Expansions and Contractions

            If there are two things you have to get good at as a Peace Corps Volunteer they are rolling with the punches and being ready to respond to the unexpected.  The last week or so highlights both how I’ve gotten better at these two things and at how I still need to work at them.  This last week has been an exciting time where my work has really expanded, but also a frustrating time where a lot of the problems I’ve thus far been able to skirt around came to the fore.  There are some funny stories, some depressing ones, and one or two heartening ones, so get ready to roll along with me for a bit.

            The first story I’ll tell is about my S.I.D.A. (A.I.D.S. by its French acronym) event last Saturday.  Although I was the primary organizer, this event was, theoretically, an ideal Peace Corps event, the idea to have it was my mudir’s, the woman actually doing the presentation is a local woman who works with a national organization for the prevention of S.I.D.A., all I had to do was act as the middle man bringing these groups together, the American facilitating a Moroccan event.  I should hope it’s needless to say but it didn’t work out that smoothly.

            After connecting the organization (O.P.A.L.S., a French acronym for the Organization for the Prevention of the Spread of A.I.D.S.) with my Dar Chabab and running between them a couple of times all I had to do was have a projector ready for the event and pre- and post- tests printed so we could see if the students actually learned anything.  Although my Dar Chabab doesn’t have a projector I found an organization in town which would lend us one the day of the event (they needed it earlier that day), and although I was a bit nervous that my normal copy shop was closed for a local holiday the day before the event I got copies printed at another shop the day of.  Everything looked fine until I went to the association to get the projector, about a half hour before the event.  My contact wasn’t there.  I called her, no response.  Uh oh.  With the room set up and the woman from the association on her way it was a little worrying.  My contact called me just ten minutes before the event and apologized, but she hadn’t been around since she was looking for her boss, the only one with a key to the room with the projector.  She’d found out where he was (at some café) and had sent a student to bring the keys.

            Back at the Dar Chabab with projector in hand we started to set up the computer (my mudir’s laptop) and projector together.  We plugged them in, only to discover the projector didn’t work.  I returned it as my mudir, the woman from the association, and a couple other local volunteers set up the computer so that hopefully most people could see (with 50 students it was wishful thinking).  My contact said that it was strange it wasn’t working now; it had earlier.  She grabbed another power chord and it started to run, so I brought it back.  In the meantime things were ready at the Dar Chabab so while everyone else got the projector running I put in the USB with our presentation.  Now, one thing I didn’t check, but should of, was if my mudir had power point on his computer.  I had assumed he would have an old version, and saved an older format accordingly, but it turned out he didn’t have any version.  I ran home and resaved the file as a PDF, came back and opened it in a PDF reader.  Then we plugged the projector into the computer, which was when we discovered my mudir’s visual jack was broken.  My computer wouldn’t work (Macs need an adaptor), but a student offered to run home and bring his laptop.  He brought it and plugged in the projector, it worked and I tried the USB.  He didn’t have power point, no problem I had the PDF format.  It turned out he didn’t have a PDF reader either.  I didn’t know it was possible to get a computer that isn’t bundled with a PDF reader.

            About this time (around 40 minutes after our start time, the students were done with their pretest and fidgeting) my mudir disappeared.  Looking around I said “alright, I guess we’d better start,” when he came running back in caring an ancient CPU from God knows where (it later turned out to be his home computer).  Projector worked, power point worked, we were ready to go.  He came back with a monitor and keyboard, shocked that I already had the program running but alright, let’s get started.  Then the power went out on the half of the room with the computer and the projector.  But not the other half.  That was strange.  Someone had flipped the lights so the projection would be brighter, but it turned out that on that half of the room the outlet was connected to the same switch as the lights.  After restarting everything we finally started, about an hour late.  It was the Platonic Ideal of the start of an event in Morocco.

            Once it finally got going the event was really good.  The woman is a fantastic presenter and the kids were, for the most part, very engaged.  A few near the back did the very rude (though culturally normal) continual walk in and out of the activity, but as a native it didn’t phase her the way it used to phase me.  I noticed part way through that the students were taking notes on the back of their pretests and made the decision that we just wouldn’t collect data then since it’s more important that they have the information than I know exactly how effective the event was.  After the event was over there was the obligatory “let’s give our opinion” session that follows any Moroccan event, where a few interesting things came up.

            The first boy to speak blamed the government for the spread of S.I.D.A.  Specifically, since the government fails to help provide good jobs for rural women some of them feel compelled to enter a life of prostitution just to make ends meet.  Then a group of boys started to call S.I.D.A. a shameful disease, but a local teacher made the counterargument that shameful or no S.I.D.A. is here and you have to know about it.  Then another local weighed in, saying that anyone with S.I.D.A. must have engaged in un-Islamic activities.  This got me (and quite a few other people) bristling, even while some of the audience nodded in agreement.  There are, of course, hundreds of arguments against this, I even had three ready to go immediately if no one offered one (the case of a woman, faithful to her husband, whose husband is less faithful, contracts the disease, and then passes it to her; a man who goes to a hospital for a transfusion who is accidently given tainted blood; a baby born to an infected mother), but thankfully the presenter stepped in and, somewhat more diplomatically, explained that Islam is one thing, medicine another, and you need to know how to defend yourself regardless.  Then my mudir and I stepped in to end the activity since it was time to go and we wanted that to be the last word.

