Tata, back home, Fez, Jamie's mdina, Rabat, Paul's mdina and back home again!

Well, I last left you all off on the day before I travelled to Tata with my counterpart Youssef for Ability Camp. I left one desert city for another in the same desert in the same country...and it took me over 12 hours to get there. Things started normally that day as we headed west towards Ouarzazate and stopped there for lunch. We boarded the bus from our town early in the morning and arrived in Oz at about lunch time. Youssef and I immediately bought our tickets to Tata and sat down and destroyed a couple of tajines at a comfortable pace...it was a nice meal. On our way back toward the bus station to catch our 2:30 ride south, we bumped into fellow PCV Emma, also headed to Tata for Ability Camp. We all waited in the bus station together, passing the time comfortably and laughing as we conversed in two languages (all making mistakes in the other's language)...until our bus never came. The gentleman who worked in the bus station told us that we could either wait for a 2AM bus (an 11 hour wait in the bus station) or take a local bus to a small town only an hour away, but at least in the right direction in which case we could hope only God could help us get there. We chose the inch'allah option and hence our 'moghamara' (مغامرة) or adventure (a word you don't learn in a foreign language until you experience it) began. An hour later, we arrived in a town I've never heard of and felt very out of place in the more desert-like region than my own. We ended up taking a 1960's hippie van filled with about 15 people two hours further south. It was an interesting experience as a drunk man boarded and verbally harassed me in English for several minutes while Youssef eventually persuaded him I'm friendly and then he departed with a kind 'good-bye' and many apologies. The three of us then made two friends in the van and we took turns singing songs in our native languages until we arrived in our destination. The van abruptly arrived in the middle of nowhere, from which point we got a taxi to take us to the nearest town. From there, we took a pretty fancy taxi (with a small screen t.v. inside playing Moroccan music videos) to another town from which the three of us bought out a taxi to take us to Tata. Forgive the latter part of this story appearing rushed...all three of us took turns dozing off as transportation here is always an exhaustive experience. Fortunately, after an entire days travel in the same desert, we arrived in Tata and everyone passed out quite quickly thereafter.

The actual camp itself was a really powerful experience. I had never spent that much time with individuals with special needs in my life and I learned about how to create inclusive programming for this population. It was definitely an exhaustive program and I gave every ounce of energy I had toward serving those youth. I was truly inspired also by the efforts of my fellow volunteers (American and Moroccan) who really gave 110% to that camp. A special shout-out needs to be saved just for Abbey and her inspiring leadership and effort

A great picture taken by fellow PCV Jeff of Paul, Ryan and myself exploring the oasis in Tata.

By God's grace, the trip home was completely normal and I spent that Sunday in bed sleeping (actually watching The Force Awakens in bed). That evening, I met with my good friend Mustapha and my site-mate Larissa to touch base about the second camp I would be doing in two weeks--a special needs inclusion camp in my site to commemorate the construction of a new basketball court built in town. That week was rushed as can be and passed successfully, with much improvisation on our parts. Every activity was designed to teach our youth about the importance of inclusion of special needs individuals in our society. We touched on this theme through sessions in the arts, sports and even directly speaking with the kids about what an inclusive society looks like. The culmination of the camp was supposed to be a field trip for kids from a special needs youth association from Errachidia to our town. Everything was designed with this in mind; however, after delivering a very long lecture to the youth, the president of the association notified us that they would be unable to bring any participants due to financial constraints. This put all of the volunteers at the camp in a bit of a bind. Larissa and I were trying to process the news on Wednesday evening as we thought about what we would do that Friday. The idea then hit me that we both wanted to install a wheel-chair ramp at the youth center and had a bag of cement ready for the job. So we took a very small building project and turned it into a volunteerism opportunity for the Dar Chebab crowd. We worked with Association Reemal, a local art group, and they helped the kids both build the ramp and paint two 'inclusion'-themed murals. It was an amazing conclusion to all of the lessons we had been learning from at camp and it was so cool to see the community come together in that way so quickly for such a great cause.

