4/10 Peace Corps Applicant FAQs

I've been getting some offline questions from applicants, and I thought I'd share my answers with you all. If you have more questions, feel free to email me or post them in the comments section. :)

I've been nominated for Peace Corps and have been waiting nine months for my invitation. However, after completing the medical paperwork and being cleared, I'm beginning to worry ... what if my placement officer decides I'm not "highly qualified" and I don't get placed when they told me I would??

Take a deep breath. Getting nominated is hard. For some, getting medically cleared is harder. But if you've cleared those hurdles, it's just a matter of patience.

Two things to do to assuage your fears: (1) Visit your "toolkit" online and verify that you have, in fact, cleared all the hurdles. If any are outstanding (legal, dental, whatever), make a note of it. Then (2) call your placement officer. Ask about the outstanding issue, if there is one. If there isn't, say something about how happy you are to have been fully cleared, and how eager you are to be invited. Peace Corps staff are human. Sometimes they drop things between the cracks, and need to be reminded. Don't hound your PO night and day, but don't be afraid to call him/her, either. At the very least, your PO will be reminded of an eager nominee who's hungry for a posting.

Do you know if one could refuse vaccinations and still be accepted? Our family all have religious exemptions to vaccines.

You should definitely check with your recruiter - policy might have changed - but two years ago, when I was where you are now, that was not an option. That's why I had so very many vaccinations to go through: I'd never been vaccinated for *anything*, and suddenly I had to get them all at once. Hence the polio shot and "booster" shot only a few months apart. Blech. The clinic I went to almost refused me, because they don't usually give polio vaccinations to adults, but I explained to the RN why I needed it, and she went ahead and gave it to me.

As I understand it, exemptions only apply to legally required vaccinations. Nobody is requiring you to join Peace Corps, so the religious protections don't apply. I grew up under the umbrella of religious exemptions, too, so a big part of my decision to join Peace Corps was deciding to let myself get stuck full of needles. I haven't regretted it. When Henry IV was told he'd have to convert to Catholicism to assume the throne of France, he said, "Paris is well worth a Mass." I'd say, "Peace Corps is well worth
some shots." :)

Where are most PCVs in Morocco sent?

Depends on your sector. YD volunteers are in medium-to-largish cities. If you're in YD, you'll be speaking Darija in a town of at least 25,000, with guaranteed 24/7 electricity, running water, etc. You'll almost certainly have internet at home, a hot water heater, a fridge, and all the other amenities of Posh Corps. If you're in Health or Environment, you'll probably be in rural regions, likely in the mountains, since those are the regions still in need of Health and Environment support. If you're in SBD, anything is possible. SBD is trying hard to reach out to the rural co-operatives, so some Volunteers are put in some pretty rural areas, but others share YD sites, with all the amenities at their fingertips.

I've read that Moroccan Arabic is almost unintelligible to most Arabic speakers. Do Moroccan volunteers get to learn much Classical Arabic? French?

Yes, Moroccan Arabic (Darija) *is* very different from Modern Standard Arabic (known here as "Foos'ha"). The "th" sounds all become t's, the vowels are shortened or removed entirely, and there are lots of words borrowed from French and Spanish. That said, Darija speakers are very well positioned to learn Classical Arabic or Foos'ha, since they're written the same and probably 80% of the vocabulary is the same.

But there's no guarantee you'll learn Darija. Youth Development Volunteers do, but the other sectors all have a chance of learning Darija, Tamazight, or Tasuseit (the latter two being Berber dialects). Tam and Tash (as they're known) are useless anywhere outside of Morocco. In fact, they're pretty useless if you go more than 200 km from your site, since as unwritten dialects, they vary *hugely* even from one mountain valley to the next.

But is there opportunity to learn Classical or Foos'ha? Absolutely. Peace Corps will give you money for tutoring, which you can spend however you find most helpful. Also, anyone who has been to school (read: anyone who lives in a city, the majority of men in the rural areas, and a handful of rural women) speaks Foos'ha, so there are countless opportunities to practice it. Ditto for French.

