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.