It's About Time!!!

Why "Hello!" to you all! I bet you thought we would never have an update on our blog… well the waiting is finally over! Since we only get to the internet café about once every two weeks or so, we haven’t had the opportunity to properly update everyone. Our time at the net is usually spent catching up on e-mails and sifting through all our work info, updates and emails, and before we know it our time is up and its time to catch our transit back to our little town.

However, that’s besides the point… we are doing well and excited to be in our final douar (town) where we will be working for the next 2 years with Morocco’s Ministry of Health. We are living in the Ouarzazate Province, but due to security reasons, we are unable to give you our douar name on a blog page, so I will try to describe it for you. From one of the larger douars, where we have a weekly souk (like a flea market where you buy anything you need, from food, spices, house-wear supplies, soap, sheep, etc.) we catch a transit and usually arrive in our douar about an hour later. Thankfully most of the road has been recently paved so it’s pretty smooth, if you don’t mind 25 people being crammed into a 15 passenger van with all the food/supplies they’ll need for the week.

Once in our town, we are surrounded by rolling hills and fields of wheat with smaller douars dotting the land, all sheltered by a magnificent, jagged mountain range that changes from colors of orange to purple with the fading of day into night. When we climb to the top of these mountains, as far as our eyes can see, there’s range after range of mountains and hills. Morocco is quite geologically diverse and our region has its share of interesting features.

Despite its natural beauty, heaps of trash are piled up along the road, the dried up river bed, and between ALL the houses. We hope to do a community clean up and help this douar stay beautiful and sanitary. We just need to get the community’s support and get them enthused about picking up trash! It’s not just a problem here, but everywhere in Morocco. Apparently many volunteers have tried to help solve this problem but have fallen short. It’s a big task to take on… but we’re up for the challenge (at least right now anyway :))

Since we are at about 7,500 ft in elevation, the weather has been quite enjoyable. While some volunteers are experiencing 130degree heat, we were enjoying (in June) a comfortable mid 80’s. Morocco is known as the cold country with a hot sun, and we have definitely found that to be true. It’s amazing how intense the sun is, but when we move into the shade, it feels at least 10degrees cooler. Last month we had about a week of thunderstorms and big dark rain clouds hovered over the mountain range and the frogs and crickets sang loudly throughout the entire day. I went for a run in the rain and it felt like home. July’s weather has turned into something else…according to the people here it’s been uncharacteristically hot for our little town with fierce winds that slam our windows and doors shut, usually breaking or cracking the glass and blowing all sorts of debris and dust into our apartment. Nonetheless, I’m trying to enjoy every ounce (I guess "gram" here) of sun because from what we’ve heard, winter is a whole other story! One of the teachers we met said he wore a pair of socks and put a plastic grocery bag over them 4 times just to stay warm (socks-plastic bag, socks-plastic bag, socks-plastic bag, socks!) We’ll keep you updated…

As far as housing goes, we had two options: mud or cement. The advantage of having a mud house is that it holds in heat better in the winter and stays cooler in the summer, however it is also inviting for bugs and other creepy-crawlers and isn’t has structurally sound. Cement is sturdier, however it is like a freezer in the winter and an oven in the summer. On our housing search, we were informed only one house was available for rent (which happened to be cement and fairly new) and if we didn’t talk with the landlord soon, it would be gone. So we were able to secure housing despite our broken Tamazight. Humdullah! ("Thanks be to God" a phrase commonly used here and is probably one of the first words that kids learn).

Our first two months in country were spent in the Azilal province where our language training took place. We lived with a host family and went to "school" Monday-Saturday. The days were long and tiring but we made it through and passed our language exam before swearing in as official Peace Corps Volunteers in late April. During those two months we were learning not only a new language, but a new culture and way of functioning within a new society, acclimating to new food, weather and time frame, and all our work policies and procedures. By the end of our training, we were pretty exhausted and anxious to find out where we would eventually be placed in Morocco and start using what we’d just learned. We made some great friends in training and are thankful for their support. Our host family in Azilal consisted of a mother and her son. The father had passed away about 3 years earlier and her other three children were either way working or going to school. The mother, Fatima, was sweet and always wanted us to feel comfortable. She made spaghetti about three times per week; I think to help us feel like we weren’t so far away from home. In that douar there were dogs galore and it was a little scary to walk around at night. Most were pretty mangy, slept during the day and awoke at night to scrounge for food, howl and keep us from sleeping. I felt bad for them, they were treated with such distain and left to fend for themselves. We did our duty though and adopted a little pup and named her Sadie. We fed her and pulled off all her ticks and put medicine on her to help keep them away. After our training ended we handed her off, nice and healthy and full of energy, to the volunteer who was stationed in that area.

Since we’ve been in site, we’ve been involved in an AIDS awareness booth at a nearby festival, World Environment Day, and work at the Sbitar (the local clinic, which has one nurse and one doctor) at least twice a week to help with infant vaccinations. We also had the opportunity to teach a couple of English classes at the local high school. All in all, we are getting used to the culture here and are learning how things are done. We also did a mini tooth-brushing lesson for our new host family (father, mother, daughter 13, and son 10). They didn’t have toothbrushes or toothpaste, so we gave them the extras we had and were greatful. The kids were pretty enthusiastic at first, until the toothpaste ran out and they wanted us to buy them more (even though they had plenty of money and could afford the 4 dirham "soap" as they call it, equivalent to about 50 cents). We later found our toothbrushes frayed and blackened from washing clothes and who knows what else. So the education starts again.

I’m not gunna fib, it hasn’t been a cake walk here… but we are thankful for this opportunity and will make the best of every situation we are given. Sorry this is long, we had four months to catch up on and another volunteer was kind enough to let us use her computer to type most of this blog so we could upload it likity-split at the internet café. Humdullah! But time is running out once again, but now that we have access to an English style computer, we hope to keep you better updated especially since I didn't get to tell you everything I wanted in this round.

Ar mn b3d! (until we meet again!)

-M & C

Morocco!!!

Hey Guys!!

We did in fact make it to Morocco and are having a great time. We applogize for taking this long to post a message on our blog but at this time we do not have a computer so we are grateful when we can borrow anothers Peace Corps volunteer's laptop. Though we tried to avoid it we went into this adventure with many expectations. We are now learning what it is really like in Northen Africa. For starters where we are located it is very green and beautiful. This is actually not a normal thing for Morocco at this time but this year Morocco had the most rain recorded in 10 years. People are very happy here becuase of this. As of now we are staying at a hotel in a town called Beni Mellal, along with 60 other PCVs and have been learning basic language and safety material. This monday we will be heading north to spend 2 months with our home-stay family. We are excited and nervous about this experience. The main goal of home-stays is immersion and language training. With any luck we will have a good handle and starting ground for the Berber language we will speak throughout our 2 year service. Well it is time to go, our computer time is up. We will continue to post on our blog, hopefully with a few pictures soon. Thankyou all for your thoughts and prayers. We love you all!

Cory and Melissa

Health Education, Morocco Africa

New Beginings

Test, Test. One, two, three.

Lets see how this works.

Sweet! So we've officially started our blog! Wow, I never thought I'd have one, but I'm glad I have the opportunity to share our experiences in the Peace Corps with our friends and family!

We'll start our PC orientation in Philadelphia on March 2, but are heading there a few days before to check out the sights, and of course, the museum steps that Rocky trained on. After orientation, we'll head to New York and fly to Casablanca where our training officially begins!

More to come...