International Women’s Day: Activity Two. “Number One”

I did a second activity related to International Women’s day about a week later. We had an outdoor movie night at the Dar Chebab where we projected the film on to the Dar Chebab for the community. The movie I chose is called “Number One.” It is a Moroccan, feature length film in Darija. The theme of the movie is the Mudawana (the family code.) It addresses women’s rights in a humorous and enjoyable way, appropriate for the whole family.

In the film there is a hard, cynical man, who disrespects the women who work in his sweatshop, his wife and the people around him. His wife, exhausted by his behavior casts a spell on her husband. He becomes unable to speak disrespectfully to women even if he wants to. He tells his wife to cut her hair, wear what she wants, gets her a bank card, and he even starts helping out in the home (which really got a laugh out of the community.) At a certain point no one knows quite how he or she is supposed to behave which causes all sorts of confusion. Eventually the husband and wife reach a balance in how to sustain their relationship in a respectful way.

I was very pleased because there was a descent turn out. There were not only boys and girls but also men and women present at the film. One of my boys from the Dar Chebab said that this was the first time he had seen women outside, late in the evening, participating in a community event.

There was a discussion that followed the film, lead by my host father. I honestly can’t say I understood a whole lot of it but it seemed good and lots of children were participating.

International Women’s Days (IWD) March 8, 2010

March 8 was International Women’s Day. It was the perfect excuse to bring up gender roles and gender issues in my Dar Chebab. I went to class with the intentions of making mother’s day cards with my 13-year-old girls. The idea behind this was to give the girls the opportunity to think about all of the things their moms do for them and all of the work women do in general. This would hopefully give them the chance to really appreciate their mothers.

I brought stickers, colored paper, pens, markers, scissors etc. It was going to be an extravaganza. Class was supposed to start at 6 but 6:30 rolled around and no one had showed up. I was standing there stewing and relatively disappointed because I was really excited about the project.

In the meantime there were two 17-year-old boys hanging out in the room. As I paced back and forth they stopped me and said, “Miss Fauve, what is it you were going to do with the girls?”

I lethargically dragged over the supplies and began to explain the point of making cards for one’s mother. The boys picked up the paper and started drawing and writing messages to the important women in their lives. As they began their art projects more and more boys began to show up. With complete disregard to the fact that all of the stickers I brought were intended for girls (hearts, stars, flowers, humming birds, rainbows) the boys decorated their cards (and cell phones) with stickers and colorful designs. Most messages said something along the lines of , “I LOVE YOU MOM!” One card was particularly moving. It said, “Thank you mom for everything you do. I remember when I was little and you slept next to me when I was sick. I love you.” I was practically in tears, be it from the messages the boys were writing or the fact that the boys just ran with the project and didn’t feel too cool for it.

The real thing this showed me was all of the preconceived ideas I have about gender and gender roles myself. I brought stickers for girls and thought of card making as a girl’s activity. The fact that the boys would just as readily participate, use the supplies provided to them no matter what colors and images they were, was inconceivable to me, despite the fact that it is just as important, if not more, for the boys to think about the appreciation they have for the important women in their lives.

new apartment

On a different note I moved into my new place at the beginning of January. It is a small, concrete apartment. Most of the rooms are a sky blue except for the hallway, which is covered in tiles.

There is a living room, the only room with real windows, which I hang out in all the time. There are two other rooms, one, which acts as a bedroom, and the second, which is currently a storage room. It may or may not be transformed into a real room at some point. In addition to the other three rooms there is kitchen with very low counters and a shower/squat toilet. I say shower/squat toilet because it is one and the same. I have a learned the hard way to put a water bottle in the hole of the toilet when I shower to avoid dropping bars of soap down the hole.

The house, other than being at an average of 45°F, is awesome. No one can quite understand why a young, unmarried girl would want to live on her own but I am thrilled to have my house. As long as I don’t make a habit of using the house as a hiding place, I think it will work out perfectly. Although I may have to put a sign on the inside of my door that says, “GO OUTSIDE FAUVE.”

Other than that, being able to cook what I want and eat when I want is amazing. You would think having someone cook for you all the time would be nice (and it is) but alas…

Other highlights in the house are the ability to blast music, the heated blanket and down comforter (thanks dad J) tiled walls, roof upon which to do laundry, skylight that leaks when it rains, and the fact that it is a safe place where I don’t have to put on a show at least a few hours a day.

Teaching English

I’ve been teaching an English class once a week. The first couple times were very impromptu but they went okay. It really just made me realize how much more I have to learn.

