12-18-2007 EID KABIR SHEEP SHOPPING
‘Tis the season! In a few days it will be time for the Muslim holiday of Eid Kabir (“The Big Feast”). The day commemorates the Koranic/Biblical story in which God tested Abraham’s faith by commanding him to kill his son, but at the last minute sent a sheep instead. So in Moroccan tradition, families go out, buy a sheep, do what good ol’ Abraham did, and we all chow down!
This morning was sheep shopping time. My host dad, Hassan, cheerfully bounded up to the room I share with my host brother, Karim, around 6:00am to wake us up so we could beat the crowds and claim our prize. Maybe it’s because it’s the holiday season back home, but as we groggily bundled up for the crisp morning air, I couldn’t help but feel like we were trekking out to chop down and carry home the family Christmas tree. The whole experience actually turned out to be quite similar, except the trees moved around and “baaa-ed” a lot.
Even though we got to the market just after sunrise, it seemed like the whole town was already there. We walked past a wall of tents and trucks filled up with hay and other sheepish food, emerging into a flood of people at least a thousand strong and their fluffy goods, thousands stronger. Customers bustled about, sizing up sheep while shepherds struggled to keep their little flocks of ten or so separate from those of other shepherds. There were all different sheep-sizes to fit your budget and appetite, from little knee biters, to big bullish ones with curly horns (I swear I saw one that was at least the size of a small donkey—no joke).
The whole place was a moving mass of people and sheep-ole, all trying to get around each other in different directions. It was tough (not to mention hazardous with all the horns and all) just to move ten feet. Luckily though, if you got off balance or pushed over, odds were in your favor that you’d most likely land on and bounce off of a big fluffy sheep. So if you thought of it as a game, or a giant sheep-bouncing ball pit, it was quite fun!
My host dad—who had spent most of the morning convinced that I didn’t understand what we were going to do and thus had been looking at me, baa-ing, and squeezing my arm to see if I was a good hunk of meat all morning—would not just settle for any old sheep. He was out for a bargain! We spent two hours squishing through the sheep-crowds while he expertly squeezed their hips to make sure there was some meat under all that fluff, checked out their teeth (and some other areas I weren’t sure were necessary), and picked them up by their back legs to gauge their weight before asking the shepherd how much he was selling for. Then, of course, we had to act surprised that the price was so high, argue with the guy for at least 10 minutes—each party prodding the sheep in different places the whole time trying to prove his point about the price—after which we had to walk away in a huff saying we had seen a cheaper, better sheep, then come back ten minutes later to argue more. After finally buying it, we’d then shower the seller with praises about his generosity and beautiful children, and he’d bless all of our parents. Gotta love a good bargain war-con-make up!
Then, once we found a big fluffy guy with a black head and curly horns that passed Hassan’s approval, a new game began. It was called “guide a giant sheep who doesn’t really want to follow you through a massive crowd of shepherds and the flocks over which they kept watch.” Hassan played this game by picking up the sheep’s back legs like they were playing wheelbarrow, and piloting him forward while Karim guided him by the horns. Then we flagged down a donkey cart-guy to ship the now-four of us back home.
Everyone was eagerly waiting at home to see the prize the boys were bringing back. We proudly carried hoisted the tree—I mean sheep—into the house while the family ooh-ed and ah-ed. The kids played with the new toy, and we all sad down to a hearty breakfast as a reward.
The actual feast isn’t for a few days, so I was a bit confused as to what we were going to do with Mr. Baa-Baa Black Sheep. That is, until I went to use the bathroom that afternoon, and lo and behold, I bring you tidings of a great sheep wrapped in swaddling wool, eating hay out of his own little manger. For unto me, a sheep was bought—who now resides in my lavatory—awaiting the day when he will fulfill his purpose as the sacrificial lamb of God. And on the third day, he will rise again… as lamb chops.
12-21-2007 THE BIG DAY
Mbrouk l’Eid! Merry Eid-mas! Today is the day! I woke up to the sounds of my host sisters rolling up the carpets in the living room. I came downstairs, still a bit sleepy, greeted by a rather excited host dad holding a giant knife. He was, once again, eager to communicate the subtleties of the cultural experience in which I was about to share, so he Baa-ed again, mimed beheading himself, and doubled over laughing.
Just about that time, I heard Karim struggling with something upstairs. The bathroom slash stable was upstairs—so I figured he was having some issues with our sheep. Then from the upstairs, there arose such a clatter, I left my beheaded host dad to see what was the matter. There was Karim, ramming his shoulder against the bathroom door. Apparently, sometime last night, our sheeply-sacrifice had managed to somehow trip the door lock from the inside. Never again will I doubt the intelligence of sheep. The lil’ guy knew what was coming.
Now imagine what would have happened if Abraham’s sacrificial lamb had gotten stuck in his bathroom: He would have ended up having to sacrifice his poor son—there would have been no seven-tribes of Israel, no Judaism, no Christianity, no Islam, no monotheism whatsoever—so one can see the importance of this seminal event to the entire world and the future of humanity. With this in mind, you can imagine the passion with which we ended up having to kick open the bathroom door.
But we got the guy! We brought him downstairs, and… well… I’ll spare the graphic details for my vegetarian friends. But let’s just say I learned some important things about the inner-workings of a sheep. For instance, when you take a skinned sheep (which is actually quite skinny after you peel the wool and fat off—it’s kind of like a corn-dog) and hang it like a piñata in front of your doorway, then you open him up to get at the goodies inside, if it’s a cold day, the inside will actually start steaming! Cool!
After we sent Mr. Baa Baa back to his maker—saving little Issac and ensuring the continuation of monotheism and the Abrahamic covenant—Mama fired up the coals and we had ourselves a sheep-becue! I sat around the table with my Moroccan family, wrapping up little bits of who-knows-what organ in sheep fat, sticking it on a skewer, and handing it to Mama to grill over a wood fire. Already worn out from the days events, I wondered why everybody goes though all this effort every year when they could just go buy their Eid Kabir meat neatly packaged at the market (Butterball could make a killing on this holiday if they expanded their market). But as we sat around the wood coals, laughing, eating our intimately-slaughtered snacks, and praising God for our bounty, I realized that this is probably EXACTLY what Abraham did with his family on that day a good 5,000 years-or-so ago. I mean, down to the last detail—slaughtering a sheep and cleaning it with nothing but a knife and some helping hands, then cooking it over a wood fire and praising God with family. I felt like I was taking part in what may be one of the oldest recorded traditions in all history.
For the Lord said, “Let there be lamb, and let Hassan have dominion over all the lamb of the Ben Guerir market place.” And lamb there was, and it tasted good.
Humdu’ilah!
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Labels I forgot to put on the pictures below
1. The US Ambassador speaking at our swearing in
2. The whole Youth Development group along with our program manager and Arabic Teachers.
3. My host Dad, 3 sisters, and little Zachariah
4. One last look out over Fez
5. Me, my host brother Karim, and youth leader Ghita
2. The whole Youth Development group along with our program manager and Arabic Teachers.
3. My host Dad, 3 sisters, and little Zachariah
4. One last look out over Fez
5. Me, my host brother Karim, and youth leader Ghita
Mid-December Thoughts
12-14-07 CAFÉ GUY
I was sitting in my favorite café today, drinking ns-ns (“Half-Half.” It’s half black espresso and half milk, like a latte in a double shot glass),and thinking to myself that I’d rather just sit there and read a book than go teach an English lesson in a half hour like I had to. I looked around and realized the man who waits on me every day wasn’t around. I was a bit jarred. That café is my place of normalcy—same man, same drink, same Moroccans watching what always appears to be the same soccer game (still dudes kicking a ball around). But then I though about it, and was glad that the poor guy had a day off. I mean, I see him there every day.
Then, as if on cue, he walked in from outside—must have just been out to get something. He walked up to me, shook my hand, and we had our same quick little “What’s up/Not much” conversation we have every time (that’s part of my normalcy café experience—no conjugation, or translation involved! Plus he’s always running around busy with no time for chit-chat). But this time, I got bold and broke the normalcy game.
I said what I think was the equivalent of “Jeeze man, you work EVERY single day?” He just smiled at me, and as a subtle look of pride crossed his face, he nodded and said Humdo’illah (Thanks be to God).
I was oddly taken aback—like I usually am when Arabic conversations go somewhere different than I had planned them to. I had been making American-style job whining conversation, expecting some response like “Yup, idiots can’t run this place without me,” or “The old-ball-n-chain wants to repaint the kitchen,” or at least something grumbley. It bothered me that he had just shaken-up my whole sense of working-class conversation.
It was wild. Rather than doing what I though would be the typical thing, and complaining that he had to work so much, this man was honestly grateful that he has the chance to run around serving coffee all day every day, because most people in town can’t even find work, much less full time. Rather than a burden, this work was a gift from God. Rather than a source of annoyance, his job was a source of pride, and the source of a good life for his family.
After, my little space-out, it was time to pack up and head to class. As I was getting up to go, the man came out, surprised that I was leaving so quickly. He asked if I was heading to work.
And I said, “Yup.”
Then, in unison, we both smiled and said “Humdo’illah.”
12-17-2007 WHAT I DO
I realized I’ve written quite a bit about random experiences I’ve had, but not a lot about what I do on a daily basis—mostly because I get a lot of “Hey Chris, good blog. So what do you actually do there?” emails. So, by request:
Officially, I spend 6 days a week working at a Youth Center here in Ben Guerir, primarily with a “Youth and English Club” set up by the last PC volunteer. The club, which is run by a group of youth leaders, has about 30 members ranging from ages 14-28 (The concept of “youth” is different here. It essentially applies to you if you are unmarried and still live with your family, which is fairly common here among 20-somethings. Most of the members are still in high school, but some have jobs and come to work with the club as sort of a “volunteer” project).
As far as the club goes: In the morning, they run a small “library” that consists of one bookshelf full of beginning and intermediate English (and some French) reading materials, and a bunch of dictionaries. Usually, between 7 and 15 kids show up every morning—sometimes to check out books, sometimes looking for English homework help, or sometimes just to have a quiet place to study with their friends. The club members run the library with a watchful eye and an super-organized sign-out system.
In the afternoons, the club does classes, events, or activities. I meet with the leaders every Sunday and we plan the next weeks events (well, THEY plan them in a big 2 hour Arabic conversation that I give up on trying to follow a fourth of the way through. Then, in the last 2 minutes, someone translates a synopsis and asks if it sounds good, and I give a resounding “Uh-huh,” which, lucky for me, translates perfectly into Arabic).
I usually take 2 of the afternoons to do English classes. I’m attempting to have one class that’s more beginning-intermediate grammar based, and one more advanced “discussion” class—but it usually depends on which students show up as to what level I end up teaching. I have to design “transformable” classes in which I can turn my planned discussion into a grammar lesson if more beginner students happen to show up that day, or vice versa.
While most club members are very interested in learning English, ultimately, they’re more excited about activities and especially discussions. On the other afternoons, one of the youth leaders will plan a discussion on a certain subject—women’s rights in morocco, generational differences, education, religion, or something along those lines—and everyone just shows up and has at it. It often gets quite heated. They get quite passionate about these issues. I was confused at first as to why everyone would get so worked up about doing these. It was odd for me that the youth here were always so eager to have a “discussion” activity. But I realized that they rarely, if ever, have a chance to do something like this where young men and women can come together and just talk openly about issues that face them and their society. The school system is fairly passive learning, and just like in the US, youth aren’t usually going to want to get into these discussions with parents and families, so they jump on the chance to just talk with each other and be heard at the youth center.
One of their favorite activities is to put someone in a chair at the front of the room, close the door, and ask them absolutely anything. Of course the person has the freedom not to answer if he/she is uncomfortable, but since it’s a mixed-gender setting, students usually respect boundaries on certain topics. For me, it was another one of those “why is this such a big deal to them” things, but again, these are discussions the students just don’t often get the chance to have outside of the club. It’s really fun to see how much people will open up in the club. They absolutely love it, and tend to do it at least once a week. I think it’s the same phenomenon that happens when youth have a place to come together in the US. It’s just so important to youth to have a safe place, away from “adults” and other authority figures, just to talk.
Other than that, the club has “talent nights” where people can just come up to the front of the room and sing, or some students will put together little impromptu theatre pieces, and people will usually ask me to play the theme from Titanic again (yes my secret it out—though Tracey Chapman’s “Fast Car” is a new frequent request). Also, the club partners up with local organizations to do AIDS education training programs, or goes out to the countryside to do activities with youth in low-budget schools there.
