By the Seaside

            Last week was a huge break from my regular, mountainous Peace Corps life.  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.

            ALCS and Peace Corps have partnered together for many years at the Gnawa festival.  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.  Peace Corps Volunteers, along with local volunteers, pass out fliers, talk with people, and lead interested people to the trucks for testing.  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.  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.  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.

            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.  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.  Often times those who had been joking became the ones who suggested they all get tested right then.  Three moments broke the pattern and are worth talking about.  The first was when I approached a couple of older men and asked what they knew about AIDS.  They responded that they had beautiful wives and therefore didn’t need to worry about it.  Funny, but misguided.  The second happened after I’d finished talking to a group of four or five young men.  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.  It turns out he’s a programmer in the States and was back to visit family here.  We talked a little about volunteer opportunities there, which he wants to do, especially since he can try and naturalize himself soon.

            The third break from the pattern was far and away the most distressing.  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.  They said these were the ones we should talk to.  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.  They seemed grateful for the information even as they were intimidated by their clients.  It was a pretty disgusting moment, though I’m glad the women got the information.

            Apart from my work, last week was also the celebrated Gnawa Music Festival.  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.  Gnawa is an interesting genre.  Like American blues and jazz its roots are in music which West African slaves brought to their new country, in this case Morocco.  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.  It centers around chant like call and responses, triplet heavy rhythms, and often (though not always) a low bass instrument called a gimbari.  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.

            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.  I think a big part of the problem was with the festivalgoers themselves.  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.  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.  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.  The musician playing was named Omar Hayati, which can translate to Omar the Living One.  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.

            This all sounds negative, but I actually did enjoy my time in Essaouira.  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.  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. 

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.  I was able to get a lot of language questions cleared up, and as frequent readers know I always enjoy Rabat.  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!