THE ROYAL SECRET TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

5-15-2008

Crowd. Cheer. Chanting.

Crowd. Not like they’ll tell you when he’s actually going to arrive...

Wait. Crowd. Cheer. Cheer. Crowd. Ow my foot. Hot.

Don’t know how to swear in Arabic.

Remind self to ask tutor.

Ow. Tall crowd. Hot. Foot. Cheer. Cheer. Crowd.

Proceed to antici-wait.

Not like I’ll be able to see him over all this, right?

“We could to a community clean up--at the park or something!” Oh, silly Peace Corps volunteer with your eager ideas that from time to time come into fruition, but usually get stuck in seedling form, buried too deep in the dirt of “you can’t want they project more than they do.” Thank you pre-service training.

I can see the lack of appeal to the project. Within a day and a half of picking up discarded plastic bags, dusty bottles, and cigarette butts, it will look exactly the same as before. But the point is sensitization, right? It’s the hope that having spent a free weekend picking up crud in the hot sun, participants think twice about chucking that chip bag next time. That’s the important part, isn’t it?

Maybe even plant some trees, paint the walls, brighten things up a bit! Hmm... who would pay you say? Understandable. Yes I’ll look into it. Yes we can once again “ich’allah” the idea into next month.

No go. Lukewarm reception. Let’s move onto ideas people will actually do (Ping-Pong tournament anyone?).

Then, one day out of the blue, it happened. “It” should be italicized or put in bold, capital letters, because this is no normal “it.” IT is the single announcement that suddenly made city beautification not only a likeable idea, but a matter of pride and patriotism for the residents and job-security for every official in town.

The king is coming to visit.

I had always thought there was exaggeration in the Moroccan joke that if you want to clean up the town, just spread a rumor that the king is coming, and watch the magic unfold. But as soon as I saw every single shop and home owner take to the streets with a bag, broom, and a bucket of paint, I became a believer. I single handedly witnessed the transformation as that main road which was in the rebuilding process for two months suddenly re-opend, complete, in four days. Someone filled the holes in the streets. Murals popped up on walls overnight with no trace of an artist. Johnny Appleseed must be heading international and diversifying into the palm tree business, because all of the sudden, the once-barren streets were lined with them. I watched in awe as my youth club donned donated caps and shirts, filled 30 garbage bags, swept out a donkey-parking-lot, and painted the curbs a patriotic red and white. Flags flew over doors, out windows, across buildings, and above streets, as if everyone in town keeps at least six stored up in their attics. Funding? What funding? No problem. It was as if everything materialized through royal magic (supplies as well as unwavering motivation).

Even returning to my own street (a part of town unlikely to receive a royal drive-through) I witnessed the fervor. The whole neighborhood was out sweeping, or slapping paint onto curbs and houses. I walked under my neighbor who was up a ladder, rolling a new brown over the identical old brown wall color, and considered jovially asking him if he’d like to hop over a few feet and paint my house too. I reconsidered though, because knowing Moroccan gregariousness, I was afraid he actually would have.

When the day came, I didn’t even recognize my dusty little town. It had turned into a jewel of patriotism and hastily-readied care. Some grumbled about the process, stating that people will care for the city for a few days and then everything will go back to normal (I have to admit, I was a little afraid that as soon as the day was over, someone would come to uproot the trees and bring them to the next royal visit site). But seeing the cheering crowds coming out to witness the new king’s first visit to their city, coupled with all of the pride and excitement that preceded it was even worth it for the grumblers. The national pride was contagious. As I ran into a 6-year old girl from my youth center on the big day, she turned to me with an orange popsicle stained face, held her little Moroccan flag up in the air, and proceeded to brag that she had heard that MY king was being replaced soon, but HER king was going to stay with Morocco for his whole life.

I have to admit, I was a bit star-struck when the moment came. I just sort of happened to be at the right place at the right time. No one knew exactly when he would be arriving, so I had gone home in the afternoon for lunch, but soon after arriving, I felt the odd beams of excitement (or eeriness) as my entire neighborhood had become a ghost town since everyone was leaving for the middle of town. So I left the dishes in the sink, and caught up with the crowds.

