3/29/10 Nature Walkin'

At the Spring Camp in Emerald City, Zifi and I led an Environment Club. Over three days, we took the three groups of students on a walk through the neighborhood park adjoining the camp.

We'd prepared index cards with various activities, which we placed at strategic points throughout the park:

• Look up. How many different colors of green do you see?

We placed this one just a few minutes into the park, to introduce to the students the idea of careful observation. Most kids responded with 3 or 4, until we pointed out that even the same leaf could have multiple shades of green, in the dappled light.

• Look at the litter. How long do you think it takes these items to decompose?

Decompose was a new word for the kids, in English at least, but most of them were familiar with the concept. We put this card near a huge pile of trash - close to the size of a football field - and pointed out various pieces of garbage while giving the kids these decomposition statistics: disposable diaper 10-20 years, orange or banana peel 3-5 weeks, cigarette butts 2-5 years, plastic six pack holder 450 years, piece of paper 2-4 weeks, plastic bag 10-20 years, Aluminum can 250-350 years, wool sock 2-4 years, Styrofoam never, glass never.

We asked them if they planned to bring their kids to this park someday - we didn't bother asking if they planned to have kids, since that's a given in this culture - and pointed out that, unless somebody stepped up with a massive cleanup effort, most of this trashpile would be waiting for their children.

The amount of litter in the otherwise lovely park depressed me. In fact, litter is the wrong word. It implies left behind detritus. This trash looked to have been deliberately dumped. In fact, the park was full of narrow mounds, mostly grown over with grass, that looked for all the world like a garbage truck had backed up, dropped a full load of trash, and driven off. Does Emerald City not have a town dump? Or is it cheaper to drop trash in the park than to pay some sort of town-dump-fee? Zifi and I speculated, and even asked the kids, but never got an answer.

• Stop. Can you feel the warmth of the sun?

This one sat in an open area in the mostly-shaded park, and gave us a chance to bask in the sunlight (since it was chilly most of the week) and to talk about photosynthesis. Virtually none of the kids knew the word "photosynthesis" in English before we gave it to them, but most had learned about la photosynthèse in Science class (which is usually conducted in French, as are half the classes by junior high and high school). They were relieved to find it a cognate (as are oxygen and carbon dioxide, for that matter. Let's hear it for the universality of science!).

• Hug a tree.

The kids found this one goofy, but did it anyway. We talked about photosynthesis and the role trees play in giving us oxygen, as well as absorbing our carbon dioxide exhalations, let alone providing wood, paper, kindling, etc.

• Make a rubbing of bark.

The word bark was new, as was the concept of doing a rubbing. After the first group mostly just drew on their papers while holding them against a tree, we were careful to emphasize with the second and third groups to only use the side of their crayon. The trees in question had a really gnarly bark, so the rubbings came out well. :)

• Using only your senses of touch, smell, or taste, become familiar with one tree. You should be able to identify your tree later on.

This was a fun one. We'd blindfold a few volunteers, assign them buddies (since the ground was uneven at best, and liberally sprinkled with thorn bushes), and then have each buddy walk each blindfolded volunteer to a tree. The blinded kid would grope around at the tree, exploring the texture of the bark, feeling for low branches, sniffing it, licking it, and generally memorizing "their" tree. Then the buddy led the still-blindfolded camper back to the group, at which point we'd spin the poor blind thing in circles till they were dizzy, and then remove the blindfold and ask them to find their tree again.

We did this with about 15 of the 50 kids in camp, and every single one of them correctly identified their tree. Undoubtedly, a few were assisted by unscrupulous (or just overly-helpful) buddies, but most had simply learned so many characteristics of their tree - a knot just at knee height, or a branch at shoulder height, or a gap in the bark just there if you reached around - that no imitation, substitution, or alteration would do. We couldn't fool 'em.

• Look down. How many different colors of green do you see?

Usually, by the time we'd gotten here, the kids were observing more carefully, and we got much higher numbers than the first time.

• Look closely. How many living things do you see? Make a list in your notebook.

