Field Trippin' and language queries

Field trip!

I've reached the stage in my training where I get to go visit a current Peace Corps volunteer, and spend a few days seeing her work. She works with a local association that's supposed to be excellent, plus she tutors, works with a school, and does...I don't even know what, but I'll find out soon. :)

I'll be travelling with other volunteers, but without any of our staff. This is one of the many ways in which they aim us for the deep end and ask us to swim. We'll get to navigate local transit and find our way from here to there, on our own. I've learned the requisite phrases in Tamazight, plus I can take advantage of the Darija speakers who we'll be with for the first leg of the trip...and if necessary, I can pull out the French. It's very handy, but I like the idea of leaning on the Tamazight. I'm pretty sure I'll learn it faster that way. :)

Last night, a COSing volunteer came to talk with us. She works with the Volunteer Advisory Counsel, which means that she's travelled all over Morocco, talked to every current volunteer and staffer, and pretty much knows everything. We've been picking her brain on all sorts of topics, and it's been wonderful. She has funny stories, inspiring stories, and plenty of sobering accounts, too. It's an education. One of her big accomplishments - she has gotten the shopkeepers in her nearby souk-town (aka a weekly gathering place for all the local villages) to stop giving out plastic bags with the groceries. In fact, they tend to lecture people who ask for them. These plastic bags are a tremendous littering problem, plus a nationwide eyesore, so the fact that she's gotten Moroccans to teach Moroccans about why not to use them...is pretty fabulous.

Plus, I got questions this week. (I love getting questions!) Here they are, with answers:

Does your host family speak Tamazight or Darija?
Tamazight. That's why they sent me to that village - to continue my language training via immersion.

Are the peacecorps folks who are learning other languages in other villages?

Yup. That's why they're using this region of Morocco - it has villages within driving distance that speak all the major languages that Peace Corps is using right now. In previous years, they have used a different mix of languages and were located elsewhere.

What does Abdelbast mean in English?

No idea. I'll try to find out.

How goes the Tamazight language training? Are you able to use it with the family or is it too soon?

Shweea-b-shweea. Imiq-s-imiq. Which are different ways of saying "Little by little." As my Language and Culture Facilitator (aka teacher) says, "Practice makes progress." I used some Tamazight with the family, along with lots of smiles and charades, but used French with the older brothers when I ran into problems (which was pretty frequently!).

I'm very glad to hear that you all have a common language in French and that you have a baby to play with all the time.

We don't all have French - just the kids. Mma and my sister-in-law don't know any French, and the littler kids only know "Hello" and the numbers, more or less. But yes, I do love playing with the baby!

Does Mma speak English?

Not a word. Nor do any of the others, although the teenage brother is working on a few phrases he asked me to translate for him. "Let's go hang out in the fields" was one; "Come and drink tea" was another. It's interesting to see what his priorities are...

Greetings and Salutations!

{big happy sigh}

So I've just gotten back from my week in [Mountain Village]. It was fabulous. :D

I've mastered the bit l-ma (hashek), learned how to gracefully turn down extra helpings of food, and successfully used the past tense in conversation with Host Country Nationals (aka Moroccans, in Peace-Corps-Speak).

I've also gotten to know and love my host family. There are a few members I haven't met, because they live in other cities, but here are the family members I know: Mma (47), my sister-in-law Z (22), her husband Big Bro S (28 and almost never around, since he works in Marrakesh), Teen Bro M (15), Middle Bro N (13), Little Sis K (10), Little Bro (7), and Baby A (9 months). They're fabulous. All of the siblings (except the littlest ones) know some French, which has been very helpful. I keep meaning to write a long thank-you letter to all of my French teachers. While I was in Houston, I kept wishing I'd learned Spanish, but now that I'm here, I'm sooooooo grateful to have not-fluent-but-definitely-functional French at my disposal. :)

Mma tends to be overprotective, which is sweet, and the kids are all tons of fun. They all love helping me with my tmrin (homework), and the baby is good for hours of language-free playtime. One or more of them usually walked me to or from madrasa (school, aka sessions with the rest of the Peace Corps group and our Language & Culture Facilitator), and the two littler ones both held my hands when doing so. :) I don't think they're a hug-friendly culture, but I remain hopeful. :)

I've got lots of fun stories to share, but there's a growing line here at the Cyber, so I'll save them for later. Suffice to say that I'm safe, sound, happy, and so grateful to be here! :D

End of CBT Week 1

Thus endeth my last full day in our village, and my 3rd week in the Peace Corps.

