Gestures

Since my Tashelhit (Berber) isn't perfect, I talk a lot with my hands. When I don't know how to say something, I try to express the idea with my hands. Its no surprise, then, that I've picked up some of the Moroccan/Berber gestures used in my community. They are now such an ingrained part of my way of speaking that I use them while speaking Tashelhit or English. Here are just a few of them....

1) To express something or someone is nice/beautiful/handsome/good, flick your fingers. If you are saying someone or their clothing is nice, you flick your fingers in their face. Think of how flick your pointer finger with your thumb...now do this with all your fingers. Its a little frightening the first time it is done in your face. I don't even notice it anymore and do it unconsciously anytime I am talking about something I like (like someone's dress) or someone who is good (like my student who is always on time for class.)

2) To express something is the same as something else, rub your two pointer fingers together with your hands horizontal to the floor. This can also mean someone is close to someone else (either by blood or by friendship.) This gesture is used A LOT in my village. Its very helpful, as I can use it to describe most anything - my sister is the same age as my cousin - rub my fingers together. Start using it! I want to see it catch on in the U.S.

3) To say you are going to get someone, flick your ear. This is mainly used in jest, but its pretty funny to see. We don't have a great gesture like this in the U.S....ours are much more extreme. You can express the same intent, although at a slightly more serious level, by hitting your closed fist with your hand (this one is a little more extreme.)

4) To express shame on you, pull down your lower eyelid with one finger. This one is pretty funny to use, especially with your friends. Moroccans use this one when we Americans use rubbing one pointer finger down the other. I don't use this one very often....its more used by mother's when telling a child to stop doing something bad (like picking on a sibling.)

5) To tell someone to come to you, put your hand facing down and pull your fingers towards you. This one took me awhile to get used to, since we sometimes use this gesture (or a version of it) in the U.S. to tell someone to go away. I have a hard time remembering to use this one instead of the American version (pulling your pointer finger towards you.)

6) After shaking hands, kiss your fingers or put your hand over your heart. I picked up this gesture the first week I was here. Now I do it unconsciously, whether meeting Americans or Moroccans. This will be a hard habit to break when I come back to the U.S. I do it probably 30 times a day....

7) To express something is full (like the market) or someone is wealthy, take your thumb and rub it upwards under your chin. This one still confuses me sometimes, as I am not totally sure of when to use it myself.

8) To express someone is worthless, make the A-OK sign and hold it downwards (with your fingers pointing towards the floor.) This one is slightly profane, but the previous volunteer said her host sister did it when boys were cat-calling towards her in our village.

Of course, I still use some American gestures that aren't understood here in Morocco. The most prevalent one is crossing my fingers. I didn't even realize I was doing it until one of my students asked me why I cross my fingers when I say "Inshallah." (Inshallah means "God willing" and is often used like we use "I hope" in English.) I'm trying to break myself of the habit now, but am not sure if I'll be successful. I've been crossing my fingers for too many years.

Pretty interesting, huh? I'm planning a lesson soon for my English class on American gestures and what they mean. Send me any ideas you have....

Spring Camp

The first week of April was Spring Camp. Youth Development Volunteers work with Moroccan government staff to coordinate week long English Immersion camps. I helped out at one in Khemisset, which is about an hour from Rabat. It was a lot of fun. The kids were great, although very different than the kids I work with in my village. Many of them came from affluent families. Most were very familiar with American pop culture and wore western style clothes. Most were very excited to study English and really enjoyed learning American songs, rhyming games, and anything else I could come up with.

Every morning, I taught an intermediate English class. I had about 14 students from the ages of 12 to 17. While they would sometimes get pretty rambunctious, they would quiet down when I told them to. They loved all the camp songs I taught them, including "Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie jar" and "I'm Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor." They also really enjoyed the games I came up with to reinforce my lessons. After they learned fruit, vegetables, and animals (including what they say in English), we played Pictionary. They REALLY got into it. Some even cheated so that they could win! Luckily, I had a very honest boy, Souleyman, in my class who would tell me if his team or the other team cheated. They were pretty funny kids and I'm glad I got to spend a week with them.

