Post-Site Visit Update

Just got back from a week at my permanent site. We basically spent a few nights with our permanent site homestay families, met the other volunteers in our province, met our gendarmes, learned transportation to and from our site, etc, etc. We also spent a lot of time utilizing our awkward silence and half-understanding skills that we developed during training.

I head back to my training site tomorrow for one last week there, then I’ll officially swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer on May 5th; I’ll officially move to my permanent site on May 6th, where I’ll live for two years. This past week’s site visit made the reality of Peace Corps set in; lots of down time, lonely, bored, confused, not sure how/what to do. I am, however, incredibly thankful that Peace Corps gives us a site visit at our permanent site before our training officially ends. It’s actually very daunting being in a small, conservative, remote village, not being able to speak the language, and out of easy contact with any American who might be able to understand you. Being at my permanent site made me realize how much work I’ll actually have to do in order to learn Arabic, which is as scary as you’d imagine. When I think about my actual health education work, I also become overwhelmed, as I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW I’LL EDUCATE SOMEONE ON HEALTH WHEN I CAN’T SPEAK ARABIC. Scary folks, real scary. Not to worry though, this too shall pass, and before long, I’ll be an Arabic expert, I’ll know every human, donkey, camel, and chicken in my village, and I’ll be darned ready to be a successful Peace Corps volunteer.

My site is located in the Essaouira province, which is convienient to both the city of Essaouira and Marrakesh. The temperature there is more moderate than many Peace Corps Morocco sites, although summer highs can reach upwards of 120°F and winter can be close to freezing. Despite this, I’ve mostly managed to escape the snow-capped Atlas Mountains (they’re perty but I don’t want to live in them) and the Saharan desert. My site is quite lush, with rolling hills covered with wheat fields and olive, argan, and fig trees. This site is beautiful and I can’t wait to begin a morning running/biking routine (Peace Corps provides us with Trek mountain bikes).

A few highlights from site visit:

• I kept getting locked in my bedroom for hours.
• There’s a small storage room between my bedroom door and the first door that keeps locking. When I was locked in my room a few days ago, I sat patiently and silently, waiting to hear footsteps so I could start knocking. During that silence, I heard someone snoring. Keep in mind this was during the middle of the day. I thought “oh my god, who’s sleeping outside my bedroom door in that tiny storage room?” I thought maybe it was the grandma or maybe the 2 year old. When my host family finally rescued me and unlocked the door, I asked who was sleeping in there. They thought I was crazy. I thought they were crazy. I didn’t believe them when they told me that no one sleeps in that room, so they went into the room with me. Surely enough, there were no snoring humans in the room, but there was a chicken sleeping in that storage room. CHICKENS SNORE JUST LIKE HUMANS! Who knew?  I’m still not sure why the chicken was in there, but it was, and its snoring has a striking resemblance to my father’s snoring.
• My host mother, a beastly but incredibly friendly woman in her late 50s, is incredibly absent minded. She can’t remember my name. And she keeps taking my books and pens and water bottle when I’m not physically guarding them. She’s not stealing. She’s just sort of aloof and doesn’t realize that she’s taking my stuff. If I’m not mistaking, her first language is Tashelheit, and therefore I can’t really understand a word she says. And anytime I talk to her, she just calls me “muskin,” meaning “poor thing” in Darija. Family is probably the most important personal value in Morocco, and so she just can’t imagine why on earth I’d get up and leave my family in the US. A person without family is a “poor thing” and my host mother definitely has pity on me.
• The 4 year old and 2 year old kids in my host family really like kissing me on the cheek, which I obviously despise but not surprisingly comply with. Sticky child slobber on my face. Bleh. 

In other news, I’m accidentally almost bald. My Arabic is clearly not sufficient enough to communicate to the barber that I want and lot of hair left on my head and a little cut off; he interpreted that oppositely.