tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31061715065136194822024-03-13T15:22:51.683+00:00Searching for JohaA Connecticut Yankee's Adventures in the MaghrebTedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-70627980339264844562014-06-02T21:03:00.001+01:002014-06-02T21:03:16.923+01:00A Yankee Comes Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Well, after a fantastic couple of
weeks in Spain traveling with fellow RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) I’m
back in the States, for real this time. Bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe
it. I’m happy to be home, of course, and to see friends and family, but I left
a big part of me in Morocco. To wit, I spent this morning going through my
replacement’s blog posts, and everything from photos of my town to stories
about people I know there made me wish I could just hop a souq bus back across
the Atlantic. Which is ridiculous. The bus would sink.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As it turns out, readjusting to
America might be the very hardest part of Peace Corps. Actually, it totally isn’t,
but how’s that for a topic sentence? No one’s asking me to eat sheep brain
here, though I do get to keep people riveted with stories of things I’ve eaten,
places I’ve been, and challenges I’ve seen. Which is pretty cool. At least on
occasion it lets me go back to being the center of attention like I was for the
last two years in my town. That being said, it’s really nice to not be the
center of attention every time I go outside. Sometimes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, I’ll give a quick overview of
things I’ve noticed coming back to America. I’ll start with a few general
observations, and then move into some more personal anecdotes. Firstly, and
most importantly, American suburbs are really weird. Globally speaking, that
is. That big yard between houses, as if each and every suburbanite were a
member of some kind of minor European nobility. No one does that. Except
Canadians, I think. Maybe Australians? However, in Spain I noticed all the
small outlying towns were cramped and medieval, just like Morocco and the
English countryside. Only nobility (and farmers, but they live in a different
setting) ever have large private yards. We really are a strange country. Never
thought I’d come to a huge realization about American culture vs. the world’s
driving through suburban Jersey.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another strange thing is public
performance and practice of the arts. While New York obviously has plenty of
touts and professionals performing in the streets and parks for cash just like
Marrakech’s Djmaa El Fna, it also has tons of people just going out to practice
or play for fun. The other day I passed by a gospel choir performing in Central
Park, no hat out or anything, just performing. People are out painting,
writing, playing music, whatever, just for the pleasure of doing it outside. In
my town, and really most places I went in Morocco, I was the only person who
did that. Here it’s normal, and changes the landscape quite a bit. The same
goes for public exercise. I’m just not used to joggers anymore.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Every RPCV I’ve ever talked to
has a version of the following story. On Memorial Day I was out with my
grandparents and parents having lunch at a diner. I opened the menu, a 5 or
6-page affair, and found myself completely and utterly overwhelmed by the
options. Do I get a gyro or do I get a salad? Omelets look good. My God, there
are eight varieties of hamburger. Just another 50 cents for onion rings. I
couldn’t make a decision. I had heard stories of RPCVs suffering nervous
breakdowns in supermarkets (haven’t risked one yet), or utterly unable to choose
deodorant from the endless options, but I’d thought it wouldn’t affect me.
Totally wrong. America, the land of overwhelming choice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On another day I set myself a
list of five chores to do regarding coming back and preparing for grad school.
They would easily have filled a normal day in Morocco. I got four of them done
in an hour. Admittedly, the fifth took several days and made me jump through
enough bureaucratic hoops to feel like I was back in Morocco, but still 4/5 is
pretty good. That being said, that last chore did teach me that my constant
refrain, “this would be so much easier in America,” isn’t always true.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lastly, I just can’t get over
using and thinking in Arabic. I’ll hang out with my friends from home, and I
just can’t help but drop words. I even think that since they’re my friends they
must understand Arabic. Isn’t that what my friends do? I miss it, though to be
honest I hear it all over. I’ve made a game of trying to guess which dialect
I’m hearing as I pass by. Still haven’t heard any Moroccan Darija, but I’m sure
it’ll come with time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I wish I had some powerful closing
remarks that could sum up the last two years of my life, but of course I don’t,
as that’s basically impossible, so I’ll close out with a Joha story my dad made
up when I came home. I think it fits the spirit of the tales very well.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One day,
Joha returned from a long trip. His friend asked him how it felt to be home.
“Coming home is the best feeling in the world,” Joha replied. A few days later
the friend saw Joha atop his donkey, heading out of town.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Joha,”
said the friend, “Why are you leaving? I thought you said coming home was the
best feeling in the world.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It is,”
Joha replied, “I’m leaving so I can come home again.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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As Moroccans say, take care of your
heads. Go with peace.<o:p></o:p></div>
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- Ted Rizzo<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-29110921351295941152014-05-06T07:21:00.000+01:002014-05-06T07:21:15.092+01:00My Last Few Days in Morocco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Really hard to believe that that’s a title, but my Peace
Corps service is coming to a close. I don’t really have that much to write
about, but I feel almost compelled, since it is the end of my service, to leave
a little note about how things closed up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To start
off this post will talk about food for the first time in ages. After writing
(but before posting) my last post I finally had the wonder known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rfisa</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rfisa</i> is many volunteers’ favorite Moroccan food, but I’d never been
lucky enough to have it until now.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>It
is now one of my favorite foods. It is made from torn up <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">milwi</i> (a Moroccan wrap akin to a thick tortilla) mixed with lentils
and baked chicken. The particular version I had also had a ton of oregano. It
was incredible, and I’m glad I finally got to sample this traditional, though
time and labor consumptive, dish.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
day some students threw a “surprise” party for me. I say “surprise” because one
of the volunteers at the Dar Chabab told me there would be a “surprise” party,
but refused to tell me whom the “surprise” was for. It wasn’t hard for me to
work it out. The party ranged from the funny (a sketch some kids put on poking
fun at my Darija and how I’ll mix up close sounding words for hilarious
effect), to the sweet (when a friend talked about how we’d first met), to the
Fellini-esque (when the “break dancing” started). It was pretty much the
Platonic Ideal of a Moroccan party, and I really enjoyed it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The rest of
my last week passed in a blur of goodbyes and classes, with another goodbye
party on Thursday, this time at the Dar Taliba. The kids managed to prank me
pretty well, someone brought in alcohol free beer to the party, but didn’t tell
me what it was, so when I drank what I expected to be a coke-like thing I
almost spit it out in shock. I had to check the percent alcohol (0.0) just to
be sure it wasn’t a test.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
day, my last day in site, was really hard, saying goodbye to friends and
students. For our last English class I tried to teach my freshmen and
sophomores “The Times they are a’Changin’” (I know, weird goodbye song, but it
wrapped up the topics we’ve worked on nicely), but we were all a little too
emotional to really do it well. Afterwards I went to Fes to wish my original
host family goodbye. It was my first time in Fes since September, and lots has
changed. One host brother is in University, my youngest host sister can now
speak in full English sentences, another host sister (whose wedding I sadly
missed because they gave me a day’s warning, while I was in America!) is
pregnant. Lots has also stayed the same, and I was glad I had the chance to
wish them goodbye. Now I’m in the capitol signing out, so this will be last
post from Morocco. I intend to make one more, a final wrap-up, sometime after I
get back home, so until then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bslama
3likum!</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-70571334680367813462014-04-26T08:56:00.002+01:002014-04-26T08:56:54.282+01:00What Some Moroccans Want You to Know About Moroccan Culture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On Thursday
night, my site mate and I ran a round table discussion with some of my more
advanced students about the Peace Corps, why some Americans (like us) feel
compelled to do it, how it benefits America, how it benefits the host
countries, and its three goals (developmental assistance, spreading awareness
of American culture abroad, and increasing American knowledge about other
cultures). Depending on which PCV you ask, and when, anyone of these goals
might be the most important. At different points in my service I’d have
answered differently. My students universally felt that the cultural exchange
elements of the second and third goal were far and away more important than the
first goal. As such, to finish up the discussion I posed this question to them,
“what is the one aspect of Moroccan culture you think it is most important that
I share with other Americans when I go home?” Below are their answers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Loubna said that honor and respect
are central to Moroccan culture.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Yassin, Scherazade, and Aicha all
think I need to teach people what I learned about Islam.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Youseph added that it is important
to remind people that Morocco is primarily Muslim and that means that it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strongly anti-terrorist</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Kamal, who spoke first, said that I
should teach people about Moroccan food, but he regretted his quick answer when
he realized most of the other students were going to make more serious points.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Moustapha didn’t learn from Kamal’s
mistake and later regretted that he’d used his answer to say I should teach
Moroccan dance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Nabil on the other hand did learn
from them and said that I should talk about Moroccans deep love of peace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One of the two Merriams said that I
should talk about tea and the importance of drinking it in a group.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Nouhela said that I should teach
about Moroccan holidays.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Abdelghani said that Morocco’s is a
culture in flux, in the midst of developing into something new.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The other Merriam said that it is
important to remember that Morocco doesn’t just have one culture; each city has
its own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Our next session with these
students is Tuesday. If you have any suggestions of important aspects of
American culture we should share back with the students leave them in the
comments below, or, if any of my Moroccan readers want to add to this list feel
free to do so in the comments.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-63007543676443809402014-04-24T08:23:00.000+01:002014-04-24T13:50:41.883+01:00How to Wrap Up a Peace Corps Service (I Think)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This has
probably been the very hardest post to start writing of my entire service. As
you might expect, with less than two weeks left in my site before I head first
to Fes (to visit my original host family), then to Rabat (to officially sign
out), and lastly to Andalucía (for a couple of weeks of R&R), this is a
pretty emotional time. Bittersweet is the go to adjective, but it hardly does
justice to how I feel, because while I’m excited to get back to America and on
to the next stage in my life the immense realization that I’ll probably never
see most of my students and Moroccan friends again overwhelms the excitement
and almost makes me wish I was extending my service just to spend time sitting
in cafes and eating meals with them. As such, I’ve spent a lot of the last few
weeks trying to spend quality time with as many people as possible, which is
surprisingly exhausting, but does lead to some great stories.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A couple of
weeks ago a couple of sisters in my adult beginners class invited me over to
their house for cous cous. As always happens, it turns out they’re related to a
bunch of people I know in town, none of whom ever mentioned that they were
related—I didn’t even know these two students were sisters until the family
members lesson! The topics of conversation ranged all over, from one of the
sister’s ill-fated attempt to teach herself guitar, which ended with her mother
smashing the “racket making device” after just two days (her mother looked pretty
embarrassed at this point in the story), to the distinction between anime and
other cartoons. This came up because their ten-year-old brother flip-flopped
back and forth between two animated channels, each showing one or the other. He
was very excited I was there, and was very proud of the English words he
learned over lunch. Their mother cooked an astonishingly good batch of cous
cous, and showed off her weaving skills on an impressive loom stored in a side
room. The conversation almost took a turn for the disastrous when the topic hit
the almost inevitable “do you pray” question. One aunt, who has emigrated to
Italy but was back visiting, started telling us all that in Italy she knows
many Muslims who are, in her words, “better Muslims” than Moroccan women. These
Muslim women in Italy always hide their hair and never shake men’s hands. Her
nieces, who are in their twenties, only rarely cover their hair and have never
hesitated to shake my hand, nor did her sister, or herself, in fact, so I
objected to her saying that the Italian Muslims were “better” Muslims, arguing
that neither way was better, just different. I started to argue that no version
of a faith is better than another, all Islams are true Islam, just as all
Christianities are true Christianity and all Judaisms are true Judaism. Then I
stopped and revised myself, if people believe their version of faith to be so
right that they kill others for it they believe a false version of the faith,
so that Al Qaeda operatives and the Afghani Taliban are not Muslims at all,
just as a man who murders for Christianity is not a true Christian, and a man
who murders for Judaism is not a true Jew. Except for the aunt, who looked
miffed, and the ten year old, who was engrossed in a knockoff version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Full Metal Alchemist</i>, the family
applauded. Which was cool.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A couple of
days later was the start of the school holiday. Since most of the students with
whom I’m closest were going back to their outlying villages for the holiday or
were travelling around Morocco, and since my Dar Chabab is still being repaired
(the new floor goes in soon!) I decided to use the opportunity to go to a few
nearby places were I’ve made friends to say my goodbyes. First, I went down to
my friend Melanie’s site, were she has gotten yet another set of toilets built
in the elementary school in an outlying village. Just like last time she did
this (just before I went home in December) she had PCVs and local high school
volunteers put on a health fair for the students. I partnered with one of her
students, who had also gone to BRO camp, teaching an exercise lesson to the
little kids. A passing herd of cows temporarily disrupted us, but otherwise the
fair went very well and I was glad for the opportunity to say goodbye to those
students of hers I’ve met and gotten close to over the last two years.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
day I was in Khenifra to help the volunteers there with their spring camp.
They’d decided that instead of an English focused camp this time around we
would teach about art in various forms: drawing, painting, music, theatre, and
dance. I helped primarily with the music, teaching the students an American
song everyday and one day also teaching them the harmonies to “In the Jungle,”
my first successful attempt at getting harmony going among Moroccan youth. My
favorite part of the camp was a group of local volunteers. A friend from my
site who is a fantastic painter came in and helped the kids plan and paint two
canvases for the “Global Art Exchange.” These canvases, on the topic of world
peace, will go to an American high school (in Colorado, I believe), and in
return the Khenifra Dar Chabab will get a piece from that school. On another
day, some men who run a performance art association came and taught the kids a
dance to Katy Perry’s “Roar” (yeah, I was confused as well), and helped the
kids write a couple of short theatre sketches.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the last
day of camp the students, many of whom I’ve gotten to know well through various
camps and events I’ve helped with, threw a surprise good-bye party for me. It
was incredibly sweet and incredibly sad. Afterwards a few kids wanted to say a
few words about the camp, and one kid's speech was incredibly touching. He said,
in English, that we Peace Corps Volunteers “are like angels, coming from far
away just to help us fill our empty time, time we didn’t know was so important
until you came.” It was a really hard day not to cry.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
day I stuck around Khenifra to join on a hike with those volunteers’ C.L.I.M.B
program, which ended up meaning I saw most of the same students again. We went
up a mesa outside of town that I’ve been meaning to climb for whole service, so
it was great to finally get up there. In a nice twist the grade and quality of
the slope is actually very similar to Toubkal (read: steep and covered in
scree), so I was able to tell the students from experience that it was good
practice for Toubkal. Just multiply it by 10 or 11 times.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
day was this past Monday and I am back to my regular schedule in site, the only
big differences being that I spend even more time trying to hang out with folks
and that I spend a lot of time helping my new site mate learn about town and
meet people. She is doing very well integrating and is already a huge hit with
my students, and I’m excited to know that even though I’m wrapping up my own
service, my students are not wrapped up with.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-78999866133421693292014-04-05T14:59:00.001+01:002014-04-06T08:37:46.392+01:00Assumptions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I haven’t
written a post on the vagaries of Arabic in some time, but this last week I
made a discovery so mindboggling I can’t help but write about it. A few weeks
ago I played “Blackbird” for my sophomores as a listening exercise. Since we’d
been talking about metaphors in previous classes I was very happy that they
quickly realized that the song is not about a bird. They got pretty close,
actually, saying it was about some person who didn’t have freedom or
opportunity before but now had a chance for it. This led us to talking a little
bit about the Civil Rights Movement (my 30-minute spiel in simple English with
Darija clarifications on the Civil Rights Movement still needs work), which
they knew absolutely nothing about. This has put us on a kick talking about
social issues in Morocco and on racism. Keep in mind that at the beginning of
the year these kids couldn’t say “hello” and still only have a tenuous grasp on
the past tense, though they kill in the present and present progressive, so
we’re not talking high theory here.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Keeping on
this topic, last week I said an English word they’d never heard before.
