Birthday cake and rabies prophylaxis

October 23, 2008

Today I greeted my quarter-century mark with a small gathering of incredibly fabulous people. It was the first time I've had any kind of party with my Moroccan and American friends so far! I'd invited my host family over earlier in the week and was sort of nervous for them to see my house and eat food that I'd cooked. Also a few other PCVs from the region came over. I decided to make Ethiopian because it's similar to Moroccan food in a lot of ways and it's something I like a lot.

Well, it was served on a dish placed on top of the box that my tv came in, but I think everyone enjoyed it. Admittedly, the house still needs a little work but it's really shaping up.

Best part of dinner: My host mom asked for some birthday cake to take back for the kids! Success! We had to light a couple candles and sing just to do a little cross-cultural exchange, of course. Work as a PCV never ends! ; )

My big/real birthday celebration will be after our upcoming In-Service Training, in Fez. I think maybe I'm too old to make people celebrate my birthday, but then again I've been alive for a quarter-century and maybe that's kind of a big deal. I did regale my PC friends with the "WKRP in Cincinnati" story of my birth... You know the one. If you don't then maybe you'll hear it in a couple years. I don't think I'll be telling it again in Fez. When you don't know your Nick-at-Nite classics, then hearing a story about funny shows from the 80s isn't as hilarious as I think it should be...

October 24, 2008

A few days ago I was at my friend Hanneke's site and she'd taken in this really sick little puppy. He was so cute! Her neighbors said another dog had bitten him and he looked so friendly and helpless that she decided to take him in when he wandered over to her house.
(In Morocco, there are generally a lot of wild dogs in our sites in the bled. It can be a problem sometimes and recently a couple of PCVs have been bitten. It's more of an issue at night, though; during the day you can see to throw rocks at the dogs to make them go away. They're so accustomed to this practice that the motion of bending down and pretending to pick up a rock is usually enough to scare them away. All PCVs in-country receive a rabies series during training, and in case of dogbites we'll be sent to Rabat or the closest facility with the post-exposure prophylaxis. )
I came to visit the next day, and he was already in need of a great deal of care. He was playful and cute but had trouble eating anything and swallowing liquids. We just kind of figured his discomfort and health issues were due to the bite wound, which was on the side of his cute little puppy face. So she was trying to nurse him back to health and I helped out a bit. Some of the neighborhood kids were watching us and laughing as we taught him commands in Tash and English. We'd say "skus" and push his bum onto the ground so he'd sit, but then he'd pop back up and want to play some more.
We tried to feed him what we could, which proved difficult. So on our trip into Tiz, we shopped around for baby bottles and formula, anything that might prove manageable for the little guy. We went back to our sites and she kept me updated on his status.
Unfortunately, after a hard-fought battle with various afflictions and an emergency trip to the vet in Tiznit, the puppy, dubbed Samson in reference to a Regina Spektor song, succumbed to his myriad afflictions, including a severe case of roundworm, and died. From Hanneke's description, it sounded like a pretty tragic end. Well this morning, after a night of celebrating my entry into the world and whatnot, Hanneke gets a frantic call from her dad, who's just read an email she sent about the dog; he tells her that anyone who was in contact with Samson needs to get a rabies vaccination. Like at that very moment. We called the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer-- in PC Morocco we have host country national medical staff) on duty, and she tells us she'll contact the hospital in Tiznit to see if they have the prophylaxis but that if we can't get vaccinated there then we'll have to travel up to Rabat for it as soon as we can.
So I'm sitting here in Tiznit writing this, after a hectic day of packing and prepping my house for an extended absence and running around getting ready for a potential trek across the country. I'm a little tired. I was ready to go to Rabat if necessary. Luckily they had the vaccination here, enough for all three PCVs who came into close contact with Samson.
In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't be playing with dogs here. This probably seems a bit obvious and maybe you're questioning our collective judgment right about now. But he was cute and didn't display any of the symptoms of rabies with which we were familiar. It's difficult to evaluate things like this because we're so out of our context that sometimes judging a situation like this can be next to impossible. Three different PCVs took it as a matter of course that you can take in a friendly but sick little dog, care for him, and raise him. It turns out that in wild animals, a symptom of rabies is fearlessness-- which we all definitely thought was playful puppy-ness. We've come to the conclusion that he most likely had rabies; although he didn't bite or scratch us, we were in very close contact with him and needed the shots. Live and learn.

What a weekend!

September 26-27, 2008

So tonight was the first presidential debate, and I had an election debate party. A few friends and I watched CNN International and stayed up late/got up early to watch the coverage. The debate itself aired at 01:00 here, but the pundits stayed up late and so did we!

