Travelling

            It’s been a busy three weeks of travelling and training since my last post.  Most of it actually isn’t worth writing about, so I’ll give you the quick version with the funniest and most ridiculous stories.  The day after my last post I went back to Rabat for the first time since swearing in, ostensibly to attend a workshop on how to run an Environmental Awareness club, and then, after that, to sit in on a meeting of Peace Corps Morocco’s SIDA (French acronym for AIDS) committee to give input from our most recent stage (group of volunteers, pronounced in the French fashion) on how to change their goals given that all volunteers will now be focused on youth development.  The Environmental training was a bit of a fiasco, the NGO which presented to us (in French) seemed more interested in telling us about their organizational history than in giving us practical tips, which is what most of us had come for, but the SIDA meeting went very well. 

However, for me the best parts of the trip to Rabat ended up being two surprises.  The more important of the two was my chance to sit and watch one of the volunteers from my stage (a former broadcast journalist and mass communications professor at Itasca Community College) and a volunteer he’s been working with from a previous stage (also a former journalist, naturalized American citizen (I want to say originally from Liberia, but I might have the wrong West African country)), the two hands down coolest volunteers I’ve met in the Peace Corps, give a presentation to a group of girls working with Girls Global Media, an NGO that teaches journalism skills to young girls in the U.S. and around the world.  Actually, they’re just starting to work on the around the world part, and Morocco is one of the first countries they’ve tried expanding to, when the volunteer from the previous stage finishes her service in a month she’ll be helping with the program in this country.  It was great to see the twenty or so really passionate young girls (all with phenomenal English) pitch their story ideas and go through the expert vetting of the two experienced American journalists.  It all took place at a vocational film school, which we got a tour of before the event.  It was a very different world from the small town I’ve gotten used to!

There is a lot of interest in my site in a student journalism club, so now I know two volunteers to go to for advice, and if there are any talented and dedicated young girls an NGO to get them in touch with.   Not bad for a trip that I went on because the volunteer in my stage thought I might be interested and mentioned it in passing (this just after we’d begged and forced the poor guy to tell us his entire life story).  The other highlight, significantly less important, was eating bacon and other pig product for the first time in five and a half months.  It’s quite easy to get in Rabat, we discovered, and a trip to the American Club netted us bacon cheeseburgers and, almost as important, Dr. Pepper.

My last day in Rabat was September 11^th, the day of the attacks in Libya and Egypt, and I travelled home in a bit of a daze.  My site mate (who is on the SIDA committee) and I travelled home together, and we only found out about the death of ambassador Stephens (an RPCV from Morocco) when one of my site mate’s friends called.  Soon after we both got a text at the same time and knew it couldn’t be good news, but it was just a warning from the Peace Corps to keep calm and caution and to avoid large, angry looking crowds.  At the time we were sitting on an overcrowded and overheated bus.  Not good ones for following directions us.  I was never near any of the demonstrations in Morocco, but from what I’ve heard they were entirely under control.  A Moroccan friend of mine (one of the metal heads from Fes) even posted on my wall and said that I shouldn’t worry.  Moroccans, he said, don’t have major protests over religion, they save their protests for politics and the economy.