There was no special fuss made, no henna or big meal…and I don’t know if it’s because I’ll be back in a week, because I still haven’t figured out this family’s customs, because they’re far from wealthy, or some combination thereof with who knows how many other factors. But they know I’m leaving for the the big(ish) city tomorrow morning at 9, so we’ll see what happens then. I love these guys! I’ll be back soon enough…and in the meantime, I get to return to the land of hot showers and western plumbing – neither of which I miss half as much as I’d expected to. Of course, it may help that I don’t have a mirror bigger than the palm of my hand, so I don’t know how badly I need to wash my hair!

Today’s Tamazight review was pretty amazing. It was fun, yeah, because we all did a good job at coming up with games (especially Dan’s Verb Smackdown), but also because we’ve learned so much. In addition to mastering all the basic greetings, we’ve got the numbers COLD, days of the week, groceries, money conversions, body parts, past participle conjugation, directions, family relations, and a mountain of vocabulary under our belts. Yeah, there’s a nearly infinite amount left to learn, but I’m going to take a beat to be grateful for all that we’ve learned so far. Today I recognized numbers, time, and greetings from Moroccans, as well as “afla” (above) from one of our gaggle and “wllf” (become accustomed to) from a woman in the village. OK, that’s not huge, but it’s an accomplishment. Plus, last night, I explained to A**’s family (and assorted visitors) that we’d only been studying the language for a week and a half, because we’d studied Darija before that. And they understood me! Who knows how many mistakes I made, but I was able to communicate and be understood, which is the entire goal of communication, as A** keeps reminding me.

Working on the pictures and powerpoint was fun, too, as was chatting with Peace Corps staff making their rounds. Our staff is so awesome. OK, I should probably stop raving so repetitively, and spend more time whining or something, but there’s just so much to be grateful for! :)

J-jam3 (Friday)

Happy First Day of Spring! Spring was greeted with a cold rain that made me grateful for all the layers I’d brought to this mountain village. I can do cold, and I can do wet, but I DON’T like doing both at once. Yeah for layers.

Today was pretty normal by village standards. Class, community mapping (we finished the map! Yeah!), walking around town taking pictures. We hiked down to the fields, across the river, upstream a mile, and our gaggle still got us back to class in fifteen minutes flat. Those kids are awesome. Then we met with not one but two imams, which meant that school got out late. Middle Bro actually came to school looking for me, so H** ran out to explain that I was not delinquent or naughty, just meeting with imams. (Name-dropping is apparently an international phenomenon.) I ran around taking pictures of my classmates, came home for dinner, and crawled into bed.

Update from the final day of CBT week 2: the bit l-ma (hashek) is downright mundane. Yeah! Yesterday, Little Bro came to get me at 6pm on the dot, so Mma wouldn’t worry. Today’s discussion ran till nearly 7, and Middle Bro was waiting at the door *and* Little Sis and Little Bro were playing across the street. The fam was out in force to make sure I got home safe. :) I walked home holding Little Sis’s hand, telling A** and B** (fellow PCTs) that my family is the BEST – not in a competitive way, just that I’m crazy about them. Visiting the other households tonight underlined that further. I love these guys!

The 3id That Wasn’t

So today is the Prophet’s Birthday. Which is supposed to be a Really Big Deal. As in, we spent half an hour yesterday discussing the various ways that it’s celebrated, and we learned the phrases we’re supposed to say. We also were told that nothing happens before 9am, so we can sleep in. (L-mdrasa starts each day at 8, so I’m generally up by 7.) So…here’s my day.

