On Development, Part III

Last time, we were talking about the difficulties of integrating into the community and finding a groove with development work. To date, this is still a constant effort, and I’m starting to get the feeling that it may be that way for the remaining year and a half I have left of service. Speaking of which, I have now been in site for a touch over six months, and in Morocco for just about nine, which is the longest I have ever been out of the States in my life. Granted, that was true about five months ago, but who’s counting?

And so, what is life like for a volunteer nine months on? Well, it’s slow, but it’s a lot more grooved than it used to be. I still mainly only teach classes, but it’s not exclusive anymore. And this is mostly due to something called PACA.

PACA, or Participatory Analysis for Community Action, is the Peace Corps’ series of surveys designed to help new volunteers assess their sites’ strengths, weaknesses, and potential for development, while simultaneously assisting in their integration. In theory, anyway. Really, it’s mostly just a handful of questions that most community members don’t really understand the point of, leading most to simply ask you, the volunteer, to give them computers. It does get people thinking about their town, though, which is crucial to any sort of sustainable development. The trick is, you have to get them to look at their homes and see not only the problems but also the solutions, and not only the solutions but also the practical solutions that are within their power. In my experience, it’s not majority response, but it only takes a handful. I don’t know what I’d do if I had everyone coming to me with project ideas; I’m busy enough as it is.

Which leads us to what’s going on here. Ever since my PACA work at the Dar Shebab, I’ve gotten little to nothing from the guys there. Unfortunately, I’ve learned in the past few months that although there are many associations working out of the center, there are just about zero of them that like to work with anyone else. This has led us to a lot of slowdown in terms of activities here. Ever since my PACA at the Nedi Neswi (the women’s association – I haven’t mentioned them much, but I also teach English there) I’ve started three clubs with the girls, so I’ll with that as I work my down the list of work.

My first day at the Nedi I tried to explain to the mudira (feminine form of “mudir,” the director) what a Peace Corps volunteer does, and she, like so many others, understood this to mean that I could get them computers. Consequently, after doing my PACA work with the girls in my English class, we settled on three clubs: Health Club, Sports Club, and Informatique Club. Each has a president, vice-president, and secretary. So far, the Health Club has held a meeting on women’s health (with Salma), the Sports Club has starting running once a week in the morning, and the Informatique Club has decided that it wants to hold computer literacy courses. The main problem is that they are looking for me to run them, while I’m trying to force them to do it, but that’s not really a surprise with Peace Corps work.

Another volunteer said quite precisely: “You get the feeling that you want development more than they do.” I had a great idea, inspired by the fact that so many people come up to me asking for me to tutor them privately and for a fee. Volunteers are not allowed to work for money, nor do they have nearly the time to devote to one person at a time like that. I proposed a peer tutoring program. Peer tutors don’t really seem to happen around here, and I still don’t know how to say that in Darija, but I was convinced it would work. So, I more or less told one of my English students that he was going to be in charge of the tutoring program at the junior high school, and started meeting with the principal and some teachers to get permission and tutor volunteers. We ended up holding about four trainings for tutors to which no one came before we revised the idea, my student brought in three of his friends to be trained to tutor math, and they went back to school as tutors. I hear that they even did a few sessions. This taught me some pretty valuable lessons, like starting a lot smaller than you want to get to, and that you need to get the idea from the local. Now we’re looking into how to continue it next year, and how to expand the Dar Shebab classes into much more than just English, an idea that came from someone outside of the tutoring project.

We also have the kind that originates with locals but doesn’t get carried through. A handful of elementary school principals told me that they wanted me to come do something English-related at their schools because most of the kids couldn’t come to the Dar Shebab so late at night. So we planned a “cultural presentation” and I actually got one of the principals to put me on the schedule. The plan was to do a little bit of English, a little bit of American culture, and maybe even sing something. What happened was that I showed up for our first meeting and the principal had forgotten. The second time, he wasn’t even there. Nor was he there the third time, either, but a group of kids told me that I was supposed to teach them. They proceeded to spend the next 25 minutes acting horribly until I couldn’t take any more and left. The fourth time, we actually had class (I didn’t see any sign of the principal, though, again), although I had to eject a good four or five students. The fifth time, I resolved to speak to the principal about how poorly his kids were behaving and how I was not going to just be a free English teacher for him; he needed to either do a better job of selecting the students, or send someone else to our sessions to keep them under control. Before I could say anything, however, he told me that with the upcoming exams, it would be best to postpone everything until next year. What happened here was a good idea that came from the community but the community didn’t invest anything in it, and it failed. We’ll hopefully do better next time.