Great picture of our Dar Chebab family being awesome! Pictured here is Youssef watering the cement on our ramp.

After two camps back-to-back, I was dead tired that following week. I continued with my evening classes at the youth center, but spent a lot of time at home recovering from those two crazy weeks. The focus of that week was mainly housecleaning (a very important mission that I had neglected for longer than I'd like to admit) and reading.

The last week of April was when I travelled up to Fez with two of my friends/counterparts Mustapha and Majid. Peace Corps organized a workshop for Project, Design and Management and so we all went up to develop some new programming for our town. While up there, we went to the Old Medina of Fez multiple times and had a great time exploring medieval history as well as artwork and decor of a priceless quality in many of the shops. A couple of other trip highlights were fellow-PCV Nora joining the three of us for McDonald's (the first time for our Moroccan friends) and a group outing to Cafe Clock to hear Moroccan storytelling in Darija and English.

I had one gap day between the PDM workshop and decided to spend it with Jamie, who's site is closely located to Fez. We had a wonderful time exploring some of the local farmland and villages outside of her city center. In addition to our little adventures, we had a wonderful dinner with our friend/counterpart Mohamed's family that evening and the two of us made a killer Mexican-American themed brunch that following morning before boarding the bus to Rabat that Sunday afternoon.

Mohamed snapped a great picture of Jamie and myself petting this adorable goat in the countryside!

We arrived in Rabat for our Mid-Service training and medical check-ups. Our MST was only two days and they truly went by in a breeze. I stayed on a third day for medical, which was nice because it afforded me a little extra time in the big city. Some highlights from MST are that I'm healthy, proud to say my Darija is now at an advanced level and learned about a few cool stuff to look forward to this fall (which I'll blog about if they come to fruition). What is really special about these trainings is that they provide us volunteers with the few opportunities that we have to all be together in the same place at the same time (and we never touch 100% attendance now that we're all in the field). I remember having a delicious Italian dinner at a West African restaurant one evening for my friend Sarah's birthday, having another delicious Italian dinner the following evening with some of the crew from the English conference in Errachidia (thanks to Joseph for the treat), enjoying a delicious suchi lunch with Santiago (who I hope does well in Spain), Emma (from the 'moghamara' in Tata) and Paul (my friend from training in Sidi Kacem) and enjoying a couple of delicious sandwiches with Noa (who is basically my neighbor in site...just living in the next town over) while sitting upon the roof-terrace of our hotel that overlooked the entire downtown. My local priest here in country actually lives in Rabat during the week and so I was also able to take him out to dinner one night to a really trendy area of Rabat with affordable food and a kind of European-like restaurant/cafe atmosphere. Before heading back south, I made it a priority to also pick up a new pair of running shoes (you wouldn't believe what the terrain here can do to your shoes), which is actually something I'd looked forward to doing since January (didn't think I'd be waiting until May before returning to a large city).

To break up the trip down south, I decided to make a pitstop to the site of my friend Paul, who lives just outside of Meknes. We had spent a lot of time together this past month as we were both in Tata and PDM, but I really wanted to make the most of my opportunity to spend some free time with my good friend. Before Tata, I don't think I'd seem him in about six months, which is crazy because I saw the brother every day for those first three months in country. We passed a great time there in his town with our good friend/counterpart Bouhoute (who makes a great tajine!). I also was really amazed/inspired by how Paul decorated his apartment. It may be the most zwin or lovely PC apartment I've seen here in Morocco yet.

Now I have been nestled back in site for a good minute, but I'll leave in about a week and a half for Tangier and Chefchaouen to spend some good time with Casey, a good friend of mine from APU who is now doing the Fulbright program in Turkey. I'm really excited to catch up with him again! Ramadan should be beginning once I return so I'll try and write a post about our adventures together up north before tackling the subject of Islam's holiest month next time.

Until then, bslama friends!