Padding the resume.

Some of the young women who enthusiastically took on the task.

The young women from my nedi neswi, or women's center, who accompanied me to last month's weekend health workshop in Agadir are taking quite seriously the charge to share the information they learned. We have a big session on gynecological help planned for this coming week, open to all girls and women in the village, kind of a test run before we start visiting the remote outlying villages that surround our community.

But to kick things off, my young women totally took the initiative to plan and execute a workshop at the nedi on making "gladrags" ~ homemade, reusable menstrual pads. From making the announcement to gathering the materials to leading the class, Malika and Fatna took care of everything on their own, absolutely no assistance from me. I was as proud as a mama bird.

The session was well-received, too ~ 15 enthusiastic young women and another 10 older women hovering around the edges, asking questions and offering suggestions while attending to their own needlework. Everyone went home with a new pad and the pattern/materials to make more. This seems like such a simple concept, but again ~ with commercial pads prohibitively expensive, this can really transform how a girl feels about herself during her monthly period. Even better, they had a great time making them together ~ a sense of solidarity and accomplishment. Kudos again to Tanie, Laila and Lori ~ the Peace Corps volunteers who introduced the gladrags at our Agadir workshop.

Tracing the patterns.

Cutting the pads out of old cloth.


Announcement and schedule for the workshop.

Malika studying her Arabic-English phrasebook.

After the workshop, and the yoga class that followed, I marked a major (to me) milestone in my work at the nedi. I was invited into what I call the "inner circle" ~ the women who make hlwa (sweets) in the kitchen, which is also the home of the mudhira, or nedi director, Aicha. It seems like such a little thing: "Wah, Becki, come in and help us bake cookies." But it was the first time I was invited, and I read it as a mutual sense of comfort with one another. Our relationship has been taken to the next level, you might say. Or, at least, I do.

Filling cookie tins with a mixture of jam, sesame seeds and glace fruit.

Aicha makes a yellow cake with a glaze of freshly squeezed orange juice and sugar. It reminds me so much of my mom's "lemonade cake" ~ a much-needed taste of home so close to Mother's Day.

On the road.

Joy, me and Donna just outside Taroudant.

Last weekend, a couple of neighboring volunteers spent the night with me, feasting on hummus and pasta salad and zucchini bread, watching a waaaay-too-long Brad Pitt movie, all in preparation for biking into Taroudant the next morning.

How can I not have done this before? It's only 24 kilometers ~ 15 miles. I used to routinely ride 20-30 miles on a Sunday morning back home. The road is flat as a pancake and two lanes wide; the wind, what there was of it, was at our backs. Yet this was the first time I've made the trek by bicycle. Inch'allah it won't be the last.

The perfect way to spend a lazy, unseasonably cool Sunday morning ~ and with excellent company.

Pit stop for water.

That sandpit in the background used to be a river, the Oued Souss.

Entering the medina.

We then enjoyed a lazy day of shopping, eating and people-watching. I took the opportunity of having friends in the souq with me to play tourist and take a few pictures.

My favorite souq entrance, of Place Assarag, near my spice guy .

Bread for sale at the souq entrance.

When I asked permission to take a couple of pictures, my spice guy insisted I come behind the counter and mug for the camera.

Spices, olives, incense, penile enhancements, jewelry, baskets and who knows what else ~ what can't you buy here?

Back home again, my bike in the parking lot that is my hallway (those other vehicles belong to the landlord's family upstairs)

New friends in an old town.

Rachel is just amazingly photogenic ... and gorgeous on the inside, too ...

Returned to town the very next day to see my stajmates Rachel and Michael, who decided to take a quick trip to see Taroudant. "Quick" means they probably spent at least as much time traveling to/from as they did actually in the medina. I hope they'll come for a longer visit, but we spent a lovely afternoon wandering the souk and hanging out in the zwin cafe.

Mike tests the orange juice, freshly squeezed by the guy with the orange bucket.

I never get tired of the elderly men, who never get tired of sitting and watching the world go by.

I call this nook of the suq "Pottery Barn" ~ the clay cones are the lids of tagines, the official cooking dish of Morocco.

Broken tagines and graffiti.

Mesquin (beggar) in the souk

Figs and dates ... a delictable dried variety ...

Menu at the restaurtant we call "the cheap panini place" ~ I love the copyright-infringing use of the little scout from "Up" in the corner ...

I never get tired of taking pictures of Dentist signs, ostensibly for Dad's benefit (but really because they just make me giggle)

Come back for a longer visit, xti!