This self-sustaining club situation is usually what every Youth Development Volunteer strives to achieve in 2 years here—and I’m walking into it from the beginning! Consequently, I often feel a bit useless (You mean you’re inviting ME to come help you do an AIDS workshop at the high school? Wait, I’m in the Peace Corps, isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?). However, I’ve enjoyed my role just being a part of the club and their activities. Plus, the whole goal of a Peace Corps project is to work yourself out of a job, and the last Volunteer pretty much did that for me (thanks Bart!). But there are still plenty of things that can be done in the club and in the rest of the city as well.
Most of all, my experience with the club continues to teach me a valuable lesson (a lesson a lot of Americans, and ESPECIALLY Peace Corps Volunteers, have a tough time with): The “developing world” is not sitting around wallowing in ignorance and self pity, waiting for brilliant white-folk with PhD’s to single handedly lift them out of their misery. First off, they’re not “miserable” (From what I’ve seen, there’s quite a low suicide rate, an odd lack of depressive disorders and “mid-life-crises,” and a perplexing frequency of general day-to-day life satisfaction when compared with the “developed” world). Plus they’re sharp, they’re socially active, they have great ideas, and they’re sure as heck putting them to use! True, funding is always needed (just like with social programs in the US!), and organizations here are always eager for skills-transfer and idea sharing. But that’s the key—it’s idea SHARING. They have fabulous programs here and great ideas already in place. Development is about honest partnership, not charity and self-gratification.
From what I’ve heard from other sorts of “development workers” here: When you go into a situation, eager to use your new ideas to help a place “develop,” you almost always come out having learned more than you taught, having been offered more than you had to offer, and ultimately having gotten more than you gave. When you work more as a partner than a “developer,” you quickly learn that you’re working alongside people—bright, driven PEOPLE people—you know the kind that eat, sleep, laugh, have families, get colds, think, and change the world. It’s laughable, but when you take a group like “Muslims,” stop reading about them, and start talking to them—people are almost disappointingly familiar. “Damn, I wanted to have a cultural experience, but there are all of these PEOPLE people around! Where are the anthropological things I read about in books? These people just LIVE man. They’re just like us and stuff—I’m outa here!” By the end, you’re finally working with people who are no longer just socio-economic statistics in your mind—and in the end—it turns out you’re the one who has been “developed.”
I was sitting in my favorite café today, drinking ns-ns (“Half-Half.” It’s half black espresso and half milk, like a latte in a double shot glass),and thinking to myself that I’d rather just sit there and read a book than go teach an English lesson in a half hour like I had to. I looked around and realized the man who waits on me every day wasn’t around. I was a bit jarred. That café is my place of normalcy—same man, same drink, same Moroccans watching what always appears to be the same soccer game (still dudes kicking a ball around). But then I though about it, and was glad that the poor guy had a day off. I mean, I see him there every day.
Then, as if on cue, he walked in from outside—must have just been out to get something. He walked up to me, shook my hand, and we had our same quick little “What’s up/Not much” conversation we have every time (that’s part of my normalcy café experience—no conjugation, or translation involved! Plus he’s always running around busy with no time for chit-chat). But this time, I got bold and broke the normalcy game.
I said what I think was the equivalent of “Jeeze man, you work EVERY single day?” He just smiled at me, and as a subtle look of pride crossed his face, he nodded and said Humdo’illah (Thanks be to God).
I was oddly taken aback—like I usually am when Arabic conversations go somewhere different than I had planned them to. I had been making American-style job whining conversation, expecting some response like “Yup, idiots can’t run this place without me,” or “The old-ball-n-chain wants to repaint the kitchen,” or at least something grumbley. It bothered me that he had just shaken-up my whole sense of working-class conversation.
It was wild. Rather than doing what I though would be the typical thing, and complaining that he had to work so much, this man was honestly grateful that he has the chance to run around serving coffee all day every day, because most people in town can’t even find work, much less full time. Rather than a burden, this work was a gift from God. Rather than a source of annoyance, his job was a source of pride, and the source of a good life for his family.
After, my little space-out, it was time to pack up and head to class. As I was getting up to go, the man came out, surprised that I was leaving so quickly. He asked if I was heading to work.
And I said, “Yup.”
Then, in unison, we both smiled and said “Humdo’illah.”
12-17-2007 WHAT I DO
I realized I’ve written quite a bit about random experiences I’ve had, but not a lot about what I do on a daily basis—mostly because I get a lot of “Hey Chris, good blog. So what do you actually do there?” emails. So, by request:
Officially, I spend 6 days a week working at a Youth Center here in Ben Guerir, primarily with a “Youth and English Club” set up by the last PC volunteer. The club, which is run by a group of youth leaders, has about 30 members ranging from ages 14-28 (The concept of “youth” is different here. It essentially applies to you if you are unmarried and still live with your family, which is fairly common here among 20-somethings. Most of the members are still in high school, but some have jobs and come to work with the club as sort of a “volunteer” project).
As far as the club goes: In the morning, they run a small “library” that consists of one bookshelf full of beginning and intermediate English (and some French) reading materials, and a bunch of dictionaries. Usually, between 7 and 15 kids show up every morning—sometimes to check out books, sometimes looking for English homework help, or sometimes just to have a quiet place to study with their friends. The club members run the library with a watchful eye and an super-organized sign-out system.
In the afternoons, the club does classes, events, or activities. I meet with the leaders every Sunday and we plan the next weeks events (well, THEY plan them in a big 2 hour Arabic conversation that I give up on trying to follow a fourth of the way through. Then, in the last 2 minutes, someone translates a synopsis and asks if it sounds good, and I give a resounding “Uh-huh,” which, lucky for me, translates perfectly into Arabic).
I usually take 2 of the afternoons to do English classes. I’m attempting to have one class that’s more beginning-intermediate grammar based, and one more advanced “discussion” class—but it usually depends on which students show up as to what level I end up teaching. I have to design “transformable” classes in which I can turn my planned discussion into a grammar lesson if more beginner students happen to show up that day, or vice versa.
While most club members are very interested in learning English, ultimately, they’re more excited about activities and especially discussions. On the other afternoons, one of the youth leaders will plan a discussion on a certain subject—women’s rights in morocco, generational differences, education, religion, or something along those lines—and everyone just shows up and has at it. It often gets quite heated. They get quite passionate about these issues. I was confused at first as to why everyone would get so worked up about doing these. It was odd for me that the youth here were always so eager to have a “discussion” activity. But I realized that they rarely, if ever, have a chance to do something like this where young men and women can come together and just talk openly about issues that face them and their society. The school system is fairly passive learning, and just like in the US, youth aren’t usually going to want to get into these discussions with parents and families, so they jump on the chance to just talk with each other and be heard at the youth center.
One of their favorite activities is to put someone in a chair at the front of the room, close the door, and ask them absolutely anything. Of course the person has the freedom not to answer if he/she is uncomfortable, but since it’s a mixed-gender setting, students usually respect boundaries on certain topics. For me, it was another one of those “why is this such a big deal to them” things, but again, these are discussions the students just don’t often get the chance to have outside of the club. It’s really fun to see how much people will open up in the club. They absolutely love it, and tend to do it at least once a week. I think it’s the same phenomenon that happens when youth have a place to come together in the US. It’s just so important to youth to have a safe place, away from “adults” and other authority figures, just to talk.
Other than that, the club has “talent nights” where people can just come up to the front of the room and sing, or some students will put together little impromptu theatre pieces, and people will usually ask me to play the theme from Titanic again (yes my secret it out—though Tracey Chapman’s “Fast Car” is a new frequent request). Also, the club partners up with local organizations to do AIDS education training programs, or goes out to the countryside to do activities with youth in low-budget schools there.
This self-sustaining club situation is usually what every Youth Development Volunteer strives to achieve in 2 years here—and I’m walking into it from the beginning! Consequently, I often feel a bit useless (You mean you’re inviting ME to come help you do an AIDS workshop at the high school? Wait, I’m in the Peace Corps, isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?). However, I’ve enjoyed my role just being a part of the club and their activities. Plus, the whole goal of a Peace Corps project is to work yourself out of a job, and the last Volunteer pretty much did that for me (thanks Bart!). But there are still plenty of things that can be done in the club and in the rest of the city as well.
Most of all, my experience with the club continues to teach me a valuable lesson (a lesson a lot of Americans, and ESPECIALLY Peace Corps Volunteers, have a tough time with): The “developing world” is not sitting around wallowing in ignorance and self pity, waiting for brilliant white-folk with PhD’s to single handedly lift them out of their misery. First off, they’re not “miserable” (From what I’ve seen, there’s quite a low suicide rate, an odd lack of depressive disorders and “mid-life-crises,” and a perplexing frequency of general day-to-day life satisfaction when compared with the “developed” world). Plus they’re sharp, they’re socially active, they have great ideas, and they’re sure as heck putting them to use! True, funding is always needed (just like with social programs in the US!), and organizations here are always eager for skills-transfer and idea sharing. But that’s the key—it’s idea SHARING. They have fabulous programs here and great ideas already in place. Development is about honest partnership, not charity and self-gratification.
From what I’ve heard from other sorts of “development workers” here: When you go into a situation, eager to use your new ideas to help a place “develop,” you almost always come out having learned more than you taught, having been offered more than you had to offer, and ultimately having gotten more than you gave. When you work more as a partner than a “developer,” you quickly learn that you’re working alongside people—bright, driven PEOPLE people—you know the kind that eat, sleep, laugh, have families, get colds, think, and change the world. It’s laughable, but when you take a group like “Muslims,” stop reading about them, and start talking to them—people are almost disappointingly familiar. “Damn, I wanted to have a cultural experience, but there are all of these PEOPLE people around! Where are the anthropological things I read about in books? These people just LIVE man. They’re just like us and stuff—I’m outa here!” By the end, you’re finally working with people who are no longer just socio-economic statistics in your mind—and in the end—it turns out you’re the one who has been “developed.”
Monday, December 10, 2007
Finally in site
11-26-2007 SWEARING IN
Today was the big day. Finally, after almost 3 months of language, culture, safety and education training—after countless PowerPoint’s, frequent traveling, and rarely being unpacked physically or mentally—we are becoming REAL Peace Corps volunteers.
Our swearing-in was held at a ridiculously posh hotel next to Roman ruins that overlook the whole city of Fez. It was a gorgeous hotel, with a canopy, an outdoor pool, and immaculately dressed wait-staff. The whole thing had sort of a "This is your last experience with fancy Europeanized luxury for a long time, so enjoy it while you can!"
During our swearing in, there were speeches from the PC Morocco director, the US ambassador, a representative of the Moroccan government, and three of our trainees gave speeches in the local dialects we’ve been learning. The whole thing culminated with us taking the oath to defend the US constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to serve the Moroccan government to the best of our abilities. Then there we were! It was like graduation, but we didn’t have any hats to throw, so we just kind of stood there and smiled a lot.
Then we had a fancy dinner with lots of little French snacky things (another one of those "this is your LAST" moments). Some of our Moroccan host families even made it to the event!
We were all very excited to be done with training, but didn’t feel much different than we did before the ceremony, probably because it’s hard to be thinking "All right! I’m a REAL PCV now," while you’re in a swanky hotel eating French pastries. I’m sure that feeling is yet to come.
11-27-2007 TRAIN TO BEN GUERIR
It was a very spiritual journey on the train today. A lot of us were headed in the same direction, so we piled into train cars—a bunch of Americans with 2 years worth of luggage—and watched as one by one, our numbers narrowed down as people got off at their sites. While PC training was essential in preparing us linguistically and technically, we all agreed that, mentally, we were more ready to be a PCV before training. When you sign up for something like this, you usually have the mentality of, "Oh heck yeah. I’m gonna move off by myself to the middle of nowhere. I don’t even want to see another American for 2 years, and I’m gonna change the world!" But then, you meet your training group—a bunch of strangers who soon become your closest friends within a thousand miles, and the only people who really understand what’s happening to you. Then, all of the sudden, you realize you don’t want to leave them. And you’re tempted to count the months to your next training workshop when you’ll get to see them all again.
But, we all also agreed that the life we had during training is not what we signed up for: Classrooms, presentations, English, written tests, Americans, Americans, Americans, and frequent runs to the McDonalds in Fez (because even though you’d rather drink chlorinated butter than go to McD’s in the states, here, it feels like home). That’s not what we wanted, and that’s not what we were about to get.
