It’s been a while, huh? I know, I’m sorry and you should all punish me by sending me lovely packages filled with wondrous items just to make me feel worse.
So, what’s been happening? Well, I’ve almost finished acquiring things for my lovely house. Although I still don’t have a table or any chairs (a taxable donation can be made to me, inquire at joshua_haynes@yahoo.com), I can say I feel comfortable. Hopefully in the next year I’ll be able to take some pictures of my house and make it interactive so that you feel like you’re actually here!
One of the most exciting things that has happened in the last couple of weeks has been my procurement of two adorable kittens. (I’ve updated the photos page a bit so that you can see them). I’ve named the girl kitten Jilbana (Pea) and the boy kitten Xizo. When I first got the kittens, Jilbana was emaciated and mskina (poor little thing), but now both Xizo and Jilbana are growing quickly. I though initially I would have troubles finding proper cat litter after horrible experiences with sand, but now I just have to hop on a bus and travel five hours round trip to reach a supermarket that carries just what I need. I bought 20 litters the first time I went.
I’m on a Peace Corps Morocco committee called GAD (Gender and Development). This last week we had our first meeting at my house where we discussed all that we wanted to do regarding gender and development this year. First of all, I must say that it is a great time to be in Morocco because of the recent changes in the Mudawana, or Personal-Status Code. These changes afford women the right to divorce and retain custody of children (upon the approval of the courts), raise the legal marriage age from 15 to 18 and make polygamy almost impossible. These statutes are some of the most progressive in the Arab World; I know of two countries, for example, where women do not even have the right to vote. One of our projects will be translating the new laws into layman, Moroccan Arabic terms, so that volunteers can begin talking to men and women in our communities. We also are going to sponsor a girls’ empowerment camp called Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) whereby we will target girls in middle school and talk about goal setting, the importance of continuing studies, etc. I recently read one statistic that said only 1 in 8 girls attend high school and that over 60% of women are illiterate. We also hope to start a boy’s camp, which has never been done in Morocco before, where the theme will not be so much on empowerment, but rather on healthy social responsibility. If anyone can come up with an acronym for this camp, please let me know, because I can’t think of anything that it culturally sensitive, if you know what I mean…..
Traveling. I haven’t been traveling too much, as I have been spending much time building relationships within my community intentionally, but I did get to El Jadida on the coast to visit a fellow volunteer. This weekend I’m going up into the mountains to an Amazieght (an ethnic minority group—preceding the Arabs—that is commonly and erroneously referred to as ‘Berber’—Berber comes from the Latin for barbarian) community called Ououizieght (pronounced ‘where we zeght’, with the ‘gh’ being a gargled r). And next weekend I’m going to be traveling to Marrakech for the first time. I’m quite exited.
Work is work. I’ve been mainly hanging out at a few tanneries, both modern and traditional, and also at a carpet association.
Other than that, life is good and I can’t complain. I’ll get some more pictures up soon, insha’allah.