Back in Site

Back in site, I have directed my attention toward the women’s center once again.  When I arrived back from Egypt, the total collections had reach about $3,000 (so exciting!  It takes some volunteers months to raise that much).  The girls in my site were happy to hear how much had been collected, but understood that $3,000 is a far cry from almost $17,000. 

Last weekend, my parents and sister over doubled the donations to the women’s center by devoting their weekend to speaking about it a church.  At 4 different masses, Steph and my mom (how did Dad get out of it?) spoke to the congregation about this project and its merits for the women of my community.  Stephanie had the added bonus of being able to talk about the community and the girls involved from first-hand experience.  The night before they spoke, I had a horrible dream that not a single person at mass wanted to donate, so I wasn’t expecting much.  But, as you will soon be able to see on the Peace Corps donation website, they raised over $4,000!  In 1 weekend!  So ALF SHUKRA (1,000 thank yous) to my wonderful family and the people of Church of the Holy Spirit, who saw the value of this project to the women of Morocco.  You check out details and pictures of the weekend at church on Stephanie’s blog, callitaclan.blogspot.com

 

That means under $10,000 to go, to make this women’s center a reality, so PLEASE keep spreading the word to friends and co-workers.  If everyone donates a few dollars, this can totally happen soon!

 

While we are waiting for the construction of the women’s center, the girls of my community and I have decided to keep meeting weekly for women’s center related activities.  The girls are still so motivated, they don’t want to sit around and wait for the center to be built.  Each week of the month will be centered around a different activity.  The first week of the month the local midwife comes to talk to the girls about women’s health issues.  The second week, I give the girls French lessons.  The third week, the girl who will eventually be the handicraft teacher at the women’s center gives basic sewing and embroidery lessons in her house, and the fourth week, we do a women’s leadership activity.  So far our meetings have been sporadic (the girls had to work the wheat harvest, and I was in Egypt), but we are looking forward to starting the activities on a regular basis. 

 

In other news, last Friday was the commune elections for local government.  Interestingly, these elections receive a lot more attention from the community than do the national parliamentary elections.  After living in Morocco for a year, I often feel like there is very little that surprises me or makes me stop and think.  These elections did just that.  The entire week before Election Day, people throughout the community were talking about the election and the election only.  Women included!  The night before,  the men hosted an event for the women, explaining to them how to vote (you place an “x” over the picture of the party you want…..the “Wheat Party,” the “Tractor Party,” or the “Berber Dagger Party” in my site’s case), and telling them who the candidates were for each party.  Out of 200 potential voters in my douar, 130 of them came to vote, including a high percentage of women.  Very exciting!!

 

Oh, and as a side note, Happy 29^th Wedding Anniversary Mom and Dad!!!   

Back in Morocco

My return to Morocco on May 28 coincided with the beginning of our week-long “Mid-service Medical Exams.”  After some relatively invasive exams, I came out with a clean bill of health.  No parasites, no cavities.  Hamdullilah!  In fact, the dentist complimented me on my dental hygiene.  Yay!  J  Mid-service meds also gave my stage of volunteers a chance to meet up and hang out, for the first time since November.  We had a lot of fun spending time together, including going bowling at the Rabat Mega Mall, having dinner at the American Club (the only place in Morocco to find Root Beer, Dr Pepper and Guinness), and dancing in a Western African dance club. 

 

While I was off gallivanting throughout Egypt and Morocco, the people of my community were dedicated to the wheat harvest.  The harvest happens once a year and lasts about 2 weeks.  Last year, I was able to help out, and let me tell you, it was the hardest work I’ve ever done.  This year, I was in Egypt for the entirety of the harvest (I swear I didn’t plan it that way!), so I just heard stories when I returned.  Everyone I talked to had the same answer when I asked about the harvest.  “Ishqa bzzaf assugassad” (which means very difficult this year).  Apparently the amount of rain we received throughout winter made for some very hard harvesting conditions.  The condition that concerns me the most is the amount of dangerous bugs and reptiles (are snakes a reptile?) present.  Everyone I talked to saw at least a handful of camel spiders and countless scorpions.  My closest friend in site, Najma, was bit TWICE by camel spiders while I was gone.  Her leg went numb for a while and she could no longer work the harvest (losing her family a lot of money), but she has thankfully fully recovered.  Another girl in souk (who I didn’t know) did not meet the same fate.  Her family had so much to harvest, they were working into the night one day when she was bit by a snake.  Unfortunately it was a weekend, so there was no one at the health clinic.  The family tried to drive her to Tiznit for treatment, but she died before reaching the hospital.  Although my site is relatively advanced in terms of health care compared to other places in Morocco and the world, this incident just renewed my frustration with the lack of accessible emergency care. 