Around the house.

I recently made a few changes that make my salon much more hospitable. A local carpenter built some risers for my ponj cushions. Lifting them off the floor, in a more sofa-like manner, has made my aging back much happier.

I then decided to move my dining table/desk/clutter collector into the main room, and finally hung an original watercolor by a would-be student who has never returned for class. Snapshots of the folks back home, and various works by my dar chebab kids, round out my art collection.

Speaking of household appliances (or at least furnishings), thanks to Faye I have successfully been telling my first joke in the local language:

A young man tells his mother that he's ready to begin looking for a wife.

Mom: "Well, what kind of wife are you looking for?"

Son: "I want one who is tall, white (i.e., fair/beautiful), and will spend all her time in the kitchen, working hard day and night."

Mom: (heavy sigh) "Son, you want to marry the refrigerator?"

It's obvious when I tell it that it's an old, old joke, but it still kills ~ most likely because people are so delighted I can actually tell it.

More from the 'donations' box.

Finally got some bookshelves put up in my classroom. So far, they look a little sad ~ not just for all the open spaces, but for the content ~ or lack thereof. All of these books have been donated from U.S. agencies working in Morocco. Not much thought is put into whether these are books Moroccan children can/will actually use/want (for context, see previous post here).

From the wildly inappropriate to the outdated to the simply out of place or downright boring, we've got it covered:

* A 1985 guide to road trips across the United States
* 1999 World Almanac
* a 2000 guide to using the Internet
* "How to Write a Report" ~ 1968 edition
* Youth fiction: "Preacher's Boy"
* Gardener's Guide to Pest Control
* Biographies of Margaret Sanger and Brigham Young
* "The Age of Voltaire" from Will and Ariel Durant's 11-volume "The Story of Civilization"
* 3-volume set: "An Outline History of Switzerland: From the Origins to the Present Day;" "The * Social Structure of Switzerland;" "Philosophy from Switzerland"
* "Shane" ~ the 1949 novel that became a classic '50s Western
* "Each Time, Every Time" ~ an oversized set of colorfully attractive, easily readable graphic novels about AIDS and STIs. Kid-friendly. A bit too kid-friendly for this culture. I want everyone to have this information, but I don't particularly enjoy being the one to translate "I'm passing this white, sticky stuff" to an eager-to-read 14-year-old boy.

I'd give anything for some Shel Silverstein, some Beverly Cleary, some Eric Carle. Basic picture books with beginner words in English. Easy-to-read, youth-oriented texts.

Still, even this incongruous collection is fascinating to my kids, who don't usually see bookstores or libraries, who don't live in a culture that places any value on pleasure reading. They love to pull them out and look at them. That's a good start ... and the obsessive-compulsive in me is doing an excellent job of letting them touch and jumble the tomes, resisting the urge to keep things in order. Disorder is good! The books are there to be used, examined, played with, explored. Just don't make me explain "white sticky stuff." Please.

OPALS at the dar chebab.

Waiting their turn.

Few weeks back, the director of my dar chebab casually mentioned that I should come by the next morning (I don't usually work until late afternoon, when kids start getting out of school) because "women will be here."

OK. I came ~ and was shocked to find the courtyard filled with at one point perhaps 50 women, all waiting to see "the doctor."

OPALS' traveling clinic.

The "doctor" was OPALS ~ one of two major organizations in Morocco that work to combat SIDA (AIDS). They were offering free HIV tests. That's all. I never could get a handle on whether the women realized that and were smart/brave enough to come for the tests, or whether they were hoping to have various ailments treated. I sat with the waiting women, several of whom mentioned having high blood pressure, or rheumatism, or other miscellaneous aches and pains. Were they disappointed? Offended? They didn't seem so.

Late into the afternoon, long after the OPALS truck was gone and I was trying to teach various levels of English in one chaotic classroom, the women kept coming, poking their head in the door to ask where the doctors were. My conspiracy-laden mind started to wander, and wonder: Were the women lured in with promises to be treated by a doctor ... or were they smart enough to *pretend* they had come for other purposes, so they wouldn't feel ashamed to be getting an HIV test? Or am I looking for issues where none exist, and they're simply smart and educated enough to know that everyone should be tested, on a regular basis?

Either way, they got tested, and that's a good thing.

With my new friend Aicha and her little girl, Hajar.

And my other new friend, also conveniently named Aicha.

Getting pulled into the "group picture"

Women on the run.

Early morning run/walk along the beach in Agadir.