I have a lingering fear that if I join Peace Corps, I may well be saying yes to two years of celibacy. Is this accurate in your opinion?

Most of us accepted that we'd be celibate for two years when we signed on. For some, that was an accurate prediction. For some, it was not. The Peace Corps Office of Medical Services claims that 90% of PCVs request condoms during their service. Some are probably given to our friends and neighbors (we're officially forbidden to distribute them, but I'm sure some PCVs do.) Also, condoms are useful for demonstrations during health and SIDA lessons, for home-brewing wine, for pranks, and various other purposes, so some are probably requested for these reasons.

Do you have much influence on which region of the country you will be sent?

It varies. Peace Corps' priority is matching your skill set to a community's needs, so they'll try to make the match *they* want, regardless of your preferences. Of course, their other priority is keeping you productive and in-country, so they don't want you miserable. You'll have a meeting with your program staff, early in stage, where you'll talk about this. They asked me if I'd be willing to live in the mountains, and whether I'd rather be in a cold region or a hot one. I said I grew up in mountains, and I can tolerate cold but hate the heat. I got the coldest, highest-elevation site in the country. When my ceiling leaks in the winter, the drip-water puddle freezes on my floor. But at least I don't have to buy a fridge! :) In other words, they do listen to what you have to say, but they have their own priorities, too. So, like in so much of Peace Corps service, flexibility is key. :)

But also, prepare for things to be *better* than what you expect. I love my village, my host family, my mountains, even my meters of snow. I love that I speak a language known by less than a million people. (Probably less than 100,000 people, for that matter.) None of this was what I'd imagined originally. Keep your eyes open for the unexpected good - the serendipities of service.

4/11/09 Moroccan Man-Touch (and Implications for Gay Travelers)

One of the first cultural differences noticed by Americans in Morocco is the practice that my friends and I refer to as "The Moroccan Man-Touch".

In America, especially among white Americans, there's a strong cultural taboo against physical contact between men. Handshakes are fine, back-slaps are permissible, but that's about it. Some men will hug each other, but many (maybe most) won't.

Morocco is different.

Here, men touch each other all the time. They hug, they lean, they hold hands, they walk arm-in-arm, they kiss cheeks, they cuddle. In public. It's the Moroccan Man-Touch.

I vividly remember one afternoon, when I'd been here for a week or two, I headed out of our hotel (in a fairly large southern city, popular with tourists) and passed by two snappily-dressed, coiffed guys holding hands and strolling the street. My knee-jerk reaction was, "Oh, look, a cute European gay couple!" (Which I thought to myself, but did not say out loud, lhumdullah.) A split-second later, I realized that nope, this is just a perfectly ordinary pair of straight Moroccan men.

Every time I travel, I think about it again. In my site and souqtown, I tend to avoid looking at men, for a variety of reasons. When I'm 8 feet in the air, though, looking through a bus window, I feel much freer to people-watch and even stare. So I see the man with his right arm wrapped around his friend's shoulders and his left arm rubbing his friend's belly. I see the guy standing behind his friend, arms clasped around his buddy's chest. I see the two men approaching the bus station, one with his arms hanging straight down, the other wrapped around his friend's arm, one hand clasping the elbow and the other the hand. I see the long, lingering goodbye hugs, with repeated kisses on each cheek.

It looks like a scene out of Provincetown, but these are all straight men. (Or so they'd call themselves, anyway, but that's an entirely separate can of worms.)

