AIWA Craft Fair & Mid-Service Meds

I spent the first third of this month in Rabat, initially to attend a craft fair I was co-coordinating, followed by dental and medical checkups as well as a few meetings with Peace Corps staff.

Not really too much exciting to report, I'm afraid. The craft fair was held in the gymnasium of the Rabat American School, which is a surreal little bubble of high school Americana, like someone air-lifted a campus right out of the U.S. and deposited it smack-dab in the middle of the capital of Morocco. The idea of the fair itself is that it provides artisans from across the country an opportunity to display and sell their wares as well as make contacts, take orders, etc. I took over the organizational aspects from another volunteer who ended up not being able to attend. Most of my duties ended once we had all arrived and set up; I spend the rest of the day avoiding the delicious bake sale happening in the cafeteria. Imagine a bunch of moms in Santa hats and kitschy Christmas sweaters smiling at you from behind long folding tables loaded with delicious homemade cookies and cakes and pies and so forth-- that's exactly what it was.

The next week was spent traversing between my hotel room, PC Headquarters, various medical-type offices, and spending more money on single meals than I do for a week's worth of vegetables in my site. I'm happy to report that I have no cavities or parasites! Apparently I've lost sixteen pounds since coming to country as well. As there was a lot of down time, I explored the city, revisited the ancient Chellah ruins, took several trips to the beach at night, and caught up with my stage-mates. Oh, the US Ambassador to Morocco, who lives in Rabat, invited us all over to his house for dinner one evening. Very fancy.

It was good to see everyone again-- the last scheduled meeting (as far as I know) for us as a group until our COS (Completion Of Service) interviews and medicals next year. I only have eleven months left. *jaw drops*

Sooooo-- what else? It's gotten chilly here now, to the point where I keep my long johns on pretty much 24/7 and have connected a continuous intravenous drip of hot tea to myself. I have a Christmas tree in my living room. It even has blinking lights. And tomorrow I'm going to the Marrakech airport to pick up a visitor I've been waiting for for what seems like a looooong time...

Thanksgiving & l3id lKbir Round Two

Before getting to the gore, I'd like to briefly recount this past Thursday's Thanksgiving extravaganza, hosted and attended by myself and my fantastic sitemate.

Donniell arrived in the early afternoon, dead-but-still-warm chicken in tow, and wasted no time preparing the feast. Deftly concocting a homemade stuffing, she proceeded to fill the bird's recently vacated cavity and lavished its plucked skin generously with butter and spices.

Six and a half hours later, we removed it from my humble oven, crisp and golden on the outside, juicy within. Garlic mashed potatoes came into existence, as did creamed peas and a bit of gravy. I was quite impressed.

It was all delicious, devoured voraciously yet appreciatively. Second helpings were conquered in a fashion analogous to trudging up a mountainside in knee-high snow with a weighty backpack, but lacking the sense of healthy accomplishment and vitality afterward.

Normally I would not feel compelled to persist in or even attempt such a feat, but such meals as rare-- I'd have to say that Donniell's creation was the most "home"-like of any food yet during the past fifteen months, and even the scent of the cooking itself was enough to induce warm, fuzzy, curl-up-in-front-of-the-fireplace-next-to-the-dog yearnings. And feast or not, I'm lucky to have someone around to spend the day with. Feels like I've been away from home a long time.

Next holiday:

Some of you might recall last year's depiction of l3id lKbir, perhaps Morocco's biggest holiday in terms of food, festivity, and sheep slaughter. Though I'd like to divert the focus away from the gruesome and entertaining aspects of the celebration in favor of the more wholesome and boring ones, I did witness a jaw-dropping moment during the disemboweling of the animal that I cannot resist writing about here. Upon removing the lungs from the inverted and dangling sheep's chest cavity, the friendly man spattered in blood held them up by the still-attached esophagus for all to see. He then blew forcefully into the esophageal opening, causing the lungs to inflate fully-- pink, glistening, and strange in the morning sun. It was so cool.

The afternoon consisted of a bottomless glass of sweet tea and delicious grilled skewers of fat-wrapped liver (*drool*) at a friend's house. A group of about thirty American students from an organization called Morocco Exchange was staying in town with host families for a couple of nights, and I spent most of their time here with them as they witnessed the holiday in full maroon splendor.