Riding in the taxi to Agadir, on my way to our long-awaited Women's Wellness Weekend, I suddenly had a burst of trepidation: Had I set my hopes far too high? I knew the dozen-plus Peace Corps volunteers involved (all female!) were enthusiastic and prepared. I knew the women we were bringing from our respective villages were excited for a new adventure and curious about their bodies. I knew had we strong and dedicated Moroccan advocates to present the information. But would any of it transfer into our ultimate goals ~ to give our women health and fitness information they could put to actual use and share with more women in their communities?

In fact, the weekend proved to far exceed my highest expectations. The 24 young Moroccan women at the workshop forged strong new friendships while learning basic health education that we take for granted. Even better, my shy young ladies from the women's center have taken the concept of sharing what they learned and are running with it. Better health, education, empowerment and leadership ~ this weekend was a highlight of my Peace Corps service, and a week later I still can't write about it without tearing up.

Getting to know each other: With each twist of the string around her finger, each participant had to share something about herself.

Yoga, sort of.

We started Friday with a getting-to-know you session ~ many of our participants rarely have a chance to meet counterparts from other communities, and we all warmed up to each other right away. Then I led the first of the weekend's three sport sessions, explaining (or trying to) some of the basics of yoga and the virtues of stretching, flexibility and mindfulness.

Saturday morning, armed with water bottles for weights, we speed-walked our way to the beach for a walk/run along the coastline. The air was cool, the setting idyllic, and there is nothing more exhilarating than seeing a couple dozen women of all ages, sizes and abilities, in conservative dress or not, take over a beach typically dominated by postadolescent boys and, literally, run with it, smiles on their faces the entire way.

That was just the beginning of a truly inspirational day. Atika from the Association Marocain de Planification Familale led a lengthy, detailed session on the gynecological system, menstrual health, family planning options and how to obtain them, SIDA (AIDS) and other STIs and more. I was worried there would be complaints that such information was hchuma ~ shameful ~ and there was a brief discussion, but Atika knew just what to say in response. She kept everything fact-based and yet culturally appropriate. And you could see the women's brains just inhaling the information. I would bet that for many, it was the first time they'd heard the actual facts.

Mounia, a high school student with all the charisma and drive of a future prime minister, took the reins for a session on breast cancer awareness, symptoms and self-exams. Peace Corps volunteers led sessions on handwashing and basic hygiene, first aid, and making reuseable menstrual pads ~ the latter being another subject we thought the ladies might not be ready for, and they again surprised us with their enthusiastic embrace of the idea.

Stretching before aerobics.

Sewing "gladrags" ~ homemade, reusable menstrual pads to replace the wildly expensive commercial variety.

Sunday morning, after a high-energy aerobics session, we sat in a circle and Amal, our local counterpart who helped us with all the logistics, asked the participants to share a little bit about what they had gotten out of the weekend. The waterworks began, and this is when we knew the weekend had been a success ~ not only could the young women articulately and movingly describe how important the information was to them, they were truly sad to see the weekend come to an end.

But this is the beauty of the plan, for the end of the weekend was only the beginning of the project. My young ladies immediately started plotting how they would share the weekend's information at the women's center. This Thursday, we'll do a short gladrags session. Next week, Atika from AMPF is coming to lead another session on basic gynecological health in our village.

From there, totally on their own initiative, my young ladies are ready to gofarther than I would have dared hope ~ they want to take the show on the road! They've already spoken with Atika, acquired her PowerPoint materials, and want to visit the duoars ~ the remote villages that dot our region, to serve women who rarely leave their homes, much less their villages, many of whom have never had any type of education.

All it took was an opportunity ~ for these women to learn something new and then see that they had something to share with others. I didn't do a thing but get them to the workshop, but I couldn't be prouder of them.

After every photograph, the demand to Nchuf! Nchuf! ("Let me see!")

Group photo.

Me with my beautiful young women from the village.

At dinner the Saturday evening of the workshop, I sat with the women from my village. We discussed what we'd learned that day and how we might share it back home. I mentioned how they would be role models for other young women.

"But Becki ~ I'm not a role model," sweet, bespectacled Fatima, my quietest participant, told me.

Why not, I asked.

"Because I didn't finish school."

I couldn't adequately say everything I wanted to tell her, but I could tell her a simplified version of this: Fatima, you and your friends are the ultimate role models. You don't just sit at home, watching television, wishing for more. You didn't have the opportunity to finish school, but you seize every opportunity presented to you. That is education. And you want to share everything you have, everything you know. That is leadership. You want more for your future daughters. That is everything.

