Lauren in Morocco

2006-09-23T05:05:00.000-07:00

This week, September 11th-15th a Traditional Birth Attendant training was held at my site. I was fortunate in the fact that I didn’t have to apply for any sort of funding or grants and this project was organized by the delegate. The training was held mainly for women in the area who have already attended a TBA training or for those looking to obtain the information. I d attended the session, so that I could meet the women involved and follow up on their progress, as well as involve myself in health lessons. Fifteen women were scheduled to attend, however only 9-10 attended the first day and the number gradually increased throughout the week, along with myself and two other American volunteers, who work in the Oarzazate province.
The training was held in a mixture of Arabic and Tamazirt, the leaders of the training all work in the Oarzazate region. In attendance was the Medicine Chef of Kelaa Mgouna, one nurse from the sbitar in Kelaa Mgouna, a Stage-fem, and one worker from Bio-diversity. Four volunteers that are from the previous stage od 2005 are planning on hosting TBA trainings at their sites and the trainings will be held in the same format. The volunteers are not actually conducting the lessons, they will have nurses and doctors from their larger sbitars hold the lessons. The women who attended the session were given lunch and a small stipend. The men did conduct most of the sessions, however for the hand-on type sessions, the stage-fem and the female from bio-diversity conducted the sessions and the men left the room. In many of the lessons the volunteers (myself, Christie, and Dana) were allowed to give lessons and we viewed as leaders to the women. For certain TBA trainings, finding women to attend is difficult because of fear of interacting with men and talking about such private topics. One day the lesson also ventured toward health lessons and we discussed washing of hands and brushing of teeth, this was beneficial because the volunteers were able to give a quasi-health lesson. On Wednesday, the birthing process was discussed and following this lesson family planning was a major lesson. Family planning is one topic I would like to talk to women about so I was glad we were able to speak in this lesson. Many women don’t understand birth-control pills or IUDs and have five or more children. Of the women in the room, most had between 4-8 children and all reported at least one child dead, but the average number for children the women had lost was around 3. One woman in the room had eleven children, but 5 had died during child-birth or during the first year of life. In general women in very rural, developing nations have no notion of family planning. The spacing of children and the number of desired children was discussed. The women were also taught that birth control should be taken everyday, because most women feel that they only have to take it from time to time and this is solely because of lack of education. The most popular form of birth-control is the form taken while breast-feeding, because typically only married women ask for birth control at the sbitar, anyone not married normally wouldn’t ask for birth-control because it would be considered “hshuma.”
I feel that the TBA trainings are a necessity because of the obvious lack of knowledge and information available for these women. One woman commented that a woman is normally pregnant for around 11 months to a year and this woman had no idea that the actual estimated time for a pregnancy is 9 months. All of the women involved were oblivious to the fact that going to the hospital for birthing is free. The training included prenatal as well as post natal care and all sessions were accompanied by some sort of visual aid or flip chart. Most of the women involved never attended college or school past five years, so the sessions were all about an hour and fifteen minutes long, with a tea break or lunch in between. This was to maximize the amount of time the women listened and to get the full attention span of all attending women.

Sent to Volunteers on my Gender and Development meeting
GAD minutes
During the GAD session in Rabat, the primary focus was the compilation of a new resource book and added information for the GLOW book. We feel that not enough resources are available to volunteers, and gender and development is a major issue in Morocco. Quoting an attendant of a previous leadership conference “Morocco is becoming an example to the entire Arab world concerning women and development.” New elections were held and there is a new position for a person to compose the GAD resource manual. The Global Rights group was visited and new information was gathered for the book. This will be an on-going process, but any suggestions as to resources about gender in Morocco, are welcome. Statistics are one subject of research, because we feel this a common request from volunteers. If any information is needed contact GAD or the library in Rabat for GLOW camp information, the current resource manual, or current copies of the Moudawana.
IST as well as PST trainings were discussed.

