Happy Holidays!

Hello friends! Please excuse me for the absence of new blog posts for these last three months. Below, I have pasted a holiday email I sent to my close family and friends to keep you all updated until I can hopefully get back into the swing of things with blogging in the new year.

“The hardest job you’ll ever love” are the words that were continually repeated to me before I began my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Morocco. For the life of me, I had no idea how true they would be. The challenges I am facing given my work situation and status as a foreigner in a society much more homogeneous than that of the United States have made 2015 the fastest and most unorthodox year of my young life. Every single day here is a new experience unlike anything life from 1992-2014 had ever introduced to me. The important thing for all of you to know is that I am really happy with my service in Morocco and have a host family here in my town who loves me like their own son.

The haste with which I introduced this message may perhaps give you all a small glimpse into the chaotic system of life I have gotten use to (which is to say I have gotten used to not getting used to things). However, my true intention with this email is to wish you all a Blessed Christmas and Holiday season. This is truly a very sacred time of year and my focus is on getting the most of this Advent season and having a wonderful Christmas with my family when the day arrives.

Yes! You did read correct; I will be home for Christmas this year. It will be a two-week visit where I will spend the majority of my time with my parents (whom I haven’t seen in eleven months) and some close friends in San Jose. I have not had a vacation for quite some time and am very excited to have this opportunity to go home and rest with some dear loved ones.

I know I last emailed all of you a ‘life update’ this past Easter and so there is certainly much news to fill you in on. As you can read from my introduction, I am certainly living life to the fullest here and am happy to share with you some highlights from these last several months.

Where have I traveled?

Work slows down quite heavily in the field of youth development during the hot summer months in my town. Consequently, much of the travel I have done in country has been when the youth center and local associations in my site were closed during that season. This last summer I was able to visit Casablanca, Kenitra, El Jadida, Fes, Marrakech and Ouarzazate all for the first time since I have been here in Morocco. Each city has its charm and unique memories. I would say that I was most impressed with Fes because it is an incredibly well preserved medieval city with lots of history and incredible architecture all wrapped together in labyrinth-like Old Medina. However, my favorite experience of the summer was actually working at an English immersion camp in El Jadida. I spent eleven days teaching English right next to the beach and then playing in the ocean once my classes were over. I also had the opportunity to attend a top-tier Moroccan soccer match with friends once the campers went home.

 Friends at I at the local match!

What has my work been like?

As soon as Eid l-Kebir ended, work has been non-stop until this current vacation I am preparing to take for Christmas. I have been teaching about four different English classes (four at a high school advanced level and one beginning class) and really have benefited from learning how to use English teaching to communicate ideas about subjects such as multiculturalism and human rights to my students. I attended a library-training workshop with a counterpart from a local association and, with a large book donation from Peace Corps, the association is opening up an Arabic-language children’s library in a village where the first language is Tamazight. I also attended a training of trainers for the Model United Nations program in Morocco with another counterpart of mine who I have been working with on a “Peace Club.” As part of this same club, I also wrote for a grant that has been approved for our club to operate a Peace Camp in our site during the school vacation in January. I am very proud to say that my old Arabic tutor Mustafa has been accepted as an English teacher with the Moroccan Ministry of Education and left our town to participate in a one-year preparatory program. My new tutor, Houda, is an incredible person and a very gifted linguist who has been doing a terrific job tutoring me since she took over this responsibility.



My friend Ali and I at the library opening at his association!

How am I doing emotionally?

There are a lot of challenges for me living in a new country with a very different culture than my own. I have experienced a lot of emotional highs and lows while in Morocco. The honest answer to this question is that I have truly never been more alive than I have been now. I am growing a lot as a person and learning so much about love, friendship and the meaning of family. Living alone here has its benefits because I can take periods of time to myself when I am feeling sad that I wouldn’t have in America. There are times when I can go “off the map” so to speak and take a day or two to myself for peace and quiet. I have the two most amazing host families (the one in my training site of Sidi Kacem and the one in my current town) and I have relied on them heavily when I have gone through difficult emotional times. I have cried with them, laughed with them and gone to them seeking advice and I have always been loved like a real member of the family.

How am I doing spiritually?

I have a close relationship with the priest at my local parish and he has become a confessor and mentor who is extremely accessible for help to his parishioners. Most recently, he allowed me to spend the night in the rectory in order to take me up to Meknes so that I could visit my host family in Sidi Kacem on the way to the airport in Casablanca. He has always been there for me through the emotional highs and lows of this experience and having a confessor I regularly frequent has been good for me spiritually. Sometimes being so isolated can have an unquestionably strange affect on a person spiritually so I do ask for prayer in feeling the providence of God in my life.

What thoughts are rolling around in my head?

A brewing passion of mine for some time now has been working in interfaith dialogue and cooperation between Christians and Muslims.

There have been times in Morocco where my feelings have been hurt by the actions and words of others very dear and close to me just because they do not have a very developed understanding of my religion. However, there are signs of progress such as a recent news story of Moroccan security protecting Pope Francis during his visit to the Central African Republic. Also, love is really a universal value that can easily cross religious boundaries. I have experienced immeasurable acts of love from Moroccans and I know that philosophizing and theologizing on such relationships from Moroccans themselves will result in new approaches to relationships with people from minority religions here in the kingdom.