7am – Wake up. Remember that H** told us that 3ids don’t get rolling until 9am. Go back to sleep.
7:30 – Wide awake. Decide to get up early and straighten up my room so that I can have my door ajar for the hordes of visitors H** told us would be coming.
8:00 – While half dressed, hear a knock at the door. Finishing dressing and discover Little Sis, announcing breakfast. An hour early…right?
8-9 – Breakfast followed by hanging out in the courtyard. Watch the boys make their windmills. Bounce the baby on my knee. He falls asleep in my arms. :)
9-10 – Increasingly confused as to what’s up. Watch Teen Bro get his head shaved.
10 – Mma tells me that my shirt is dirty. Which it is – it’s my dressy shirt, which I wore to meet the Quyd, and which therefore got massacred by the sandstorm. But I was told to dress up for the 3id (and told that, regardless of what I wore, the family would undoubtedly dress me up in traditional garb). Maybe they want me to change out of this outfit so they can dress me up…??
10 – 10:30 – Do laundry with Sis-in-Law.
10:45 – Sis-in-Law invites me into the house. Is this where I get dressed up in traditional garb??? No. She’s sweeping my room (over my protests) and wants me to watch so that I don’t worry about the invasion of my privacy. They take my private locked room very seriously. Giving me the key to the padlock on the door was the first thing they did, after all.
11 – Tea with the barber. (The guy who shaved Teen Bro’s head, anyway.)
1 – Lunch
2 – Off to l-mdrasa. Everyone else had comparable stories. H**, our usually unflappable LCF, was noticeably bummed. She said that she had talked to her family earlier in the day, and when they’d asked how the 3id was going, she’d said, “There is no 3id here.” :( On the plus side, we did get to meet the moqaddim of the village. He’s the mayor, more or less. I could elaborate on the meeting, but in the interests of political correctness, I won’t.
6 – Home again. I’m greeted with three kisses by Sis-in-Law. Is this an 3id thing, or a thank-you-for-getting-my-baby-to-sleep thing, or a thanks-for-doing-your-own-laundry thing, or is she just happy?
6:30 – Evening tea. Mma has a candy bar for everyone, including me. H** had explained that parents traditionally give gifts to their children today, and I guess this is the manifestation of that tradition, here.
8 – Dinner. Huuuuge dinner. I stuff myself silly on the vegetables in the tagine. Like every tagine, once the veggies are all eaten, the meat, nestled into the middle of the dish, is revealed. It’s usually a chicken thigh, but tonight it’s beef. It’s the first time I’ve seen beef in this house. (Note – beef is absurdly expensive in this country. Like, over 20 US dollars a pound, and that’s not even the choice cuts. And in this country, you can get a full-length outfit hand-tailored for 20 bucks. So that’s a loooot of money.) Since I don’t eat meat – and my host family has always respected that, humdullah – they’d hidden aside a hard-boiled egg for me. I protested that I was stuffed silly (djiwngh), but they protested more strongly that I had to have a meat equivalent. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the gesture, and guessed that the meat was extra-important, because of the holiday. So I ate the egg, but waved off any hint of dessert. It helped that I was dozing off over the table. :) They sent me off to bed.

3id mubaruk!

3/19/08 - Tagrut of Terror

When we’re out in our villages, doing our Community-Based Training, we alternate our days between language lessons, led by our beloved Language and Cultural Facilitator, and technical training activities, which we conducted as a group. Some of our tasks involved learning what our community already knew about their natural resources. For one, we were supposed to ask local children to collect insects, tell us their names in Tamazight, and ask what they knew about them. (Are they harmful or helpful? What is their life cycle? Etc.) Finding local children wasn’t hard; every time we set foot outside, we were surrounded by a group of young boys that we referred to as our “gaggle”. This gaggle of boys ranged in age from about 5 to about 13, and had a core of three boys, at least two of whom are related to our LCF’s landlord.