Assumption. “Younes,” they asked, “what does ‘assumption’ mean.” Realizing that
I actually didn’t know it in Arabic, I defined assumption as something you
believe without having a reason to believe it. Then I asked them how to say it
in Arabic. They thought for awhile. Then they thought some more. Their eventual
conclusion was that there simply wasn’t a word for it in Arabic. I found that a
little hard to believe, but we moved on and they used it correctly for the rest
of class. Since their first language is Tamazight, I decided I’d ask one of my
English-speaking friends whose first language is Arabic what “assumption” is.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He’d never
heard the word before. So I explained it to him the same way I’d explained it
before, giving examples of bad assumptions (an American who has never lived in
an Arab country or met any Arabs might think all Arabs are terrorists, or boys
in Morocco often assume girls who dress “loosely” are asking to be harassed)
and good assumptions (if the next town in one direction is the same distance
away as the next town in the other we can assume that it takes the same amount
of time to drive to one or the other, but even this can be wrong because one
might be uphill and the other down). He said that this was an entirely new
concept to him, but that good assumptions could be covered by a certain word,
however as we talked more about that word it seemed like the better translation
was “conjecture.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Still
unsatisfied I took to the Internet. On Facebook, Peace Corps Morocco has a
group where PCVs can ask each other and various LCFs, tutors, and other English
speaking Moroccans language questions. I explained that the word had come up in
class and how I’d defined it. The first response from one PCV was this: “
‘something you believe without reasons’ is oftentimes ‘fact’ here.” Rather
flip, but sadly often rather accurate as well, which is part of the reason I
want to talk about assumptions with my kids. Another enterprising PCV got an
answer from Google translate, but we wanted confirmation. Another PCV suggested
that since there isn’t much of a cultural context here for it just to go with
“beliefs” or “opinions,” but I still wanted an answer. Eventually one of the
Moroccan group members chimed in. His response was laughter. So as far as I
know, there is no word for assumption in Arabic (any Arabic speaker reading
this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">please</i> comment and let me know
if I’m missing something here).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now, this
might be assuming too much (yeah, I groaned as well, but it was too easy), but
I wonder if part of the problem the first volunteer brought up, that things you
believe without reason are oftentimes “facts” here is because they don’t have a
word for assumption. There is a lot of distance between fact, not fact, and
outright false, and assumption is an important concept bridging that distance.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the limits of language, reading Orwell too much
at an early age will do that to you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In other
news, a couple of weeks ago I was in Rabat for my Close of Service Conference.
There isn’t really too much to write about it here, but it was an interesting
and reflective time. Really highlights how close to the end I am. In fact, I
realized, I have no more than 6 sessions left with any one class at this point.
Less with some of them. Hopefully, most of those sessions won’t be solely mine
anymore either, providing the bus system follows through the volunteer who is
to replace me in site should be arriving later today!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To finish
up I’ll put in a Joha story since I haven’t in awhile. This is one of the ones
I’ve used in play form in class, in this case with my freshmen to follow-up on
their lesson on clothing:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One day,
Joha went to a shop that sold clothing. There he saw a beautiful pair of pants
that he wanted to buy. After haggling for a good price the shopkeeper started
to wrap up Joha’s purchase.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Wait,”
said Joha, “I actually think I like that coat better, how much is it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“For you,”
said the shopkeeper, “I’ll say the same price as the pants.” Joha thanked him
and took the coat. “Wait,” cried the shopkeeper, “Joha, you haven’t paid me.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’ve left
you the pants,” replied Joha.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You didn’t
pay for those either,” said the shopkeeper.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Of course
not,” said Joha, “why would I pay for something I didn’t buy?”<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-57473293791533120492014-03-11T16:51:00.000+00:002014-03-12T08:10:48.894+00:00The BRO Code<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The last
week of February was probably one of the busiest and most meaningful weeks of
my service. As I mentioned a few posts ago, a fellow volunteer down in the Beni
Mellal area had been planning a camp to teach boys life skills and how to be
honorable men, and I had the opportunity to help out with this important
project. He called his idea BRO (Boys Respecting Others) Camp, and modeled it
on the Peace Corps standby GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camps that have been
enormously popular and successful with female PCVs and Moroccan girls. This was
the first camp of its kind for boys in Morocco, and I’m glad to say it was a
great success, mainly on the strength of the organizing PCV’s tremendous
efforts beforehand and the passion of his fantastic Moroccan counterparts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On a
day-to-day basis, BRO camp had a packed schedule. Each of the five full days
centered on one topic important to growing up to be a good man. The first day
focused on health and healthy life styles and in the morning featured classes
on topics like exercise, hygiene, nutrition, drugs and alcohol, and emotional
health. In the afternoon the students made and preformed informational skits on
one of the topics they’d studied (all the groups chose drugs and alcohol), and
in the evening a doctor gave a talk about SIDA and sexual health. On the second
day we focused on the world of work, with classes in interview skills, resume
writing, goal setting, and the like. That afternoon students created
commercials to sell a fictional product or service. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On the third day we started hitting
the harder topics and approached gender. The morning classes got the boys
discussing gender stereotypes in Morocco, the different worlds of men and women
here, how to be an honorable man, and, of course, sexual harassment. Afterwards
a couple of Peace Corps’s female regional managers came in and gave a talk
about their lives as successful, independent women in Morocco, which the boys
seemed to find riveting. Later in the afternoon the boys went through what we
called “The Gauntlet of BRO” (since “gauntlet” doesn’t really translate in Arabic
we called it the only slightly less awesome “Competition of Honor”). In the
Gauntlet of BRO small groups of boys cycled through different rooms in the camp
where they were faced with a common situation and expected to recognize the
situation and respond as an honorable man would. In one room the teacher came
late, the students hopefully spotted the loose change on the floor and reported
the missing money (almost all groups did, and no one stole it). In another a
couple of teachers ordered them about to serve tea and biscuits, without any
‘pleases’s, ‘thank you’s, or recognition at all. In the discussion afterwards
the groups all realized that this is how a lot of Moroccan men treat their
wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers, and having now experienced it vowed to
try and behave better. Another challenge had students making requests and
seeing if they would say “please” and “thank you” themselves (this was only partially
successful, mainly because they found tasks they were asked to ask the tester
were rude requests to make). The last two rooms both involved bystander
intervention. In one a Moroccan co-teacher “accidentally” brought in the wrong
supplies and got chewed out by the PCV, students were expected to stop the
“fight.” In the last the PCV (me) stepped out of the room in the middle of a
silly ball game. The game was the “bait,” and after I stepped out came the “switch,”
a female PCV walked in and my Moroccan co-teacher pretended to harass her. This
was probably the most depressing room, because although all the groups recognized
the harassment only two stepped in to stop it. Interestingly, they did it in
markedly different ways. One group actively called out the teacher. The other
subtly invited the girl to join the ball game, and then put her as far from her
harasser as possible, which I thought was a very clever solution to dealing
with this issue with an authority figure. In the evening the boys put on skits
about different forms of sexual harassment and methods of intervening.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The fourth day was all about
teamwork and leadership. The morning classes were on topics like public
speaking, project planning, and community organizing. In the afternoon a local
business leader gave a talk and then we took the boys on a nature walk, where
we occasionally stopped and threw in exercises like the human knot and trust
falls. In an unplanned twist, at the last moment we decided to make the whole
thing an exercise in discipline. Earlier in the week, one of the other PCVs had
taught the boys how to stand at attention, on the hike we taught them to march,
occasionally called them to attention, and even doled out pushups.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the boys really enjoyed the strangely
paramilitary exercises. On the last day, we taught about community service and
the boys participated in a trash pickup. The speaker was the local delegate to
the minister of Youth and Sports, who talked about the importance of
volunteerism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Throughout the camp, the boys
worked in teams on a project called the Build a Better Morocco Competition
(BBMC). In this project the students picked an issue in the Beni Mellal
province (topics included: lack of transport to schools, unemployment, and the
high high school drop out rate, among others), researched that issue, and tried
to come up with a youth based solution to the problem. The presented these on
the last day, an impressive capstone to the camp. The BBMC was actually a big
part of the camp’s success. In addition to the points their team could earn in
the competition we also rewarded, or removed, points for team actions
throughout the camp, things like doing their chores (we had a rotating cleaning
schedule), helping out, and behaving particularly well (or poorly). It really
helped to build team spirit in their cohorts, and to keep everything running
smoothly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, this all makes the camp sound
very serious, but of course all these things were interspersed with regular
camp activities like sports and games and banging on drums. One day one of the
PCVs who hails from the American South even taught the kids a line dance. Sort
of. Since he didn’t remember an actual one he sort of made it up on the fly,
but the boys enjoyed it. One thing I found very interesting was how much more
faith based this camp seemed than any other I’ve worked in Morocco. Part of
this, I think, was that the Moroccan counterparts were a particularly devout
group, and since they were often making time for their prayers the boys decided
they would too (in one particularly beautiful moment a large group prayed
together on top of the mountain on the nature walk). The other part could be
that instead of saving their prayers for the end of the day, as often happens
at camps, the boys didn’t have girls to flirt with, and without distractions
decided to pray at the prayer times. In any case, it was probably the most
systematic I’ve seen the practice of faith here.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the camp was over and the
boys all marched (of their own volition this time) to the taxi stand I was very
happy with how it had gone, though very exhausted and sick. I actually came
down with a flu the last couple of days, and had to miss the community service
day and only just trundled myself out in a blanket to watch the BBMC
presentation. Since the week after school breaks is always slow back in site,
and since this would be my last chance to travel in Morocco, I went down to
recuperate in Sidi Ifni, a beautiful seaside Spanish colonial town from the 1930s
built in a wonderful art deco style. I don’t have too much to say about it,
other than that it was incredible and relaxing, but I’ll finish off this post
with some pictures of it. For now I’m back in site, my flu mostly passed, and
I’m excited to get back to work finishing out my last two months in the Peace
Corps!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-13804150201325534702014-02-18T09:11:00.003+00:002014-02-18T14:55:42.728+00:00Breaking the Silence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Despite a
disappointment at the end of the week, last week is easily a contender for
“Best Week of My Service.” Starting last Sunday, everything just seemed to be
going right, I had a great time at a student’s family’s farm, I had some good
and productive meetings with counterparts, another great lunch at the Khenifra
volunteers’ host family, two great classes with my sophomores, where they wrote
their own English plays, a great discussion with my juniors, all the other
classes running very smoothly, and weather finally getting warm and sunny
enough to spend a lot of time playing Frisbee with various age groups in the
park. The capstone to the week was going to be two events on Friday and
Saturday, one for boys and one for girls, where we would show the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking the Silence: Moroccans Speak Out
about Sexual Harassment</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I hinted
that we were planning this activity a couple of posts ago, but now I’ll go more
in depth. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking the Silence</i> is a
documentary produced by Girls Global Media (an NGO you can read about <a href="http://globalgirlmedia.org/about-us/" target="_blank">here</a>). In
it a group of young and older women, young men, the former Minister of Women, and
various others talk about their experiences with sexual harassment and an
exploration of the issue in Morocco. You can watch it with English subtitles <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MA1LrH9-Mk" target="_blank">here</a>.
To prepare for the activity I found four counterparts (my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i>, one of my former CLIMB counterparts, a popular local
teacher, and one of the workers at the Girls’ Dormitory), who all watched the
documentary, and then we prepared some activities and discussions to follow up
the showing. To me this was an extremely interesting part. The two male
counterparts hadn’t heard these kinds of stories before because it is often
very hard for women and men to talk about these topics together here. The two
women, both of whom I’ve known for a long time, talked a little about their own
experiences with harassment. We decided to divide the two events because we
worried that the girls wouldn’t want to discuss things as openly with boys
around, even the male counterparts and I wouldn’t be present for their event
(and vice versa for the boys).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On Friday,
the day of the girls’ event, we had a major setback, when both my female
counterparts became indisposed. We had around 70 girls show up, and it was
really disheartening for me to have to tell them we needed to reschedule.
However, we’d already planned an extra day for girls who couldn’t make Friday
on the following Tuesday, and most of the girls said they would come to that
instead. On Saturday we had the boys’ event, which faced its own problems when
the ministry closed down the Dar Chabab for repairs over the objections of my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i> and me (why they couldn’t wait
three days is still beyond me, especially since they’ve been talking about
these repairs for the last year). Despite the inconvenience we were able to
move the event at the last minute, and about 15 boys and young men showed up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Watching
the discussion was fascinating. My counterparts conducted it entirely in
Arabic, and at times it got very heated, so I wasn’t able to follow everything.
Many of the boys came in at first on the defensive; there was a troubling
amount of talk about how girls should watch what they wear. However, a few of
the boys disagreed, and after an impassioned speech by my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i> (who has one teenaged daughter, one almost teenaged daughter,
and a third much younger daughter) many of the boys changed their tune. One
even made the important point that they (the boys) would probably find it
incredibly frustrating if they couldn’t wear tight shirts or shorts without
comment. Empathy is a wonderful thing. The boys were also very interested in
finding where the line is between flirting and sexual harassment. One tried out
the theory that many things are harassment if directed towards people you don’t
know, but are fine with friends. While that is true to a point, the boys saw
its weakness when my counterpart said, “Ted is my friend,” and then grabbed at
my knee. “He didn’t want me to do that. Harassment.” Funny, and they got the
important point. Some complained that we hadn’t done the events together, it is
important that the sexes talk together about this. While we all agreed, we
explained to them that we’d separated the events to make sure the girls felt
comfortable the first time broaching this topic, and most of them seemed to
understand that. We talked about the causes of sexual harassment, how many boys
do it more out of boredom than anything else, and ways to confront that. They
also talked for a while about differing moral and cultural norms regarding sexual
freedom in the West and Islamic countries, which of course led to talk about
differing interpretations of Islam and someone can still be Muslim by their own
definition even if they are not in someone else’s. In the end, I think the boys
found this a very important discussion. Many thanked us for showing the video
afterwards, and want us to do follow up work, and say they’ll encourage their
friends to come to future showings of the video.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, this
was a very good week where I got to feel like I was doing some important work.
Looking forward to the girls’ activity this week, and to working with these
counterparts to talk more with the kids about gender issues in our town!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-69875915163433297092014-02-09T09:42:00.001+00:002014-02-09T09:42:59.181+00:00Students on the March<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last week,
a series of student protests across the country nudged Morocco. The impetus for
these protests was a new online grading system from the Ministry of Education.