My peace corps experience in numbers
7 is the number of months I’ve been in country, 4 months since swear in. 25 volunteers started out in our health stage and now 2 our gone. 24 started in the 2005 health stage and now 9 remain. 2 is the number of host families I’ve had in country with 9 children in total.
3 projects have been completed, 2 health lessons, with 4 major project ideas.
21 is our youngest volunteer and 69 is our oldest volunteer. 4 other health volunteers are in my region and 4 our female. My closest health volunteer is 3 hours away and my post office is 2 hours away. I’ve seen 10 cities since I’ve been in country and lived in two. I’ve lived with a host family for 5 months and its been 5 months since I’ve slept on a bed. I’ve watched 2 hrs of TV in this country and read 57 books. I’ve climbed 3 mountains ranging from 2000 meters to 3000 meters. I’ve had 5 taxis break down and I’ve had 4 people get car sick…on me. The second highest mountain in Morocco is 4000 meters and it is a 20 minute walk from my site. I’ve visited 20 of my 50 villages and lived in 2. I’ve had 4 cases of Giardia and lost 15 pounds in the process. I consumed 4 chesses burgers to regain the weight and I’ve eaten at Mcdonalds 4 times in country. I can speak 2 languages native to Morocco, moderately well and I am learning a third…French. I’ve had one GAD meeting and attended one SIDA training. I’ve had scabies 1 time and I currently have 15 mosquito bites and 10 flea bites on my feet. I’ve eaten goat brain 3 times….and couscous, bread, and tajine over 100 times. 3 is the number of cups of tea/coffee I drink a day and 9 is the max. I’ve been to 3 weddings, one funeral, and 3 village celebrations. I have IST in 2 months and will have been in country one year in about 5 months. I see other volunteers once or twice a month, but it is difficult as my closest volunteer is over 2 hours away. I left 1 amazing family in American and several Amazing friends from my 1 university. My first friend from college is getting married next week and my younger brother is in his second year of college. I will experience Moroccan/Islamic holiday number 3 starting tomorrow.

June, entering my 5th month in Morocco

2006-07-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me just say I am sorry I haven't updated my blog in about a month. I sometimes prefer emailing the whole group because I can say anything I am thinking. I've officially been a volunteer for one month, but I've been in country for 4 months. During June I lived with my second host family and worked in the sbitar. A normal day for me is: waking up around 5:30 because that is when the roosters start or the sheep run through the middle of the house, I normally pretend to sleep until about 7, because waking up at 5:30 makes for a long day, I eat a breakfast consisting of bread and tea with my host family, I go to the sbitar from 8-12, I eat lunch around 2. Let me pause here and mention that lunch is the longest and most important meal of the day in Morocco, so we normally start the process around 12:30 by drinking tea and sit until the food comes around 2 and then sit more and drink more tea. By this point I've had about 4 hours of sitting with my host family understanding part of what's going on, so around 4 everyday I need to get out of the house and go for a walk to different duars (villages), then from 6-dark I run because I am training for the half marathon in Marakesh next year. After dark it's the same sitting and eating routine as lunch, plus reading. I think I finally have a grasp on the language, well when I am at the sites of other volunteers I do. Most other volunteers are replacing volunteers so their families understand that you are not going to understand every single thing at first and their families tell me I am doing very well with the language. No one in my host family seems to understand that I've only been learning the language for 3 months and I am told almost everyday that I know nothing. That is quite alright, when I return to America I will have an extremely above average confidence level. The other day my host grandmother was standing outside of my room saying all kinds of crazy things and I just said I don't understand, I don't understand. She was trying to tell me the lighter didn't work, now if she would have just said lighter and does not work..I would have understood. Instead she was using the Arabic word for stick and the Arabic word for lighter...well A. I never learned Arabic and B. I don't think I know the work for stick in Tamazirt either. I would say I know about 90 verbs..Which is enough for any day to describe what I am doing and all nouns concerning people, clothes, houses, the sbitar, water, food, the outdoors, and traveling...All of which should suffice, but my host family likes to switch it up. One morning this week I exited my room around 7 and there were about 30 people in my house, my host mother said they had already eaten breakfast because today was special day and gave me some dates. I asked her if it was a holiday and she said no, but did the harvesting motion...So I used the verb to harvest and the word for field and the answer was still no. She said we work very hard all day and eat breakfast, then rice at 10, the couscous, and finally tajine. From what I could gather no one was working, so from what I could gather from language..I think this was a day maybe to celebrate the end of harvest and hard work. One man from each family in our duar came to our house and ate, the older men in one room and the younger in another. Then around 4 all the women from town came to our house and we all ate. I will never really be sure what the event was for that day, other volunteers live relatively close to tutors or mentors who may be able to answer this question, but I live 2 or 3 hours from anything of the sort. That night the women in my town tried to teach me how to make bread and when I said I didn't know, she said you will never learn our language. Maybe it's just me, but I see no correlation between learning a language and making bread..ahah. I had a lunch meeting with all of the teachers in town this week, before they went on summer vacation, about potential health lessons and projects and that was very productive. They also told me if in September, when they returned, I wanted to play soccer...Then we would start a community soccer league. I also went and found our town association (the government of our town) and had a meeting solely in Tamazirt about potential projects and duars in the area with no water. I have a scheduled meeting with the Rice (the leader of my area) in two weeks, which I am looking forward to. I have also found a house, so in August I will be able to move. My conversations with teachers were also good because the teachers are very educated and I was able to receive varied viewpoints on cultural issues which I will write more about later.

