Thanksgiving and New Work: Part 1

These past few weeks have seen the largest mood and psyche changes to date in my Peace Corps service. After the instillation of the computers at the Dar Chebab as described in my last blog post, the Ministry I work for decided to close my youth center for repairs. Though completely necessary, these repairs come at probably the most inopportune time. Not only did the computers just get installed, but the summer season had just ended and I was anticipating beginning classes. Some things just don’t compute for me such as, why couldn’t the work be done over the summer when there was nothing going on and the center was closed? This unfortunate event put me down a little bit and threw me my first real curveball in my Peace Corps service. Up until then my service had been mostly smooth with but cultural differences and feelings of language inadequacies my only gripes. The closure of the center was unforeseen and now after being able to process the experience, I have come out the other side stronger for it.

            I have cultivated a small class in the neighboring town where I head over every Friday and Saturday and chill out with some kids there and do activities. One activity we did a couple weeks back was a PACA or participatory analysis activity. First, we split up into groups of 5-6 and also divided into male and female groups. The goal of the activity was for the students to draw a map of their town. I asked them to label different places and also to point out any bad spots of town that they don’t go to. The use of separating the groups in to male and female is that, especially in this country, you receive very different examples of what the town means to them. For the boys, it was a map where the soccer fields and coffee shops were focal and for the girls, the souk and small stores were prevalent. Additionally, the scope of the maps were very different with kids who either live outside the center of town of have family outside of town having a larger impression of the village than kids who live right in the center and don’t frequent the mountains much.

            I really enjoy this activity for a couple of reasons. One, I get to learn about the town from the perspective of the kids and two, the kids really take to the activity for it combines art and the places they live which always invokes pride. Seeing some of the reactions to some of the questions, which come with the activity, makes all of the frustration of things not going your way with the Dar Chebab worth it.

            After the weekend of work in Timoulilt it was time for Warden Training in Rabat. A Peace Corps Warden is someone who works with the safety and security office as their point of contact with volunteers in different regions. In total there are 4 “super regions” with smaller consolidation points in central locations for volunteers to consolidate to in the event of an emergency such as civil unrest, political unrest or natural disaster. The job of the warden is to be responsible for the well being of volunteers in the event of a consolidation as well as assist Safety and Security with regional matters. During the training, we learned about how to check a house and make sure it fits in the PC guidelines, learned about the current status of security in Morocco and came up with ways for Wardens to become more involved as advisors for SS in the field.

Thanksgiving!

In the states, I would usually go to my grandparents house in Manhattan and have turkey with the family. Although I am from Pittsburgh, I don’t think I have been back for thanksgiving for many years. This coupled with the fact that my grandparents had moved buildings made Thanksgiving easier in terms of feeling homesick. I was slightly homesick on the day but that was all washed away by the festivities at the Peace Corps office. For the past couple of years the new country director has put aside funds for having a Thanksgiving lunch for all volunteers at the office. This year 10 turkeys were cooked as well as mounds of mashed potatoes and stuffing. Volunteers brought salads and deserts as well as drinks. I contributed a cooked sheep’s head. It was a bit of a joke but a lot of the Moroccan staff at PC were into it and even the Ambassador had some. It was pretty funny to see his body-guards reactions but I was happy he was into it. After the lunch/dinner some friends and I went out to a local ex-pat haunt where I skyped with my family. The night continued with us going to a nightclub and over 25 PCV’s showed up. It was a great way to round out the day.