In this system, as I understood it, teachers will enter test grades directly
into the program, which will then compile student grades. Many students (and,
indeed, many teachers) were bothered that this leaves no place for intangibles
like student participation and behavior. Additionally, since this service was
online and accessed by password many students were worried that their parents
would have access to their grades.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You’ll
notice there were two extremely dissimilar elements to the protest against this
online system. On the one hand, there were students arguing that their grade
should be based on more than just a flawed testing system, on the other, there
were students arguing that parents shouldn’t have access to their students’
grades. This, of course, widened the popularity of the protest, as both
slackers and high achievers had something to complain about. Actually, having
talked with some other volunteers about the protests in their towns, I found
that different protests emphasized different things. I didn’t hear too much
complaining about parental access (admittedly the kids I talked to are my
regular students, all of whom are obviously taking extra English hours with me,
so they are high achievers who probably don’t have too much to hide), but heard
a lot about the terrible new grading system, but other groups apparently had
different emphases. One volunteer said so far as her town was concerned it was
a protest of slackers. They actually didn’t want to see participation and
behavior added back in! In my town I did see a number of the slackers
participating, but I also saw many of the hardest working kids.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Many places
also added additional complaints to the general protest. This is where I
thought my kids made their strongest appeals. My kids wanted to see the leaky
roofs to their classrooms fixed. They wanted to see the bathroom at their
school repaired. They wanted more and better trained teachers hired. They
wanted attendance to be made mandatory so that richer students couldn’t just
study with private tutors then come in and ace tests (I didn’t know that was a
thing until they told me about it). They also waxed a little into conspiracy
theory territory; one group said they feared that hackers would break into the
website and change grades.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Although
they didn’t attend school for most of the week, from what I saw students kept
peaceful and organized. My regulars still kept coming to my classes, so they
didn’t make it a holiday. One of the days they tried to march to the provincial
capitol, but were escorted back by the gendarmerie a few miles out of town. A
different day (the first) I was in the Khenifra on a failed attempt to visit
the local offices of the Education Ministry. Although there was a huge crowd of
protesters outside the office they left room for pedestrians to get by about
their business. It was the gendarmes guarding the door, rather than the
students, who prevented my meeting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From what
I’ve heard the protests didn’t change much. Our regional deputy of the minister
did come to town to talk with my students, but it seems the protests died
across the country without much change. As a mass the protests didn’t have much
effect probably because of their diffuse (and sometimes contrary) messages and
the fact that many of the students have much more invested in getting back to
class than their administrators do. However, I thought it showed great gumption
and national level awareness from so many high school students to organize this
series of protests, and evidences an interest in taking control of and
reforming their education to suit their needs. As one of the protesting
students said to me, Morocco’s youth have many great abilities and talents, and
they’re just aching for the opportunity to use them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-42281023595255665562014-01-31T14:59:00.000+00:002016-03-05T00:18:45.403+00:00Attempts at Redemption<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is a
hard post to write. Morocco has a serious issue with the behavior of its men
and boys. While I’ve written before about sexual harassment and gender
inequality and their effects on the country’s young men and women, in this post
I want to explore this issue from another angle, the standard cultural response
to people who cause problems.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Before
I start I need to say two things. Firstly, while this is a major issue I don’t
want to leave the impression that this applies to all, or even a majority, of
the country’s men and boys. It is a hugely prevalent issue, and one all us
volunteers face, but we have allies among the men here. Secondly, just to be
clear, I’m not using “culture” as a euphemism for “Islam.” While I’ve heard
plenty of “Islamic” justifications for the separation of the sexes (and that
ever awful response to sexual harassment, blaming the girl since she was
dressed “immodestly, i.e. without a headscarf, i.e. without something that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> specifically encouraged in the
Quran), those same people turn right around and make “Islamic” arguments about
why boys shouldn’t harass women or be brats. I’ve also heard Islamic arguments
saying the exact opposite. An American Muslim friend of mine recently posted a
reminder on Facebook, that the prophet Mohammed cooked, cleaned, and took out
the trash, so using Islam as a justification for treating women as household
slaves is just wrong. The issue is cultural, and while it is a problem across
the Islamic world, Islam is not the problem. What preachers need to do is make
it part of the solution.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Moving to the issue at hand, I’ve
time and time again heard people who act badly described as crazy, or as a
brat, or a bully. The crux of it is that they don’t try to deal with the
behavioral problem, they explain it away, and they don’t confront the person. I
might be over analyzing, but I think this is a direct result of my hobbyhorse
pet peeve, corporal punishment of children. Since beating is the most common
form of discipline, boys never get used to feeling shame as a punishment. As such,
they never learn how to cope with being shamed, and get very upset, sometimes
even violent, if you shame them as an adult. When adult men behave badly then
you can either try to shame them, which might end in a shouting match or even a
fight, or you can go to the old standby and just hit them, which ends in a
fight. No one wants to end up in a fight over something stupid, so men and boys
who misbehave get away with acting terribly, and get used to it. As such a
large group of “men” never really become adults; they’re just larger boys.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I have friends and counterparts who
recommend that I buy into this element of the culture, and try to work sideways
around intransigent and awful people, the way they do. The good Moroccan men
have a knack for getting what they need from the bad ones, without ever calling
them out or shaming them in any way. I haven’t learned this tactful skill. I
think that not calling people out for their misbehavior creates a culture where
they feel comfortable to misbehave. Acting like everything’s fine when it isn’t
is a piece of Moroccan theatrics I won’t hold to. As a PCV I’m expected to
adopt my host country’s culture as much as possible, but this is a place, as
with child beating, that I draw my line.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In site, I’ve tried to deal with
misbehaving boys in any number of ways that don’t involve beating. Some I’ve
reformed by dangling something ahead of them (you can’t join class today, but
if you behave you can come tomorrow). Some I’ve dealt with by giving them trust
(you weren’t behaving well, but I’ll trust you’ll do better now). With those boys
it can be wonders to give them responsibility (alright, I’m going to teach
these girls how to throw the Frisbee, can you work with the younger boys?). Some
I just have to punish (you’re not welcome in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dar Chabab</i> this week). A couple I’ve gone to their parents’ house
with them, and then at the last moment seemed to give in to their pleas not to
report on them (of course I’m never actually going to tell on them, child
beating parents are the problem, but this bit of psychological warfare works
occasionally). Some, despite all my methods, just will not improve, and they’ve
frustrated me a lot lately.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The impetus for this post was my
class the other day where that group of boys kept throwing rocks and dirt clods
at the window and through the door of the classroom (again showing how awesome
the girls are as they stuck at it despite the problems). The impetus for this
post was the other week when walking the girls to my classroom those boys
started hooting and hollering at them. I wasn’t paying attention to what they
were saying, but one girl responded with a loud and clear “go **** yourselves”
in Arabic. The impetus for this post was when they learned “**** you” in
English and chanted it after me everywhere I go.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The only way Morocco is going to
deal with the problem that is its men is if it confronts the problem head on.
Letting bad behavior slide by and maintaining the status quo are easy, but it
means almost half of Morocco’s work force will be disempowered while a huge
chunk of the other half is incompetent with a superiority complex. I’m
approaching the last few months of my service, and to wrap it up I think I can
do no better thing than working in this troubling and difficult area. I’m
confident enough in my integration that my mudir and I are planning an event to
get people talking about the problem of sexual harassment in our town (with a
cool resource that I’ll write about when we use it, stay tuned!). At the next
school break I’ll be helping another volunteer with his plan to run a camp
where boys think about the gender divide in a serious way, while also learning
the skills to be functional adults. Lastly, I’m going to keep plugging away
with those worst boys, because as this last week proved they aren’t
irredeemable, and maybe in these last few months I can reach one or two more of
them. Wouldn’t that be something?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Addendum: I can’t even comprehend how much better this last week has been.
Additionally, my classes are have gotten back up to their usual numbers, so all
kinds of positive motion in the latter part of this week. So I’ll end with a
Joha story. This one I actually learned last summer when an older kid presented
it as an English play (written by his teacher) at the Khenifra summer camp.
Some of my students had just studied food and ordering at a restaurant, so I
rewrote a simpler version of the play for them to put on in class. Apparently
it’s a classic, because they all recognized it early on. Here is a
non-dramatized version of the story:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One day, Joha went to a restaurant.
He ordered himself a big meal, with roasted chicken, and rice, and all sorts of
treats. At the last moment he asked for some soup. After bringing Joha the food
the host went to relax, when suddenly Joha started to shout. “Ugh, what is
this?!? This is disgusting!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The host approached and asked what
was wrong.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“There is a bug in my soup!” cried
Joha. The host apologized and gave him the meal for free. Joha smiled and
thanked the host, but while the host wasn’t looking Joha took the bug out of
the soup.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Later, Joha ran into a friend. Joha
asked him, “Do you want to eat a large, delicious meal for free?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Yes,” said the friend, so Joha
brought him close and told him what to do. The friend went to the restaurant,
but when he ordered his meal he was told there was no soup.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Where can I put this bug then?”
asked the friend, taking out the insect Joha had given him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“So it was you!” cried the host,
who chased Joha’s friend from the restaurant.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-12191271035524134532014-01-10T09:32:00.000+00:002014-01-10T15:57:44.303+00:00A Summary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As I’m sure
most of my readership knows, I spent the last three weeks (ish) in America
visiting family and friends for the holidays. As such, there isn’t too much to
write about it terms of my experiences in Morocco. However, I do want to share
a couple of anecdotes from before I left and talk about a couple of interesting
Morocco and Peace Corps related observations I made while at home.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Firstly,
the week before I left I went to nearby town at a history teacher’s invitation
to talk with his students about Moroccan-American relations in terms of the
Peace Corps. It was a fun, and I think the students (and the teacher) liked the
approach I took, asking students to think of why America might have started the
Peace Corps in the 60s, why we continue it now, ect... At the end of the day,
though, the students wondered why there isn’t a volunteer in their town,
something I couldn’t answer until I discovered that although they had a Dar
Chabab built <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">two years ago</i> it has
never been opened because there is no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i>.
Waste and inertia strike again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A few days
later I left town, but on my way to Casablanca I stopped at a friend’s site
since she and I had discovered we’d accidentally booked the same flight to
America and wanted to travel together. Another American development
organization (whose name eludes me) had just built toilets at an elementary
school in one of the villages outside her town. She had done the same last
year, so they asked her to help run a health fair for the students to
inaugurate the new toilets. A few other nearby volunteers, she, and I each
developed lesson plans for the health fair, but in a neat twist we each
partnered with some of her high school students who helped teach the lesson. I
was very impressed with the volunteer I worked with, whose English was very
strong, and who quickly understood how I liked to teach and actually had taken
over the entire delivery of the lesson by the time the last group of students
reached us. All of my friend’s students seemed to have similar levels of drive.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
day we journeyed out to the coast, visiting the much-storied Casablanca. Even
just typing the name gives a sense of romance and mystique, which the city does
not deliver on. Not to say I dislike Casablanca, I very much enjoyed the burger
joint we went to, just that burger joint would have fit in perfectly in the
Lower East Side, which isn’t quite the romantic French colonial capitol in the
Muslim world one pictures. That being said, we made our usual hit as Arabic
speaking Americans—except in the burger joint, where even all the Moroccans
spoke French. Also of note, tons of taxi drivers tried to cheat us, but when we
finally found one who would run the meter he turned out to be from the town I’d
given the history lesson in earlier in the week. Small world!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Back in
America I talked with a lot of people about life in Morocco in the Peace Corps.
Conversations ranged from people who wanted to know more about the hardship of
living in a semi-developed country to those who wanted to learn about culture,
to those who just wanted details on what exactly I do (besides blog and drink
tea). I found it was sometimes hard to explain things about Morocco to people
who haven’t lived there for a long time. To be honest, now that I’m writing it,
I’m having a hard time explaining what was hard to explain. I hear this is a
common problem for returned Peace Corps Volunteers. We see the issues our host
country faces, and we want to be honest about them, but at the same time we
love the country and don’t want to sell it short when giving a quick talk about
it. Maybe I shouldn’t generalize that feeling to all PCVs, but therein lies the
problem, knowing when to generalize and when to talk about the nuance that does
pervade our host countries. I guess most people would have just as much trouble
summarizing the last two years of their lives, they’re just not asked to as
often.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m going
to wear off that confusing headwind for now and end by saying that I’m safely
back in site and was excited to find my students were excited to start back up
again. In the past I found it always took awhile to get started again after I’d
been away, but this time we jumped right into it. Looking forward to an
exciting and fulfilling four months!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-26733825754970127412013-12-10T15:38:00.005+00:002013-12-10T15:38:52.004+00:00A Touristic Interlude<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last Sunday
I went to Meknes for the first time. Meknes was a capitol of the country in the
days of the powerful Moulay Ismail, a contemporary of Louis XIV, who tried,
unsuccessfully, to become the Sun King’s son-in-law. Now Meknes is one of the
least visited of Morocco’s popular destinations, but somehow even though it is
only three hours by bus from my town I’d never visited it. Faced with a free
Sunday and some Christmas shopping to do I thought I would spend a day exploring.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Upon
arriving it became apparent why tourists skip Meknes in favor of Marrakech and
Fes. The old <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">medina</i>, while antedating
America’s Founding Fathers, is a young cousin to Fes and does not hold the same
medieval charm. Marrakech has easy access to the High Atlas, the desert, and
Essaouira, while northern charms like Rabat, the Middle Atlas, Chefchouen and
Volubilis are just as easily accessed from Fes. All this means that the Meknes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">medina</i> hasn’t become overrun with shops
and restaurants catering to tourists, which is exactly what I loved about it, though
it made the Christmas shopping harder than I thought it would be. More than a
major city, Meknes’s old city reminded me of a larger version of nearby
Khenifra, a historic center still frequented by locals.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since
people trying to make their living off tourists weren’t trying to overwhelm me
I had much more of an opportunity to talk with people then I normally get in
tourist centers. After making my compulsory stops at an excellent artisanal
crafts museum, Moulay Ismail’s triumphal gate (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bab Al Mansour</i>, the Door of the Victorious), his tomb, and his
cistern I took the long walk out to his granaries (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">makhzen</i>). These <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">makhzen</i>
are interesting because Ismail’s closest retainers became so closely associated
with them that the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Makhzen</i> is
still used to talk about the powerful and influential in Moroccan society. They
are intermittently lit, and while inside them a tour guide addressed me in
French. When I asked what he’d said in Arabic he replied, “Oh, you’re a
Moroccan. The water wheel is over there.” Then he walked off. Later when I left
he was surprised to see I’m not Moroccan, but answered a quick Arabic question
for me, since I’d somehow gotten it into my head that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">makhzen</i> translated to “stables.” It turns out I was confused
because Ismail also kept horses in his granary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the walk
back into town I wished peace upon a group of soldiers loitering by the edge of
the king’s palace—I guess guarding might be a more accurate word. In the sunlight
they were even more confused than the guide had been in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Makhzen</i>. “You’re not Moroccan, are you?”
Basically Meknes was a huge ego boost for my accent and me. We chatted for a
little while, and I went on my way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Shopping in
the not-particularly-twisted streets I asked the price of a symbol I’ve always
heard called the Hand of Fatima. The lady I asked was confused, saying it was
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Khmsa</i> (the five) and that it
represents the five pillars of Islam. I’ve heard the symbol called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Khmsa</i> before, but I’d never heard anyone
favor it over the Hand of Fatima name. Her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Khmsa</i>
wasn’t what I was looking for, but later I stumbled into an artisan’s shop in a
quieter corner and after he took some time to show me how he makes his silver
on iron etch work—patiently and beautifully—I asked him about the Hand of
Fatima-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Khmsa</i> confusion. He said that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Khmsa</i> is the proper name and that “Hand
of Fatima” was a name used to help sell it to tourists. I don’t know if this is
the real origin of the alternate name, but it seems as plausible as anything
else. I thanked him for his time and his tutorial and ran to catch the last bus
back to Khenifra.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So all in
all it was a symbolically and lexicologically informative interlude, though I
still have a couple people I need to finish Christmas shopping for!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-8320298149050086552013-12-05T09:24:00.001+00:002013-12-05T09:24:18.993+00:00Weeks which Elude a Title (WET)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Actually,
only one of the weeks was very wet, but it seemed as good a title as any (read:
I’m running out of title ideas).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Most of
last week I spent in Rabat for the joint affair of a SIDA Committee Meeting and
Thanksgiving. The meeting went all right, but obviously Thanksgiving with 200+
volunteers was the real highlight. Not too much to write about, but I’ve got
one funny story. Last time I took the bus to Rabat I noticed that we pass right
by the end of the tramline in Sale, the city across the river from Rabat. Since
it takes almost an hour to get to the bus station from there and an expensive
taxi ride into the center to finish the trek, this time I hopped off to catch
the tram. As expected, it was cheaper and faster, though I confused the hell
out of a bunch of commuters as the strange European who boarded the tram with a
pressure cooker (filled with apple sauce for Thanksgiving). Upon exiting the
tram it was only a short walk to the hotel, and I congratulated myself on how
well I’ve learned Rabat. Immediately on finishing this thought I came to the
wrong street corner, and had to turn and walk uphill into the sun to reach my
destination. Hit me right in the hubris.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
Rabat, I returned to Khenifra (the nearest big city to mine) where some other
volunteers and I assisted a group of Moroccan students teaching about SIDA.