2006-05-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

Swearing In Ceremony

2006-05-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Today we had our swearing-in ceremony and we are finally volunteers. You have to go through 2 1/2 months of training to swear-in and we just completed our training. We have been in a really large, extremely modern city and have been able to swim in the hotel pool and have a little free time. There were a few of us with the highest scores in language and we just decided to draw names out of the four of us and my name wasn't drawn out of the hat so I didn't get to give the speech. I am however, the Gender and Development Representative for our staging group. There is one elected each time a group swears in, so there are 6 in-country that represent about 150 volunteers. I will be able to travel to Rabat three or 4 times a year to work on gender camps and have meetings with administration and maybe the US ambassador. I will also work with the other 5 volunteers to create GLOW camps (girls leading our world or guys.) I leave for my site tomorrow, wish me luck.

2006-05-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of the first day we ever played soccer in Morocco, I am one of two girls on the field and I think we attracted half the crowd. I say this only because we are American and normally women do not play soccer. Since this day I've played soccer everyday that I've been in Azilal and the locals always play with us. I am amazed because normally the few girls that play are picked for teams before the American boys. The Moroccan's are obviously all amazing at soccer when we all play together and I can hardly keep up, one day...One day.
Rabat when we first arrived in Morocco (these pictures are obviously not appearing in my Blog in any sort of order, but I've just started uploading them.) Rabat is obviously an extremely large city and being a health volunteer I only work in extremely rural areas, although on vacation I will revisit Rabat and we have mid-term Medical exams in the city.
A Moroccan roof-top, this a place of great importance for Moroccan women because much of the laundry and down-time is spent on the roof.
View of Casablanca from the Plane window (over two months ago, this picture if obviously also out of order.)

