If there
are two things you have to get good at as a Peace Corps Volunteer they are
rolling with the punches and being ready to respond to the unexpected. The last week or so highlights both how I’ve
gotten better at these two things and at how I still need to work at them. This last week has been an exciting time
where my work has really expanded, but also a frustrating time where a lot of
the problems I’ve thus far been able to skirt around came to the fore. There are some funny stories, some depressing
ones, and one or two heartening ones, so get ready to roll along with me for a
bit.
The first
story I’ll tell is about my S.I.D.A. (A.I.D.S. by its French acronym) event
last Saturday. Although I was the primary
organizer, this event was, theoretically, an ideal Peace Corps event, the idea
to have it was my mudir’s, the woman actually doing the presentation is a local
woman who works with a national organization for the prevention of S.I.D.A.,
all I had to do was act as the middle man bringing these groups together, the
American facilitating a Moroccan event.
I should hope it’s needless to say but it didn’t work out that smoothly.
After
connecting the organization (O.P.A.L.S., a French acronym for the Organization
for the Prevention of the Spread of A.I.D.S.) with my Dar Chabab and running
between them a couple of times all I had to do was have a projector ready for
the event and pre- and post- tests printed so we could see if the students
actually learned anything. Although my
Dar Chabab doesn’t have a projector I found an organization in town which would
lend us one the day of the event (they needed it earlier that day), and
although I was a bit nervous that my normal copy shop was closed for a local
holiday the day before the event I got copies printed at another shop the day
of. Everything looked fine until I went
to the association to get the projector, about a half hour before the
event. My contact wasn’t there. I called her, no response. Uh oh.
With the room set up and the woman from the association on her way it
was a little worrying. My contact called
me just ten minutes before the event and apologized, but she hadn’t been around
since she was looking for her boss, the only one with a key to the room with
the projector. She’d found out where he
was (at some café) and had sent a student to bring the keys.
Back at the
Dar Chabab with projector in hand we started to set up the computer (my mudir’s
laptop) and projector together. We
plugged them in, only to discover the projector didn’t work. I returned it as my mudir, the woman from the
association, and a couple other local volunteers set up the computer so that
hopefully most people could see (with 50 students it was wishful
thinking). My contact said that it was
strange it wasn’t working now; it had earlier.
She grabbed another power chord and it started to run, so I brought it
back. In the meantime things were ready
at the Dar Chabab so while everyone else got the projector running I put in the
USB with our presentation. Now, one
thing I didn’t check, but should of, was if my mudir had power point on his
computer. I had assumed he would have an
old version, and saved an older format accordingly, but it turned out he didn’t
have any version. I ran home and resaved
the file as a PDF, came back and opened it in a PDF reader. Then we plugged the projector into the
computer, which was when we discovered my mudir’s visual jack was broken. My computer wouldn’t work (Macs need an
adaptor), but a student offered to run home and bring his laptop. He brought it and plugged in the projector,
it worked and I tried the USB. He didn’t
have power point, no problem I had the PDF format. It turned out he didn’t have a PDF reader
either. I didn’t know it was possible to
get a computer that isn’t bundled with a PDF reader.
About this
time (around 40 minutes after our start time, the students were done with their
pretest and fidgeting) my mudir disappeared.
Looking around I said “alright, I guess we’d better start,” when he came
running back in caring an ancient CPU from God knows where (it later turned out
to be his home computer). Projector
worked, power point worked, we were ready to go. He came back with a monitor and keyboard,
shocked that I already had the program running but alright, let’s get
started. Then the power went out on the
half of the room with the computer and the projector. But not the other half. That was strange. Someone had flipped the lights so the
projection would be brighter, but it turned out that on that half of the room
the outlet was connected to the same switch as the lights. After restarting everything we finally
started, about an hour late. It was the
Platonic Ideal of the start of an event in Morocco.
Once it
finally got going the event was really good.
The woman is a fantastic presenter and the kids were, for the most part,
very engaged. A few near the back did
the very rude (though culturally normal) continual walk in and out of the
activity, but as a native it didn’t phase her the way it used to phase me. I noticed part way through that the students
were taking notes on the back of their pretests and made the decision that we
just wouldn’t collect data then since it’s more important that they have the
information than I know exactly how effective the event was. After the event was over there was the
obligatory “let’s give our opinion” session that follows any Moroccan event,
where a few interesting things came up.
The first
boy to speak blamed the government for the spread of S.I.D.A. Specifically, since the government fails to
help provide good jobs for rural women some of them feel compelled to enter a
life of prostitution just to make ends meet.
Then a group of boys started to call S.I.D.A. a shameful disease, but a
local teacher made the counterargument that shameful or no S.I.D.A. is here and
you have to know about it. Then another
local weighed in, saying that anyone with S.I.D.A. must have engaged in
un-Islamic activities. This got me (and
quite a few other people) bristling, even while some of the audience nodded in
agreement. There are, of course,
hundreds of arguments against this, I even had three ready to go immediately if
no one offered one (the case of a woman, faithful to her husband, whose husband
is less faithful, contracts the disease, and then passes it to her; a man who
goes to a hospital for a transfusion who is accidently given tainted blood; a
baby born to an infected mother), but thankfully the presenter stepped in and,
somewhat more diplomatically, explained that Islam is one thing, medicine
another, and you need to know how to defend yourself regardless. Then my mudir and I stepped in to end the
activity since it was time to go and we wanted that to be the last word.