This was one of my excuses for splurging for satellite: I need Grand Slam tennis and election coverage. The tv is one of the few luxuries I allowed myself in my house and seems a bit excessive, but it's also a big part of entertaining here. It's also a nice paradox when you take into account that I have no running water in my house, but I have a really "zween" (very very nice) satellite.
It's so much fun to be with this group during such an important election year. I think I'm probably one of the most moderate PCVs in the group, but that's normally the case at home, too. We had a great time picking apart the candidates. You can probably guess which one we were supporting... : )

On election night itself we'll be at our In-Service Training and hopefully have coverage of the results. All the PCVs who trained with me will be there, and excepting one or two most of us have a leftist slant.

The plan is to watch debates with other PCVs and have little get-togethers in the run-up to the big night. It's fun to tell my community that we're staying up late to watch the election news from America. Some of them have definite opinions on who should win!
For the first of the debates we made an Indian feast, which was quite a feat considering all the food was cooked before we broke fast and there was no taste-testing allowed. We left that up to the one of us who wasn't fasting, so thanks, Emmy, for ensuring that we didn't gag on the results of our guesswork dinner ; )

September 27-28, 2008

Tonight was Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power. It's a night when the men stay up all night at the mosque reading the entire Quran and the women all get together outside. This is done because in the Muslim tradition, it's believed that the Prophet Mohammad was transported on the 27th night of Ramadan from Medina to Jerusalem and back again. The entire Quran was revealed to him on that night. Muslims commemorate this miraculous event by reciting the Quran at mosque. The men go to the mosque together and the women take them food (here it's either couscous or lamb tagine) throughout the night.
It felt oddly like a wedding, because we sat and chatted and ate tagine. I hadn't had tagine in about a month because of Ramadan, so it was nice to eat with the women. We started out at the well near my house where I sometimes draw water. Then a group of us moved to another house and stayed until about 1:30. We sat outside the whole time, and it was a beautiful night.

It's great to spend the holidays with the people in my douar and I can't wait until Eid next Wednesday!

wedding season

August 15, 2008

I'm told by PC staff that in my site being invited to weddings means that I'm integrated. I wonder what they'd say to a 16-hour three-wedding marathon...?
My site is huge, which means there are a lot of people to meet. A great way to do this has been going to weddings. In the summer, because there's traditionally not as much work to do after the harvest, there are tons of weddings in Morocco. There were multiple weddings to attend every weekend in August!
On a side note, the Tash words for wedding and harvest are very similar. "Tmgra" is a wedding and "tamgra" is harvest. Usually the weddings in Morocco happen once the harvest season has ended, because then people aren't working all day.
I've had henna done every time someone knows I'm going to a wedding and they see it's faded too much. There are several styles of henna done, and the one most common in my site is the one in the Facebook album. So far, I've seen three techniques of applying henna.
The first involves using a syringe to draw flowery patterns on the palms, the backs of the hands, and, on married women, on the feet. In Ouarzazate and regions further north than here, unmarried girls can get henna on their feet, but in the south it's reserved for married women. Sometimes the girls will get a small design just above the ankle though. Henna on the feet covers the soles and tips of the toes, including toenails. Around this block of henna, a pattern to match the hands is done.
The other kind of henna design involves a form pattern that you can buy in souq. It's a stencil made of tape similar to black electrical tape. You tape the pattern on and cake henna on. When I had this done during homestay, it was just before bed and plastic bags were tied around my hands so it wouldn't rub off in my sleep. I woke up the next morning and washed it off. You have to leave henna on for several hours so that the stain takes hold.
The only kind of henna I've not yet had done is the type that completely covers the palms. You just smear the henna across the palms and leave the backs of the hands uncovered. I'm sure it'll happen in the next two years.

My goal for the next two years is to always have orange-stained fingernails all the time. When the henna covers your nails it stains them permanently and they have to grow out before it's gone completely. I think my goal is realistic. There are a lot of weddings here! And henna is done before holidays, too.

So... Berber weddings. You've seen my pictures from the fake Oz wedding. Basically here it's the same. Everyone gets all dressed up. I go and sit with the women, and the men sit somewhere else. We chat and eat tagine. Sometimes there's dancing and music. Usually this involves the younger girls playing drums or recorded music and getting in a room together to dance. Dancing here is something that has to be seen; there's a definite style to it that I can't describe. The bride, who enters the room with her face covered, wears several outfits and makes her rounds so everyone can see her.