As a PCV, when it was your turn to get off, as you watched the train pull away, you couldn’t help but feel that this was not just a train. It seemed like some magical chariot that just dropped you off into a completely different world, a world where you’re basically done speaking English. You’re done being understood. It’s a world where you’re no longer "The guitar player, the student, the person down the hall." Nope. Now you’re "The American." You’re "The English teacher," Now you’re "that foreign guy who lives in town who’s white but stares blankly at you when you say ‘Bonjour!’" Now you’re a symbol. Now you’re the stars and stripes. Now you’re the go-to for information on anything from George Bush, to Metallica lyrics, to phrasal verbs—none of which you really know that much about.
And you wonder if your view of yourself will change, as you spend 24 hours a day representing something of which you never considered yourself to be a representative. Suddenly, you’re dropped off in a world where "the American" is what defines you—not your name, not your hobbies, not your favorite food—your Americanism. And you didn’t even think "Americanism" was a WORD before this moment! But spell-check says it is, so apparently someone on the Microsoft Word programming staff has done the Peace Corps too….
11-28-2007 ARRIVAL
Got off that good ol’ spiritual train to Peace Corps glory, and my wonderful host brother, Karim, was there to meet me. He’s 24, splits his time between working at a cyber café and being the Vice President of the youth club I’ll be working with. He’s been my saving grace ever since I visited Ben Guerir. Just like most everybody else, he doesn’t speak English, but he’s got this miraculous talent for making me understand him, no matter how long it takes. I don’t know what he does (probably just talks to me like I’m a four year old and uses a lot of hand-gestures), but I’ve somehow been using him as a translator. Whenever some fast-talking Moroccan runs some intelligible Arabic by me, I just reflexively look at him, and he translates speedy Arabic into 2nd-grader level Arabic until I understand. He’s also been taking the time out of his day to take me around to the hundreds important offices I need to visit, as he guides me through the laughably bureaucratic process of getting me a Moroccan work permit (Plenty of jobs are generated by making sure you need to get at least four different stamps from four different people and four different signatures on at least four "essential" copies of four different documents, all of which need at least four 2x1 pictures of you stapled on top. It really does make work for people who need it, but by the time a person is standing in the fourth line for the fourth hour on the fourth day of attempting to APPLY to work, one begins to question which is the bigger monster: Unemployment or bureaucracy…). So I have to give a shout out to Karim—who’s probably currently reading this with the use of Google Translator (another fun trick he taught me)—because he really has been saving my sanity on a daily basis. Thanks Karim!
As Karim and I left the train station, the weekly souk (giant market) was just winding down. Sellers were packing up their crates of fruits, veggies, and live chickens, taking down their canopies, and packing up carts and donkeys. As always, the souk had left its mark of trash, peelings, and rejected goods all over the ground. We walked through the garbage and my newly graduated PCV mind thought "Wow, someone should come up with a wildly creative way to do a souk cleanup every week. Maybe that can be my first project with my youth center!" About that time, we turned a corner, and ran into a giant heard of at least 150 goats and sheep all running right at us towards the souk behind us. I looked at Karim with that "Is this normal or something I should be afraid of" look that I’m sure he’s already used to, and he just pointed at the goats, then at the soiled souk, then wiped the souk clean with his hand. The goats were the souk cleaning crew! Dinner time—it’s brilliant!
That’s one of the most important things they try to teach you in PC training—when there’s a problem you want to fix as a volunteer, there’s a good chance the locals already have a good way to deal with it, considering they’ve been living with the issues for generations. The idea of development is not always to bring in some new revolutionary idea that will fix everything—ask any PCV—those projects are usually the ones that fall flat on their faces immediately. The idea is to work within the local structures that are already there. Don’t reinvent the wheel, or in my case—the goat.
11-30-2007 ISN’T AFRICA SUPPOSED TO BE WARM??
What’s the deal here?? I’m wearing 3 shirts every day, and burying myself under 4 blankets every night and my teeth are still chattering! Isn’t this AFRICA?! I really feel like I shouldn’t be complaining, because I’m sure it’s much colder back home. But it’s a different kind of cold here. It’s not THAT cold, but the difference is, here there’s really no escape from it. All of the buildings here are giant, drafty cementy things that are designed to block out sun, and retain cold. I’m sure they’re wonderful in the summer, as they block out any sun, or even any THOUGHTS of warm—I swear they somehow AMPLIFY the cold and it’s actually warmer outdoors.
I remember winters in the US—I’d be absolutely freezing and frigid walking outside, or starting the car, but then I’d get home and crawl into a toasty warm house, or crank up the heat in the car, and life would be perfect. Here, in my concrete icebox, I can only replicate that feeling if I crawl under four blankets, cover my head, curl into the fetal position, and wait for my own body heat to create this little pocket of warmth that will stay as long as I don’t move an inch. Of course, I wake up in the middle of the night with my legs all cramped up, and have to weigh which one feels worse, cramping or frigid night-desert air. The cramps usually win. But I try to tell myself that it’s reminiscent of Tibetan monks folding themselves into the lotus position and meditating in the mountains. I just pretend I’m dealing with the pins and needles for higher spiritual purposes. If I’m lucky, I’ll hit Nirvana by 5:00am, reaching some other-worldly plane where my mind, my limbs, and the cold don’t exist—and I’ll be able to get some sleep.
I’d probably be fine if I could stay in my little blanket-womb all day, but unfortunately blanket forts aren’t conducive to youth work, so I have to get up and face the cold in the morning. Since the sky is always clear, during the day, I can usually catch some warm rays between the shadows of buildings outside (I swear there’s a tangible 10 degree difference between the sun and the shade). The only problem is, a lot of Moroccans I’ve met are fully convinced that the sun is bad for you. Yesterday, I was reading a book out on the roof of my host family’s house, basking in a glorious ray, when my host mom came up to hang some laundry out to dry. She immediately walked over to me, smiled, dropped a shirt on my head, and told me the sun was bad for me.
Ah well, when my own mom called me that night, I was able to tell her not to worry about me since there was still a woman in my life who was worrying about me in a highly irrational way as only wonderful moms can.
12-2-2007 OBLIVIOUS PUPPY
I’m in what I’ve now decided to call the "Oblivious Puppy" stage of my work and language learning. Mostly because, like a puppy, when I listen to people conversing around me, I perk up every time I hear my name, so I’m aware that they’re talking ABOUT me, but not what they’re saying. It kind of sounds like "Dadada dad a dadadadadadada CHRIS da dad a da dad dad a da ad AMERICANI dadadadadadadadadad CHRIS (lots of laughter) ad adadadadadadad CHRIS!"
Also, like a puppy, I spend my days understanding, and thus gladly following simple commands like sit, go, eat, sleep, eat, drink, eat more, youth center, eat, go, go, eat more. I have certain "masters" who I follow around whenever I need to go somewhere, and they show me off and people smile at my little Arabic tricks. It’s actually a rather enjoyable, oblivious life once you resign yourself to it for a while.
As far as communication goes, I’ve developed my own filtering system where I kind of decide from the gist of what people are saying if it’s something I actually NEED to understand, or something I can just smile and not my way through, feigning understanding. As days go by, a lot more conversations are starting to filter into the latter category, simply out of necessity and courtesy. It’s usually a much more pleasant experience on both sides if I just nod when they nod, smile when they smile, laugh when they laugh, and shake my head and say "God forbid" when they do. It’s amazing how much one can understand of the general mood and theme of a conversation without understanding a word.
I was actually just reading a book that talks about some mythical language in which all humans can understand each other without language, which under normal circumstances I would write off as BS, but here, I’m really starting to believe it. Mostly because there’s no other explanation as to how I’ve understood as much of what’s been going on in my life the last few days as I have. In the US, I’ve been so used to the simplest, surface level, communication that common language offers. I feel like here, with so many languages floating around, people are a little more attuned to communicating through other mediums. I can’t really explain it, you just sort of start to feel the conversation after a while—like when you watch the Spanish soap opera channel—you don’t actually comprehend what’s being said or what’s happening, but you still understand the human drama—who’s bad, who’s good, who’s hurting who, who’s in love with who, who needs something, who is longing, who’s sincere, who has good intentions, who truly cares—these are all concepts that don’t need words. We just recognize them.
But personally, I’ve spent my whole life relying on spoken language to convey all of this. Here—understanding little to nothing—I’m actually enjoying the very pure form of communication on which I’m forced to rely. Words are tricky. They can be misunderstood, said the wrong way, or just plain lies. When I can’t rely on the all-too-easy satisfaction of understanding someone’s words for their face value, I notice the hundreds of other things that are conveyed during communication (like in the Daredevil comic books where the guy goes blind but then all his other senses become superhuman!)—things that are often more true than the words themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of simple things end up taking a lot longer than they should to figure out. But Moroccans are miraculously patient. When I’d just as soon give up, and say "I just don’t understand you. It’s fine. Let’s just move on." They’ll always keep on me until I understand. Surprisingly though, usually if we give it just a little more time, try for just a little bit longer than we want to, we’ll figure each other out. I can honestly say I’ve never had a single incident in which I absolutely could not understand or communicate even a complex subject when both parties gave it enough time.
For example: The other day, I was watching TV with the family, when out of the blue, my host-sister jumped off the couch next to me and yelled something. Suddenly the entire family was on their feet looking at where I was sitting, and yelling something at me. I was really confused, trying to think of what I could have possibly done wrong. They were still pointing at me, so I just decided to join suit and stand up with them. My father pulled me towards him and pointed at the couch I was on, as my sisters tried to lift it up, and my host brother was holding on to the cat, trying to push him under the couch. They kept on saying some word and pointing at the couch. I could tell it was French, cus that’s what everybody tries when I don’t understand what’s going on—and it never works—but they do it anyway, because somewhere, deep within my whiteness, I MUST have some instinctual understanding of the French language.
They tried words, they tried acting something out, but I was still just staring blankly. Suddenly, Karim lit up like a light bulb, grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Thome and Geeery." I said, "Huh?" He said, "Thome and Geery!" and pointed at the TV, then at the couch, then at the cat. I stared blankly as usual. My sisters were still yelling, and my Dad was still pushing the cat under the couch. Karim grabbed my head, turned it the cat and said, "Thome." Then he pointed my head at the couch and said "Geery." Then he pointed at the TV. Then, the world stopped and the gods of linguistic comprehension descended upon me, and it was my turn to light up like a light bulb. I grabbed Karim by the shoulders and said "Tom and Jerry! The Cartoon!" There was a mouse under the couch! HUMDU’ILLAH!!
I can’t put into words the feeling two people get when they FINALLY understand what the other is talking about. No matter how little of a thing they were talking about, it’s like the whole world suddenly makes sense. Like when you’re lost, driving around downtown with absolutely no clue where you are, then you turn a corner onto a street you recognize and suddenly you know exactly where you’ve been the entire time. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s seriously an orgasm of understanding (Sorry, there’s really no other way to explain it).
I’m floored by how much it’s possible to understand, how much I can accomplish, and how much I can bond with people on a truly human level without understanding more than a few words they’re saying. I don’t know if I’d call it a mythical language that all humanity understands, but trust me, there really is something more there—more than words, more than body language—there’s just something else there that allows people to communicate if they just have the time and patience to wade through all the words we throw around every day.
12-10-2007 3 MONTHS
Well, tomorrow is going to mark three months I’ve been here in Morocco. It’s crazy, if this were a semester abroad, I’d be almost done. I’d feel comfortable. I’d feel like I’d mastered the country, and be ready to go back. But now I feel like I’ve barely started. It’s like the last 3 months have just been preparing me to begin. Now I’m in my site, and it really is like starting all over in a new program. Unpacking again, adjusting again, culture-shocking again—it’s all just more constant this time—because during training I went to Arabic class for four hours a day, then went and English-ized with a bunch of Americans until I felt like studying again. During training—a hopped into a Moroccan community for a few days at a time, learned about it, worked with youth, then went back to Amercian-ize about it with the other Volunteers.
Here, it’s Arabic class all day. Every time I want to speak or understand a sentence, it’s like balancing an Algebra equation in my head. And anyone who’s taken an algebra class knows that there’s a point where the numbers just stop making sense. Unfortunately, I usually reach that point in the middle of a community meeting, or at least when I’m at home eating dinner, spacing out, when somebody asks me to "pass the salt." Then it’s like, out of the blue, I’ve suddenly been assaulted by a verb and a noun in a dark alley way and I first have to wrestle with "pass" and then with "salt" and then kick-box both of them at the same time so I can decipher the command I’ve just been given. By that time someone else has usually just grabbed the salt from in front of me, cus I’ve been too busy kickboxing, and I just want to yell "No, wait! I understood you perfectly! It just took me a minute!" But that would involve more wrestling, and with adverbs to boot, so I just keep chewing—cus you don’t have to conjugate to chew.
