Site Announcement

I found out that I’m spending the next two years in Boujaad! Between my mom (who googled everything there is to know) and the current PCV (who talked on the phone with me about it), I’m pretty excited. According to the site selection papers PC gave me, here are some fast facts about Boujaad:

-Population: 40,513 people (if I meet 40,514 people, I’m going to complain to PC)
-Language spoken: Darija
-Local cooperatives: Sewers, electricians, blacksmiths, & carpenters
-Local associations: Electrical, Painting, & Sewing
-Communication Access: Landline, cell phone, telegrams, post office, & cyber (yay connectivity!)
-Utilities: Water, check; electricity, check; paved roads, check; indoor bathroom, check!
-Work done by previous PCV: Product development, sewing & printing bags, screen-printing
-Fun things available: Lettuce, ceiling fans, hot water, 5 hours from capital
-Future Host Family: Fatima the mom, Rabia another mom, & Ahmed the 12 year-old

I’m also excited because my current host family has extended family only 24 kilometers away from my future site. With them, extended family is really just family, and we hope to meet up. An American anthropologist wrote a book about them, and I found a copy in Arabic at our hub site (part of my gbye present). It’s called “Knowledge & Power in Morocco: The Education of a 20th Century Notable.” We have one more week of training in Aminaville, a few days in Beach Town, and then MOVE IN TIME!

Weekend Trip to 30-House & 30-Donkey Town

We had a free weekend to travel last week, and so I met up with some friends in another training site. It’s a quaint, peaceful town, but it has the sweetest, most hospitable people. I’ve never smiled so much or received as many cheek kisses in two days. It’s located off the one-lane main road off the side of a mountain. After getting dropped off on the side of the road, we walked downhill for 20 minutes before we got to Emily’s house, the first one in town. There are olive trees, a Kasbah (old castle-like house that another PCT lives in), an olive press, plump animals, and one hanut (where we found lighters with flashlights).

Azalia’s house was so welcoming. A part of me was slightly shocked to see a tv, appliances, big couches, a bed, contemporary Moroccan fashion magazines, a beautifully-tiled area, and donkey room. Yes, one donkey had its own indoor room with bales of straw, while another was tethered outside. With chickens and dogs lounging around almond and olive trees, the town’s so relaxed. And then comes Azalia’s 12-year old sister, who has enough liveliness to energize all UH football fans, who also acted as our tour guide and third arm. Everyone in town knows and greets each other, has tea and cookies together, and sits for impromptu meals.

We made pizza, donkey trekked along water aqueducts, visited the family’s olive trees, played Snakes and Ladders, cracked almonds with grandma, and even saw Jerry the Mouse swim in the douche (what a surprise…). I tasted one-day and one-year old olive oil, and I probably gained a few pounds from all the “tsh”-ing (eating) I was forced to do.

Over all, it was so relaxing-- the perfect way to spend the days right before Site Announcement…dun dun dun…post about it to come soon!

“Vegas, baby!”

Almost a month of training has passed by, and when I say pass, I mean flew. What’s kept me busy?

-LANGUAGE CLASS: 5.5 days a week of learning the Darija language. Learning involves
-a morning fruit/cookie break
-a huge, delicious lunch
-an afternoon tea/snacks break
-adventures with Sandala Del Mika (a fictitious character my sitemate, Henry, has made up)
-tales of world travels
-physical workouts (jump roping, mid-arvo walks, ab exercises from laughing too much)
-PB discussions (politics, business, and peanut butter)
-memorizing (if God wills it) 3 verb tenses and 150 verbs, question phrases, names of items, family members, numbers to a billion, food shopping vocabulary, and Amina’s perfect answers to all of our questions…in Arabic script for a challenge

-HIKING: Last weekend, an easy 5k hike to a barrage turned into a 5-hour trek to a mirage. A coke’s never tasted so good as when we got back to the first hanut. We passed heaps of fat sheep and goats though (see picture above).

-FAMILY TIME: Watching old Arnold Swartzenager (spelling?) movies on television, cooking together, sitting together in the salon, sitting together on the outside stairs, sitting together on the stairs inside, charades, eating breakfast and dinner together, reviewing my schoolwork…good ol’ family bonding time.

-TRIPS TO AZILAL: Peace Corps sessions, kefta sandwiches and kababs, wandering the streets looking for something fun to do…

Wow…it seems like I’m super busy here, but after typing this...not really. I’m off to a Women’s Day meeting soon though so cutting this short. Tomorrow, there will be a film screening at the Dar Shebab, and us PCTs are helping the PCV with it. The local film is about women’s rights codes. Hope all is well with you, and if anyone has advice on posting photos, please share!