This card we placed in a relatively open spot, with a view of a stream that usually hosted a few egrets, as well as near some bushes that played home to snails. Most of the students learned the English words for ant and grass and insect here. (This is an English-language immersion camp, after all, they're supposed to be learning new words.) Some kids got really into it, and found all sorts of beetles and spiders and other creepy-crawlies.

That reminds me - once, a student asked me to translate le ver. Thinking she'd said le vert, the grass/greenery, I gave them grass. But as I heard them passing the word to each other, I realized they meant worm, and suddenly remembered the tongue-twister from French class, Le ver vert travers la vert vers la verre vert. The green worm crosses the the grass towards the green glass. And all the words are homonyms (or nearly, for travers). OK, sorry, end tangent.

• Close your eyes. Listen. What do you hear? Make a list in your notebook.

Most of the students discerned the nearby flowing stream, the wind through the eucalyptus leaves, crickets, frogs, and a few birds. A few snarky kids pointed out that they could hear their not-so-silent friends, too.

• Imagine - what did this park look like 100 years ago? Draw in your notebook.

We placed this card in one of the most picturesque sections of the park, far from the dump sites and the toxic sludge growing in the pond. By this point in the walk, we were usually running late, so sometimes we had the kids draw, and other times, we just talked about what we saw. Most of the kids knew that the eucalyptus trees in this area were all non-native, introduced from Australia fairly recently. The Water and Forestry Department loves planting eucalyptus trees. Kalaytus, as they're known here, grow ridiculously quickly, so tree-planting projects look successful within a matter of years. Unfortunately, they also poison the soil, so there's never much (if any) undergrowth.

• Make a rubbing of a leaf.

By the time we got here, we never had any time, so we skipped this activity all three days. Sorry, leaves. You'll get love another time.

• Imagine – what will this park look like in 100 years?
  

We placed this card on top of a garbage pile that someone had dumped right smack in the middle of the road. They hadn't even pulled into the trees, like the rest of the trash dumpers. We gave the kids the chance to speculate whether the park would be cleaned up or would turn into a multi-acre trash heap. Most kids went with a middle ground, anticipating that it would be a housing development. Given how rapidly this Casablanca suburb is growing, they're probably right.

At this point, we walked the kids back to camp, thanked them for joining us on a nature walk, and sent them off to their afternoon activity.

PS: Of the three groups we took out, we never once had a kid wander off (helped by having either Zifi or me walk sweep), but we did occasionally have extra kids join in. I'm not sure where they wandered in from, but as long as everyone who we'd left with, came back, I figured we'd done our jobs.

4/09/10 Women's Hour

After hearing from my host dad just how much Ama had missed me, I fully intended to go over to their house for lunch. When lunch rolled around, though, I was in the middle of something, so placated my conscience by promising myself that I'd go over for teatime, around 4:30 or 5.

Instead, they came to me.

At 4:30, I heard a knock on the door.

I trotted down the stairs and found Ama. I started to invite her up, but she instead urged me to come out. My cousin Lucky is getting married tomorrow (which I knew*), so preparations have already begun. We went over to Lucky's house, where I was fed milk and tea (since they know I don't drink coffee) and sponge-bread and lmsmn (sort of naan-like crepe-y bread) and chatted with the women of my family. In addition to the full spread of my 3ttis (ie, all Baba's sisters-in-law), Baba's own 3ttis were there.

So they asked me the usual spread of questions - are you married? do you have children? when will you find a man? - and I gave the usual answers. (Not yet, not yet, as God wills.) Then someone brought up my impending departure. Yes, I'm leaving soon. Yes, the time is close. Yes, very close: about a month.

And then came the rapidfire attack:

"So will you get married when you go back to America?" an 3tti wanted to know.

"As God wills," I evaded.

"When you get married, you need to invite Ama and Baba and all your 3ttis and friends to America to come to the wedding," 3tti Rqiya announced.

"If God wills," I dodged.

And then Ama stepped in. "I've told Kauthar that when she finds a man, she just has to bring him here. We'll throw her a wedding like Lucky will have tomorrow." She gestured to the decorations (mostly taHruyts) already in place for tomorrow's festivities.