As usual, tons more pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71994606@N00/sets/

Camping it up.

As many of the 107 campers as would heed my instructions to Zidu! Zidu! ~ crowd in. I like the kid on the left, in the red shirt, doing the Moroccan symbol for "crazy. "

Told you it'd take me time to rest up enough to tackle a proper account of English Camp Taroudant 2010. But I didn't mean for it to take me nearly two weeks.

I have to admit, I was a bundle of nerves heading into this thing. Who in their right mind willingly signs up to coordinate a camp for 100+ kids who speak English (if at all) as a third or fourth language, armed only with 9 other Peace Corps volunteers, a nearly equal number of Moroccan counselors, an industrial sound system and a couple dozen sheets of butcher paper?

Turns out I had less than nothing to worry about. Sure, the mother of all head colds decided to crash the party just as things were getting started. Sure, we averaged about 5 hours of sleep a night. Sure, we welcomed our maximum number of campers and then some (107, to be exact). Sure, printers didn't work and schedules didn't mesh and there was the occasional paint explosion. But if those were the greatest of our worries, all I can say is hamdulilah.

Go bananas. You know you want to.

Chick-a-Boom ... underwater!

This is the third camp I've worked here in Morocco. Previous ones have been blemished by bickering between Peace Corps volunteers, between American and Moroccan staffs, between Peace Corps coordinator and Moroccan camp director, between volunteers and youths, between the youths themselves. There've been kids caught stealing, smoking (you name it), drinking, having sex, fighting, vandalizing. There've been breakouts and breakdowns and hookups and rumbles between urban/rural factions. Camp funds have gone into unknown pockets instead of such things as class materials or food for the kids. Frankly, my previous experiences had me desperately wishing I never, ever had to work a camp ever again.

But Camp Taroudant was about as good as it gets, and we didn't even have a beach to use as a bargaining chip. The kids were well-behaved, enthusiastic and actually inquisitive. The staffs got along famously, and we had an angel of a camp director, who worked at least as hard as we did, danced as hard as the kids did, and has a penchant for Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall."

Our success can only be blamed on the nine intrepid Peace Corps volunteers who signed up to work with me. Ali, Ariel, Joy, Laila, Lori, Matt, Michelle, Nicole and Vish didn't just do their time. They worked hard, around the clock. They turned on the charm with the kids. They practiced in their spare time. They propped each other up when propping up was needed. They swapped ideas and strategies and kept each other laughing. They made the whole dang thing fun, not just for a boisterous crowd of Moroccan adolescents, but for a middle-aged Midwesterner who came in more than a little dubious and left with new friends, new music and a new appreciation for the possibilities of engaging youths.

Ariel's class got a lesson in Somali politics along with their English via the song "Wavin' Flag."

Joy and her budding artists. This is "during." The "after" is, thankfully, not recorded for posterity.

and Bingo was his name .... (substitute awkward fadeout for trying to explain name-oh)

Not that we didn't have any problems; we just managed to, well, manage them. The main one was the number of kids, especially the number of entry-level English learners. We'd organized four English classes ~ two beginners, one intermediate and one advanced. A couple more beginner classes would have made a world of difference; Lori and Matt's classes were overwhelmingly full. They handled it with aplomb, though, with a lot of help from Ali, Joy, Laila and Vish. As for the intermediate and advanced classes, Michelle, Ariel and Nicole really boosted their students' conversational abilities ... not to mention their rapping skills.

Vish's New Zealand club gets into their haka dance at the spectac.

A visit to the tannery just outside Taroudant's medina. Giddyup!

The final night of camp is traditionally the SPECTAC! Short for spectacular, very much in the spirit of an old Andy Hardy flick ("Hey, kids! Let's put on a show!" ... and yes, I know I'm dating myself here. Wikipedia it, kids.) Much of the last two days of camp were spent practicing our performances for Friday evening. Each class and each club prepared a number, and American taxpayers should be pleased to know that a select group of youths in Taroudant province are now fluent in the Black-Eyed Peas' "Where Is the Love," the Maori haka war chant, K'naan's "Wavin' Flag," the Maasai jumping dance, "Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles, the enduring classic "B-I-N-G-O" and a taste of Bollywood dance. We wrapped it all up with a mock Berber wedding procession and an official Peace Corps performance ("best part!") of "Thriller" that came off well enough despite my stumbling in the back row.

We kept 107 kids pretty well entertained for seven days, and if they came away speaking a little more English via the Banana Song and Chick-A-Boom ad nauseum ... well, who could ask for more?