By the time I got there, the crowds were impenetrable, and everyone was still excited, but had become hot, parched, and tired of standing. The situation reminded me of New Year’s Eve on Times Square—on TV, you get to see the actual moment and the 5 minutes of flag waving excitement, but when you’re THERE, you must bear the dreary, endless waiting while barricaded by crowd control. The differences in Morocco were that A) the police were more polite and B) the neighboring cafes weren’t charging $13 for a hamburger like the evil Times Square McDonalds does on New Years.

The crowd was grew louder, and beginning the royal chant, and I could feel everyone surge forward. He must be near. Since I couldn’t see over the heads, I resigned myself to jumping as high as I could at strategic intervals, hoping for a glimpse, but then I caught the eye of one of my students. He and a friend had propped a bicycle up against a wall behind me and were precariously balanced, standing straight up on the seat and handlebars. The waved me over, and hoisted me up so I could stand on the tire (yes, stand up on the incredibly stable rolling thing Chris). As we clung to the wall, balancing like circus bears on a unicycle, the royal precession arrived. First came a parade of royal guards shining in French-style military uniforms, but holding onto tradition by topping off with turbans. Then traditional white jallaba-clad holy men came through, making a jostling sea of red fezzes. Finally, strolling out in between stressed out guards in black suits and ear pieces, there was King Mohammad IV, head of state and leader of the faithful, looking suave as usual in a suit, tie, and stylish sunglasses giving us all the royal wave. I had an amazing view of him greeting the crowds for about 45 seconds, and that’s about the time our bike toppled over.

The rest of the day I ran around with the crowds playing “where will he pass next,” a game in which we all bolt in different directions hoping that his motorcade will pass by so we can him waving out of the sunroof. I managed three king-sightings, which I though was pretty good, but some of my students got four or five, so I lost. But I still felt like a champ. Partially because I had just achieved multiple royalty-sightings in one day, but mostly because, on that day, I was the volunteer who had the cleanest, most environmentally conscious site in the Peace Corps--and all it took was a stop-off on the royal itinerary.

(The King of Morocco)

Spring Trip

4-15-2007 A LETTER FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON?

After camp, I took a few days off to do some traveling. I had a conversation at camp with another volunteer about how unbelievably lucky we are to have ended up in Morocco, a country with such varied beauty and culture that we could never hope to take in everything even in the two years we’re stationed here. With deserts in the south, beaches in the west, snow capped peaks in the middle, winding hills and Spanish villages up north, not to mention the mixing of Arab, Berber, French, and Spanish culture running together like watercolor everywhere you go, the country offers ceaseless opportunity. The other day, I met this absolute hippy-stereotype who had been in Morocco for a month with his wife and daughter, and he had the audacity to coolly tell me that he was “already getting bored,” and that he’d “spent a few days in each of these cities and didn’t find anything new.” All I could do was just smile, nod, and think “You jaded, ignorant, travel-moron. You’re a walking cliché of the types that zip around a country, checking off names of cities they’ve ‘been to’ after they’ve hit the bus station and main street. Then they leave, going to look for ‘uncharted territory,’ some new unattainable authenticity they think they can get cus they played guitar and laughed with some Berber guys in a tent, but left not having learned a single thing about their real lives.” But this guy was a lot bigger than me and had scary tattoos, so I kept my mouth shut and was comforted realizing that he would live a miserable, unsatisfied, “too cool” life in which he missed anything of beauty or importance the world was begging to offer him.

Off the tangent but and back to my vacation... I traveled to Chefchauen, “the prettiest little town in Morocco,” nestled into the hills, known for its ubiquitous light blue painted buildings. Though it’s built around tourism now, it was once a “forbidden city.” Chefchauen, apparently not having received the memo on Moroccan hospitality, had only been seen by 3 foreigners before the Spanish came in 1937—one had been poisoned, the other chased out, and the other made it in and out cus he apparently disguised himself as a Rabbi and that worked out for him. Fortunately, I did not get poisoned or chased out and had a great time, but UNfortunately, it would have been fun if I would have had to dress as a Rabbi to get out alive.