The Catholic Church has been very vocal in criticizing the return of Islamophobic language in the public sphere since the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris and has undergone many brave efforts to participate in healthy interfaith dialogue with the Muslim community. Nevertheless, the use of Islamophobic language by many of our co-religionists (of all traditions and denominations) merits increased attention to be placed on this issue. Indeed, I am greatly troubled at the language that is being used by politicians and pundits alike in America.

Looking beyond just the U.S. and Morocco as individual countries proves that dedicated Christians and Muslims pursuing peace together is a necessary step in ending the conflicts taking place in now in Iraq, Syria, Central African Republic, Nigeria and so many countless other nations where these two religions struggle to coexist. Furthermore, many shared values provide opportunities for Christian-Muslim cooperation in a number of different areas in the international sphere.

My response to all of this is a desire to work for any organization or institution that values peace building through love between these two religions. I am interested in looking for teaching opportunities where I can incorporate such themes into the classroom with student populations from the relevant religious backgrounds. I am also interested in working with an organization involved in peace building efforts between the followers of these two faiths. If anyone reading this message is aware of any opportunities for me to pursue such a passion, please let me know.

What does Christmas mean to me this year?

I am happy that the liturgical year has us experience the Gospel every go-around as if we are witnessing such a transformation of history take place for the first time. Given the challenges and difficulties I have recently gone through, thinking of Christ coming to Earth to save the world gives me indeed great motivation to both meditate and celebrate during this Christmas Season.

  Link to Image


Happy Holidays!

Summer's Come to a Close

Well, I am so happy to be writing this at the end of what has been an incredibly adventurous summer. This definitely goes up there with my study abroad experience in Rome in terms of the amount of fun I have had along with the number of awesome historical sites I have seen.

Where we last left off in my little narrative here in country, I had just finished typing a blog post on the roof of a very random hotel in an even more random city all of you back home in America have probably never heard of, but is pretty awesome to visit here in Morocco. It certainly was a very strange place to blog, but Peace Corps is all about new experiences and I maintain rooftops at nighttime are awesome places to write pretty much anything. 

Anyway, the next morning I left from the train station and continued all the way to El Jadida to participate in an English Immersion Camp with high school students from all over Morocco.  The volunteers I served with are Emilio, Sarah, Byron, Olivia, Rosana, Bri, Paul, Hans, Matt, Anne, Robert and Julie. As with the two previous camps I have done this summer, this was not only a great experience as a volunteer but also a wonderful opportunity to deepen friendships from within the PC community. I remember having some very genuine conversations with Byron, playing Frisbee with Matt on the beach and attending a Moroccan soccer match with Paul, Hans and Emilio as some of my favorite personal highlights from the trip. As a volunteer, I taught English everyday with an emphasis on entrepreneurial language. We had a little ‘start your own business’ competition with prizes and I am super proud of how my students performed. The entire camp went to the beach every day after morning English classes were over and so I played in the ocean over the course of this English camp more than I ever have before. It was a very peaceful place to spend 12 days and I returned home feeling as if I had been on vacation.

                            
                                                 The fellas and I at the Match!

Once home, it was time for planning projects for the fall as well as attending my first Moroccan wedding. The planning went well and I had much fun at the wedding with my friends Mustafa and Simo. For those of you who don’t know, Moroccan weddings are often multiple-night events. The first night we went together was mostly Quranic recitations followed by a delicious dinner. We returned to the same wedding two days later, which was a grand party with probably two to three hundred people there to celebrate with the groom and bride together.  This evening’s festivities began at around midnight and after much time spent in cheer and jubilation, Mustafa and I decided to leave early and by the time my head eventually hit the pillow, it was around five in the morning.

Day 1 Under the Wedding tent!

Only two days after the wedding, I was back on the road…this time to Fes for our regional meeting. I actually enjoyed myself there quite a bit because there were some volunteers I had not had the opportunity to meet until that time and so I learned quite a bit about what my service could look like that I had not thought about before. However, I will not deny that what made Fes special were a couple of really fun nights exploring the city with my friend Alexander. He was patient enough, having visited Fes multiple times before, to walk with me from our hotel to the Old Medina for some unplanned exploring in a medieval urban maze. Having the interest in history that I do, I ate this stuff alive. There is a magic to the medina there that you just feel when walking through the streets and discovering things like the world’s first university across the street from a lamp store with such a diverse collection of bright, floating objects that you can’t help but yield to the temptation of imagining it as magic portal which can take you to any sort of enchanting place you may have dreamed about as a child. The next night, the two of us hit the road again for a slightly different destination, the mall. We decided to contrast our UNICESCO experience of the previous evening with something akin to a Costco run in the states. We did get to visit the local Marjane for shopping of “necessities,” but also decided to see how the other half of Morocco lives and do some window shopping in stores with prices that far exceed what our Peace Corps budget allows us to consider shopping in. We both love media and so had a lot of fun together spending time in a Virgin store with a great selection of books, movies, music and video games. We then accidentally bumped into Amina and Abdelghani, two very kind Peace Corps employees, who were both caught in act of purchasing frozen yogurt in order to have a nice time. Amina gave Alexander and I the warmest greeting she could and offered to buy us some froyo (of which we were obligated not to refuse). I maintain that the warmness with which she greeted us reminds me of a really awesome aunt or mother of a close friend, definitely not our manager. The four of us had a really nice time chatting together while enjoying a luxury we don’t partake in much anymore. All in all, Alexander is an awesome travel companion and we not only saw some great stuff, but did so comfortably and with some real genuine conversations.