This seemed to reassure the 3ttis. "Oh, so she will find a man in America," they told each other. Repeatedly.

They were addressing their remarks to each other, not to me, so I didn't respond.

"And you'll bring your man here?" they asked, seeking confirmation.

"As God wills."

"Oh, that's good." "We'll meet your man." "That's very good." Their voices overlapped each other, while I gave my heartiest, slightly pained smile.

By the way, this was all happening at the slightly slower-than-normal speed that the older women have learned they need to adopt if the foreign girl is going to understand them. Berberville's women are famous for their rapidfire delivery. Even my tutor and friend, an intelligent and educated women who grew up just over in Souqtown, has trouble understanding them when they're at full speed.

So they've learned to slow down if they want me to listen and respond. And I've learned that if they are speaking at full velocity, it means they don't want me to understand.

So when Ama rattled off a machine-gunned sentence, I knew it was for their benefit, not for mine. And once I'd heard the whole thing (and taken a second to process it), I understood why. She'd said, "And FYI, the man she brings back might be black. Just be warned."

The 3ttis burst out in a chorus of shock and indignation.

Ama reiterated her point, and I nodded confirmation. She and I haven't talked about this in months, maybe years, but at some point, race came up, and I said that yes, I might marry someone of color. She was surprised (though much less so - or at least less visibly - than any of these women), and I'd told her that my sister and I have both dated men of color, so yeah, anything's possible.

I rarely discuss race with Moroccans, because I know I'm probably not going to like what I hear.
And while I can try to rationalize to myself that different cultures and different countries will of course have different attitudes, it's still hard for me to like anyone who's cheerfully racist. I have a Black Studies minor, for pete's sake. (Plus, yes, the cliche is true, lots of my closest friends are non-white. As are an ex or two.)

So I rapidly girded myself up for this battle, and smiled cheerfully at my 3ttis while they railed at me. I won't reproduce their comments, because it would only hurt some of my readers. Here's my response, interjected among their remarks: "Maybe someone white, maybe someone black. Only God knows. And no, 3tti, I *don't* have 'the good color'. Just ask Rebha, here, who called me a matisha [tomato] my whole first summer. I'm too white. It's better to have some color. Besides, it's all in God's hands."

Our conversation was abruptly interrupted by the news that my sister had just been hit by a car. After a flurry of panic, it quickly became clear that the car was going the routine 5 km/hr that our barely-paved roads require, and that while she was shaken up, she was completely unhurt. (Alhumdulillah.)

But the conversation never got back around to me and my future honeybun, for which I was grateful.

After another few minutes of assorted chatter, Ama and I said our goodbyes and then went to our separate homes. After making plans to go to the wedding, of course. :)

Oh, and why did I call this post Women's Hour? Because in the hour or hour-and-a-half I spent there, I didn't see a single man or boy. (Well, not counting my nine-month-old baby brother.) I knew that weddings themselves were fairly gender-segregated, but I hadn't realized that the preparations are, too.


* When I arrived home last night, I saw my 3tti Rebha sitting with my cousin Lucky (names changed) on their stoop. I greeted them, told them about my travels, etc. They promptly informed me that Lucky's wedding, which has been impending news for months now, is scheduled for Sunday. See, here in Berberville, when folks get engaged, they don't really "set a date". Instead, they just publicize their intent to marry, and then wait a while. I've never figured out exactly what they're waiting for, though I'm sure that saving up money for the wedding plays a role. (It's haram - forbidden - to borrow money, which means that nobody takes out loans for homebuying or weddings or anything else. You just wait till you have enough money. That's why nearly every house you see is in some state of ongoing construction - whenever a windfall comes in, they'll add a room/floor/throw pillows.) I've been asking for months when Lucky's wedding will be, and always get the answer, "Later, inshallah." Accordingly, every time I travel, I accept that she may well be married and gone before I get back. But luckily (hey!) enough, I'll be here for the wedding! Expect pictures tomorrow. :)

3/28/10 The Insurance Samaritan

As loyal readers may recall, I worked as a counselor at a Spring Camp last year, too. Despite the rant I wrote on the first day, camp was a success. The kids had a good time, I met lots of great folks, had fun with my PCV buddies, and got to explore a part of the country that was new to me. Oh, and the students learned some English, too. :)

Even though this year's camp was on the opposite end of the country from last year's, with a 100% different staff (well, except for me), I expected things to be similar. I'm good at making predictions based on past events. It's one of those critical thinking skills the American educational system excels at giving its students.