At really nice weddings, there are men who perform a traditional dance called Ahwash. They have various instruments that they play and there was a wedding I went to that was really fancy because they had a singer and band and dancers! I met the bride from another wedding on the same day who said she was leaving hers to come to this one because it was going to be so ifulki! But apparently in a site with so many weddings this isn't all that uncommon. Also, weddings last several days so leaving for a few hours probably wasn't a big deal.

I'll post more details on weddings later but this, along with the pictures, should give you some idea.

Ishqa!

August 10, 2008

So a key word in my life, a phrase and idea around which everything revolves, is "ishqa". It means "it is difficult." People ask all the time if this or that is difficult for me: life in Morocco, drawing water, the heat, learning Tashelheet. You name it. Mostly the questions center on shared experiences like aspects of life in my site, and it's a great way to commiserate. I tend to agree that things are difficult, and that it's a lot of work, sometimes, to live in the bled.
This is such a good thing, I think. Every experience I have is both a challenge and opportunity to learn.
Here's a little story to serve as an example. You'll see what I mean.
Recently, my phone decided to rebel against my need to use it and stopped holding a charge. Unable to figure out what was wrong on my own (duh), I tried several times to take it to the phone guy in my site. He's very helpful in such matters. But by the time I finish at the sbitar every day, he's closed for lunch. I live far away and the heat is intense, so I never can muster the energy to walk back to souq a second time. And usually I spend the afternoons and evenings in my douar, getting to know people.
So I took it to Tiznit with me one week, and the guy I took it to had no clue what was wrong. I explained the problem, and he just couldn't figure it out. I didn't want to blow my monthly budget on a new phone, so I took it home again and kept it off most of the time so it would have a charge for emergencies.
I was kind of frustrated because my phone's become an important lifeline. I'm lucky to be in a country with generally good cell phone coverage, or coverage at all for that matter. I've come to rely on my cell and text other PCVs pretty often (calls are pricey here, but texts are 1 Dirham apiece :)
One day I happened to pass my usual in-site phone guy, and ran over to his tahanut to ask about the phone situation. He listened patiently as I explained in broken Tash, Arabic and English what the phone was doing. He said maybe it was the charger, and proceeded to open a new charger and test it. Turns out that's exactly what the problem was, and (Hamdullah) new chargers are only 15 Dirham- totally in my budget!
So the phone debacle was remedied, and I was ready to start texting and talking to people Stateside once again!
You're probably thinking, "What a boring story!" Maybe you're thinking, "Wait; what's a tahanut again?"
But there's a point, I swear!
People keep asking how life is here. If I had to give an answer that encapsulates every day, it would look a lot like this story. The details vary, but this is how it goes. Life is "ishqa". I've relearned how to cook, clean, dress, speak, and go about every aspect of public and private life. If I have a problem that'd be easily remedied in the States, like the thing with my phone, usually it takes a bit more time and care here.
This is great, and I wouldn't change it at all. It means that I have to learn to be more patient, and think about things in different ways. I'm constantly calling everything I think I know into question and reevaluating things. Luckily there's a lot of time to think here.
Oh, by the way, at the end of the day I also found 20 Dirhams! Now do you think it's a good story? ; )

The Girl From the Sbitar

June 10, 2008

So I went on my first vaccination drive today and it was... interesting.
There's an association in Tiznit that does vaccination drives in various towns in the province and today was my site's day.
The sbitars are far away and a lot of people don't have access for various reasons, so this association has a bus that they use as a mobile health center. They coordinate with people in outlying douars to let them know the dates of the drives. Usually they show up and there's a crowd all day long.
My counterpart told me to do a health lesson and I was not prepared at all!
I told him maybe next time. For now, a lot of what I do involves observation and learning about how things work in the sbitar and my town. So I watched a girl from the association give health lessons on topics that I'll cover later. She talked to the women about family planning all day , while the sbitar staff did examinations and the kids got vaccinations. It was a great chance to learn about conducting health lessons with the women here, and how to go about it. And I made some helpful contacts.
For now, I'm content to be observing most of the time. I go to the sbitar on vaccination days, when there are a lot of women bringing in their kids, to watch and learn. I explain to people what I do, and that my job for now is to learn Tash and learn about my site.

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The other day I was walking home from work and passed a group of girls who were on their way to school. I greeted them in Tashelheet and they returned my greeting. Then one of them said she'd seen me at the sbitar the other day.

I told her I work there and a little bit about what I do. I said that later I'll do health education and talk about health to kids and women. They seemed to think that was a good idea. I said that the next year I'd come to their school, perhaps, and teach. They really liked that idea!