When we set out to learn what the children of [River Village] know about insects, we turned to Lahcen and Mohammed, two core members of the gaggle of boys who accompany us everywhere. H**, our LCF, explained to them in Tamazight that we wanted them to find insects and bring them back to us. We then went in to meet with a farmer and his wife, to talk with them about the crops and herbs they grew. After a very fruitful discussion with them (pun intended), we went back outside to find our gaggle. They appeared within minutes, clutching a wiggling mikka (plastic) bag. They handed it to H**, who flinched, blanched, and thrust her arm outwards, shouting something indistinct.

For the record, I have never—before or since—seen H** be anything but poised, gracious, and articulate. So this was a bit of a shock. She held the bag in her outstretched arm. Arik moved to take it from her. She said something like, “But it’s got a tagrut!” When Arik just shrugged, she shoved it into his hand. We looked inside. Apparently, the gaggle had interpreted “insects” as “small slimy things”. We had a larvae, a tree snail, an ant, and the tagrut: a frog. A cute frog, as frogs go. (It would be an agro if male, tagrut if female. Have you ever tried to sex an amphibian? Yeah, me neither. The gaggle called it a tagrut, it’s a tagrut.) We took her out to get a better look at her. Once freed from the bag, the tagrut made a break for freedom, in the form of a huge jump…which flung her out into space, then crashing down onto the ground. We picked her back up, checked her out, and asked the kids our questions.

I looked around for H**, so she could translate for us, and discovered that she’d moved about ten feet away. Every time the tagrut had made another lurch for freedom, she’d moved further. She translated from a distance. The boys didn’t know anything about her life cycle or her role in the ecosystem – what she ate or what ate her – but they did know that she lived in the targua, the canal, since that’s where they’d found her. We took her back there, and, with the gaggle’s help, returned all the animals to their homes. (Except the ant, who crawled away while we were walking down to the fields. We didn’t mention that to H** – no need for her to know that Arik wasn’t holding the bag that tightly closed.)

H** admitted later that if Arik hadn’t taken the mikka bag, she would have flung the whole assemblage of critturs as far away as she could. Turns out our unflappable LCF has an Achilles heel, in the form of a reptile phobia. I asked her if she’d explicitly requested invertebrates, or had avoided the technical term when talking to the gaggle, and just asked for little creatures. With a shudder, she replied, “I asked them for insects, and they brought me a tagrut!”

Gratitude*

*Remember, a star in the title means that there’s going to be some religious overtones in here. No heavy God-talk, but definite implications. If you don’t want to hear it, feel free to skip along to the next post. :)

Grateful for…so many things. Mom and Dad, regardless of the distance. My Moroccan family. The infinite flexibility of Mind, which embraces new vocabulary and new family members and whose infinite resources meet all of my needs. For the heart-stopping sunset tonight. For Teen Bro inviting me to participate in the arritshta (dancing) tonight. For Sis-in-Law’s loan of the coin belt. For our gaggle’s collection of creepy-crawlies. For Ali’s and his wife’s willingness – eagerness – to share their knowledge with us. And the reminder that everything, however strange, becomes normal with repetition. Once I clear the first hurdle with my community, anything is possible. For my friends’ confidence that community members – like Ali and the gaggle – will want to help us. For the technical assignments that push us to independence and interdependence. For H**, with her patience and humor and smiles and adaptability and tremendous language abilities. For Mma worrying about me (because “school” ran until 7 instead of 6). For my little siblings, teaching me every random thing I ask them. For the buzzing flies that remind me that I have more than enough to eat. For the roses. Ah, the roses. For coincidence # 67, starting a prepositions list inside the back cover of my language notebook, which I needed today and which will help me organize my thought/notes/studies.

For the imam and quyd and moqaddim and everyone else who is willing to meet with us. For the reminder that, while some volunteers may be in it for the money or the paid vacation or the career perks, the vast majority are in it to help heal the world.