After that I started doing more formal classes and had about 15 students coming regularly. At this time I also had an hour dedicated to doing art with the kids, an evening dedicated to games and hanging out and a couple evenings dedicated to a journalism club. The moudir however started enforcing the enrollment fee of 25Dirhams. I now have about 7 students that come regularly.

Right now I am at my Post-Pre service training and hoping that when I go back to RoseValley I can just start over. It is time to get a class going for the BAC students in the area. (the BAC is the end of the year exam for high school students that dictates whether they graduate or not. They have two tries to pass the exam at which point they either graduate or are kicked out of school. ) Women in the area have been asking for both an English class and an aerobics class. Inchallah.

I am getting excited about teaching English though because I am starting to understand the concept of content-based training. Through teaching English you teach about different topics that can also create awareness about important things.

For example something as simple as teaching the conditional: would, should, could and asking students to create a sentence using “If I was a boy, I would _______________________” and “If I was a girl, I would___________________,” you can create a discussion about men’s and women’s roles in society.

This works with introducing lessons about gender, environment, health and any number of other issues. Again, Inchallah.

SIDA project/ Rose Festival

My main project right now is a SIDA/VIH (AIDS/HIV) awareness project. I am currently collaborating with about ten other volunteers and a local SIDA organization just outside my town.

The Organization with which we are collaborating does SIDA education in the several towns near mine. Their main focus is on educating prostitutes, boys ages 14-21 and truck drivers on different aspects of SIDA including transmission, ways to protect oneself, and the impacts SIDA can have on ones life.

A recent and primary role of ours, while working with this organization, has been to share ideas and techniques of transferring information in a way that people can be receptive to it. We first sat in on a presentation to high school students about the topic of SIDA. The lecture was a few hours long, it was a PowerPoint and kids were coming and going at their leisure. From our perspective, no one wants or has time to sit for that long. No one wants to be talked AT about a subject that makes him or her uncomfortable, with three people to a desk, in a small classroom of 70ish people.

From here we were able to have meetings with the organization and discuss some of our ideas. For example, come up with a one-hour presentation that can be repeated over and over. This way students have time to stay for the presentation, it keeps their attention longer, and they get all of the information.

Another idea was to include an activity to get the students involved in the education. Of course we as PCVs have a hundred games related to SIDA education up our sleeves. We shared some of these with the organization and did one of the activities together. Even if there is a class of 70 you can bring 10 kids in front of the class and have them do the activity in front of everyone. It helps keep people’s attention and keeps it interesting.

I’d like to think even just sharing little ideas like this makes some sort of difference.

Now…the next part of our project has to do with the Rose Festival that takes place in RoseValley every May. PCVs are known for putting up a SIDA booth to help make people aware of the impact SIDA(and other STIs) can have in their lives . There are also a high number of prostitutes in RoseValley (Though by no means unique to RoseValley) and their work increases tremendously during the Rose Festival. People come from all over the country to visit the Rose Festival and it is not unlikely that many men will take that opportunity to visit prostitutes.

We are working with this same organization to do training with the prostitutes and their Madames and Pimps about two weeks before the festival in an effort to increase their knowledge of diseases and the benefits to protecting oneself. We are hoping that by putting a financial spin on it and an emphasis on the fact that a sick sex worker cannot continue to work and make money that they can benefit from protecting themselves. I would like to think that just talking about the fact that protection is important for their own health and for the sake of their own well being, would be enough but…its not. And currently a person pays more to have sex with a condom than without.

Another facet of the Rose Festival SIDA awareness campaign will be directing our energy towards women. We have always had one booth to talk about SIDA but clearly women and men will not feel comfortable coming to the same tent. Our goal is to get an extra tent or make our own under the pretense that we are doing a women’s wellness campaign. This will allow us to not only speak about SIDA but the mudawana (family code,) STIs, maternal health among a variety of other subjects. It also gives some anonymity to the women that are taking advantage of the booth to educate themselves about SIDA and other STIs..

A third facet of this SIDA project is our goal of securing an ALCS (association de lutte contre la SIDA, The Association to Fight Against AIDS) vehicle to be present at the festival. They bring a bus in which people can get tested for SIDA, similar to the way we have buses that go to different events in which we can donate blood.

So, why SIDA/STIs? Is SIDA really prevalent in Morocco? Are people uneducated about SIDA?

We are focusing on SIDA for several reasons. For one when we are talking about SIDA we hope to include other STIs in our education. People in Morocco know what SIDA is and know that it can result in death but they are uneducated about other STIs and the fact that they can be equally as detrimental to their lives and their families.