After that, I headed to the international port city of Tangir where apparently you can sit on the beach and see Spain on a clear day, of which I unfortunately did not have a single one. But it’s an absolutely entrancing city, especially when you get into the literary gossip and visit the places where many great writers of the early 20^th century lived, wrote, and occasionally worked as spies during WWII. I even got to see the cafe where Tennessee Williams wrote his first draft of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” even though it’s been turned into a sort of beach-disco club these days. It would, however, be interesting to have seen how the play would have been different had the cafe been a dance-club while Williams was writing. But “A Disco Musical Named Desire” may not have been as meaningful a production, and I don’t know if Marlon Brando can sing...

The other intriguing part of the city was my visit to “The American Legation,” which is the only American historical site that exists outside of the US. The building was a gift from the Moroccan Sultan and was the first American ambassadorial building. Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the US as an independent nation, and inside the Legation, there is a letter of correspondence between George Washington and Sultan Moulay Ben Abdallah. In the letter, Washington very cordially invites the Sultan to recognize and trade with the fledgling nation, even though, as he stated, the US had no gold or silver mines and agriculture had been limited by the recent war, so they had nothing to offer but hoped that the US could someday be somehow useful to its friends. Oh how times change! It was so intriguing to read into the tone of the letter as the leader of a rebellion essentially begged a powerful monarch to side with his impoverished rouge nation that had nothing to offer but hope and good will. The world’s come a long way.

Also housed in the Legation was a copy of a hilarious correspondence from one of the Ambassadors housed there in its early years attempting to explain that, even though he was strictly ordered to receive no gifts, a parade from the Sultan had showed up at his door with a magnificent lion and lioness as a gift to the government and people of America. In the letter, the ambassador explained how he did absolutely everything in his power to refuse the gift, but the people were impossibly insistent and would not leave. At the time the letter was written, the lions were being housed inside a room at the Legation and the ambassador was hoping for a swift reply from the US indicating how he should deal with them. It was good to see that Moroccan gift giving to foreigners has not changed in the last few hundred years, not in the scope of its generosity or in the absolute futility of a polite refusal to receive it!

Pics From Spring Trip

1. Me in Chefchauen
2. Church in Tangir (that's the lords prayer in Arabic bordering the alter area)
3. Reviving some Roman ruins outside of Fez
4. Letter from George Washington to Sultan of Morocco
5. Beach time at Asilah

Spring Camp

4-6-2007 CAMP

I’ve spent the last week working at an “English Immersion Camp” in Al Hociema, a city up north on the Mediterranean 3 trains, 2 busses, and 3 cabs away from my site. The camp is organized each year between the Peace Corps and the Moroccan Ministry of Youth for kids ages 13-17. For a week, three other volunteers and I worked with some amazingly motivated Moroccan staff members to entertain, control, and from time to time educate fifty eager Moroccan middle schoolers.

I was in charge of teaching the intermediate English class, and also running a “music club” which mostly involved me playing songs from the greats of western music that I decided were essential to the students’ development—The Beatles, Elvis, Bob Dylan... Justin Timberlake—it was great fun! However, the biggest ended up being “Bingo” which I would use to warm them up. Yes, I’m talking about the “B-I-N-G-O” song and the tricky “instead of a letter, you CLAP” trick. I can’t explain how strange it is to be unwinding in your room when you hear six too-cool teenage guys pass in the hall rocking out and chanting “There was a farmer, had a dog...”

Otherwise, it was just like any other summer camp I’d seen in the US—lots of singing, camp games, skits, counselors playing tricks on each other, yelling at kids to go to bed and then doing the same thing to wake them up in the morning. The kids were great, almost TOO well behaved. I mean, they did kid stuff, but even the “bad kids” were nothing compared to what I’ve seen elsewhere. A lot of them were first timers, as these sorts of camps are fairly new in the country, and I think the kids recognize it as more of a privilege then just “Summer camp, of COURSE I get to do this every summer.”

Probably the biggest surprise came at the end of the camp when all of the students were saying goodbye. Older volunteers had warned us about what was to come, but we still didn’t really believe it: Apparently, without fail, at the end of every camp, all of the students start weeping and holding each other, not wanting to leave their new found friends and the joys of camp. I was skeptical. Most of the participants were teenage guys, and teenage guys are WAY too cool to cry in front of each other. And besides, these kids had been together for like six days. How much of a bond could they have?