And broadly speaking, yes, this year's Camp resembled last year's. Similar daily schedule, similar hopes on the part of the students/campers and staff, even a similar menu. (Though this year we got *meat* at every lunch and dinner, which indicates that our mudir - the Moroccan in charge - spent every penny of the food budget on food.)

But a few logistical things were different.

Instead of being housed in a dorm with the students, we PCVs were in a separate building, with a separate entrance. While there were a few computers available for our use, whereas last year there was only one, the printer didn't show up till the second day, and it never worked. Last year we had free use of a printer and photocopier, which made many things easier. (For one, I spent about half of each English class reviewing environmentally-themed songs, which meant the students needed printouts of the lyrics.)

Solution to the printer-less problem? We walked into town, where we found lots of cybercafes.

Interestingly, though, cybercafes in Emerald City don't have printers.

Huh.

We went into a couple, and they all seemed to think it ludicrous that one might wish to print out that which one could see perfectly well on-screen.

The only printer in the whole town, apparently, lived in a teleboutique about a 20 minute walk from the camp.

So that's where we printed stuff the first night.

The second day, though, we tried to do our printing during the mid-day siesta break.

And the teleboutique was closed.

When we discovered this, Sprinks and I brainstormed possible solutions. (Another of those nifty critical thinking skills.) First we tried the mktaba (office supply store) where we'd gotten cardstock and permanent markers and other tools of the camp counselor trade.

Photocopier, yes. Printer, no.

Next, we brought our trusty thumb drives (aka USB drives, aka flash drives) to a photography studio. They print photos off of USBs all the time, so it stands to reason they have printers and computers, right?

Turns out they have photo printers only.

Or so Mr. Printer Man told me, when I politely asked for his help. (In French, since Emerald City is an Arabic-speaking town, with no more than a scant handful of Tam speakers.)

Then he hesitated.

"How many copies do you need? Like, 10ish?"

"No, like 5." I glanced over at Sprinks for confirmation. In English, I quickly asked her how many she needed. She needed two pages, I needed three. "Yes, just five pages," I confirmed to Mr. Printer Man.

"Well, the machines here only work for photos...theoretically. Hang on a sec."

Sprinks and I exchanged glances. I translated the conversation for her, and we prepared to wait. This being Morocco, "a sec" could be anything from thirty seconds to 2 hours. We'd given ourselves a big time window - about an hour and a half - to print out our five pages, but we both knew that time here flows differently than it does in America.

About 5 minutes later, Mr. Printer Man closed up his side of the shop and headed to the door. Sprinks and I exchanged glances again. "Should we follow him?"

Just then, he looked back. "Come on," he said, in one of the few Arabic phrases I know. (Of course, Sprinks's Arabic is awesome, so I'd planned to rely on her, but it's always nice to know first-hand what's going on.)

We followed him into the street, exchanging further dubious glances. He led us up the block.

"Do you think he's taking us back to the mktaba?" Sprinks asked, in the usual PCV linguistic soup.

"I dunno, imkin," I answered. (It's possible.)

But we walked past the office supply shop and kept going. We continued to the edge of the business district. We followed, not sure what else to do, both wondering if he was taking us to his house?!

Confused but cautiously hopeful, we kept after him. And then Mr. Printer Man walked up to an insurance office, closed and locked for siesta.

He pulled out a keychain.

Did he live above the office? Did he own the office?

He unlocked the door and walked through. We followed him in. He walked back to the farthest desk, and began powering up the computer on it. He motioned us into the seats across from him. It felt - and must have looked, to someone looking in through the glass doors from the street - like we'd come to buy insurance.