After Fes, there was a two-day gap until I had to travel to Ouarzazate for Amazigh culture and language training. Accordingly, I had coordinated a weekend visit to Marrakech with Gehad, the “Pharaoh” I mentioned befriending in my last blog post, before he was set to return home to Alexandria. Thomas and Erika, two volunteers I am quite close with, gave me a wonderful surprise by actually covering the cost of a first class ticket on the train ride from Fes to Marrakech so that I could sit with them and our good friend Noa. So the four of us had a very relaxing and comfortable journey to Marrakech together for the weekend. When we arrived, I pledged to introduce them to my good pal Gehad sometime while we were all there together. That first day in Marrakech, Gehad and I just walked aimlessly (as many of you know, my favorite pastime) throughout the city and eventually bumped into everything historically awesome that we had intended on seeing. We really spent most of the time that first afternoon and evening just talking about life and how we were really doing personally. At the Peace Summit, we already knew that we got along really well and developed a good connection, but here we really had a chance to be very sincere with one another about some real vulnerable areas of our lives and just know that the other person was caring. The next day we walked to the Majorelle Garden, nowhere near our hotel (but we really enjoy just walking and talking) and made crucial pit stops to Starbucks and the Marrakech mall on the way. We had so much fun on that walk and really enjoyed the garden together as well. That evening, we joined Thomas, Erika and Noa for dinner at a very fancy restaurant and all had a wonderful time spoiling ourselves with fine dining atop a Marrakech roof while the sun set. The conversation was wonderful and they all got along quite well with one another. I unfortunately woke up very frail that Sunday morning when we had to travel to Ouarzazate and actually had to have Gehad help get me to the train station. God bless him for his patience and servant-minded heart, I would have been really screwed if he were more individualistic. Unfortunately, the time then came for us to part and we hope to meet again in Egypt someday soon.

Now the road from Marrakech to Ouarzazate is famous for two reasons: incredible scenic views of a stunning mountain range and a very narrow road which passes through said mountain range and known for making people so nauseous that the bus companies hand out bags for troubled passengers to vomit in. As someone who does get carsick and already felt sick that day, I spent the bus ride listening to the adrenaline-filled soundtrack to Interstellar with my eyes closed. L’humdullah, I arrived to Ouarzazate feeling healthier than when I had climbed onto that bus.

I spent one entire week in Ouarzazate for the Amazigh workshop and I unsurprisingly learned it is difficult to learn a new language in only one week. Nevertheless, I gave it my best and am continuing to study the language from my notes so as to build a good foundation for conversation with friends here. I am proud to say that I did get my verb conjugations down on the last day! The training was a really nice experience for all of us volunteers and teachers who come from Amazigh communities. There was a lot of bonding that went on over there and Paul and Katie actually both celebrated their birthdays over the course of the training.

Also, while in ‘Oz’, many of us went on a field trip during our free day to Aït Benhaddou and a film studio. Both were used for filming Gladiator and several other well-known films that dim in comparison.

Some friends and I enjoying ourselves at the film studio.

When the time to leave Ouarzazate, I could not help but feel a sense of relief to finally return home. As you can tell from my previous blog posts, I had returned back to site many times during the summer, but each visit had never exceeded much more than a week in duration. I had not had the opportunity to live my normal life since I left for our first In Service Training close to the Fourth of July. 

I have been here in site meeting with active citizens to plan my volunteer schedule for the fall throughout this week. We really hit the ground running and so I am so happy the weekend has finally come. Next week is Eid al-Adha, where Muslims around the world celebrate Abraham’s faith in God. You can Google it for the academic information, but I am especially excited to spend time with my host family and eat some bbq’d lamb!

Until next time,

Steven

It's Been a While, but I Feel Great!

As I sit down to write this blog post on August 10, you may be wondering why it is you have not heard from me since the first day of Ramadan. I figure it best to begin with the present, as when I blogged about my experience being sick, and then we can journey back into the past together. I currently find myself sitting atop the roof of a very unaesthetic Moroccan hotel I have been forced to stay in due to my first three options of lodging all falling through. I am in a big city, one of the biggest in Morocco in fact, that I will not name because I traveled here for a personal weekend and that is exactly what it will remain. Perhaps my time here will come up in stories when I see those of you I am in close contact with, but I firmly stand by the belief that sharing personal information on the Internet disqualifies a personal weekend as being personal.  I been without volunteers for these past couple of days and I have really appreciated what God has done in my life in Morocco when I am in these sorts of situations where I have to make every decision for myself in a place (specifically a city) that is all too unfamiliar to me.

I arrived here from my new hometown where we volunteers organized a Space Camp at a local association. We had somewhere between fifty and sixty youth attend and I had four volunteers from other communities stay with me overnight to help with the camp. It was a great bonding experience for us to be with each other every day for a week, I really feel a very close bond with each of them. Shout-out to Cameron, Marc, Michelle and Paul for helping with the camp and acting crazy with me for a week. I truly have developed a deep affection for all of you.