At the Language Camp, two of my male PCV buddies had a running contest going: They fully participated in the Moroccan Man-Touch with the male counselors/instructors, and competed to see which of them could touch a Moroccan man enough to make him uncomfortable. Neither won. They did both end up with a bunch of new friends. :)

Today we had a SIDA (AIDS) lesson with the students at the nearby middle school. Afterwards, we discussed the next lesson with some of the teachers, and showed them images we're planning to use. The images all relate to SIDA, some more obviously than others. The exercise is a creative one, asking the students to create explanations connecting the photos to SIDA. Sometimes the connection is pretty tenuous, as in, "These corrugated iron shanties represent a community in poverty, where the triple cocktail isn't available and therefore HIV is more likely to turn into AIDS."

One picture showed two men, smiling into the camera, one with his arm draped over the other's shoulder. In America, it would clearly be an image of gay men, and students' possible connections could be that AIDS first appeared in the gay community, or that AIDS continues to be rampant among gay men, or something in that vein. Here, though, everyone assumes that they're just two buddies, and the students say things like, "Even if you have SIDA, your friends won't abandon you," or "You can't transmit SIDA by hugging, so this is safe behavior."

Actually, that last sentence was the one I thought of. It wasn't until "Lahcen," my PCV friend who had brought the pictures, explained that it showed two gay men, that I realized that it hadn't even occurred to me. I've become so inured to the Moroccan Man-Touch that it hadn't even crossed my mind that these two men with their arms around each other might be attracted to one another.

And that's where the "Implications for Gay Travelers" comes in.

In America, gay couples often hesitate to show affection in public, for fear of attracting attention and/or harassment. Straight couples can engage in public displays of affection without a second thought (unless they're approaching public decency laws), but for gay couples, public affection is a nearly political act that requires no small measure of courage. Here in Morocco, it's the reverse. It's Hshuma (inappropriate, shameful) for men and women to touch in public (though, like in the US, handshakes are nearly always acceptable), but same-sex couples can be free to hold hands, link arms, put their arms around each others' waists, etc.

It may seem odd to promote gay tourism in a country where homosexuality is a crime, complete with a 5-year potential jail sentence...but as long as you limit your PDAs to the behaviors described here (as in, keep kissing and the rest for your locked hotel room!), you'll actually find a more tolerant populace than in most American cities.

Oh, and yes, women do engage in Moroccan Woman-Touch, but (1) It doesn't alliterate as well, so it's not as fun to say, and (2) It looks less startling to American eyes, because every junior high in America has girls clinging to each other all day long. Also, women are much less frequently hanging around outside - if they're out-of-doors, they're probably going directly from one place to another, not loitering for the fun of it, as the men do for hours at a time - so you just don't see it as much.

But here are some examples of the Woman-Touch: (1) Last time I was in a grand taxi for a few hours, the matronly woman next to me first put her arm around me, then pulled my shoulders down so that I was snuggled against her bosom. She'd noticed me dozing off, and wanted me to rest more comfortably. (2) Another time, a group of us were crowded side-by-side in a big room, for a meeting. The woman next to me leaned over to hear something better, and (completely unconsciously) balanced herself by holding my thigh with both hands. (3) During Language Camp, there were always more students than available chairs or sofas in the big room, so the girls routinely sat on each other for an hour or more at a time. (4) Whenever I'm seated next to a woman, I can count on her using my leg as an armrest. (5) In every medina in the country, you'll see women shopping together, bodies intertwined to some degree.

This utter unselfconsciousness about expressing friendly physical affection is actually one of my favorite aspects of Moroccan culture. I've always been a hugger by nature, and while it makes me sad that I can't hug my male PCV buddies in public, I can't help but smile when a Moroccan friend tucks her arm through mine while we walk through town. :)

3/28/09 Snapshot: Doctor's Office (aka It Takes a Village)

A few months ago, my friend "Rachid" found himself in a doctor's office in Rabat. There were plenty of other people in the waiting room, and he filled his waiting time by watching them.

One woman was there with her infant child. When the doctor summoned her, she looked at the receptionist and asked if she could leave her baby there on the seat in the waiting room. The receptionist shrugged and continued her work.

The person who had been seated next to the woman and her baby leaned over, tickled the infant, watched it goo, and smiled. After a few minutes, she turned her attention away.

