Lazy Sunday

I had a great day yesterday. I started teaching an English class to teachers from the area. I wasn’t looking forward to it because my first session with them did not go smoothly. I expected them to have a higher English level than they did and we clumsily stumbled through the hour and a half in frustration.

This time I went about teaching in a different way. I had originally tried bringing in an article to read and discuss. This time I brought in a list of vocabulary. I chose the topic, primary education, because they are all primary school teachers. I figured that way, while in their own classrooms; they could glance around the room and remind themselves of the different words we went over.

After class I went to my Moudir’s house for lunch. He wasn’t there but I sat for hours with his wife and daughters, dozing in and out, while watching the Moroccan equivalent of American Idol. When I felt rested I ventured into town and stumbled across a couple of trainees. I sat with them for a little while, doing my best not to corrupt, scare, or mislead them in anyway. They were good company and I appreciated sitting with them for a little while.

On my way home I started to feel kind of weary. I think it stemmed from the fact that I had been around PCVs for the last few weeks straight and in good PCV company at that. As much as I love my own little, sacred, apartment I wasn’t too sure I wanted to go sit by myself there contemplating what to do with myself.

When I walked up to my door, my Moudir was sitting out front. He was polishing a pair of shiny, silver, suede (?) shoes. I sat down next to him and he started telling me about this pair of shoes. They were a pricy pair of shoes ($32), from Ouarzazate. They were a worthy investment however, because he has had them for three years and has taken good care of them.

That same morning he took the back pockets off of a pair of his daughter’s pants. He sewed them back on to the side of the pants. I squirmed as I watched, thinking…if you do it that way you are going to sew up the whole pant leg and she wont be to put them on. Silly me. This guy knows how to do absolutely everything. He sewed those pants right up, good as new.

After he finished polishing his shoes he brought out some grapefruit syrup he had made. You mix it with water…a nice touch of flavor. He explained how I could do it with lemon as well.

Next he got his guitar and started playing. Some days he takes apart computers and puts them back together. When my power goes out he shows me how to fix it. When the kids get rambunctious he whips them into shape. He went to school to be the director of a youth center with an emphasis on sports. So, I asked him, “Where on earth did you learn how to do Everything?” He explained that after he finished his studies, he was unemployed for two years. He likes learning and he held many different jobs during that time. A friend invited him to work for his company in France as a Mr. Fix It but he said he had everything he needed right here in Morocco.

As he played his guitar, a neighbor woman came out and joined us. And then another and then another. It began to get dark and bats started to circle around head. As the sound of the women’s gossip grew louder my Moudir slipped away into his house.

After he disappeared out came the kiddos. Little girls that wanted to draw surrounded me. I gave them each small, flash card, size paper and a pen. They copied the titles of the books they were writing on, to the paper. M_O_R_O_C_C_O. P_H_R_A_S_E_B_O_O_K. It was quite an achievement, writing the French alphabet, left to right. I tried to get them to sound out the words they were writing. MO RO SSO. I explained the difference between C and S but I don’t think it stuck. I’ll try again today. When they got bored with that…mostly because there was no light to see what they were writing, I brought down a coloring book, crayons and a flashlight.

One of the older girls brought over a candle. We melted some of the wax on the slab of cement in front of my house and stuck the candle in it. How many times that coloring book almost went up in flames, I can’t say. Soon boys surrounded the coloring book too. I was grateful to have one of my young English students deciding who got to color when and with what. I jus sat back and watched. They each wrote their names at the bottom of the page they colored. Some of the kids were so diligent about staying in the lines, other were just excited about the colors and didn’t particularly care where they ended up on the page.

Finally Mom’s began to corral their children. I promised the coloring book would still be there tomorrow. I went up to my house, not feeling so alone after all. Actually, feeling really excited for the lengthening days, warm breezy evenings, and a summer full of sitting on my slab of cement, hanging out with the ladies and children, chatting with my Moudir and listening to the strumming of a guitar. I never thought I would crave hanging out with Moroccan’s and my community as a whole. Alhamdulillah.

Spring Camp- English Class 3

For the third class students asked to look at song lyrics, learn them and then sing along. Due to poor planning, short attention spans and a general lack of organization this class failed miserably and while I certainly learned how to improve it next time…I don’t feel it is necessary to elaborate here.

Spring Camp- English Class 2

My second English class went equally as smoothly. I read Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” to the students. It is a great story about a relationship between a boy and a tree. We went over the vocabulary and then the students broke up into pairs and read different sections of the story. Next they were required to act out the scene of the story that they had. We put them all together so that the class acted out the entire story and so that everyone would understand.

After acting out the story we took some time to write poetry about trees, nature, really whatever they wanted and then they presented those. This was also a good class, students participated and there was an end product, which is always rewarding for everyone involved.

Spring Camp- English Class 1

About six of us were teaching English and three of us ran clubs. I was responsible for an Intermediate-Mid English class and I helped out in a health club in the afternoon. We also had a SIDA/ART club, and an Environment club, we tried to tag team most classes and clubs because…well…kids are just that scary.

For my first class I decided to talk about gender roles and play a “gender-bender” game. I know, I know, I would incorporate that into my English class on the first day. For the activity I had 27 note cards with different jobs/gender roles on them. Some examples were: Police, cooking, cleaning, teacher, doctor, nurse, airplane pilot…and some harder ones (at least to explain)…determines the sex of a fetus upon conception, prostate cancer, breast feeding and giving birth. I created three categories, Mostly Women, Mostly Men, Both Common. In the first round I asked the students to put the different cards in the category with which they most closely corresponded.

I was working with an extremely helpful environment volunteer and both of us were surprised to see the results. Most of the students in the class were from Rabat. There were just a few from the bled (countryside.) But we still didn’t expect the students to say…Both mom and dad: cook, clean, become teachers, gendarmes and wash laundry. We both said, REALLY? REALLY?

This is interesting because we both live in the countryside and…we’ve never seen a female gendarme, a female doctor, our host dads don’t cook and clean…that is for sure. The Rabatis kind of shrugged it off and re-enforced the, YES GUYS, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN DO THESE THINGS. It was certainly news to me. And I’m pretty sure it was news to the students from the countryside that got extremely quiet at about this time.

The next step of the game, after discussing why certain jobs are more female specific and other jobs are more male specific, was to switch up the categories. The new categories were, Only Women Can (physiologically,) Only Men Can (physiologically,) Both Can (physiologically.) Of course when we did it this way, we found that both men and women are capable of doing just about every job. There were exceptions, Only women give birth and breast feed and only men get prostate cancer and determine the sex of a fetus upon conception but… the majority of all other jobs can be done by either males or females. A small discussion followed about why jobs are gender specific when both males and females are capable of doing them. It was a great class despite the fact that some of the language was a little over the students heads. They seemed receptive and hopefully it made them think at least a little bit.