So, on my way to Rabat for a yearly medical exam, I have stopped at my friend Liz's site near Casablanca to help her with a project. We have also had some time to make some freakishly delicious food. I know I talk a lot about food but I think it's because it's something I really miss a lot since I'm not at home for the holidays. Needless to say we've been making orange chicken, teriyaki beef, and most importantly today apple turnovers. Not only did we make applesauce to go into the turnovers but we were listening to Christmas music while making them. 

Liz enjoying orange chicken (which we called for sake of the dish, but it's actually orange turkey)

Watching Liz cook the turnovers on the stove. You never know what cool things you can do with a stove until you don't have an oven. 

Liz wanted to give a box of applesauce and turnovers to her shop keeper who lives nearby.

Well now that we gave the turnovers to the nice hanut lady, she invited Liz and I to her house. Hooray! She happened to have a bunch of family who lived upstairs and they had a baby. They let me hold the baby and I got to coo at it! I was stoked, haha. And then of course we watched the baby naming ceremony they had on dvd. Basically an Usbu3 (baby naming ceremony) is a party where everyone comes to the house and greets the newly-named baby. So, why are we watching a baby-naming party? Generally at parties or weddings there will be someone taping everyone and the bride and groom or baby and mother. Therefore, you can show every friend and relative who wasn't at the party what they missed! 

And thus ends another good day here in Morocco. :D

Girls Empowerment Camp

Since September, I've been working with my counterpart, El Jallali Abdelaaziz on designing and funding a Girls Empowerment Camp. I walked into the Dar Chebab (Youth Center) one day in September and we sat down and I asked him if he thought it was a good idea to make a camp whose goals were to encourage education, employment, and self-reliance among Moroccan teenage girls. The camp will be held at the end of January during the winter break holiday at the local girls' boarding school. The 50 attending girls are from my town and the surrounding rural villages, ages 15-17. Jallali and I have asked a female doctor, lawyer, and  leader of a carpet cooperative, all from my area, to speak to the girls. I have also asked 10 other Peace Corps Volunteers to come to the camp to help implement activities such as discussions on women's right's career development, women's health, and of course, dancing. The camp is also designed to empower more adult women in my community. I have asked for 10 women from the community to pair with a volunteer so that they may better instruct the girls through each activity.

Honestly, Jallali has been meeting me almost every day to help plan this camp and I'm pretty sure it could not have happened without him. He's helped me get this camp off the ground by turning in paperwork to the president of the community, arranging the camp space in the girls' boarding school, and talking to the ministry  of youth and sports about the camp. He's also been curious about writing his own grants, which in my opinion is fantastic. I am really looking forward to helping him make connections with various international and Moroccan organizations that will help him continue to do development projects. In my opinion, this is Peace Corps' goal number 1 in action (goal number 1 being: volunteers bringing technical assistance to interested countries).  

However, El Jallali and I are now looking for grantors, which happily, can be you dear reader! Feeling the Christmas spirit? Interested in International Women's rights? Why not donate to this camp and see the direct benefit to a camper's life? I invite you to donate to this project by clicking here: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=378-175

And of course, picture time: 

Here are the wall paintings that Rachel and I did during 3id K'bir (and talked about in a previous post). 'Bismillah' means, 'In the name of God.' You also say it when you eat and this is why we painted it in the kitchen. 

Here's the hand of Fatima we painted in Rachel's salon!

And here's me being ridiculous with Rachel's monster refrigerator. It's literally a monster. 

Do you see how ridiculously good our Thanksgiving was? It was SO good. Myself and a bunch of other volunteers celebrated Thanksgiving at Rachel's (another volunteer who lives close to me). We even had bacon-wrapped turkey! Egads!

And, of course, during 3id k'bir (the big holiday) I got bored and made pickles. :D They were delicious!!

So now you've seen some holiday fun with us. Please support our holiday fun by donating to my grant! You'll have my thanks forever, and if you tell me you donated, I can send you something neat in the mail! 

:D :D :D

The day the sheep came early.

Today I shall not post any pictures but I would like to forewarn you that this post will run a bit to the gross side. Prepare yourselves. Or don't read it because it's 3id Kbir-Al-Adha time in Morocco, which means, Moroccan Christmas time, a.k.a., 'let's kill the sheep!'

This holiday season I have decided to spend some quality time in my friend Rachel's town. She has dubbed her town 'Christmas Village,' in an order to provide a little anonymity. Anyways, Rachel asked me to accompany her during this 3id (Arabic for Holiday) because like me, she was a vegetarian in America. Neither she nor I relish the thought of seeing sheep being slaughtered ritually. But let's recap what this holiday is about. 