In the afternoon, I taught "Art Club." It was a pretty funny title, since we all know I'm not an artist. Luckily, my art club involved making friendship bracelets. All those years of making bracelets and anklets during Swim Meets really helped me out. I was able to teach all the kids how to make them and my club was very popular! Some of the girls even came up to me at 2:00 a.m. the last night to get extra string so they could make more at home!

After art club, the kids played sports and then had some sort of activity run by the Moroccan staff. We were very lucky - the staff from the Dar Chebab (youth center) was AMAZING! They took care of everything and were quick to solve any problems that came up. They were great at keeping the kids entertained and had some excellent activities planned for them each night. In addition to a talent show, they had a game night where the kids had fun games to play. I think the funniest was a game where a group of five boys pretended they were driving a bus. They had to stand up when they went up a hill, lean when going around a corner, etc. One by one, the staff put a wet rag on their chair while they were standing. Luckily, the boys all took it in good fun and the kids loved it. It was pretty funny, seeing their expressions as they sat down on the rag!

Here are some more pictures from camp.

Halloween night! Sarah really got into her costume. (Its a ninja, if you can't tell.) She was hoarse the next day from all her "battle" yells. The teenage boys didn't know how to react. I have to say, I laughed a lot.

Some of the kids waiting for their afternoon snack.

Me teaching the art club how to make friendship bracelets.

Me with Rachel and John, drawing out the schedule for the week. Luckily, one of the staff was able to add the arabic translation for us!

Todra Gorges

Morocco is a land of contrasting landscapes. It has the Sahara, a mediterranean climate up north, and several sets of mountain chains (one of which I live in.) It also has a beautiful gorge a few hours from Ouarzazate, called the Todra Gorges. It reminded me of a mini grand canyon and was very pretty. Here are a few pictures from our day trip there.

Annie, Linda, Donna, Peggy and me with our new masks that we bought in the gorges. They are from Mali and pretty cool looking.
Me in the gorge.
Me, Linda, Donna and Annie in the gorges.

Desert Oasis and Camel Trek

This weekend, I got to go on a camel trek into the Sahara and visit friends in their desert oasis home. Here are some of the pictures from my adventure.

These are our guides getting the camels ready to go on the hour and a half ride to the desert camp. It was my first time riding a camel, so I was a little nervous. Luckily, although my camel complained loudly when she was given a command to sit or stand, she didn't bite or spit. We nicknamed her "Princess Sara" because she seemed pretty high maintenance.

This is our caravan heading into the desert. I'm in the very back of the line.
This is us posing on top of our SUV. We stopped to get our first good look at the Sahara. You can see the dunes in the background.
This is our group taking a walk at Emily and Sean's site. They live in a beautiful town in the Errachidia province. Their town is an oasis in the middle of the desert. It has palm trees and amazingly clear streams and rivers running through it. It was truly a beautiful area.

Emily and Sean made their giant bed by lining up six foam ponjs. Its huge and comfortably fit five of us to sleep. They were wonderful hosts and I'm so glad I got to visit with them and see their site.

Fes

On the way to PPST, I stopped in Fes with a couple of my fellow PCVs. What a cool city! The architecture is amazing. I even enjoyed seeing the tannery, although it smelled horrendous. Thank goodness they gave us sprigs of mint to smell while we were looking...

This is me with Adriana and Peggy in front of the tannery. The vats below are filled with pigeon poop (because its high in ammonia) and lime to help treat the skins. The tannery treats cow, sheep, goat and camel skins. The building we climbed to get this view is filled to the rafters with all the products they make from the leather.

PPST

As most of you know, Peace Corps loves acronyms. These last two weeks I've been at PPST or Post-Pre-Service Training. Although I was worried about being away from my site for so long, I'm so glad I got to go. It was great! We got to spend two weeks in a very nice hotel. We had heat in our rooms and hot water (almost) every morning. The food was amazing and best of all, I didn't have to cook it. There was even a sandwich shop down the street that sold amazing chocolate, pistachio, and vanilla caramel mouse for about a dollar. Oh, and of course I learned a lot about working with a co-op and will hopefully be able to implement some of the ideas here at my site and with my weaving cooperative.

