Here’s another Peace Corps blog. The great thing about Peace Corps blogs is that you get to see what it is like for Americans to be totally immersed in Morocco.

Maroc, Je T’aime

Often the volunteers live in remote villages where there are no other foreigners. They interact with the people, they affect and are affected by the culture, and in general there is a genuine love and concern for the people they are working and living with.

Consider the bio of Nicole, the author of this blog:

I’m a 20-something who’s batting for Team I’m Spending My Golden Years in Africa. Seriously, though, I’m a Peace Corps volunteer in the beautiful country of Morocco. I grew up in southeastern Michigan,and graduated in the spring of 2008 from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) with a degree in linguistics, and Arabic and Islamic studies. After arriving here on 4 March 2009, I trained for two months in the province of Azilal. I now reside in the Tiznit province, which is part of the Souss region.

Official documentation regards me as a cooperante de santé, though I’m serving currently as a waste management infrastructure consultant (which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds, trust me). My village is just shy of 2000 people and we speak Tasoussit, which is a dialect of Tashlheit, which is a dialect that falls under the umbrella of “Berber.”

No, not Arabic — I said Berber. This distinction is very important.

On a personal note, I favor tea to coffee and hand-written letters to emails. I have a borderline-obsession with scarves and I make it a habit to trash talk on a daily basis. Should you want to talk to trash, scarves or hot beverages with me, or if you’re looking for an in-depth analysis of the international postal system

Now consider this recent post in which Nicole admits that she has stolen something from her host family….now this is good blogging!

That’s right, I did it. I slipped something that used to belong to my host family into my pocket and took it home with me. What I did is un-Islamic, unethical, and really, just blatantly wrong. But like I said, it was for the sake of entertainment… so, blame away.

Know that if you laugh, however, the universe will likely consider you an accomplice.

My weekly visit to Host Family was rough today. After nearly breaking a toe whilst wading through the river to get to their house, I found out that Host Mom is ill once again; in fact, she collapsed yesterday evening. Host Mom and Host Dad have hit a rough-patch in their relationship, and the kids were home from school because of last night’s outrageous (and I don’t use that word lightly) thunderstorm.

I thought that I was going to lose my nerve and walk out of the house before lunch was ready until Host Brother – remember him? He’s the cute one that, as of today, still thinks he’s coming back to America with me – presented me with a small instruction manual. Hoping that they were instructions on how to get through lunch with my sanity intact, I opened up the book and took a look.

The booklet was in fact a set of English-language instructions for a recently-purchased washing machine. As I read through the instructions, I couldn’t help but laugh.

…out loud.

…for an extended period of time.

…and at a rather loud volume.

The combination non-native English (remember, folks, that “in order to prevent the clothing the button makes the sound, it’s better to put the clothes with button inside other clothes”) and helpful illustrations (I found the sweating washing machine holding an umbrella and standing under a grimacing sun to be particularly informative) were enough to lift me from my bad mood, put the top-of-the-lungs argument I had just witnessed out of my mind and to even help me enjoy the undercooked, undersalted lentils that we had for lunch.

I got such a laugh out of the booklet that, after confirming that the whole thing was in English and that I wasn’t going to be removing any information crucial for the operation of said washing machine… that I ripped out my favorite page and stuck it in my pocket for a rainy day.

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Casbah Life, Moroccan Wife, Swiss Army Knife

Of course, we like this blog. It has great pictures, interesting thoughts of a n expat living in Morocco, and well, let’s just say, that we have an intimate connection with it. We think you’ll like it too. Not to mention you can download what we think is a pretty great book for free: Liminal Travel by Vago Damitio.

Vagobond.com

I woke up on al-Eid and the Oued Aggai was running red with the blood of all the sheep that had already been killed upstream and we had to get ready to go to Hanane’s parents place where I met her two older brothers for the first time. To my surprise, I liked them both. Driss and Isau are nice guys and it’s hard to mesh that with the stories of Hanane’s youth where they stole her money, stole her phone, and beat her.

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Bisahha is something completely different than any of the blogs we’ve seen in Morocco so far. It is ethno-psychology-anthropology or something like that. While you might think that is too complex for the average person, youmay be right, but this is fascinating reading.

Bisahha’ (bih-saHA) means ‘to your health’ in Moroccan Arabic. It’s a wish Moroccans often extend to one another in daily conversation. My research examines how Moroccans pursue their own health – mental health, that is – and what it really means to be mentally ‘sahih’ (saHEEH).

In the name of that research I recently moved to North Africa for a two-year period of fieldwork. On this page I share some of my experiences as I try to integrate my blonde female self into this new cultural environment and get my research under way.

http://bisahha.blogspot.com/

Mr. Abbas is a thin, clean-shaven man in his fifties. He is well-spoken, but restless as he meets with his treating physician, a young petite woman in her second year of psychiatric residency. Sitting on the edge of his seat, he keeps getting up and walks around the room, as though he is acting out the story he is telling. He is beating around the bush, and the resident repeatedly calls him on it: you’re not answering my question, she tells him.

He isn’t providing the resident with the information she is looking for. Neither is he speaking her language: while she poses her questions in Moroccan Arabic, he insists on answering in French, and utters not a word in dialect throughout the meeting. At first I think he may be doing this for the benefit of the observers in the room: two master’s students in clinical psychology, a psychiatrist from France, and myself. Our presence probably did have something to do with his conduct. But there was more to Mr. Abbas’ very performative behavior.

Mr. Abbas is an alcoholic, and he has checked himself into the Clinic in order to conquer his addiction. When his doctor introduces us, the observers, during this particular consultation, Mr. Abbas responds with a polite and pleasant enchanté, and proceeds to introduce himself with a quite elaborate story. He is a successful lawyer, he tells us, well-educated and fluent in French. Over the course of the consultation he talks about his practice, his nice car, his wife – none of which the resident asked about. After he leaves, his doctor tells us that Mr. Abbas hasn’t worked in three years. His wife has left; in fact, the life he just described to us has been destroyed by his addiction. What emerges at that point is the sad picture of a man dethroned; a man who has lost everything he thought to validate his existence; a man who desperately tries to maintain an image he knows he has already lost.

And it made me wonder. What does alcoholism mean for a Moroccan man? Alcoholism is destructive to anyone, but in this country, where alcohol is forbidden by religious decree, what does it mean to be an alcoholic? What does it do to Mr. Abbas’ sense of who he is? To his identity as a man, as a Moroccan, as a Muslim?

Mr. Abbas is but one of the patients I met during my week of observation on the service de toxicomanie, the Clinic’s addiction ward. It was the inaugural week of my research project; though I will not actually be able to do anything I mention in my research proposal until I obtain authorization from a local ethics board, the Clinic’s director has given me permission to kick-start my research with a period of general observation. Dr. Rachidi and I designed a schedule that would put me on a different ward each week, and as of last Monday, I spend every weekday morning looking around, shadowing doctors and nurses, and sitting in on meetings and rounds.

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