First Week at Post

After a few more days of administrative sessions and lots of socializing in between in Ouarzazate, the Health and Environment sector trainees wrapped up Pre-Service Training with a swearing-in ceremony on May 5^th. The ceremony took place at the Ouarzazate Palais de Congres, a lavish building with plush auditorium chairs and the ever-present photograph of the King. The Ouarzazate governor, the Director of Peace Corps Morocco, the US Ambassador, and three trainees gave speeches before we took the oath. It felt strange taking that oath again. It brought me back to the Benin swearing in ceremony in the field outside Lokossa, 5 years ago. All the new Volunteers there had sported matching fabric outfits for each sector. We’d sat through the ceremony in plastic chairs under makeshift open tents, with traditional musicians performing a dance and drum routine. Afterwards, we’d joined the mad dash to the snack and soda pavilions only to get out-run by the all the Beninese host families and find only crumbs leftover. In Morocco, we all pretty much wore Western business casual attire. Two people out of 69 trainees wore traditional outfits. Afterwards, we were ushered to the cocktail hall for Moroccan sweets, smoothies, and tea while we took group photos and chatted with the governor.

On Thursday, May 6^th, I took the bus to Marrakech with all my belongings. The winding roads across the Atlas Mountains proved challenging once again, as I fought off nausea and exhaustion from the previous night’s celebrations. To avoid dragging my obscenely heavy suitcase, backpack, and handbag across town, I opted for the more expensive route and bought out an entire bush taxi to take me to Malika and Larbi’s door in Amzour. Malika was waiting with open arms. I felt like I was home.

I’ve been keeping pretty busy since I’ve arrived. On Friday I went to see the Gendarmes in Amzmiz, 25 km south of Amzour. I presented myself and began the process to acquire a carte de sejour. Morocco does not require a Visa, but after three months, we must get one of these cards as proof of residence and to be able to go in and out of the country. That’s what I understand from it anyway. It’s a painstakingly long process involving loads of paperwork, passport photos, a 100DH fiscal stamp, the presence of a host family member with all their identification papers, and lots of waiting. Luckily for me, there are two Volunteers in Amzmiz, and the Gendarmes here are friendly, efficient, and accustomed to the process. I returned on Tuesday with more documents and spent about 4 hours with the commandant but managed to leave with a receipt document that will be my carte de sejour until the actual card comes in, inch’allah.

On Saturday, I spent an afternoon in Marrakech with Malika and Hicham. We took the bus in and visited Jema’l’Fna and the medina for a few hours. Malika went to all her customary wholesaler stores to buy gowns, sandals, and undergarments to resell at a tailor shop in Amzour. The vendors seem to know her well. She’s quite the businesswoman. The covered souk is full of textiles, crafts, spices, and so many people. I was burning up and dizzy from all the movement, yet I was happy to visit the city with a local. We walked around the square, munched on roasted peanuts, bought Hicham an ice cream cone, and then took the crowded bus back to the Barrage at 6:30. We all went to bed early that night.

On Sunday, an Italian tradesman who works with Naima’s association brought another order of baskets for the women to weave. His name is Nicola and he works with various associations in Morocco and India to fabricate textiles and re-sell them from Italy. He brings the raw material, shows the women how to make the product, then comes back to buy their work. This time, he brought 15 straw baskets and bags of turquoise sequins to be woven all around the outside of the baskets. One of the women, Aicha, already knows how to do the work, so she showed the others, including myself. I spent several hours weaving, which they greatly appreciated. It’s arduous and tough on the fingers. Nicola wants to pick up the baskets on Thursday already. Aicha gave me a basket to work on at home. I’ve been doing a little each day but I’m not even halfway done yet. Even if 15 women each took a basket home to work on, I don’t see how they could get it done in 4 days, with all the other household chores they accomplish each day.

I returned to Marrakech on Monday to meet two current Volunteers in the region for a day of shopping. Donielle is posted in Amzmiz, so I met her on the bus to the city, where we met Sara from Tahanaout. We went to the outskirts of the city to a brand new shopping mall and Carrefour supermarket. It reminded me of the Midtown mall in Miami. We definitely didn’t feel like we were in Africa. The shopping center opened in April so some stores aren’t open yet, but there’s a United Colors of Benetton, an imitation of Starbucks, a food court, a TGI Friday’s, swank restrooms, and a movie theater. The Carrefour has all the French brand names of groceries, great produce, a liquor store called La Cave, and an extensive electronics and household items section. I bought cheese to make quiche for my host family.