The next day was rough but I had time to kill in Rabat and hung around before picking my parents up at the airport! More to follow in Part 2…

Kids on Computers Lab Set up in Ouled Moussa

These past couple of days have been the most busy days of my Peace Corps service thus far. Beginning last Sunday, I have consistently gotten up at 8am and been finished with work at 8pm with only a lunch break in between. Now this may sound trivial to the average American schedule but in PCV and Moroccan terms this is intense

(Here we are working on the set up of the Lab)

For the past seven months I have been working with an American organization called Kids on Computers. Back in May I submitted a proposal to receive 8-10 computers in order to help jumpstart my Dar Chebab as well as provide tools to underprivileged youth to access information, learn Math Science and English and have a more advanced grasp on technology. Kids on Computers is a completely volunteer based organization in which American software developers, and IT specialists bring donated computers and funds to critical needs areas and help in the assistance and set-up of computer labs. Their members are from across the United States and they take time out of their ordinary schedules to help. 

So, last Sunday, I went to the airport in Marrakech with a RPCV named Sasa who had previously served in Ouaouzeight which is a town just over the mountains from me. We were going to meet up with 4 Americans from the organization, Randy, Fareeda, Avni and Chase. After waiting around in the airport a while for everything to get cleared through customs we started on our trip back up to Beni Mellal and my site to purchase the computers for my site.

Driving us were some of the staff from Sasa's towns' boarding school. This bus was such a time warp; with huge glass windows all around the vehicle it must have been from the 1970's at least. None the less, it ran well and we all got up to Beni Mellal just fine. 

In Beni Mellal, we ran into our first challenge. The owners of the computer store didn't have everything arranged so we had to redo the prices on everything being bought and do a new tally. This essentially negated all of the bargaining and haggling I had done for the past six months but at least they had all the equipment. Finally ironing out a price, we headed out and I got dropped off at home while they went up the mountain to town. Despite the fact that it was late at night, this was a great experience to know that after just 9 months in country, I can handle myself in a professional business situation and make sure all parties are satisfied. It was a lot of fun doing this and is something I think I excel in.

                                                                        Class!

The next day we set-up the computer lab arranging the tables and chairs, installing the software and wiring the system. In the middle of the day though we went to my host mothers cooperative where we had a HUGE lunch. My favorite lunch here is this chicken they make by first boiling the chicken in the pressure cooker and then somehow, someway browning the thing to perfection. I genuinely think it is sorcery due to the juicy, crispy super-seasoned nature of the chicken. So amongst 5 people we split 3 chickens, french fries, salad and desert. Needless to stay we were stuffed and could barely walk back to the house and then to work. Unfortunately we had to go back into Beni Mellal to exchange some things but my friend Jake was with me and all of the volunteers were super nice so we all had a good time piling into the mudir's car and running errands in town. The fact that lunch was so good definitely outweighed the tedious nature of Moroccan business dealings.

Tuesday was the last day for the KoC volunteers in Ouled Moussa. We finished the wiring of the network, installed the new software on a couple more machines and fired the room up. Kids began to trickle in and by evening we had a packed house for me to lead my first class in the new center. It was a bit of chaos but thats Morocco for you. Kids were so excited to checkout all of the new programs on the computers and play the different typing and math games. I left the session feeling exhausted yet really happy because this was the first real class I have held in my site so far!

The KoC folks just left the region today and as I have been able to reflect on the experience I have to say I am really happy with the result. Indeed there were major bureaucratic hurdles in the process of getting these computers to Ouled Moussa and at times I didn’t think it was going to work out. Only now do I realize how much energy, effort and emotion I have put into this project over the past 7 months and how great it feels now. I have never actively worked towards giving something away and to see the reactions of all parties involvedmade it all worth it. This is Peace Corps. Not the bringing of materials to a community, rather, the full investment of emotion into a community you had no previous connection to and working your hardest for them just because.

                           

Post-Summer, Pre-Fall

Summer has come and gone and the days I thought would be long, hot and unbearable were merely

long and hot. I anticipated this summer to be something of mythological proportions where I would be constantly at the brink of melting under the sweltering heat of Morocco. My premonitions of heat came true yet I am still here and solid.