Secondly, marriage in Morocco tends to be a contract between two people to make a family. There is no real sexual exploration and women in general don’t get a lot of say in how sexual relations play out. If men want to have a baby they have sex with their wife. If they want anything else they often go to a prostitute.

Thirdly a woman doesn’t have a lot of power in the bedroom when it comes to whether or not their husband uses a condom. Asking them to use a condom implies that the wife thinks the husband is “dirty.” And a wife doesn’t necessarily know if or how many prostitutes her husband may be sleeping with.

In addition sex and sexuality is taboo and there is no formal education on the topic. People learn about it predominately from friends, porn, or visiting prostitutes. If all of your knowledge about sex and sexuality comes from porn and prostitutes it is bound to be a little twisted.

In Morocco(2007) , according to UNICEF, there is a prevalence rate of .1% and approximately 21,000 living with HIV/AIDS. It is expected that the number has increased since then. This is relatively low but when diseases grow exponentially each year the scale can tip rapidly. And in addition the amount of people with STIs are likely significantly higher.

Anyway, As we do this work we are in full collaboration with different members of Moroccan society. Moroccan counterparts give lectures and will be at the booths disseminating information at the Rose Festival. Our role is to find people to distribute information and with whom we can share activities and ideas. We rely on Moroccans to spread the word. People are way more likely to be receptive of this information when it is coming form their peers when it is coming from a strange foreigner. Anyway… all that to say…Inchallah …wait… NO, not god willing, just protection protection protection!

Regional Meeting

Not long after the New Year I had a nice meeting with my region mates. I live in the Ouarzazate region of Morocco and all the volunteers in the area (Health, Environment, Small Business Development, and Youth Development) got together to discuss regional projects and plans. There were around 16 people including several volunteers from other regions joining us to get an idea of how these meetings work.

Regional meetings are entirely volunteer driven and while encouraged by Peace Corps Morocco, the volunteers are responsible for making it happen. Our goals were to share project ideas, best practices and offer help to other volunteers when possible.

It was helpful to me because I not only got ideas about how to get Dar Chebab students active, ideas for SIDA (AIDS) and environmental projects to do at site, but I was also able to meet the different people in my region who are my ultimate support and go to people.

This meeting was also beneficial because it was the beginnings of a large SIDA project as well as planning for the Rose Festival that takes place in RoseValley every year. It is really nice to have a large group of volunteers to work with because the work can be divided and it is possible to reach a wider audience when we work together. I also really like this project because I can be more involved with some of the planning aspects and logistics but the attention is never directly on me (I will tell you more about this project in the next post.)

Hopefully these regional meetings will continue and allow us to keep up the regional collaboration. Each person has their specializations and it is advantageous to all of us to be able to share the resources and knowledge we have.

The New Years in Merzouga

It has been brought to my attention that I am a little behind on this blog thing. I could enumerate all the excuses I have but I think I’ll just get to writing instead.

Lets start with New Years. It is hard to believe that New Years was two months ago already! To celebrate I went with a group of volunteers to the Merzouga Desert.

Merzouga is seven hours from where I live, on the edge of the desert, in the southeastern part of Morocco. We took 4X4s from a nearby town to get there. As they weaved between one another, at high speeds, my stomach was filled with butterflies. It felt like a race and as we would pas each other’s cars we would stick our tongues out or wave. When we stopped we were close enough to the dunes that we could walk into them and enjoy the cool sand but not far enough in to get lost.

We slept in Berber tents very much the way I did at the music festival in Mali a few years back. The tents had three walls with the open sides facing a campfire. They were connected in a rectangle, which created the feeling of our own little commune.

To send out the year 2009 we walked into the desert and watched the sunset. At the very moment the sun was setting, the full moon was rising from the other side. The place that we were staying prepared us a fantastic Couscous dinner and served us mint tea (both staples in this neck of the woods.)

We couldn’t send out 2009 without being slightly Hshuma (something between inappropriate and shameful) So we got out the champagne (or more accurately Jack Daniels,) danced around the fire, got lost in the dunes and passed out in time for at least a couple hours of rest. Despite roomers, no Pagans were involved and there were no sacrifices of virgins, although there may have been attempts. The sand did manage to eat my shoes among other things but who needs shoes anyway!?

The next morning we all got up and did a camel trek into the dunes to watch the sunrise. I just walked along and spoke Darija with the man leading the camels since I got my camel fix in Egypt this summer. My feet were frozen by the time the sun rose, due to the lack of shoes but I couldn’t have asked for a better way to bring in 2010.

After breakfast we got back in the 4X4s that lead us out to the desert and raced back to town, a couple hours away. Needless to say we were all less lively and enthusiastic about the race out of the dunes than we were during the race into the dunes.