He offered us his card. It turns out that Mr. Printer Man is only a part-time photo printer, and a part-time insurance salesman. This was his desk, in his office, where he could help us out.

When the computer had booted up, he reached for our thumb drives. We handed them over, one by one, pointing out the documents we needed. He printed us one copy of each (and asked if we wanted more, but we refused).

"Should we pay him?" Sprinks murmured.

"I dunno; I'm trying to think how to ask without offending him," I whispered back.

As we stood up to leave, heaping profuse thanks and blessings upon him and his parents, I seized upon an excessively formal French construction that allowed me to ask if one could possibly pay for this? He refused instantly and profusely, as I'd expected, so I reiterated the thanks and blessings, shook his hand, and turned to go.

The photocopy place was only half a block away, and we quickly got all the copies we needed. The whole thing had taken something like half an hour, leaving us plenty of time to join our friends over at the cafe before returning to camp.

So the camp didn't have a functioning printer. So the only pay-per-page printer in all of Emerald City was closed for lunch. The insurance samaritan had gone way, way out of his way to take care of us - two people he'd never seen before and would likely never see again.

I really love this country.

4/10/10 QotD: "Did you die?"

This morning, while picking up bread and yogurt from my favorite hanut guy, my host dad came up behind me and cried, "Kauthar!"

I spun around with a huge smile on my face. We clasped hands, said the routine greetings, and then he asked, "Did you die?"

I laughed, as he expected me to. "No, I didn't die. I just traveled. A lot."

"Your mom keeps asking about you. 'Is she back yet? Is her house still shut up?' and every day I have to tell her, 'No, she's not back. Her house is still padlocked.'"

I reassured him, "I just got in last night. I'll be over soon."

With a tone that said, you better, he said, "OK, we'll see you soon, then."

"See you soon."

As I walked away, I couldn't hide a big grin. It's nice to know that I'm missed when I'm gone. :)

4/1/10 Sprinks' Camp

While a successful Spring Camp experience requires many things, from competent staff to friendly kids to tasty food, in my experience it hinges on having a great group of PCVs. If you love the Volunteers you’re working with, you can weather nearly anything. If there’s drama, tension, resentment, or any other negative emotion, everything becomes harder.

Al-humdulillah, we have an awesome group of Volunteers working here in Emerald City. Awesome.

And from here on out, I’m going to refer to us by the nicknames we gave each other.

Our fearless leader is Sprinks, shortened from Sprinkler, who famously sprayed an entire table and several friends with water after hearing the 10,000th joke of the day from our resident comedienne. That fabulous female is now Wudja, from her habit of posing brain-twisting “Would-you-rather” puzzlers, like “Would you rather run naked through your site for a full day, or spend a full week slapping on the butt everyone you greeted?” or “Would you rather battle a witch pilgrim or a zombie shark?”

My Environment partner-in-crime is now Zifi, truncated from Zombie Fish. See, we Volunteers tend to slip off and play cards from time to time, and one of our games of choice is E.R.S., also known as Double Jack Slap. (You know, the one where you slap doubles and sandwiches, and where face cards let you steal the pile.) If you run out of cards, you’re out – but you can slap your way back in, if your fingers are quick enough. Zifi got out early in one of our first rounds, and his outstretched palm, twitching and flopping and shuddering as it kept reaching out to slap the stack and then checking itself against illegal slaps, looked like a cross between a flopping fish-out-of-water and a shuddering zombie. Hence, Zombie Fish.

The only Volunteer working the camp who I hadn’t met before was RoRo. He’s the newest of the five of us, having only been in-country for about six months. Whence the nickname? Well, we were trying to decide what simple song to sing with the campers at the pre-dinner camp song spectacular (previous favorites include “Boom Chick-a Boom”, “Go, Go Banana” and "The Hokey-Pokey"). Somebody suggested “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” so we gave that a trial run. RoRo opened with an arpeggio. When, after three gentle (and not-so-gentle) reminders that all three Rows are supposed to be on the same note, we just accepted that (1) he’s tone deaf, and (2) he’ll be RoRo forever.