In the afternoon, Sara and Donielle headed home and I managed to set up a meeting with CDRT through my program manager, Mohssine. I met with my counterpart, Larbi Didoukane, at a café by the Science University on the northeast side of town. He took me to the CDRT office nearby, located in a quiet residential neighborhood of villas and bougainvilleas. The office is large and well-equipped, with several secretaries and interns busy at their computers. We had a meeting with the Director and the President and discussed my role in their capacity building project with partnered associations in the region. CDRT works with 100 associations in a vast area around Marrakech, reaching as far west as Essaouira. Because I am based in Lalla Takerkouste, they’d like me to first work with the women’s association there on the fruit drying machine project. Then, they’d like me to meet with all the partnered associations in the commune and identify the ones capable of carrying out a project, then help them realize it. We discussed the philosophy behind their work and this capacity building project in particular. Overall, it was a good meeting and I’m excited to see where it goes. They have some paperwork to do regarding the fruit drying machines, and then Abdelkader, the Director, would like me to go visit the manufacturer once they’ve identified who can build the machine. In the meantime, I have to explain to Naima that the machines won’t be ready by apricot season this year, which is in less than two weeks.

I think I’ll be moving about a lot with the position, namely to Marrakech. It’s a lot of transportation costs, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I headed back to Amzour and chatted with Naima at the pharmacy before heading home at 8pm, thoroughly exhausted and famished. Malika had squash duwaz and coffee waiting for me. Duwaz is a common, simple and tasty dish here. It’s basically a mixture of vegetables and sometimes meat pressure cooked for a long time and served with bread.

On Tuesday, after visiting the gendarmes in Amzmiz, I went to the town’s weekly souk, which is absolutely enormous. I met with Donielle for a lunch of tajine at her house. She’s pretty much my post mate and I get along real well with her, l’Hamdulah. There’s another Volunteer there, who’s currently vacationing in the states. I’ll meet him in a few weeks.

Today, Wednesday, I finally baked a quiche for Malika and the family. She’d been eagerly anticipating that since I mentioned it during site visit. It definitely went better than the rice mush dinner in Asfalou. It was quite delicious even. Mehdi really like it and already requested that I make more. Maybe next time I’ll make tarte a la moutarde…

Last Week in Asfalou

We’ve finished up our last week of training in Asfalou. It’s been a long and rather boring week, as far as training sessions. We returned all pumped up from our site visits and after telling all our stories about the past week, we were extremely reluctant to sit through hours of class, learning language and whatever administrative information we still needed to cover. Our LCF was a bit more lenient though, and we were able to convince him to let us have loads of study time. I spent most of it swapping music and movies with other trainees or playing minesweeper. We went to souq in Ouarzazate on Sunday. It’s gigantic. I bought some gifts for my host family: head scarves, perfume, a shirt for my host dad, and a pair of bright green plastic house shoes for my host mom because the ones she has are 3 sizes too small. She’s got the same size feet as me! Imagine that, a Moroccan woman with boat feet too. I also got some coloring books for the kids.

On Wednesday, we went to the souq in Timdlin to buy ingredients for a host family party. We all enjoy going to souq because it’s a great way to practice bargaining, learn the price of things, and interact with vendors. Not to mention there’s a growing selection of fruit, and we all love going to a particular peanut vendor. He sells honey-coated peanuts, sesame flavored cookies, salted peanuts, golden raisins, and roasted chick-peas. The dried dates at souq are delicious as well. They come in a wide variety of qualities, and levels of moisture. A kilo of good quality dates cost less than $2.50.

