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February 16^th, 2011

I went down south to Tinghir this past week for VSN training. VSN is the Volunteer Support Network, which I believe every Peace Corps country has. I left on Thursday and it took me seven hours on the bus, which went by pretty quickly as the views were breathtaking. Around a town called Rich, the scenery changes from snow-capped mountains to red-desert with lush green oasis’s and sandy villages scattered about. Then you go into the red High Atlas Mountains/desert and through a large gorge with a green river and palm trees running along the road. The south is so very different from the north of Morocco and it’s pretty amazing watching the change take place from the bus, surrounded by Moroccans.

On Thursday evening, we had a meet and greet dinner of lentil soup and garlic bread. There were ten of us in total and I had already met four of the volunteers, on previous occasions. We went shopping the next day and bought our food in for the weekend and we all rotated turns cooking for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

VSN is a peer-to-peer counseling group and so the training was to help develop the skills to be a counselor. Active listening was the main subject, which is much more difficult and technical than one might think. We also talked about feelings...a lot. 

Each night we slept ten to the room, all in a row across the floor, in our sleeping bags. The first night I only got a couple hours of sleep as my sleeping bag wasn’t quite warm enough and there were a couple of snorer’s in the room. On the second night, we went out to dinner in Tinghir. I had a kefta mincemeat sandwich, which consisted of; mayo, mincemeat, pasta salad, potatoes, french fries, and red onion. I spent the entire second night in the bitlima, throwing-up, out of both ends. It was awful. And I was trying my hardest not to wake the other nine-up in a hollow Moroccan house. Until that night, I don’t think I have ever had food-poisoning, and I never want it ever again. By the third day of training, which was 8.30-6 each day, I was a mess. Absolutely knackered. I had a good nights sleep that night though, and was 110% by the next day. The training itself was very good and I really felt as though I got a lot out of the weekend.

Sadly, there was no time to do any sightseeing around Tinghir, which was disappointing as the Todra Gorges are close and I was hoping to see them. Ah well, plenty of time left to explore. The bus ride home on Monday was insanely hot, which was a crazy change for me as I am so used to the freezing cold. It’s warm down south and there is no air-conditioning on souk busses and on this particular bus there were no windows to open. We were also on the back of the bus above the engine and I was in long underwear in preparation for arrival back in site. I’m pretty sure I partially cooked myself. 

I had internet installed in my house on February 1^st, and much to my dismay, it still isn’t working. I’m trying desperately to get the people at Maroc Telecom to help me sort it out but, the problem is they are in the city and speak Moroccan Arabic or French. I kind of speak Tamazight and so there is a massive communication barrier, especially as the conversations take place over the phone. I paid for another volunteer to travel here today to try and sort it, but the end result was that the problem is on Maroc Telecom side of things. So tomorrow is dedicated to not hanging up the phone until it’s sorted.

I leave on Saturday morning to go to Post Pre-Service (PPST) training for 7 days and then I will go straight from training back to my original site, in Ait Hamza to visit with my old host family for the weekend. I am excited to see them and hopefully we will be able to communicate much better than we could when I lived there. 

While PST was mainly cultural and language training, PPST is technical training. We are going to have sessions on building websites, project design and management, marketing and promotion, product development, and grant writing. I am looking forward to learning lots in all of those areas. We also have to give individual presentations about our sites, I am planning to put together a power point for that this Friday.

Big smiles to everyone reading this-I am happy, healthy, and keeping busy and I hope you are too!

Love,

Maryeem xXx

Going down South...

Me & A Massive Cream Puff

View from our roof in Tinghir

Amazigh (Berber) Women waiting for the bus

Need I tell you what this is?

Desert outside of Rich