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!