However, even if I’m mentally bloodied and bruised from all the linguistic cage fighting, I’m truly having a good time. Those little "Peace Corps-y" moments when your neighbors start saying "Salaam" instead of "Bonjour" as you walk by seriously make it all worth it. Just like anything else, it’s all about recognizing the small victories, and forgetting about the small defeats, because none of the defeats will matter 5 years from now. In fact, surprisingly few things that we worry about on a daily basis ever will.
Today was the big day. Finally, after almost 3 months of language, culture, safety and education training—after countless PowerPoint’s, frequent traveling, and rarely being unpacked physically or mentally—we are becoming REAL Peace Corps volunteers.
Our swearing-in was held at a ridiculously posh hotel next to Roman ruins that overlook the whole city of Fez. It was a gorgeous hotel, with a canopy, an outdoor pool, and immaculately dressed wait-staff. The whole thing had sort of a "This is your last experience with fancy Europeanized luxury for a long time, so enjoy it while you can!"
During our swearing in, there were speeches from the PC Morocco director, the US ambassador, a representative of the Moroccan government, and three of our trainees gave speeches in the local dialects we’ve been learning. The whole thing culminated with us taking the oath to defend the US constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to serve the Moroccan government to the best of our abilities. Then there we were! It was like graduation, but we didn’t have any hats to throw, so we just kind of stood there and smiled a lot.
Then we had a fancy dinner with lots of little French snacky things (another one of those "this is your LAST" moments). Some of our Moroccan host families even made it to the event!
We were all very excited to be done with training, but didn’t feel much different than we did before the ceremony, probably because it’s hard to be thinking "All right! I’m a REAL PCV now," while you’re in a swanky hotel eating French pastries. I’m sure that feeling is yet to come.
11-27-2007 TRAIN TO BEN GUERIR
It was a very spiritual journey on the train today. A lot of us were headed in the same direction, so we piled into train cars—a bunch of Americans with 2 years worth of luggage—and watched as one by one, our numbers narrowed down as people got off at their sites. While PC training was essential in preparing us linguistically and technically, we all agreed that, mentally, we were more ready to be a PCV before training. When you sign up for something like this, you usually have the mentality of, "Oh heck yeah. I’m gonna move off by myself to the middle of nowhere. I don’t even want to see another American for 2 years, and I’m gonna change the world!" But then, you meet your training group—a bunch of strangers who soon become your closest friends within a thousand miles, and the only people who really understand what’s happening to you. Then, all of the sudden, you realize you don’t want to leave them. And you’re tempted to count the months to your next training workshop when you’ll get to see them all again.
But, we all also agreed that the life we had during training is not what we signed up for: Classrooms, presentations, English, written tests, Americans, Americans, Americans, and frequent runs to the McDonalds in Fez (because even though you’d rather drink chlorinated butter than go to McD’s in the states, here, it feels like home). That’s not what we wanted, and that’s not what we were about to get.
As a PCV, when it was your turn to get off, as you watched the train pull away, you couldn’t help but feel that this was not just a train. It seemed like some magical chariot that just dropped you off into a completely different world, a world where you’re basically done speaking English. You’re done being understood. It’s a world where you’re no longer "The guitar player, the student, the person down the hall." Nope. Now you’re "The American." You’re "The English teacher," Now you’re "that foreign guy who lives in town who’s white but stares blankly at you when you say ‘Bonjour!’" Now you’re a symbol. Now you’re the stars and stripes. Now you’re the go-to for information on anything from George Bush, to Metallica lyrics, to phrasal verbs—none of which you really know that much about.
And you wonder if your view of yourself will change, as you spend 24 hours a day representing something of which you never considered yourself to be a representative. Suddenly, you’re dropped off in a world where "the American" is what defines you—not your name, not your hobbies, not your favorite food—your Americanism. And you didn’t even think "Americanism" was a WORD before this moment! But spell-check says it is, so apparently someone on the Microsoft Word programming staff has done the Peace Corps too….
11-28-2007 ARRIVAL
Got off that good ol’ spiritual train to Peace Corps glory, and my wonderful host brother, Karim, was there to meet me. He’s 24, splits his time between working at a cyber café and being the Vice President of the youth club I’ll be working with. He’s been my saving grace ever since I visited Ben Guerir. Just like most everybody else, he doesn’t speak English, but he’s got this miraculous talent for making me understand him, no matter how long it takes. I don’t know what he does (probably just talks to me like I’m a four year old and uses a lot of hand-gestures), but I’ve somehow been using him as a translator. Whenever some fast-talking Moroccan runs some intelligible Arabic by me, I just reflexively look at him, and he translates speedy Arabic into 2nd-grader level Arabic until I understand. He’s also been taking the time out of his day to take me around to the hundreds important offices I need to visit, as he guides me through the laughably bureaucratic process of getting me a Moroccan work permit (Plenty of jobs are generated by making sure you need to get at least four different stamps from four different people and four different signatures on at least four "essential" copies of four different documents, all of which need at least four 2x1 pictures of you stapled on top. It really does make work for people who need it, but by the time a person is standing in the fourth line for the fourth hour on the fourth day of attempting to APPLY to work, one begins to question which is the bigger monster: Unemployment or bureaucracy…). So I have to give a shout out to Karim—who’s probably currently reading this with the use of Google Translator (another fun trick he taught me)—because he really has been saving my sanity on a daily basis. Thanks Karim!
As Karim and I left the train station, the weekly souk (giant market) was just winding down. Sellers were packing up their crates of fruits, veggies, and live chickens, taking down their canopies, and packing up carts and donkeys. As always, the souk had left its mark of trash, peelings, and rejected goods all over the ground. We walked through the garbage and my newly graduated PCV mind thought "Wow, someone should come up with a wildly creative way to do a souk cleanup every week. Maybe that can be my first project with my youth center!" About that time, we turned a corner, and ran into a giant heard of at least 150 goats and sheep all running right at us towards the souk behind us. I looked at Karim with that "Is this normal or something I should be afraid of" look that I’m sure he’s already used to, and he just pointed at the goats, then at the soiled souk, then wiped the souk clean with his hand. The goats were the souk cleaning crew! Dinner time—it’s brilliant!
That’s one of the most important things they try to teach you in PC training—when there’s a problem you want to fix as a volunteer, there’s a good chance the locals already have a good way to deal with it, considering they’ve been living with the issues for generations. The idea of development is not always to bring in some new revolutionary idea that will fix everything—ask any PCV—those projects are usually the ones that fall flat on their faces immediately. The idea is to work within the local structures that are already there. Don’t reinvent the wheel, or in my case—the goat.
11-30-2007 ISN’T AFRICA SUPPOSED TO BE WARM??
What’s the deal here?? I’m wearing 3 shirts every day, and burying myself under 4 blankets every night and my teeth are still chattering! Isn’t this AFRICA?! I really feel like I shouldn’t be complaining, because I’m sure it’s much colder back home. But it’s a different kind of cold here. It’s not THAT cold, but the difference is, here there’s really no escape from it. All of the buildings here are giant, drafty cementy things that are designed to block out sun, and retain cold. I’m sure they’re wonderful in the summer, as they block out any sun, or even any THOUGHTS of warm—I swear they somehow AMPLIFY the cold and it’s actually warmer outdoors.
I remember winters in the US—I’d be absolutely freezing and frigid walking outside, or starting the car, but then I’d get home and crawl into a toasty warm house, or crank up the heat in the car, and life would be perfect. Here, in my concrete icebox, I can only replicate that feeling if I crawl under four blankets, cover my head, curl into the fetal position, and wait for my own body heat to create this little pocket of warmth that will stay as long as I don’t move an inch. Of course, I wake up in the middle of the night with my legs all cramped up, and have to weigh which one feels worse, cramping or frigid night-desert air. The cramps usually win. But I try to tell myself that it’s reminiscent of Tibetan monks folding themselves into the lotus position and meditating in the mountains. I just pretend I’m dealing with the pins and needles for higher spiritual purposes. If I’m lucky, I’ll hit Nirvana by 5:00am, reaching some other-worldly plane where my mind, my limbs, and the cold don’t exist—and I’ll be able to get some sleep.
I’d probably be fine if I could stay in my little blanket-womb all day, but unfortunately blanket forts aren’t conducive to youth work, so I have to get up and face the cold in the morning. Since the sky is always clear, during the day, I can usually catch some warm rays between the shadows of buildings outside (I swear there’s a tangible 10 degree difference between the sun and the shade). The only problem is, a lot of Moroccans I’ve met are fully convinced that the sun is bad for you. Yesterday, I was reading a book out on the roof of my host family’s house, basking in a glorious ray, when my host mom came up to hang some laundry out to dry. She immediately walked over to me, smiled, dropped a shirt on my head, and told me the sun was bad for me.
Ah well, when my own mom called me that night, I was able to tell her not to worry about me since there was still a woman in my life who was worrying about me in a highly irrational way as only wonderful moms can.
12-2-2007 OBLIVIOUS PUPPY
I’m in what I’ve now decided to call the "Oblivious Puppy" stage of my work and language learning. Mostly because, like a puppy, when I listen to people conversing around me, I perk up every time I hear my name, so I’m aware that they’re talking ABOUT me, but not what they’re saying. It kind of sounds like "Dadada dad a dadadadadadada CHRIS da dad a da dad dad a da ad AMERICANI dadadadadadadadadad CHRIS (lots of laughter) ad adadadadadadad CHRIS!"
Also, like a puppy, I spend my days understanding, and thus gladly following simple commands like sit, go, eat, sleep, eat, drink, eat more, youth center, eat, go, go, eat more. I have certain "masters" who I follow around whenever I need to go somewhere, and they show me off and people smile at my little Arabic tricks. It’s actually a rather enjoyable, oblivious life once you resign yourself to it for a while.
As far as communication goes, I’ve developed my own filtering system where I kind of decide from the gist of what people are saying if it’s something I actually NEED to understand, or something I can just smile and not my way through, feigning understanding. As days go by, a lot more conversations are starting to filter into the latter category, simply out of necessity and courtesy. It’s usually a much more pleasant experience on both sides if I just nod when they nod, smile when they smile, laugh when they laugh, and shake my head and say "God forbid" when they do. It’s amazing how much one can understand of the general mood and theme of a conversation without understanding a word.
I was actually just reading a book that talks about some mythical language in which all humans can understand each other without language, which under normal circumstances I would write off as BS, but here, I’m really starting to believe it. Mostly because there’s no other explanation as to how I’ve understood as much of what’s been going on in my life the last few days as I have. In the US, I’ve been so used to the simplest, surface level, communication that common language offers. I feel like here, with so many languages floating around, people are a little more attuned to communicating through other mediums. I can’t really explain it, you just sort of start to feel the conversation after a while—like when you watch the Spanish soap opera channel—you don’t actually comprehend what’s being said or what’s happening, but you still understand the human drama—who’s bad, who’s good, who’s hurting who, who’s in love with who, who needs something, who is longing, who’s sincere, who has good intentions, who truly cares—these are all concepts that don’t need words. We just recognize them.
But personally, I’ve spent my whole life relying on spoken language to convey all of this. Here—understanding little to nothing—I’m actually enjoying the very pure form of communication on which I’m forced to rely. Words are tricky. They can be misunderstood, said the wrong way, or just plain lies. When I can’t rely on the all-too-easy satisfaction of understanding someone’s words for their face value, I notice the hundreds of other things that are conveyed during communication (like in the Daredevil comic books where the guy goes blind but then all his other senses become superhuman!)—things that are often more true than the words themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of simple things end up taking a lot longer than they should to figure out. But Moroccans are miraculously patient. When I’d just as soon give up, and say "I just don’t understand you. It’s fine. Let’s just move on." They’ll always keep on me until I understand. Surprisingly though, usually if we give it just a little more time, try for just a little bit longer than we want to, we’ll figure each other out. I can honestly say I’ve never had a single incident in which I absolutely could not understand or communicate even a complex subject when both parties gave it enough time.
For example: The other day, I was watching TV with the family, when out of the blue, my host-sister jumped off the couch next to me and yelled something. Suddenly the entire family was on their feet looking at where I was sitting, and yelling something at me. I was really confused, trying to think of what I could have possibly done wrong. They were still pointing at me, so I just decided to join suit and stand up with them. My father pulled me towards him and pointed at the couch I was on, as my sisters tried to lift it up, and my host brother was holding on to the cat, trying to push him under the couch. They kept on saying some word and pointing at the couch. I could tell it was French, cus that’s what everybody tries when I don’t understand what’s going on—and it never works—but they do it anyway, because somewhere, deep within my whiteness, I MUST have some instinctual understanding of the French language.
