Welcome to my CBT Site!

My CBT Site :)

Big Deep Breath. And Again. This is it-my Peace Corps experience has officially begun. I am in the Real Morocco…and it is breathtaking. Lovettsville is a metropolis compared to where I am now! After a 5-hour bus ride, I am sitting in bed, typing by candlelight in my new home. The drive from Mehdia to here, in my opinion, is best described as driving through the landscape of Disney’s, The Lion King, but with monkey’s horses, sheep, and donkey’s rather than zebra and lions…does that make any sense?! The dour (village) is at the base of the mountains and is tiny. I’m not sure I can even put into words what this place is like, and one thousand photos wouldn’t do it justice. It’s surreal. I honestly don’t know what to say…

We arrived at our community based training site (CBT) around 5pm today via a grand taxi (a run down Old Mercedes, and I mean run down). After paying the driver, we managed to drag our luggage across a small farm field and into our Language & Cultural Facilitator’s (LCF) home/our new classroom, where our new host moms were waiting eagerly. Awkward, is the only word to describe this situation. We had a crash ‘survival phrase’ course of Tamazight en-route, but nothing stuck and all that was left was smiles, stares, and nervous laughter! I was the first one to be introduced to my host mom, who in reality is more like my host sister, as she is only 24!

So here are my new families statistics per the Peace Corps:

Father’s Name: Mimoun

Mother’s Name: Hafida

Others Living in Household:

Son: Hamza, 6

Son: Omar, 4

Grandfather: Laheen (pronounced Lahsheen), 70

Grandmother: Aicha (pronounced, Ayeesha), 60

The dour is a maze of similar looking adobe buildings surrounded by farmland and is at the base of the Mid Atlas Mountains. The views are incredible. Their house is quite big for the area, I think. The floors are bare, but there are various rugs in the rooms around the furniture areas.

After introducing myself to the family, Hafida insisted I sit on a very small stool and watch her prepare the dinner. She explained all the vegetables and spices she was using in Tamazight to me. Then her sister and two cousins showed up and I moved into the living room to sit on the Poonj’s (cushioned benches with pillows for back rests all lined around the room against the wall, Moroccan couches) with them while she finished preparing dinner.

Dinner was served on the ‘coffee table’ sitting on the poonj’s. Hafida’s cousin held an empty bowl in front of me with a jug of water in her other hand and insisted that I rinse my hands, while she poured the water over them. I was given a small individual dish of diced cucumbers and tomatoes, but it appeared that normally this might have been served in a communal bowl. The meal was a chicken (there was no oven and I never saw the chicken being prepared so I am still uncertain as to how it was cooked!) on a bed of onion, tomato and other vegetables (not sure what they were yet as I have never seen them before) broth, which was slightly chunky and everything was topped with fresh green olives. A plastic tablecloth was placed on the table and the chicken dish was served in a communal bowl in the middle for the 9 of us.

Thick, flatbread was the utensil for eating and everyone only eats the triangle portion of the round dish from directly in front of him or her. You start by breaking the bread (using only your right hand of course) and sopping up all the juices and pinching up all the olives with the bread. Once all the juices were gone, Hafida, using her hands picked the (small) chicken up and shredded the meat off distributing it in even piles in each person’s portion of the dish. I put my left hand under my leg to 

deter me from habitually trying to use it and as warned they continually tried to get me to keep eating, but I had my notes next to me and made sure they knew I was full-up and very grateful. “Safi Burraka L’Hamdullah!”

My CBT Site

Entrance to my neighborhood...

View from outside my LCF's (school) house

My CBT Site

Lunch at our Hub site in Azrou

Annie & Me at our Hub in Azrou