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Published: March 7th 2006
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Travels With Cara
It was a long day and we were hungry and stuck waiting in the taxi while the other passengers had lunch and the driver prayed at the mosque. But this photo makes it all worth it. The reason I got to travel over to this other side of the Atlas is for a weekend workshop to train me as a VSN counselor. The Volunteer Support Network is a group of PCVs who are trained to counsel our peers. We are not professionals (three days of training cannot work miracles) but when we are out in our sites it is sometimes not very feasible to go to get professional counseling in Rabat. Peace Corps does provide psychologist services (and I have heard they are very good) though sometimes talking to a Moroccan, no matter how good they are, isn’t what we need. We need another American who understands what it is like to live in a fishbowl, who understands why the sight of a plastic bag can make a person want to scream, in short, who understands all the little things that drive us crazy here. Peace Corps Volunteers are in such a unique situation that sometimes only other PCVs can understand what we are going through.
Enter VSN. We are on call and in a Moroccan village near you. That was my advertisement.
Besides the workshop sessions I got to spend a weekend with
Tinjdad
Moshay's town is about as different from my town as coule be. He gets gorgeous sunsets though. several other PCVs who I have not seen since November and meet some new PCVs who have been in country longer than me. We talked about our sites and new homes and host families and cooked. We cooked a lot. Bringing Americans together seems to bring out the best in our culinary abilities. It wasn’t like the Christmas feast, but in a way it was almost better since we had several days of meals instead of trying to cook everything we have been craving all in one giant meal.
We made chili and tacos - with real fresh made tortillas and cheddar sent from the US - and I made my great-great aunt Elsie’s chowder. No clams in the Sahara, but corn is a rare treat. Cara made lentil burgers and we ate more popcorn and peanut butter than I have seen in months. We watched Harry Potter and new Family Guy episodes that Marc downloaded off the internet. In short, it was a mini-vacation that counted as work.
There were quite a few incidents that made the week memorable but at the top of the list has to be Moshay’s kitchen. In a last minute scramble to
replace the person who had planned to host the training, we ended up all staying with Moshay though he just got his house a month ago and wasn’t completely set up for hosting yet. The trainers knew that, but they didn’t know to what extent his house wasn’t ready to host. Granted, he had enough ponjes (little mattress/couch things) for us to sleep and sit. He had a hot water heater - I don’t even have hot water. He had peanut butter. But he didn’t have a stove to cook on and he will never live it down. He lived a month in his own place without cooking anything. The first night, after spending the day stocking the kitchen with food for the next three days and even borrowing pots and pans from the neighbors, we set out to cook dinner - and finally noticed there was no stove. It was just so incomprehensible that there not be one that we hadn’t thought to check. We rushed around town trying to find a store that was open finally borrowed a stove from another volunteer. Moshay broke down and bought one the next day. And he was a wonderful host, very tolerant of our constant jokes about his lack of stove.
Tingdad isn’t really the kind of town that attracts tourists. Actually there isn’t really much there, which is probably why it gets a volunteer. But I enjoyed watching sunsets from the roof and playing with Moshay’s puppy Mushkila who has grown a lot since I last saw her in Immouzzer three months ago. We didn’t really go out much but that was part of the fun. We didn’t have to go out. This wasn’t my community and I didn’t have to be super friendly with all the neighbors. I got to sit inside watching Family guy and eating peanut butter - and learning all about VSN of course.
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