We parted ways further down the path and it occurred to me that people were beginning to recognize me not just because I'm the foreign girl learning Tashelheet. I'm the girl who works at the sbitar.

The Women at the Well

June 10, 2008

Every time I go to town I try to walk past the well that our douar uses. Generally there are two or three donkeys and a handful of women drawing water to load on the animals and carry back home. As I pass, we greet one another and they invariably ask if I'd like to help draw water with them. They have seen me helping carrry water from another source before, and know I need to learn how to do such things. My host family has a cistern behind the house, so they don't use the well that often.

Usually when I pass the well, I'm on my way to the sbitar and don't stop to help; I just pause long enough to be polite and greet them.

I'm considering renting a house that doesn't have running water in it, and so may have to draw water for the next two years. The women warn me that this will be difficult. It sounds weird, but I really have to learn how to draw wellwater. There's a technique to it, and a sort of rhythm. Maybe next month it'll happen...

Life as a PCV

May 21, 2008



So as of this morning I'm officially a PCV! I'm so excited, but nervous to begin work at my site!


We had our swearing-in ceremony at the Berber Palace, the only 5-star hotel in Ouarzazate. Apparently it was built to cater to the movie people who frequent Oz, and it's filled with old movie set props.


Needless to say, we had a nice ceremony and a pool party followed. It was sort of bizarre to herald our new status as PCVs with poolside drinks at a posh hotel. And our host families from CBT were invited, and my host mom and sister where there. It was especially interesting to have people from CBT sites there, because they've seen us at some of our sickest and worst points in training. Then we were all cleaned and dressed up and having a reception at this hotel with them. I'll have to send pictures so you can see the juxtaposition for yourselves.



Anyway, we're all official now!











May 25, 2008



This is my first week at site, and there's not a whole lot to report yet. So far it's been a lot of resting after travelling to site, and hanging out with my host family. I'm trying to study every day, but have gotten hooked on al-Jazeera English. Sometimes I try to translate the news into Tashelheet, so I can multitask by "studying" while getting the news.


Also, the last season of 24 comes on Thursday nights subtitled in MS Arabic. I'm pretty happy with this, of course!


And no, I haven't gotten sick yet, so there's hope!

Every day I eat askif for breakfast, which is the Moroccan equivalent of cream of wheat. My host family in Ighrem didn't really eat this, and after months of hearing other Trainees talk about it, I feel like now I'm in the Askif Loop.

Also, my host mom makes really good amlou, which is like peanut butter with added oil. We dip bread in it at breakfast and during kaskru. Kaskru is a small meal eaten between lunch (around 1:00) and dinner (in my house eaten around 9:30). My host family says that when my family comes to visit next year, they will find all this food delicious and want to take it back to America. I have to agree!

May 29, 2008


Today I had my first Friday Couscous. In my region this is a fairly common thing to do. It basically involves a lot of women (there were about 20 this time) and a ton of couscous. Couscous is eaten in a lot of households on Fridays, but here it's made into a sort of party.


Today I learned how to eat couscous with my hands. Or rather, my hand, because of course in Morocco only the right hand is generally used in common dishes.


Eating couscous with your hand is a process best seen, not described. It involves mashing vegetables into the couscous so you can form a ball and eat it. At first, my hosts gave me a spoon. Then I decided to just go for it and learn how to eat properly, no matter how silly I felt learning with an audience. I was thinking worst case scenario would be I'd fail but maybe they'd appreciate the effort.

Apparently, it was funny when I said at first that it was difficult to do. I jokingly said, "But I'm American, and we don't eat like this!" Then I got the hang of it and it was kind of easy after that. I'm learning...

May 30, 2008


Today I taught myself to knit. I borrowed a how-to book from another PCV and learned this morning. I figured what's the point in knowing how to spin wool if you can't do anything with it? Next step: learn to shear a sheep ;)


My first knittng project is a red scarf, the purpose of which will be revealed at a later date. Ooh, isn't the suspense killing you?










June 2, 2008


I went to my sbitar today to help out with vaccinations. They're held once a week, and the sbitar is always packed on these days. My doctor and nurse are pretty cool. I speak Tash with the nurse and some English with the doctor.


I'm so excited to be really starting my job here!


Next week we have a vaccination drive in a neighboring douar. More on that later. For now, I'm observing what goes on in the sbitar and figuring out what sorts of projects I'll be working on for two years. I've got some ideas and my sbitar staff has been really helpful in telling me what sorts of issues we'll be tackling.


My sbitar is smallish, but it has a doctor, nurse and sage femme on staff. They all live in housing adjacent to the sbitar, which is common. I'll be going there a few times a week for the time being to see how things work there.