The week before Space Camp was one of the most fun in my life. I traveled to Kenitra, a large city near Rabat, to help out with what is officially called the Global Peacebuilding and Social Development Summit (Google it :p ). I did not know what to expect when I arrived, but the experience definitely exceeded the non-existent expectations I had felt before coming. Basically, I got to spend a week with like-minded people my age from over thirty countries. Amazing conversations took place about global issues and cross-cultural relationships were forged at the most cherished levels. I made more wonderful friends than I can count, but the ones that stand out in my mind are: Demhat (pronounced Damn hot—yes, this guy is really that awesome. Truthfully, a very nice man.) from Istanbul; Gehad (aka the Pharaoh), Rowan (with whom there is an agreement we will work together professionally one day) and Menna (my new pen-pal. She had to Google it to figure out what it mean, but she’s down for some correspondence) – all from Egypt; Demba from Ghana (who is one of the most gifted young leaders I have ever met); Soufian (aka Soufflé—a Corps Africa volunteer with more swag than the rest of us put together), Mariyem (one of the most friendly people I have ever met), Lamiaa (one of the most deep-thinking and open minded people I know) and Khaoula (with whom the hours I spend with pass by as if they were minutes) all from Morocco. I also was bunk-mates with fellow PCV T.J. and while we were friends before the summit, I feel that he is now one of the closest friends I have here in my new life. The week was spent in conversation about global issues and showing our international friends (and we PCVS) some of the most famous things people can see in Rabat and Kenitra (like observing a session of Moroccan Parliament, for example).

One amazing thing that happened during the Summit was that I was able to sneak to Rabat one Sunday morning (left Kenitra at five in the morning and bumped into Akram, who had been working all evening) for one of the only English masses held in Morocco. I made it in time, was able to say confession in English and worshipped in my native language for the first time since January. I had only had about three or for hours’ sleep that night and was absolutely exhausted when I was there, but I was alert for this. It was mission Sunday and I felt a very special blessing from the Church as a Peace Corps volunteer that day. As I walked up the aisle to receive the Eucharist, the choir sung one of my favorite hymns (I don’t know the official name, but its chorus is “We are many parts, we are all one body. And the gifts we have, we are given to share. May the Spirit of love make us one indeed.”) and tears started to pour down my face as I received the Body of Christ. It was truly an amazing experience.

I left to attend the library workshop in Rabat for a couple of days with my counterpart Ali (congratulations on the certificate) because we want to start one in a local association in my site. While there, the PCVs from Kenitra (with swag-filled Soufflé) came into town to celebrate Jane’s birthday and so we all had a real nice evening together while I was up there. When this workshop ended, I had so much darn fun and had developed so many deep relationships in Kenitra that I decided to return to the summit for one day before heading back home. I was so excited to return that I actually left Rabat immediately, without saying good-bye to hardly a single soul. I arrived in Kenitra early in the evening and spent a night awake in fantastic company underneath the night sky, one of the best of my life. I was consequently very tired the next day, but participated in full because it was my last at the summit. One really nice thing we did at the summit was write “love notes” to each other to share our affection with those new friends we had made. I received a lot of love, but want to especially thank my Egyptian hommies Menna (who gave me a wonderful present), the Pharoah and Rowan for expressing such beautiful sentiments to me.

What I had learned at the summit was that a certain Miss. Aloui from Oman and I share the same birthday, but I (being the overly-cautious person I am) booked the bus-ride home on my birthday the next day. I had not expected to share this information publically, but the relationships developed at the summit were so close that it did come up. Demhat (Damn hot!) and Khaoula made a decision to organize a surprise party for the two of us that day. So Menna and Rowan kept me busy talking about random events in history while things were getting wrapped together for this shin-dig.  Then Khaoula isolated Miss. Aloui and myself from the rest of the participants and then took us to a giant surprise co-birthday party. “Happy Birthday” was sung to us in four or five languages, we danced to music from many different countries and ate absolutely sensational cake. Akram, the event organizer, said good-bye for me before I had to leave and also kindly organized the transportation for me to get to the train station on time. There was no sleep that day, but it was one of the most love-filled moments of my life and I thank everyone involved.

Me and Demhat before I departed from Kenitra!

Our Birthday Cake!

The week before Kenitra was spent in Goulmima having meetings, catching up with old friends and celebrating 3id l-ftur (which commemorates the end of Ramadan). It definitely was an interesting period of reflection for me as I looked back on Ramadan. This season of fasting was actually the most difficult time I have spent in Morocco and I think this is especially because I am a foreigner. I felt religious-differences maximized during this time of year and it is difficult spending a long period of holiday away from my family. I had actually drafted a blog post about the experience, but I had found it more appropriate as a private journal entry because I was too negative in what I had said. Looking back, I am so blessed to live in my   community and the hospitality of people during this sacred time of year I did not know only four months ago has positively impacted me as a person.

These next ten days (11-21) will be spent doing an English language immersion camp in El Jadida. It will be a blessing for a Sarahawi such as myself to spend a week away from the heat of home and next to the beach.

Until next time,

Steven

School's Out for Summer...and then we fast!

June 18, 2015

Well, the first draft of this blog post is actually being written on the very first day of Ramadan, which means I currently have very little energy and concentration to accomplish the task and am sure it will take a few days before the proofread version of this has been published.  As you can probably tell, I have decided to participate in the full-fast for Ramadan. However, I have decided to make one minor change in how I observe this month and that is that I will not participate in Ramadan fasts on Sundays. The reason I am doing this is because I am participating in Ramadan to develop an appreciation for the significance of this month for Muslims and its value in strengthening mankind’s relationship with God and with one-another. I am not practicing two religions and the same time nor do I wish to practice another religion temporarily. I would not participate in Ramadan at all if I did not appreciate the many beautiful aspects of the Muslim religion. However, the reason I have chosen to not observe fast on Sundays is because of the Resurrection. In Christian fasting history and tradition (Lent from my experience), fasts are not observed on Sundays because that is a day to celebrate the Resurrection. I feel that my Ramadan fast should follow these standards at least because my celebration of this special time for my brothers and sisters of a different religion should not supplant celebrations at the core of my own faith.

