Site assignments!

Humdullah! We've gotten our site assignments!

Friday morning, our program staff gave us our sites and assignments, telling us where we'll be and what we'll be doing for the next two years (inshallah). Not surprisingly, since I'm learning a Berber language, I'll be in a Berber village in the High Atlas Mountains. Berberville, as I'll call it here (for purposes of safety, adherence to Peace Corps Policy, and just because it seems like a good idea).

Yesterday, Saturday, I left Mountain City to come to Berberville. Berberville doesn't have internet access, sadly, but [Eastern Atlas City] does, and that's where I spent last night. :) I'll be going back and forth between Berberville and EAC fairly regularly - probably once a week - for things like shopping, internet access, and language tutoring. (Why not find a tutor in Berberville? Two reasons: There aren't many available - my sitemate is not thrilled with hers -
and more importantly, because H**, the language and culture facilitator I've worked with (and been hugely impressed by) for the past two months, lives in EAC! :D So I get to keep studying with her! (She's fluent not only in Darija and Berber but also in Classical Arabic and French, the other two languages I'm going to want to be working on over the next two years.) lHumdullah!

So I haven't actually seen Berberville yet. We'll head out there in the next hour or two. I've spent the past 18 or so hours in EAC, spending time with the other new PCTs assigned to the area and with the PCVs who have been here for the past 5-23 months. (Youth Development and Small Business Development volunteers come to Morocco in the fall, so they arrive in site in November; Health and Environment volunteers come to Morocco in the spring, so we get to site in May.) It's a great group of people. I'm sad that none of my Environmental buddies will be too nearby - the other three PCTs are all Health - but the volunteers here are pretty fantastic, so I'm looking forward to making friends with them. And with my Environmental friends scattered so broadly, I've got people to visit all up and down the country.

The social aspects of last night and this morning were great, but at least as wonderful (in my opinion, because I'm a big nerd, and like to feel like I'm doing productive things) is that I made contact with people I'll be able to collaborate with on my projects. There are two environmental volunteers, married to each other, (K&D) who live on the opposite side of the National Park I'll be working with. K&D don't come into EAC very often--I think this is their second visit in the year they've been here--so it's wonderful that they were here when I was, and we were able to talk about our projects and plans. We've already decided to collaborate on their plans - which include hiking the five days from their site to mine and marking the trail and surveying it, plus doing a count of the Barbary Sheep that live in the park - and mine.

About my plans...

Friday morning, after I knew where I'd be coming, I talked with the Environmental Program staff about what their vision was for Environmental Education (EE) in Berberville. And they've got one. As most of y'all know, I'm a certified science teacher, back in the States. Apparently, there aren't many certified teachers who have been EE PCVs in Morocco, so they're excited to take advantage of my training. (Oh, and coincidence #23: D**, of K&D, is also a certified teacher. Science teacher. Who taught middle school. And he also has a M.S., but his is in Wildlife Ecology. This collaboration, inshallah, is going to be iHla bzzef.)

So what are these education-intensive EE plans?

They want me to meet with teachers from each of the schools in the National Park. (The Park is less than 20 years old, and the government wanted to include large swathes of land--53,000 hectares, but I don't know what that means in acres or miles--so there are many villages and towns that are entirely within the boundaries of the Park.) Inshallah, these teachers will work together as a Park-wide EE committee, determining which environmental issues the students in our region need to learn. We'll create EE clubs in the schools and create EE curriculum to target the issues that the committee decides are important. And then I'll monitor the implementation of this curriculum.

It's ambitious, but then, I knew our staff had big goals. :) There are challenges, not least of which is the sheer scope of the Park and the virtually nonexistent transportation between these villages. (I may well be getting to most of them on foot, and they range from a two-day hike to a five-day hike away.)

So...ambitious. But this is good work, and the work that I've been called here to do. Which means that I've got legions of support to make this happen, not to mention another certified teacher who lives on the opposite side of the park. lHumdullah. :D