Before going to Rabat, some other PCVs and I helped the students clear up their
questions about SIDA and prepare lessons for peer education. Their lessons
centered on discussions and educational games. On Saturday, the students led a
fantastic World AIDS Day event, teaching over 40 local teens and adults about
SIDA’s biology, transmission, and prevention. I was very impressed with their
work.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next
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International Day of Tolerance in mid-November, but a couple of hiccups (read:
power outages) prevented us from running the event until this Sunday. It went
well, though there was an unforeseen strangeness. In Morocco, the idea of
tolerance is wrapped up with the idea of anti-terrorism. While an important
message, I think this oversimplifies all the forms intolerance can take. It
also let to some frighteningly graphically violent pictures from a bunch of 10
year olds; one girl’s picture reminded me of “The Bombing of Guernica” in terms
of violence. On the flip side, this all has an understandable origin in the
greater fear of terrorism here (it is closer to home), and the increased
violence children are exposed to on T.V. (parents generally don’t censor which
violent Western movies their kids watch, even from a young age).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nothing
else to report really, classes have started back up and I’m looking forward to
a full couple of weeks before I head home to visit for Christmas!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-59688368992720889382013-11-19T08:28:00.003+00:002013-11-19T08:28:50.933+00:00Harmonies, Discords, and Realizations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After many
false starts and delays my schedule of classes for the second year has gotten
off the ground, and, thus far, is going rather well. Having learned a lot from
last year’s mistakes I’m looking forward to a very fulfilling year. I want to
tell you a few anecdotes, but to start I’ll lay out my schedule so you have a
framework for these stories.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My one big
disappointment this year is that I have not yet gotten morning work off the
ground; I often feel like a bump on a log until work starts around 4PM. I go
every morning to a café in order to have breakfast and check my e-mails. On
some days my teacher friends get off work early and we chat, but other days
their schedules don’t have any openings in the morning. When the English
teacher gets off we talk about how the students are doing, what topics he is
working on (so I can provide follow up to our mutual students), and trade ideas
about how we can approach these topics. I usually follow this breakfast time
with a stroll through the surrounding mountains, or stopping to say hi at the
artisanal cooperative where I taught last year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After lunch
I finish preparing lessons and materials and head off to the Dar Chabab.
Theoretically, my first real job of the day is a young kids’ English class, but
we’ve changed this into a singing club since they are more interested in music
than English. After that I either teach one class at the Dar Chabab and then
move to the Dar Taliba (female students’ dormitory) for a second, or teach two
at the Dar Taliba. Originally, I’d planned on making the Dar Chabab classes a
place where I would direct all the misbehaving students and direct all the
behaving ones to the Dar Taliba, but most of the misbehaving boys seem to have
gotten bored with disrupting classes, so instead I offer a general basic course
at the Dar Chabab for first time learners and older students who need review
and grade specific classes at the Dar Taliba. I finish up around 9 PM, at which
point my town is a ghost town. I do this Monday through Saturday, though on
Monday the Dar Chabab is closed and on Saturday the Dar Taliba is. Sunday I
have off, though we’re talking about starting a morning sports club.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Speaking
about clubs, a few members of the C.L.I.M.B. program have decided they want to
try and run a version of it! “Graduates” of last year’s program will now lead
their own hiking and environmental club, and though they won’t have outside
funding to allow for a big trip like Toubkal they still hope to do some longer
day treks by splitting transportation costs. I’m helping them design lessons
and will come to their first few meetings to lend them authority as student
leaders, but the goal is to make this a sustainable project without the need
for a Peace Corps Volunteer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now on to
the anecdotes: I’ve discovered that teaching music to young Moroccan children
is very difficult. So far in our music club I’ve been teaching them songs we
learn as kids in America like “The Ants Go Marching,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little
Star,” and “Are You Sleeping, Brother John?”. Surprisingly, the biggest
challenge hasn’t been with the pronunciation of English words but rather with
the concept of pitch in general. Since students haven’t been exposed to
learning music before they don’t really get the idea of singing together on one
pitch to sound nice, or, in some extreme cases, the difference between singing
on pitch and yelling rhythmically. One big surprise was the first time I taught
them a melody they tried to sing in my register rather than up the octave as
I’d assumed they’d naturally do, though honestly I don’t know if this would be
a natural reaction as my music teachers up through my voice changing were all
women. After a lot of repetition the students did get pretty good at “Brother
John,” so I tried to introduce the round. They looked at me like I was crazy,
and the resulting train wreck only confirmed their suspicions. Going to have to
go back to the drawing board on teaching singing, but at least I’m getting to
teach some music!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the
opposite musical extreme, I had some students get really excited over the
Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” the other day in class. I’d given them lyrics with all
the verbs and verb contractions omitted as listening practice, and they got so
excited by the song that they insisted we listen to it again multiple times
after the class was done, with them singing and air guitaring along.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In my
highest-level class I learned something about English grammar myself the other
day. My students explained that they understood how and when to use the Present
Perfect tense in a complicated sentence with multiple verbs, but wanted to know
how to know when to use it as opposed to the simple past in a simple sentence
with just one verb. It wasn’t until they asked that I discovered I had no idea
how to answer it. By thinking of examples I quickly realized what the rule I’ve
unwittingly followed all my life is, but it was a pretty humbling moment.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Which
brings me to another realization I had about language the other day while
talking with some teachers in the café. They were defending the Moroccan
practices of writing all books in standard Arabic as opposed to the local
dialect, and to teaching math and science at the university levels in French
rather than Arabic. They explained that those students who wanted to reach the
very highest rungs of modern mathematical and scientific study would need
French (and, they added, English too), to follow modern research at the highest
level, it is best they be forced to grapple with it at the undergraduate level
to prepare them for the future. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’d never really thought about the
fortune of having my native language be the language from which higher-level academia
is usually translated. At the highest levels of academia even a major world
language like Arabic is limited. As Americans, I think we tend to think of
foreign languages as a very useful luxury; even in fields where they’re
necessary we only use them as a tool to access information, not as the language
in which we must conduct all our work. To most of the rest of the world foreign
languages, particularly my native language, are necessary tools to learning,
and the expectation that students be able to learn <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> another language, rather than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">from</i> it, is not so far-fetched as I’d first supposed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Of all the privileges I never
realized I had growing up in America this might be the most important.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-11476302267480913862013-11-11T08:48:00.003+00:002013-11-11T08:48:41.295+00:00Ashura<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finishing
the full week of Moroccan holidays, this weekend we celebrated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ashura</i>, the tenth day of the first month
of the Muslim year. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ashura</i> is a very
important day; in Islam it is the day the world was made, the day Adam was
made, the day the world will end, and—according to the friend who explained it
to me—a whole bunch of other important events he couldn’t remember the
specifics of.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Despite
being such a significant day, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ashura</i>
celebrations in my town are quite simple. I was coming home from the Dar Chabab
on Saturday, thoroughly surprised by the evening since a few students had shown
up, when I encountered a rag tag group of little boys and girls walking up and
down my street beating drums. I had my guitar with me—I’d brought it to the Dar
Chabab as a defense against boredom/teaching tool if the one kid with a keyboard
showed up and wanted to learn more about reading music—and because it was a
holiday I ignored my better knowledge about the behavior of some of these
little boys and took it out when they requested I play with them. It went about
as well as expected. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At first, one of the little girls
would start playing a beat, I would join in playing my approximation of
Tamazight music, then a little boy would stop the girl’s playing either by
grabbing the drum from her hand or playing and shouting a different beat loudly
over her. I would stop, try and explain that to play we need to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> play together, and tell the girl to
start again. Rinse, wash, repeat, which obviously exasperated the little girl. Bored
that there was no music, some of the boys whose behavior worried me started to
shout that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they </i>should play the
guitar, and being of the body of boys who enjoy breaking things they proceeded
to punch the guitar and try to snap its strings. I put the guitar away and told
the bad boys that I was leaving because of their bad behavior, then turned and
apologized to the good boys and girls. Sadly, I’ve found this is the most
effective way of dealing with behavior problems, I won’t hit the kids, I won’t
tell their parents (because I’ve found that’s just delegating my hitting), they
won’t respond to other punishments, so I do the least unhealthy effective
thing, and turn them into pariahs. In my defense, it has changed a couple of
kids’ behaviors in the past, not wanting everyone to hate them, but I don’t
like it as a method.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I went up into my house, dropped
off my guitar, and went on an evening stroll to see the celebration, now
unencumbered of my guitar-loadstone for bad boys. Through most of the town’s
main streets nothing was going on, so I went home, convinced I wasn’t a fan of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ashura</i>, when at the corner of my street
I encountered another group of boys, this one a little older. It included my
host brothers, a couple of C.L.I.M.B. boys, and a few other boys I know and
like, so I accepted their invitation to clap and dance and drum with them, to
the great amusement of them, the surrounding adults, and little children. After
some spirited <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ahedus</i> (traditional
Moroccan dancing, at which I have become in no way adept), the boys dispersed,
but by the then the young girls from the first group had returned, having left
the young boys to go off and be terrible somewhere else, so I joined their
parents and older siblings and watched them dance and drum for a little bit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The next day was a slow and sleepy
Sunday, without much of note, except for when one of the little girls in my
neighborhood asked how we celebrate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ashura</i>
in America and was very confused to learn that we don’t. In the evening I had
plans to meet some friends for tea, but I left a little early knowing I would
get shanghaied by the group of mothers and daughters drumming on drums and metal
dishes outside my house. I clapped along with them for a bit, deciding that I
really enjoy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ashura</i>, when suddenly
they stopped and requested that, since they’d been showing me so much Moroccan
music, I should show them a traditional American song. The time of year being
what it is I had to reject the first bunch of songs that came to mind, since
singing about the birth of Jesus on a Muslim holiday seemed offensive, and I
desperately grabbed onto the first secular song that came to mind.
Inexplicably, this was “Home on the Range.” They thanked me for the song and we
went back to Moroccan tunes, though I had to leave shortly thereafter to get to
the café.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There you go, a little slice of
Moroccan life. Along with “Home on the Range.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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P.S. For those of you who didn’t see my Facebook post and
enjoy images of life not making sense, yesterday I saw four men wrestle two
live goats into the trunk of a small sized sedan. The goats didn’t seem happy
with the arrangement, and protested. In the face of goatly protest the men
didn’t seem happy with the arrangement either.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-35126710478959930292013-11-07T08:29:00.002+00:002013-11-08T08:49:35.073+00:00Drop by Drop the River Floods<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This has
been a full week of Moroccan holidays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Early on in the week was the anniversary of the Green March, which
commemorates Morocco’s occupation of the formerly Spanish controlled mandates
which in America we call the Western Sahara.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Normally I don’t shy away from touchy topics, but our relative positions
on the legitimacy of this are one of the few disagreements I let lie with
Moroccans, though as with many things I have heard a few people in the younger
generation question the legitimacy of this past action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other holiday was the Muslim New
Year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Happy 1435.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the
night of the New Year—like Jewish holidays, Muslim ones generally start at
sundown, so calling it New Year’s Eve would be a misnomer—I was invited to a
party at a local acquaintance’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
met this guy once when we both had to take early morning buses and sat together
at the station waiting for our late transportation in opposite directions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is the president of the local veterans’
association, and many of the people at the party were former military men,
along with a couple of young men my age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was also a women’s party, though as usual that happened in another
room so I have no idea what the make-up of it was.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
men’s room, topics ranged from the Arab Spring to the new highway that apparently
was recently announced to connect Beni Mellal and Fes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This highway would completely change life in
this part of the country, though the men disagreed as to how.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some believe that towns like ours, which
essentially lies on the Route 66 that this highway would replace, will lose
much of their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’etre</i> as entry
points for farmers to the main road and suffer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They believe the new highway will destroy the countryside lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others believe the highway, which would have
three exits all within 30 kilometers of the town, will provide new economic
opportunities for the region.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Regarding
the Arab Spring, they talked at length about the political situations in Libya
and Syria, which led to rebellion, and the situation here, which led to
reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, it was interesting to
listen to older, former soldiers perspectives on this issue, because usually I
only hear from youth, whose take on the reforms the king made in the wake of
the Arab Spring in Morocco—called the February 20<sup>th</sup> Movement, for
its start date—is quite different from the older take.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While many young people say they don’t think
the reforms went far enough, the older men think the new Constitution is very
good, though they still acknowledge the reforms were necessary for the
entrenched powers to stay entrenched.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From
talking about the political situation the conversation soon shifted to talk
about Morocco in general, and they wanted to know my opinion as a
foreigner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gave my usual answer about
things I like in the country, but since they obviously wanted a fuller answer I
also talked about the gender disparity which frequent readers know I believe to
be one of Morocco’s biggest challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As I was talking about developing cultural attitudes towards women’s
equality one of the party’s few young men asked me why it is always non-Western
countries that have to change their culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In short I was accused of being a cultural imperialist.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I’ve thought a lot about culture,
both American and Moroccan, the last 19 months I’ve lived here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I first arrived I was something of a
cultural relativist, and though I didn’t buy completely into the idea that
cultures can only be judged by their own rubrics I certainly tended that
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over time I shed this view entirely
and started to think in more absolutist terms that, while I didn’t like
thinking those thoughts, I couldn’t shake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although America was far from perfect in this new view on culture of
mine it is only in Morocco that I’ve ever seriously felt proud to be an
American.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even before this October shook
that pride, my thoughts had already shifted again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Central to my erstwhile American jingoism was
the belief that what made American culture great was its diversity and
fluidity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Around a shared set of central
tenets, there are uncountable different ways of being an American.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I came to realize, and what I realize
now was always my problem with cultural relativism, is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this is true of all cultures.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cultural relativistic ideas, at least as I’d
been exposed to them, always seem to function on the assumption that cultures
aren’t themselves changing and transforming over time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cultural Relativists are right in that
Cultural Imperialists have no right to dictate how another culture acts or
develops, but treating culture statically doesn’t allow for the natural growth
that will happen in all cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
as a society of individuals inspires humane tendencies in individuals so the
world’s society of cultures ought to inspire the growth of human liberty,
equality, and dignity in all cultures, each in their own manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which I guess is probably a pretty common
belief, and certainly what I believed coming in, but I had no idea how to
articulate it even in my own language.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Now, my Arabic has gotten pretty
good, but it is in no way good enough to explain that monster of a paragraph in
a way that wouldn’t raise a whole bunch of confused eyebrows around the tagine,
so instead I replied with a more metaphorical version.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said first that American culture <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> change; we talk about our cultures
of the 60s, 70s, and 80s as different both from each other and from now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Culture, I said, is not a stone, but a river,
and drop by drop the river floods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
last phrase is a bit of Moroccan folk wisdom, and I don’t know whether it was
the metaphor, the appropriation, or the idea itself, but the older men nodded
in agreement after.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We then talked for a
little bit about how attitudes towards women and women’s freedoms have changed
in their lifetimes, and how they think the trend will continue with time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Since I haven’t told a Joha joke in
awhile here are two:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One day Joha was sitting by a lake
watching several ducks swimming nearby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He decided that he could catch one of the ducks and have a fine
dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He quietly went into the water
and swam up behind the ducks, but just as he approached the ducks flew away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Back on shore, and now feeling very
hungry, Joha took out a piece of bread and dipped it in the water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fisherman saw him do this and asked what he
was doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m eating duck soup,”
replied Joha.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
There was a new barber in town, but
he was not very experienced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joha
decided to give him some business, so he to went to have his head shaved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The barber’s razor was not sharp, and he was
very careless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several times he cut
Joha, who was losing patience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Suddenly there was a loud scream
from the shop next door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What was
that?” cried Joha.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the
barber, “There’s a blacksmith next door and he was just nailing new shoes on a
horse.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Oh, I see,” said Joha, “I thought
they were giving it a shave.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-19918612729272699182013-10-28T08:44:00.003+00:002013-10-28T15:16:48.597+00:00L-eid Again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since I
last posted the Muslim world celebrated the major holiday of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leid al Adha</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I talked about the holiday last year in <a href="http://tedinmorocco.blogspot.com/2012/11/l-eid-al-adha.html" target="_blank">this post</a>, so I won’t repeat myself describing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ll instead tell you a few stories and observations from the last few