I know that it has been over a month since I last blogged for my friends and family back home and so there is indeed a good deal of information I have to update you all on. My decision to start my service with English teaching has thus far proven to be a very rewarding experience. I was able to get plugged in with the local high school and a local association to do about 6-8 hours of study sessions a week in order to prepare students on the verge of high school graduation and entrance into university for national exams that are essential for both. I also met with a good friend of mine, Simo, every week because he has approached me about volunteering with him for his big Peace Club project. Our goal is to be able to organize an extracurricular activity that combines a model-UN type of program with local volunteering and eventually a week-long camp in January that can pull in kids and Peace Corps volunteers from other regions.

Recently, I also had my site visit with my regional manager Lahcen and we talked a lot about what I would like my service to look like for these next two years. We spent some good time speaking with my host-sister about my volunteering with her association for the disabled as well, which is something I very much want to play a big part in my service. A project that I wish to initiate in my own community is something revolving around historical preservation and cultural celebration of our town’s long gone Jewish community. Given the fact that our town is so small, I feel it very important to do activities centered on the theme of multiculturalism. Another cool thing I am excited about is matching the French classes of my godmother at Santa Teresa High School in San Jose with a French class here in my site for the purpose of launching a pen-pal program between the two classes. This may end up being digital, but I feel such a program would really provide special exposure to all youth involved. During Ramadan, I will be doing a discussion-club for six hours a week with the same students from the association I did test prep with.  Hopefully this will give them some listening and speaking skills with the English language before they head off to university. This is the only local institution which has expressed interest in having a volunteer during the summer (and particularly Ramadan). The Dar Shebab is still closed and the other two associations I have had contact with do not seem to wish to be active during Ramadan.

Personally, I have been doing well this last month. Helping the students prepare for their exams was a really rewarding experience and I felt the sessions we did really helped address their needs. I am also happy to be relatively busy with three English classes a week during Ramadan. This portion of service can be a bit difficult because of what I would deem ‘island fever’. Peace Corps policy states we are not allowed to leave our sites for the first three months of service and I have mentioned to many volunteers in a spirit of kidding that I would have a hard time with such a policy if implemented in San Jose (a city of nearly a million people). So this isn’t to say I’ve felt sad in site, I’m actually in a state of holistically very good health, but I do definitely have a burning desire to get out for a week or so for a change of scenery. Our training next month will be a much-welcomed experience and there are also some camps I would like to volunteer with out of site during the summer. In addition to these opportunities, I would also like to add a couple of vacation days to a weekend and go check out a tourist spot here in country for a little r&r.

Update on Work with a little Moroccan History!

May 15, 2015

Work has been to a slow start since my Dar Shebab has been closed for five months, but I have been able to meet with English teachers and associations to find ways to help out the community here. Every volunteer is different and I know many who have said they are looking to make a very different impact than English teaching and others who truly have a passion for the subject and wish to really emphasize that activity. As for me, there are some ambitious project ideas floating around in my head, but I have found that I enjoy English teaching much more than I expected given the fact that I now have context as to why so many Moroccans wish to learn it.

In Peace Corps, we receive news updates in English about Moroccan society and many have centered around the debate of whether or not English should replace French as the primary foreign language taught here. From what I can tell, the people seem to be excited to move away from a colonial language and towards what is now the world’s dominant language. English truly can help build bridges between people here and things such as the world economy, diplomacy, human rights, medicine, international development, science, technology and so much else. It seems to really be the key to connect more and more Moroccans with the various global conversations people are having outside of their country. It also would provide an avenue for the people here to educate the outside world about their culture in order to foster a more meaningful understanding of life here. For example, the CIA World Factbook lists 99% of the Moroccan population as Arab-Berber. I am not sure what the source of this statistic is (it could very well be the Census here), but I have honestly never met a single person who identified as “Arab-Berber”. I have met people who have both ancestries, but they have always identified as one or the other when asked. Before arriving in Morocco, this country profile gave me the impression that the country was much more culturally homogeneous than it actually is. I do not think such misperceptions would occur if Moroccans could share substantive information about their culture in English. There really does seem to be an incredible capacity to increase understanding between cultures if there were more fluent English speakers in this country.

I have many friends here in my site and spend most evenings out in the city center enjoying their company and conversing in some combination of Moroccan Arabic and English. After a little over a month, it is nice to see the friendships I have made becoming more personal because this has allowed for some of the most meaningful conversations that I have had in Morocco since I have been here. All of the moving we have been doing as volunteers has resulted in me parting ways with people once I started to feel close with them up until I arrived here. Although my city is rather small in size, I find a pretty hip boutique every evening I go outside and discover that more things are available here than first meets the eye. For example, there is a lady in center who bakes millwi (Berber pizza) for three dirhams and a man nearby who sells Herrera (spicy soup with beans) for three dirhams and so last night I was able to have a pretty awesome fast-food experience for a very cheap price! So “project integration” is off to a good start I would say!

