: NY (potluck! come say goodbye!)
March 14: Philadelphia (staging with the rest of the trainees)
March 15: MOROCCO

wow.

twenty days and counting

... or less, actually.

I was so frustrated when I got delayed in the fall, but everything's really worked out pretty well. I'm finishing up at two amazing jobs (check out two organizations doing really awesome work of very different kinds: Demos and Hot Bread Kitchen,) I've gotten to spend a lot of time with my family, and I've gotten to see so many friends in New York and elsewhere. I'm sure that if I had left without establishing these post-college friendships, I probably would have lost touch with a lot more people.

Definitely excited, starting to get nervous about being away for so long, wondering if I'll remember any Arabic, trying not to Google the weather in Morocco too often ... 

how I got here

If you're curious about the application process, or wondering why I'm still in the U.S. when I told you six months ago that I was about to leave, this is from a journal I kept during the past two years:

10/22/09: Open application on the PC website.
12/21/09: Submit completed application and health questionnaire.
1/1/10: Receive fingerprint and background check forms by mail.
1/15/10: Get fingerprinted at the New Haven police station; submit background check forms and transcripts by mail.
1/29/10: Interview in New York with a recruiter. She is nice and tells me I'd be hearing about a nomination soon.
2/3/10: Receive nomination by email from recruiter. Nomination is for NGO development with a community health organization, Portuguese-speaking post in sub-Saharan Africa, departure late September 2010 (Mozambique). Accept nomination immediately and start setting up doctor's appointments for medical clearance papers.
3/1 to 4/3/10: Eight (8!) doctor's appointments (eyes, teeth, physical, ob-gyn, blood, shots, and more.) Submit medical clearance paperwork. Receive notification that it won't be reviewed until three months before my nominated departure date, which means late May.
5/25/10: Receive phone call (while in Salt Lake City airport on the way to Hawaii, by the by) saying they've begun reviewing my medical paperwork, and did I think I would be able to leave earlier than September? They have a post they'd like to fill. I say I don't think I'd be able to do the follow-up medical work until I get back from World Tour in mid-July, so probably not. They say no problem.
5/28/10: Receive notice that there is a medical hold on my application and I'd be receiving more info by mail. Too bad I'm going to be traveling for two months and can't do anything about it.
7/15/10: Get back from World Tour and make four more doctor's appointments (more blood drawn, allergy testing, and two separate dentist trips).
7/23/10: Submit additional medical paperwork.
7/29/10: Receive notification of medical clearance. Read online that you have to get invited at least 6 weeks before the departure date and start getting nervous about a mid- to late-September departure.
8/5/10: Call the PC placement office to check on application status; am told by phone that I have been medically disqualified from my original nomination. No more information but I'd be hearing soon. Start looking for jobs. Great birthday present.
8/18/10: Receive request for and send updated resume and transcript to Placement.
8/31/10: Receive notification that I won't be leaving in late September (big shock) and that since there are few programs departing in the rest of the year, I'll probably be re-placed for a 2011 departure. Apply for more jobs.
9/2/10: Final phone interview with a placement officer. Among other things, she asks how I would feel about Morocco (I talked a little in my original interview in February about a difficult study abroad summer I had there a few years ago.) Later in the day, she emails to ask for my updated mailing address to send my invitation(!).
9/13/10: Invitation still hasn't arrived. About to tear hair out. Finally get UPS tracking number from placement officer and realized it's been sitting in a UPS holding facility in Rockaway for a week because the PC office forgot my apartment number in the address. Spend two hours on the B-35 going to retrieve it. MOROCCO. March 14, 2011. NGO development.
9/14/10: Officially accept invitation to Morocco. What to do with the next six months?

I did get a job (two actually) in the meantime. And then ...

12/13/10: Receive call from Morocco country desk saying the NGO development program has been cancelled. Will hear from a placement officer to find another option, either another country (which means waiting longer) or another assignment in Morocco, by the end of the week.
12/16/10: Speak to placement officer again, who says I can choose between health education and environmental education in Morocco. I have one day to decide and not nearly enough information.
12/18/10: Stretch that one day into two and finally email her back. Environment it is. Same departure date (phew.)

Now it's hoping that there are no more hurdles before March 14! And getting some other stuff done too.

T - 33 days

I'm leaving on March 14 for staging in Philadelphia with the rest of my training group for Peace Corps/Morocco, all health and environment sector, then flying out the next day. We'll all be together in one of the big cities for a few days, then split up according to the language we're learning and the job we'll be doing. We'll train in small groups (less than 10 I think) for about two months before we're actually assigned to our sites. So no, I don't know where I'll be living after about May or June. Or before then, for that matter. One thing I'm getting used to is the number of unknowns inherent to this whole experience, which I don't expect to change any time soon.

Though I haven't been that into blogs since early high school (some Kent friends might remember that), this is going to be my attempt to keep all the people in my life posted. As basically everyone who knows me knows, I'm not the best at returning emails and phone calls in a timely manner, so hopefully a blog will suffice in the meantime.

A few things about Morocco and the Peace Corps, basically my answers to some frequently asked questions that I've gotten a lot over the past five months: 

• Morocco's about the size of California (shocking! most map projections make Africa look much smaller than it is). 
• Similar to California, it has sandy, beautiful beaches, temperate in-between zones, a serious desert (the Sahara), and pretty tall mountain ranges that remain snow-capped all year. 
• Because of this, the climate varies a ton and can get pretty cold in the winter, so I'm bringing some solid winter gear after reading the advice of current volunteers. 
• Urban and educated people in Morocco speak French, but I almost certainly won't be in a city, so I'll either be learning Moroccan Arabic, which is pretty different than the standard Arabic I took in school, or one of two Berber dialects. 
• I'm working as an Environmental Educator, but who knows what that will actually mean. 
• Although Morocco is one of the largest Peace Corps programs by number of volunteers, I'll probably be the only volunteer in my village, or maybe even region. 

So we'll see how the blog updating thing actually goes ...