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Published: February 25th 2013
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February 17, 2013
What has been happening in Morocco in February other than what we have relayed in our specific blog posts? Let us begin with winter in Ain Cheggag. Most days it is so unbelievably cold that we wear long johns under our jeans and 4 layers of tops under our coats. The long johns and socks for the following one, two, maybe three days, are the same ones that we wore to bed because taking them off would be excruciating. LET US REPEAT – THERE IS NO HEAT OF ANY KIND and IT IS FREEZING! Many women here wear their warm pajamas all day.
Onto showering, even if the shower water was hot, the before and after nakedness would be too much to bear. Tooth brushing, however, is essential to us and can be done with freezing water. Being dirty prevents frostbite so it is acceptable, and in fact, is not near as bad as we once thought. Luckily, the cold reduces sweat and keeps the fact that we are dirty from being so obvious. We have learned the value of baby wipes.
We are doing both our learning and teaching in the dar chebab now.
The building is concrete with few windows to let sun inside. The first few days, one of the windows was broken and fully open. We have learned how to write with our gloves on, and wearing a warm hat is a necessity. We have forgotten the meaning of, “heat,” “central heating” and “furnace.” We can now say that although extremely unpleasant, it IS possible to live in freezing temperatures without heat or fuel oil. Blankets and our own body heat are our saving graces at night. There is no brandy or tequila to warm the blood here and if there were, it would be “shooma” (shame). Yes, it is true … we still have not imbibed even once. The occasion is about as likely to present itself as us being served ham for dinner. It is UNLAWFUL for a Moroccan to drink alcohol, but in truth, we do see empty beer bottles sometimes (though not that often). FYI, there is also no separation of church and state and the King is the head of Islam and law.
Onto the really great part - - - the youth! See swearti bizef!!! (lots of photos). We have done several activities with
Our version of Moroccan dinner...
We made couscous with Parmesan cheese (think polenta) and oven roasted veggies topped with fresh pan cooked fish. YUMMO!!! the kids, all of which involve English in some way, whether requiring them to speak or recognize words. One night, our group of six paired up and gave an English lesson on one night - - we did a lesson on parts of the face and the other groups did greetings and family members. We had a turnout of about 80 youth. They had great fun and so did we. At least for now, the audience is interested and excited.
We also had an activity where we had youth draw a map of the town - - a map from females and one from males. This activity gave us perspective of the two genders - - very different focuses. The female map did not even have a soccer field on it, which is a very big part of the city. Females’ homes and schools were identified as the most prominent. The other day, we had the youth vote on what types of activities they would be interested in and provide a schedule of availability. We are in the process of tallying up the information to produce a formal schedule. This is an activity which we will do at our
Our "mom"'s for real Moroccan dish...
Tagine with potatoes, tomatoes and herbs, topped with a whole fish! (Remember, this dish is eaten only with your hands!) permanent site. We will find out that location mid-March.
Some notes about these youth activities: Most of the youth do NOT speak any English. You may ask how we have successful activities. It is hard to say, exactly, but somehow it works out. We all do a lot of miming, and having fun with it helps. When we get to our final site, we would love to receive some resources from home - - paper, pens, crayons, rulers, erasers, stickers, glue, tape, etc. There are NO resources provided by the dar chebab here. We have purchased some items with our own money and it is expensive to buy these things. Peace Corps pays only for our room and board, so if you are interested in helping, please let us know.
Friday is always cous-cous day. It is always warm to the belly and delicious. This past Sunday, we went to the store to find some polenta, but only found some very fine cous-cous. It worked like a champ and we were heroes (we added butter, parmesan cheese and chicken broth), although we had no idea what we were doing. We made this dish, along with some mild, pan-fried
white fish and blanched broccoli for our host family. They asked us to buy shrimp, which we did, and they kept telling us that we had to fry it, which we didn’t. They were turned onto healthy, peel and eat boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce. It was a hit with some, not with others.
To Sundays ago, we made Mac and Cheese with Velveeta which we brought from the US. This dish was NOT a hit - - too much cheese, we were told. BsHal ! (really?!?!?). We will save our other block for a party with other PC volunteers at a future date. On the other hand, our salads are a big hit, although the lettuce part is not very popular. We also served grapes and our family peeled them.
One other note about dining is that belching is A-ok. Our memory banks will be forever full of the sights and sounds of belching from the old to the young, and from the male to the female. The proximity of one another at the dining table is close, so we back off from the scents of it when possible. We both hope that we do not pick
up this habit.
Also at meals, we have generally put our foot down when it comes to sharing the communal water glass, particularly when someone has coughed into it. Coughing and covering one’s mouth do not go together from our observations thus far. We try to show our “little brother” how to do this, but it probably will not stick when we are gone.
Language is really hard, but it is starting to click. You may remember from earlier posts that the language is not written, so phonetics are the basis for studying (qua-rah is the word for to study). It is really weird and many of the phrases do not have an understandable translation into English. We still have some awkward silence moments with our family, but they are patient. We have about a month left here to learn more language and get this town into a routine before we move on. Wish us luck.
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Wendy
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Brrrr!
I continue to be amazed and impressed by you two. Dirty and cold, but you still have huge smiles on your faces! Hope warm weather comes you way soon!!