Training in Sefrou and Immouzer-Kandar, October to November, 2005

Sefrou is a wonderful town, and my host family is lovely! While I’m in Sefrou I’ll be staying with Malika (which means Queen) and her daughters Assma and Aisha. Malika’s husband is a farmer and works out in the country. I haven’t met him and I wouldn’t be surprised if I rarely see him. It’s a women’s house and it’s a lot of fun. During training, we got a lot of information about how cultural gender relations are different here, but we didn’t get any prepping on how different relations are intra-gender. The women here are very close and I joke with the other Volunteers that I’m living in a harem.

Our first day here, we arrived late morning and went to the Dar Shebab (Youth Center) where our host families picked us up. Both my sisters showed up and they were a big surprise to me. After all the lectures we got about how conservatively women dress here and how we as PCVs are expected to dress appropriately (no matter how hot it is) they were a breath of fresh air. They are younger and their family is fairly modern so they can get away with more than I can, but it is funny to see them wearing tight jeans and t-shirts while I have on a long skirt and loose long sleeve shirt. As a teacher here, I really have to put on a different persona when I am out in public. The contrast between the American who really wants to wear a tank top and my Moroccan sisters who are supposed to be conservative is pretty ironic. 

That first day, the group experienced another exciting bit of culture shock. Michael & Nada’s (pronounced Nedda) host family invited all of us to a relative’s party. On the seventh day after a baby is born, they celebrate naming the child. Since it was all one family, the gender interaction rules we had learned didn’t quite apply either. Young men and women were dancing together to very loud music supplied by a live DJ in a very small house. There were also separate rooms for men and women to sit and talk in, but as foreigners somehow we didn’t fit into either room. 

That first day we also learned about Moroccan hospitality, i.e. the propensity to stuff guests until they can’t fit in another mouthful. We had all been fed large lunches at our respective host families’ homes. Assma had excused herself, saying she was going to a party, so I lay down to take a nap, exhausted after the morning’s travel and giant lunch. I might have slept five minutes when Assma came back saying I had to go to the party also. I didn’t understand exactly what the party was for and didn’t know that the other volunteers would be there also. Remember, I had been learning Darija for less than a week at that point. Assma and Malika proceeded to dress me up in a traditional kaftan dress, but decided that none of my clothes were appropriate to wear under and gave me some kind of spandex pants and top to wear. The dress went over that and then they wrapped a very tight girdle kind of belt around me which really wasn’t my size. 

This whole week they keep insisting I am the same size as Assma and dressing me up in her clothes. She is definitely smaller than I am. Over the dress and belt went a jellaba, the traditional hooded coverall dress/ coat that all Moroccans wear to go out in the street. They also tried to put high heels on me, but luckily they were too big and I got to wear some pointed red flat slippers which I could actually walk in. I can’t even begin to think about how I could have danced for five hours if they had succeeded in making those heels fit. The party was fun, though we had to sit through a three course meal as soon as we arrived, despite our protests about the size of our recent lunches. 

Malika and her girls have really taken me in as one of their own. Family is very important here and anybody without one is pitied and taken into an established family. People don’t live on their own here. In some ways, this aspect of the culture is very beneficial to me as a PCV. I really am allowed to integrate into the family and learn about their culture. They answer all the questions I manage to communicate and feel responsible for my integration and comfort in the community. I have begun helping as much as I can in the kitchen, since I will eventually have to cook for myself when I get to my final community. The food here isn’t too different, but the ways of preparing and eating it definitely are. Breakfast is similar to a French breakfast, lunch is a huge meal, then there is a tea/ coffee time somewhere around 6pm and a light dinner right before bedtime. Some variation of tomato soup is a common dinner. I’ll write more about food once I start cooking.

My women are also very enthusiastic about teaching me Darija (da-REE-jah - Moroccan Arabic) and they are so patient with my attempts at speaking. They’ll sit and wait while I try to piece together a sentence or run to get my books to look up a word. The sisters are also a lot of fun for little word games and songs. Assma came to some of my English lessons at the Dar Shebab and also attended one of Brian’s lessons when he taught the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes”. That night she and I worked on the English version, then Aisha wanted me to teach her the French version, since she claims she doesn’t like English. After that, I got the Darija words from them to write my own version. Malika even taught me a few words in Tamaizight (her native Berber language) and we worked with that. I’m really trying to focus on the Darija for now, though the Berber languages and Standard Arabic are tempting. 

Teaching is going very well. Since Sefrou is a training site for us and not our final community, we can focus more on what we’re learning than what the students are learning. Of course, we do our best at teaching and take it very seriously. It’s not a one-way parasitic relationship: they’re getting extra English classes out of the deal. It’s not like my student teaching either, since the Dar Shebab is not a school. Classes are in the evenings, since most kids get out of school around 6pm. Dinner usually isn’t until 9 or even 10 pm, so we have time to teach one or two hour long classes before we go home to our host families.