weeks, since nothing too exciting has happened otherwise—I’ve pretty much
devoted my time to working on graduate school applications and trying to get
stuff started.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the
holiday itself I again celebrated the sacrifice with my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir’s</i> family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they were
preparing organ kebabs wrapped in fat, one of his daughters (aged eight) asked
me if we ate meat this way in America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
explained we have kebabs, but usually not organ wrapped in fat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The father said that she should note that
Americans were just like Moroccans then, though the daughter seemed skeptical.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A week
later I was excited to see her not skeptical when she skipped into the Dar
Chabab and started to tell her father and me all about the science class she’d
had that day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t catch
everything she was saying, but the words “birds,” “shapes,” “years of study,”
“Darwin,” and “Galapagos,” came up over and over again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I’ve met some adults here who do not
like the idea of evolution it was nice to see that the topic is still
approached in a way that gets kids excited.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My town
went through a transformation that I didn’t notice during the holiday last
year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since it is the biggest holiday of
the Muslim year tons of people come home from their work and school in other
parts of the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my town that
means a huge upswing in the number of people who can speak English well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From two or three to several dozen (notably,
all but one of the regulars left town for the holiday).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an exciting reminder that the kids who
acquire English and other skills have enough opportunities out of town that
they don’t often come back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One guy is
even studying in the States.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are
two new English teachers in town, and unlike the people they’re replacing they
seem much more interested in working with me directly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of them especially has helped me meet
teachers of other subjects who I hadn’t met yet, some of whom speak quite good
English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other day I had a very
informative conversation with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
I first came to Morocco, I read in my guidebook that the name of the capitol, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rabat</i>, is the Tamazight word for
fortress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the desert I’d even heard
some Imazighin (Amizight people) calling a fortress-like building a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rabat</i>, so I thought I’d had this confirmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, according to these teachers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rabat</i> is actually originally an Arabic
word which means “armed camp,” and was later adopted into Tamazight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They say it got associated with permanent
fortresses because overtime people used for any place warhorses were gathered
and cared for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An interesting derivation
for a semi-correct guidebook fact!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In another
interesting discovery, I’ve gotten both the heaviest praise and heaviest
criticism of my Arabic accent recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some kids from my town said they thought that while my vocabulary isn’t
as extensive as the last Youth Development volunteer’s (a guy universally
praised for the quality of his Arabic), my accent is much more authentic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My new, English-speaking teacher friends, on
the other hand, think I pronounce a bunch of things wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One example the teachers gave me was that my
pronunciation of one of the glottal letters (kh, خ) sounded like it was
actually a failed attempt at another glottal letter (gh, غ).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s interesting is that when I first learned
the word for bread in Tamazight I couldn’t tell if people were saying it with a
خ or a غ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I asked, people said
either would work, saying the sound was kind of between the two Arabic
letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between the local kids praise
and the teachers explanation of what is wrong in my pronunciation I’m fairly
certain my attempt to adopt a rustic accent and grammar worked.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So yeah,
not too much exciting these last few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m excited to get back to work, though it looks like that won’t start
for another couple of weeks because, after this coming week, there is another
week long school holiday, this time for some secular national holidays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means that since the beginning of the
school year kids had three weeks on, then a week off, now two weeks on and
another holiday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the Dar Chabab
is open during the holidays not many kids come in, especially my most regular
English students, many of whom live in a dormitory and go home to outlying
towns for the holidays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still trying to
get stuff started next week, but I don’t expect much work until the middle of
November, which is right in line with last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some things you cannot change.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-81251233496781734642013-10-01T09:41:00.002+01:002013-10-01T09:41:20.800+01:00God Helps Those Who Help Each Other<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The other
day I was chatting with a bunch of boys about a little bit of everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to report bits and pieces of the
conversation because I think it will tell you a lot about how some Moroccans
perceive the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To set the stage,
these are four boys who I know very well, two of them are in their last year of
high school while the other two are about to start their second year of
university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two university students
are both studying history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of the
four has much English, but they are patient and willing to explain things in
simple Arabic when we hit a roadblock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One has quite good French, which helps with cognates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All four are hard working, ambitious, and
smart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None has ever left the country,
or, for that matter, travelled all that extensively in the country.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I can’t
remember quite how the conversation began, but it started getting interesting
when we began to talk about democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
initial definition of democracy was a little off; they defined it as “being
able to do whatever you want.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
explained that while everyone should have a voice and a vote (two words which,
in Arabic, are almost the same, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sot </i>and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sout</i> respectively) in a democracy
oftentimes many people don’t get to do what they want because the vote is
against them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then tried to further
explain that in many democracies there are also failsafe laws to try to keep a
majority group from subjugating a minority group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way even majorities don’t always get
to “do whatever they want” in democracies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I made a tacit attempt to segue into Egypt from here (because I think
its important that young people here understand why there was so much anger at
the Muslim Brotherhood, anger that has now allowed a much more actively
repressive regime to step in), but as I’ve talked about in previous posts there
is a staunch refusal here to acknowledge that Morsi ever did anything wrong.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Quite
naturally from this failed segue we segued again into the news and how much you
can trust the media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe I’ve
mentioned before that many Moroccans don’t trust any news source.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given how used they are to state run and
state censored news this isn’t surprising.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unfortunately it leads to a tendency to believe in some pretty wild
conspiracy theories (which media outlets are a part of).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These boys, like a lot of Moroccans I’ve
talked to, would feel at home at a 9/11 Truthers conference, and this is where
they steered the conversation next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have no patience for this theory, either at home or abroad, so I told the kids
we were going to look closely at the possible motives both the U.S. Government
and Al Qaeda might have had for attacking the towers, and the risks they would
take on doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who has ever
debated a Truther back home knows how lopsided this list becomes, and I can now
proudly say that two of the kids now believe Al Qaeda did it, the other two
went from staunch believers in a government conspiracy to unsure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ended this part of the discussion by saying
that while a healthy skepticism in what you read and hear in the media isn’t a
bad thing, but a good skeptic doesn’t always write off what they read and hear,
they analyze it, compare it to other sources, and use their brain to figure out
what makes the most sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The boys
seemed to like that idea.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>9/11 talk
quickly and easily moved to Afghanistan and Iraq, which then moved to us
talking about Syria and the recent threat of force and even more recent
redaction of the threat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These boys are
pure cynics about United States involvement in Middle Eastern wars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interestingly, they don’t question that
America <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ought</i> to act as the world
policeman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d always thought it was
only a small group of Americans who thought that was America’s duty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These kids though think it is America’s duty,
as the superpower, to keep order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whatever ought to be, though, they also think that America is bungling
this duty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of Syria their
anger is that we didn’t strike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I
can’t speak for all of them, from other conversations I know at least one of
these boys <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does not</i> discriminate
against Shia Muslims (Assad’s sect is a subgroup of the Shia), so for at least
one of them the Sunni-Shia divide <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was not</i>
coloring this call for action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We talked
for awhile then about reasons for the U.S. not attacking, and past U.S.
interventions and invasions (specifically, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Kosovo, which they knew a surprising amount about).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This got us talking about self-serving and
altruistic national urges and how sometimes both of these can be present in an
international action.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This led to
talking about the purpose of the Peace Corps itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told them both about the more
“self-serving” element (a way to peacefully swing countries out of Soviet
influence, now a way to better America’s image in the world) and the altruistic
elements of Peace Corps three stated goals: to pass on technical skills to
people in the developing world who want them, to better other people’s
understanding of Americans and American culture, to better American’s
understanding of other peoples and other peoples’ cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They liked that I mentioned both sides of the
coin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then they asked what my opinion of
the youth in their town is after having lived here almost a year and a half.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I started
by saying it is of course very hard to generalize, but if I had to I could
divide the boys into two roughly equal groups: the group that works hard and
the lazy bums.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could do the same with
the girls, I said, only then the groups aren’t equal, the vast majority of
girls fall into the hard working group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I told them I think this is because girls have so much of a more
challenging life here, so they push harder against those challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three of the boys indignantly said girls
lives were no harder thank you very much, but the fourth scoffed as they said
so and joined me listing off the many ways girls have it harder here (less
opportunity for work, more likely to be pulled out of school, less able to
travel, less able to go outside at all, harassment, the list went on).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We convinced the other three rather quickly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Seeing an
opportunity, I asked the boys what they thought we could do, as men, to help
girls and women here in their struggle for equality, but they shot back that
it’s impossible to improve the world since God makes its order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I replied that God helps those who help
themselves, then quickly added “and each other,” which to me seems like it
would be truer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This launched us into a
discussion of whether this was a “Christian idea” or one that could apply in
Islam too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I tried to join in they
asked what I knew about Islam, so I laid down my credentials and told them
about the college course I took and the books I read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One boy said that American college courses on
Islam must be about how bad the religion is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I told them not at all, and explained that I’d had Muslim professors,
Muslim TAs, Muslim friends in these classes, and even the ones taught by
non-Muslims focused on Islam as a beautiful and great faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seemed pretty shocked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This makes me worry about how Christianity is
approached in their classes, of the three Islamic Studies teachers at the high
school I know one really dislikes America—he has twice shown up at my events
and gone on anti-America rants and to him America and Christianity are
synonyms—but the other two both seem like they would give a fairer appraisal,
one is even a good friend who once delivered a counter rant to the first
guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t seem like the time to
ask, since they had to go and I wanted to end on a good note.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All in all it was quite the conversation!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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P.S. Just so people don’t get concerned about the
anti-American teacher, although he very much dislikes the States he seems to
have no beef with me personally, and except for when he shows up at my events
and says that America created AIDS (at the AIDS awareness event) or that
America polluted the world (at my CLIMB kids Environmental Education
Conference) he and I are quite civil to each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do wonder, since he never seems all that
interested in having longer conversations, if he knows my Arabic is good enough
to follow his rants.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-32979124508351731392013-09-21T14:43:00.002+01:002013-09-21T14:43:40.380+01:00A Better Mood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I realize
that my last post was a pretty huge downer, so to make up for it this post is
going to be all about things I really like about Morocco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since last time one of my cousins came by to
visit, and showing her around my town and a couple of nearby places really
helped to remind me what I love about this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of these things I’ve talked about
before, some I have not, but all of them are things that give me hope for
Morocco’s brighter future.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With all my
talk about religion last time I think it’s important to lead with another
aspect of religious feeling here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
other day I was sitting in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dar Chabab</i>
with my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i> and his wife talking
about different alphabets when they revealed that they can both read
Hebrew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently they studied it for
fun for a couple of years while in university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i>’s wife then started
talking about the Abramaic religions and how they all believe in the same God,
so they have no reason to struggle against one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then she went on to say something I’ve never
heard from any other Moroccan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She said
that you must choose the religion that feels best to you in your heart and in
your head, and that God alone can judge what is right for each person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given how I haven’t felt tolerated for my
religious feelings recently this was a welcome message!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last post I
also complained about how often we volunteers have to contest with people
trying to cheat us, or with people just generally making us feel down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While this does happen quite a bit, another aspect
of Moroccan culture has grown up against it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Oftentimes Moroccans will feel compelled to try to defend us from the
less accepting members of the population when they can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll give two examples from the last few
weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last week I went travelling with
my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i> to a regional conference for
volunteers and their counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
our way back to site I went to buy a sandwich, but couldn’t afford the
exorbitant price the guy tried to charge me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After telling my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mudir</i> he went
off and got me the sandwich for the real price.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Little kindnesses go a long way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The other
instance happened in my town when one of the boys who is always a jerk kept in
character and started yelling at me in Tamazight and taunting me for not
following this other language well enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A seven-year-old girl walking on my other side started berating him for
being obnoxious in Arabic and managed to shame him into running off with a
scowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was awesome.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Younger
kids, boys and girls, are always what help my mood here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that the summer heat has finally broken
I’ve started up playing Frisbee with them again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope we can try to make it a little more
formal this year, but even if we don’t its a great way to get kids to have a
little fun and try something different.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I think
that’s all for now, but hopefully in the next few months once work starts
getting off the ground again I’ll have more and more interesting stuff to write
about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they say in Morocco, take care
of your head!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
P.S. Best way of saying good-bye ever, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned it
before!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-65149101699945191492013-08-27T09:50:00.000+01:002013-08-27T09:50:18.313+01:00European Escapades and their Consequences<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It has been
a while since I last wrote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be honest
it has been quite hard to write because I’ve been pretty feeling pretty low
since coming back to Morocco from my Ramadan trip to Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trip to Europe was absolutely fantastic
and a welcome break from life in the developing world, but coming back has
seriously highlighted some of the intense issues that Morocco must face in
order to move beyond this developing stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since this is a blog about Morocco the majority of this post will be
about these issues, rather than a blow by blow of the trip and the camp I
worked in Khenifra upon returning.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Chief among
the issues facing Morocco is harassment in its many forms, religious,
political, and sexual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the best
parts about being in Europe was simply liberation from constant scrutiny,
judgment, and pressure to live differently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not once did I feel uncomfortable for being a different faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since coming back I’ve had to readjust to
people constantly asking if I’m Muslim and then pressuring me or even trying to
trick me into converting when I say I’m not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Someone even told me that the Christian faith I profess was evil and
ugly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This lack of tolerance and
harassment of the different puts a severe check on the forward movement of the
country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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While in Frankfurt I had the
fortune to meet two young men from Cairo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were both very left thinking and were supporters of the military
coup, which they did not feel was a coup (this was before the massacres in
early August).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were both secularist
Muslims, and as such were intensely against the Islamist government, which they