Training is a little different in every Peace Corps country. In Morocco, each stage, or training group, is brought together a few months after swearing-in so that we can discuss how things have gone our first few months at site. As I'm sure you can imagine, no two Peace Corps experiences are alike. In our group, we have some people in large cities (250K) and others in very tiny villages (250 people). Some people have a plethora of associations to choose from when deciding who to work with. Others have to work to find even one. I'm lucky in that my site is kind of in the middle of these extremes. While I don't have as many options as my big city PCV friends, I do have an association I can work with that makes some beautiful, high quality products. And, while I can't get some of the food products I want in my village, I can get them by traveling the hour to Ouarzazate.

It was great hearing about everyone's sites, their trials and their triumphs. Hearing how others have struggled adapting to the language, culture, etc. really helped me keep my worries in perspective. It made me proud that I've been able to accomplish some things and pushed me to try to accomplish even more. In one of our training sessions we got to hear from a woman who's co-op started working with a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2000. That PCV helped them establish officially establish the co-op. Today, that co-op is very successful and selling their products internationally. Although I know that may not be possible with my co-op, I'm hopeful I'll be able to at least help them get started on that path. At the end of the session, all of the PCVs were pumped about getting back to site and implementing some of the suggestions from the speaker.

Training also included tips for website development, photographing artisan's products, product quality control, and training artisans in business skills. I can't wait to meet with my co-op again to get their perspective on what's important and get their input on what they'd like help improving. I am going to start building a website for them and hopefully start training on how to develop more marketable products. While my co-op makes beautiful carpets and their embroidery is top-shelf, they don't have a wide product line. Some of my fellow PCVs gave me ideas on how we can adapt the products so that they are more marketable in the international and tourist markets. I'm so glad there are people with artistic talent in my stage! Business skills I've got but I can't draw at all!

It was wonderful spending time with my fellow PCVs. I forget sometimes that I'm not alone in what I'm going through. There are other people who are struggling with the language, and making cultural mistakes and struggling to force down that new drink they've never had before and hope to never have again (I hear the sour milk grows on you, but I'm not there yet.) It was good to hear other people's stories and how they coped with some of the more difficult parts of living in a new culture. All of us had difference coping mechanisms. Some of us had a lot more difficulty with the language, while others had more trouble with the culture.

Overall, PPST was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the sessions and the hot shower every day and heated room every night were a wonderful treat. Plus, I got to see a lot more of Morocco. Azrou is a beautiful city, Ifrane really is like a piece of Switzerland in the middle of Morocco, and Fes is too amazing for words to describe. I can't wait to travel more and see more of this amazing country.

The wolf and the hen

As most of you know, Tashelhit (Berber) is not a written language. For someone like me, who has only studied written languages like German and French, this makes learning the language much more difficult. I had no idea how much I relied on dictionaries and stories to learn a new language. Lucky for me, my tutor found a few websites with stories written in tashelhit. I’ve been working on translating them with my tutor. Its really helping my vocabulary and I enjoy learning the Berber folktales. One of my favorites is called “The Wolf and the Hen”

It goes as follows:

A hungry wolf went walking in the forest until he came up next to a small tree, in which a hen was sunning herself. He said to her, “ Peace to you” to which she replied “And peace to you.”

The wolf said, “Did you hear what the town crier announced? Its no longer allowed for the lion to eat the gazelle or the tiger to eat the mountain goat. Also, the eagle can no longer hunt the hare. To top it all off, democracy will spread in the forest! So come down from the tree!” The hen wanted to come down out of the tree but she was afraid. The wolf said, “ Come down! The era of dictatorship is over! Come down!”

Meanwhile, the hen saw two hungry hunting dogs coming towards where she and the wolf were standing. When the wolf saw the hunting dogs, he wanted to run away. The hen said, “Hey Wolf! You just said all that about what the town crier announced!”

He replied, “It seems these jokers didn’t hear the announcement!”

Pretty funny, huh? I love folktales. And translating this one meant I got to learn how to say “to top it all off” in tashelhit (Its “awal n ufella” for those of you who wanted to know.)

My language is progressing slowly but surely, but I wish it were faster. I’m very lucky in that I get tashelhit “lessons” when I tutor some local women in English. We speak in a mixture of Tashelhit and English, so its improving all of our language skills in both languages.