Yesterday evening after devouring an impressive portion of the biggest and most delicious dish of couscous I've had yet in Morocco, we found ourselves in a corner of the neighborhood, underneath an intoxicatingly-scented night blooming tree, watching a frenzy of drummers and dancers in the night as the glow from a fire reached up the walls of the surrounding houses. One of those moments of awe, wherein the experience is so visceral and surreal-- witnessing the spirit of the celebration in everyone, watching the people I've become such good friends with in their element, realizing just where I'm standing and what I'm seeing. This is a pretty amazing place to be.

This afternoon the kids are parading through the streets. I hear them chanting in droves as they taunt the harrma-- the stick-wielding man dressed in sheepskin who threatens to hit you if you don't fork up a coin or two. Unfortunately for me, I have to make my way across town to visit the host family. It's a long walk and I know they are out, there prowling the alleyways...

Cultural Tourism, Maybe?

Here's a basic framework for the system I'd like to implement:

Concept:
Visiting tourists participate in a variety of cultural activities utilizing local resources. All aspects of coordination and execution will be carried out and sustained by locals.

Goals:
Boost economic opportunity for businesses and individuals in the area, offer new avenues of income to explore and develop. Empower local entrepreneurs, introduce possibility, encourage creative thinking. Integrate local elements. Provide a positive experience for visitors, encouraging return trips and word-of-mouth exposure.

Elements:

• GUIDES: Available for contact info, to facilitate motions between the different activities, translation, and introduction to homestay families

• HOMESTAYS: Local families willing to host visitors

• TREKKING: L___ leads short daytrips through the mountain trails. J___ leads multi-day trips during which groups stay overnight with Berber families in small mountain villages

• COOKING CLASSES: Lessons with willing locals-- perhaps homestay families, couscous co-op?

• POTTERY VISITS: Observe potters at work, visit various stations around the neighborhood, witness preparation, throwing and firing. Possible participation? Opportunity to purchase authentic items

• HOTELS: Maroc Lodge, Le Source Bleu, both on the outskirts of the neighborhood

• ADVERTISING: website, wikitravel, brochures distributed in Marrakech and beyond!

Questions/Needs/Initial steps to take:

Availability:

• Who is available to work as guides during the visits?
• Which families are willing act as homestay hosts?
  
• Which potters are willing to be part of this idea?
• What are the potters willing to offer in terms of demonstration, explanation, or even visitor participation?

Pricing:

• Guides, homestay families, potters, trekking guides, and those hosting cooking classes will need to be compensated for their time, work, and materials. Talk to the community. Figure out and agree upon pricing for each. We need a simple system-- a "menu" of activities and their prices.
• How, when and whom will the visitors pay?
• How will payment be distributed to the appropriate parties?

Advertising:

• Who pays for web hosting?
• Who pays for printing of brochures?
• Where can we have this done? Who will design them?
• Can we obtain funding from outside sources to take care of this initial cost?

Friday Seafood Buffet:

• ....wait, what?

The Good With the Bad

It's been a whirlwind of a week.

Ami, my sitemate extraordinaire and partner in crime here in the High Atlas foothills, screeched off into the sunrise via grand taxi and dust cloud this past Tuesday, having completed her service. Woo hoo!

She's really been a big sister to me,-- helping me out, keeping me involved, and checking in on me, especially during those first few painful months of homestay. I am forever indebted to her for letting me use her hot shower. Oh, and for introducing me to a young lady I've grown pretty fond of in the last year... A true friend, I'm lucky to have shared this experience with her. I really couldn't have asked for anyone better. She did an admirable job here, and it's been great to watch her flourish as a Volunteer, and to see her influence among the community. I've really looked up to her. Now she's off to go to grad school and get married; I'll be seein' her in May when I fly out to San Francisco for the wedding.

I'm thrilled to announce the arrival of my new sitemate, Donniell, who showed up one week ago today! I won't write too much so as not to embarrass her, but I will say that I'm really glad she's here and I'm looking forward to our coming year together. She's got a great attitude and sense of humor about it all, and I think she'll do really well here. She'll be working at the local dar chebab, (basically the Moroccan equivalent of a YMCA) doing Youth Development.

Hard to believe I'm a second year Volunteer now. One year to go. Everyone says this one flies by before you can blink, and I believe it. In one sense I feel like there's so much to figure out, like I'm always a beginner. Though I can say that I have a foundation now and with that, the confidence that follows familiarity and a learned ability to approach the unknown with enthusiasm rather than a bristle. There's a feeling of momentum-- of finding a stride, and that's invigorating. I think these 2nd year pants will fit just fine.