felt had repressed even moderate Islam in favor of a more fundamentalist
approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They felt that they weren’t
safe in the streets, one had even received death threats for wearing his hair
long, and his mother was threatened for not wearing hijab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the men threatening them were fanatics
the boys were convinced the government would not pursue justice against them,
and that put their lives in danger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
upshot of all this was that they’d felt dehumanized, and from there they
dehumanized their oppressors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
seemed incredibly angry at the Islamist and didn’t seem to care one way or the
other if the military used violence against them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To me this shows the dangers of intolerance;
these boys hadn’t had their differences tolerated, and now in turn when their
side was in power they saw no problem in repressing their former
repressors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tried to talk with some
Moroccans about this, but my conversation with actual Egyptians about Egypt was
dismissed in a wave of Islamist fervor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The wouldn’t accept that Mr. Morsi hadn’t done a good job maintaining
his democratic mandate, and because they felt more compelled to say their
beliefs as truths then to listen to my different (and thereby necessarily
wrong) ones they couldn’t understand that I liked neither the Morsi government
nor the coup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than listen to
another point of view people shoot it down and attack the person saying
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a product of the
dichotomizing effect of harassment.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
There is another form of harassment
endemic to Morocco which severely damages its tourist industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the constant attempt by many
Moroccans in touristic areas to prey on tourists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the truly great things about Morocco
is how welcoming, kind, and helpful Moroccans are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the truly terrible things about
Morocco is how a significant minority of people will attempt to cheat tourists
by faking this helpful and welcoming attitude up until the point that they can
get the tourists in a bind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
standing at a map in London trying to get our bearings we talked about how nice
it was to not have dozens of young men throwing themselves at us trying to drag
us away from the map so they could take us somewhere and charge us a service
fee for doing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The upshot of course
is that in Morocco there wouldn’t even be a map, and the young men would just
try to drag you to the popular tourist places, where you actually want to go be
damned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s frustrating, annoying, and
if there are women in the tourist group possibly traumatizing as the young men
harass them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After almost three weeks of
not having these kinds of issues it was really disheartening when our first
experience with Moroccans as we left the airport was a bunch of men agreeing to
a fair price for a taxi back into the city and then trying to raise it once we
got into the taxi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These actions hurt
the tourist industry, which could otherwise be a major shot in the arm for the
economy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The other major issue that this
trip threw into relief is the inequality between the sexes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there is still a ways to go in both
America and Europe towards full gender equality, compared to Morocco the
disparity is very small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It felt safe
going out at night with the girls in our group, and we saw women doing all
kinds of things that they cannot do in Morocco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps the most surprising and strangest thing I noticed in Europe was
that it was equally interesting to talk with women and men in our hostels and
in the cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the camp I worked at
back in Morocco I noticed that, as always, I tended to find the girls much more
interesting to talk to then the boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Also, unlike in Europe, the young women’s English, on average, is
notably better than the young men’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
think that this problem is a direct result of gender inequality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the boys face so many less challenges
they tend to work less hard, meaning that the girls, in general, have better
English, greater drive, more informed view points, and a wider range of
interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is, of course, a gross
generalization, and there are many exceptions but in the younger generation it
is largely true, and would probably be true in older generations if not for the
higher levels of repression that kept women from attaining higher (or any)
education.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I was hoping to end this post on a
positive note, but I’m having a very hard time writing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think instead I’ll just mention that
although I’m having pretty negative feelings about Morocco of late the trip was
an inspiration to redouble my efforts at development work with my students
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the coming year I hope to especially
work in two areas, giving students more opportunities to explore their
interests, be they art, music, sports, theatre, or what have you, and working
with students on issues of gender equality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If possible I’d like to do this by helping the boys understand the
importance of respecting girls and of engaging and working hard, like the girls
do, but should that fail with the boys here I’ll instead focus on giving the
girls more opportunities to develop their talents and interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I guess in conclusion I escaped to Europe,
and as a consequence now want to work even harder.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-16440092954666625632013-07-18T20:48:00.000+00:002013-07-18T20:48:26.893+00:00Ramadan Report #4 (Questions of Faith)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s hard
to believe, but I’ve been here long enough that I’m now in the middle of my
second Ramadan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like last year, I
decided that I would participate in the fast, at least for the parts where I’m
in the country, though since I got sick early on I haven’t been keeping it very
strictly, especially with regards to water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This isn’t really cheating, you are not supposed to fast when you’re
sick, in fact you’re breaking the rules if you don’t eat while sick.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last year I
found that Ramadan was a time when people wanted to talk about faith a lot, and
this year is the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has seemed to
me that for whatever reason a lot more people don’t like that I’m fasting
without being Muslim this year than last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While the vast majority of people I’ve talked to still like that I’m
participating in this part of their culture, a vocal minority never fails to
say that my fasting doesn’t count since I’m not praying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another minority (sometimes the same people,
sometimes others) has been trying to get me to convert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This happens pretty much constantly through
the year, but during Ramadan even more would-be missionaries come out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get asked a lot about why I’m a Christian,
why I don’t pray, and why I don’t believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A lot of times my responses, which are that Christianity is the faith I
grew up with, and that Christians do pray and believe, aren’t accepted, which
is unique to Ramadan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thankfully
sometimes other people will jump in and tell the questioners to stop jumping
down my throat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be honest, it can be
annoying but I don’t really mind, I know they’re asking and trying to convert
me because they care and want me to go to heaven.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One day
while I was on the way to break fast, one of the town’s old men called me over
to talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know this man’s real
name; everyone just calls him <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">El-Hajji</i>,
an honorific for someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">El-Hajji</i>
has never actually made the pilgrimage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He earned the honorific through his intense study of the Quran and Hadith,
and is one of the town’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Imam</i>s
(prayer leaders).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">El-Hajji</i> wanted to teach me a little about Islam, and maybe convert
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an interesting conversation,
even if he was only successful in teaching me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He started
out by talking a little bit about how God keeps track of our actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that each of us has two angels who
always travel with us, one to our right and the other to our left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The angel on the right writes down all our
good actions, the one to the left records the bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the Day of Judgment they will read both
lists back to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he changed tacks
a bit and asked me if I knew what happened in Egypt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surprised, I said of course I knew all about
the coup, but he said no, not that, and then started to tell me a story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took me a minute to realize it was Moses
parting the sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He followed this up
with a few other miracles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he told
me about all the unpleasant things that happen to someone in Hell, a fire and
brimstone sermon that would rattle John Edwards (not the one of recent
political fame).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, after asking if I
was circumcised, he described the process of prayer and invited me to come to
the mosque for Friday prayer some week to learn more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was quite the tour-de-force, though the
shock and awe approach to conversion wasn’t the right tack to convince me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Otherwise
not too much is going on, but I wanted to post because in less than a week I’ll
be flying to London for my first out of country vacation since arriving last
March!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-19970370234439092412013-07-09T14:41:00.000+00:002013-07-09T15:36:47.729+00:00Creating Leadership In the Mountains and Beyond<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This past
week was definitely the high point of my service thus far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the week when, after six months of
preparation, we finally made the trip down to Mt. Toubkal, the tallest mountain
in North Africa, with my C.L.I.M.B. students.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Toubkal is
4,167 meters (13,671 feet) tall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
takes two to three days to summit and return to the base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A daunting task, and one my students handled
with their usual aplomb and spirit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We left my
site on the last day of June to travel down to Marrakech and then immediately
onto Imlil, the village at the foot of the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a long day, made longer both in actual
time when the bus came an hour late and in exhaustion when the waiter at the
food stand we stopped at on the way down tried to pull a fast one and double
the price of lunch when he realized the American had all the cash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once all gathered in Imlil we were an
impressive group, 14 students (the 15<sup>th</sup> in the club had a family
event he couldn’t miss), two Moroccan teachers, two other PCVs who came to help
out, and myself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first
day of climbing we went from Imlil to a refuge about a kilometer and a half
below the peak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first day is a long,
steep ascent, but the students had tons of energy and the hardest part for me
was restraining the fastest boys from running up the mountain in their
excitement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We met some other American
hikers on the trail, who you’ll see later in the story become very important.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEganxNaqLShZwbs8ncMHgCwPnw9SeZEOJBWFSoFFtrcymC9NzUPsviUSZepOAeS_vdExQJhZ3cU7A8EPFs2vDtEwkuA1PrBHVU-QGtQJ7gf_M3XvhVd_wKm22NBqk3alnroNLCXfuQieaFS/s1600/IMG_2987_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEganxNaqLShZwbs8ncMHgCwPnw9SeZEOJBWFSoFFtrcymC9NzUPsviUSZepOAeS_vdExQJhZ3cU7A8EPFs2vDtEwkuA1PrBHVU-QGtQJ7gf_M3XvhVd_wKm22NBqk3alnroNLCXfuQieaFS/s320/IMG_2987_2.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Refuge in Imlil</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlDMJovTiAWlfXBKXAEpOauf6NqjrHKh7oTE4b76J7klAT_xv7PoYTfz7jN_MxYzBOnMl6g1VISkrBjw39GVkLxn3JIknmQFJn2ZvyfMqWyJ7he6RO70VfFGNxWXJ-b6eUjt-SSIrNUzfG/s1600/IMG_2989_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlDMJovTiAWlfXBKXAEpOauf6NqjrHKh7oTE4b76J7klAT_xv7PoYTfz7jN_MxYzBOnMl6g1VISkrBjw39GVkLxn3JIknmQFJn2ZvyfMqWyJ7he6RO70VfFGNxWXJ-b6eUjt-SSIrNUzfG/s320/IMG_2989_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Imlil</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQE3DjkU5nD-1miBqkJVOzuKiCf2auZV4TzJh2GayqREf1I-vySnY0vONc7Q2gy8N5oasBs6ZY9PbTQ9QvUNK5wb-hk-lNNLxvyCQXLCJcZJEfZBdh4XMV-D4Ob3feiitH_RA-QJ2Il_Uu/s1600/IMG_2992_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQE3DjkU5nD-1miBqkJVOzuKiCf2auZV4TzJh2GayqREf1I-vySnY0vONc7Q2gy8N5oasBs6ZY9PbTQ9QvUNK5wb-hk-lNNLxvyCQXLCJcZJEfZBdh4XMV-D4Ob3feiitH_RA-QJ2Il_Uu/s320/IMG_2992_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The two girls who hadn't wanted their photos online say they've changed their minds, which means now I can post group shots!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX7gopTRjRGHhZAjLvaFVOABgV60gvkO3F2iep1oq1SRsonM18jkK8msxtSNiWGYTSX2d9RyvFojzXBIz2XVYWt9CFmVvRhg4Hii-kbYj5Dd7T6S3O6gGexGBnWEpd_7cMl7KArGRkAXkV/s1600/IMG_2993_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX7gopTRjRGHhZAjLvaFVOABgV60gvkO3F2iep1oq1SRsonM18jkK8msxtSNiWGYTSX2d9RyvFojzXBIz2XVYWt9CFmVvRhg4Hii-kbYj5Dd7T6S3O6gGexGBnWEpd_7cMl7KArGRkAXkV/s320/IMG_2993_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the
refuge we rested and recuperated with other hikers, some of whom had done the
same climb we had and others who had summited that day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One group was another student group, this one
of British middle school students who were on the most awesome field trip of
all time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their leader, an ex-military
guy turned school teacher, has done extensive climbing in Nepal, so leading a
group of 13 year old school kids up this peak wasn’t actually that over the top
for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was extremely impressed,
though also a little jealous of their British public school discipline,
especially when it came time for lights out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wouldn’t change my students for the world, but it was a reminder of
one reason (besides money) that Western students tend to have more frequent and
more awesome field trips than Moroccan students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s way less of a logistical nightmare with
students who’ll keep to a timetable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the
start of the second day we had a frustrating revelation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite our constant reminders to bring cold
weather cloths for the top three students had decided not to bring them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The worst part, they actually had lugged
jackets on the trip, but without asking us leaders had left them with some
other luggage we were stowing in Imlil since it had seemed so hot at the foot
of the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In good conscience we
couldn’t let those three climb, so we had to leave them behind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess we should have done another gear check
as we started climbing the first day, but this was a mistake I hadn’t expected.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So with
eleven students and five teachers we started the difficult second day’s
ascent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It starts with a steep scree
slope, and except for a couple of boulder fields continues in that vein for the
whole way up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an exhausting climb
through barren, black mountains that recall the entrance to Mordor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wind was howling most of the way up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still we pushed through, though at a pretty
slow pace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6hSPanAJAyBr-vPP6dwf158oD4xY7GZ9fCBhmmzETDoQzIqWeDshtKS866Zl0Qg8nQBAxKExGyiIzySpjX33nxWvcHYefY42ll3p8ZHi7WH-D0FYxZufO_izN3u6qU9ikFGoAv7caEV5N/s1600/IMG_3009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6hSPanAJAyBr-vPP6dwf158oD4xY7GZ9fCBhmmzETDoQzIqWeDshtKS866Zl0Qg8nQBAxKExGyiIzySpjX33nxWvcHYefY42ll3p8ZHi7WH-D0FYxZufO_izN3u6qU9ikFGoAv7caEV5N/s320/IMG_3009.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Refuge on the mountain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOWupKElFD4rXRsQ_xxdpHAPLxlS0cc1rCuyJbmTPlvGksBNPbY78TVEjyXnlfYuaX-Zo2jnOsfxDWxNioYWUtlH9k_lxf9xmZ9HyYl15jEOPJfdhBqkIQSqXepqwX_iiUrip5PHahuDnj/s1600/IMG_3017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOWupKElFD4rXRsQ_xxdpHAPLxlS0cc1rCuyJbmTPlvGksBNPbY78TVEjyXnlfYuaX-Zo2jnOsfxDWxNioYWUtlH9k_lxf9xmZ9HyYl15jEOPJfdhBqkIQSqXepqwX_iiUrip5PHahuDnj/s320/IMG_3017.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The peak finally in sight!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the very
beginning of the day we caught up with a group of extremely unprepared Moroccan
hikers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were wearing very little,
and carrying almost no food and water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When we saw them they were taking a very dangerous and difficult route
straight up the scree, and I had to stay behind a second to help guide the last
one in the group down to a safer path with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The others refused to try the easier route.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The guy who did come with us eventually went
on when we took a break so he could catch up with the friends who’d abandoned
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He must have caught up at some
point, because when I next saw him he had a bottle of water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also had lips and nails slowly turning
blue in the early stages of hypothermia and his friends had abandoned him
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sending the kids forward to a
safer ledge to take a break I opened up one of the safety blankets I’d brought
and pulled out some nuts and raisins for him to snack on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked ahead and was very happy to see the
two American girls we’d met the day before chatting with our group ahead,
coming back from an earlier summiting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since I’d learned the day before that they knew what they were doing I
had no concerns asking them to help the man down, especially since he had
pretty good English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was lucky they
were there to take him down safely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was lucky they were there so that I didn’t have to forego my own summiting to
bring him down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
Moroccan group was not the only group of fools on the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One German sounding family had brought their
kids, neither of whom could be older than eight, who looked absolutely
miserable as we passed them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
Australian man came galloping down the mountain and was lucky not to twist his
ankle when he tripped and fell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All in
all I guess it was good for my students to see how much they’d learned, how
they knew what not to do, but the amount of dangerous practices I saw on the
mountain was staggering.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The very
last part of the ascent is extremely slippery scree, made all the worse because
at that point I at least was starting to feel the lack of oxygen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had to stop every few minutes to let
ourselves catch our breaths, so it was a hard push, but eventually, just as the
wind died, we were able to reach the very top.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The view is spectacular, and since the winds had finally gone down we
ended up having lunch up at the very top of Morocco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kids now have bragging rights for life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFynnH4KmURshNtLoS1GZGt9ewKnonF2atrXiSaIIwxDjuERZIcWxT29CA5C90BY5v9Xw_x-7PVh7R0i4udlygwnaOgb9v50JPlgvBvKwnqASN-I0OKBBO0Ke_fTWQijvCQSrJSHZkAk3S/s1600/IMG_3026.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFynnH4KmURshNtLoS1GZGt9ewKnonF2atrXiSaIIwxDjuERZIcWxT29CA5C90BY5v9Xw_x-7PVh7R0i4udlygwnaOgb9v50JPlgvBvKwnqASN-I0OKBBO0Ke_fTWQijvCQSrJSHZkAk3S/s320/IMG_3026.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our group, with some random dude sleeping in the way (we think he's the dude who abandoned the other guy lower down)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixoWH5eIqp-PTMwr7N50EA087hAvU26RwxN5CIG2u_Ylhet72RiaRKQtDFHpwQ80Od8RzkWMRHWlfiEoDKVrrTkWj_PfPUDcz_NYgwICc6E6m1KnVoph7N9PYRQg2bV8DXtrXbQB1fbu42/s1600/IMG_3030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixoWH5eIqp-PTMwr7N50EA087hAvU26RwxN5CIG2u_Ylhet72RiaRKQtDFHpwQ80Od8RzkWMRHWlfiEoDKVrrTkWj_PfPUDcz_NYgwICc6E6m1KnVoph7N9PYRQg2bV8DXtrXbQB1fbu42/s320/IMG_3030.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and my counterparts</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO85Bzno1mBalSNc4a9x9CxQeblbkO-aKkMgEXQVjp55MPDc5_B8YGY0KVPu614we3nM2gBytT-jWP4HUo_wVIUA8cnWicx3-Eaatdarz2uylJ7Pb3Ei-lQ08-mri5J0cHn2mliH-dGcc5/s1600/IMG_3032.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO85Bzno1mBalSNc4a9x9CxQeblbkO-aKkMgEXQVjp55MPDc5_B8YGY0KVPu614we3nM2gBytT-jWP4HUo_wVIUA8cnWicx3-Eaatdarz2uylJ7Pb3Ei-lQ08-mri5J0cHn2mliH-dGcc5/s320/IMG_3032.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peace Corps Volunteers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFP6Fd70EoW_LQPKRifC2vP6jueqYNMjEXbx8FBPymb_2rAUXAlMC5x-Q6R-rcuCBMhh8VVH8rw2V7Cpn8QDfIPNGNrkxcR5raQoFqrSoHWfVFAyO34z12aMcAuCG-O6f0rj207XIX2oOs/s1600/IMG_3052.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFP6Fd70EoW_LQPKRifC2vP6jueqYNMjEXbx8FBPymb_2rAUXAlMC5x-Q6R-rcuCBMhh8VVH8rw2V7Cpn8QDfIPNGNrkxcR5raQoFqrSoHWfVFAyO34z12aMcAuCG-O6f0rj207XIX2oOs/s320/IMG_3052.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The further town is Imlil</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig04YgCt7Tckx0ekjACCiaAgWdTZLOLI3ZdOvHTkdPIRnjqfnhpPufGIXdofiM81QbhHgfBlQNePvwWZ3VRpE_XkCYYl_OnJ1NumOTqEmYSOZwZqa2x0-oLsYG4Pomq4tdY8b_GcwysC6D/s1600/IMG_3053.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig04YgCt7Tckx0ekjACCiaAgWdTZLOLI3ZdOvHTkdPIRnjqfnhpPufGIXdofiM81QbhHgfBlQNePvwWZ3VRpE_XkCYYl_OnJ1NumOTqEmYSOZwZqa2x0-oLsYG4Pomq4tdY8b_GcwysC6D/s320/IMG_3053.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kids with a Geocache</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Going down
