Monday, July 25, 2011

Smithsonian - More Photos

Khadija, Mom, Fatima, Sophie and Emily hanging out after lunch. 

The crowd watching the women weave. Normally, there were several rows of people watching and listening while I talked about the women, weaving in Morocco and my time in the PC

This is a group of us waiting for the bus after the fair one day. The woman in white started the world map project and designed manuals for PCVs to paint world maps on school walls around the world. The RPCV in blue, Laura, helped her local elementary school build two classrooms using recycled plastic bottles. Her host mom and aunt, who came to DC to help her demonstrate, were the principal and a teacher at the school

Khadija weaving early one morning, before all the visitors came. This is one of my favorite outfits she wore, with a traditional Berber headdress and sparkly white sheet held together with a large gold belt. 

Fatima working on her carpet. She wove a beautiful, all natural dye carpet with Berber symbols in lots of beautiful colors. 

The Festival

The festival itself was an exhausting but totally amazing experience. Most days, we had several rows of people (up to four deep) surrounding the weavers and listening to me talk about carpets, weaving and Peace Corps Morocco. (On the second day, the Smithsonian staff started handing out throat lozenges to all the participants because we were talking so much.)

I can't say enough about how well Smithsonian took care of us during the festival. We had breakfast and dinner provided everyday at the hotel and food tickets to get lunch at the fair. They arranged transportation to and from the fair everyday and always had people walking around to make sure we didn't need anything at the fair itself. Best of all, they gave all the participants spending money so that we could sightsee and the women could buy souvenirs to take back to the families in Morocco.

For me, one of the best parts of the fair was that my family and friends came to visit! My mom, Emily and Sophie came up the first weekend of the fair with two of my cousins, Christina and Patty. They helped me explain about Peace Corps Morocco to visitors (which was great, since there were so many, I couldn't talk to everyone), they brought sandwiches for Fatima and Khadija when they found out neither particularly cared for the food at the fair and they took me out to dinner every night so that I got my 'fix' of Mexican and Italian food. My mom really wanted to take Khadija and Fatima out to a nice dinner, but they were always too tired after the fair ended. They just wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep.

After the fireworks on the fourth, Mom, Emily and Sophie drove the 16 hours back to St. Louis. The next weekend, my Dad and Katie (another sister) flew up for a night. It was great to see everyone and lots of fun for them to see the fair. Dad and Katie bought lunch for the ladies, which both really appreciated, and helped me at the cooking demonstration. (We had 6 cooking demos during the fair, where Fatima and Khadija prepared dishes from Morocco and I talked about food in Morocco and my PC experience as a whole.)

I think the crowd really enjoyed hearing my Dad talk about visiting Morocco and drinking tea with my host family. Often, we PCVs get so used to the culture we're living in that we forget to mention some pretty amazing things. For example, I'm so used to the amazing hospitatily in Morocco that I sometimes forget to mention it when I'm describing my time here. When my family came to visit last summer, the hospitality we received at my host family's house is one of the most special memories for them. His comments about Morocco really added something special to our demonstration.

I also got to spend time with my friends Greg and Lauren from undergrad. I hadn't seen either of them in several years and I really enjoyed catching up. It was wonderful hearing what they've been up to and about their lives in D.C.

The fair was closed on July 5th and 6th, so we got to go sight-seeing. Sarah, an RPCV from Morocco, and her husband Brahim, came down from NYC to visit. I think everyone had an amazing time and we had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to describe all of the sights in Tashelhit.

One of the souvenir shops we went to had an oval office we could take pictures in.  We got shots of Fatima and Khadija pretending to work at the desk and this great group shot. Lynn, in the hat, is an RPCV from Morocco who lived in Fatima's town. Fatima was beyond thrilled to see Lynn. Her smiles didn't stop the two days Lynn was in town.

This is a shot of most of the Peace Corps participants at the fair during the reception they held on the 6th. The reception was beautiful and it was great to hang out with such an amazing group of people

This is us at the cooking demonstration. Generally, there were about 40 or 50 people watching us make sffa (a delicious dish made with couscous, powdered sugar and cinnamon) and a chicken tajine. 