At that point, someone else in the waiting room walked over to the chair where the squirming child kicked its tiny feet in the air. He played with the baby for a few minutes, then returned to his own seat.

And so it continued. Everyone in the waiting room got a few minutes of Quality Baby Time, gooing and giggling and tickling and doing whatever one does with an infant.

When her appointment was finished, the baby's mother returned to the waiting room, picked up her child, smiled at her dozen caregivers, and went on her way.

What I most love about this scene is how unthinkable it would be in America. The receptionist would never have allowed the mother to leave the child behind, for fear of assuming liability. Most mothers would never trust a room full of strangers to care for her child, fearing kidnapping or just some unspecified form of harm. And while there are certainly plenty of Americans who would play with a baby, given the opportunity, there wouldn't have been the unvocalized but clear expectation that everyone would take turns to keep the child happy and attended.

Just one more in the thousands of ways that life here and life in the US are different. :)

3/29/09 Snapshot: Xalti's Departure

Xalti means sister-of-my-mother in Tamazight. It's the name I use to address Ama's little sister, the mother of my 9-year-old cousin and my newborn baby cousin (whose birth I attended, back in August).

As loyal readers may recall, she stayed with my host family throughout the summer. She had originally planned a shorter visit, but sometime in mid-July, her husband informed her that he no longer wanted her or the children. With help from my host father, her brother-in-law, she brought her heavily pregnant body before the Berberville judge and got a divorce settlement, including alimony and child support requirements. Which he refused to pay.

As Xalti was now completely without resources, she stayed on with us until the birth of her baby. She couldn't stay after that, though, because local Berber custom dictates that a man cannot live with two sisters. As long as Xalti was pregnant, she was (presumably) sexually unavailable, so there was no problem...but once the baby was born, it was Hshuma (shameful, inappropriate, morally repungant) for her to keep living in her brother-in-law's home. So when the baby was four days old, ie as soon as Xalti could be expected to bounce along a dirt road for an hour without hemmoraging, she was packed up to live with her father, my Bahallu (Grandpa), in a mud house without running water or electricity.

Bahallu comes into town most Fridays, to visit the mosque on the Islamic holy day, and to pick up vegetables and other necessities at souq. (Berberville hosts a small souq every Friday and Saturday morning.) Whenever he came, Xalti and the infant would come with him. My little 9-year-old cousin usually stayed behind with an uncle so she could keep going to school.

This has been the pattern for the past six months. Whenever there's a school vacation - which happens a lot - Xalti and both cousins come up to stay with my host family. (There's some loophole in the two-sisters custom that allows for long visits but not actual residence.) Ama and Baba also financially support Bahallu and everyone living with him, though I don't know to what extent. Whenever Xalti visits, she takes over all of Ama's domestic tasks. She cooks, she cleans, she does the laundry...I'm not sure whether it's out of gratitude, just because she's nice, or whether it's a formal way of paying Ama back for the financial support. Regardless, Ama appreciates it, especially now that her own pregnancy is progressing.

(Hey, surprise! Ama's pregnant! I've known for a long time, but she asked me not to tell anyone. She even stopped going to the Hammam, the public baths, so that she could hide her swelling body from her neighbors. But now she's showing so visibly that it's undeniably obvious even through her bulky traditional clothing, so I'm allowed to talk about it. :D Ama's pregnant! I'm going to have a new baby brother or sister! I'm very excited.)

Ama loves having her sister come visit nearly every Friday and for longer stays at every holiday. She gets to play with her tiny nephew while her sister takes care of all of the household work. She gets to see the sister she adores. In her opinion, the situation was pretty perfect.

And then suddenly, a few weeks ago, Xalti's husband called up and said that he'd changed his mind. With less than 24 hours notice, he had her pack up her things and the children's things and come join him, several hundred kilometers away.