 

Amanda in Morocco and Erin in Egypt

On May 4 I received another visitor from America!  My high school friend Amanda and I hadn’t seen each other since high school (she went to college in Pennsylvania), but facebook brought us together once again.  J  A few months back, she expressed an interest in stopping by Morocco on her way to Egypt (she is Egyptian-American) for the summer, and I expressed an interest in accompanying her to Egypt after Morocco.  So we spent a week together in Morocco, seeing some of the typical sites in my area (Marrakech, Agadir, Tiznit), and also making a trip to Tafroaute, where Brooke (a Youth Development Volunteer) escorted us to the painted rocks of Tafraoute.  

My host family LOVED Amanda, especially since she knows Arabic and is Muslim.  Having her visit just renewed their thought that I too should be Muslim.  I think they’ve given up again….for now at least. 

On May 12, Amanda and I made the trek from Agadir to Casablanca in order to catch our flight to Cairo.  Here is a bit of a picture story of my trip to Egypt.

Old Cairo, where we visited my first night in Egypt.  There are some pretty cool mosques.

Starbucks in Egypt.  I went 6 times!!!

The gardens in our hotel compound.

Our hotel-usually reserved for military families.  We had connections. 

 Delicious Turkish coffee.

Another trip to Starbucks  :)

On our private boat trip on the Nile.

Us with our wonderful hosts.

The boat!

The next day, at a desert resort near Cairo

We got to ride dune buggies!

The Nile

Hanging out at a cafe on the Nile.

The Citadel

Inside the Mohammed Ali mosque in The Citadel

Amanda and her lovely mother at The Citadel

Al Aharamat! (The pyramids)

They were way cool.  And way old.

After trying to figure out how to do this on our own, we had a vendor take the pictures for us.

The Sphynx!

At the Egyptian Museum.  Because we were with military officers, we were escorted to a room not open to the public that has Hatchepsut's mummy.  How cool is that?
Cairo Tower

View of Cairo from the Cairo Tower

And I got to drive!  Some people in Egypt actually have automatic cars.  It had been so long, driving made me SO happy.
We got to have an amazing seafood dinner with some of Amanda's family

Some of Amanda's wonderful family

Amanda and I got all dressed up to see a belly-dancer..I haven't been this dressed up in a LONG time.  Guess there's not too much of an opportunity in Peace Corps!

Dinner at the Belly-dancer show

Bdour, the Raqasa (belly-dancer)

Bdour!

A big market in Cairo, Khan al Khalili, with some friends of Amanda's family

We went to the Red Sea (the town is Ain alSoukhna) and stayed at a beachside resort.

My feet in the Red Sea.  

The next day we went to Alexandria, on the Mediterranean.  Way cool.

At our delicious seafood dinner in Alexandria

MMMMMM crabs.  I impressed everyone with my crab-eating skills.  Thanks to Maryland!

Another trip to Starbucks.  :)

While we were in Alex, we watched the European Soccer Championship.  People got WAY into it.

At the beach in Alex

Amanda eating some delicious Egyptian food

Half-way through my time in Cairo, I received word from my family in America that my sister is engaged!!!!  It was so exciting to talk to Steph and Adam about the engagement, and start talking about the wedding right away.  And can I just say I did a darn good job of keeping the secret since March!  Yes, when Steph and Adam visited, Adam told me the approximate date of his proposal.  And I didn’t even tell anyone!  Whew, that was a hard secret to keep!  So July 10, 2010 look out, Erin is getting a brother-in-law!  

End of the School Year

Well apparently it has been a while since I updated this blog of mine.  It amazes me how time flies here in Morocco.  I have been in country now for over 15 ½ months, with only 11 ½ months until I finish my service.  Yikes!