____________________________

It's with a heavy heart that I write to you of the passing of SoYoun Kim, a Youth Development volunteer from my stage. She died this past Monday in a Marrakech hospital from an unexpected illness.

I recently spent some time with SoYoun, as she was one of the volunteers who hosted the pottery workshop discussed in my previous posting. She was ill when I saw her, though no one at the time imagined it would lead to such an end.

She was such a spirited, bright, creative and giving person. One of those rare individuals that seemed to be truly in love with her experiences-- someone who paid attention and took great joy in the simple moments and interactions that make up our everydays. We'll miss her greatly.

Pottery Apprenticeship Focus Group

I spent the last week of October in a small town near the edge of the Sahara attending a pottery workshop organized by two fellow Volunteers. As the tentative schedule had indicated that we would be learning intricate design and traditional decorative methods, I was initially hesitant to make the trip, thinking that I wouldn't be learning anything applicable to my own group of potters, whose work involves no sort of decoration at all. I quickly reconsidered, however, after considering the potential connections to be made, the opportunity to travel to a new area of the country as well as see some friends, and hey, it just might be fun after all. Having come to a head with my work situation at site and with no clear direction or new ideas to pursue, I bought a bus ticket, and off I went through twisting mountain passes and plateaued Martian expanses to the softly sculpted dunes and wild palmeries of the southeastern country.


The majority of our time was spent at a local pottery cooperative under the guidance of a very talented artisan, practicing a variety of techniques-- from throwing the pottery from raw clay on wooden kick wheels to cleaning and designing our pieces. We did small relief carvings on tiles, henna decorating, cloth bleaching, painting, and glazing. We saw their methods of clay gathering (they dig deep tunnels and mine it from under a dry river bed... I crawled down in one and had a look), preparation, and firing in the kilns. A good week, overall, despite a brief-but-violent mysterious illness during which I could not stand without throwing up, and vivid colors pulsed across my fevered vision. (Perhaps someone slipped some "Saharan Special" into my tea...) And I'll tell you, it's quite a feeling to stare up at the night sky knowing you're at the edge of an ocean of sand so vast it's near impossible to contemplate.


What I had not initially realized was that our group, a collection of PCVs, was in fact a group of guinea pigs-- a test group for a tourism project being implemented at the local pottery co-op. We were given the opportunity to come learn some new methods of the craft while simultaneously going through the motions of the workshop to help work out the kinks for future groups. It was this realization that sparked an idea-- I should do this in my town.

Working to establish such a system would be a matter of connecting the right elements and people, most of which are already present and available in my area. If anything, I could work to build a framework for these kinds of visits to take place in a self-sustaining manner after my departure-- tours of the pottery production as well as connecting tourists with local hotels, trekking guides, the couscous co-op, and any other points of interest I can think to incorporate wherein the community would benefit. There have already been "guinea pigs" for a test run, too: a group of American college-age students came to town about a month a go with a program called Morocco Exchange, and we did an abbreviated version that went really well. My biggest concern would be to develop the tours in such a way that visitors would truly be beneficial to the potters' business, not invasive or burdensome.

I don't know if I've ever explained this before, but as SBD Volunteers we work with the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism, Artisans, and Social Economy via artisans and entrepreneurs on a grassroots level as part of an initiative to "build capacity through skills training and limited logistical support in areas of product quality and service, business planning and management, organizational development, and individual empowerment/community leadership." In this scenario I would not be working literally side-by-side with the potters, as I initially attempted, but would yet be working to boost their economic opportunity as well as that of others. Who knows what kinds of developments, product-wise, business-wise or otherwise, could take place as a result.

Truthfully, it's an idea I am a tad reluctant to mention at such an early stage, but it seems appropriate to record here. The majority of this experience involves figuring things out (or not) as I go, and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I knew what I was doing all along.............HAH

Fall Semester, and the Triumphs and Woes of Work in the Amizmiz Pottery Sector

English class is back in session, bigger and badder than ever! The number of students has doubled in size this time around, with mostly beginner level kids comprising the new additions. It makes for a rowdy couple of hours, as our humble garage cannot accommodate the enthusiasm in sound or occupancy levels, nor am I able to give equal attention to all students. The presence of the the entire range of language ability makes it near-impossible to teach any one lesson that will engage everyone. Instead I find myself bouncing back and forth, pinball-style, between the narrow row of desks and scattered chairs, responding to constant calls, helping individually with specific homework assignments.