And my nickname? Well, between my penchant for playing the original “Big Yellow Taxi” (which I taught my kids, for its English vocabulary and environmental message), my habit of bursting into random snatches of song, and my general tree-hugging hippy behavior, it was decided that I’m an updated version of Ms. Joni Mitchell. And since I give back rubs to my fellow PCVs, and there’s no record that Joni Mitchell is a massager, I’ve been deemed an upgrade: Joni 2.0.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce the American staff of Spring 2010’s Spring Camp in Ben Slimane: Sprinks, Wudja, Zifi, RoRo, and J2.

1/6/10 Inventory

Yes, this post is three months overdue. Whoops.

As I rode the bus back after my long European vacation, I reflected on the transformed contents of my backpack. I’d traveled with a small pack, so I could carry-on with it (and thus dodge RyanAir’s travel fees), and had deliberately brought my least favorite clothes so that I could leave them behind, in trash cans and/or hostel share-boxes. I managed to drop 2 thick cotton shirts, a longjohn shirt, a pair of socks, and a bottle of shampoo.

I also swapped out an apple for 4 granola bars, and an empty memory card for a full one (despite repeated purgings).

And I filled the space left behind by the abandoned clothes with FOOD. Mmmm, food. 3 bottles of herb-saturated olive oil from Rome. A round of goat cheese from Amsterdam. A wedge of brie from the airport in Brussels (there’s a story there…). A wedge of parmesan from Rome. A wedge of redball cheese from Fez’s Marjane. A box of green tea. A bottle of syrup-infused crème. A bottle of fish sauce. A toy box with 8 Van Gogh paintings, from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum. A Starry Night mug from a tourist shop in Amsterdam. A holy shot glass from the Vatican (by special request for a friend). A rainbow pin saying “Peace” in Italian. ~15 country patches, to be sewn on to backpacks/jackets/whatever. Postcards and notecards from the Escher museum.

But my best exchange story involves books.

4 random romance novels inherited from a COSed Volunteer went into Café Clock, in Fes, where they magically transformed into 3 much better books: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (so much better than I’d expected!), Europe on a Shoestring (necessary for any cheap/broke/PCV traveler in Europe), and Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood (as hauntingly memorable as her other dystopian futures). I swapped Dracula for Isabelle Allende’s City of Beasts (nutshell: she should stick to writing for adults) on my second day in Marseilles. I swapped Year of the Flood for David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day (soooo much funnier than his depressing Christmas stories) on my first day in Rome. In Amsterdam, Shoestring and Beasts left me in exchange for James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (not my cup of tea) and D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (couldn’t get into it – too much dry psychoanalysis, not enough nice people). In Brussels, a friend gave me John Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (redefining what a “novel” can be – breathtaking!), and I surrendered Joyce for Khalid Housseini’s Thousand Splendid Suns (which made me sob hysterically for about half an hour; Housseini is not for the faint of heart, and his portrait of womanhood under totalitarian regimes and totalitarian husbands…searing, to say the least).

Thus did 4 totally forgettable novels turn into some of the best books I’ve read.

Traveling is cool. :)

3/24/10 QotD: "I was the sixth person! Woo-hoo!"

The subtitle of this blog post should be: The Value of Lowered Expectations

As I’ve mentioned before, traveling in Morocco often means riding in grands taxis, 4-passenger wide-body Mercedes sedans that here seat 6 passengers. (Two ride shotgun, four squish in across the backseat. Duh.) The taxi won’t leave until all six “seats” (using the term generously) have been paid for.

This means that if you’re the first person who wants to go to, say, City Z from City Q, then you either get to pay for all 6 seats or wait for five other people to show up who also want to go to Z from Q. Or some combination thereof. The wait can be anywhere from five minutes to five hours, although as a rule of thumb, you should expect to wait about 5 minutes for each missing person.