Last section, things I didn't expect to hear my first month here:
-"I love you I love you I love you!" -group of screaming kids yelled at us when we first got to site
-"It's Vegas, baby!" -said by sitemate's host brother and friend over and over
-"If only we were Jewish we could have partied with that tour group" -sitemate regarding the Jewish reunion in town for the weekend
-"Yeah, sure" -typical response to a yes/no question
-"It's good" -typical response to any how question
-"Are there frozen peas in the market?" -PCT question to PCV

Local Artisans

Aminaville is known for its handmade, delicate jelaba-d-bizouia. Thin, homespun thread from local sheep and shiny silk thread are woven together on a “loom.” Sheep skin is washed, cleaned, and separated at the local gorge, called the Temda. [In the summertime, boys swim here and people picnic.] The artisans pull the sheep hair apart and spin it into yarn, or hire someone else in the community to do it.


Tree branches, wooden planks, and cords are somehow assembled together in a weaver’s house, where the weaving takes place. After the time-intensive process of setting up the loom, women sit on the floor and pass the thread back and forth through the loom by hand. One woman, Eric’s host mom, took three weeks to weave one fabric, called a jellaba. Jellaba is also the name for the hooded robes worn by local men and women. This particular fabric from Aminaville is of very high quality and worn only by the king and other affluent people who can afford it. Usually, men wear white and gold jellabas; women, colorful ones.

Every Friday, the vegetable vendors in town move aside for the outdoor Jelaba Auction. Women from all over the “city” will come here to sell their homespun yarn and put their jellabas up in the auction. This is a change from the past, where the market was dominated only by men. The auctioneers and buyers (middlemen who will travel to the big cities to sell the fabric) are still men; women look on (there was one middle-woman though). Three men run back and forth to the buyers, sweating over the delicate fabric and shouting prices.
Although the final customers seem to pay a very large sum for the fabric, the profits don’t trickle down to the artisans (Eric’s mom received 1200D for her fabric and she is not living lavishly). At the auction yesterday, the highest-priced fabric I heard went for 1600D. The women--who must pay a registration fee for each jellaba in the auction and a tax on each jellaba sold there--aren’t paid completely upfront for the sold jellabas. They wait, sometimes a month or more, for the middleman to sell the jellaba to the end customer. Cash flow and marketing definitely have room for improvement. This town and its gossip are the life of the weavers, mostly older, illiterate women. Although some artisans have some private clients who order directly from them, the whole jelaba-d-bizouia industry makes an interesting case study/working environment for a Moroccan PCV…and yes, there is one here.

Money & Markets

Morocco’s a mathematician’s dream. Lfloos, or money, is measured in dirham (or drahim if the number’s between 2 and 10), ryal, and centimes (or francs). Basically, 100 centimes=1 dirham. The currency itself is denominated in dirham bills and centime coins.

What makes shopping interesting is that most vendors say prices in ryal. 20 ryal=1 dirham. Not only do we have to do math in our heads, we also have to do translations. Story: my first morning at site (I’m not a morning person), I wanted to buy bread before class. The local hanut owner I bought cheese and yogurt from the day before quoted me a price of 24 francs (first he said “arbauashreen” then “Vingt-quatre francs”) for a piece of day old bread. I was shocked; why is he ripping me off today?, Are we playing the bargaining game already?, I’m not a tourist, I could buy a whole meal for 20 francs in France for that amount ran through my mind. I held up a 2D coin to show him I wasn’t paying more than this. He took it and gave me change. I had no idea how much that bread cost. That day in class, I learned about Morocco’s money system AND that hanut prices are fixed. Alhumdullah.


At the outskirts of town, there’s a weekly outdoor market, called a souq, where fresh meat, animals, veggies, fruit, knickknacks, clothes, spices, tea breaks, electronics, and beauty products are for sale. These prices (except for clothes) are also somewhat fixed. My CBT group took a field trip there once and stocked up on lunch supplies. We wandered up and down the aisles of tents offering such goods. Boys selling plastic bags and men selling cold drinks also roamed around. Unlike RIM, the souq is a male-dominated area.

Twice a week, Aminaville also has swiqas, outdoor markets right in town. Wednesdays are Produce Day and Fridays are Clothes and Household Goods Day. I’ve eaten fresh figs, pomegranates, and turkey (obviously, not together). It’s great. Last week, my site mate Donna and I watched a man who sold cactus flowers, which apparently stop bowel movements. He cut the ends off of the fruit and peeled off the skin. One of his clients ate seven of them right there in the swiqa. We would have watched him eat more, but we were caught staring and felt like we needed to walk on. . . .

Host Family

(CAPTIONS: 1-My host brother, Hatim. 2-I henna-ed my host mom, Nezha, for the end of Ramadan holiday. 3-My host dad, Yassin, and his mom, Zahara, at the meal to break fast. 4-Other PCV/PCTs, aka my American family, made lunch at a current PCV's house. 5-My bedroom.)

I live on the 3rd floor of a beautiful house, complete with my own bedroom, tiled floors, a comfortable salon, a well-equipped and well-stocked kitchen, rooftop with chicken pen and herb garden, and great view of olive trees and the rest of Aminaville. I’m not roughing it at all: sitting on thick sofas, drinking cold water from the fridge or smoothies from the blender, taking hot showers, and staring lovingly at the washing machine. It seems like my set up is a lot more comfortable than most of the other PCTs and ten times more relaxing than my PST house in RIM. A visiting American researcher actually wrote a book about my family. They were/are pretty prominent in town. My mom's sister, who live's fifteen minutes away, lives in a hillside mansion/palace. I kid you not.

