Another New Family

---

Opportunities correspond with almost mathematical accuracy to the ability to use them. -Lilian Whiting

I changed host families after about a week in Kelaa, but hopefully this is it for the moving until I get my own place now. This new family is really only a young couple, but they are so wonderful; I couldn’t ask for anything more. I feel very lucky to be living with them.
The wife, Maryam, is not much older than me and we get along great. She actually used to work for Peace Corps as an LCF, “Language and Cultural Facilitator” in Federalese. We were talking about the US government the other day, and how much it’s involved in Peace Corps and I told her than when she worked for PC her paycheck was actually US citizens’ tax money, she thought that was pretty amazing.
She is now an English teacher in an outlying village, called a duwar. She works at the junior high, but only two mornings a week. The English program at the junior high level is new in Morocco and there are not only very few teachers in it, but also very few participating school and very little work. Nevertheless, it is a much needed program because in high school the students are under a lot of pressure to succeed in English, though they often do not have enough classtime to learn all they need to know to pass the exams. This is one problem I hear about a lot from my students at the Dar Chebab. They have to study far too many subjects and they don’t have enough time to begin a new language at that point. From what I have seen of their schedules, they definitely have a lot of subjects to study and the exams are worse than stressful.
But back to Maryam. The biggest news in her life right now is not the foreigner that has taken up residence in her spare room, it’s that she’s pregnant. When I met her she was just starting to show, but of course I didn’t notice until she told me.
Her husband, Hichem, is a very sweet and kind person, almost shy. The other day he was explaining a verse from the Koran to me, and it was very serious, but I couldn’t help laughing because the way he was standing he looked like an elf or some sort of little forest gnome. Not that he’s particularly short, but he does have an impish sort of way about him. As I get to know him better I am starting to learn more about his sense of humor and be able to joke with him. He doesn’t speak English like Maryam, but we get by with Arabic and French. He works for the Ministry of Agriculture here in Kelaa, but both of them are from Er Rachidia.

---