This week I have my final LPI (language exam) and next week I swear in as a volunteer. Our group has not yet had one person ET and hopefully this trend will continue, inshallah (which translates to God-willing.) I can't really say more about previous groups that are in country, but I will mention the information in an email. Our swear-in site is in an undisclosed location in the desert, so I have to prepare myself for the heat this week. I just had my final day with my first host family in CBT and I have to say that I had an amazing time at my CBT site. My host family was amazing and I know that they have little, but they would always give me so much. I've noticed and mentioned to another volunteer, how little materialism there is, because of the lack of "things." In the more rural areas there is very little money, the average income of a Moroccan in any rural area is less than 3 dollars a day and 70% of Morccans live in rural areas. My family always cooked the most amazing food and tried to teach me something new everyday. We did actually have a TV and I was able to watch Middle Eastern Music videos. This doesn't seem important, but the videos were something that we could all understand and having two host sisters that are around my age, we always enjoyed the videos. During our final CBT I was able to give my host family a few gifts and I gave them candy from staging in Philadelphia and a tea set from Morocco. My host-family is so amazing because I expected nothing from them, because they have given me so much already and then they gave me an amazing gift. They gave me Moroccan slippers (they told me many times that I had axator feet, axator being big, so I guess they knew the size) and a wall decoration for my new house made of Barley. I mention the feet thing, only because, for some reason every Moroccan in my town is extremely small and I always tower over them. They also always try to give me slippers to wear when I enter the house and my size 10 1/2 foot only fits into half of any shoe ever given to me. My family told me they bought the largest pair they could find at the Market (haha) and I really appreciate their kindness. Our CBT group of five hosted a party for everyone in town yesterday and we had a vast array of cookies and cake. Tea is always served and the women taught us their dance moves, we were fortunate because we have one male in are group and sometimes women will not dance around men, but they all seem to view B.E as just a brother. A male in another CBT group was asked to leave the room during the party and he said he felt that he missed out, because being able to see the women interact so freely is a huge cross-cultural lesson.

What I've learned about the Peace Corps....Thus far.

2006-05-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

I've only been in Morocco 2 month's and during this time period, I've learned a vast amount of things about the Peace Corps and Morocco. I've learned to never except anything because the Peace Corps is only a series of surprises. I've learned that while in Morocco you can be in one region where it is snowing and travel 6 hours and be in the desert. I've learned to never except your travel plans to work out or be extremely comfortable/safe. This is because you normally have to wait on a grand taxi until you have 6 people to fill up the taxi or you take a bus around the mountains and you feel as if the brakes will fail at any moment. I've learned that you will re-evaluate your definition of beauty over and over again, because you see all the layers of beauty in another country. You will never be clean or look put together in the "bled," but you realize that you don't care because you haven't seen a mirror in a month. You learn that donkeys can be an amazing form of transportation if you live in a small down. You realize that the landscape can be anything from extremely beautiful to extremely barren.
I've learned to eat solely with my hands, I've learned how to not overeat couscous, I've learned to drink 17 glasses of tea a day, and yes I've learned to cook bread. I've learned that for some reason everyone at my site thinks that the best well water has fish in it..? I've learned that no matter how well I did at language in comparison to others in my group, that some woman in the bled will always tell me I know nothing. Therefore I've learned how confident I really am and how your confidence plays a major role in your success as a volunteer. I've learned that it is possible to find an amazing friend in a language you don't even speak, because I have many Moroccan friends and my language is only now developing. I've learned the power of women in this society and the power of the woman in the household. I've learned that, like any country, there are going to be a variety of cultures, beliefs, personalities, and practices. There are people who are incredibly welcoming and those who are not, just as in America. I've learned how to properly make a well and how to find water sources in remote areas of Morocco. I've learned that I actually don't value electricity and I'm actually disappointed I have it in my site. A final note~ Congratulations to all of my friends that graduated this weekend and good luck.

2006-04-29T05:47:00.000-07:00

Riding a donkey, making bread, and other such things.