Peace Corps assigned Zahara to be my host mom, but her daughter-in-law, Nezha, has been a surrogate mother to me as well. Nezha is 32 and also a housewife, which means she’s unbelievably busy cooking, baking bread and sweets, puttering around, managing the household, tutoring me in darija, and cleaning up after her son. Hatim, 6, is a ball of energy: constantly jumping around, riding his bike in the house, dancing, and making noise. He adores his parents, and so do I. Our dad, Yassin, owns a teleboutique, which is a store where people can make phone calls. He also sells his home-made honey (at 300D=$35 a liter!!!), olive oil, gaudy gold jewelry, and perfume.

My family’s so patient with me, and they constantly want to review whatever I learned in language class each day. Zahara and I smile and play charades with each other. We’ve cooked spaghetti together, cleaned house (with soap!...RIM folk will know how significant this is), and had dance parties with television music. Last night, Nezha made pasta alfredo and fish pizza. Wow and yum, is all I can say. After almost three weeks, I feel so lucky to have had only great moments with my family. PC calls this time the honeymoon period, and I am very smitten being here.

Aminaville

(CAPTIONS: 1-View of town from the top of the hill behind my house. 2-The “tour guides” who hiked with us. 3-View of town halfway up the same hill. 4-View of the market area and mosque from my kitchen window. 5-Main street, lined with shops, homes, and cafes [for men], at dusk. 6-View of the “suburbs” from my kitchen window. 7-Ti leaves?! My site reminds me a bit of Kauai. 8-These irrigation channels run all through town.)

Located somewhere in the rolling foothills of the Atlas Mountains, Aminaville is so pleasant. We just missed the summer heat and aren’t high enough to get hail/snow (like some other sites). It’s perfect for me and my summer wardrobe. Red dirt, olive/pomegranate/lime trees, cacti with edible fruit, a river, farming plots, a gorge with a summertime swimming pool, and plenty of hills to hike can be easily found. Although frogs and snails love my house, I have yet to see a cockroach or mouse.

People here, one rock-throwing incident aside, have been very friendly. Greetings are important. Some kids and women kiss my cheeks. Men sometimes shake my hand. People zip by on bikes, scooters, and donkeys. No marriage proposals or conversion attempts have been made, alhumdullah. The city is known for their delicate, handmade jellabas (more on that later) worn by the Moroccan king and other affluent people. There are potters and bakers, but no candlestick makers. Like most towns, there’s a hammam (public hot water baths); plenty of hanuts (little convenience stores); cafés where men drink tea and PSTs play cards; and merchants selling fresh meat, dried foods, spices, and produce. Amenity-wise, there’s wifi, cold yogurt drinks, plastic Christmas trees, and varieties of La Vache Qui Rit cheese. Trash and animal poop exist but are by no means overwhelming (compared to RIM). Kids playing in the streets can be overwhelming, but at least they are having fun.

There are five other PSTs in Aminaville with me, and I think we are a pretty awesome group. I learn a lot, laugh a lot, and eat a lot. There’s also another CBT group in the boonies of our town. Both of our groups are learning Darija, the Moroccan Arabic dialect. Three other SBD groups are learning two dialects of Berber, Tashelhet and Tamazight. YD PCTs are in a completely different region, learning Darija and apparently, playing baseball. It will be really interesting when we come together again at the end of stage, and with the time flying by, it will be very soon.

Weekend Trip to the Waterfall

One weekend, my sitemates and I took a day trip to the Ouzoud Waterfalls, aka Cascades (en francais) or Shllalat (f darija). A nationally known tourist destination/scenic spot, I saw heaps of backpackers, an Italian cameraman, a French motorcycle gang, Moroccan women in heels walking up/down the muddy steps, and some other CBT groups (Community-Based Training, us 25 PCTs have been separated into 5 different sites). *Correction, 23 PCTs now because 2 have ETed.

Usually, the water's clear, but a sudden rainstorm the day before muddied up the falls. It was refreshing to be outdoors and hang out at one of the many cafes serving tagines and tea. I ate two ice cream bars and "window-shopped" the local souvenir shops' offerings of woven fabric, beads, metal work, and tagine vessels. Six of us piled back into a compact Mercedes to drive past almond, olive, and pomegranate trees back to Aminaville, my new name for our training site. I feel really fortunate to be in such a warm, interesting, developed town, with a great Language/Culture Facilitator (named Amina), site mates, and host family. More to come in the next post.

Regional Capital

Since photos are worth a thousand words and I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog...

These pictures are of my hub site, where we Small Business Development (SBD) PCTs store most of our belongings in a hotel and taxi back to every couple of weeks for group SBD meetings. My (amazing) site is a two-hour taxi ride away, through hills, winding roads, and greenery.