 

Here, we have all four Peace Corps volunteers in our town. Together, our duration of service here is from 2013-2017! Sanjay is the volunteer I am replacing and he certainly left an amazing example of service (especially in terms of cultural integration and language ability). It is imperative to note that we intentionally tried to make the picture look silly.

I am still fascinated about the culture and history of my community and this country. In fact, there is information in my last blog post that I have learned is untrue. Sources on the Moroccan slave-trade are very difficult to find and I have not yet found substantive history about my region in English. Just yesterday I learned from someone I trust as a knowledgeable source on this issue that there was indeed slavery all the way up to the early twentieth century in our site. As I mentioned previously, a good deal of the population here has sub-Saharan African heritage, but I had mentioned believing this was due to gradual migration over time. However, I have learned now that slaves were treated as prizes of war and that the migration of sub-Saharan Africans to our region was due to forced “transactions” of these populations over the course of several generations. Although I did mention this before, I will repeat that this population is now “Berberized,” identifies with Amazigh culture and speaks Tamazight as a first language here. More experienced volunteers than myself who are in sites with black populations have told me about how racism has manifested itself in their communities, but I have not been here long enough to witness it firsthand.

Also interesting is the history of Judaism in my region. I had heard things about a mellah or Jewish Quarter in my site, but was unable to find it on previous attempts because the types of markers used to identify Jewish communities in the west (book store, cemetery, community center, synagogue, kosher deli, etc.) are not recognizable to me in my site since there is no longer a Jewish community here. So just last week, my site mate and Nadia were exploring the historic portion of our city and happened to bump into a small tour group led by a local hotel owner who is also the curator of a museum here. Amazingly, this was exactly where our new friend was taking our visitors. Essentially, within our city’s historic quarter, there is a relatively large archway that leads one into a very small neighborhood that was once the home of our city’s Jewish community. Furthermore, within the neighborhood, there is actually a museum dedicated to the history of our site. Most of the pieces actually relate to the community of the mellah, which seems to be the specialty of the curator seeing as he can read Hebrew. For example, there are many stone tablets with Hebrew inscriptions on them, photographs of Jewish Moroccans who once resided in the community and a book with the names of local Jewish families. Our friend told us that every member of this community has either converted to Islam or immigrated to Israel (I know that some families also migrated up north to Casablanca). I find this rather sad seeing as Judaism is the oldest continuously practiced religion in Morocco (with only about 3,000 practitioners left) and I think these types of communities provide powerful examples of peaceful coexistence between different religions.[1] In a way, I feel that their departure is a victory for the forces in the world that try and make us believe that this is not possible.

Here is a tablet written in Hebrew from my town's Jewish community.

As I reflect on what I have just written, I realized that my site probably seems eccentric and exotic to many Americans back home. Indeed I am learning day by day that the ways we are taught to categorize people do not always give us a full picture of their identity. There are indeed not too many places in the world where the African and Jewish diasporas intersect in such an interesting way, but that is one of the things that makes Morocco such a fascinating place to live for those who love history.

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[1] See photos of Volubilis for ruins from Synagogue (in Greek and Hebrew).

Those Week 3 In-Site Vibes

April 21, 2015

Now that the storm of transition has ended and the dust of normalcy has started to settle in, I am happy to share with you all about what life is like in my site.

The first piece of amazing news I have to share is that I have a fully furnished apartment to move into that is exactly the price Peace Corps gives us for rent. Two volunteers have lived there this past year: one just completed his service and the other will be moving downstairs in a couple of months. Consequently I will be only paying half of the rent for these first couple of months and will have a good selection of savings between that and the majority of my moving-in allowance. With this extra dough on hand, my intention is to inquire into the refrigerator situation and buy a television with satellite dish. I am particularly excited about the latter because they are not terribly expensive in Morocco (most Moroccans own them and so it would not be an inappropriate personal possession) and come with several English-language international news stations.

The week of the fourteenth, something really awesome that happened is that I had my first two Arabic tutoring sessions with Mostafa and they were really productive. I find them very challenging because he constantly raises the level of conversation beyond my comfort zone. Really, it is not unlike a boxing match because we are going back and forth in an activity that I find challenging for a long time. What’s really cool about these conversations is that they are good for getting to know one-another personally and for learning about our respective cultures. I really love my tutor and our sessions and am so happy that Peace Corps provides us with the funds for improving our language skills.

I also have started tutoring two high school students early Saturday evenings who know English, but need help applying it in school and also taking what they know and using it in conversation. Starting next Sunday evening, I will be teaching English to a class of about ten kids who have been studying it for a year. My tutor also had me meet with his association last week and so more classes may be in the loom. On the nineteenth, I bumped into a local basketball legend and we may co-lead basketball with another Peace Corps curriculum. So it seems that a much busier schedule in-site may be in the loom.

I actually live in the Northern Sahara Desert and so the weather in my city is neither predictable nor temperate. This applies to daily weather as the same twenty-four hour period can witness a sand-storm, hot weather, rain and wind (happened last week). In terms of seasons, I have just been told that the winter gets to be very, very cold and the summer is exactly what one thinks of when the Sahara comes to mind.

The culture in my site is indeed quite distinct from that of my first Moroccan city. I think that the next two years’ worth of posts will communicate how I perceive the culture here, but I will try and give everyone back home an introduction to what I have experienced in these last few weeks.