2006-04-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I returned from about 8 days of CBT training and I will be training with the entire group for a few days before we return to our CBT sites. My host family is amazing and I am so luckly to have two host sisters that are around my age, because it gives me the opportunity to have not only family, but also close friends in my host country. Five of us arrived at our CBT site on Thursday and met our families for the first time. My CBT site is the smallest site out of the five potential sites, but I think the landscape is beautiful. There are green mountains all around my house and my host family lives right on a lake, that is directly beside the largest dam in North Africa. One of my host sisters is 25, the other is 18, and there are two that are younger. From my roof (because roofs are essential in Morocco) I can see the homes of the 4 other volunteers in my CBT group. There are three other girls that also just graduated in May and one male who is alittle older. The first night with the family was alittle strange, only because my language classes were still in the beginning stages, but I helped my sisters cook tajine and we watched hours of Moroccan Music Videos (well not solely Moroccan, but videos that are popular in most of the middle east.) A normal CBT day for me consists of waking up around 6 for a walk/run with another PCT, breakfast that consists of bread and tea with the family around 7, then off to school at 8, one tea time at 10, another tea time at 4, tea again with my family at 6, reading and homework with my host family, helping to prepare dinner, and bed around 10. On Thursday I had the grand idea to tell my sisters that I wanted to learn how to cook, as this would be a cross-cultural learning experience. Little did I know this would enclude me killing the meat we were going to cook, since my family owns sheep and chicken. The first night I cooked with my family they brought me a large container of fish and showed me the process of picking the eye out with my finger, then snapping the head off with my hands. Now, this wouldn't bother most people, but after about the 20th fish I was done. My family also decided that Lauren is far to difficult of a name, so I was called Lala, Lora, Nora, or silence. Sunday is the day we have no class and spend the entire day with our family and naturally I had no idea what to expect during this first CBT experience. I was awaken around 6 am by tribal drums (I still have no idea where they came from) and I met with my family to learn to make bread. Bread and Mint tea are essential to life and culture in Morocco and I had more than I could handle during my first CBT visit. We made homebread bread for a few hours, then my host sister insisted that I ride the donkey around town, which I'm sure was quite a spectical, an American riding a donkey up and down the street for an hour. This experience was only topped when she made me pick up B.E, the male volunteer in my group, and made him ride the donkey up and down the street for a few hours. During my CBT I also attended two dance/tea parties hosted by the women in my community and they were absolutley amazing experiences. All of the women gather and at the party with my host family I was dress up in silk and amazing outfits. They showed me traditional dance moves and wedding dances. There is a common misconception that most women in Morocco are oppressed or that gender roles are not equal and I would have to dispute this stereotype because all of the women in my community break this stereotype. Yes, gender roles are different than those in the US, but these women, in my opinion do most of the work to hold the community and family together. They are all, also amazing women who have taught me more than I could imagine in this short time. Having Language class everyday and living with the family every night really transformed my language skills. I went from knowing almost nothing to being able to buy anything that I want, have very basic conversation, describe my family, time, money, and ask basic questions. This all seems so simple but actually having the knowledge to implement these everyday actions was amazing. I would say the only problem I had with language was that when I found out the word for egg, I said it everytime we ate eggs. Yes this seems like it would be fine, but everytime I said it my host family would laugh and just tell me to call it an omelet. I went along saying the Tamazite word for egg then entire week and everyone continued to laugh and at the end of our first CBT I brought this to the attention of my teacher. I was then informed that the word for egg is the slang in that region for a certain part of a man's body that I will not mention at this time. All in all the week was great, I've learned to cook Moroccan food, dance a few Moroccan dances, and I've had some wild wild tea and bread parties.

CBT, host family, possible projects

2006-03-30T03:46:00.000-08:00

Today we leave for our CBT training, during which we will stay with a host family every night of the week. Until now we've had training everyday that focuses more on the technical aspects of what we will be doing. My CBT family is "bizef" (large) and consists of 8 people, the youngest is 6 and the oldest being 95. I have the second largest host family out of everyone in our training group, the largest belongs to male who will have 10 members in his family. I make up for the two lacking people in the form of animals..as my family has a donkey, a cat, a sheep, a chicken, and a dog. They also have two girls around my age, which I'm excited about because it is necessary to have friends that are from your host country. Another random piece of information, as you all know I love the jellabahs, slippers, etc. Last night after soccer I went with Fatima and another PCV to have our very own jellabahs tailored. This costs about 30 dollars and you actually are able to choose the material you want and the style.
This week we also had several volunteers visits and possible projects we will be working on were discussed. With the PC health program we will be working directly with the ministry of health in Morocco and my counterpart will likely be someone who works at the local spitar or with the ministry of health. In Morocco 44% of the population is rural and accessibility to running water is the main problem in rural areas. In many rural areas if running water is avalible it is often not sanitary resulting in infant deaths in the first year of life. Out of the rural population 35-40% have access to running water, which leads to many projects in which the PC tries to establish methods for obtaining running water. I'll write more later, but basically several projects that current PC's are working on involve running water, safe drinking water, proper sanitation methods (disease is wide-spread in rural areas), the creation of wells and piping, health education, basic education, family planning, infant vaccinations, UN water projects, and several involving operation smile.