Ama was broken-hearted. At a stroke, she'd lost her sister, her helper and best friend, as well as her beloved neice and nephew. To make it worse, she'd lost them all to a man who cut off his 8-month-pregnant wife without a penny, who had refused to pay court-ordered familial support, who hadn't even given his children presents for 3id al-kebir, the closest Muslim equivalent to Christmas.

She repeatedly urged her sister that if her husband was a jerk to her again, that she should pack everything back up and come back here to Berberville. But Xalti was thrilled at the thought of exchanging her status of dependent, abandoned, poor relation for that of wife...at the prospect of having her children's father back in their lives. So she brushed aside her sister's concerns, packed up all their belongings - nearly all of which had been gifts from Ama and Baba - and went to her husband.

Her daughter was extatic to have her daddy back; her infant son gurgled happily in his daddy's arms. So Xalti was happy.

Ama was heart-broken. Suddenly she was the one abandoned, bereft, stripped of family... She wept. Every time she came across another tiny shoe or other trace of her sister's family, left behind in the hasty packing, she'd start crying again.

I have to admit that Xalti and I were never particularly close (in anything except age - she's 3 weeks older than me, to the day), but I'm mourning her departure for Ama's sake. I hate seeing her so sad.

3/30/09 Welcome to Spring Camp, aka Mini-Rant on Heterogeneous Groupings

I went to the English Language Immersion Camp, aka Spring Camp, with four other PCVs from my region. We're a pretty tight-knit group, thanks to sharing a souqtown and collaborating on most of our projects. (I'm a firm believer that when you have a dense cluster of Volunteers, you end up with *more* than the sum of our parts. We support each other, both emotionally and in our work.)

The five of us from the Berberville Region traveled north on Friday, then east on Saturday. We met up with our Fearless Leader Saturday afternoon, then our final two PCV teammates on Sunday morning.

We spent Sunday getting everything together, and were ready for the kids to arrive today, Monday.

As they arrived, we had a quick, one-on-one chat with them, in English, to determine their English language proficiency. It's a quiz disguised as a conversation. Here's a typical example:

"Hi! Welcome to Spring Camp!"
"Hi."
"I'm Kauthar. What's your name?" [basic statements of fact]
"Mohammad al-Bijanibi."
"Nice to meet you, Mohammed." [basic greeting phrases]
"Nice to meet you."
"Where are you from?" [advanced statements of fact]
{blank stare}
"What is the name of your city?" [simpler words - can they understand "to be"]
{blank stare}
"Your. City?" [simpler words]
"[Some nearby town]"
"Can you tell me about your family?" [can they understand or conjugate the present tense]
{blank stare}
"Do you have any brothers?" [simpler words - can they understand "to have"]
"Yes."
{looking expectantly} [can they conjugate it]
"Two brothers."
"Do you have any sisters?" [checking additional vocabulary]
"No."
"Are you happy to be here?" [can they understand basic emotional vocab]
"Yes!"
"Why?" [can they conjugate "to be"?]
"Because. Friend. Happy."
"What did you do last summer?" [can they understand or conjugate past tense]
{blank stare}
"What do you want to do this summer?" [can they understand or conjugate future tense]
{blank stare}

At this point, I'd cut off the conversation with a big smile and a reiterated welcome. Kids whose English was still up to the challenge got some more questions, continuing this pattern of taking one big step, then dialing it down until they could respond, taking another big step, finding their level of comprehension and creation, etc, etc.

I'd then assign an English Language Level to the student, based on which questions they'd been successful with. It was complicated by the fact that, because of Moroccan educational methodology, nearly all the students had comprehension levels enormously above their ability to speak or use language. They memorize long lists of vocabulary words and conjugation charts, but never construct sentences, let alone paragraphs. But I'd assign them something, giving it my best guess based on our broken conversation, and then wait for the next arrival.