My site is bilingual with the people here speaking both Moroccan Arabic and Tamazight. I have a couple of friends who are Arab and are able to understand Tamazight and have encountered some older Amazight women who do not speak or understand any Moroccan Arabic. My city and region are considered distinctly Berber and the only population of Arabs I am aware of nearby are an extended family of a few hundred people who live in a nearby town. What really fascinates me about the social dynamics of my site is how people perceive race here. In Africa, I have usually seen English textbooks use the Sahara as a marker to distinguish between Africans who would be considered Black in the U.S. and those who would be considered Caucasian. What is interesting about actually living in the Sahara is that the system used in the U.S. Census does not seem to account for people who live in this type of transition zone. In my small town, there are people lighter than me in complexion, people who appear like the majority of sub-Saharan Africans, people who have brown skin, people with light skin and facial features of sub-Saharan Africa, people with dark skin and traditionally Caucasian features and probably a few physical combinations I have forgotten to mention. In my city, I have not noticed any form of racism yet because the ethnic and religious identities seem to me to be more important than skin color here. However, in Western Morocco there is an entire ethnic group who are descendants of sub-Saharan slaves brought here from that despicable trade. I have spoken with two volunteers stationed there (shout-out to Rebecca and Kelsey) and they have told me that they have noticed both racism and socio-economic inequality as issues for these people. I should probably add for context that in Northern Morocco and larger cities, there are immigrants, students and workers from sub-Saharan African countries who are the victims of a combination of nativism and racism.

One of the most awesome things about this site is that the people work hard to make it look beautiful and spread joy to its residents. There is an abundance of nature here and newly landscaped gardens are bordering forests bursting with palm trees. The city is also filled with public art that is in thanks due to both local efforts and contributions from international organizations. My new home is also the cleanest city I have seen in this whole country thus far and the people deserve a lot of credit for being so aware of environmental stewardship (it is a passion of many people I have met here).

There is indeed much more I could say, but I hope what I have written here gives y’all a picture of what I am seeing and experiencing every day. Hopefully, the unconnected dots in your minds will be linked by the time I return home.

Peace and Blessings.

Easter in Errachidia

Before sharing my experience celebrating Easter in Errachidia, I would just like to take this opportunity to wish everyone reading this blog post a belated Easter (unless you are Orthodox in which case this blog post may be published before you celebrate) and Passover. Most of us volunteers are located in smaller cities and towns where there are no houses of worship native to us, but I have been very blessed to be located an hour from a parish in Errachidia. My site mate Nadia and I thus made the decision to celebrate Easter in the city. Our last trip from our site to Errachidia was very convenient and stress-free. However, the Lord chose to challenge me this Easter and push my patience to the limits in order trust in him more than I have been doing. The first thing I learned on Easter is that Sunday mornings in our town are quiet…dead quiet and it seemed as if a cab headed to New York from our cab queue would fill up quicker that one for Errachidia. So after arriving at the queue, we ended up waiting for additional passengers to join us for around forty-five minutes.  After what we thought was paid due diligence, we arrived in the city around ten for an eleven o’clock Mass. However, before departing, I needed to find Joseph, another PCV, because he had left his wallet in the hotel we all stayed at a couple of days ago. This small side mission was accomplished without much complication and now our religious minority search party was up to three persons.

Based on some prior inquiries in Errachidia, I knew that a petit taxi was needed to take us to the neighborhood where our desired address is. When we three PCV’s finally arrived at the petit taxi queue, it was surprising to me that none of the drivers were aware of a Church in their city. This is strange because usually Churches are rather easy landmarks to identify in other Moroccan cities because only immigrants and tourists frequent them. However, it was reassuring that the cabbies were all familiar with the neighborhood the Church is supposed to be in. Accordingly, we were driven to the area by a kind gentleman who sincerely tried to help us find the Church and even went out of his way to ask a policeman for directions who ended up being just as confused. Our driver ended up giving up on the hunt, which was discouraging, but we were fortunate enough to be in walking distance of our destination (insh’allah).

The time was approximately 10:20 now and so we thought we had some wiggle room to find this sacred place. What became clear very quickly is that the urban planning and system of organization for addresses and streets in Errachidia is not at all like it is in America. We all walked around for about 20 minutes in a state of absolute confusion because the addresses on the street are not listed in chronological order, which would be manageable for Americans if street names referred to streets in the same sort of system we are used to in America instead of referring to a very large general area. Truly, this pursuit made Harry Potter searching for Platform 9 ¾ in the Sorcerer’s Stone look manageable even if Mrs. Weasely had not come to his assistance.

So now there were twenty minutes before the scheduled start of Easter Mass and the idea entered my head that perhaps this Church is no longer in existence. Although Churches are perfectly legal in Morocco, they are designated strictly for foreigners and since there are not many of those in Errachidia, it was wisely suggested by Joseph that this Church is probably very low-key and known only to its congregants and probably very few Moroccans. So with little time to spare, his instinct was to go from hanut (store) to hanut asking about the Church, Nadia’s was to find internet and to do some research on the web and mine was just to walk around and search for it by foot. Joseph eventually had to leave and so it was between Nadia and I to find this place. By this time, I was incredibly stressed because the Mass was about to begin and we had no idea where to go. Furthermore, we had decided to search for this Church by separate means. I had asked just about everyone I could find in the neighborhood where the Church was and the consistent answer was that the address does not exist and that there is no Church.