Ramadan, during the month of July was a time of hardship for me but as the days wore on I adapted. I fasted this Ramadan 21 of 30 days and I will be the first to tell you it was difficult. Not only can you not drink water or eat from 3:30am until 7:43pm but it was also was consistently 110 degrees. This month was definitely some of the longest sustained mental hardship I have gone through in recent memory. Sure there have been run-ins with a snow-storm at 9:30pm on the side of a mountain where your physical and mental fortitude is tried, but this was 30 days of body-altering hunger and thirst. Now it is not nearly as dramatic as it sounds but going one day from being able to eat/drink whenever to being restrict the next for 16 hours is tough. Ramadan was a great lesson in cultural understanding and empathy, both of which are my job here. I think the hunger and thirst might have made me a more patient person which is a positive! I also learned about why Muslims love Ramadan so much. Every night at the breakfast there were great dishes reserved for the holiday and it was a time when everyone became even more inclusive of one another in an already hospitable country. It is serious family bonding time and never have I felt more included in a foreign culture with relatively random people than I have during Ramadan here. Random encounters on the street would lead to Lftor (Breakfast) invites. This was a great time to work on my integration and I definitely feel as though I got closer with my community over that month. 

During Ramadan I was able to travel to my friend Andy's site to help him with a Grassroots Soccer Camp. Grassroots Soccer is an organization which teaches HIV/AIDS education via the worlds game, soccer. The camp was held at Andy's site in the city of Kenitra, home to more than 800,000 people. The kids that came to camp were so different than the kids in my small town. Many of them knew english well and had advanced ideas and thoughts for their ages of 10-17. It is a liberal city just north of the capital and was really striking to see the differences. The camp went well and the kids definitely came away from it with new ideas but at the end of the camp we concluded that Grassroots Soccer in Morocco must be designed differently than Sub-Saharan Africa's program. Due to cultural limitations, and a language barrier the curriculum was tough to navigate through in a culturally appropriate way. We also concluded that a very educated/liberal, english speaking counterpart was necessary in order to convey the message appropriately. This is a common factor in our work here as PCV's how to teach somewhat radical ideas to a conservative Muslim culture. The motivation for social change is not high yet there are often glimmers of promise which make it all worth it.

After Ramadan I did some more traveling around the country and worked another camp for English Immersion at the costal city of El Jadida. The camp went well and we had many opportunities to go to the beach and swim and play with the campers. We also did some teaching. 

A week after the camp I was faced with a tough decision. My grandfather John had, for the past couple of years, been increasingly ill. I had known that he was approaching the end of his life and was faced with the tough decision whether or not to go back for the event. It wasn't until the third week in July that I got a call from my father telling me of the news. After much internal deliberation and the weighing of the pros and cons I booked a flight. It was a weird feeling getting on the plane in Casablanca, heading for Paris and then NYC. It was even weirder to step out of the B train on 79th street in Manhattan. Just 12 hours before I was a world away, somewhere I was used to. A place where everything has got just a little more wear, a little more tear. Where people move slowly. 

Being in New York and Philadelphia was like a dream. 5 days of action, drinking real beer, eating pork and being in a place where every car is seemingly new and everyone speaks your language. It was a sad event to go home for and while at home I did have some hard moments explaining myself and what I do here in Morocco to family and friends. At the same time the wide-eyed, drop-jawed reactions by family-friends made me feel really proud to be taking on this challenge of Peace Corps. 

As I rode back to the airport in Radoune, my Moroccan Uber driver's car, talking all things Morocco in the middle of Queens I knew it was time to go back.

IST and the Beginning of Ramadan

I have never been much of a writer. I like to talk with other people either on the phone or in person to express how I am feeling. Yet I trudge on with the blog! For those who are all wondering what the heck I have been doing in the past couple of months, it has been a lot. I do not know if I can properly articulate all that has gone on. Everyday feels both the same and totally different all at the same time. Sometimes the monotony is painful. Other times, the smallest thing like sitting under a tree talking about American holidays can be the best part of the day. 

