Sorry it’s been so long since last post! I have been super exhausted these last couple of weeks, tons of work, tons of school, too much food and not enough sleep! Despite the exhaustion all has been good and I’m enjoying myself here.
In the past week or so I’ve had some exciting Moroccan experiences and have made some new friends. Two weekends ago my family took me to a nearby town called Moulay Yacoub, it’s about 17km west of Fes. It’s a really small town in the mountains that was built on top on natural sulfur hot springs. So the town has about 5 hammams (public bath houses) and is a tourist site as a result. The town it’s self is beautiful, and has more of the quaint old world feel that I expected Morocco to have than anything I’ve seen so far. The streets are lined with vendors selling all sorts of bathing accessories that one might need for the hammam including, “kisses” hand loofas that feel more like steel wool on your skin when in use, pumice stones for feet, large bags of henna for skin and hair, rassoul (dried clay that has been mixed with lavender, cloves, orange water, rose and cloves) that you add to warm water to made a paste with which you use to cover yourself with mud and makes your skin and hair really soft, and a variety of other bathing products and amenities. All of these can be bought in single dose amounts for the equivalent of only a few US dollars.
The hammam that I went to with my host family and neighbors was the hammam that locals use. It cost about 8 Dirham (1 US$) per person and consisted of one large communal bathing pool that everyone gather around a bathed in. There was a tap on the side of the pool that everyone got water from (collected in large plastic buckets) and then brought back to her bathing spot. There were seemingly 100 other women there when we first got there, we went on a Sunday, which is a popular, bathing day so there were a ton of people. In these hammams everyone is wearing nothing but their underwear and you bathe with the people that you go with, family or friends. I ended up being there for about three hours and washed my hair and body about four times. You generally leave the hammam with an ultra clean feeling and most women wont bath for anywhere from three days to a week after wards. So far I can only last a day or two without showering but I’m working my way up to Moroccan standards. The sulfur in the piping hot bath water was really awesome, it made both my skin and hair extremely soft, hopefully my permanent site will also be built on sulfur water hot springs! In’shallah! The hammam experience is definitely becoming an essential part of my life here in Morocco.
This last weekend I went to my first Moroccan wedding! I went with my family and another PCT, Rachel, and her host family. I was given a gold and blue kaftan to wear with gold gini pants to wear underneath, which ended up being really hot and uncomfortable. At the wedding there were about 100 people and it took place in about three different houses. For the first 5 hours Rachel and I sat around with our host families waiting to eat, which we didn't do until midnight. By the time we ate everyone had gotten really hungry and crabby, not to mention tired. This was probably the first time that I was hungry since I got here. After we ate we all went to another house and there was a big dance party, which was really fun. Rachel and I were forced to dance by ourselves in front of almost everyone which was really embarrassing, but later we danced more when everyone else was dancing. We also got to see the bride and groom, who didn't appear until the very end of the wedding, about 2 am. We ended up being awake until about 4 am, which is the latest I have stayed up here, thank god we didn't have school the next morning. All in all the dancing was fun but Rachel and I have concluded that most weddings here are just about sitting around and are kind of boring.
My diet has become almost 100% consistent of only sugar oil and olives.
Also we fine out site placements this weekend!!!! Wish me luck for a good site.
Until next time.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
One Month
Sorry I haven’t written much I’ve been super busy in the last couple weeks. More excitingly I’ve been in country for one whole month!
All of last week we were doing a community assessment report of our CBT site, which we had to present to our “community” i.e. mainly our host families last Thursday and then to the other PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees) last weekend in Fes.
Four the community assessment we conducted formal and informal interviews with the community to learn more about certain youth development related topics such as: community participation, education, health and youth. We also did community mapping with some 14-15 year old kids from our site, boys and girls were divided and asked to draw a map of their town and circle the things that were most important to them, common things that were circled were the mosque, their schools and the Dar Chebab, also the girls circled the teleboutiqe and the boys circled this hot spring swimming spot that’s a little outside of the town. We also made a daily calendar and a seasonal calendar that visually depicted the daily and annual activities of our community. The daily calendar was pretty simple, men went to work, kids went to school and women stayed home to cook and clean. The seasonal calendar was a bit more interesting and depicted the wheat and olive growth an harvest cycles, the school calendar, the Dar Chebab calendar, national and religious holidays and some other actives that the community mentioned, like eating hot food in the winter when its cold and looking at the pretty flowers that bloom in the spring. I actually drew the seasonal calendar, and the staging program director liked it so much that he said he was going to make a copy and have it framed for display in the Peace Corps main office in Rabat. Pretty exciting!
Our actual assessment went really well. We found out a number of interesting facts about our community such as, the number one health problem is diabetes (not surprising due to the high sugar diet of Moroccans) and that there are only primary schools in our town and if kids want to go to secondary or higher education they have to go to one in the next town over or possibly commute to Fes to go to school.