Moving on
from A.I.D.S. to a more fun topic, I’ve recently made a bunch of young Moroccan
girls (8-12) obsessed with Frisbee. It
started the other day when about ten girls showed up an hour early to
class. I usually hang around the Dar
Chabab for that hour before class and entertain any early birds with card games
or chess, but ten was too many to do that with so I ran home, grabbed my
Frisbee, and took the girls outside. I
had been a little worried that the older generation might not like that too
much, girls in rural Morocco almost never play sports outside, it’s culturally
very abnormal, but the adults who weren’t indifferent had big smiles watching
the girls have so much fun. Only the
young boys (same ages) didn’t like it since the girls won’t play if boys—other
than me, who these younger girls have now started calling their big brother—are
playing and I wouldn’t let them ruin the girls’ fun. Over the next few days I played several times
with both the girls and the boys separately, but I found that with the girls I
had to spend most of my time chasing away boys, some of whom get very violent
and start throwing things like sticks, boxes of dates, and even soccer balls at
the girls. One boy said I was a
“shameful” person for giving the girls an event before the boys! I discovered that carrying a big stick keeps
them further at bay, since some of them have never stayed long enough to
realize I won’t follow through and actually hit them. To be honest I shudder to think of how bad
behavior will get with them once they realize this. The boys who threw things I wouldn’t let play
with the other boys the next day, and after an obnoxiously long argument they
did leave the better-behaved kids alone.
With all
but the best behaved boys I had to spend Frisbee time fetching the Frisbee from
various roofs since the boys won’t pass to each other and just try to throw as
hard as they can. After awhile I started
to not allow boys who didn’t try to pass to each other to play, but instead of
learning from their bad behavior like they had when I wouldn’t let them play
the first time they reverted so that they were even worse than before, one day
even going so far as to steal the Frisbee and not returning it to me or the
better behaved boys until I knocked it out of the air. Since I’ve had so many problems with this
group both in and out of class I immediately banned them from all further classes
and activities—a ban I hope to rescind someday if they show improvement. To be honest, I don’t have high hopes. After this I realized that I was left with
about six boys under 14 still allowed into my activities, and I was worried
that my service would be marked by me letting the boys of town down. However in all my younger classes the rest of
the week a bunch of boys who I’ve never worked with but seen around started
coming. It turns out they hadn’t wanted
to come to class because all the misbehaving boys (called dsar in Arabic, which loosely translates to brat/bully) were
there! My new policy is to not let the dsarin (plural of dsar) in and otherwise operate on a strict one-strike you’re out
policy per class with the others, and we’ve shot through new material since
then with only one boy removed one time and he much better since then.
The same
day the dsarin took the Frisbee was
also one of the few days I’ve had a really major behavioral problem with older
boys. It’s exam time in Moroccan high
schools and a bunch of boys who’ve never come before came in the hopes that one
review session would help them pass their exams. The idea was even stranger since they seemed
to think that they’d be able to review while also making strange noises in the
back of class and failing to impress the girls who come regularly by shouting
out incorrect English. I told them
they’d have to leave if they continued this and they complained that they had
an exam and had to review! The behavior
continued so I told the worst offender he’d have to leave. He refused, something that’s never happened
before. My mudir wasn’t around, so I
couldn’t fall back on his authority and this kid continued to bellow (and at
one point yodel) and stop the class from proceeding, so I went over, stepped
right up to him (thankfully he’s one of only a handful of students bigger than
me, so it didn’t look like bullying), and backed him out the door, though again
thankfully I didn’t have to touch him at all until we were at the door and he
tried to push his way back in. He
couldn’t push past me and so gave up, but unfortunately this did nothing to
force the rest into line and my regular students walked out about the time one
of the dsar pulled out a bottle of
bubbles and started blowing them at the girls!
When my regular students left so did I, because there was no point
working with these older dsarin.
Now, that
was a huge bummer obviously and I was feeling pretty down but over the next few
days some good things happened to pick me back up. Firstly, the boy who I had to walk out came
up to me the next day and gave me an obviously heartfelt apology for his
behavior the day before. Secondly, my
younger students, freed of their own dsar
issue, started to make huge strides forward.
They also simply continue to be adorable. Thirdly, my most advanced students (a couple
of college drop-outs and a French teacher) had a great lesson reading and
interpreting the Declaration of Independence.
Lastly, the young women I teach at the artisana had a major break
through all around the same time and can now speak reasonably well (for
beginners) in four tenses: present simple, past simple, present continuous, and
past continuous. This last development
really reinforced for me one of the reasons I like teaching (even while I still
don’t particularly like teaching ESL).
There is sometimes a moment in class when your realize, wow, that
student just got it, right then, they didn’t understand something and now they
understand it. It’s a great feeling to
know you helped them comprehend something new.
I’ll leave
you with a Joha story:
A man
brought a letter to Joha to read but the handwriting was very poor. Joha looked at it, but said, “I can’t read
that; it’s illegible.”
The man got
very angry. “What kind of wise man are
you?” he said. You wear a turban and you
can’t even read a simple letter.”
Joha
immediately too the turban off his head and put it on the man’s head. “Now that you’re wearing the turban, you read
it,” Joha said.
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