Finally, we have projects that are initiated by the people we work with who are invested in them, and yet they still don’t quite work out. A local association – an association of associations, actually – wanted to build a playground at their facility. They had worked with the previous volunteer to do a Peace Corps funded projects to build an information resource center, and now wanted to expand on that with something to draw families and life-long users. There are actually no playgrounds of any kind in Freedonia, and children tend to have the option only of playing in the street or not playing at all. Unfortunately, however, the king has decided to develop our town into a city (note: this is actually fantastic, although in this particular instance it’s causing a problem for me). You see, the center used by my association friends is connected to a long-abandoned public pool, but the current plan would include repairing and reopening it, and, thus, we can no longer build a playground there. We’re considering moving the plan elsewhere.

I have, however, started working on some summer sports programs, and have in the last week gotten my Dar Shebab students pretty keen on ultimate frisbee, and have a tentative plan to play baseball this coming week. We also want to try some more academic projects of the popsicle stick bridge / egg drop contest variety. And, of course, there's summer camp that will be a big part of the summer, but that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say, development is still a constantly frustrating struggle, but, with time, it starts to make itself a little clearer.

Moroccan National Tour: Entr'acte

As you’ll recall, when we last left off Salma and I were in a taxi headed home. We arrived in Freedonia around sunset, and went straight to my host family’s house. Firstly, we had to get the key to the Fortress of Solitude (my host brothers take care of Amal while I’m away), but mostly it was because both Salma and my family had heard quite a good deal about the other, and they were all itching to see how accurate my depictions were. Fortunately, my name of Amin is well-earned (it means “trustworthy”), something you readers at home should keep in mind. And, since the television was on the fritz again, we had a great meal and a great time chatting. Thus began Salma’s whirlwind tour of my hometown.

Freedonia is usually known for its relaxed atmosphere and unbearably cold weather (it doesn’t matter where I go; whenever I say I’m from Freedonia, people shiver like someone just walked over their grave). Our time here, however, was affected slightly by the fact that I was technically working, the only three days of work in three weeks. Consequently, we rushed from meeting to meeting to take care of development at the same time as house to house for the people to meet Salma. We started the week with a fantastic health discussion at the women’s association (Salma is a doctor, after all), and then spent the rest of our time having a succession of lunches and dinners with a fraction of the various families who take care of me, and then going off to teach classes at the Dar Shebab. In fact, of the five or so well-known sights in town, we saw pretty much none of them. Salma did get to meet most of my friends, though, and my host family, and the places where I create peace. Not to mention making friends with Amal and enjoying the luxury of the Fortress of Solitude.

It was really helpful for me having her around, since, as I’ve just mentioned, I was pretty busy. But I got to exploit Salma’s charisma and command of the English language for my own selfish purposes (that’s also one of the goals of the Peace Corps, they just don’t talk about it as much). And, fortunately, I had planned ahead and asked her to bring me presents for some of the families that we went to visit, which worked out nicely considering how, once again, gifts were heaped upon her little shoulders.

And I got catch a small glimpse of what life might have been like if I had been a lady volunteer. It’s a just part of the culture, but men don’t really spend as much time with families; they mostly spend time with other men. Salma, on the other hand, is not a man, and so when we went to visit the family of some of my friends from the Dar Shebab, for example, and the mom was going to go next door to bake some bread, Salma was able to just ask and go with and got to learn how to make bread. I, of courses, had to come with her for the sake of language. If it had just been me, they very likely would never have asked if I wanted to see the bread making, and even more likely would have told me to just sit and relax if I had asked. But it wasn’t all work in Freedonia. Well, no, it pretty much was, but we got away from all that for two days and went to Fes.

I love Fes, and I think that was infectious because Salma seemed to feel pretty similarly. This may have been partly inspired by the fact that it being only one night, we figured we could splurge a bit and go to a riad in the old medina. A riad is an old house organized around a central courtyard that has been converted into a fancy guest house. Ours, Dar Iman (the house of Iman, a girl’s name and shared by the adorable little girl who lives there), belongs to a family that I met on an earlier trip to Fes, and is gorgeous. And just about two minutes down the street from the most beautiful building I have ever seen, the Madrassa Bou Inania. The Madrassa is really just a courtyard, but every inch of the walls are carved and decorated and tiled. It is absolutely incredible and I could easily spend hours just sitting there if it weren’t for the fact that some parts are still used as a mosque and they make tourists leave before the calls to prayer.

We toured a few more of the sights in town, but the most incredible thing to see is really just the city, so we spent most of the rest of our time just walking along the alleyways of the medina. And Salma got her souvenir, a fez from Fes, which gave her no small pleasure in talking about. We had a great time buying it, too, because the fez-man thought it was fantastic that I could speak Darija and that the Moroccan-looking girl couldn’t but wanted a fez. It turns out that he lied to us a little, though. We asked him which way to wear the hat, and he told us that the tassels go in front. This is not true, as we learned basically the next time that we turned on the tv and saw someone wearing one with the tassels in the back, as well as every other time we saw a fez, and from everyone else that we asked. I’m still not sure why he said that.