Some of the work I have been doing has been thinking of different creative ways to help bring resources to my town. I have been talking with a few different organizations on how to bring books, computers and classroom materials to the D.C. Additionally, and more recently, I have had some solid conversations with the youth in town as to why they think the D.C isn't active and running. Knowing the issues of your town is one of the most important parts of Peace Corps service and it really allows you to see behind the shades and get at the root problems which need to be addressed.

Recently, I have been traveling. I went to Marrakech for 10 days with the rest of my Staj to relax by the pool, hang out with friends and attend Youth Development meetings about projects and ideas as well as more mundane topics such as Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation. It was a great time to see other Volunteers as well as relax a bit.

We went to the main square called Jemma El Fna where there are snake charmers-, monkeys, acrobats, etc. .. I didn't really care for the animals because many of them were obviously drugged and or had a leash on and it just did not feel right. I think this coincides with my feelings on zoos and circuses. The high point of my trip to the square was eating all the different street meat sandwiches and breads and juices. A glass of fresh orange juice here costs 50 cents and a meat sandwich costs $ 1.50 its a great bargain.  I would not suggest diving into street meat sandwiches though until you've had a couple of days to get acclimated! Then there was this amazing juice stand down one of the corridors. Imagine a literal hole in the wall booth with 3 guys blending juices and outside, a ring of 3-4 people deep out into the alley. People were begging the guy to take their money and most impressively, whenever he was out of one type of juice his helpers would have a whole new pitcher waiting for him to scoop up and keep pouring. At .40 cents a glass this was by far the best deal of the night.  

Marrakech tourist also really really heavy. I have not seen So Many forigeners in one place! This May sound a bit jaded goal Effective living in site for months at a time only seeing 8-10 of your fellow Volunteers it can be overwhelming. The Guilez neighborhood is spotless, fancy, rich and white. It is a stark contrast to the conservative, fully veiled women who float around Kech. These contrasts have seemingly been getting bigger and more obvious as I am in country longer. 

There is also a big elephant in the room. Ramadan. Ramadan is a time once a year where Muslims fast during the day, not eating, drinking or smoking and then at night, they breakfast in grand style and the towns and streets come alive. I have beens struggling with whether or not I want to fast. I think it would be a hard challenge. It also has the potential to bring me closer to my community, something I have been looking for.  On the other hand, it quickly provokes conversionist harassment . This form of harassment affects me most so I'm not totally sure how to proceed, though I think I will give fasting my best shot. I am looking forward to breaking fast though with different families and inshallah getting my integration on! 

Finally I am headed up to my first homestay to hang out with the family there. The two host families are pretty opposite so it will be good to get a change of pace!

Finally, Finally, it has been 6 MONTHS IN COUNTRY. Crazy. Time is flying by.

First Month In Site

These past twenty-something days have been some of the most unique, challenging and exciting days thus far in Morocco. As I sit on the roof of my house listening to Steel Pulse with the mountains in the background and the sun in my face, I finally have a house to call my own. This will be the first time in my life living alone. In college for two years I lived in a house but had roommates and was constantly surrounded by friends. Now being alone, I think there will be some challenges of loneliness but also some relief that I can waltz around the house with out a care because no one is there to judge or laugh!

My site, Ouled Moussa is a teeny tiny site outside of a fairly large city in Beni Mellal. Every Thursday there is a Souq or farmers market on steroids. My host mother and I have made a habit of going and it is really fun to ride on the back of a horse drawn cart to buy vegetables for 3dh a kilo or approximately 40 cents for 2 pounds. In town there are many coffee shops and little general stores or hanouts but besides that there isn't a whole lot going on. There is great nature just 5km away but people dont seem to go to the mountain much. People long for the bustle of Beni Mellal and a place to hang out. 