The Dar Shebab is run by the government’s Ministry of Youth & Sports and is a bit like a Girl’s & Boy’s Club and community center all in one. Lots of associations and community groups use it for meetings and other functions. Sefrou has two Dar Shebabs: the older one by the market (suq) and the big new one in the new part of town which is next to a large sports complex. With a population of just over 80,000 Sefrou is big enough to qualify for two Dar Shebabs. 

This town is the site for a Volunteer who has been in Morocco for about a year now, Sara. She has helped some with our training though she is still keeping up with her activities at the new Dar Shebab. My group is teaching in the older one.

When we first arrived, we had to advertise our classes and hold an evening of informal interviews with people to see what their level of English was. It went very well and we were able to split people fairly easily into groups of beginner, intermediate and advanced. Each night we had two beginner classes and one intermediate and one advanced. 

On Thursday we will have to change the schedule because of Ramadan. Everything changes during Ramadan, but I won’t be able to write much more until I experience it. I’m not expected to fast, but I’m definitely not going to be eating in front of anybody during the day. I probably won’t eat much though, because I want to be able to gorge myself with them during the two meals they do get. Each morning before the first call to prayer we will have a giant breakfast. All day they won’t eat or drink. (I’m not going to be holding back on the water in the least!) After evening prayers it’s another feast, with lots of foods that are traditionally only for Ramadan.

One more thing I have to add is Frisbee. We not only stand out as the new people in town, the foreigners, the Americans, we also stand out because we play Frisbee all the time. It has gotten to the point that we play it walking down the street and use it to teach possession in beginner classes: “this is MY Frisbee” and “this is OUR Frisbee.” From our first ten minutes in town, we play with the kids who follow us around and hang out in the street. Bart and Brian each have a Frisbee, though we usually only bring out one at a time. We’ve almost lost them several times each, accidentally throwing them over a wall and having to wind through the maze of back streets trying to figure out where it went and if it’s in somebody’s yard or on a roof. Most of the Volunteers are pretty enthusiastic about it and there’s even talk to trying to start an Ultimate Frisbee league here, though that could take a while to get going. I like it because it takes very little infrastructure. People like soccer and basketball here, but those each need fields and goals/ hoops plus the balls. Frisbee just needs a Frisbee, and the rules (if you play with them) are so simple you don’t need much language to communicate them.

As I teach more, I will have more stories to share, and as soon as I start speaking more Darija I'll be able to include all my mistake stories - there will be plenty!

Immouzer-Kandar

This town feels more like southern Europe than northern Africa and our seminar site is practically a resort. Except for the paperwork, meeting and tight schedules, this doesn’t feel much like Peace Corps. 

It is nice to see everybody again and hear about their experiences in their homestays. There is a very wide range of families who have taken us in. Some are very modern and have washing machines and toilet paper like mine, some have over ten people in the house and only one spigot for water. Some have to boil their tap water. After talking to everybody though, it’s obvious that all the families are very nice, though can sometimes be almost too accommodating. 

A big topic of discussion was Moroccan hospitality and how it can get to the point of being overwhelming. Guests and foreigners in Morocco are not supposed to feel uncomfortable in the least. While this is wonderful in that they genuinely try to take care of our every need, it can also mean that they won’t tell us when we’re doing something wrong. As a Peace Corps Volunteer who desperately needs to learn the cultural norms here, it can be a bit frustrating. Luckily my family is direct enough (especially the 14 year old) that they let me know when I’m making a faux pas. Other volunteers don’t have it so easy and are often left wondering.

During PC training though, not much is left up in the air. There is a tight schedule to follow and lots of books and manuals handed out for us to go through (i.e. carry around like rocks in our backpacks). We had lots of sessions about the culture and did some homestay debriefings. The PCMOs came to give us another round of shots, do check ups and give sessions on proper cooking in Morocco, dental care and HIV/ AIDS. Other volunteers, some who have been here for two years and will be leaving in December, gave sessions also.

The most intense for me was the harassment session. I got the feeling that some of the male volunteers thought the previous several sessions on harassment had been enough, but I think it’s something we need to continue to talk about. Harassment here is very different from in the US: it’s low key and constant. It’s mostly verbal little things that I have experienced everywhere I’ve been and so far it hasn’t been as bad as it was for me when I was in Italy. However, what the volunteers stressed in this session, is that it won’t stop for the whole two years. They warned us that it will be hard because we are already a long way from home, we stand out a lot here and we are in a very vulnerable situation. They also repeatedly told us that we are our own best support group and encouraged us to talk to each other about any problems we have during service. There is also a PC peer support network of volunteers who are trained in counseling and are willing to talk to other volunteers at any time. Another round of training for the volunteer counselors is coming up soon and I think I’ll sign up.

So, yet another productive few days of Peace Corps training, though the highlights were definitely the hot showers in the bunk houses and seeing the other trainees who are staying in other towns. Catherine, our movie queen, organized movie nights and I finally saw Back to the Future (everybody was horrified I hadn’t seen it yet). The place we’re staying is a tourist hostel in the summer and it’s very nice. The food is great too, even better than the place in Fès.