For the infrastructure support that has already been given to my village, in the form of the targua (canal) and the steps down from the cliff-top to the igran (fields), both of which have eased the lives of my friends and neighbors. For Peace Corps giving me yet another support network – my host family – to ease me through the steps towards becoming a successful Morocco PCV. For the Environment Program Director Mo, quietly demanding that the PCVs bless his country. For H**. OK, so I’ll have to wait a little longer to learn Classical Arabic. If I’d been assigned Darija, aka Moroccan Arabic, I wouldn’t have gotten H**. For getting a hot shower this afternoon, in the local hotel!

For realizing that, while the shower was lovely, I could have survived without it. For realizing that familianu (my family) holds dinner until I admit that I’m sleepy, since bedtime immediately follows dinner. For the gaggle bringing us an ant, a larvae, a tree snail, and a front. And for their knowing absolutely nothing about them, meaning that there is LOTS of space for environmental education. For coincidence #23, my friend’s melt-down coinciding with Ali’s wife’s search for plants, meaning that we had the time to comfort her without delaying the progress of the day. For visiting the local hotel, which (1) gave me the western toilet that I love, (2) gave me an idea for when Mom/Dad/Sis/et al come to visit, and (3) made for a nice mid-week break. For solving the mystery of the disappearing sheep*.

So I still haven’t mastered 3in. It’s getting better. And I’m realizing (with Teen Bro’s help) that ing and other sounds are as challenging for Moroccans as 3in is for me. That helps.

* On my first day, I saw Mma and Sis-in-Law with some sheep in the back yard. I went out to hang out with them, and ended up watching the sunset. While we were sitting, the kids shooed (shepherded?) the sheep through the gate towards the house. I wondered if the sheep would be sleeping in the house with us, but not to worry - they just disappeared entirely. They weren't in the courtyard, they weren't in the house...they were disappearing sheep. I referred to them as such from then till now. Turns out there's a small, completely enclosed mini-sheep-pen built into one of the courtyard walls. I'd never noticed it, thinking it was just the courtyard wall. But tonight, my brothers showed me the wulli (sheep) by the light of their glowing cell phone. :)

The Sandstorm and the Qaid/Quyd/Kaid

Note: I have no idea how to spell this guy’s title, in English or Arabic. My guess would be Quyd, but everyone around (I’m typing this while hanging out in the common space) is saying Qaid. Enh, forget it. I like quyd better. Regardless, he’s the representative of the government in the region. He’s below the governor but above the sheikh and the moqaddim. The executive branch of Moroccan government looks like this, more or less:

King

Governor

Quyd

Sheikh

Moqaddim

We’ve met our village’s Moqaddim twice now. He oversees three villages, of which ours is the largest. Once he came to our little school; the other time, we went to his house to meet with him. We met the Quyd because he requested (required?) our presence. We presented our papers to him, explained what we were doing in his region, and asked him a few questions about the government. My impression is that, like most politicians, his job is 90% knowing what to say, and 10% doing it. He said that he is most proud of the roads that he has put in during his tenure, and that most of his goals revolve around building more. (Paved roads -->Trucks carrying equipment --> Cell phone towers --> Community development!) I wonder how well distributed the roads are; do they cluster, or does my village get an equal share?

When I write it that way, our visit to the Quyd sounds nice and normal.

Now add a sandstorm.

The biggest sandstorm that I’ve ever seen.

And the taxi that drove us to the Quyd’s town didn’t drive into our village, but met us on the paved road. (Because no, the Quyd hasn’t yet brought pavement from the main road into my village.) So we had to hike out the half-kilometer, through the sandstorm. How bad was the sandstorm? When we came back, I discovered that the road to the village is curved. I’d hiked half a K on a road with two switchbacks, and I hadn’t noticed that the path was turning. My field of view was limited to the friend at my right hand and about two steps ahead on the path. I held my notebook in my right hand and used it to shield my face.

I was wearing a cowl-necked shirt (the one dressy shirt I brought to Morocco – if meeting the local poobah doesn’t justify dressing nicely, what does?), and I pulled the cowl all the way up to the bottom of my sunglasses and breathed through it. When I washed the shirt, it made the water turn brown.