But when the day came, an experience I’m now familiar with in morocco... I was wrong. Once the kids got their bags outside of the center, they all (the cool guys even MORE than the girls) started openly weeping and hugged every single camp member and counselor. A few of the heaviest weeping dudes somehow ended up on my shoulder and I had no clue what to do, mostly because I hadn’t realized how culturally-conditioned I am to feel that public expression of male emotion is inherently awkward, but also because the only Arabic consolation phrase I know is what you’re supposed to say when someone had died, and I figured that would only make things worse. So I just held onto them and let them cry. It was so touching to see these guys, on the verge of adulthood, openly expressing emotion and how much the camp meant to them. I think a lot of it was that, unlike in the US, weeping over the departure of your guy friends is actually a masculine thing to do, as if it indicates that you were part of the club, and that you had such a close experience with this brotherhood. But I think it also was an indicator of what these kids were going home to. Not that I have any knowledge of their particular situations, but I just know that this week of games, songs, and field trips wasn’t just “entertain me” time for them. Though I’m not sure they learned a ton of English, and they’ll probably forget Bob Dylan (and go home singing “Bingo”), something about this time of free interaction with kids their age in a supportive atmosphere touched them enough to merit tears—tears that no one criticized, because they all understood and felt the same way.

More Theatre Workshop Pictures (see below)

Pictures From the "World Famous" Theatre Workshop (see entry below)

World Famous Theatre Workshop

3-15-2008 WORLD FAMOUS THEATRE WORKSHOP

Well, I don’t know if I’d call it "world famous," but that’s how my translator introduced the workshop, because I had told him I’d worked with groups who had used these techniques in the US and India—now we’ll add Africa to the list!

Knowing that I was a Theatre major, the students at my youth center have been eager for me to do theatre lessons since I got here, but the language barrier has made it nearly impossible. I mean, people keep encouraging me by telling me that one doesn’t need language to do theatre and that we can work through mime techniques, but honestly, who likes mimes? Besides, the kind of theatre I like to work with is a lot more discussion based. It’s not about doing funny skits and reading prepackaged plays like the students are used to. The theatre I’ve learned to work with deals with participants creating their own material and using theatre to discuss social problems (Side note of thanks to Dr. Amy Seham, the cast of “I Am We Are,” The Thambo Project, and of course Augusto Boal for familiarizing me with all of this).

I finally gave in to doing a Saturday workshop, as long as I would have a translator present. Saturday is a massive day at the youth center. Students don’t have school in the afternoon, and we often have upwards of 40 people show up to see what’s going on. I was a bit intimidated by the sheer mass of participants I knew would be present, but I figured if you’re gonna go for it, you might as well go big!

We started out with some warm up games, made discussion groups, and then the participants made “tableaus” representing issues dealt with by Moroccan youth. About a half hour into the workshop, I spotted my translator standing in the corner and realized I hadn’t yet used him once in this workshop. This threw me off for a moment... What language had I been speaking? The workshop was running smoothly and productively and people seemed to understand what was going on. Had I been speaking English? No... about 4 of the 40 people in this room understand higher levels of English. Good lord, had I been... no.... had I been conducting a functional workshop in Arabic?

It was true. The flaming tongues had descended. My cup of linguistic communicability runnith over. I mean, most of the workshops functionality was due to the participants’ good natured patience with sentences that must have sounded like “Now putting hands on his head you are—like a photograph I must be, I mean, you must be, without speaking like statue she are.” But it’s miraculous how unnecessary grammar really can be when you just let go.

Though things got a little crazy, as tends to happen with 40 students in a large room, the participants managed to create some profound tableaus dealing with issues ranging from drug use, to street violence, to trying to illegally immigrate to Spain. Plus everyone had a good time, and was able to use art as a medium to discuss the issues Moroccan youth deal with day to day.

If there’s anything “world famous” about the workshop, it’s that in every situation I’ve seen it used—across countries, languages, and age groups—people immediately connect with the idea of creating theatrical representations of their daily struggles. None of them are artists, or “theatre people,” but they create with a power of honesty that one rarely even finds on a professional stage. And in that workshop, 40 people became artists, actors, and sculptors who used theatre to critique the society in which they live.