The overwhelming influx of new kids has been tough on the advanced and loyal ones, as the chaotic environment rules out any chance of our good ol' thoughtful discussions. So, we have split up the week, agreeing upon two beginner days and three advanced days. I have a feeling that everyone will continue to show up at once, but we'll see. I need a bouncer.

We've been working on a class website, wherein the students create the content-- short autobiographies, photos from trips, information about our class and our town-- which I revise and build into a simple site. It's not very developed yet at all, but take a look if you're interested: Friends of Amizmiz

Some work-related notes:

In the last several months since IST, I've been trying to make headway on improvement within the local pottery business operations. So as not to repeat a lot of already-written info, check out this post to read about the issues with which we're dealing.

A Moroccan acquaintance of mine who works in small business development locally, and with whom I have met to brainstorm and exchange info, helped me out by looking into how to go about my first project idea-- finding land for the potters to lease from which they can take soil legally. After asking the appropriate authorities, we found that no such land was available. Just recently, however, I discovered that the potters do have a large area of nearby land at their disposal. It is legally theirs to use, which they do, frequently. Some still choose to take dirt from prohibited areas, though not due to a lack of their own land. So that idea is out for now.

At a recent visit to one of the potters, I noticed a large pile of cardboard boxes and scrap paper sitting next to the kiln. I inquired about this, and learned that the potters obtain, for free, these scraps from local businesses in order to burn in their kilns, and that they have ceased using badly polluting materials like rubber tires. This was also news to me. My next project idea had, in fact, been to set up such arrangements with businesses. Another promising idea already implemented. Hm. Perhaps I am to blame for not doing thorough enough initial research, though there was no indication that I hadn't until now...

A long walk and conversation with my friend Hamid was quite enlightening. We had a realistic discussion about just what it is that we could really do here. I commented that I've been placed in this town to help, but it seems as though no one particularly wants or even needs my help. Hamid, being a potter himself, agreed. He didn't know what it was I could do, saying that the potters are generally very happy with their work. They have the materials they need. They have a stable, reliable market in which to sell their craft, from which they are able to provide for their needs. They have the added benefit of actually working from their own homes, near and often with their families.

The one thing they don't do, he said, is work together. I thought that a natural step would be to encourage them to do so, and to organize a location and regular times during which they could convene, making use of their collective skills and knowledge to hone their business practices. Perhaps invite those more skilled in such practices to come and deliver workshops on the subject. But according to Hamid, this has all been tried in the past, even by the previous Volunteer whom I replaced. The potters are competitive and private, preferring to work separately, having little patience for each other and especially for those who want to alter their stable system. Understandable. Hamid says that in addition to Peace Corps, many associations have come to town (one visited just the other week, in fact) with the intent of somehow "improving" the situation here, and that by now the potters are wholly uninterested and have closed themselves off to such talk.

As discouraging as this may sound-- having my little plans crumble and no clear direction ahead, it actually felt quite productive. I have a much better understanding of the potters' point of view, of their methods, and of what has been tried in the past. What does seem clear is that they certainly don't need my help. There are still things to be improved upon, and though I am not at all abandoning or closing myself off to possibilities with them, I have to think that perhaps I should be looking elsewhere. But where? With whom? I'm hoping that some feedback from my program manager and counterpart will offer some insight.

There is still a year to go, but time does fly, especially here where every day is over before I can even put my sandals on, it seems. In the light of these new revelations on my work situation here, I recall that my service does not stand on its own; that it is a step in a cycle of volunteers, and that succeeding in tangible things is not the point of being here. Sure, I tell myself that to fend off envy when others are perhaps putting fresh paint on the walls of their artisana or exporting carpets to far-off lands, and I am stumbling along learning about where dirt comes from. But each person and his or her situation are unique, this is mine, and I'm in the right place. I have no clue what will happen in the next year and probably wouldn't even come close with a guess. There are always things brewing out there that I can't see...

Mbruk l3id!

Today is l3id sghir, the holiday marking the completion of Ramadan. Everyone is out and about visiting each other, ingesting enough sweet tea and cookies to onset diabetes in a matter of hours. Thus far I have managed to avoid such nectarous excesses (not the case last year), strolling with my friends Abderrahim and 3ziz through the neighborhood to greet everyone, shaking hands and giving congratulations. I did, however, just return from my saintly neighbor Latifa's house, where she served a lunch consisting of an entire chicken literally covered with french fries. Nap time is imminent.