We kept our records of the students' scores, and our Fearless Leader used them to divvy the students up into four homogenous groupings: Beginner Low (no or virtually no English), Beginner High/Intermediate Low, Intermediate Mid, and Intermediate High/Advanced Low. For simplicity's sake, we referred to them as English 1, English 2, English 3, and English 4.

Our Fearless Leader compiled the lists and typed them up, then posted them this morning.

So where's the mini-rant promised in the title?

Thanks for asking.

Turns out somebody had made other plans, and had grouped the kids randomly. Which educators refer to as "Heterogenous Groupings". ("Homogenous Groupings" are those where students are grouped by ability level - ie, exactly what we'd tried to do - what we'd done! - the day before.) Educational theorists will argue the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two styles. In heterogenous groups, theoretically the stronger students will help the weaker students, thereby enriching their own understanding while supporting others. That's the theory. It works in concept-based disciplines, like social sciences and physical sciences, but tends to be less successful in disciplines that are more dependent on linear progression, like math and foreign language acquisition.

Which is a complicated way of saying that OUR GROUPS WERE BETTER. After we'd realized what had been done, we pointedly asked, "So then why did we test them all yesterday?" and got wide-eyed stares. Grrr.

When you're trying to teach a foreign language (like English is, to Moroccans) to a MIXED group of students, you're guaranteed to never meet all of the kids' needs, all of the time. Even when the kids are at roughly the same level, it's really hard to teach them all the same thing at the same time. But by scrambling our groups, they just ensured that our classes would be useless for at least half of the kids, most of the time. Sigh. I hate feeling like an ineffective teacher.

4/1/09 A Shwarma a Day Keeps the Munchies Away

The food at camp is good if redundant. Every breakfast is hunks of baguette with jam and butter. Lunch is "salad" - cubed vegetables in a salty dressing - followed by a large hunk of meat. Dinner starts with harira, the delicious soup traditionally served every evening during Ramadan, and is then followed by an unconventional spaghetti-and-meatballs.

Why unconventional? Because every night, the dish of meatballs is served first, in the form of chunks of meat (rarely beef) floating in a greasy sauce. After the kids have mostly devoured that, a plate of pasta comes out, coated in butter.

I'm a lax vegetarian - which is to say, pre-Peace Corps I was a vegetarian from 1994 onwards, but here in-country I eat meat two to four times per month. I do my best to avoid red meat (which is usually sheep or goat, since beef is incredibly expensive) so I usually end up getting chicken every couple of weeks.

My extra-special-super-favorite form of chicken is shwarma. Shwarma isn't available anywhere in my province, so I only get to have it when I travel. It's hard to describe...imagine a cross between a chicken burrito and a gyro, with magical Middle Eastern spices mixed in. More or less. There's a fairly good description of it available here, or just google either shwarma or shawarma and enjoy the various links that turn up.

Anyhow, it's delicious, and not too expensive, and readily available in the Algerian border-town where we spent the week...so we had a loooot of shwarma. I think I had enough meat for two or three months. But it was gooood. :)

3/31/09 Hallelujah

For about 72 hours now, I've had "Hallelujah" stuck in my head. I don't even know all the words, though I've now looked them up to post here. Thanks to TV and movie soundtracks, plus friends' iPods, I've heard different renditions of both Leonard Cohen's and Rufus Wainwright's versions, and am not even sure which in particular was on permanent loop...just that every time I was lost in thought, or drifting off to sleep, or waking up, or even while I was engaged in other tasks, this song poured through my head, over and over and over again.

So I figured I'd share it with y'all. This appears to be the most comprehensive version of Cohen's lyrics, which were somewhat altered by Wainwright when he covered it. I like Cohen's better:

"Hallelujah"

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

To watch/hear my favorite YouTubed performance, go here. :)

4/8/09 The King is Coming! (The Sequel)

When I first visited Berberville in April of 2008, I was told that His Majesty the King would be visiting in a week or two, and that I would just barely miss him.

I was sad.

When I moved here at the end of May 2008, I found out that he had never come.

