Harassment is always a popular topic when I get together with other volunteers. It is always an issue here, especially for the women. I bet we had more sessions on harassment than anything else during training. Since it seems to be such a big deal here I thought I’d share some of my opinions and experience on the subject. It all started in Philadelphia almost a year ago when, during one of our pre-service training sessions about harassment, somebody said that people in Morocco would yell "fish an' chips" at us. I thought this was incredibly funny at the time, wondering [View Full Entry]

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I have been in a whirlwind the past week or so, which was sorely needed after sitting around my site for too long. The short and sweet of it is: Tuesday, June 6 I met with some other volunteers in Marrakech to attend the official opening of the American library with Karen Hughes, Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Friday, June 9 I went with Bart and Brian who I was in Pre-Service Training with to our training town Sefrou, which is north of me close to Fes. We visited our host families and attended the yearly cherry festival which was [View Full Entry]

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I haven’t talked much lately about work and how things are going at the Dar Chebab (Youth Center). Considering that I am supposed to be here for work, I thought I should write a bit about what’s going on in relation to my “purpose” here. Thanks to book donations to the Dar Chebab and some finagling by my mudir (the DC director) we have opened a library. Our DC is quite small and wonderfully full, though that leaves little room for new programs. All the associations who use the DC rooms for meetings strongly opposed using one of said rooms as [View Full Entry]

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This is already my second weekend overnight out of site this month, which means I have to stay in Kelaa the rest of May. We are allowed to spend the night out of our site two weekends each month, as long as we tell Peace Corps where we will be in advance. I spent last weekend with Marie in M'rirt, just north of Khenifra, where she wanted to visit a farm belonging to a French woman who hosts tourists in a sort of dude ranch sort of operation. This weekend I was invited to the home of the volunteer in Afourer, [View Full Entry]

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Pour la version française regardez la blogue de Marie sur http://momaroc.canalblog.com/ I went into Marrakech today to meet Marie, a French woman who is a very close friend of my friend Michèle Lafuste and who I knew briefly when I was in France. She is here for three weeks backpacking around on vacation and also a scouting mission. Next year when her granddaughters are 7 and 8 she is planning on bringing them to Morocco. I am very impressed not only with the way that she is traveling around alone, but also with her granddaughter project. She says that though she [View Full Entry]

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Maryam’s baby still didn’t have a definite name when I got back, so I got to weigh in on my pick of names. I voted with both grandmothers for Selma, though I’m not sure that was Hichem’s first choice. For once the women got to decide something. We outnumbered him by quite a bit since both grandmothers and Maryam’s sister stayed for over a week to help out. They had the first baby party on the traditional 7th day after she was born, but since Maryam had been in the hospital until the day before the party, they kept it small [View Full Entry]

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After camp I took a few days to recover and relax before heading back over the mountains to Kelaa. The gorges are just off the main road that goes north from Ouarzazate towards Errachidia, where Maryam took me to have L-Eide Kbir with her family in January. I met another volunteer who had been working at the Errachidia camp and we spent the day hiking through the canyons along the road. To get out of the town of Boulmane and up to the gorges we took a transit, which is a kind of van stuffed with at least twenty people and [View Full Entry]

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I had no idea what to expect at camp in Morocco. In some ways it reminded me of camps I have attended back home, though with a lot less structure, organization and planning. I think part of that stems from the fact that the five American PCVs were not really in charge of the campers, we were just supposed to teach English classes and do activities in the mornings. The Moroccan staff had all the real responsibility for counting heads and keeping the kids out of trouble. They were the professionals, the Americans just helped out as best we could when [View Full Entry]

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Up early in the morning I took yet another bus to Zagora where I had promised my mudir (director of my Dar Chebab) I would look up his sister and her sons who worked with tourists before I went on to M’Hamid, where the road ends in the desert near the Algerian border. After a couple phone calls and talking to some of the guys who approached me on the street, a man came up to me and said he would take me to one of the nephews. He led me to a new, black SUV which had a couple French [View Full Entry]

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Considering I haven’t yet been here a year and I spend the vast majority of my time working at my site, I have managed to travel quite a bit already. This trip up and over the Tishka Pass was just as beautiful as the first time and much more comfortable since I managed to keep the seat next to me empty the whole way. The snow has almost entirely melted off the mountains along the pass and only dirty patches cling to the bare peaks along the windy road. The trade off is an abundance of little waterfalls that drop over [View Full Entry]

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