A Yankee Comes Home

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

            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.

            “Joha,” said the friend, “Why are you leaving? I thought you said coming home was the best feeling in the world.”

            “It is,” Joha replied, “I’m leaving so I can come home again.”

As Moroccans say, take care of your heads. Go with peace.

- Ted Rizzo

My Last Few Days in Morocco

           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.

            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 rfisa. Rfisa is many volunteers’ favorite Moroccan food, but I’d never been lucky enough to have it until now. It is now one of my favorite foods. It is made from torn up milwi (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.

            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.

            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.

            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 bslama 3likum!

What Some Moroccans Want You to Know About Moroccan Culture

            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.

Loubna said that honor and respect are central to Moroccan culture.

Yassin, Scherazade, and Aicha all think I need to teach people what I learned about Islam.

Youseph added that it is important to remind people that Morocco is primarily Muslim and that means that it is strongly anti-terrorist.

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.

Moustapha didn’t learn from Kamal’s mistake and later regretted that he’d used his answer to say I should teach Moroccan dance.

Nabil on the other hand did learn from them and said that I should talk about Moroccans deep love of peace.

One of the two Merriams said that I should talk about tea and the importance of drinking it in a group.

Nouhela said that I should teach about Moroccan holidays.

Abdelghani said that Morocco’s is a culture in flux, in the midst of developing into something new.

The other Merriam said that it is important to remember that Morocco doesn’t just have one culture; each city has its own.

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.

Assumptions

            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.

            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.

            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.”

            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 please comment and let me know if I’m missing something here).

            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.

            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!

            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:

            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.

            “Wait,” said Joha, “I actually think I like that coat better, how much is it?”

            “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.”

            “I’ve left you the pants,” replied Joha.

            “You didn’t pay for those either,” said the shopkeeper.

            “Of course not,” said Joha, “why would I pay for something I didn’t buy?”

The BRO Code

            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.

            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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!