These were some of my favorite people at the fair. Samba (on the left), from Mali, read a beautiful poem about what Peace Corps means to him and his community during the reception. It had most of us near tears. 

Smithsonian Folklife Festival - Traveling

I just got back from an amazing two weeks at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. It was exhausting, but such a cool experience. Khadija and Fatima did great, despite often being overwhelmed by the strange food, strange clothes, strange sights, etc.

We left our villages on Monday, June 27th and traveled to Casablanca. Khadija and I traveled together from Marrakech to Casablanca, while Fatima met us at the hotel in Casablanca. It was Khadija's first time on a train! So many firsts on this trip, for both women. They did an amazing job 'going with the flow' and trying new things. After the first day of the fair, Khadija turned to me and said, "Now I know what its like for you volunteers when you first get to Morocco. EVERYTHING is strange!"

It was over 120 degrees when we were traveling through Marrakech and the train, unfortunately, had no air conditioning! Its amazing how much more exhausting traveling is when its super hot. We made it into Casablanca in the early evening and quickly turned on the air conditioning in our hotel rooms. Smithsonian really took care of us on the trip - they paid for our travel in Morocco and graciously offered to pay for a hotel room in Casablanca the night before our flight, so that we all had a good nights sleep before another long day of traveling.

We woke up on the 28th, ate breakfast, and headed out to the airport. We had A LOT of luggage, since I brought carpets and embroidery from my cooperative to sell at the festival and Khadija and Fatima brought all their weaving supplies. We looked a little silly each dragging two giant bags to the train station and then to the ticket counter.  After checking in at the airport and sending our bags off, we were a lot more comfortable. We went through security and relaxed for a few hours before our flight.

Both Khadija and Fatima did absolutely fine on the trip. It was Khadija's first time on a plane (Fatima had been on a short plane ride from Casablanca to Agadir) and both ladies first time out of Morocco. Luckily, the plane wasn't full so we could all stretch out and get some rest on the flight. After 8 hours, we arrived at JFK and went through customs. I was a little worried, because we had a huge amount of luggage, but we made it through without any problems. All of the customs agents really got a kick out of my speaking Tashelhit (you speak WHAT??) and wished the ladies good luck on the rest of their trip.

After grabbing a snack at Starbucks, we got on our plane to D.C. By this time, we were all exhausted. When our plane got stuck on the runway for two hours, both Fatima and Khadija fell asleep and slept until we landed in D.C. at 11 pm. We found the Smithsonian staff that came to pick us up at the airport and rested for a few minutes while waiting for some of the Columbian participants at the fair to arrive. They got in at 12:30 AM and we took the bus to the hotel.

Smithsonian put all of us up at the Marriott Hotel by Georgetown. The hotel was absolutely beautiful and I felt really lucky to be staying at such a nice place. After making sure that Fatima and Khadija could work the air conditioner, TV and the shower, I went to sleep. We were up again at 7:30 am for orientation and a trip to the mall to set up for the festival.

This is me with Fatima on the train to the airport. You can't tell so much from the photo, but it was HOT and we were carrying a lot of luggage. I was so happy when we finally got to the airport and could check-in and get rid of all those bags!

Zarnaz, an RPCV from Morocco, invited all of us to her home for a wonderful dinner. I can't thank all of the Moroccan RPCVs enough for their help during the fair. They went out of their way to make all of us feel at home, taking the women out for shopping, for lunch, and coming to help at the fair itself. They were all wonderful and made the experience even more special for all of us. 
Fatima, me and Khadija in front of the official 50th Anniversary sign for Peace Corps.

This is us at the 4th of July parade with our amazing neighbors at the Festival, Elena and Mele from Tonga. They demonstrated weaving palm like leaves into mats and decorative items, like the belts they're wearing

Amy, Khadija and Karen at the dinner party at Zarnaz's house. Karen was the PCV in Khadija's village a few years ago and Amy served in a village very close to mine. Both really went out of their way to make all of us feel at home in D.C. and came to the fair several times to hang out with us. Khadija's face would light up anytime she saw them :)