Well brave co-adventurers we have, at long last, reached the end of our long journey. For two years we have braved through extreme temperatures, new language experiences- achievements and errors, and countless other mishaps and victories. Some of you have voyaged with me from the beginning, and some of you have joined in along the way; there are many brave reader we have lost as the quest has progressed. Congratulations one and all who have clung on to my wandering and disconnected recounting. Farewell to the comrades who have peeled off, may your new adventures be full of exciting discoveries all your own.
There isn’t much to share to catch you all up with my last two months. March was spent in the village warning all of my friends that my leave taking is eminent. They all insisted that I come over for tea a few more times before I leave and that they’ll miss me, but I think they’ll bounce back pretty quickly once I leave. Actually, I think my warning people of my heading out was more to convince myself that I am heading out... even now with less than five days before I head out it hasn’t really sunk in.
April flew past in a flurry of Spring Camp and packing. Spring Camp is a weeklong English emersion camp (two weeks this year) that the Peace Corps organizes with the Ministry of Youth and Sports for high school students during their spring break. The camp was two weeks long this year because the spring break was extended as well. I was really glad to have the chance to do this camp; many PCVs say that it is one of the most fulfilling things they do during their entire service. I couldn’t do it last year because I had an Op Smile mission, but this year they had a scheduling conflict of some sort so I wasn’t needed for the mission in Tangier. Huzzah! I spent two weeks in the beach town of Essouara. You might remember that name from one of my summer entries; it’s the same town that hosts the Ganoua Music Festival every year. Wow, that town is so different without all the music goers, the population must increase tenfold during the festival.
At first I was a bit nervous about doing camp in Essa’ because of how aggressive the people were when I had gone before, but I agreed to go because Yusuf was the camp facilitator this year. But it turned out to be a great choice, almost every day we had a beach day where we took the whole camp (87 kids and 10 teachers) to the beach to play games. Also every day the five American teachers taught English classes, I had one of the beginner levels. Not the most beginner level because that would have needed me to explain activities in Arabic... and we have covered that I do not speak Arabic, very few people under the age of 60 speak Tamazight, and even fewer under the age of 18 speak French. Therefore I took the higher beginner level and we used English and charades to get ideas across. The trouble with that specific level was that those students tended to be the class clowns and generally noisy kids; the majority were the chil’l’ns that have been in English classes for two or three years but dinked around so much that they hadn’t picked up more than a hand full of verbs and nouns and could only conjugate in the present tense. In retrospect, though, that was the perfect class for me to have had. All of the other teachers were fresh new PCVs, they wanted to have that great camp experience with attentive students to hang on their lecture and remember the lessons all the days of their lives, and who are excited to be at camp learning English and making friends. My class was there because their parents wanted them out of the house for a week or two, but they were in English classes at school so they kind of wanted to pick up some English stuff to give them an edge on their class mates. That was perfect for me because I was just killing time before I bounce; so I, too, wanted to have a ton of fun with the kid and if they picked up some new English skills, hallelujah. Which is not to say I did not take my role as teacher seriously, there was plenty of English lesson giving... there were just a lot of team building exercises (aka games) as well. I would like to pat myself on the back here and say that of the students to return for the second week my class had the highest return rate. And a few of them even improved their English so much over the first week that they moved to a higher level class the second week. But I’m not sure I can take much credit for that.
I would also like to take a minute to praise my fabulous site mate Yusuf for the amazing job he did as a camp facilitator. He organized both weeks: all of the beach outings, helped all of the English classes, lead the afternoon dance club, worked the coordinate between the Moroccan and American staff, and made sure that everyone had all of the supplies they would need for their own clubs. Tabarkalaalik Yusuf, hats off to you. Oh yeah, and he did all of this while plagued by an allergy fit that was so bad he has developed asthma from it and he now has to use an inhaler for his last six months of service. Is he bad ass or what?
I mentioned that Yusuf lead the dance club, I should expound. The first day of camp we give the students a simple language proficiency indicator (LPI) test to figure out which English class they belong in, and while we’re at it we ask them to pick one of the three club options: theatre, art, or dance. I- as I imagine you can guess- lead the art club. This was hugely different from the arts and crafts I’ve been doing at my Dar Chebab, these kids already had great talent, so I briefly gave a demonstration of seeing the basic triangle, rectangle, and circle shapes in everything they see, then we covered 3-D and shading and I set them loose to express themselves. I had worried that my plan might backfire with kids not knowing what to draw or being disruptive again, but this worry was groundless. It was an hour and a half of silent creativity every day. This is especially cool because a lot of the most difficult kids from camp were tossed into art at the last minute because they had been kicked out of all of the other clubs. I don’t think the other teachers were expecting me to have any better luck than the rest of the clubs; I was just the last option. The nice thing about art, though, is that it is engaging to everyone, as long as they are allowed to express themselves however they want. After forcing the delinquents to listen to my lesson I gave them paper and pencils to see what would happen, and was rewarded with a very creative graffiti style rendering of my own name. The Moroccan teachers were surprised by my success; I think the teachers need to watch Sister Act.
Between the two camp weeks we had a day off so all of the teachers spent some time sitting on the beach and wandering the markets. I had been really curious about the non-festival markets, after seeing how chill the rest of the town was during the week of camp I was hopeful that the non-festival market would also be calmer as well. During Ganoua their aggressiveness is a nightmare and there is no haggling with them because of the huge tourist presence. The non-Ganoua market is an unmitigated delight. The shopkeepers are attentive but not aggressive, and I was able the haggle a silver talisman down to 150dhs from 750. I’d say that was a success.
It’s brief and there are, of course, a lot of details I’m skimming over but these are the basics and the most interesting bits.
I got back from camp a week ago and I’ve spent the rest of my time here saying goodbyes and packing my house. It was weird spending those last couple of days in a house with everything I owned packed into boxes. The last three days the only things I still had unpacked were the handful of dishes I would need every day; every sound echoed off of my barren walls. It’ kind of funny how something as banal as an echo can leave you feeling so lonely and finite.
I write this blog with an additional tone of bittersweet farewell. This is my last entry to be posted in Morocco, I am still somewhat undecided as to whether or not I’ll be continuing this blog. After all, the title is all about my grand adventure, now this adventure is coming to an end and a new one is about to begin. The difference with the epic to begin and the one so soon to end is that I will soon have continuous Facebook access to update one and all about my every mood swing and there is always Twitter to archive my innumerable observations on humanity... a most useful program as I work my way through the culture shock I have been assured of having upon re-entry into the US. I’ll make one more post once I’m back home to let everyone know my plan, and- if I make one- my twitter handle.
I would like to leave you all with one more thing; a list of thing I have learned during my service in Peace Corps Morocco.
• Most of the people in the world are on auto-pilot to help numero uno, but that doesn’t mean they won’t help you, too. You just need to ask, and specify with a complete sentence.
• A vaguely directed noun and un-conjugated verb constitute a complete sentence. “To go downtown. Where?” or “My bag, a lot. To Help?”
• When we get stressed all humans break down, a person’s strength is measured not by the breakdown, but by how they manage in the chaos.
• Eat the street food.
• All English grammar lessons should end with, “Yes, but sometimes no.”
• A seasonal food market is not restrictive... it encourages creativity.
• Milk from a bag is much fresher than milk from a box.
• Indoor climate control can- and should- blow your mind.
• Deliberately seek out the bright side, all of the negatives will find you on their own.
• When at a desperate loss take a deep breath and remember that, no matter what, the earth is still spinning. We are just along for the ride.