I was relieved.

They said he'd be here for our big summer-end festival. The town painted itself red (literally, all the buildings along the main streets were painted various shades of pink, coral, and red). I had to be out of town, though, and was bummed that I would miss him.

He didn't come.

Then they said he'd come For Sure in October.

He didn't.

Then the word on the street assured me that he'd be here in late December. Public works projects exploded as the entire province prepared its prettiest face. Every building in Souqtown and Springfield draped itself in red and green bunting. Flags sprung up like April daffodils. A helicopter flew into town, bringing the king's security force to prepare the ground. My host family cleared all the furniture out of their two largest entertaining rooms, so that they could sleep the throngs sure to visit our little town.

He went skiing in France.

The bunting was quietly removed. The furniture crept back into the entertaining rooms. Flags melted away with the snow.

He'll come in April, everyone agreed.

And now April is upon us. I returned to my province a week into the month, and was nearly blinded by the profusion of red and green decorations drenching Souqtown. Flags have popped back up on their white posts, radiant against the rich blue mountain sky. "He's in Springfield right now, and will be in Berberville next week," a government employee assured me.

I have a friend currently visiting one of Morocco's larger cities. As he strolled by the King's palace (His Majesty maintains palaces in *all* of Morocco's large cities, as well as many of its medium-sized and small ones - even Berberville has built him a palace in the past few months), my friend was vehemently shooed to the other side of the street by the King's security forces. My friend is therefore confident that the King was in residence there, many hundreds of kilometers away from Springfield.

I remain hopeful. Someday, the King is bound to visit our little province. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. But he'll come. Someday. Inshallah.

And I'll greet him with a genuine smile whenever he does, because I'm truly a fan. He has done countless wonderful things for his - our - country, and I'd love the chance to tell him I think so.

4/4/09 Life is a Bollywood Musical

OK, maybe not all of life. But Spring Camp certainly was. :D

Every time there was open space in the busy Camp schedule, somebody would flip on the sound system or even just pull out a drum, and suddenly everyone was bobbing their heads, shuffling their feet, shimmying their hips, and getting their groove thang on. :D Everyone. Male and female, young and old. (Or, more accurately, young and slightly-less-young. I don't think anybody at Spring Camp, including the full staff, was over 30.)

Even spaces on the schedule originally filled by ... any scheduled activity ... could instantly revert to a dance party. Introductory Session? Dance party. Aerobics cool-down? Dance party. Music class post-activity time-filler? Dance party. "Moroccan Games Night"? Dance party. Waiting for dinner to start? Dance party. When in doubt, assume the kids are dancing to music provided by the Moroccan staff.

The first time it happened, the American staff - aka the six PCVs teaching English classes and leading "Clubs" - chuckled to each other. The second time, we still found it funny. By the third time, we had a standing joke: We live in a Bollywood musical.

But so what if you can't understand the lyrics, let alone why everyone has burst into dance for the fifth time in the day...just shake, stomp, shimmy, and smile! :D

4/9/09 ...aaaand we're back!

Thanks for your patience. The past two weeks have been busy, fun, exciting, rewarding, and tiring. :) I slept for 12 solid hours last night, and may do the same again tonight.

I'll write a bunch of updates, dated for when they occurred, so don't be confused if the dates aren't chronological for a little while. :)

So, what adventures do you have to look forward to? A tentative list of blog titles:

Life is a Bollywood Musical
Hallelujah
A Shwarma a Day Keeps the Munchies Away
Mini-Rant on Heterogeneous Groupings
Games Night (with pictures!)
Field Trip (with pictures!)
My Brush with Algerian Prison
Games For All
The iPod Incidents*
Midnight Ruminations
Conditioning and Perceptions
Overnight with Strangers - Moroccan Hospitality Redux
Word of the Day: i3mmr

Snapshot: Rabat Doctor's Office (aka It Takes a Village)
Snapshot: Xalti's Departure