Time Speeds Up

Months ago, I noted to my friend and then fellow Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) Ben, that it seemed like time was passing more quickly than when I had first arrived in Morocco. He responded, "Yeah... time speeds up."

Yesterday I was reminded of this phenomenon. I was sitting at a cafe here in town with some friends who are also expats, but who aren't PCVs. One of them asked me if there are any other PCVs living here in this town. I told him that there aren't any other PCVs here. I explained that there used to be another PCV living here during my service, but that he decided to put an early end to his service. Then I added that about 120 new PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) will arrive here in Morocco in March. I said I figured that there's a good chance that another PCV from that stage, or group, will be assigned to start living here in late May or early June.

Then I noted to him that at this time last year, I was finding life here so much more challenging, and thus time seemed to be passing so much more slowly then. I thought of the blog post I had written in late January last year, and of how distraught I was then. I remembered how, at times, I would cope by asking myself if I could make it until the end of the day: of course the answer was always "yes." And then I said to my friend, "And now, I think about when the new PCTs are going to arrive in March, and I think, 'Wow, that's just right around the corner!'"

I Was Already Having A Great Day...

Last Friday, I was already having a great day, and then I went to the post office and found a care package waiting for me!  Newman O's, peanut butter, chocolate hazelnut butter, and chocolate bars!  Yippee!!!

Explaining To Kids What Their Shirts Say

Last night in the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a Youth Development PCV here in Morocco, I saw that one of the boys was wearing a sweatshirt which said "Oklahoma Training Team." I asked him if he knew what Oklahoma was. He admitted that he didn't know. I told him that it's a state in the U.S.

A few months ago, a Moroccan girl was wearing a shirt which said "Lover Girls," and under that, "London." I asked her if she knew what it meant. She said, "Girls who love London." I explained to her that the shirt did not say what she had thought it said.

I often tell kids who come to the dar chebab to ask me questions about forms of speech in English that they don't understand. It has occurred to me that I could add, "And if you want to know what your shirt says, I'll explain that to you, too!"

Simple Pleasures

The Peace Corps is preparing for new Peace Corps Trainees to arrive here in Morocco in March. As part of that preparation, Peace Corps is asking us to find out if families are interested in hosting PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in their homes for several weeks, when the PCVs arrive in the towns where they will live for their two years of service. The Peace Corps then decides with which families PCVs will live when PCVs arrive in their final sites to start living there.

I went to one family's home in the last couple of weeks and asked them if they would be interested in hosting a PCV in their home. They said they would. When I then took out the information sheet so I could write down their basic information, they said to do that another time. Later I realized that that was their way of saying that they really weren't interested. Moroccans are often indirect. Rather than directly saying that they cannot do something, they'll respond indirectly to a request, such as by postponing the time for doing something.

Yesterday I went to the home of another family. They already hosted a PCV in a previous year. Also, I had previously asked them multiple times, and each time they had said that they would host another PCV, so I was a bit more confident that they would indeed host another PCV. After gathering their basic information, of course when I got up to go, they told me to stay for tea. So I sat back down. With the tea, they also served bread with olive oil. The olive oil was delicious! After the snack, I was enjoying simply sitting in the sun, looking at the blue sky, and noting the other brilliant color, the electric blue on their window frames. It was so serene and calming, to just sit there for a little while, and take it all in. I love simple pleasures!

Treat Each Other Well

Earlier this week, I was walking through a douar, or small village, near my town. One of the men who lives there in the town had started walking with me, and was telling me a little about the history of the area. At one point I looked over to the other side of the road. I saw a boy, perhaps about 9 years old, appearing to push a much younger boy, who was about 4 years old. The younger boy was crying. The older boy let him go. The younger boy continued crying, and started throwing rocks at the older boy, who didn't look that concerned, but picked up a rock anyway.

I thought, "That's it. I don't care what this guy walking with me thinks, or what any of these kids think." I walked over to the boys, got them to stop throwing rocks at each other, and physically removed the rocks from their hands.

It reminded me of a writing exercise I had some students do a couple of weeks ago at the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a Youth Development PCV here in Morocco. Sometimes students ask me to give them a topic, so they can write about it, and so I can then correct the grammar and spelling mistakes in what they have written. On this one day a couple of weeks ago, when students asked me to give them a topic, I gave them the first idea which occurred to me. I suggested to them, "Write about why we must treat each other well." Each of the three of them wrote about various reasons. But all three of them wrote that we must treat each other well "because we are all sons of Adam." I was struck not only by how all three of them gave that reason, but also I wondered at how they didn't refer to any Biblical figures after Adam.

I noticed how none of them mentioned Jesus. Later I thought about how I've often heard people living in the USA say to me, "Jesus is in the Koran." While some people add that Muslims believe that he isn't the Son of God, I never remember others informing me about how Muslims believe that Jesus didn't die on the cross. In my mind, those seem to be significant differences, which, I believe, account for a lot. Additionally, if Jesus, who spoke so much, and so extensively, about treating others well, is in the Koran, then why, when these students were asked to write about why we must treat each other well, did not even one of these students mention Jesus?

Relevant Experience

It seems like the Peace Corps takes a fairly broad view of what experience is relevant to being a Peace Corps Volunteer. More and more I've been thinking, though, that they might underestimate the range of experience relevant and helpful to being a PCV.