Field Trip!

2006-03-26T08:41:00.000-08:00

Over the past week I have been on a field trip with a current volunteer and another trainee. Normally this field trip occurs part of the way through training, but this year they decided to move the trip to the beginning of training so that we could see what volunteers actually do and live with a host family so that we see how important language really is. We left Sunday for Oarzerzate, which is a province in the quasi-desert. Eight of us were able to stay the night in town as part of our travel and we were able to see the other half of our staging group (the people in the environment sector.) Monday we left on the ever-crowded taxi and went with our volunteer to her site...which was two hours farther into the desert. She was to give us cross-cultural assignments and show us what she does as a volunteer so we could have some idea of what we would be doing. For the first two weeks in country, I have been studying Darija, a form of Arabic. Last week the day before we left on our trip we found out our language groups, as aforementioned in the previous blog. This means that we have had VERY little language training before going to our volunteer's site. Our first assignment was to go out alone and purchase all vegetables that we would need for week. Well not knowing the Tamazite word for any vegetable (since I had only 2 hrs of language training) and not knowing the standard price made this task slightly difficult. However, all is well and I survived my first task. One interesting thing I learned about my volunteer is how much she cooks from scratch. Life in Morocco moves at a slightly different pace than the fast-paced life of America and she said while she was working on many projects, she still had more free time alone, than she had ever had in her life. Normally you may have a site mate in another sector (i.e Small Business development) or another health volunteer is normally about 30 minutes away...so you still get to see others. Apparently the amount of free time that most volunteers have allows them to become amazing cooks and I actually cooked a whole meal from scratch with fresh vegetables (I know amazing right.) What I like about most rural areas of Morocco is that you eat nothing with preservatives, everything is fresh. Fresh bread from the oven, vegetables grown in that town, meat from the butcher..etc. My volunteer works with the Maternal Peace Corps program so much of her work deals with family planning, infant vacinations, money allocations for things needed at her sbitar, etc. A problem in Morocco is that many women believe in the "inshalla" idea, which means that they believe they will continue to have as many children as God will allow. Which is fine, but many of these poorer families end up with 7 or 8 children and there is no monetary support for the children. Also, the sbitar is very small and many women still believe in having the child at home so they lack pre and post-natal care provided by staff that is trained. Also, in the area where my volunteer was, racism was previlant and only women of darker color used the sbitar so that is also obviously a major problem. Other trainees stayed with Health and hygience volunteers and one volunteer actually brought running water to his town over his two years here, which is an absolutely amazing project. The second night in Taghzoute (where my volunteer lived) I had to stay with a host-family, which would have been amazing if I would have had at least a week training in Tamazite, but I had so little that it was quite difficult to communicate. The family was amazing and I would really like to go back and visit with them once my language skills have improved. They bought chocolate, yogurt, and dates for me, which was amazingly kind. They spoke not a word of english and I had 2 hours training in Tamazite. Therefor my night was spent pointing to cats, tables, body parts, etc so I could learn the words. The two children also played soccer which was something to do to pass the time since our verbal communication was lacking. I had couscous with the family and mint tea, which are both amazing by the way. We stayed with the host family for two nights and my family was in a very rural area. My host father turned on Euro-news each night (which was in English) and this was an amazing break for me. However, the family obviously didn't know what was going on in English, so that brought the focus back towards me, the random American staying with them. Following my field trip the 8 who intially left for Oarzerzate met in Marrakesh, which a pretty amazing city. It's a city for tourists so the other Peace Corps volunteers say its nice to visit when you want to just an average person and not a Peace Corps volunteer. Friday night we had Pizza and looked around the market. At about 10 that night we stopped and one of the many tea stands and we spoke our darija mixed with Tamazite and the owner thought it was so amazing that had actually learned the langauge that he gave us everything for free. The following day I bought some amazing silver ear-rings and a huge silver cuff (like the one I have with elephants on it I bought in the states.) I did an amazing job bargaining and purchased both for the equivilant of 10 US dollars. We arrived back in town last night and will do language training until thursday when we leave for CBT. Its good to be back, only because I have friends who are locals in the city and I missed our nightly soccer games. Tonight we find out our CBT groups and where we will be going for CBT. I can't wait and in one month we find out our area for our final site.