is also a tricky operation, especially since we’d never been able to practice
descending a scree slope, but the kids did a fantastic job and we were able to
break up our trip by finding a geocache someone had hidden about half way up
the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The students were shocked
to learn that some hiking obsessed Westerners play a game hiding things on
mountain and leaving GPS coordinates for others to find, but were really
excited once we’d found the cache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
returned afterwards exhausted but accomplished.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On our
third day on the mountain we walked back down from the refuge to Imlil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once there we discovered the innkeeper with
whom we’d left our stuff with was in Marrakech, two hours away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We called her up, and I got permission to
climb up a few tables and enter a high, open window, successfully burgling our
own stuff from an inn I had permission and ability to enter only through the
most ridiculous means possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
fitting end to our time on the mountain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After my
flirtation with a life of crime we went back to Marrakech, a city I was
surprised to learn almost half my students had never visited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We took them through the raucous street
theatre that is the main square and split into small groups to explore the
souks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The group I was with somehow
stumbled on a shop full of antique Jewish artifacts, so now I can say I’ve
explained the purpose and history of the menorah to a bunch of Moroccan
students in Arabic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afterwards we had
dinner and fresh squeezed orange juice under the stars back in the main square.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I told
my students we wouldn’t be leaving until the following afternoon they rushed me
in a football scrum of hugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a
second I wondered if they registered the bit where I told them we were doing
this to give us time to visit an historical monument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We took them to the Bahia palace, a place I’d
visited with my parents but which even most of the students who’d been to
Marrakech had never seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As with any
group of teenagers in an historic site about half were really interested while
the other half were bored out of their minds, but it was still a good trip and
I’m glad I finally got a chance to make history a little more tangible for the
kids.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All in all,
this trip to Marrakech and Toubkal was fantastic and easily the highlight of my
service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then a couple of students
have told me it was the greatest thing that they’ve ever done, which I guess
means I can go ahead and say I’ve had a successful Peace Corps service,
regardless of what else I can get off the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Sunday after getting back to site we had
an after party where the students told us how much they’d like to keep the club
going, even in a non-funded form, to learn more about the environment and to
keep doing local hikes together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
glad I’ve had this chance to work with such a great group of kids, watching
them grow both as individuals and as a team, as leaders and as good followers,
and I hope to keep working with those who aren’t going to university next year,
but for now we have to take a little break.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ramadan has come.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-60592915741762624372013-06-28T10:43:00.003+01:002013-06-28T10:43:30.394+01:00By the Seaside<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last week
was a huge break from my regular, mountainous Peace Corps life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I travelled down to Essaouira, a city on the
coast, in order both to watch the Gnawa music festival and to work with a
Moroccan anti-AIDS association, the ALCS.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ALCS and
Peace Corps have partnered together for many years at the Gnawa festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ALCS uses the opportunity of the festival,
when Essaouira is loaded with concertgoers both foreign and domestic, to
provide free HIV testing, condoms, and information from two trucks near the
main stages of the festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peace Corps
Volunteers, along with local volunteers, pass out fliers, talk with people, and
lead interested people to the trucks for testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People seemed very interested in talking with
us, both because they don’t often meet Darija speaking Americans and because
they know very little about AIDS and HIV, but are rightly terrified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spent a lot of time correcting
misconceptions about the virus and working to convince young men that it was in
their best interests to get tested.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Those free condoms turned out to be a useful bribe, though because of
limitations on what Americans are allowed to do in aid work I could only lead
them to Moroccan volunteers who were passing them out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After I’d
gotten over the initial discomfort of approaching random groups of young men (I
left the awkward work of approaching young women to the female Volunteers) to
talk with them about AIDS the work actually turned out to be quite
fulfilling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People were mostly genuinely
interested in learning, and if there was a clown in their group the rest
usually shut him up so they could learn more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Often times those who had been joking became the ones who suggested they
all get tested right then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three moments
broke the pattern and are worth talking about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The first was when I approached a couple of older men and asked what
they knew about AIDS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They responded
that they had beautiful wives and therefore didn’t need to worry about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Funny, but misguided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second happened after I’d finished
talking to a group of four or five young men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They thanked me for the information and then went about their way, but
one hung back and, in a perfect Southern accent, complemented my Arabic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turns out he’s a programmer in the States
and was back to visit family here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
talked a little about volunteer opportunities there, which he wants to do,
especially since he can try and naturalize himself soon.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The third
break from the pattern was far and away the most distressing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talking with a group of disrespectful young
men (really the only very disrespectful group I met all day) two of them walked
off and dragged over a bunch of young women who they explained were their women
for the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They said these were the
ones we should talk to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They continued
to hoot and holler as another volunteer and I explained to the prostitutes
about the disease, ways to prevent it, where the testing was, and how to get in
touch with ALCS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seemed grateful
for the information even as they were intimidated by their clients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a pretty disgusting moment, though I’m
glad the women got the information.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Apart from
my work, last week was also the celebrated Gnawa Music Festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The festival (which I would really call more
of a concert series, since there was only music in the evenings at a very few
venues) features Gnawa, but also allows other musicians from across the world
to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gnawa is an interesting
genre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like American blues and jazz its
roots are in music which West African slaves brought to their new country, in
this case Morocco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gnawa, which means
black in a Tamazight dialect, is a fusion of Amizigh music with West African,
and had a big influence in Morocco’s mystical Sufi tradition, where people
would smoke and listen to the music for a spiritual experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It centers around chant like call and
responses, triplet heavy rhythms, and often (though not always) a low bass
instrument called a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gimbari</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In many cases it also involves ecstatic
dancing, sometimes even the drummers and members of the rhythm section will
make gigantic leaps into the air.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For the
most part I like the recordings of Gnawa music that I’ve heard, but most of the
acts at the festival left me cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
think a big part of the problem was with the festivalgoers themselves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At most music festivals anywhere there are
going to be a number of high people, it’s pretty much expected, but Moroccan
young men on drugs seem particularly unpleasant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any time I went to music with female
volunteers I felt worried for them, and with good reason, most of the time we
left early after one too many men took liberties grabbing at the women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only time I was able to relax a little
was the time I checked out a little of the music alone, and even then I’m glad
I’d tucked my wallet into the breast pocket of my shirt, because I felt a
pickpocket’s hand go into my pant pocket while his high-as-a-kite buddies tried
to distract me with their singing and dancing along with the musician.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The musician playing was named Omar Hayati,
which can translate to Omar the Living One.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was fantastic, and I stayed for awhile after moving away from the
pickpockets, but it was too little too late to let me really enjoy the music at
the festival.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This all
sounds negative, but I actually did enjoy my time in Essaouira.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The work with ALCS was very rewarding, the
counterparts we worked with fantastic, and in addition I get to spend time with
a lot of other volunteers and hang out in Essaouira, a city with great food and
laid back attitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Watching Omar the
Living One was also great, it may have been the only bit of live music I
enjoyed at the music festival but I enjoyed it a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Immediately after finishing work at
the festival the volunteers in my training group all travelled up to Rabat
together for our Mid-service training, two days where we reconvened, talked
about our work, and got some further language training from Peace Corps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was able to get a lot of language questions
cleared up, and as frequent readers know I always enjoy Rabat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I’m back in site, but not for very long,
soon I’ll be making the attempt up Toubkal with my C.L.I.M.B. students!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-60965238531787971312013-06-10T17:23:00.002+01:002013-06-10T17:23:27.291+01:00Different Worlds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since my
last post I’ve been in near constant motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First I went to Rabat to attend a meeting of Peace Corps Morocco’s SIDA
(AIDS) Committee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The purpose of this
committee is to create, organize, and present resources to help volunteers in
Morocco counter SIDA and teach about sexual health in general, a very difficult
topic to broach in this culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
appointed as a representative for my stage (the group I came in with) a couple
of months ago, but since the meetings are quarterly this was my first.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The meeting
went very well, and I’m excited for the extra work I was able to pick up from
it, which will keep me doing something useful during the upcoming slow summer
months, but what I really want to write about is Rabat itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve talked before, and at length, about how
Rabat is very different from the rest of the country, but again this hit home
in my last trip, perhaps even harder than before.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The very
first thing I did this trip was finally visit the Rabat archeological
museum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The museum is small but
fantastic, especially a room full of bronze sculptures from Volubilis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During my visit there was also a school group
(they were Moroccans, but, strangely, the teacher was speaking in
Spanish).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t help but think
about how different these kids lives are from those in my town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For these city kids, history is something
tangible, something real, and they can see evidence of the various
civilizations that have lived in Morocco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They have something to get excited by in history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In contrast, a few kids in my town don’t even
know the Arabic word for museum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
talking about it with a group of students, and I know I said the word right,
because about half of them knew what I meant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The others just didn’t know what one was.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Later, I
met up with my old LCF (Arabic teacher).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As always it was a pleasure to hang out with him, but he had some bad
news for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has been applying to
graduate school in the States, and he even got accepted to a program, but it
was only at that late stage that they told him the fellowship he wanted wouldn’t
be available to him until after a year of extra study because his Moroccan
undergraduate degree isn’t considered equivalent to an American B.A.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently one of the sticking points is that
Moroccan degrees are done in three years, rather than four!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without the fellowship he can’t afford to go,
though the school says that after a year of graduate study in Morocco they’ll
consider his credentials again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
whole debacle is awful for two reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Firstly, the fact that they didn’t tell him until so late that he’d need
an extra credential, forcing him to spin his wheels for awhile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secondly, that they even need this credential
and won’t instead judge him on the quality of his academic record as it stands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">both</i>
long research papers he wrote at the end of university, and both are fantastic
and of comparable quality to American undergraduate theses.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I tell this
story because it is indicative of a larger problem facing the third world, how
hard it is to get out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Qualified people
like my LCF should not just be able to get out of their countries to study, it
ought to be encouraged so that eventually they can come back and hopefully do
much better development work than we foreign interloper Peace Corps Volunteers
ever could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hoops people have to
jump through make this very difficult, and all the people who keep pushing
through and trying, like my LCF, impress me a lot.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
hanging out and talking about Hemingway—in the last year my friend has
discovered a new love for 1920s American literature, go figure—we parted ways
and I met up with another acquaintance, another young, university educated
Moroccan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We talked about my experiences
living in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bled </i>(countryside) and
like at the museum I was quickly reminded how different things are in the big city
vs. my rural village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of weeks
ago I was talking with a student in English and casually used the word
“evolve,” which he didn’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
explained both the sense I’d meant (something changing) and the scientific
theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely, I was told, I couldn’t
believe that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve since talked with a
bunch of people in my town, and so far as I can tell, regardless of education
level, everyone here is a creationist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One person believed in a symbolic, rather than literal, seven days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t even know where this comes from, the
seven-day creation is not even in the Quran as I recall, though it could be
mentioned in a hadith or a Moroccan folk tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another believed in the possibility of animal
evolution, but told me in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t believe humans
evolved from animals because that would mean there was no God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t see the connection, but tried to
explain the idea of intelligent design as a middle ground, but no one would
have it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Rabat though my friend, a
passionate Muslim, found no disconnect between evolution and Islam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here was a place where the divide between
rural and urban Morocco lined up nicely with the divide between rural and urban
America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps a lot of the things I
find so strange in rural Morocco would seem less bizarre if I came from a
different part of America.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Returning
home I discovered that the scheduling issues plaguing my Toubkal climb had
worked themselves out, so a counterpart and I travelled down to Marrakech to
make reservations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d been less than
twenty-four hours home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My counterpart
and I climbed up to the refuge where we will spend the night before attempting
the summit with students in a month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
service and amenities there are pretty bad, but nothing out of line with either
cheap, backpacking hostels in Europe, or cheap Moroccan tourist hotels. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, the staff did treat us
particularly poorly, at dinner they gave bread to all the tables, and the
basket on our table was obviously of much older (rock hard) bread, and they wouldn’t
give us any of the better bread from another table until we promised to shut up
if they ate some of the stuff they’d given us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Which they couldn’t, unless they wanted to chip a tooth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, nothing of note in the world of cheap
Moroccan travel, but I’m fairly certain my friend has never been more offended
in his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moroccans don’t stay at the
same cheap hotels as foreigners do, and on the rare occasions we foreigners do
stumble into a Moroccan hotel they tend to try and fleece us so the cheap
tourist places end up being better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Never having travelled with a foreigner before this was all news to my
counterpart, and I think by the end of it he was as angry with how his
country’s cheap tourist industry treated me as I am with how my country’s education
system treated my LCF.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the end of our
two day sojourn my friend would insist I stay back whenever negotiating prices
so that the person wouldn’t see me and double the price, though happily I
noticed that after we got out of the trap of transportation to and from the
mountain the prices my counterpart got for things were the same as what I
usually get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder how much of that
is people being more honest away from the mountain and how much is my Moroccan
Arabic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In defense
of the budget Moroccan tourist industry, while at times it is awful it hits the
opposite extreme just as often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our
students had asked if we could spend the night after the climb in Marrakech
rather than at the foot of the mountain before heading home; we told them we’d
look at the cost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a budget
hotel in Marrakech that gives good deals to Peace Corps Volunteers, so we swung
by them first to see if we could get a deal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d hoped to get a price somewhere between the ridiculously low Peace
Corps price and their regular price, which would be too much money for what we
have with the grant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After explaining
the project they offered us the Peace Corps price for all the students, saving
us forty dirhams <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per person</i> from the
projected price on the grant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
most of these savings will find their way back into the Peace Corps country
fund I’m going to ask the grant manager if I can take a little to pay the
entrance fees for a landmark or two in Marrakech, see if I can’t make history a
little more tangible for these <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bled </i>students.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-84137677850690443762013-05-30T15:17:00.000+01:002013-05-30T15:17:18.211+01:00The Things I Cannot Change<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I want to
preface this post by saying that things have actually, for the most part, been
going really well the last few weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve been reasonably busy and, thereby, happy, and shouldn’t really have