Our presentation to the community went really well, we had a turn out of about 45 people, mostly our host families and kids from the Dar Chabab. All of our interviewees showed up which was great since they were able to see that the information they gave us was being used for a positive purpose. We also had a few town officials there as well. Every topic presented was followed by a lively debate amongst the adult community members, signifying that there is not only awareness in the community about their issues but also a strong interest in taking action. Even though most of our presentation wasn’t very comprehensive for our younger audience I think it was very important that they were able to hear about the issues, maybe some of them for the first time, and know that their parents, the community officials and the Peace Corps trainees want to do something about them.
In Fes all of the different CBT groups presented their findings to everyone else and there were a lot of similarities and also a lot of differences. Most of the similarities were that the project was really difficult to conduct because our Darija skills aren't great yet and that we all felt a little uncomfortable telling out host communities our observations about the problems and such since we haven't been in them for very long and wont be staying in them as permanent PCV's and thus don't have a lot of time to implement projects to help ameliorate some of the issues. The biggest difference between the different experiences of the CBT groups were the differences in the Dar Chebabs, one group hasn't even been to their yet and thus has been very limited in their activities, another group had a Dar Chebab that is attended only by mid 20 to 30 something year olds thus they had to completely redefine their idea of what youth is.
Now and for the next couple weeks we will have a current PCV staying with us in our site giving us training about various jobs that we will have to do once we are at our permanent sites. This week we are learning about teaching English in Morocco, then we will be learning about creating/designing community projects and activities which we will later implement in November after our site visit.
We find out our sites in about two weeks and I cant wait. I am requesting a site that is a small town (around 5,000 people), that's warm, with a good hammam, is more green than brown and has a woman's association.
More updates on my family will come soon.
Bslama
All of last week we were doing a community assessment report of our CBT site, which we had to present to our “community” i.e. mainly our host families last Thursday and then to the other PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees) last weekend in Fes.
Four the community assessment we conducted formal and informal interviews with the community to learn more about certain youth development related topics such as: community participation, education, health and youth. We also did community mapping with some 14-15 year old kids from our site, boys and girls were divided and asked to draw a map of their town and circle the things that were most important to them, common things that were circled were the mosque, their schools and the Dar Chebab, also the girls circled the teleboutiqe and the boys circled this hot spring swimming spot that’s a little outside of the town. We also made a daily calendar and a seasonal calendar that visually depicted the daily and annual activities of our community. The daily calendar was pretty simple, men went to work, kids went to school and women stayed home to cook and clean. The seasonal calendar was a bit more interesting and depicted the wheat and olive growth an harvest cycles, the school calendar, the Dar Chebab calendar, national and religious holidays and some other actives that the community mentioned, like eating hot food in the winter when its cold and looking at the pretty flowers that bloom in the spring. I actually drew the seasonal calendar, and the staging program director liked it so much that he said he was going to make a copy and have it framed for display in the Peace Corps main office in Rabat. Pretty exciting!
Our actual assessment went really well. We found out a number of interesting facts about our community such as, the number one health problem is diabetes (not surprising due to the high sugar diet of Moroccans) and that there are only primary schools in our town and if kids want to go to secondary or higher education they have to go to one in the next town over or possibly commute to Fes to go to school.
Our presentation to the community went really well, we had a turn out of about 45 people, mostly our host families and kids from the Dar Chabab. All of our interviewees showed up which was great since they were able to see that the information they gave us was being used for a positive purpose. We also had a few town officials there as well. Every topic presented was followed by a lively debate amongst the adult community members, signifying that there is not only awareness in the community about their issues but also a strong interest in taking action. Even though most of our presentation wasn’t very comprehensive for our younger audience I think it was very important that they were able to hear about the issues, maybe some of them for the first time, and know that their parents, the community officials and the Peace Corps trainees want to do something about them.
In Fes all of the different CBT groups presented their findings to everyone else and there were a lot of similarities and also a lot of differences. Most of the similarities were that the project was really difficult to conduct because our Darija skills aren't great yet and that we all felt a little uncomfortable telling out host communities our observations about the problems and such since we haven't been in them for very long and wont be staying in them as permanent PCV's and thus don't have a lot of time to implement projects to help ameliorate some of the issues. The biggest difference between the different experiences of the CBT groups were the differences in the Dar Chebabs, one group hasn't even been to their yet and thus has been very limited in their activities, another group had a Dar Chebab that is attended only by mid 20 to 30 something year olds thus they had to completely redefine their idea of what youth is.
Now and for the next couple weeks we will have a current PCV staying with us in our site giving us training about various jobs that we will have to do once we are at our permanent sites. This week we are learning about teaching English in Morocco, then we will be learning about creating/designing community projects and activities which we will later implement in November after our site visit.
We find out our sites in about two weeks and I cant wait. I am requesting a site that is a small town (around 5,000 people), that's warm, with a good hammam, is more green than brown and has a woman's association.
More updates on my family will come soon.
Bslama
Friday, October 1, 2010
Darija Words of the Day/Week/Month/Next Two Years of My Life!