Back in Freedonia, we still had a day and a half before taking off for our final week of touring in the north, so I made sure to take Salma to at least one sight in town: the Saturday souk. Granted, Salma had been to souks in just about every city we’d been to, but these were either for tourists or big-city folks. There’s nothing like the country town souk. We hunted our way through the mayhem for all the vegetables necessary for making a vegetarian tagine (my staple dinner, roughly 4 times a week), which we cooked for dinner that night. We also took a little time to ourselves to walk around the town and enjoy the bucolic peacefulness. There were still nine more days of fast-paced action ahead of us.

To be continued…

Moroccan National Tour: Act I

My friends, I’m sorry that it’s been so long since the last time I’ve written to you, but the truth is that I’ve been doing things that are much more exciting than writing to you. Fortunately, however, I’m not doing any exciting at the immediate moment, so I’ll try to catch you all up.

I just spent the past three weeks touring Morocco with Salma. We went to almost all of the major cities in the northwestern part of the country – Essaouira, Marrakesh, Fes, Tangier, Chefchaouen, Rabat, and Casablanca – as well as a handful of the smaller ones, too. To tell you about everything we did and saw would take days and miles of writing, and none of us want that. Instead, I’ll save a lot of that for our continuing Moroccan Gazetteer series, and focus on important highlights of our trip and my first time bringing an outsider to Morocco.

I met Salma first thing in the morning at the Casablanca airport (not entirely true, I really met her back in high school), and, long before our collective sense of reality caught up with us, we shot off directly for Essaouira. The Casablanca bus station did serve as a great introduction. We had hardly stepped out of the taxi when we were whisked off by two mildly shady characters into a bus that we could only hope was destined for Essaouira. It’s a part of life in Morocco that you just have to accept or go crazy from trying to fight, but these bus guys get paid for the number of people they get into them, so there’s little use in trying to explain to them that you really don’t need their help to find where you’re going. Besides, it turned out to be the right bus.

And there’s something you should know about busses in Morocco, too. There are some that are like the Grayhounds and Peter Pans of America; that is, they have regular schedules, pick up and drop off at pre-determined sites, and sometimes even have assigned seats. The main carriers of these are Supratours, which operates from the train stations and continues along the directions of the trains on a schedule determined by arrivals, and CTM, which goes everywhere and in Arabic is spelled: “Seteyem.” Then there are the others that we tend to call “souk busses.” I’m not entirely sure why, since they don’t usually depart or arrive at the souk (bazaar, for those of you who’ve forgotten), but it might be because they are about as structured and ruly as the souk, which is to say pretty much not at all. They leave whenever the driver feels like it, and pick up people on the road whenever people flag down the bus and the driver feels like it. They don’t necessarily take that much more time to get to their destination than the more established lines do, but they can get pretty crazy. Such as ours, which, just outside of Essaouira, decided to pick up just about all of the folks finishing up at the souk and cram them into the aisle. Maybe that’s why they’re souk busses.

Essaouira is a beautiful town, just about as “chill” as everyone said it would be, and the perfect place to ease into a tour of Morocco. We stayed in a cute hotel right next to the water and could hear the tide through the window. We didn’t really do all that much in the town aside from stroll around and it was fantastic. We walked the seaside battlements, the medina, and the beach, and Salma had her first tagine (with fish) and first Moroccan mint tea. I got to have my first spinach in nine months by eating the sandwich her mom made for her. Salma bought a small wooden box (iconic of Essaouiran crafts), establishing a tradition of getting one souvenir of each city we went to, and, two nights after we arrived, we were back on the bus and headed to Marrakesh. This time, though, we took a Supratours.

Marrakesh is legendary among volunteers as being the number one place to avoid. This is because it is the domain of tourists, and since we are clearly foreign (it doesn’t matter what you look like, when you show up with a hiking backpack – whether you’re speaking their language or not – you’re a tourist), we’re usually treated like the rest of you. Nothing offends the sensibilities of a Peace Corps volunteer like being treated like a regular foreigner. It’s one thing to go to a city like Fes and be told that the price is a million dirham for something because I can respond in Darija and tell them that I know the real price, and my language is proof, and I’ll usually get it. Or the next guy will treat me like a Moroccan. Not so Marrakesh. These guys know that no matter what I tell them, all they have to do is wait about five minutes and an ignorant actual tourist will show up and pay. If I threaten to just walk instead of ride the cab, they reply, “happy trails.”