In site there is a great women's cooperative who makes cookies and bread and also sells olive oil and spices. My aforementioned host mother is the secretary of the co-op so whenever I go I am sure to get at least 5 cookies to eat whether I like it or not. They are tasty and all the women there want to treat me as their son. I don't object. They have recently been making trips to spring fairs called mousems to sell their goods and have had some foreign NGO's come in to possibly provide funds for different items they need to be more successful. This will be one of my jobs there, helping them to write grants for an oven or help them to become more profitable

Also in the town there is a Dar Chebab. It is quite sad and shabby but there is a great association which goes there every Saturday and Sunday to hangout, sing and play games. At least it is getting used and just last week I had a total of 3 kids show up for an hour of English teaching! I consider that a success and something to build on. Just the other week I had a solid two day whine session with my parents about how I didnt feel like I was working at all and now I have stuff going on. This is Morocco. One day you're up, the next you're down.

I have a great sitemate named Bernice who has helped me out a lot since I've come to little ol' Moussa with introducing me to counterparts, laying down the law to annoying Moroc Telecom ladies and generally being a hospitable friend. Unfortunately she is leaving in a few days to COS.

Finally, I was put in touch with a former LCF turned farmer who has his own organic farm just a few km's away from my site, he apparently produces top-quality olive oil and wheat and wants to work with the community to become better and more productive. SCORE! awesome counterpart material and hopefully a really valueable connection for the future! If anyone needs some organic Moroccan olive oil holler at me.

For now, I am looking forward to fully furnishing the house, doing some projects and keep meeting people around town to work with. The summer is fast approaching which means work dies and people hang out and try and beat the heat which I have heard is brutal. We shall see.

Last week in CBT

Much has gone on since the last post. Where i will be stationed for the next two years will be revealed to me come next week and as the time draws closer, I become excited and also nervous. I will miss my host family here in Mhaya and don't really want to start my life over again in a new site but such is life. It feels weird to have picked up and left 3 months ago to start a new life only to have to do it again in a week. In my site I will hopefully be building youth assets and making some friends. I will be working with directors of associations, town councils, regional delegues and other community members to build a successful service. Not knowing anyone in the town I will be going to is a bit daunting but I'm confident in my smiling and eye-batting abilities that I will be able to make a friend or two.

Some of my goals for my service are large and grandiose. Since my time in Hawaii working on organic farms, sustainability has become and interest of mine. Peace Corps likes this. The staff preaches manageable and reasonable expectations and goals yet my idea is to have a fully sustainable Dar Chebab in terms of water, electricity and waste. We'll see what happens.

Another desire I have is to become involved with local artisans and participate in small business development. This sector of PC Morocco has been phased out but the open-ended nature of PC makes it still a viable route to pursue. There are tons of people here with incredible skill that could definitely be marketed better. It would be a huge learning opportunity and also an opportunity for me to contribute some of my skills to the community and actively work on bettering the lives of Moroccans.

These ideas were noted to the Regional Managers. RM's as we call them are Peace Corps staff who monitor and assist volunteers in the field. They help with Dar Chebab issues, host family issues and are our right-hand peoples for the next two years. We had two come to lil' ol Mhaya to interview us about our site preferences as well as the skills and attributes we posses. I think mine went well and hopefully I can be matched in a site that has some of the qualities I am looking for and vise-versa. Yet as with many things in the Peace Corps things are left to chance.

Some cool, non-stressful things have been happening though. I have become relatively competent in my arabic. Indeed relative competency makes it seem pretty simple but I have been having full conversations where I am only missing a few words and phrases. In Fes last weekend I managed to haggle with a cab driver at 7am and navigate the alley ways. I have also been able to talk smack with my host brothers and generally be able to talk with most people on the street provided they don't speak super-duper fast or mumble. Things that cannot always be ruled out. Though my grammar is still a work in progress, I am able to look Moroccan and sound Moroccan and this helps immensely. It is pretty interesting how if you can replicate the accent well and dress similar how much credibility you immediately receive. Admittedly, being a man in this culture helps a ton but I am still feeling good about my accomplishments.