On Wednesday night, I decided to cook an “American” dinner for the family. The night before, I had told Najat, Brahim, and Khadija that I would make some sort of rice dish. I went with a Chinese stir fry type theme and bought hot peppers at the souq. I was planning to cook for four people, but then the entire family showed up right at 7:30pm. There was Fatima and her husband, Zahra with her son and husband, Maryan, and Halima. The sisters were picking up Khadija so that they could all travel to Marrakech in the morning. They’re going to visit their brother Omar there. Anyway, the dinner party grew to eleven people. The pressure was on. All the women crowded in the kitchen to see what I was doing, and Najat had Brahim running back and forth from his boutique getting spices and ingredients for me. I was intimidated to cook in front of all these women. Their husbands were pressed to get back to Timdlin so they kept telling me to hurry. It turned into a bit of a fiasco. The rice was not of stir-frying quality, so it turned to mush. The hot peppers were hotter than I thought. I mixed the spicy vegetables with the rice mush and threw in some eggs. Najat and I heaped the sticky mound of food onto a big platter and brought it to the table of guests. It didn’t look very appetizing. Plus, Zahra had told me a couple weeks before that they always add orange or red food coloring to their dishes because in Morocco, food is not considered palatable unless it’s got an appetizing color. My rice mush was looking rather pale, with only green vegetables sprinkled in.

Anyway, everyone dug in with their spoons. It was tasty, yet extremely spicy. Khadija, who complains to Najat all the time about there being too much spice or salt at dinner, took one bite, gasped, and clamored for a glass of water. Everyone had the sniffles and huffed and puffed all through the meal, but they kept eating. The plate was scraped clean, l’Hamdullilah! Gou-Brahim said “we will always remember Felicie and her rice dinner now”. They told me numerous times it was delicious, but I still felt like I’d flopped the dinner. Anyway, I’m happy I did it. I’m sure they appreciated the gesture. I now know a bit more how Najat feels every day. She constantly has to cook and make tea at a moment’s notice. The number of guests can increase ten-fold in a minute and she is still expected to prepare a delicious meal in a timely fashion.

After dinner, Khadija and her daughters got ready to leave. They showered me with hugs and kisses. Khadija didn’t want to let go of me. She’s quite short next to me, so she buried her head in my chest and weeped for about a minute before joining the others in Grou-Brahim’s car. I was touched by how attached they were. I’m really going to miss this family.

Thursday we took our language proficiency interviews. It basically entailed 15 minutes of conversation with a Tashlhit language tester. Our minimum level requirement is Novice High, I scored Intermediate Low. I think I could have don’t better if I’d studied, but I was worn out and just figured I’d do fine with my French. I managed to communicate to the tester in Tash where I worked in the states before coming here, that I served in Peace Corps Benin doing environmental projects, and what I’ll be doing in my new site.

We had our host family party in Asfalou Friday afternoon. Our amazing cook Rqia made cakes and donuts for 50 people. I had told my host family about the party on Monday. On Wednesday, Najat said she wouldn’t be able to go because Brahim wouldn’t allow it. He doesn’t let her go anywhere that includes a lot of men. This upset me a bit, even though she just laughed it off. I asked Brahim if she could go and he said only if there were separate rooms for men and women. None of the other host families seemed to have made this request, but we decided to have the party at Rqia’s house and she said we could do two rooms. All of us were wondering if people were going to show up. Our family members seemed so nonchalant about the whole party idea. When we asked if they were coming, they shrugged and said “inch’allah”. But, sure enough, at 4pm, everyone was there, dressed up in jellabas and colorful scarves. My host mom was the last to arrive, after I’d begun to fear she was still not allowed to come despite the separate rooms. Rqia and her sister busily ran back and forth between the two guest rooms and we all sat in semi-awkward silence for a while. We loosened up little by little, and with the help of the kids to create distraction, we were all laughing and chatting by the end of the afternoon.

On Saturday, I got hennaed again by Najat’s sister. The women had been planning this all week. Apparently it’s a customary sending off procedure. She covered my hands and feet in beautiful designs. It looks really cool; I just don’t like the part where I have to sit for 3 hours and not touch anything until it dries. I sat with my hands in the air and my feet propped up on a pillow, nodding off in front of the TV. Najat took me to my room and had me lay down for a while until I could wash it off.

In the evening, Brahim invited me, our language trainer, and the other trainees to dinner and music at the hotel by the river. He’s taken me there several times to listen to berber singing and to hang out with his friends who run the place. We had a nice last evening in Asfalou. I cant believe it’s been two months already.