They tried words, they tried acting something out, but I was still just staring blankly. Suddenly, Karim lit up like a light bulb, grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Thome and Geeery." I said, "Huh?" He said, "Thome and Geery!" and pointed at the TV, then at the couch, then at the cat. I stared blankly as usual. My sisters were still yelling, and my Dad was still pushing the cat under the couch. Karim grabbed my head, turned it the cat and said, "Thome." Then he pointed my head at the couch and said "Geery." Then he pointed at the TV. Then, the world stopped and the gods of linguistic comprehension descended upon me, and it was my turn to light up like a light bulb. I grabbed Karim by the shoulders and said "Tom and Jerry! The Cartoon!" There was a mouse under the couch! HUMDU’ILLAH!!
I can’t put into words the feeling two people get when they FINALLY understand what the other is talking about. No matter how little of a thing they were talking about, it’s like the whole world suddenly makes sense. Like when you’re lost, driving around downtown with absolutely no clue where you are, then you turn a corner onto a street you recognize and suddenly you know exactly where you’ve been the entire time. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s seriously an orgasm of understanding (Sorry, there’s really no other way to explain it).
I’m floored by how much it’s possible to understand, how much I can accomplish, and how much I can bond with people on a truly human level without understanding more than a few words they’re saying. I don’t know if I’d call it a mythical language that all humanity understands, but trust me, there really is something more there—more than words, more than body language—there’s just something else there that allows people to communicate if they just have the time and patience to wade through all the words we throw around every day.
12-10-2007 3 MONTHS
Well, tomorrow is going to mark three months I’ve been here in Morocco. It’s crazy, if this were a semester abroad, I’d be almost done. I’d feel comfortable. I’d feel like I’d mastered the country, and be ready to go back. But now I feel like I’ve barely started. It’s like the last 3 months have just been preparing me to begin. Now I’m in my site, and it really is like starting all over in a new program. Unpacking again, adjusting again, culture-shocking again—it’s all just more constant this time—because during training I went to Arabic class for four hours a day, then went and English-ized with a bunch of Americans until I felt like studying again. During training—a hopped into a Moroccan community for a few days at a time, learned about it, worked with youth, then went back to Amercian-ize about it with the other Volunteers.
Here, it’s Arabic class all day. Every time I want to speak or understand a sentence, it’s like balancing an Algebra equation in my head. And anyone who’s taken an algebra class knows that there’s a point where the numbers just stop making sense. Unfortunately, I usually reach that point in the middle of a community meeting, or at least when I’m at home eating dinner, spacing out, when somebody asks me to "pass the salt." Then it’s like, out of the blue, I’ve suddenly been assaulted by a verb and a noun in a dark alley way and I first have to wrestle with "pass" and then with "salt" and then kick-box both of them at the same time so I can decipher the command I’ve just been given. By that time someone else has usually just grabbed the salt from in front of me, cus I’ve been too busy kickboxing, and I just want to yell "No, wait! I understood you perfectly! It just took me a minute!" But that would involve more wrestling, and with adverbs to boot, so I just keep chewing—cus you don’t have to conjugate to chew.
However, even if I’m mentally bloodied and bruised from all the linguistic cage fighting, I’m truly having a good time. Those little "Peace Corps-y" moments when your neighbors start saying "Salaam" instead of "Bonjour" as you walk by seriously make it all worth it. Just like anything else, it’s all about recognizing the small victories, and forgetting about the small defeats, because none of the defeats will matter 5 years from now. In fact, surprisingly few things that we worry about on a daily basis ever will.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
MY SITE
11-2-2007 MY NEW EDITOR POSITION
I just got elected to be the Youth Development 2007 representative editor for “Peaceworks,” a publication sent out to all of the volunteers in Morocco featuring stories, poems, and random anecdotes from PCV’s in our country! This means I’ll get to travel to Rabat every so often to edit, and help put together the magazine. I’m excited about the position, and I’d like to think I got elected because of my writing skills and experiences with playwriting and thesis work, but I think I really got in because I told everybody about “Bachelor’s Corner,” a column I made with some friends in our 8th grade newspaper for lonely single guys. Who knew THAT would ever get me somewhere in life?
11-6-2007 MY SITE
Well, after months of training with no idea where I’m actually going to end up in this country, I finally have a site! Imagine, a little chunk of Morocco to call my own. My site is BEN GUERIR—a pretty large city by Peace Corps standards (about 70,000) just an hour north of magical Marrakech on the train line. The town thrives on a military base and phosphate mining—both nearby. It’s flat, mostly devoid of greenery, and basically surrounded by desert, which doesn’t make it much to look at, but the city is bursting with energy, social associations, and active youth.
This allows me to begin answer the question, “What will I ACTUALLY be doing here?” I’m actually following a lineage of volunteers who have worked in this site. The city is well familiar with Peace Corps and is eager to have a new volunteer. The volunteer I’m replacing at the Youth Center here did some amazing work setting up a “Youth and English Club.” Right now, a committee of youth leaders sets up meetings, plans events, and runs a small library out of the Youth Center. They frequently plan youth outings, talent shows, and have even done AIDS awareness campaigns in the past. My job will be to help the group expand, facilitate more activities, connect the youth group with other local organizations for awareness campaigns, and of course, do some English teaching. I also hope to work with a budding theatre group in the Youth Center that does clown shows for children, but is interested in expanding into older audiences.
It’s odd. Before I came here, I had the vision that I would basically be an English teacher, that is, in a more conventional sense. And English teaching is actually what we get the most training in, and what most PCV’s end up doing in their time here. However, we’re trying to get more into the realm of youth development and empowerment in addition to English teaching.
In reality, from what I’ve seen, Morocco has a pretty spectacular language program here in the schools. First of all, the students here are generally amazing: They usually speak Darija (Moroccan Arabic) at home, and they learn to read and write Standard Arabic (quite a bit different) in school. They start learning French in 3rd grade, and then tack English or Spanish onto that around the time they hit middle school. Many students even speak a completely different Berber dialect in the home, so they put yet another language on top of those. Students here are quite shocked to learn that we usually only learn one language in America (Well, first of all, they’re shocked that I’m a white person who doesn’t speak French, to the extent that they usually just don’t believe me and speak to me in French anyway). I have a difficult time trying to rationalize with them as to why we don’t. Aka:
Me: Well, you don’t really NEED French or German in America.
STUDENT: Don’t Americans ever go anywhere?
ME: Well, not really, and if they do, they usually just expect other people to speak English.
STUDENT: Ah, Americans.
ME: Yeah, but we do make really good food, like Pizza.
STUDENT: Isn’t that Italian?
ME: Probably.
STUDENT: So you learn other peoples’ food, but not their languages.
ME: Don’t you have some English homework you need help with?
On top of that, the curriculum designers use English as a medium to teach lessons that are actually important. Gone are the days of “The dog is under the house,” which is my experience with language learning. Nope, kids here have units like Stereotypes, Tolerance, Women in the Workplace, Environment, and Immigration Causing Brain Drain in Morocco. It’s so encouraging to walk into a Youth Center in a small Moroccan village and have kids run up to you and say, “Do you have any stereotypes? You should not have stereotypes. They are wrong. Do you want to know why?” and then they proceed to pull out the essay they wrote on tolerance of differences.
So, in sum, the students here, by and large, have wonderful English programs. What they do not have is time in school for extracurricular activities like music, theatre, sports, and AIDS awareness (Well can you blame them? It’s not like they’re learning 3 languages at once or anything). That’s where the Youth Center comes in. Traditionally, it’s a place where students can go for extra tutoring and rousing games of ping pong. But the Peace Corps—along with the Moroccan ministry of Youth—wants to incorporate more extracurricular activities to empower youth. So THAT’s what the heck I’m supposed to be doing here.
SO WHAT’S THE PEACE CORPS UP TO THESE DAYS?
My vision of The Peace Corps has changed quite a bit since I signed up. There’s this romantic vision of what the Peace Corps is—rough, idealistic young Americans being parachuted into remote jungles where desperate locals eagerly await their arrival. The rugged American youth then proceed to dig wells or build dams, hand in hand with local leaders, knee deep in mud, drenched with the sweet sweat of community action. Then those Americans, soiled from working with the land, go home to take a bucket shower in their mud hut and write poetry with too many floofy adjectives by the light of an oil lamp.
Then there’s this vision that volunteers are basically dropped in the middle of no where with no real direction or anyone to report to. Then they just pine away 2 years hand washing their clothes and coming up with more elaborate adjectives for the floofly poetry they hope to publish when they get back to the states.
I can’t speak for other programs, or even other sectors of Peace Corps Morocco, but it’s certainly not like that here. We’re actually under the jurisdiction of the Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sport. We have educational professionals come from the US to design project plans and objectives for our work with youth.We write monthly reports to our sector administrators, and come together for mid-service conferences to network ideas. Our staff, our communities, and certainly our volunteers take our work quite seriously, and I’ve been thoroughly impressed this whole time by the organization and support the Peace Corps has provided us.
Not to mention that I get to work with youth all day! Plus, the simple presence of Americans doing good work, and being readily accepted into tear-jearkingly hospitable Muslim families in an Arab nation this day in age speaks volumes about the reality that people are just people no matter where you go. Put all of that together, and I feel like I have one of the most important—and the coolest—jobs in the world right now.
~CB
I just got elected to be the Youth Development 2007 representative editor for “Peaceworks,” a publication sent out to all of the volunteers in Morocco featuring stories, poems, and random anecdotes from PCV’s in our country! This means I’ll get to travel to Rabat every so often to edit, and help put together the magazine. I’m excited about the position, and I’d like to think I got elected because of my writing skills and experiences with playwriting and thesis work, but I think I really got in because I told everybody about “Bachelor’s Corner,” a column I made with some friends in our 8th grade newspaper for lonely single guys. Who knew THAT would ever get me somewhere in life?
11-6-2007 MY SITE
Well, after months of training with no idea where I’m actually going to end up in this country, I finally have a site! Imagine, a little chunk of Morocco to call my own. My site is BEN GUERIR—a pretty large city by Peace Corps standards (about 70,000) just an hour north of magical Marrakech on the train line. The town thrives on a military base and phosphate mining—both nearby. It’s flat, mostly devoid of greenery, and basically surrounded by desert, which doesn’t make it much to look at, but the city is bursting with energy, social associations, and active youth.
This allows me to begin answer the question, “What will I ACTUALLY be doing here?” I’m actually following a lineage of volunteers who have worked in this site. The city is well familiar with Peace Corps and is eager to have a new volunteer. The volunteer I’m replacing at the Youth Center here did some amazing work setting up a “Youth and English Club.” Right now, a committee of youth leaders sets up meetings, plans events, and runs a small library out of the Youth Center. They frequently plan youth outings, talent shows, and have even done AIDS awareness campaigns in the past. My job will be to help the group expand, facilitate more activities, connect the youth group with other local organizations for awareness campaigns, and of course, do some English teaching. I also hope to work with a budding theatre group in the Youth Center that does clown shows for children, but is interested in expanding into older audiences.
It’s odd. Before I came here, I had the vision that I would basically be an English teacher, that is, in a more conventional sense. And English teaching is actually what we get the most training in, and what most PCV’s end up doing in their time here. However, we’re trying to get more into the realm of youth development and empowerment in addition to English teaching.
In reality, from what I’ve seen, Morocco has a pretty spectacular language program here in the schools. First of all, the students here are generally amazing: They usually speak Darija (Moroccan Arabic) at home, and they learn to read and write Standard Arabic (quite a bit different) in school. They start learning French in 3rd grade, and then tack English or Spanish onto that around the time they hit middle school. Many students even speak a completely different Berber dialect in the home, so they put yet another language on top of those. Students here are quite shocked to learn that we usually only learn one language in America (Well, first of all, they’re shocked that I’m a white person who doesn’t speak French, to the extent that they usually just don’t believe me and speak to me in French anyway). I have a difficult time trying to rationalize with them as to why we don’t. Aka:
Me: Well, you don’t really NEED French or German in America.
STUDENT: Don’t Americans ever go anywhere?
ME: Well, not really, and if they do, they usually just expect other people to speak English.
STUDENT: Ah, Americans.
ME: Yeah, but we do make really good food, like Pizza.
STUDENT: Isn’t that Italian?
ME: Probably.
STUDENT: So you learn other peoples’ food, but not their languages.
ME: Don’t you have some English homework you need help with?