But I really didn’t find Marrakesh to be the Mos Eisley it’s reputed to be, and actually enjoyed myself. We did have to deal with our fair share of obnoxious taxi drivers, but I got to give one of them enough comeuppance to square us. Moments after we walked out on an offer to take us the 10-15 dirham route to the main square for 60 dirham, we heard a French couple agree to it. I wasn’t about to let that stand and told them not to pay, hailed a succession of taxis for them, and sent them off with a driver who had a counter. The look in first guy’s eyes made all the rest of it worthwhile.

I’m fairly sure, though, that Salma and I looked Moroccan enough to avoid the worst part of the tourist harassment. When we strolled through the markets the calls to buy things was pretty minimal, which was fortunate considering how much time we spent there. Marrakesh has a handful of sights – most of which we caught – but its main goal is to supply the tourist population with an overwhelming opportunity to buy any souvenirs they can imagine. We picked up a few ourselves, including a painting for Salma, but mostly just enjoyed strolling the alleys of little boutiques. That, and introducing Salma to as many other key Moroccan foods as possible, including mismin (greasy pancakes), harsha (similar to cornbread), kifta (spicy ground meat), Poms (apple soda), kook (macaroon cookies), Hawai (fruit soda), and mediocre couscous. Plus this one dish called tanjia that’s meat slow roasted in the ovens that power the local hammam that I’d never had either. And we also took advantage of a botched attempt to find the nearby palmery to go to the local people’s souk, where I purchased the absolute ultimate Moroccan souvenir. And every night we meandered through the chaos of the Jma’a al Fna’.

And it turned out that the hotel where we were staying was a regional Peace Corps office. Just as we were walking out, we ran into two other volunteers who’d been staying there, three of the brand new environment volunteers who’d just sworn-in about two days earlier, and two other Americans who were travelling around. We took the newbies to the taxis and got them on their way, and then discovered that all the rest of us were planning on going to the Cascades of Ouzoud, so we all did.

The guide book describes Ouzoud as "not too far removed from the Muslim idea of Paradise depicted on gaudy prints throughout the nation," and it’s so true. There are pictures of waterfalls everywhere. Ouzoud is also one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. When we showed up, like every other place we went, we hadn’t made any reservations ahead of time. Luckily, though, we made friends with the taxi driver (he even gave us his business card – a first for me) and he introduced us to a friend of his who worked at a campsite at the falls. This sounded great, and the price was even better. Then we found out it was at the bottom and we got to lug our backpacks all the way to the bottom, take a raft across the water, and take another short hike to get to the camp. The tents were traditional Berber tents, which are fixed in place and have an open front, but the view was phenomenal. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing at the camp café, watching the monkeys (there are monkeys in Morocco), yelling at the other tourists for feeding the monkeys, climbing all the way back up to the top, and enjoying the beauty of Ouzoud. And it was Friday, so the campsite cooked us proper couscous in a big communal plate (not the personal size you get at a restaurant that’s entirely inappropriate for couscous). While we were eating these two extremely frazzled British girls showed up and stayed with us. That’s the Peace Corps. We take care of everyone.

The British girls and the two American “normies” decided to catch a taxi back to Marrakesh, and the rest of us headed to a town nearby (sorry, folks, there’re volunteers there still). Salma and I were on our way to Truck Stop Number 9 (you’ll recall the place where I did my training) to meet Mama Naima, but we stopped for the night in this other place and hung around with the other volunteers so that Salma could get more of a feel for volunteer life and I could get some of what happens whenever volunteers all get together: Mexican food. We had a great time, and the next morning we got to ride through the beautiful High Atlas Mountains.

We arrived at Mama Naima’s late. As we were walking down the alley to the house, my little sister Selloua came running out to meet us, possibly because she hadn’t seen me in a while, likely because she wanted to see who was the Moroccan-looking girl in a jelaba walking with me, and almost certainly because they’d all been waiting to eat lunch with us. Salma got to have the best tagine of her life, followed by the best stuffed baked chicken, and it wasn’t ten minutes after we finished eating that they had a lady over at the house decorating her with henna. We spent the rest of the evening sitting around chatting about old times. The two volunteers each came by and hung around for a little while, and we managed to not go outside all day. When we woke up, Mama Naima had me make breakfast for everyone (I’ve never met another Moroccan woman who’s so down with gender equality), and we took a brief walk around the town’s sights. Of which there aren’t really any, but we did pop over to Selloua’s school because she begged for a visit. The rest of our time was spent trading gifts with each other. Salma and Mama Naima briefly got into an arms race of surprising each other with presents, which really only ended with the taxi driving away to take us to Freedonia.

To be continued…