Little 12-year-old Ibtissame from my dar chebab was the youngest camper, and possibly the most enthusiastic.

Camp schedule:
7:30 a.m.: Wake up, get dressed, make beds
8 a.m.: Morning activities (national anthem, a few wake-up songs, announcements, Stars of the Day
8:15 a.m.: Breakfast
9-11 a.m.: English classes
11:15-12:30 p.m.: Sports/recreation
1 p.m.: Lunch (followed by much-needed naptime)
3:30-5:15 p.m.: Country Clubs (we divided kids into a cross-section of Anglophone countries to practice English while learning history, culture, music, art and more about their assigned nations ~ Canada, Jamaica, India, Kenya and New Zealand
5:30-7 p.m.: Activities with Moroccan counselors ~ or ~ outings in which we inflicted all 130 or so of us upon the unwitting streets of Taroudant
8 p.m.: Dinner
9-10:30 p.m.: Evening activities (these ranged from talent show to crafts, games, movies and of course the SPECTAC!
11 p.m.: Lights out (inch'allah)

Campers' best quotes:

"Becki is a vegetable. Are you a vegetable?" ~ asked of a fellow vegetarian
"WHAT FROM YOU?" ~ urgent query put to Laila during a game where students were trying to guess our national origins
"I want power. All I need is money, guns, and the love of my parents." ~ aspirations of a student in Ariel's intermediate class

My amazing crew of intrepid, inexhaustible, invigorating PCVs. Thella yfraskum!

300+ more camp photos here, if you have the interest/patience: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71994606@N00/sets/72157623679130607/

Ki dehek.*

A rainy, dreary day ... the sun keeps trying to poke its head out, but the clouds have repeatedly beaten its sunny ass and told it to get back inside if it knows what's good for it. A day better spent curled up reading with a cup of tea than slogging through the muddy "streets" of my village to get to the dar chebab.

I almost didn't go. But if I hadn't, I would have missed out on one of those little everyday moments that repeatedly remind me just how much fun this "youth development" gig can be.

Only two kids braved the rain to meet me, but they were my two best middle-school students. At 14, Brahim and Abdsamad know way more English than most high-school seniors (thanks, Fox Movies!). I helped them review body parts and clothing for an upcoming quiz at school. Most of the basics they could rattle off easily, so I challenged them with new vocab like "polo shirt" and "eyebrows" and "kneecap" (it's a cap for the knee, get it?)

Brahim drew a diagram of a person, labeling everything as we went. We played a little "Simon Says." I answered several random vocab questions, some pertaining to the body, some completely unrelated.

Brahim wrote the word "fanny" on his paper, then ≠ ~ the universal symbol for "not equal to."

Oh, dear. What are you trying to ask me, Brahim? And where on earth did you hear an old-fashioned word like "fanny"?

I debate whether I'm even gonna get into this, the naming of the backside, the bottom, the butt, the bum. Whatever you wanna call it, it can't be anything but hchuma to discuss it with a couple of adolescent boys. (And what's with the "≠" sign? Just how bad is this gonna get?)

They're perplexed by my reluctance.

"Like you are fanny," Brahim further explained. Not helping, Brahim.

"You are fanny, and I am not ~ what is opposite of fanny?" Abdsamad adds, striking a fiercely stern schoolteacher pose.

Aha. I'm slow to catch on. They don't want to talk about my fanny, they're trying to tell me I'm funny ~ and the word they're looking for is "serious."

In the end, just so they could truly appreciate how funny this was, I did in fact explain why I was so confused.

I haven't laughed that hard with 14-year-olds since the time Kelly and Shon stuffed me in a trash can in Mr. Wengert's 8th-grade math class.

(The boys also informed me that I have short eyelashes. So, there's that, too.)

* It's funny!

Category: Random.

OK, this is one of the stranger videos I've seen while visiting the host family. A Moroccan singer/guitarist with a growly Sheryl Crow voice, English lyrics, a cowboy/sheriff-type character wielding a big stick, prisoners in '30s-era stripey uniforms a la "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" ... and a deep desire to perform on "The Muppet Show"? Yeah, those themes all converge quite nicely. Enjoy!



Promise I'll post an update on our Spring Camp in Taroudant just as soon as I fully recover ... which should be sometime in October. Short version: It was awesome, thanks to a truly spectacular group of volunteers. Thank you Ali, Ariel, Joy, Laila, Lori, Matt, Michelle, Nicole, and Vish-o!