Rain

02-05-09

It is wet and cold and muddy and I miss that sun from last week! It has officially been rainy and cold for a week now. And now the water doesn’t just leak in a few places slowly, it leaks at a constant rate all over my house! Every morning I wake up and hope that today will be the day that the rain stops.

It all started this past weekend on my way to Taroudant, a region 4 hours north of me, where I went to attend a Superbowl party. I arrived a little wet, but it was a great time! We made buffalo chicken wings, homemade tortilla chips, and chili cheese dip. And even better, we actually got to watch the game. The commentary was in German, so there was a lot of ‘das linedrive Pittsburgh Steelers ein draie’ or whatever, but at least we got to see it! And because of loyalty to my dear Poppop, I was very excited in those last couple of minutes when the Steelers won!

Since getting back to my site, I have been very busy with work. This upcoming Sunday was supposed to be an AIDS Skit Competition, in Tiznit, that a Youth Development Volunteer and I were organizing. I met with the director of my middle school on Tuesday and Wednesday to finalize which students were attending and who would be chaperoning them. Everything seemed to be falling into place until this morning when I got word that the students coming from Tafraoute are flooded in and there is no clear road for them to take to Tiznit. Darn that rain! Soooo the other volunteer and I talked, and it looks like we will inshallah have the competition next Saturday. This means the kids will get taken out of school to participate, so I am pretty sure they are not too heartbroken about the delay. ☺

I also taught at the middle school this week, and it was business as usual. The second year students could almost be called angels, the third year students behaved with a couple of warnings, and DO NOT get me started on the first years students. Crazy I tell you. More and more teachers are telling me just to hit the kids, and I know, ‘when in Rome,’ but I just can’t! As I sat there hopelessly giving up on them, I thought, I work for free……I don’t have to teach these monsters if I don’t want to! And that helped me to get through.

And then there is the women’s center and I am about ready, hamdullah, to submit the grant proposal to Peace Corps. It is very exciting to be at this point, and the girls are thrilled! The local community partners are also looking forward to beginning the project.

And that is about it. Like I said, the rain and cold stinks, and my once black gym shoes are now completely coated with mud, since getting to town center includes about a mile of unpaved road. Its amazing how far your foot will sink into the mud when it rains this much. ☺

02-06-09

Now it is Friday morning, and I woke up nice and early (6:30am) to get a ride with my host dad to the town center. It turns out it started raining really hard at around 3am, and everything is flooded! I went to my host family’s for breakfast, and my host dad said that with this much rain, the roads to Tiznit will be completely flooded and impassable. I figured he was exaggerating, that is until our ride to souk. On the 3 mile trip, I saw that places which were completely dry a week ago have now turned into rushing rivers. Like wide, fast rivers. Fortunately, they’ve had winters like this before (not for the past 10 years), so people built bridges where the rain flooded years ago. I even remember thinking over the summer that it was so silly to have these bridges since it is always dry. Ha. Looks like the joke’s on me. So, now a couple of hours later, I really wonder why I even got out of bed this morning. I may try to get to Meredith’s site for some internet connection, but that’s a big inshallah.