Blogs from Rabat, Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaer, Morocco, Africa - page 7

Back at the Orphanage today…I so wish I could take pictures!! I started off the morning in the pink nest with the 0-6 months. I helped hold babies as Ina changed the sheets and then I dressed the babies after their baths. I still cannot get over the amount of clothes they put on these kids. It is HOT and a little infant will have on thicker onesie and a thick sleeper. The pink nest is set up with a room about 10 x 20 with two much smaller rooms on either side. The rooms on the side hold the babies beds and this larger room is a common room where you can lay on the floor with the babies or sit and feed. I went from one room to the other helping with dressing and ... read more

Welcome to the first day of placement. I felt totally shattered when I got up this morning. All the walking yesterday I should have been exhausted but I hit the wall about 11 PM last night and then couldn't sleep. It seemed like alot of volunteers had the same problem. My group has to be ready to leave at 7:40 AM so we are up early to get ready and have a little breakfast. We have to wear these lovely white smocks so we all look like doctors. LOL When you work in the Orphanage they have several rules - the main rule is NO PHOTOGRAPHS. Boo-hoo! I wish I could take pictures to show everyone what it was like. I understand with vunerable children and the internet you have to be careful so they don't ... read more

Our first month here has gone as quickly as we had feared. It has been a steep learning curve, as for both of us this is our first time living overseas (deployments don't exactly count as "living overseas"). We arrived on August 11th, and that night we moved into a 3rd story apartment in a a part of Rabat called Agdal ("The Georgetown of Morocco"). It has 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, all tile and plenty of windows, with a balcony that overlooks the residential part of the city; with a recently added patio set we had built by one of the local artisans here, its not a bad way to enjoy coffee in the morning, or a drink at the end of the day. The US Embassy, where we both work, is about 3 miles up ... read more

My first full day in Rabat kicked off with mint tea and croissant for breakfast, followed by a long walk up to the Roman ruins of Chelah on the outskirts of Rabat. The crumbling ruins made for intriguing exploration, accompanied by the soundtrack of clacking from the hundreds of storks that have come to nestle in there. Here I met a chap called Dan from near Gothenburg, Sweden, who was passing through Rabat on an epic journey south into Western Africa. He seemed unperturbed by the minefield he'd be encountering in the Western Sahara, and had another two months to go as far south as possible. With the crashing waves of the Atlantic on my doorstep, I decided to take my first ever surfing lesson at the Oudayas Surf Club. Given the instructors basic grasp of ... read more

here are more photos...... read more