Recall the story of the prophet Abraham's attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac found in Genesis 22. I'll quickly paraphrase the story: God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son but at the last moment, He intervened and stopped Abraham's hand. Abraham then noticed a ram caught in the bushes nearby and slaughtered it in sacrifice to God.

 Muslim's commemorate this miracle in two ways. The holiday not only signifies the end of the Hajj (or the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca made by Muslims) but it also is celebrated by ritually sacrificing a sheep. If you'd like to know more, click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/religion/islam/eid_haj.shtml

So Aly, you might be thinking, 'I was reading your title of this post and it occurred to me that wouldn't it be odd that a sheep would come early since it's not the Holiday yet?" (The holiday is November 7th this year). Why yes, dear reader! You are correct! I was not expecting to see a dead sheep yesterday, but see it I did. Here's the story: Rachel and I wanted to get some neat looking Berber Henna (think interesting geometrical lines traced in dark brown color on the hands and feet). Rachel had previously arranged with a family to find a woman to give us henna. At noon yesterday we went to the house, expecting to find the henna artist waiting for us. Instead we found a sheep carcass freshly killed, waiting for us in the entryway of the house. Rachel and I were both a bit surprised because we thought the holiday wasn't until Monday. In any event, we entered the house and waited patiently for a few hours before it became apparent  that henna wasn't coming but lunch was. Rachel and I have both done 3id kbir before and have explained to both our communities our feelings about meat (i.e. we don't eat it). So the family, wanting to please us, gathered some eggs and boiled them and asked if they could give us chicken. We agreed (I mean...you have to eat some meat here....it would be too offensive not to). They then served us a plate, which they called 'chicken,' but in reality was actually goat meat with boiled eggs around it. 

Retelling this story just makes me want to put my face in my hands. Anyways, we left back to our house and spent the evening drawing a mural on Rachel's wall. I'll post pictures of it soon. 

Happy 3id everybody! 3id Mubarak!

Henna and applesauce

Yesterday, in attempt to do work, I ended up going to my friend's house. Turns out she wasn't there so I took a nap on her couch for an hour. Eventually she did come back and offered to do henna on me and paint my nails. Spa day? Yes, very. 

This is my friend posing in her beautiful jelaba.

 This is my friend's sister who now lives in a big city so I don't get to see her too often. But it was nice that she was there so I could hang out for a while.

Um, this is us pretending to feed each other cookies.....but everytime I go over to my friend's house, she always feeds me these elaborate cascrutes (snacks). Score.

Here's a picture of the henna the following day. 

Yay for getting henna'ed!

Also, today I made applesauce and put in cinnamon and nutmeg. It's making my kitchen smell like Christmas. Haha. Love it. 

Pictures from me to you

Hey,

I wanted to show some neat pictures I've had in my camera. This first one is a particularly great sunset from my roof. You can just see the mountain in the background. :)

 I was standing on my roof and was pleased that my camera took a photo how great the clouds looked over the moon.

 Here's an evening shot of my town from my rooftop.

 From my roof to inside. It's so cozy in my house!

 I bought vegetable crates and washed them for what seemed like hours o.0 Anyways, I finally put them in my room and they're really helping clear up space.

 As I said in my last post, this weekend I did some serious shopping. Africa key chains!

 I'm such a sucker for earrings.

 I don't think this ring is particularly Berber, I just think that the designs were cool. Apparently it's silver...but only my geologist buddies could tell me for sure.

And this has been picture time with Aly. 

1 airplane down, 2 to go.

Hey All!

As per usual I've been busy. Busy finishing up Ramadan insomnia (You get so used to being awake at night that being awake during the day is weird), finishing doing nothing (people are coming back to town?), and finishing meetings held in the big city. For the last week, I've attended a volunteer training session, did some serious shopping, then went to another meeting for all the volunteers in the region. It's been busy and I think it will continue to be busy because so many people have returned, school has started, and the feeling of efficacy is in the air. 

First of all, I'd like everyone to rejoice in my purchase of a drip coffee maker. Many of you know that I have a serious coffee drinking problem, but am unwilling to change it. Therefore, in order to celebrate being in Morocco for ONE ENTIRE YEAR, (minus the two weeks I went home) I enabled my favorite vice. Point for me. 

Other cool things to update about: I'm really getting back on the saddle fast; I'm in the works of setting up a girl empowerment camp to take place in January. Inchallah, it'll be fantastic! I'm sincerely blessed by amazing  counterparts who want to work with me. 

Second, I may be doing an trash education project (or as I like to say, 'trashcation'), but more to come on that next month. 