After just twelve hours in site I was on the road again, this time travelling to Agadir to attend a workshop on setting up and running a library in my Dar Chebab, a project that both my mudir and I are very passionate about.  The workshop was great, run by Peace Corps Morocco’s fantastic librarian, and I have a lot of material to work with my mudir on.  I also learned that there is a book donating charity that the Peace Corps works with a lot based in Darien, Connecticut, my hometown.  The Darien Book Aid Plan, Inc., something I’d never heard of growing up.  Go figure.  While the workshop was great, I have to say that Agadir is the first place in Morocco that I just did not like.  My buddy Eugene and I had met up in Marrakech on the way town to travel together the last leg of the trip and the moment we stepped off the bus con artists with just a smattering of English tried to prey on us.  One offered to have his friend take us to our hotel in his taxi, just 100 dirham each.  We’d heard that the price to downtown should be about five, so I told him that we know how prices work in Morocco and we walked away.  He started screaming at us (in English) that we knew nothing.  We then proceeded to get a five dirham taxi, but not without a few other insincere drivers trying to insist we should buy out a whole taxi because we would have to wait a long time for one to fill (we filled one and left instantly once we found the line).  One guy even had the gall to ask for a tip for showing us where the line was, which was a loose translation for walking with us and talking at us as we walked towards the obvious group of people.  Once we arrived downtown all the small taxis refused to turn on their meters, and while we bargained one down to a reasonable price it still cost twice as much as it should have.  In other words, within twenty minutes of arriving in Agadir five or six people tried to cheat us.  That is about five or six times the number of people who’d tried to do that to me in country since arriving.

In all of their defense, it didn’t help that the Peace Corps put us up in a luxury hotel overlooking the beach.  Their regular place in town was full-up, and in desperation Peace Corps had to put us up in what amounted to a giant palace, so we did nothing to dissuade the idea that all Americans are made of money.  Still, nothing like a stunning view over the Atlantic for a couple of days to get you over your rancor at failed attempts to cheat you.  Agadir has a highly built up beach frequented by European and Gulf state tourists.  The beautiful marine distract only houses expats and the very richest Moroccans.  Once the workshop was over it was nice to finally get a swim in this summer, but the touristy boardwalk with its touristy prices was a bit of a turnoff.  Leaving the next day even the bus ticket salesman tried to overcharge us by twenty dirham each, but we called him out on it and he gave us the real price.

After a night at my friend Nicole’s site just south of Marrakech with most of my CBT group (during which we watched many episodes from Nicole’s complete collection of How I Met Your Mother) we found ourselves in Marrakech for the start of our Inter Service Training, or IST.  Basically our entire stage got together for a week filled with trainings and information sessions at a swank hotel (actually a retreat for employees of an arm of the Moroccan government that the Peace Corps could rent cheaply, but still complete with swimming pool).  Some of the sessions were useful and gave me great project ideas or insights, some were not, but overall I’m happy with the quality of IST.  It was mainly a time to see friends we hadn’t seen in months and relax.  Unfortunately, because of the busy schedule and our extreme distance from the center of town (either an expensive twenty minute cab ride or cheap but long bus trip) I wasn’t able to see too much of the city, just the main square (djamaa al fna, the frighteningly named meeting place of the dead, where they used to hold executions) and a few of the surrounding medina streets.  Since I’ll see it in a few weeks when my parents come I’m not upset about that.  The main square gets incredibly lively at sun down, filled with snake charmers (I went with a friend who is terrified of snakes, so my job was to look around and say, “oh, lets go this way instead”), musicians, tourists, street venders, and languages from all over the world.  It is one of the only places in Morocco that I’ve seen street performers.  I didn’t have the instant love affair with the medina streets that I had with Fes’s, but maybe that’s because I’m so much more used to medinas now.  That could be it, but they definitely lack that labyrinthine charm that Fes has. 

That being said, I’m excited to go back and give it a second look, and I do have one funny story from a shop (actually two funny stories, but I’m going to keep the second one under wraps until after my parents come and leave, for reasons that will become clear once I tell the story).  We were talking to a shopkeeper about our jobs as Peace Corps volunteers and we each told him where our sites are.  I’ve gotten used to being general about my site, the town is too small for most people to know it, but when I mentioned that I am nearby Khenifra he asked for more detail.  It turns out his cousin lives in my town, and upon hearing where I was from he decided he liked us and immediately dropped the price of everything in his store.  A lot.  In the case of some jewelry the girls were looking at almost 75% (which got him enough sales to make up for it).  It’s nice to know you can get Moroccan prices if there is a possibility you might know a family member (I’d never met the cousin).  The other story will just have to wait, but I promise it’s good.

