Finally 2012, this year I come home!

Another holiday season has come and gone, le sigh. They just aren’t the same here as they are back home. I can still remember how nasty holiday shoppers are to barristas... but now that I’ve missed out on two such seasons I miss even the cranky quips and crazy drivers. I was online just before Christmas doing research and I thought it would be nice to stream Christmas music from KBCO- I may not like technology but I’ll never speak ill of it again. Before the music started to play they ran an ad for the skating rink that’s at the mall I worked in, I admit, that I got a little choked up. Yes, it snowed here last month... but there’s no way we could sustain an outdoor skating rink. Ah, but this year it’s not so hard because I know that home is just around the bend, even if I can’t really remember what home looks like.
We had quite the epic adventure in disease scares this last month. My site mate, Yusuf, had his middle of service medical exam at the end of Nov and came back with the news that he had schistosomiasis... and if he has it then I probably have it, too. This was good news for me because it meant that as the Health education volunteer I would finally have some health based work to do. So we went into a flurry of activity raising awareness about the parasite to all of the people in our community. And we came up with a plan to treat the water for the parasite and the snails that are the vector for the schisto. We began getting in contact with anyone we could think of who might be able to help us come up with designs to treat the water and figure out how much of what we would need. Honestly, I think my enthusiasm for the potential project kind of hurt Yusuf’s feelings.
Yusuf: “I have schisto and I think it’s from Aghbelu.”
Me: “Really! Yes, I get to have a health project after all!”
Yusuf: “Don’t sound so broken up about it, I’m sure I’ll live.”
Me: “It’s only damages the liver after several decades... wait, no, I’m sorry, honey, that sucks. Do you feel OK?”
Yusuf: “Best sitey ever.”*
*I have taken great artistic license with this dialogue, Yusuf is actually incredibly supportive of me as a site mate and I count myself very blessed to have someone who thinks so highly of me. Especially because in reality he’s the rock star and I just follow along in his trail pretending to do stuff.
I was just beginning to feel very overwhelmed by how much work this project would require when Yusuf received a call from our doctor in Rabat to clarify the situation. Apparently when he said, “We have the results of your test back, you have schisto.” He meant, “We have the result of your test back and you are parasite free; but don’t swim in stagnant water because the area you live in might have schisto.” Ugh! He’s a good doctor, but the language barrier can be very confusing. Alas, so ended my fabulous health project. But I can still work on finding a way to treat the grey water (water with soap and other non-human-waste-waste water) that comes from the daily uses of the spring.
In other news, I’ve made two great additions to my job description. Resume reads: arts and crafts lady, day care teacher, English tutor, and yoga instructor.
Every Friday I now teach yoga lessons to any girl who shows up (it has to be gender segregated or the girls won’t come) and then I offer English tutoring to any of the students who have the time from class.
I’ve started the exercise classes with yoga, but the girls have expressed a strong interest in Karate (I know Tai Kwan Do, but they don’t even distinguish between limes and lemons- hey, if they don’t split hairs neither will I) All the same, I’m reticent of teaching these girls to beat up other kids without fist explaining the difference between starting a fight and getting yourself out of a pickle...maybe I’ll teach them Tai Chi instead. Very useful when defending yourself from roving gangs of sloths.
I have a brief and random aside that I could not think of a way to slip in smoothly. Our dar shebab (youth center) has a blog! www.blogspot.kerrandou.com check it out!
One health project I have been able to do this month is AIDS Awareness related. December is international AIDS/ HIV (SIDA/VIH- for those who are curious about what we call it here) Awareness month, so Yusuf and I dedicated the entire week before Christmas to SIDA/VIH oriented events. I was really pushing activities instead of lessons because these kiddos start hearing about SIDA/VIH really early in their educations; the topic is pretty dead by the time their 12. This is only concerning to me because it leads to people not taking it seriously by the time they reach high school. So I’ve been thinking back to my childhood to remember how teachers and parents made learning fun for us. I’m sure you’re sniggering because most teachers don’t even try anymore, but that makes those that do stand out that much more. Here I would like to thank educators (and, of course, mom and dad) who made learning fun. And, as someone who has racked her brain trying to make AIDS entertaining, I want to say I take my hat off to you all. You amaze me!
I’ve been racking my brain for months about what we could do- Yusuf has a whole bunch of other projects going on right now, so I was trying not to lean on him for ideas. Suddenly, during the first week of Dec, the ideas all hit me at once. And I do mean “hit”, they quite literally smote me upon the mind, had I not been sitting when it happened I would have fallen flat on my tuckus.
First, getting the chil’ens involved. Kids love to get mementos, and- even better- they’ll take anything. Background: I have been given, over the last year and a half, seven or eight yards of red ribbon meant to make AIDS Awareness ribbons (you know the shape, like breast cancer ribbons, only they’re red). Those ribbons mean nothing over here, and when I see them floating around, more often than not they’re upside down. Instead, I have been encouraging participation by using the ribbons to make bracelets! This is also great because it means I’m not giving little kids pins; fun those the mental image may be. And I make the kids participate if they want a bracelet. One kid showed up just as everything was cleaned up demanding a bracelet; I told him that he hadn’t learned anything so he couldn’t have a ribbon until the next day’s project. He was the first kid at the youth center the next day. Yes I feel smug.
Really I only had two projects but since they were new ideas they were interesting enough to keep everyone’s attention for a week.
First were origami boxes with SIDA Awareness collages. Origami has become an old topic to the kid, and we’ve been making the same four things for about two months now. So the prospect of a new thing- and one so practical as a box with a lid- was a huge hit. The collage worked out well because I have a ton of SIDA/VIH oriented handouts from every health organization in Morocco. And I have those given to me by three previous volunteers: I could paper a small bedroom with all my flyers.
Second was a book... you think it lame, but wait. I wrote a very simple story with just one sentence per page about a boy who was HIV positive but gets the medicine he needs and leads a productive and normal life; then I had one of my friends translate the story into Arabic so the kids could all read it. I pulled out my art supplies and had the kids illustrate the pages; they had to draw a picture about what they read. At first it was a difficult concept: the kids would assume the boy was dying because he had SIDA so they would draw a grave and crying people. Then I would make the kids read the book to me aloud and ask if their pictures made sense. The idea of being HIV positive and still having a life with hopes and dreams was really shocking to them. This was also a great opportunity for me to clarify for them that HIV and AIDS are not the same thing.
After a choppy start the books were popular too, but the boxes remain the biggest hit.
I especially liked these two projects because they are complicated enough for all of the students to enjoy, but simple enough that my mentally handicapped students can join in too. The box folding requires me to give a lot more help to my handicapped kids, but they can manage the collage and drawing, so we all win.
The down side to working so closely with one of my favourite kids was that he had a nasty cough, and he has a very severe learning disability; so the idea of covering his mouth when he coughed just didn’t stick. I spent the entire week being coughed on by this sweet heart of a Petri dish and ended up coming down with a plague that verged on death two days before Christmas. Alas, I spent my Christmas all alone and sick.  But a bunch of people at the Christmas party I had planned on going to texted and called me to send well wishes and let me know I was missed, and my parents called me to wish me merry Christmas and then made pitying noises at my plight. So I was alone, but by no means lonely. Actually, it was a great opportunity for me to look at my life and realize that with the love and support of friends and family like mine nobody could be lonely.
I don’t care if it’s a mushy thing to do, it’s the holidays and that’s the time to be mushy. I want to thank you all for making my life so very, very rich. I’d be lost without you guys.