anything to complain about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That being
said, a lot of the recent good has thrown the bad into particularly stark
relief, and I wouldn’t be presenting an accurate view of my service if I didn’t
include my ruminations on some of the many things that Morocco still needs work
on and that, unfortunately, as a foreign interloper I am nearly powerless to
effect.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first
of the bad things which happened is that one of my counterparts just up and
quit the C.L.I.M.B. program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn’t
give a reason or seem upset about anything, and my other counterparts and I
continue to scratch our heads over it, since he essentially quit once all the
hard parts of the program were finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While obnoxious, this is not out of place in Morocco, where a lot of
times it seems people lack the commitment to follow through and finish large
projects, probably because outside forces scuttle projects so often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What with one of my counterparts getting
pregnant and now this though it leaves just three adults to supervise the kids
up Toubkal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can do it, but it’s not
going to be anywhere near as pleasant, and I hope some nearby Peace Corps Volunteers
will take my offer to climb with us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The problem
with getting help from other volunteers is that we still haven’t been able to
schedule our exact dates for the climb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One of my remaining counterparts is an elementary school teacher, the
other is studying plumbing at a vocational school, and even though it’s only a
month away <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their respective ministries
haven’t scheduled their last days yet!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The ministries just give the extremely vague information of, “around the
end of June” rather than a specific date, which is infuriating for getting
anything else organized (see those outside forces scuttling projects I
mentioned above).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This inability to
schedule anything is one of the biggest anchors keeping Morocco in the
developing world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Despite
these problems, we had our fourth practice hike with students this past
Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We went up to Azrou and did the
same loop over a monkey-covered mountain and through Morocco’s only cedar
forest that I did last year during training.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was the hike that fate did not want to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were supposed to go the week before, but
were rained out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the morning of our
driver was two hours late; he claims because his boss slept in and he couldn’t
get the keys to the van.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had a flat
on the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We got to Azrou, but to get
to the trail head I needed to direct the driver from the very back of the van,
where I couldn’t see street signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never
having driven in Azrou I told him to turn down a one way street, and rather
than tell me it was a one way street he turned, which, of course, ended in us
getting pulled over and getting a ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Actually, pulled over is a loose term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The police stopped us and wouldn’t let us leave the middle of the street
while giving their ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ticket
was the same as the cost of transportation had been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily for the driver, we’ve been way under
budget on transport so far, so my counterparts and I decided, in the name of
letting his kids eat, to pay the fine, the cost of gasoline, and a few extra
dirhams so, while he didn’t make anywhere near as much as he would have made,
he wasn’t screwed over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unintentionally
this ended up being a great punishment, because we didn’t tell him we were
giving him extra cash until the end of the day, so he fretted the whole day
wondering what he’d do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He ended up
giving us big, tear filled hugs when we told him we’d pay for gas!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After all
this the vast majority of the hike went really well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We saw some monkeys out in the wild.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We met some British tourists at the touristy
place to see monkeys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They graciously
allowed my students to practice their English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything was going well until, on the last leg of the hike heading
back into Azrou, one of my students fell and injured her foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a quick observation I could tell something
hard was out of place, and she complained of a lot of pain, so while one of my
counterparts took the other students back to Azrou the other counterpart and I
took her to the ER.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Getting there in
itself was a hassle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were,
thankfully, already on a road, but ambulances in Morocco apparently only come
to big car accidents, not little things like people being unable to walk
without possibly permanently damaging their feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily a passing group of young Moroccans
saw us and agreed to bring us to the hospital, even stopping to buy us cherries
on the way, “to keep her strength up.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the ER
we were asked to pay before they’d take an x-ray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With all the money to pay the driver in
pocket I had no worries about affording it, but they initially refused
treatment because I didn’t have exact change and neither did they.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please, take a minute and let that sink in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scrounging my pockets I found the eleven
dirhams we needed to continue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While we
waited I ran to the rest room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was
no soap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the hospital rest room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, let this sink in for a second.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the x-ray the doctors told us there was
no fracture, and then casually mentioned that she might have ruptured a tendon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worried the hard thing I’d felt in her foot
was the scrunched up tendon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They then
did no more tests, wrapped her foot, gave us a prescription for a painkiller,
as if this was just a sprain, and unceremoniously had us leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There had been a car accident and apparently
there weren’t enough doctors and nurses in the ER to deal with two patients at
once.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The others
having left, we took a bus home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
counterpart and I recommended the family bring her to another doctor the next
day, since we didn’t really trust the ones in Azrou, so the next day my student
ended up going to a local healer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
healer took one quick feel of the girl’s foot, realized that the hard thing I’d
felt was actually a bone that had popped out of place, and simply popped it back
into place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the few days since then
the girl says the pain has stopped, there is absolutely no swelling, and she
can walk almost like normal already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Somehow the ER doctors correctly saw the bone was not fractured been
incorrectly saw that it was not in the totally wrong place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I see why no one trusts doctors here.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In addition
to all these systematic failings the last few days, my old cultural pet peeves
of children not reacting to any punishment that isn’t corporal and boys being
terrible to girls came back with a vengeance this week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Monday night I was playing with some of the
young girls in my neighborhood (about ages 8 to 11), when two boys (about age
14) galloped donkeys right through the middle of them, almost running over an
eight-year-old girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The boys were
laughing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told them not to do that
again, cause, you know, they’d almost killed someone, and they took that as an
invitation to do it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they
turned their donkeys to gallop through a third time I realized that I have been
wrong for years, there actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a
point at which it is okay to strike a child, and that is when he is continually
putting another child’s life at risk and won’t stop for anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I hit one of them upside the head, hard,
as he turned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I put my hand on the
other’s shoulder as he galloped by and held just long enough to unsettle him a
little in the saddle, which he correctly realized was a warning that if he did
this a fourth time I could and would pull him from the saddle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That solved the problem forthwith and they
galloped off into the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Although I hate the physical
punishment culture here I had to become part of it, at least this one time,
because nothing else works on these boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Actually, I think it made a big impression because I’ve been so vocally
against physical punishment this last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Onlookers (who did nothing themselves) gasped when I hit the boy, I
think realizing that I must have been indescribably angry in order to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately no one around knew those boys
or where they lived, otherwise I would have followed up with a far worse fate,
telling their mothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t like
reporting kids to their parents here, normally it just results in a thrashing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time I honestly think that’s what was
needed, and strangely I feel no remorse about that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The next day I saw something that,
sadly, I can now call bizarre walking to the Dar Chebab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bunch of teenaged girls playing basketball
on the court next to the Dar Chebab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was the first time I’ve seen people use that court for basketball (in fact the
basket fell off the backboard long before I came to this town), it’s usually
just another soccer field for boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
bunch of boys were sitting angrily on the side, and when I came up they asked
if I’d help them take back their soccer field!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I refused they tried to overrun the field, but after a couple
attempts to get them to grow up I used the nuclear option and, since I know
these boys and were they live, I knocked on the door of the one who lived
nearest and brought his mother into the fray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That pretty much ended problems with those boys, and afterwards the only
real issue was creepy older men gawking at the girls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Later I started to play Frisbee
with some younger girls on the side, and a different group of young boys
decided they were hell bent on ruining at least one group of girls’ fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The girls did a good job ignoring the boys’
taunts, until one boy actually ran up and started to hit a girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went over and pulled him off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a boy I’ve had tons of trouble with in
the past, and I asked him if I’d ever hit him before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I told him that I don’t want to start, but in the future I will treat
him the way he treats the girls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be
honest, I feel much guiltier about that threat of violence then hitting that
other boy the day before, but it was effective and the boys stopped attacking
the girls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afterwards I had the girls
play while I kept an eye on the boys, one of whom asked me, if I was a boy, and
they were boys, why was I on the girls’ side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Except he said it in a much more offensive manner involving what people
have and don’t have.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Through all this a group of men at
a local shop sat, watched, and did nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve seen these men step forward to chastise older boys when they play
too rough and threaten business at the shop by scaring away customers, but this
apparently wasn’t a big enough deal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After the girls left I went over to these men and I told them, point
blank, that they were doing themselves a disservice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked them why they thought the older boys
often act like animals, and before they could answer the rhetorical question I
told them it was because when the boys were young they were allowed to act like
animals without any adult supervision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Obviously, I said, these young boys don’t respect girls and they don’t
respect the foreigner defending girls, and it is the job of the older men in
the community to act as both role modals and supervisors to the young, so
they’d learn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if this bit
of public shaming will get them off their lazy bums next time, but it is,
again, one of Morocco’s biggest problems, when adults do nothing but complain
that their boys act like animals but do nothing to nip it in the bud when the
boys are young.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Sadly these aren’t the only recent
examples, but there is no need to bore you all with a litany of all the reasons
boys here make me sexist against my own gender.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead I’ll give you a Joha joke to make up for this major downer of a
post.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Once Joha had a fat, young lamb
which he liked very much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day some
friends were visiting, and they proposed to Joha that they kill the lamb and
have a feast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first Joha resisted,
but finally one of them said, “Look, Joha, the day of judgement will come to
all of us soon, so why don’t we enjoy life’s pleasures now?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Reluctantly, Joha agreed, and the
all went to the bank of a river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
built a fire and killed and roasted the lamb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After the feast, the other men took off their clothes and went swimming
in the river.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
While they were swimming, Joha
threw their clothes on the fire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
friends came back and couldn’t find their clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then they realized Joha had burned them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“What did you do that for?” they
asked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Joha replied, “The fire needed fuel,
and see how well it is burning now to keep you warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And since the day of judgment is coming soon,
what do you need the clothes for?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3106171506513619482.post-60716969206503619372013-05-19T09:18:00.001+01:002013-05-19T09:18:25.154+01:00Reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, I’ve
pretty much reached the year in service mark (not counting the two months of
training), which means I have about a year left to go, probably a little less
since our exit dates are scattered such that the last people leave after exactly
two years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t yet know which end of
the leaving period I’ll tend towards, for a long time I thought I wanted a
later exit date, but given how work dries up after about the middle of April
that seems less important now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We still
have a year to see.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As you
might expect around the year mark I’ve been quite reflective these last couple
of weeks about my service thus far and what I’ve done, successes and
failures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leaving aside the C.L.I.M.B.
program, which I write about all the time and which is obviously my big
success, how do (or, simply, do) students benefit from my day-to-day presence
in their town?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interestingly, I’ve had a
bunch of new students recently who’ve really helped put things in perspective.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As you may
recall from posts of a year or so ago, Moroccans have a huge test at the end of
high school, the Baccalaureate Exam, which pretty much determines the rest of
their lives, where (if) they can go to university, vocational school, what have
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say it is a time of
great terror for many students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
I’m quite popular in town among kids in their first year of university (who I
gave Bac review to last year when I first got to town) and among students in
the year before their Bac (high school juniors), I’ve only had one consistent
student in her Bac year come to my classes this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, with the test looming, a lot more of
these high school seniors are coming to my classes, which I’ve moved over
entirely to Bac review for these weeks proceeding the test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the suggestion of their teacher I’m
working a lot with writing and with usage of different tenses, rather than the
mechanics of grammar, which they are quite good at.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the one
hand working with these new students has been a bummer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of them have fantastic grammatical
knowledge and vocabulary, but they have no idea how to use these either in
speaking or in writing (and have a hard time with listening too, because they
haven’t heard much of a native accent).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s a lot of lost potential, ways I can see that they would have
much better communicative English if they’d just been coming to my intermediate
classes throughout the year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However,
the juxtaposition lets me really see what I’ve done for the students who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> been coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Already, pretty much across the board, my
consistent juniors write as well or better in English than these seniors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since they’ve spent more time with me they
can comprehend spoken English much better, despite their smaller vocabularies and
knowledge of tenses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most importantly, a
lot of them, though by no means all, have reduced or eliminated their hang-ups
about trying to speak in English, even when they don’t know if they can pull
off the sentence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I still worry
about not giving as much as I get, it’s nice to have this visible reminder that
I’ve done good things for students that don’t involve mountains or trust falls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This also
helps me to plan ahead for what I’m going to do next school year with my
students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For my intermediate class I
hope to keep the kids I’ve been working with in their senior year and,
hopefully, attract more students, doing more of the same, though increasing the
emphasis on writing, both for greater variation from our speaking classes and
because I’ve finally found a way to teach writing that I think works well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to my basic class, I’ll see if there is
interest in keeping it up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there is
I’ll keep it going, if not I’ll either replace it with another intermediate
class (to give kids more options of times to come), or with time to do a
non-English extra-curricular.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
elementary/middle school classes finally completely fell apart; we’ve just been
playing Frisbee and cards for weeks, which they seem to prefer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As elementary school students who spend seven
hours in school doing other academics I can’t blame them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next year I think I’ll allow what few of
those students who actually want English lessons into the older Basic class,
something I’d already started, and instead use the time to try and start a
music club inspired by the one I saw the Moroccan counselors running at the
Taroudant Spring Camp (see my post “Let It Shine” from April).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the kids would like it and find it
much more enriching and interesting than the English lessons their parents
insisted on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably help their English
pronunciation in the long run anyways, since we’ll keep to English songs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, that’s
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not really too much more to say in
this post, but I’ll leave you with a joke from my local Joha, the man I call
Nasreddin in previous posts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paying for
my tea the other day, Nasreddin asked me what I’d be paying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tired, but aware I was walking into a joke, I
warily responded “five.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Five, five
what?” he asked a glint in his eye.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
responded, “five dirhams,” and I gave him a five-dirham coin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s not
five,” he declared, “that’s one!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You know,”
I threw back, catching on, “I should know better, you Moroccans give prices in
ryals (the equivalent of nickels to the Dirham).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll give you a hundred!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You better
not give me a hundred ryal, they’d scatter all over and I’d end up counting all
night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, there was once a man
who paid me in francs (the equivalent of pennies to the Dirham), it took him
days to clean it up, though I gave him his coffee on the house.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Tedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06067239619418208172noreply@blogger.com0