After IST a few of us decided we’d take a stab at climbing Jbel Toubkal, the tallest mountain in North Africa, located just south of Marrakech.  It’s a steep, two day trek leading almost three miles up above sea level.  You start from the small, beautiful Amizight town of Imlil at the base of the mountain.  We got there late the day after IST and explored the town, which is beautiful.  We even found the local women’s center and talked to the women there about their export, Argon oil.  We even got to see the process of making some.  We went to a café and got some hot chocolate looking at the mountain ahead of us.  Already I could tell there would be some problems.  There was a heavy feel of rain in the air, and I was starting to have strange pains in my belly.  I woke up the next morning in a downpour and with some pretty severe stomachaches.  Once the rains subsided a bit I told my friends to climb without me, I would have been a liability even on a dry trail, let alone a wet one.  It was a bit of a bummer, but the right decision; I could not have handled such a tall mountain.  They, luckily, ended up having a good climb, though slower than they’d expected because of the dampness and occasional returning storms, so they ended up having to spend an extra night on the way down.  I waited in Imlil for a bit and then went back to Nicole’s site, where we watched more How I Met Your Mother, not a bad way to get over a stomach bug.

Now I’m back in site and starting to get some work done, but because of a ministry meeting scheduled next week and my parents visit soon after it’ll still be a little while before I really get into the swing of working with the kids.  I’m actually very happy about that, with all the prep work that I’m putting into these programs with my counterparts I’m hoping to have some very good activities to get us started.

Sorry for the rambling post, nature of the beast this time I think.  I’ll leave you now with two Joha stories from my tutor and a must-read postscript if you want to visit me over the next couple of years!

Joha went to the pulpit.  Before he started his sermon he asked the congregation,

"Do you know what I will be talking about today?"

"No," answered the congregation.

"If you don't know then what can I tell you?" he replied, and walked away. 

Next week he went to the pulpit and asked the same question.  This time the congregation answered, "Yes, we do."

"If you do then there is nothing I can tell you," Joha said and walked away again.

The members of the congregation decided that if Joha asked the same question again next week half of them would say "Yes," and the other half would say 'No."

The following week Joha went to the pulpit and asked the same question a third time.  As they had decided, half of the congregation said "Yes, we do," and the other half said, "No, we don't.”

"In that case, those who know tell the ones who don't know,” said Joha and he walked away again.

One day, Joha was riding his donkey to the next town.  He was tried, so he sat in the shade of a huge walnut tree.  He took off his turban and his robe too.  He noticed some pumpkins on the ground a few feet away.  He looked at them for a while and said to himself “God sure works in strange ways.  He makes these huge pumpkins grow on the grass and these small walnuts on tall trees with long branches.”  Suddenly, a walnut fell off the tree and hit Joha on his head.  He jumped up in pain and his eyes started tearing up.  He put his turban on and when his pain subsided, he looked up and said, "Forgive me, God.  I will never meddle in your affairs again, what would have happened to me if you had pumpkins growing on this tree."

P.S.  For those of you planning on visiting me sometime while I’m here, I’d like to let you know how vacation works for me.  For every month of service (not including training) I accrue two days of vacation time, which I can use whenever.  As of now I have eight days, though I’ll be using most of those when my parents come.  I will get six additional days after I’ve been in country nine months (including training, so in December), which represent the six days I should get for my last three months of service (when I won’t be allowed to travel).  If you want to visit, the best times are in the Fall and in the Spring.  I recommend highly against Royal Air Maroc, it is expensive and not that great an airline.  If you’re coming as part of a longer trip I’d recommend going first to Europe and then flying over here by budget airline (or taking the ferry from Spain), it might save you quite a bit.  If people want to travel but don’t particularly want to see Morocco let me know, I’d definitely be willing to meet up in Spain.  Also willing to do other trips, but Spain is easiest.  In any case, anyone who wants to visit is welcome, get in touch with me and we can figure out a good time!