On top of that, the curriculum designers use English as a medium to teach lessons that are actually important. Gone are the days of “The dog is under the house,” which is my experience with language learning. Nope, kids here have units like Stereotypes, Tolerance, Women in the Workplace, Environment, and Immigration Causing Brain Drain in Morocco. It’s so encouraging to walk into a Youth Center in a small Moroccan village and have kids run up to you and say, “Do you have any stereotypes? You should not have stereotypes. They are wrong. Do you want to know why?” and then they proceed to pull out the essay they wrote on tolerance of differences.
So, in sum, the students here, by and large, have wonderful English programs. What they do not have is time in school for extracurricular activities like music, theatre, sports, and AIDS awareness (Well can you blame them? It’s not like they’re learning 3 languages at once or anything). That’s where the Youth Center comes in. Traditionally, it’s a place where students can go for extra tutoring and rousing games of ping pong. But the Peace Corps—along with the Moroccan ministry of Youth—wants to incorporate more extracurricular activities to empower youth. So THAT’s what the heck I’m supposed to be doing here.
SO WHAT’S THE PEACE CORPS UP TO THESE DAYS?
My vision of The Peace Corps has changed quite a bit since I signed up. There’s this romantic vision of what the Peace Corps is—rough, idealistic young Americans being parachuted into remote jungles where desperate locals eagerly await their arrival. The rugged American youth then proceed to dig wells or build dams, hand in hand with local leaders, knee deep in mud, drenched with the sweet sweat of community action. Then those Americans, soiled from working with the land, go home to take a bucket shower in their mud hut and write poetry with too many floofy adjectives by the light of an oil lamp.
Then there’s this vision that volunteers are basically dropped in the middle of no where with no real direction or anyone to report to. Then they just pine away 2 years hand washing their clothes and coming up with more elaborate adjectives for the floofly poetry they hope to publish when they get back to the states.
I can’t speak for other programs, or even other sectors of Peace Corps Morocco, but it’s certainly not like that here. We’re actually under the jurisdiction of the Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sport. We have educational professionals come from the US to design project plans and objectives for our work with youth.We write monthly reports to our sector administrators, and come together for mid-service conferences to network ideas. Our staff, our communities, and certainly our volunteers take our work quite seriously, and I’ve been thoroughly impressed this whole time by the organization and support the Peace Corps has provided us.
Not to mention that I get to work with youth all day! Plus, the simple presence of Americans doing good work, and being readily accepted into tear-jearkingly hospitable Muslim families in an Arab nation this day in age speaks volumes about the reality that people are just people no matter where you go. Put all of that together, and I feel like I have one of the most important—and the coolest—jobs in the world right now.
~CB
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
A TON of Elmenzl!
EID SIGHIR
Today was the last day of Ramadan, which means, after a month of fasting from sun-up to sundown, it was time to party Moroccan style! Everyone gathered around the TV the night before. No one actually knew if the fasting would be over that night or not, because the last day of Ramadan depends on the moon, so you have to wait for nightfall, let the powers-that-be decide if it’s a new moon, and if it is, a bunch of horns blow and they make a big announcement on TV (sort of like a Groundhog Day that actually matters).
The next morning, everybody got all dressed up in traditional jallabas, hats, and women did henna on their hands, and everyone went out on the town to congratulate each other on a month of fasting. The other volunteers and I got together and went around to visit each others’ houses. On Eid, people go all around town (and for that matter, the whole country) to visit friends and family, sit in their houses having tea and cookies, then move on to somebody else’s house. It felt oddly like trick-or-treating, except we actually went into people’s houses and ate our “candy” (Moroccan tea, which probably has more sugar than any Halloween candy you could find anyway) and took pictures with the families. Then we all went home, and passed out in a sugar coma.
It feels like a totally different country now that fasting is over. During Ramadan, people stay inside and sleep a lot—no one has much energy when they don’t eat or drink all day—so the streets of our city were usually fairly barren. But now, shops and cafes are open, kids are running around going to school—it’s like the whole place has woken up. It’s like as soon as I was starting to get used to this country, the whole place has changed! Seriously, it’s wild to see the daily schedule of an entire country (and a huge chunk of the world) change for a whole month. School hours change, mealtimes change, even the TV schedule changes. And let me tell you, the whole time we’ve been here it’s been drilled into our “culturally sensitive” minds NOT to EVER be seen eating or drinking in public (not that anyone would be upset, they understand we’re foreigners and go out of their way to tell us that it’s ok that we don’t fast—but it’s just the polite thing to do). Now I still feel like I’m doing something naughty every time I pull out my water bottle, or that I have to be sneaky when I buy myself a candy bar in the afternoon. It’s like “Welcome to
BRING ON THE STUDENTS / NOTEBOOK SUPER-VILLIAN
We started English Classes at our youth center, which are a bit more insane than we were prepared for. Peace Corps gave us a lot of workshops on how to make learning fun, interesting, and energetic to pump excitement into Moroccan students. I don’t know what Moroccan students they have been working with, because our students had enough energy and excitement to break through the youth center windows! (That’s foreshadowing by the way. Read on.) See, the kids have usually been sitting in school for 8 hours or so by the time they get to us, and once they get to the youth center, they DO want to learn English, but they’re A LOT more interested in socializing and having fun. So our class ended up being more of an exercise in classroom management than an actual English class. But the students had a good time, and hopefully they picked up a few things.
I was pumped up about the lesson, but then I noticed that my notebook was missing. I looked all around for it—almost certain that I had left it on the table of the classroom. As all of the students left, I came to the conclusion that I was trying to avoid coming to—one of my students stole it. It wasn’t a huge deal, I just had a bunch of notes on Moroccan culture and teaching pedagogy in there. It was all stuff I could easily replace. But it was more just the fact that one of my students stole it that bothered me. I even would have understood a bit more if someone would have stolen money, or a camera—something that was actually WORTH something. But nobody steals a notebook other than just to be a jerk.
It’s odd, because I’ve noticed that in the Peace Corps, sometimes something like that it all it takes to break you. It’s like there’s all these things that are pressing on us day to day—different weather, living with strangers, having to mentally juggle with conjugations EVERY time you want to communicate with another human being—that we don’t really notice are stressing us out, cus it’s just a constant weight. And then something that should be rather insignificant happens, and you snap. Then you just fall into one of those “Why am I here?” days. “How did I end up here? Am I actually helping anybody or just wasting my time? Do people even want me here? Why does everybody keep speaking to me in French even though I tell them I don’t speak it IN ARABIC? If I had stayed home I could be taking a hot shower or going out to a coffee shop right now. Maybe a freakin’ hug would make things better right now, but that’s quite culturally inappropriate, and I’m surrounded by strangers anyway, and oh my gosh I just realized I don’t think I’ve touched a human being in three weeks and four days and AHHHHH!” You know, that kind of thing. I’ve seen volunteers here get a question wrong in Arabic class and randomly break down into tears, which normally would be weird, but everyone understands, because we all get it.
BUT, then there are those all too “Peace Corps-y” moments that you think only happen in the official publications: The night my notebook got stolen, I was telling my host-family about it (mostly through miming and repeating what I think would translate as “My paper-book. On table. Then not. I don’t know. A student. It is where. Shame, shame. Bad. Smelly.”), and they said it was a big deal and that I shouldn’t just let it go (at least I think that’s what they said, they might have been saying “How have you been here with us for 3 weeks and you still don’t know how to make a coherent sentence?”) The next day, after class, I had my teacher come in and translate for me as I told the students that I had forgot my notebook somewhere in the classroom, and if anyone found it, I would be very happy and give them something nice. Of course, the students knew I was being overly nice, and told me someone probably stole it. They were all concerned, and genuinely upset that someone would do that to me. They crowded around me asking what color it was, what it looked like, and telling me they were sorry kids in their town were so bad and that they hoped I would still keep teaching them. Then, a little girl, who’s probably about 8, ran up to me and started chattering at me in Arabic. My teacher translated, and told me that the girl was saying that she saw the boy who took it and that she knows where he lives and she was going to go to his house right then and get it. Before I could even say anything, she was out the door. I still wasn’t too hopeful, I didn’t think a an 8-year-old could do much to persuade an evil super-villain-notebook-pilferer to return stolen goods. But she must have said SOMETHING magical, cus she was back in the door with my notebook in less than 5 minutes.
I was blown away! I didn’t think it could possibly be that easy, but there it was. I showered her with broken Arabic praises, and gave her precious American chocolate for her heroic efforts. Most importantly, it just picked me up so much that all of the kids had been so concerned about such a little thing for me. Then you have one of those reverse-breaking moments, when the tiniest thing—like the elatedly shocked look on shopkeepers’ faces when they tell you your bill in French and you count it back to them in perfect Arabic—that just sends you to cultural cloud nine for no reason whatsoever. Then you sit back and realize, “Darn it, all of those seemingly cheesy Peace Corps recruitment books are totally right. Stuff like this ACTUALLY happens!”
MY
I was having my nightly random Arabic lesson from my 5-year-old host sister, earlier tonight. We’ve moved on from her saying stuff that I don’t understand and me repeating it, to reading Arabic script. Out of children’s’ books of course. As I was plodding along, sounding out words like—well I would say like a 5-year old—but she reads a heck of a lot faster than me, I came to a startling realization. As she read the word “he is saying” she said “Tat-gul” instead of “Kat-gulm” and I was all excited that I was going to get to correct HER.
So I said “No, it’s Kat-gul.”
And she said, “Yes, Tat-gul.”
And I said “Nooooo. It’s KAT-gul”
And she said “That’s what I said, TAT-gul!” (Keep in mind this is all me attempting to argue with her in Arabic)
I came to the startling realization that she—as is common for a little kid—CAN’T DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN HER “T” AND HER “K.” I’ve been learning it wrong this WHOLE TIME! I guess that’s what happens when you hire a 5 year old as your language tutor and only pay her with games of “I put the big sheet on my head and you run away.”
A LITTLE TIP ON LANGUAGE LEARNING:
They tell you that when you learn a language you’ll probably make some embarrassing mistakes, but it’s OK. Keep trying. And if you THINK you know the right word for the situation, try it out.
HOWEVER, I’m finding that, in Arabic, if you can’t think of the word right away, and you kind of say half of it and then pause for a long time to think—at least for me—it usually comes out as a heinously inappropriate swear word. I’m gaining quite a reputation in our group as the guy who accidentally swears in Arabic in front of important city-officials. I always know when it happens, because my Arabic translator gets very red and starts giggling uncontrollably, then the whole room starts laughing. Then I laugh too, cus I’m glad they have a sense of humor about it rather than throwing me out of the country.
A STOMACH IN MY STOMACH
Well, in addition to chicken, beef, and lamb meat, in some parts of morocco, they do eat some more interesting parts of the body. I knew as soon as I sat down to dinner tonight, that we were eating something “interesting” because they had that “I bet you don’t know what you’re eating right now” look in their eyes, like they did when we had liver the other night. So I gave in and asked them what it was. They were quite pleased to tell me it was a sheep’s stomach stuffed with sheep meat and onions, and I was quite pleased to turn over their idea of squeamish Americans who won’t eat organs by asking for seconds.
It pretty much just tasted like meatloaf. But now, I’m lying in bed, imagining my digestion process and thinking about the interesting paradox that there is currently a stomach in my stomach. I mean, think about it. If my stomach can digest a stomach, why can’t it digest itself? Plus, the sheep’s stomach was stuffed with sheep meat, which basically means he ate himself after he died. This inherently conjures up an image of a sheep being fed its own leg BEFORE it dies. Which can be a really sad picture, or if you turn it into a cartoon in your brain—kind of funny. Now my stomach is starting to hurt a bit, and I’m wondering if it’s really MY stomach that is hurting or the sheep’s. The possibilities are endless…
OUR TALENT SHOW
In addition to teaching English, we were also supposed to do some sort of community activity in our youth center, led by the youths themselves. Seeing as we didn’t have a whole lot of time to get together, we decided to try and capitalize on the abilities our youth already have. Considering how much time they spend disrupting class with antics, general showing off, and more random synchronized music breaks than “
We announced it in class and got a few students who were interested in organizing to stay after and meet with us. The meeting mostly consisted of a bunch of people all talking at the same time—which seems like the norm in
So we set up some tables in a big room the next day and waited for things to get started. A bunch of kids just came in off the street and gathered in the room, but people were just standing around and chatting, so about half an hour into the chatting we asked one of our youth leaders if he actually had anything to show us and he said, “Oh, you want to see something now?” And we said “Umm… yes,” realizing they probably didn’t actually organize anything at all.
But then he got up onto the stage, clapped three times, and said a buch of stuff in Arabic to the crowd, from which I pulled out something to the extent of “The Americans want to see some theatre, music, and comedy, so come up here if you want to.” The following two hours amazed me.