It was at this moment that I looked to sky and vocalized a number of complaints to God in rather obscene speech. At the time, such questions were popping into my head such as: “Why on earth would You not allow me to attend Mass on Easter,” “This is [fill in your favorite adjective] stupid,” and “How am I supposed to be an effective volunteer without Mass?” It definitely is the most frustration I have felt in Morocco and most likely in the past year. I was definitely heated and so most of these questions were coming out of my mouth uncontrollably.

Pause in the story for a little reflection: It seems ironic that someone trying to go to Church could get so upset so easily, but I think this is one of the most important reasons there is a Church: transformation. Crucially, I have also been much too self-reliant when it comes to my faith here in country. This is a very new context for me to practice my faith in and I do feel somewhat forced to individualize it because of the fact it is not the religion of the majority here and I want to respect the people I am now in relationship with by celebrating what we have in common instead of always focusing on our differences. The accompanying issue is that I think I forgot that God is love, located everywhere and present in all people. The universality of love is one of the most crucial bonds that we as people share with one another and I think that I lost sight of that in the process of worrying how I was going to practice my faith not only individually but in community here in country. Furthermore, this concept of community is difficult to grasp and I would never be ever to attend Church if it were not for the help of the many loving Muslims in Morocco who have continued to show me some of the greatest hospitality I have seen in my life. This applies to both attending Church generally and also in the events that are about to follow.

I am not sure what broke me from that fit of rage, but I started noticing taxis passing by on the street and thought just to ask for the “eglise catholique” because the drivers would most likely be used to hearing it asked for in French by foreigners than Arabic speakers. The first driver I talked to knew where it is exactly (I am still bamboozled as to why this was not the case at the queue), but Nadia was in the café looking up the Church on Google and so I obviously did not want to leave her behind. I begged the driver to wait and said this was a very important religious holiday, but his passenger was a very insistent lady who wanted no involvement with me and needed to catch a bus. I told the man our former driver did not know where the Church was and none of the other petite taxi drivers at the queue knew either, but he insisted the other drivers would be able to help us out. This was a crucial breakthrough because it was from hereon established that there is a Catholic Church in Errachidia and at least one Moroccan knows where it is. Nadia and I then literally bumped into each other and shortly thereafter another cab came. This driver was also aware of a Church in Errachidia, but we had some difficulty understanding his directions for walking because this building was clearly off the beaten path. He then volunteered to take us there despite the fact he had a passenger in the car (l’humdullah). So went down a seemingly random and undistinguished residential side street that existed long before the invention of the automobile. After maybe only a minute the driver got out of the car and led Nadia and I to the door of a house and showed us in the smallest of print (possible only a centimeter tall) and the most warn out of characters, the words: “Eglise Catholique.” What is even more shocking is that this Good Samaritan initially refused payment and considered helping us out during his work hours as an intrinsic act of kindness. I was able to quickly pull out the usual cab fee because I truly felt he may be the kindest cab driver in the entire world (free trips to houses of worship for people of different religions…a pretty incredible gesture considering where humanity is today). I hope he felt our appreciation.

Before leaving, he had rung the doorbell and so an elderly French gentleman who turned out to be the parish priest opened the door of this house and invited us inside in English for Easter. At first I could not believe what I saw was a Church, but the Diocese of Rabat essentially converted a Moroccan living room into a worship space and uses the rest of the house as a rectory and for storage. The worship space (much like a small California mission chapel) had icons and paintings on the walls, various Moroccan religious artifacts in Arabic and very short wooden benches that looked as if they were built for an elementary school decades ago.

We arrived early and so the priest sat Nadia and I in the Church while he got ready. Few by few the parishioners came: many French-speaking West African college students who are joined by Lebanese and Filipino employees at an international architecture firm. One of the really cool things about this service is that this priest conducts it in both English and French. The congregations and Masses in the other Churches I have been to in Morocco have almost always been exclusively French speaking and so I feel very blessed to live near a bilingual Mass. The Scripture that was read was also very impactful and really stimulated me as a whole to continue to pursue God. I think that focusing on the things of Heaven and not worrying so much about the things of the world were some appropriate concepts to wrestle with considering where I was earlier today.

When Mass was over Nadia and I met up with Connor, his new host uncle Brahim and another volunteer named Eleni. What truly surprised me about this encounter is that these two volunteers were each carrying violins despite the fact neither of them knows how to play. What Nadia and I learned is that they apparently decided to use the abundance of time they will have during Ramadan to learn how to play a new instrument. I have just continued to laugh to myself when I think of those two free spirits and their newfound passion (with the accompanying financial investment). Brahim, like all Moroccans, was just incredibly hospitable with us and had an entire lunch prepared for a group of strangers. When told Nadia and I had to leave at 2:30 to catch the bus, he took action and made sure we were watered and well fed before the return trip.

And alas…another Moroccan adventure, another lesson learned and a great story to tell for many Easters to come.

I would love to hear how everyone’s Easter and Passover went so please feel free to contact me!



In Errachidia, the name of the parish is the Fraternity of St. John the Baptist

I only took one picture of the Church (or chapel) itself. From here you can see the alter and cross above it. Below the cross and behind the altar there is an icon of Christ and the Last Supper. To the left I believe is an icon of the Holy Spirit distributing different spiritual gifts (This is my best recollection because I did not get to look at this one too closely). In the middle of the two windows there is a painting of St. John the Baptist preaching. Something exciting I learned is that the Bishop for all of Morocco will be coming to visit next month which is intense considering he is appointed by the pope and our congregation cannot number more than twenty to thirty people!

Volubilis Photos!