After the taxi strike in April I returned to my site to finish up the semester at the middle school.  Thanks to a generous donation from the Church of the Holy Spirit Vacation Bible School program, I supplied the physical education department (and by physical education department, I mean the one part-time PE teacher) of the middle school with a dozen new soccer balls.  For kids who don’t often see new supplies and equipment come their way, it was a very exciting event.  Here are pictures of the kids playing with the balls.

My last lessons of the year revolved around trash education.  Although my community is very lucky to have a trash collection system in souk (a man in an open back pick-up comes around every Friday to collect trash from the old oil barrels placed throughout the community), trash awareness leaves much to be desired.  Before I decided to dedicate my last two weeks at the schools to trash, I consulted the commune, who is in charge of trash collection.  In doing so, I met a member of the commune who, 3 years ago, arranged a community-wide trash collection day to inaugurate the trash collection system.  He provided me with large trash bags and a place for the students to dispose of trash collected during my lessons.  The students were slightly horrified that I made them walk around town collecting trash, but had an overall good time, especially while learning how long it takes for different types of trash to decompose (or as I like to explain in tashelhit, how long it takes for the earth to eat the trash). 

 

The end of the school year coincided with the arrival of a new group of health volunteers to Peace Corps Morocco.  My region, Tiznit, is blessed with 3 new health volunteers, and 1 new environment volunteer.  Although it was very sad to say good-bye to some of my close friends who have now completed their service, meeting the new volunteers is so exciting!!  This weekend we are taking them to the beach at Sidi Ifni to enjoy a relaxing break away from their host families. 

 

The 1^st of May and 2^nd of May became two very important days for us girls down in Tiznit, Primero de Mayo, and Kentucky Derby!  I hosted a weekend at my house filled with margaritas, Mexican food, mint juleps and Derby Pie.  We sure know how to have fun out here in the country!  

Women's Center Donations

The location where the Women's Center will be built.

The 14 girls who have worked extremely hard to plan the Women's Center

Last June, when I first arrived to my site as a Health Peace Corps Volunteer, I did a "needs assessment" with the women of my community, Talbrjte, to see where I could fit in as a new volunteer.

The 30 women I interviewed overwhelmingly expressed a desire to have a women's community center. After six months of discussing the idea with various community members, I came to the conclusion that building a women's center is a worthwhile, sustainable project. Since then, I have met weekly with 14 girls from the community who are assisting in the design and implementation of this project.

Fortunately, the women immediately received support from local associations and the local government. After much discussion as to how to best meet the community's needs, the objectives of the women's center were identified.

None of the women, and few of the girls in this community were allowed to attend school. Consequently, the Talbrjte Women's Center will include a literacy classroom, staffed by the local schoolteacher, where the women can learn to read and write in a safe environment.

In addition, the women expressed a strong desire to learn a handicraft that will one day enable them to bring in an income. The local government is donating the necessary materials and expertise to teach these women skills such as embroidery and weaving.

As a health volunteer, I am acutely aware of the health situation in the community. Because there is no transportation available to the local health clinic, many women in the community are unable to take their children to the doctor for vaccinations and illnesses. The same applies for the women themselves. For this reason, the Ministry of Health has agreed to donate the time and equipment necessary to have a functioning health room in the Talbrjte Women's Center.

Finally, this women's center will go beyond helping these women to read, write, and be more healthy. The women's center will empower them to take control of their lives and their socioeconomic situations.

The local association and local government are contributing both financially and in-kind. Their contributions make up 43% of the total project cost. However, this project still needs $16,902.06 in order to be built.

I hope you will consider making a contribution; even the smallest contribution will help make the Talbrjte Women's Center a reality.

In order to donate you can click on this link:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=378-110

Or go to:

www.peacecorps.gov -> Donate Now -> Donate to a Volunteer Project -> search by my last name, Atwell, or by country, Morocco.

On the project page, you will be able to see how much has been donated and how much is still necessary to fully fund this project.

If you know any individuals or group who may be interested in seeing this project completed, please forward him/her the link.

I cannot express into words the impact the successful completion of this project will have on the lives of the women in my community.

Thank you, in advance, for your generosity.

Video of My House

from Stephanie & Adam's Visit

The last night of Spring Camp. We tried to take a picture of just the American and Moroccan counselors, but the kids loved being photgraphed


On our field trip to the Valley of the Birds in Agadir



On our last night we had a dance party during the variety show. It was great!