General Information

2006-03-26T03:23:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone and sorry it has taken so long for me to update my blog.
I finally found out my language and it is one of the berber dialects...we were to be placed in Darijia or one of the two Berber dialects. Our darija group only consists of 5 peoplem so the rest of us were split up. Some of my good friends from training are in the other Berber dialect so they won't be at CBT with me, but all of my soccer friends are in my language group. The only hard part is that we've been learning Darija for two weeks and now all of the sudden we have a new language to learn. The day after we found out what language we would be learning we left for a field trip to stay with a current volunteer for a week to see what she does and to stay with a host family. We were put with a host family that is in our new language group, which we don't know at all, only to teach us how important language really is. Prior to leaving for our field trip the locals that we play soccer with took us on a 2 hour tour of town which was really amazing. I'm sorry that I don't go to the internet as often as many people in my group do, but I've found that playing soccer everyday and really interacting with the locals has helped me learn more about the culture and the language. Some projects that the health group works with are projects with the UN, Operation Smile, basic projects for health educationm family planning, and projects to bring running water to villages. You would be amazed at how many people in this country are living without running water in rural areas. Most rural areas speak one of the two Berber dialects, which is obviously why most health volunteers are put into these language groups. Many sites that speak Tamazite (which is my dialect) are in the mountainous regions of the country, which is what I wanted because I find the landscape to be absolutely amazing and I deal with cooler weather better than alot of people in my group. I hope to learn more about potential projects, but obviously no project can be implemented until I am sworn in as a volunteer and my language skills are at par with my community.

Training and Morocco

2006-03-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

Thus far I've been in Morocco about 9 days and all I have to say is I absolutely love the country. We've been through over a week of training and we are finally reaching something that pertains to our lives for the next two years. We started Arabic script yesterday and I was suprised at how quickly I picked it up and how there is actually a great deal of order to the whole process. We have class everyday from about 8 am until 6 pm and I normally run with three other girls at about 6am. My most amazing experience this week was the creation of a soccer league with some of the other volunteers and members of the town. On Sunday 5 volunteers went out to the dirt field across from where we are staying before our CBT and started a small soccer game. After about 30 minutes every single person from this town was watching us and we had created a tourn. of sorts. There were 3 guys and another girl and myself...so obviously we were the only two girls on the field. It was pretty amazing because we played for hours and communicated in a mixture of Arabic, french, and english...but somehow we all understood exactly what was going on. I feel that I can not really describe my experience here because there are no words to describe how open and amazing the people are. The food is also amazing and everyday life without less is really liberating. We started our cultural studies today and we will be leaving for other villages on Saturday for more training so I'll get in touch with everyone in a few weeks. A few of us still haven't purchased cell phones b/c we are always too busy with everyday life to go to the store. However, thursday we have no class and the market comes to town so I am very excited about buying some Moroccan slides. The view of the Mountains were we are will take your breath away and I can't imagine waking up to this everyday. It really puts life into perspective. We will be sworn in as official volunteers in May then we have another homestay in June and July and after that I will be living on my own.