For now, I'll leave you with a post I wrote in the Rome airport while freaking out about how to get to my next terminal and get a boarding pass. Proceed with caution as it was 7am and I still had two more planes to go before reaching home.  

August 2^nd, Rome Airport-on my way home to see the ‘rents.

Here are some important lessons from today’s not-yet-finished adventures.

First lesson: The ONCF train is so awesome for going straight to the airport and not giving me extra hassle when I’m already stressed out.

Second lesson: I found out through empirical means that the Casablanca airport is open and quite busy during the night.

Read: I arrived there at 9:30ish and left at 2:25 in the a.m.

Third lesson: try and get all yo boarding passes.

I think I’m going to give the Casablanca airport one thumb down for not giving me boarding passes all the way through. I mean, I’m only giving them one thumb down because they tried but were unsuccessful for some reason for not getting me my passes. However, half a thumb up for sending my luggage directly to Seattle. Good move there Casablanca.

Fourth lesson: Drink wine when it’s free.

The airline Alitalia is probably the coolest airline I’ve ever been on. Ten thumbs up for giving me free white wine.

Fifth lesson: Don’t panic and bring a towel.

Due to lesson three's occurrence, me getting off a plane to be ferried around by random buses going random places did not make me feel secure. Also, the fact that I knew I had to go talk to some desk at some terminal in which I did not have that information in order to get a boarding pass, did not make me feel good. In fact, it made my heart race. And then I tried speaking Arabic to everyone because doesn’t everyone in Rome speak Arabic? Needless to say, I’m having a really hard time not speaking in other languages while I’m in this airport. I definitely had a moment where I had to go, “Pull it together, Williams!”

Also, washing your face without a towel is uncomfortable.

Sixth Lesson: Cappucinos in the Rome Airport are delicious.

I’m pretty sure that doesn’t require explanation.

So, in conclusion, I think the best way to make me have an anxiety attack is to put me alone in the airport in Rome, when I know that I have to somehow check in and don’t have flight numbers or airline carriers etc. Check.

However! Rome isn’t as bad as I’m making it seem! I mean, if you’ve got the logic powers of a 10 year old, you too can triangulate destinations plus times in order to arrive at the correct gate, sans panic attack. C’est bon, no?

Hope you enjoyed that.
I wanted to put a picture of the Charles de Gaul airport in here....but I realized I already posted that...haha new picture? Ok! Here's a picture of me and my buddy Simo at a birthday party. Yay!

The rough life.

I finally got to experience a really big holiday here in T-town. I passed the end of Ramadan here, called Eid al-Fatir. Finally, on August 30th, everybody got to eat during the day! Hamdullilah! Interestingly enough, my good friend Rachel wanted to visit me for a while and came two days before Eid. Unfortunately for poor Rachel, due to the holiday, transportation shut down and she couldn't get out of town. However, she did get to Eid with me and made the holiday extra special.

During a big holiday like Eid, it's important to go out in the morning and visit all your family and friends and eat tea and cookies at everybody's house. Rachel and I ate at so many peoples' houses that we had to come back to my house and nap through the major sugar crash we had earned through our cookies. 

Here's a picture of Rachel enjoying the company of my baby host sister. 

During the Eid, Rachel and I got snagged into eating couscous at a friend's house. 

I am trying to intimate by my face how ridiculously huge this plate of couscous is. 

What a glorious day it has been! I've been gradually recuperating from traveling and being gone from T-town for two months and I'm really starting to feel myself again.  

Today began productive. I washed my clothes in the bathtub, dumped about 5 buckets of water down my three flights of stairs to clean them, and then squeegeed after. But then, I took a turn and watched about 2 hours of tv. Hah, summer and free time makes me lazy. I'm sort of just kicking around until work starts back up! Lo and behold, I think a little bit of work came my way this next week with people realizing I'm back in town and I'd love to teach English. 

However, I can only do so much alone and so I eventually came out of my house to go visit some friends. When I knocked at her door, my friend wasn't there but I did see that her neighbor's door was open. I walked over to their house and knocked on their door to find out if they knew if my friend was home. They said that they didn't know but then they invited me to come inside, which eventually turned into, "Come see the fields!" How could I not love seeing the fields in the late summer afternoon? Everything smelled rich and earthy and the fields were green. My hosts were kind enough to gather up figs, grapes, and mint to give to me. You should smell the mint! It smells like sweet candy you could just eat then and there. 

We came back to the house after we had wandered around the fields for a while. There my new friends made me mint tea and cookies. After a bit, the girl I had been looking for came into the house  and found me happily nestled in pillows, drinking tea. So everybody chattered for a while until my friend took me to her house for more tea and cookies. 

It's a rough life.