To start out, one kid went and sat up on stage and pulled out a little leather bound pocket Koran. Keep in mind that the youth in our center talk CONSTANTLY—during class, during movies, during meetings—but as the boy (who was just another one of their classmates) went up on stage and opened the holy book, the room fell silent. He sat down, with his eyes on the little pocket sized book, and started to sing. He was reciting verses from the prayer book—put to a transcendent tune that echoed and shook the room as his voice wavered in pitch over the timeless script which is said to be the very words of God. To give a comparison, it almost sounded like a monk chanting in a cathedral, in the way it echoed off the walls against concrete and revered silence. But unlike Latin chanting, where the vowels are held steady and stretched out in a breathless continuum, the Arabic vowels bounced with a variety of pitches as they boy’s voice darted in an impossibly quick staccato from note to note—the holy words adorned with a melisma of pitches. It was truly breathtaking.
Then he just stood up, went off stage, and the real show started. After about 5 minutes of quick conversation, about 5 of our students got up on stage and started performing a skit for us, which they appeared to put together on the spot. But the kids’ stage presence was amazing. You could hear them clearly, they never stumbled for lines, they didn’t have their backs to the audience. They just went for it. It was all in Arabic, so I couldn’t exactly understand what was going on, but they were honestly hilarious. I was baffled, because they don’t teach theatre in the school systems here at all, and I usually see kids their age in
As all of this was going on, more and more kids started coming in off the streets. So the actors and singers just kept going. We didn’t have our language translator there with us, so we didn’t exactly have the capability to say “OK, this is good. But we actually wanted to have the SHOW next week.” So we just let it keep rolling. The kids got up to sing, act, and perform for almost 2 hours. We had planned to actually make a list and a schedule of who was going to perform the next week, but it was all so on-the-spot it would have been impossible. So when the youth center was about to close, and the kids started to leave we got them all together and said, “That was awesome. Can you just do this exact thing again next Wednesday?”
WE HAVE GIRLS!
Whereas we were having trouble getting girls to come to the youth center at first (it’s kind of seen as a “boy’s club”), lately they’ve been coming in droves. Apparently, I’ve been told it’s because they’ve heard that I play Celine Dion (the Titanic song) on the guitar and they come because they want to hear it.
So I just wanted to give Celine Dion a shout out (cus I’m sure she reads my blog), because although I’m getting quite tired of playing that song, she needs to know that she has done more for Women’s education in Morocco that she can probably imagine at the moment. Thank you Celine.
THE LAST DAY IN ELMENZL
Today was our last day in Elmenzl. We had our talent show (the REAL one) last night, and it was even better than the one we accidentally had at our audition. The kids did their skits again, but this time with full props and costumes that they managed to scrounge up on their own. And they also added dramatic silent scenes depicting stories from the Koran set to music. They even had audience participation songs! The only problem was, about half of the town showed up and our crowd was pretty rowdy.
Rowdy has kind of been the theme of our youth center lately. Word has gotten around town that we’re teaching and doing fun activities there and TONS of students are starting to show up, even if they have no interest in learning English whatsoever. It’s gotten to the point where we’ll have a classroom filled to the brim with 40 students or so and we have to start using the desks as chairs in addition to the extra chairs we have. Last night we literally had to close the door to the classroom because we couldn’t fit anymore students, but people kept coming in, so we put a chair in front of the door and had a student sit in it. Then we just tried to teach class with a bunch of people banging on the door. It’s getting a bit out of hand. There have been a couple of fights outside after class, and some kid even threw a rock through the window of the youth center because he got kicked out of class. Somehow we’ve managed to break 3 chairs too and needles to say, the director of the youth center is getting a bit perturbed with our popularity. The last few nights, when we haven’t had lessons, he’s just been closing the center early when things start getting crowded and we all just have to leave. So, while I’m sad to go, it seems like it’s about time—before things get even more out of hand.
We had a party for all of our host families. We served them tea, danced, and forced them to eat more and more cookies until they thought they were going to explode because that’s what they do with us at dinner every night. They loved it! And yes, they requested that I play Celine Dion…. I’m going to miss my family—especially my little teacher—and the kids at the youth center quite a bit. My permanent site (which I find out in a few days) has A LOT to live up to! My family told me I could come back at any time and that their house was my house now (which I understood, because they’ve learned to talk to me REALLY slowly) and that I had a Moroccan mom and sister now in addition to my American family. My host sister told me that all of the girls in Elmenzl were going to cry when I left, except for her. I pretended to get all indignant and ask why she wasn’t going to cry, and she said it was because I never played Celine Dion for her. So I promised I’d come back someday to visit and play it again… and again… and again I’m sure.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Fez/El Menzel Updates
9-21-2007
MY SINFUL NAME
So I had an interview with my Moroccan site directors today, and I was joking around with them about my Peace Corps nickname “Haram” Chris due to the fact that my last name represents a forbidden food in Islam. APPARENTLY, as they pointed out, “Haram” isn’t actually translated best as “forbidden” it’s actually closer to “sin.” So they suggested I stray away from the nickname “sin Chris,” for the obvious reason that it’s just kind of weird that my friends walk by and say “What’s up Sin?” Ah, the beautiful subtleties of language that get lost in translation!
~The PCV formerly known as “Haram” Chris
9-22-07
MY MOROCCAN FAMILY
Today, five other trainees and I traveled to our “Community Based Training site” (CBT). We drove through the hills to the little city of Menzel—a pretty little town of about 8,000 nestled in olive tree covered hills. It’s not exactly on an important road, so it’s a relatively isolated town. We’ll be staying here with a homestay family for the next two months, organizing programs in the Youth Center (Dar Chebab—“house of youth” in Arabic).
I met my homestay family right away. I live with a grandmother, Ghita, and her unmarried daughter Hanan. Their house connects to the home of Ghita’s other daughter, Turia, and her husband and 2 kids. Since Peace Corps loves to REALLY immerse us in language and culture, they speak NO English whatsoever. I understand why they do it, so we can’t use English as a crutch, but it makes the first few moments quite awkward. My Arabic is still quite limited. I’ve started to measure how well I know the language, not by standard testing, or the number of vocab words I know, but by how long I can keep up a conversation with someone, which is now up to about 30 seconds. However, if you take out all of the “God willing’s” and “Thanks be to God’s” it’s actually only about 15 seconds.
This limitation did lead me to an interesting cultural discovery however. I had just gotten to the house, and Hanan brought me into the living room. We just sat, because of course, my Arabic had run out within 30 seconds of meeting her. We were just sitting in silence, and I started racking my brain for any casual Arabic question I could ask her. I started to stumble out the little “get to know you” questions we knew, and she sat there smiling as I stumbled over language. I finally remembered how to ask “How old are you,” so I did. Suddenly her smile faded, she raised one eyebrow and gave me an emphatic “Llllllla.” Which means “No.”
So for anyone who is wondering, it’s ALWAYS dangerous to ask a woman’s age—no matter what culture you live in—even if it’s the only Arabic phrase you know.
Live and learn,
~CB
9-25-07
THE LANGUAGE MIRACLE
Having a grand old time with the homestay family. Most of our dinner conversation consists of my pointing at stuff around the room and asking (in Arabic) “What’s that?... What’s that?... How do you say that?” They tell me, and then I forget right away, so they’ve started giving me quizzes at the end of the meal. Through this game—and a dictionary—I found out I’ve been eating liver every night for the last three days and didn’t even know it. It’s not that bad… until you find out it’s liver, then you suddenly don’t like it. Weird.
The rest of the time, we usually watch Moroccan sitcoms, which are surprisingly similar to American sitcoms—a dumb father does something stupid, the mother gets mad and makes him sleep on the couch, and sassy kids laugh at him. I think they even use the same canned laughter track.
Anyway, despite all the Moroccan TV and food quizzes, my Arabic is moving along kind of slowly. But Moroccans are very friendly and patient, and love to help me learn. Even when I’m holding up a line at the convenience store cus I’m trying to figure out how much I need to pay the owner, everyone in line smiles and comes up to help me count in Arabic.
I realized that this is a VAST difference from the way things work in the US. Moroccans absolutely love the fact that I’m trying to learn their language and are always eager to attempt to decipher my broken, terrible Arabic. They’re just so happy to help. If someone walks into a store (or anywhere) in the US and stumbles with their English, everybody glares at him and thinks “Why don’t you know frickin’ English, moron.” Whereas here, it totally makes their day to help me out.
It’s also miraculous how much learning the local language opens up a huge window into the culture. In my other travels abroad, when I wasn’t learning the local language, people (especially shop owners/cab drivers) were pretty short-tempered and unfriendly to me—usually because I was just another tourist who was wandering around their country expecting people to cater to my English. But here, when I simply greet them in their local language, and at least TRY to ask for what I want in Arabic, they treat me like family. The transformation is amazing. It really is beautiful to watch someone open up to you—realizing you’re not just another annoying tourist who doesn’t care. Though that still doesn’t mean I don’t feel like an absolute idiot for the 18 waking hours of my day that I can’t do anything other than point at something, say “What’s that,” and immediately forget the answer.
~Chris
9-28-07
MY 3-FOOT TALL TEACHER
Still can’t talk. However, my 5 year old host cousin, Wedaad, doesn’t seem to care. We still play games in the international language of kids, such as “If I put a blanket over my head and chase you, you’ll run away and giggle.” It’s amazing how similar kids are all over the world. She even makes up elaborate games for us to play. She’ll ramble off scenarios and orders to me in Arabic, I just sit there an nod, but she doesn’t seem to care. I just sort of follow her lead. They’re quite complex games. At one point I was playing “hide the ball” with her, and I somehow ended up going to “prison” by the end of our game. At least that’s what I think happened, cus she pulled me to the other side of the room making siren noises, ordered me to sit, and shacked my hands together. Still trying to figure that one out.
I’m not sure if she can even conceptualize that we speak different languages. I think her parents have tried to explain to her that I don’t know Arabic, because now she’s decided to become my teacher. She’s just learning how to read (Arabic script). She’s at that stage where she just loves to read every word she sees on TV, or on a sign, or whatever. I’m just starting to learn the Arabic script too. So now, each night, she comes into the living room with an Arabic children’s book, sits down, and orders me to read. When I mess things up, she promptly corrects me, and orders me to repeat. She’s quite strict. And of course, I follow orders and learn how to read, because I don’t want to get put in prison again.
~CB
9-30-07
HOW I BECAME CELINE DION
Yesterday, another volunteer and I got invited to go play soccer with a bunch of Moroccan guys. When we got to the field, a kid who had heard I played guitar handed me a beat up, out of tune guitar with two broken strings and gestured that I should play. I did the best I could (though they were sad I couldn’t play any Metalica). The kid indicated that he wanted me to teach him to play. I got some other kids to translate for me that I couldn’t teach him correctly because the guitar was missing strings, but that I’d try to bring my guitar the next week.
Today, he showed up at the field with 2 new strings for his guitar. He had taken a bus a half hour to the next city to buy them. The guitar was still broken, but I tuned it up, and showed him the four chords he needed to know to play The theme from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On,” which is HUGE here for some inexplicable reason. I wrote down the chords so he could practice later, then he went off to play soccer and the other kids made me play the song four more times in a row. Now I have kids walking up to me and saying “I want to hear Titanic” multiple times a day. Thank you Celine Dion for making me the most popular American in town.
Other than being leading the neighborhood guitar madrasa, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Dar Chebab with the other volunteers trying to organize youth activities. Really, all the kids want to do is play cards or learn English, so we’re trying to do a little bit of both. The younger kids in this town are quite creative when they have a lot of free time. Tonight, on my walk to the Dar Chebab, some little kids had started a trash bonfire in the city square and were taking turns jumping through the flames. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen, but they needed something to do. One of the kids even managed to get fire on a string of some sort and started doing a fire-twirling dance. That’s about the time I decided to leave. It’s odd though, cus even though I wouldn’t exactly call fire twirling a safe, structured activity, I found myself thinking, “Well, at least they don’t sit around watching crappy TV like kids do in America. I’m sure fire-twirling develops a lot more brain cells than a play station. So twirl on little guy. Twirl on.” I think I need to drink less Moroccan tea (or “Moroccan whiskey” as café owners like to call it.”