Finally, and completely unrelated to anything I have previously written about, I want to raise chickens and also shepherd sheep in the mountains with my staff and Jelaba on. I think this would be totally bad-ass

~Over and Out~

-J

Hills, HUBs, and Camps

Sorry for the delayed post, these past couple of weeks have been hectic!

Things are chugging along here in Morocco, learning language and culture. I would tell you all about the extensive studying we do everyday at the Dar Chebab, (don't worry Mom, I am in fact learning some things over here!) but lets go with the more exciting parts shall we?

We have finally gotten a couple of weekends off and besides hanging around L'Mhaya and integrating, we have gone on some adventures! Before our first HUB days, my friends Kira, Alex and Ih went for a hike in the nearby hills. Getting to the mountain I wanted to climb was a bit of a process, Alex had to ask her host father to ask his friend to drop us off at the base and then they would come back a few hours later once we had finished. We were supposed to leave by 11 Sunday morning and in true Moroccan style didn't get on the road until 12:30. Once on the road though we stopped at a very pretty gorge/valley to take some pictures and drink some spring water.


From there we continued on towards the hillside where things got pretty country. The country side here in northernish Morocco isn't like what we think of in the United States. Here there are tons of olive orchards as well as open fields where animals graze and farmers grow different vegetables. It is amazing how much this part of the country looks like southern Europe and Italy in particular. Alex, Kira and I wandered up to the hill where this sweet old lady tried to help lead us to the mountain side and walk us up. We wanted to get away from speaking Darija since we have been living it 24/7 so we called our LCF and she helped us explain. It turned out that the lady just wanted us to be careful because climbing hills is dangerous. The amount random people care for you in this country is astounding. We had a laugh and continued on. After a lunch of cheese and avocado sandwiches we got to the top and the view was something else. The city of Fes on one side and Meknes on the other with the countryside in the middle and snowcapped mountains in the background. Special.

The next day, 50 of our 100 person Staj got together in the city of Meknes to-have a 2 day intensive HUB session. HUB sessions are overnight and consist of many bureaucratic meetings and sessions where we learn about different teaching styles and what is required of us as PCV's. You may be able to see a pattern here That every time we get together-have meetings and they Are long and drawn out the positive purpose of speaking with current as well as volunteers Having 2 days in a really swanky hotel make up for the dull parts. The hotel we stayed at, (Name redacted due to Peace Corps policy) overlooked the old city and even had a pool. It was too cold to swim of course but the food was good.

When we were not bogged down by meetings, we had the chance to explore the city. One notably cool site was the old underground prison of Moulay Ismail. I cruised down there with Treva and Garrett as well as Treva's host brother and we made silly scary faces and tried, from a distance albeit, to scare this other group of tourists down there. There were still the wooden locks where the prisoners hung down there and it was relatively creepy.

After Meknes we went back to good ol' Mhaya and have been for the past week teaching classes and preparing for the upcoming Spring Camp we will be hosting. Camps are one of the big components of our service and is something the Ministry wants us to focus on while kids are not in school. I'm really excited for this experience because it will be great experience for when we are in site by ourselves and need to lead one of these by ourselves, in Arabic, the second week were are there. Crazy, I know. 
     
But this is what it is all about. Yeah the travel and cultural integration are important and really fun but the reason I came here was to make a difference in someones life. I have larger, maybe unrealistic goals of eventually creating a fully sustainable Dar Chebab. I.e electricity, water, waste, food. Yet the essence of my service is going to be about the relationships formed and the knowledge exchanged on a personal basis; something I value. Becoming a better self-starter, accepting failure and cherishing success are all things I hope to learn here. It will be a constant struggle and it already has. Each day is different. In the month I've been here I have had great days and bad days but its about what you've got deep down which makes you a volunteer. I am excited to find success, Inshallah and I am also maybe even more so excited to fail, excited to be in the dumps, when that happens and I'm at my lows I'll know that there is so many highs that I have to get though in order to get there. Thats when the challenge is. Thats when we really learn about ourselves.