Last April, a Moroccan high school sports teacher and I organized a bicycle trek to some nearby douars, or villages. On the trip, some other PCVs did some health presentations to some children and women. My Moroccan counterpart, other PCVs and I ran some sports activities for some of the local kids. In helping to plan the bicycle trip, I considered various logistics, such as where we would be able to get food and water along the route. Having ascertained that we wouldn't be able to buy food along the way until we reached our campsite, I advised my fellow PCVs to bring whatever food and water they would want before we reached our campsite. I also determined that we would have a van with us which could pick up a rider whose bicycle got damaged or got injured. It was relatively easy for me to think of these logistical concerns, insofar as I had participated twice in the California AIDS Ride, a bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. One could think, "What does going on a bicycle ride have to do with being a PCV?" In retrospect, having done the AIDS Ride, I was much better equipped to plan the bicycle trek with my Moroccan counterpart.

Last May, a Moroccan Arabic teacher and I conducted a mock trial event at the dar chebab, or youth center, where I do most of my volunteering as a Youth Development PCV here in Morocco. Again, one could think, "How can a former attorney help kids while he's in the Peace Corps?" Having participated in mock trial events both as a law student acting as an attorney, then later as an attorney acting as a mock trial judge for law students' mock trial events, I was that much better equipped to train and guide the students in the mock trial event we held in the dar chebab.

Last week, some students at the dar chebab asked me to teach them how to write a report of a meeting. As I started writing an example of a report of a meeting on the dry erase board, I wasn't particularly thinking about the source of the structure and style of the report as I was writing. As time passed, however, I realized that I was writing the report based on minutes of labor union meetings I had read while previously employed in the states. At the time I had been reading those minutes, I was reading them to be an informed union member and employee. I wanted to be able to make intelligent decisions, and to converse with others with the knowledge required to have meaningful conversations with them. Now, however, I realize that having read so many minutes of meetings, I was that much better prepared to help those kids last week when teaching them how to write reports of meetings.

So I would submit to you that you might have more experience that is relevant to your work as a PCV than you think that you have. Draw on as much of your experience as you can; it might turn out to be more helpful than you had previously thought.

A Surprising Question

Yesterday I was a tutoring a student at the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a Youth Development PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) here in Morocco. He was asking me to explain certain words to him. He pointed to the verb "to mean." He asked me, "What does this verb mean?"

I replied incredulously, "But... you must know what it means! You just used it in a sentence!" He started to laugh and admitted that he knew what it meant.

Classroom Shenanigans

At the end of last week, a dozen teenage students asked me to teach them how to write a cover letter to send when applying for a job. So I started teaching them how to do so. First I wrote an outline of the letter, with a general description of its structure. At one point, a few girls got up and left the room, then re-entered after not too long. When I finished laying out the structure on the dry erase board, I turned around to get the eraser so I could erase the structure and go through an actual example with them. The eraser was gone. I kept asking where the eraser was. Finally one of them got up and retrieved it outside where they had hid it.

I then started going through the specific example letter, with specific (though fictional) addresses and people, and an imaginary job mentioned in it. At one point, I had to change something I had written on the board. I again turned around to get the eraser, and again found that it was gone. I was both irritated with the students, as well as with myself for placing it behind me again after the first time they had hid it. I let myself get angry enough so that they could see the anger on my face, but I didn't yell at them. One of them told me not to get angry, then soon thereafter the eraser was returned to me. For the rest of the lesson, I kept the eraser on the board in front of me, avoiding any further shenanigans.

Last night I was teaching an English class with a much larger group of students, mostly about food and mealtimes. I used the opportunity to teach them that people in the USA often eat lunch and dinner earlier than many Moroccans do. (Moroccans tend to eat lunch between 1:30p.m. and 3:00p.m., and sometimes later than that! They tend to eat dinner after 8:30p.m., and sometimes after 10:00p.m.!)

Anyway, the classroom was nearly full; I think that there were nearly 30 students in the room. Soon after I got started, more students were coming into the room. I had to keep stopping the lesson because the new arrivals were distracting the students who were already in the room. Finally a couple of students came in with a couple of chairs, and were trying to shove their way to some free space near the front of the room. I concluded that I had to stop the distracting and disruptive interruptions. Although I wasn't actually as irritated as I probably appeared to be, I bodily removed the two students who were trying to shove their way to the front of the room. For the rest of the class, the rest of the students who were left in the room behaved much better than Moroccan students usually behave when I teach...

Classroom Management Strategies

Now that the Moroccan academic year is in full swing, kids are coming to the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center") often, and in large groups, for a variety of classes, including French, math, philosophy and computer science. They also come to the dar chebab to attend English classes, some of which I teach. Being kids, they tend to be fairly restless in class. For the most part, disruptive kids mostly just talk during class.

I alternately employ a variety of strategies to try to keep them in line and to manage classroom misbehavior. They work to varying degrees.

I think I best like letting the kids police each other. I have them do this in various ways.

One, I ask the kids who I know to be studious and attentive to help me keep the other students to be quiet. Then, during class, those kids I have enlisted to help me tell the talkative ones to be quiet.

Two, and perhaps even better than the first way of getting students to police each other, when students start to talk too much, I simply stop talking. I just stand in front of the class until the talking subsides, a result helped along by the more studious children, who want the lesson to continue, and thus get the more talkative ones to be more quiet.

Sometimes if a student is talking quite obliviously to how I have noticed that he or she is talking, I demonstrate a teaching point with that student. I draw attention to the student. For example, during a recent class I was teaching the students some verbs. I had gotten to the verb "to throw." A student in the front row was talking and seemed completely unaware that I was looking right at her as she was talking. So I demonstrated the verb "to throw" as I tossed my magic marker at her. When it landed on her, she seemed embarrassed at being caught in the act of talking during class.

Sometimes I just loudly tap the end of my magic marker on the table in front of me, especially if the students at that table are talking. If they're unaware that I've noticed that they're talking, they're usually startled by the tap and thus immediately stop talking.

And sometimes I resort to an even more common approach. Sometimes I just utter a quick "Shh!"