A big fan o' Moroccan whiskey,
~CB
10-3-2007
3 WEEKS!
Happy October! I’ve officially been in the Peace Corps for 3 weeks, though it’s seemed like 3 months. Time passes at an odd pace here. Well, not so much odd, as SLOW. I was talking to an older Volunteer last night who said “Yeah, your whole training is like that. It’ll suck until you get your own place (keep in mind that’s 5 months from now). Yeah, the next five months will probably be the hardest, probably of your life.” And I’m thinking, “Wow. THANKS.” I think the slowness is due to a combination of having been in 5 different (and foreign) cities in the past 21 days, and having to learn how to talk all over again, which I haven’t done since I was 2-years-old. Which I think is why little kids sleep so much. Discovering and naming a new world is exhausting! This may explain why I’ve been napping like crazy, or it could be because I have nothing else to do cus I can’t talk to my host family. They’re incredibly sweet to me though, every time I fall asleep on my bed or a couch, there’s a blanket on me when I wake up.
We all came back to Fez today, because we have to get more shots over the next few days, and it was CRAZY how excited we all were to see each other. All of the volunteers spent the entire afternoon and evening just randomly hugging each other. I think we’re all just kind of starved for physical contact, or to speak in English, or both. Either way, it was refreshing to see everyone again. Even though we’ve all only known each other for 3 weeks, there’s already a strong bond between all of us. Nobody’s dating anybody yet though. Which apparently (according to older groups of volunteers) makes us a pretty boring group. It turns out at least half of our group has relationships back in the US, making us even more boring to other PCV’s, but we all have fun talking about how we keep up contact with our loved ones back home, how much being away sucks, and how consistently but wonderfully DISTRACTING they are (thanks Noemi)!
Anyway, it’s back to Menzel in a few days. I plan to learn at least 3 more impressive Arabic phrases so I can wow Ghita and Hanan for at least 45 seconds before I lapse into silence again and end up taking another nap.
Sleepy in El Menzel,
~CB
MY SINFUL NAME
So I had an interview with my Moroccan site directors today, and I was joking around with them about my Peace Corps nickname “Haram” Chris due to the fact that my last name represents a forbidden food in Islam. APPARENTLY, as they pointed out, “Haram” isn’t actually translated best as “forbidden” it’s actually closer to “sin.” So they suggested I stray away from the nickname “sin Chris,” for the obvious reason that it’s just kind of weird that my friends walk by and say “What’s up Sin?” Ah, the beautiful subtleties of language that get lost in translation!
~The PCV formerly known as “Haram” Chris
9-22-07
MY MOROCCAN FAMILY
Today, five other trainees and I traveled to our “Community Based Training site” (CBT). We drove through the hills to the little city of Menzel—a pretty little town of about 8,000 nestled in olive tree covered hills. It’s not exactly on an important road, so it’s a relatively isolated town. We’ll be staying here with a homestay family for the next two months, organizing programs in the Youth Center (Dar Chebab—“house of youth” in Arabic).
I met my homestay family right away. I live with a grandmother, Ghita, and her unmarried daughter Hanan. Their house connects to the home of Ghita’s other daughter, Turia, and her husband and 2 kids. Since Peace Corps loves to REALLY immerse us in language and culture, they speak NO English whatsoever. I understand why they do it, so we can’t use English as a crutch, but it makes the first few moments quite awkward. My Arabic is still quite limited. I’ve started to measure how well I know the language, not by standard testing, or the number of vocab words I know, but by how long I can keep up a conversation with someone, which is now up to about 30 seconds. However, if you take out all of the “God willing’s” and “Thanks be to God’s” it’s actually only about 15 seconds.
This limitation did lead me to an interesting cultural discovery however. I had just gotten to the house, and Hanan brought me into the living room. We just sat, because of course, my Arabic had run out within 30 seconds of meeting her. We were just sitting in silence, and I started racking my brain for any casual Arabic question I could ask her. I started to stumble out the little “get to know you” questions we knew, and she sat there smiling as I stumbled over language. I finally remembered how to ask “How old are you,” so I did. Suddenly her smile faded, she raised one eyebrow and gave me an emphatic “Llllllla.” Which means “No.”
So for anyone who is wondering, it’s ALWAYS dangerous to ask a woman’s age—no matter what culture you live in—even if it’s the only Arabic phrase you know.
Live and learn,
~CB
9-25-07
THE LANGUAGE MIRACLE
Having a grand old time with the homestay family. Most of our dinner conversation consists of my pointing at stuff around the room and asking (in Arabic) “What’s that?... What’s that?... How do you say that?” They tell me, and then I forget right away, so they’ve started giving me quizzes at the end of the meal. Through this game—and a dictionary—I found out I’ve been eating liver every night for the last three days and didn’t even know it. It’s not that bad… until you find out it’s liver, then you suddenly don’t like it. Weird.
The rest of the time, we usually watch Moroccan sitcoms, which are surprisingly similar to American sitcoms—a dumb father does something stupid, the mother gets mad and makes him sleep on the couch, and sassy kids laugh at him. I think they even use the same canned laughter track.
Anyway, despite all the Moroccan TV and food quizzes, my Arabic is moving along kind of slowly. But Moroccans are very friendly and patient, and love to help me learn. Even when I’m holding up a line at the convenience store cus I’m trying to figure out how much I need to pay the owner, everyone in line smiles and comes up to help me count in Arabic.
I realized that this is a VAST difference from the way things work in the US. Moroccans absolutely love the fact that I’m trying to learn their language and are always eager to attempt to decipher my broken, terrible Arabic. They’re just so happy to help. If someone walks into a store (or anywhere) in the US and stumbles with their English, everybody glares at him and thinks “Why don’t you know frickin’ English, moron.” Whereas here, it totally makes their day to help me out.
It’s also miraculous how much learning the local language opens up a huge window into the culture. In my other travels abroad, when I wasn’t learning the local language, people (especially shop owners/cab drivers) were pretty short-tempered and unfriendly to me—usually because I was just another tourist who was wandering around their country expecting people to cater to my English. But here, when I simply greet them in their local language, and at least TRY to ask for what I want in Arabic, they treat me like family. The transformation is amazing. It really is beautiful to watch someone open up to you—realizing you’re not just another annoying tourist who doesn’t care. Though that still doesn’t mean I don’t feel like an absolute idiot for the 18 waking hours of my day that I can’t do anything other than point at something, say “What’s that,” and immediately forget the answer.
~Chris
9-28-07
MY 3-FOOT TALL TEACHER
Still can’t talk. However, my 5 year old host cousin, Wedaad, doesn’t seem to care. We still play games in the international language of kids, such as “If I put a blanket over my head and chase you, you’ll run away and giggle.” It’s amazing how similar kids are all over the world. She even makes up elaborate games for us to play. She’ll ramble off scenarios and orders to me in Arabic, I just sit there an nod, but she doesn’t seem to care. I just sort of follow her lead. They’re quite complex games. At one point I was playing “hide the ball” with her, and I somehow ended up going to “prison” by the end of our game. At least that’s what I think happened, cus she pulled me to the other side of the room making siren noises, ordered me to sit, and shacked my hands together. Still trying to figure that one out.
I’m not sure if she can even conceptualize that we speak different languages. I think her parents have tried to explain to her that I don’t know Arabic, because now she’s decided to become my teacher. She’s just learning how to read (Arabic script). She’s at that stage where she just loves to read every word she sees on TV, or on a sign, or whatever. I’m just starting to learn the Arabic script too. So now, each night, she comes into the living room with an Arabic children’s book, sits down, and orders me to read. When I mess things up, she promptly corrects me, and orders me to repeat. She’s quite strict. And of course, I follow orders and learn how to read, because I don’t want to get put in prison again.
~CB
9-30-07
HOW I BECAME CELINE DION
Yesterday, another volunteer and I got invited to go play soccer with a bunch of Moroccan guys. When we got to the field, a kid who had heard I played guitar handed me a beat up, out of tune guitar with two broken strings and gestured that I should play. I did the best I could (though they were sad I couldn’t play any Metalica). The kid indicated that he wanted me to teach him to play. I got some other kids to translate for me that I couldn’t teach him correctly because the guitar was missing strings, but that I’d try to bring my guitar the next week.
Today, he showed up at the field with 2 new strings for his guitar. He had taken a bus a half hour to the next city to buy them. The guitar was still broken, but I tuned it up, and showed him the four chords he needed to know to play The theme from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On,” which is HUGE here for some inexplicable reason. I wrote down the chords so he could practice later, then he went off to play soccer and the other kids made me play the song four more times in a row. Now I have kids walking up to me and saying “I want to hear Titanic” multiple times a day. Thank you Celine Dion for making me the most popular American in town.
Other than being leading the neighborhood guitar madrasa, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Dar Chebab with the other volunteers trying to organize youth activities. Really, all the kids want to do is play cards or learn English, so we’re trying to do a little bit of both. The younger kids in this town are quite creative when they have a lot of free time. Tonight, on my walk to the Dar Chebab, some little kids had started a trash bonfire in the city square and were taking turns jumping through the flames. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen, but they needed something to do. One of the kids even managed to get fire on a string of some sort and started doing a fire-twirling dance. That’s about the time I decided to leave. It’s odd though, cus even though I wouldn’t exactly call fire twirling a safe, structured activity, I found myself thinking, “Well, at least they don’t sit around watching crappy TV like kids do in America. I’m sure fire-twirling develops a lot more brain cells than a play station. So twirl on little guy. Twirl on.” I think I need to drink less Moroccan tea (or “Moroccan whiskey” as café owners like to call it.”
A big fan o' Moroccan whiskey,
~CB
10-3-2007
3 WEEKS!
Happy October! I’ve officially been in the Peace Corps for 3 weeks, though it’s seemed like 3 months. Time passes at an odd pace here. Well, not so much odd, as SLOW. I was talking to an older Volunteer last night who said “Yeah, your whole training is like that. It’ll suck until you get your own place (keep in mind that’s 5 months from now). Yeah, the next five months will probably be the hardest, probably of your life.” And I’m thinking, “Wow. THANKS.” I think the slowness is due to a combination of having been in 5 different (and foreign) cities in the past 21 days, and having to learn how to talk all over again, which I haven’t done since I was 2-years-old. Which I think is why little kids sleep so much. Discovering and naming a new world is exhausting! This may explain why I’ve been napping like crazy, or it could be because I have nothing else to do cus I can’t talk to my host family. They’re incredibly sweet to me though, every time I fall asleep on my bed or a couch, there’s a blanket on me when I wake up.
We all came back to Fez today, because we have to get more shots over the next few days, and it was CRAZY how excited we all were to see each other. All of the volunteers spent the entire afternoon and evening just randomly hugging each other. I think we’re all just kind of starved for physical contact, or to speak in English, or both. Either way, it was refreshing to see everyone again. Even though we’ve all only known each other for 3 weeks, there’s already a strong bond between all of us. Nobody’s dating anybody yet though. Which apparently (according to older groups of volunteers) makes us a pretty boring group. It turns out at least half of our group has relationships back in the US, making us even more boring to other PCV’s, but we all have fun talking about how we keep up contact with our loved ones back home, how much being away sucks, and how consistently but wonderfully DISTRACTING they are (thanks Noemi)!
Anyway, it’s back to Menzel in a few days. I plan to learn at least 3 more impressive Arabic phrases so I can wow Ghita and Hanan for at least 45 seconds before I lapse into silence again and end up taking another nap.
Sleepy in El Menzel,
~CB
Monday, September 17, 2007
I'm here!
We landed in
Anyway, we got straight on a bus and drove to the capital,
Hope everybody back home is doing well!
~Chris
For the last few days, we’ve been staying at a pretty posh hotel in
As far as
A few of us (me and two of the three other people named Chris in our program) took a jaunt to the cliffs that rise over the ocean to watch the sunset this evening. It’s trippy to look out over the ocean and realize I’m looking at
In a few days, we’re splitting off from the business development people, and 27 of us are headed to
Somebody needs to pet my cat for me back home. They’re all scary strays here!
~ “Haram” Chris
We made it to
Life is an adventure if you let it be,
~Chris
We started hard core language training today, which is tougher than I expected. Arabic has at least 6 sounds that have NO equivalent in the English language. You know the “Hhhhhh” sound you make while you’re trying to fog up your glasses? Just air, no vocals. Try putting it in the middle of a word, like “Welcome.” try it “WelcHhhhome,” now make the H sound really quick. It’s like you have to derail your vocal chords for a second. There’s also a sound where you have to make a sound in your throat like you’re gargling water, but without water, without your head back, and in the middle of a word. There are some REALLY fun phrases that combine both too. Really COMMON phrases that EVERYBODY always says too. Rock on!
It’s a very religious language too. People throw in phrases like “thanks be to god” and “God willing” all the time. In
We’ve gotta soak up as much language as we can, because next week we go to stay with our homestay family. Then I’ll be bouncing back and forth between my homestay family’s nearby town and
~Chris
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