Intro to Peace Corps Training, March 2010

I have been in Peace Corps training in the Ouarzazate region of Morocco since March 3^rd. There are 71 Environment and Health trainees in this group, all divided into groups of 5 or 6 for our 2 months of Community Based Training (CBT) in different villages .We live with host families and attend language and cultural training classes with our language trainer 6 days a week. My CBT is in a small Berber village about 35 km northeast of Ouarzazate. The local language is Tashlhit, one of the 3 main berber languages of Morocco. Every week or two, we all converge to our “hub” site in Ouarzazate for group training sessions on safety, security, and culture. This is also a much relished opportunity for us to take numerous hot showers and take advantage of wi-fi internet at the hotel.

Our training community has a population of about 500-600, with agriculture alongside the river as the main occupation. The landscape is quite dramatic: barren, rocky hills all around and the snow-capped High Atlas Mountains in the distance. The lush and vibrant green river basin creates a stark contrast to the brown desert hills and plains that dominate. The main cash crop is olives, and farmers also grow almonds, dates, figs, pomegranate, fava beans, alfalfa, barley, and wheat. The river is fed by two streams that converge about 5 km north of the village. One of these streams has very high salinity, and in summer, the freshwater stream dries out so the river becomes quite salty. Farmers water their crops through an intricate flood irrigation system but are forced to stop irrigation in the summer months because the water is too salty. Nevertheless, the fields seem healthy and fruitful to my untrained eye.

I find myself comparing everything to my experience in Peace Corps Benin. Environmental and health concerns here seem a lot less obvious. Yes, there is a lack of waste management so trash litters parts of the village, but not nearly as much as what I saw in Benin. The villagers seem accustomed to a lack of water, seeing as they live pretty much in the desert. So desertification doesn’t seem to be an issue. Livestock are kept in barns and pens and therefore there are no goats, chickens and cows roaming the village. The air can get dusty and hazy but I assume it’s from the wind and desert, not by any sort of pollution because there aren’t many cars or motorized vehicles out here. I am sure with time, environmental concerns will become more obvious to me.