Sooo I thought it be fun to give some insight in to the key vocab that I have been surviving on in Morocco.
First to give some background let me start by saying that Darija is the spoken language of Morocco, technically it is a dialect of Arabic however, it is nothing like the “Arabic” that Americans are learning in college or from Rosetta Stone, which is Modern Standard Arabic and is taken from the language of the Koran. It is also nothing like the Arabic that is spoken in the other Arab countries of the world, each of which have their own different dialect of Arabic. Darija is what Moroccans speak, but not what they learn to write in, the learn to write in Modern Standard, because they is no official written version of Darija, thus when trying to learn it you’ll quickly discover that your text book, language teacher and Lonely Planet vocab book all have a different way of spelling the words that you are trying to learn.
Despite this complexity a few words have quickly become my key words that make up 90% of every conversation I am able to have. Not surprisingly they are those words that you normally learn when you are first learning to speak, thus when mixed with the fact that we basically don’t know how to do anything the Moroccan way (i.e. use the Turkish toilet, use money correctly or hail a cab and ensure it’ll get us to the right place) the PCVs and I have officially embraced the fact that we are all currently at preschool level. We have also dubbed our Madrasa (school), that we spend about 9 hrs a day at learning Darija and about Morocco, as “Little America.”
So for all you back home, here are my first words:
Shweeya: literally means little, can be used in key phases like shweeya afak – slow down please, shweeya b shweeya – little by little (I am learning darija), I am a little tired etc.
Zueena/zueen: literally means pretty, can be used to describe anything as being pretty, really good, or that you like a lot such as a women’s kaftan, saying a kid is cute, the food is good. Negative is mazueensh as in I don’t like something.
Muzyn: literally means good, as in I am good, it is good, my day was good, good job, I am okay with this etc.
Bzzzzaf: literally means a lot, can be used to describe anything that is a lot, i.e. you can say something is zueena bzzzaf or that you are muzyn bzzzaf
Fin: where
Shnu: what
Elas: why
Foquash: when
Shnu hadda: what is that?
Brit: I want
Bit: room, example Bit L Ma is literally the water room, or in Moroccan it’s the toilet room.
Shuma: is shame, or what we say when someone does a faux pas, like eating with your left hand.
Etani: give me, for example etani flus means give me money
Zuk: is a “bad” word and means ass, we all learned not to say this when we got excited about our vegetable vendor having zucchinis and screaming out the word.
Shukran: thank you, a word that currently is making up at least 50% of my vocab.
Also fun fact, last night I churned butter from milk from our cows with my host family.
First to give some background let me start by saying that Darija is the spoken language of Morocco, technically it is a dialect of Arabic however, it is nothing like the “Arabic” that Americans are learning in college or from Rosetta Stone, which is Modern Standard Arabic and is taken from the language of the Koran. It is also nothing like the Arabic that is spoken in the other Arab countries of the world, each of which have their own different dialect of Arabic. Darija is what Moroccans speak, but not what they learn to write in, the learn to write in Modern Standard, because they is no official written version of Darija, thus when trying to learn it you’ll quickly discover that your text book, language teacher and Lonely Planet vocab book all have a different way of spelling the words that you are trying to learn.
Despite this complexity a few words have quickly become my key words that make up 90% of every conversation I am able to have. Not surprisingly they are those words that you normally learn when you are first learning to speak, thus when mixed with the fact that we basically don’t know how to do anything the Moroccan way (i.e. use the Turkish toilet, use money correctly or hail a cab and ensure it’ll get us to the right place) the PCVs and I have officially embraced the fact that we are all currently at preschool level. We have also dubbed our Madrasa (school), that we spend about 9 hrs a day at learning Darija and about Morocco, as “Little America.”
So for all you back home, here are my first words:
Shweeya: literally means little, can be used in key phases like shweeya afak – slow down please, shweeya b shweeya – little by little (I am learning darija), I am a little tired etc.
Zueena/zueen: literally means pretty, can be used to describe anything as being pretty, really good, or that you like a lot such as a women’s kaftan, saying a kid is cute, the food is good. Negative is mazueensh as in I don’t like something.
Muzyn: literally means good, as in I am good, it is good, my day was good, good job, I am okay with this etc.
Bzzzzaf: literally means a lot, can be used to describe anything that is a lot, i.e. you can say something is zueena bzzzaf or that you are muzyn bzzzaf
Fin: where
Shnu: what
Elas: why
Foquash: when
Shnu hadda: what is that?
Brit: I want
Bit: room, example Bit L Ma is literally the water room, or in Moroccan it’s the toilet room.
Shuma: is shame, or what we say when someone does a faux pas, like eating with your left hand.
Etani: give me, for example etani flus means give me money
Zuk: is a “bad” word and means ass, we all learned not to say this when we got excited about our vegetable vendor having zucchinis and screaming out the word.
Shukran: thank you, a word that currently is making up at least 50% of my vocab.
Also fun fact, last night I churned butter from milk from our cows with my host family.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)