After our sand-blasted trek, we made it to the taxi. The ride into the town was short, but the wind was as harsh to the car—a Mercedes Benz with seven people in it—as it had been to us. We were pushed all over the road.

When we got to the Quyd’s palace, the wind still hadn’t let up. Inside the palace itself we experienced a lull, but when we went into his office, we were reminded of the storm: the awning outside his window was pulled loose from its moorings, and it began to furl and unfurl, slamming against the window every few seconds. The Quyd and H** both did a masterful job of carrying on their conversation and pretending nothing was going on. It added an element of the surreal. If this had been a movie, the howling winds and whipping awning would have created an environment of foreboding and portent. Since it was reality, it was just distracting.

But it got better.

The Quyd used his unsubtle foot-pedal-summoning-device to call in an adjutant, who he instructed to take care of the awning. This unlucky soul headed out into the storm. He squinted against the driving sands, but couldn’t shield his face because he was trying to hold down the flailing cloth. It didn’t take long to realize that he couldn’t just tuck the corners in, so he went back for reinforcements. He came back with a friend and a length of wire that they used to tie the awning to the bars around the window. It kept slipping away from him or from his friend, and they’d start over. The whole process, performed against the howling winds, and requiring the best efforts of two of Morocco’s finest, took about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes of my looking back and forth from the Charlie Chaplin-esque comedy outside the window to the serious discussion taking place inside, between H** and the Quyd. I’ve had *dreams* that made more sense than this afternoon. Dreams with ukulele-playing, French-speaking Japanese tourists that seemed more plausible than the disconnect I witnessed from my seat in the Quyd’s office.

An unexpected effect of today: I’ve reopened the question of chopping off my hair. After three days without a shower and an hour when the wind whipped it and drove sand and dust into it, it’s unthinkably grimy and snarled. I might even have a start on dreadlocks.

Reflections

I continue to think that we should get more language before we’re dropped in CBT, but I’m definitely appreciating why we’re here. Before this week, Morocco was a post, and Moroccans – they – had their culture. As I ease into this family – which already sees me as pretty well nestled in, as far as I can tell (they even let me wipe the table today!) – Moroccans are rapidly moving from a them to an us.

Coffee Talk

Sunday, Mma served me coffee. I was determined to be a good guest, so I braved a sip, despite my life-long antipathy for the stuff. I discovered that it was so crammed with milk and sugar that it was basically a coffee-scented Steamer. I drank it down, and felt proud of myself. Then, yesterday, they served me qahwa b sukar – coffee with sugar. Turns out the milk makes a biiiiig difference. I managed to force down a glass, with help from large amounts of bread and jam…and looked up to find the glass refilled. I crumbled. I told Mma (by way of French-speaking Teen Bro) that a doctor had instructed me to never have more than one cup of coffee a day. Okay, so it was a bald-faced lie. My bad. But Mma knew I’d been sick earlier, so this seemed plausible. I could have said that I’m not allowed to drink it at all, but I didn’t think of that, plus I was still considering how best to be a gracious guest. (I know it’s hard to claim ethical considerations while I’m lying to my host mother, but, well, so be it.)

Turns out I shouldn’t have worried. Between my mediocre French, Teen Bro’s mediocre French, and whatever he told Mma, today she served me sweet hot milk. My favorite café beverage after chai. So I’m pretty much in heaven. Oh, and later, Little Sis asked for the same, which Mma described as “Like Eliaz*”. Which gave me all kinds of warm fuzzies.

* After several attempts at my name, they’ve settled on calling me Eliaz. Apparently, Elias is a boy’s name (but not pronounced like I’ve heard it before – more like Ee-lee-ass), but Eliaz (Ee-lee-az) is a made-up collection of syllables that they invented just for me. When they write it out in Arabic script, it’s Iliaz. I might ask my next host family (at my permanent site) to pick a real Moroccan name for me…or maybe I’ll stay Eliaz. Who knows.