My site

We celebrated the completion of our two months of training and became Volunteers on November 12, 2009. I am now settling into my new site, RoseValley.

RoseValley is nestled between the Atlas Mountains and the Anti Atlas in a gorge known to draw tourists in the summer as well as locals who come to the region for the annual rose festival. RoseValley fluctuates between a washed out pink color, a brown or a grey depending on the day and the amount of dust in the air. In the region most buildings are either made of mud, similar to Malian architecture or concrete buildings. It is hot in the summers and cold in the winters but it doesn’t get cold enough for snow, at least in the gorge.

When I told the American fam yesterday it was starting to get cold here at about 61˚F (inside) and probably closer to 65-70˚ outside they laughed. I forget that they have snow and it is probably in the 30s there. The difference however is that they can go inside to warm up. There is no such thing as central heating here and the concrete buildings manage to perform as iceboxes in the winter and ovens in the summer, no joke. If I didn’t already have a fridge I don’t think I would have needed one until may rolled around.

I am living with a host family until December. They have been great thus far. I have a host mom and dad and there is a 12-year-old daughter named Soukaina, an 8-year-old daughter named Wisal and my host mom gave birth to a baby girl yesterday! They keep referring to her as Little Wisal because she looks a lot like Wisal but wont be given a name until 7 days after her birth at the naming ceremony. There is also a big holiday coming up, L’3id Kbir, the same day as Thanksgiving this year. This means there will be lots of festivities and activities going on in the next few days. These will hopefully be great opportunities for me to meet community members and start integrating.

Site Placement

The end of training is approaching and I have lots of updates!
First off

I have been placed in a town between the Atlas Mountains and the Anti Atlas. I will be near the desert but by no means will I be completely surrounded by sand, as I had originally feared. There are actually two rivers that run around the town and in May the valley is filled with roses. For this reason I will now refer to my site as the RoseValley.

I will be replacing a volunteer that has been working in RoseValley for the last two years. She has been very generous with general information about the site, people to work with, organizations to work with, projects she worked on and more. It sounds like I will have active counterparts and a nice Moudir with whom I will collaborate. I feel very blessed to be going to RoseValley! Everytime I mention that I am moving there other PCVs, kids at the Dar Chebab and my host family, as well as strangers all give me positive feed back about the town and the people that live there (this is not the case for ever site.)

Some other benefits of replacing a volunteer is that I will be able to buy all of her things and it turns out that hopefully I will just move into her apartment as well. This will save me a significant amount of my settling in allowance as well as saving me the trouble of looking for a place to live, negotiating rent and utilities and getting PC staff to make sure it is safe.

I will be able to tell you more about it once I get there but for now it sounds Great!