Finally at my Site!

5/6/09

So I have sworn in and arrived at my final site where I’ll be for the next two years. We had a nice swearing in ceremony during which the Ambassador spoke and we took our oath of service. After that we had a reception and packed our bags to leave for our sites. It took a day to get to Agadir, which included a stop in Marrakesh for lunch and a taxi transfer, and then the following morning we went to Tiznit. I was soo nervous about meeting another host family but again they are so wonderful and welcoming. The town is beautiful and has pretty much all the amenities I need besides a cyber cafe and maybe a weekly soq market. I can’t complain though because some people have to travel hours for a cyber and I only have about a 20 minute taxi ride to my nearest town with everything I can’t find at my site. The people at my site are also really great. Everyone is friendly and wants to be helpful which is neat. Thanks to Jess, the volunteer I’m replacing everyone knows why I’m here and respects my mission. This is good since there’s a lot of work to be done here. This week I have been shadowing Jess and getting all the info I can before she leaves at the end of May…she’s been a wonderful resource and great about introducing me to everyone around town. So far what I have learned is that Trash, an ambulance for the nearest clinic, and training for the traditional birth attendants should be top priorities. Once things settle and I have integrated more I’ll start trying to tackle these things a long with other projects which I’m sure will pop up.

Alright that’s all for now but I’ll post soon! : )

5/10

I just came back from my first out of site project! Me and five other girls went and helped out at a SIDA (AIDS in French) day event at another PCV’s (Meredith’s) site that lives in the region. There were 100 kids and they only seven of us but it worked out. They made SIDA bracelets, learned a song bringing awareness to the topic, watched a video on it, and then we had a question and answer session which was interesting. It was a big success and then afterwards we had a girl’s night at Meredith’s complete with pudding cake and American Idol. Before, I went to Meredith’s though I also had a great experience with an English class nearby which helped prepare me for the kids at Meredith’s site. Me and the other Jess went to my soon to be tutor’s English class to do a Q&A session and then teach a health lesson. The kids are high school aged and amazing for only having a year of English. They asked some intense questions too like what do you think about Gaza, What do you think about terrorism, and how is America going to fix the world economy. Luckily their teacher stepped in and let the class know we are not politicians whenever we did get questions like that so that was helpful. Alright…These are the main updates but I’ll continue to keep you updated!

5/18

It’s been quite a week or so. To start I’ve been busy mostly with meeting with people in my community, brain storming project ideas, and getting my carte de sejour (which is basically a work visa). The peace corps thankfully gives a tutoring allowance so I also started tutoring in Tashlaheit this week also.

It’s also been a hard week because I found out Lucy, my dog back home, passed away at 17, and it’s also Jess’s last week here before she goes back. Our overlap is almost over so I’m trying to get all the information I can from her before I’m completely on my own. Luckily though she was here to be supportive when I found out Lucy was going to be put down. Also my family from CBT called and texted me when they found out through Marj so it was nice to have that support also. What made it even more difficult though was that most Moroccans don’t understand the concept of having pets. Because of this my host family could not understand why I was so upset. My host dad offered to go to Taradant though (the next Province over to the East) to find a puppy for me since there are a lot of strays there. A sweet offer and it made me feel a little better that he kind of understood but I said no.

So those are the biggest bits of news for now but I hope everyone is doing well back home and I’ll post again soon.

Jess

5/29

The other Jess left on Monday morning so I have officially almost finished my first week alone at my site. Before Jess left we had a going away lunch for her last Friday with other volunteers and then with my host family last Sunday. We also walked to her village earlier last week where she started out her service and met some really neat people she needed to say goodbye to. It took about a week but she finally said all her goodbyes and headed to 72 hour checkout in Rabat before heading to the States. Now that I’m on my own I have been trying to set a schedule for myself so I’m integrating and getting to know the community. After meeting with my counterpart this week at the clinic and with my tutor I think I have one. On Mondays and Tuesdays the Clinic is full since they’re vaccination days so I’ll try to spend part of both days each week in the waiting room meeting people and practicing language skills. I also am going to start taking daily walks hopefully more than once a day as another way to meet people and hopefully get invited to tea. I’m going to spend Wednesdays investigating new associations. Thursdays are dedicated to going to Tiznit for Tutoring, soq (farmers market that is usually only one day a week), and for time at the cyber cafe plus if I have any other errands. Fridays are going to be a day to brainstorm ideas, investigate more associations and to catch up on reading. Until I move into my apartment the weekends are going to be dedicated to getting appliances and furniture for my apartment, writing, and planning for the next week. Of course this is the ideal schedule but won’t always happen. This week is a good example of this. On Wednesday I had to go to Agadir since I found out around 9am we had an emergency consolidation exercise. So I dropped my plans for the day to get to and from Agadir for the drill. At least I got a good burger on the beach while I was there which is rare over here so I guess it was worth it! :)

I’ll end here for now but just a little side note because I’ve gotten some questions about how to comment on posts, if you want to comment click on the little pencil icon at the end of each post. It should prompt you and be pretty simple from there.

Thanks again everyone for following so far and I’ll post again soon!