Another exciting weekend sitting around home

---

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 a library, so the mudir worked around all the bickering and politics and emptied out a storage room for me to use as the new library. At the moment it is only a few sets of shelves with books organized quite primitively. I am working on getting a system for cataloguing the books. Currently, anybody can check out a book for a week if they bring me a photocopy of their identity card. I just write down the person’s name and the title of the book in a notebook and check it off when they bring it back. Some books are already missing that I know were not checked out. I can only hope they are being read and may some day return to the library.

Another problem with the library is that while we have a large, beautiful selection of children’s story books in English (thank you Sabre Foundation and Rabat American School) the books in Arabic tend to be old texts, history, and development books that are even less interesting to kids than they are to me. I am currently searching for an organization to donate kids’ picture books in Arabic. Last week we had some highly unseasonal (and from my point of view wonderful) rain so I spend some time reading stories to kids who would have otherwise been outside playing basketball. The trick is, that I was reading in English and stopping after every sentence to either translate, act it out, or ask one of the high school students to help translate if they happened to be around. At least I got a lot of laughs for my efforts. Since opening the library I have earned a large entourage of small children who never paid any attention to me before since they weren’t interested in my English classes or the Environmental Club.

On the home front, I had my first guest yesterday. I made pizza for my friend Najat and she came over for lunch. We chatted for a few hours, though to any normal American it would probably have sounded like we were fighting. Little discussions and disagreements, though they may sounds like a friendly conversation to an Arab speaker, tend to sound like horrible arguments to English speakers. Part of it is that here everybody tends to speak at the same time and raising your voice just means you want to be heard, not that you’re upset. It wasn’t bad with just the two of us, but imagine the meetings of my Environmental Club when everybody is excited about their idea for out next project! It sounds like chaos and partly is, though it works here.

Najat is about 30 and a junior high Arabic teacher. We talked about politics and religion and sexism and all those sorts of topics that tend invite disagreement between me and most Moroccans. It was a great afternoon. Najat is busy with work and such, so I don’t really get to see her much and it has been hard for me to cultivate much friendship there. I have two really good friends in Maryam (English teacher and my Arabic tutor/ host family who has 1 ½ month old baby) and Fouzia (landlady who lives downstairs). Both are about 30, but I would like a slightly wider circle of friends sometimes. As long as I have to live in a city I am going to enjoy one of the advantages I have here: educated women.

As for my own education, I am trying hard to cram in more Darija (Moroccan dialect) in the next two weeks before my next Peace Corps language test. They are overhauling the tutoring system due to some budget mismanagement and have cut our tutor’s monthly wage from 800 dirhams to 500 dirhams, which is more in line with what other Peace Corps countries in our region pay for tutoring. I finally cemented in my head the word for history in Arabic just this morning, (after using it for weeks): tarekh or tarikh, depending on how you transcribe Arabic script. It’s the standard Arabic word, not the Moroccan dialect one. I have got enough dialect down to get around fine in everyday life and understand most conversations, so I am starting to learn a little Standard here and there. I need it to read. I learned the script pretty well and can write and sound out the words in the newspaper and in the announcements on the wall of the Youth Center, but since the vocab is so different in Standard Arabic I can hardly understand much of anything. I reminds me of how the official language of Vatican City is Latin, which is about as much like modern Italian as Standard (Koranic) Arabic is like Moroccan Arabic.

But I’m still having fun learning.

---

Photos

Traditional Water Mug
Clay water jars are traditionally painted inside with tar to keep the water cold and people still say it tastes better that way. Clay cups are painted with tar to cool and flavor water.

Selma
Getting bigger, at a month and a half old.

Tazi
And my little one is about three months old.

لا الللإرهب
I happened by an anti-terrorism protest last weekend and caught two of my Women's Center students in action. The slogan in script means No Terrorism.

Comments

[MPK]

reponse
salutHEATHER C'EST BIEN DE CONTINUER L'ARABE MAIS COMME TU FAIS PRESQUE DE L 'Immersion CA DEVRAIT bien MARCHER J'ai trouve ta ville tu es bien sur le haut Atlas Amities MPK

[Lynn Wood]

Inspired
Heather you are truly an inspiration. When I read your journal I get lost in your adventure and can imagine the daily frustrations of learning a new language; of which I am sure is multiplied compared to what I felt learning a latin based language. I have to share a funny story-- I sat next to a gal in chemistry that was from Persia and she took notes in her native language. One day she asked if she was absent if she could borrow my notes and she would lend me hers if I ever needed them. When I glanced down at her paper it looked like a fantastic tapestry made of lead and paper, not chemistry notes! So for what its worth I think you are amazing and I think you are doing a really great thing.