            Moving on from A.I.D.S. to a more fun topic, I’ve recently made a bunch of young Moroccan girls (8-12) obsessed with Frisbee.  It started the other day when about ten girls showed up an hour early to class.  I usually hang around the Dar Chabab for that hour before class and entertain any early birds with card games or chess, but ten was too many to do that with so I ran home, grabbed my Frisbee, and took the girls outside.  I had been a little worried that the older generation might not like that too much, girls in rural Morocco almost never play sports outside, it’s culturally very abnormal, but the adults who weren’t indifferent had big smiles watching the girls have so much fun.  Only the young boys (same ages) didn’t like it since the girls won’t play if boys—other than me, who these younger girls have now started calling their big brother—are playing and I wouldn’t let them ruin the girls’ fun.  Over the next few days I played several times with both the girls and the boys separately, but I found that with the girls I had to spend most of my time chasing away boys, some of whom get very violent and start throwing things like sticks, boxes of dates, and even soccer balls at the girls.  One boy said I was a “shameful” person for giving the girls an event before the boys!  I discovered that carrying a big stick keeps them further at bay, since some of them have never stayed long enough to realize I won’t follow through and actually hit them.  To be honest I shudder to think of how bad behavior will get with them once they realize this.  The boys who threw things I wouldn’t let play with the other boys the next day, and after an obnoxiously long argument they did leave the better-behaved kids alone.

            With all but the best behaved boys I had to spend Frisbee time fetching the Frisbee from various roofs since the boys won’t pass to each other and just try to throw as hard as they can.  After awhile I started to not allow boys who didn’t try to pass to each other to play, but instead of learning from their bad behavior like they had when I wouldn’t let them play the first time they reverted so that they were even worse than before, one day even going so far as to steal the Frisbee and not returning it to me or the better behaved boys until I knocked it out of the air.  Since I’ve had so many problems with this group both in and out of class I immediately banned them from all further classes and activities—a ban I hope to rescind someday if they show improvement.  To be honest, I don’t have high hopes.  After this I realized that I was left with about six boys under 14 still allowed into my activities, and I was worried that my service would be marked by me letting the boys of town down.  However in all my younger classes the rest of the week a bunch of boys who I’ve never worked with but seen around started coming.  It turns out they hadn’t wanted to come to class because all the misbehaving boys (called dsar in Arabic, which loosely translates to brat/bully) were there!  My new policy is to not let the dsarin (plural of dsar) in and otherwise operate on a strict one-strike you’re out policy per class with the others, and we’ve shot through new material since then with only one boy removed one time and he much better since then.

            The same day the dsarin took the Frisbee was also one of the few days I’ve had a really major behavioral problem with older boys.  It’s exam time in Moroccan high schools and a bunch of boys who’ve never come before came in the hopes that one review session would help them pass their exams.  The idea was even stranger since they seemed to think that they’d be able to review while also making strange noises in the back of class and failing to impress the girls who come regularly by shouting out incorrect English.  I told them they’d have to leave if they continued this and they complained that they had an exam and had to review!  The behavior continued so I told the worst offender he’d have to leave.  He refused, something that’s never happened before.  My mudir wasn’t around, so I couldn’t fall back on his authority and this kid continued to bellow (and at one point yodel) and stop the class from proceeding, so I went over, stepped right up to him (thankfully he’s one of only a handful of students bigger than me, so it didn’t look like bullying), and backed him out the door, though again thankfully I didn’t have to touch him at all until we were at the door and he tried to push his way back in.  He couldn’t push past me and so gave up, but unfortunately this did nothing to force the rest into line and my regular students walked out about the time one of the dsar pulled out a bottle of bubbles and started blowing them at the girls!  When my regular students left so did I, because there was no point working with these older dsarin.

            Now, that was a huge bummer obviously and I was feeling pretty down but over the next few days some good things happened to pick me back up.  Firstly, the boy who I had to walk out came up to me the next day and gave me an obviously heartfelt apology for his behavior the day before.  Secondly, my younger students, freed of their own dsar issue, started to make huge strides forward.  They also simply continue to be adorable.  Thirdly, my most advanced students (a couple of college drop-outs and a French teacher) had a great lesson reading and interpreting the Declaration of Independence.  Lastly, the young women I teach at the artisana had a major break through all around the same time and can now speak reasonably well (for beginners) in four tenses: present simple, past simple, present continuous, and past continuous.  This last development really reinforced for me one of the reasons I like teaching (even while I still don’t particularly like teaching ESL).  There is sometimes a moment in class when your realize, wow, that student just got it, right then, they didn’t understand something and now they understand it.  It’s a great feeling to know you helped them comprehend something new.

            I’ll leave you with a Joha story:

            A man brought a letter to Joha to read but the handwriting was very poor.  Joha looked at it, but said, “I can’t read that; it’s illegible.”

            The man got very angry.  “What kind of wise man are you?” he said.  You wear a turban and you can’t even read a simple letter.”

            Joha immediately too the turban off his head and put it on the man’s head.  “Now that you’re wearing the turban, you read it,” Joha said.