When the stars align in your favor, you show up at the taxi stand and discover that five other people have already been waiting to get from Q to Z, and you get to hop right in and leave immediately. Hence the QotD: “I was the sixth person! Woo-hoo!” My buddy was celebrating a wait-less travel experience.

It made me reflect for a moment: in the US, land of car ownership and shuttle flights, we’re not really accustomed to waiting for travel. Transportation is on tap, like hot water and mochaccinos and so many other things that just aren’t readily available here in Morocco. We PCVs have become so accustomed to this waiting state of being that when we do get the instant travel we’d simply expect in the US, it becomes grounds for rejoicing.

Maybe there’s something to be said for lowered expectations.

3/26/10 Peace Corps Morocco: Sh*t Happens (Rated PG-13)

Scene: 4 PCVs sit around a table, eating lunch. I knew the other 3 before this conversation took place, but most of them hadn’t met each other before.

The conversation turned to intestinal distress, as it so often does when PCVs assemble. One of us pointed out that most Americans would find it at least odd, and probably disgusting or even nauseating, to discuss diarrhea while eating.

But, well, that’s life here. Like the book says, everybody poops. And since it’s a source of distress and fear for so many new Volunteers, it gets brought up in scared tones – at first. But as time passes, it becomes more and more normal-seeming to discuss your bowel movements with your friends. Newbies compare symptoms and offer diagnoses. Mid-term PCVs share the results of the required poop test portion of Mid-Service Medicals. Older PCVs reassure newbies that this, too, shall pass. (No pun intended.)

And before you know it, it’s just another topic of conversation, as appropriate as anything else for mealtime chit-chat. After all, it’s not nearly as alarming as some of the other things that happen to Volunteers here.

As one of us proposed today: “That should be the motto of Peace Corps/Morocco: Sh*t Happens.”

3/27/10 Emerald City

My eyes bulged out. My jaw dropped. My breathing quickened. Or maybe slowed. I dunno, but I got lightheaded one way or another.

Everything’s so green. Every field we pass swells with growing wheat, still grass-green. Behind the fields, trees drip with leaves. Bushes fill the gaps between.

After years in my barren mountains, I’m intoxicated by the lushness.

A sign we passed called this place Morocco’s Green City. I wondered if that was an environmental designation, but it seems more likely to reflect the simple fact that this place looks like Frank L. Baum’s Emerald City, without Dorothy’s green glasses. So that’s what I’ll call it: Emerald City, my home for the next week.

3/27/10 How To Open A Door 101

This afternoon, 4 of the 5 PCVs who will lead the Spring Break English Language Immersion Camp here in Morocco’s “Emerald City” arrived on site at the welcome center. After a warm welcome, our gracious hosts showed us into our prepared and freshly cleaned accommodations. We gladly shucked our bags, checked out the gorgeous views from the windows, and tried to figure out the slightly rattle-y lock. I made sure all the knobs turned smoothly and that the lock could be opened with the key before I closed the door. Confident that everything worked, I shut the door gently and tried the lock again.

The bolt slid as smoothly as ever.

Which made it hard to figure out why the door wouldn’t open.

At all.

After a few minutes wherein we each tried the lock a few times, our fearless leader, Sprinks, figured it out: the small slip-latch, that should turn with the doorknob, was caught.

Because there’s no doorknob.

We could overlook the lack of plumbing attached to the toilet, the hopelessly clogged bathroom drain, the bug corpses squished against every wall of the kitchen…but the missing doorknob felt like a dealbreaker.

Sprinks crawled out a window, spidermanned her way around a ledge to the door landing, and hopped down so she stood outside our door.

Turns out there’s no doorknob on the outside, either.

She went in search of our gracious hosts, who brought a variety of tools, sticks, and toys that they tried to use to twist the knob-hole and free us.

None worked.

Oh, some succeeded in twisting the hole, but that didn’t budge the latch.

Nothing did.

After the third day of our lock-in (OK, yes, I’m kidding, it was something less than half an hour), they took a crowbar to the door and used it to shove the doorjam far enough over to free the latch. We promptly taped it down with half a dozen pieces of electrical tape, so it’ll never catch the door again. Inshallah…