Sorry for the digression and definitely don't think I'm down here! Minus spelling corrections this is all train of thought and I want to keep it as such in order to truly give you, my friends and family and maybe even strangers a real glimpse into my life here in Morocco.

-J

First Post

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. Herein I'll be able to communicate whats really going down in the Peace Corps in Morocco and how my immersion into Moroccan culture is going. The point of my 2 years here in Morocco is to help promote world peace and friendship while helping Moroccan youth develop into valuable members of society.

Is the idea of world peace and friendship idealistic and grandiose? Yes. But in spite of my occasional cynicism, I truly believe these ideals will make me a better person and also enable me to radiate this in Morocco and back in the states once I COS (Complete Service) inshallah (God willing/ i.e hopefully, maybe, possibly, or any other way to be vague and non-committal).

The Peace Corps has three goals:

     1: to help the people of interested countries (Morocco) in meeting their need for trained men and women.

     2: to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

     3: to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Through cultural exchange and creative projects I hope to be able to accomplish these three goals and fulfil my commitment of service to the people of Morocco and the people of the United States.

My Peace Corps adventure started in the Moroccan capital of Rabat where we had 10, exhaustive days of training, sessions, bad food and dogs barking. Seriously, at all hours of the day there was a German Shepard howling. Oh well. Rabat is a dense city with a new vibe about it. It feels a lot like Washington D.C with loads of government buildings and offices walled off to the public. Although my friend Jake and I did manage to shmooze our way in and had a nice chat in English/Darija/French about America. We tried to get into the Department of Defenses' building which was a ornate complex but didn't have too much luck.

Admittedly, Rabat was a bit of a blurr. We were tired at all hours of the day and were constantly being herded into meetings or rooms with sugary pastries.

After getting the lowdown on such things as, "How to use a Turkish Toilet" Our next step was to receive our placements for CBT. CBT stands for Community Based Training. This consists of 3 months where we are placed in a community around the cities of Fez and Meknes. In this time, we learn Darija and learn how to integrate into a community and begin to work with the youth. Because we are a group of 6 Americans here we get a LOT of attention. This comes in many forms. Stares, chides, questions and love. I don't know if I can accurately describe how incredible nice and generous our host families are. I think every woman over like 20 years old thinks she is my mother. If I don't have food in my hand, on its way to my mouth or in my mouth, I'm instructed to eat. If I walk on the tile without sandals? I'm told to put shoes on so my toes don't get cold. My host mom Fatima tucks me in for a nap on the couch after lunch. Does this sound overbearing and smothering? Yes. But in the same token its remarkably loving and affectionate.

My site is called Mhaya which is a town smack-dab between the two larger cities with about 4,000 people living in it. There is one main road and a highway which runs through the town. There are beautiful foothills around and some bigger mountains in the distance. Tiny hanoots or corner-stores sell everything you could need while living on 25 Dirham or 3 Dollars a day. Cats, Dogs, Sheep, Cows, Goats, and Donkeys all roam around the town some shepherded, some not. The cats are hard to shepherd.

The host family I am staying with, the Elyachi family, has a great big house with 12 people from the family living in it. I have 4 host brothers, 2 host sisters, 2 host mothers, 2 host fathers its craziness all the time but I dig it and they are super nice. We have about 15 or so chickens out back and a couple of rabbits which are all delicious. I was having breakfast one morning and heard a chicken squaking. It was a little bizarre to hear a chicken be butchered at 7:45 in the morning but lunch was really good.




As the first post I hope you've got a relatively solid overview of what my time here has been like.  I'll definitely go into more depth in the coming posts but for now its bed time.

Shukran Bizef!! (thanks a lot!)

-J