How I Spell Work

When I’ve cried “busy” in recent blog posts, what I’ve been alluding to is Spelling Bee Morocco™.

It’s a project of mine that has taken up the lion’s share of my time since last December and involved a number of my PCV friends as well – Ryan Scheidt (website), Mark McEnery (graphic design), Mimi Duong and Fauve Johnson (City Bee organizers), and Maureen Sieh (connections and press coverage) – and many others who’ve pitched in here and there. The idea came from another PCV, Ben Pennington, who finished his Peace Corps service last October and is back in Tennessee writing, reading, and making music.



Trophies and medals for the
 City and Regional Championships



Morocco is a land of many languages. Most people speak a dialect of Berber (there are three main ones, including Tamazight, the one I speak) or Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic. In school, they are taught Modern Standard Arabic from the 1^st grade on. They begin French in 3^rd grade.  In recognition of the role of English as the current lingua franca of the world, the Ministry of Education mandated the offering of English about 10 years ago. But it does not begin until 9^th grade and lasts only four years and there just aint much English spoken here.

So Spelling Bee Morocco™ aims to promote and popularize the use of English – through play, not testing. As a uniquely American creation, spelling bees also offer opportunities for cross-cultural education. Spelling Bee Morocco™ has two main activities – a competition and a website. The competition provides motivation and recognition for Moroccan students of English. The website provides information about the competition, but, just as importantly, it functions as an ESL resource for students and teachers all year long. The Spelling Bee Morocco™ competition is open to students through 12^th grade.

During the practice round at the Kalaa City Championship

We’ve partnered with the regional chapter of MATE (Moroccan Association of Teachers of English) for Ouarzazate, Zagora, and Tinghir provinces. Our hope is to develop a program that will become national in scope, but this first year we decided to restrict it to the region, get some experience, and work out some details. This is what we’ve done so far:

·         Developed a website and created a Facebook page

·         Applied for and received a grant from WorldConnect/Kids2Kids to support the cost of City Bees and the Regional Championship

·         Held five trainings that introduced the spelling bee concept (pretty much unknown in this country) to about 50 teachers

·         Registered 25 schools, which finished their school championships earlier this month

·         Held four City Spelling Championships, which were completed last Sunday.

And this is what remains to be done:

·         Hold our Regional Championship in Ouarzazate, the largest city in the region.

·         Start all over again. Things have gone well enough so that we think we can expand it - and that's a whole new ball game.

Checking to make sure all spellers are in order in the
Solo Bee at the Kalaa Championship

Despite the challenges of introducing a new concept, working long-distance, organizing a multi-part event, trying to work to a schedule in a country where serious planning seldom seems to extend more than a day or two in advance, it has gone pretty well. On Friday and Saturday, May 25 & 26, twenty-seven of the best spellers in southern Morocco will converge on Ouarzazate for the first ever Spelling Bee Morocco Championship. As in the States, talent and desire will tell. The group includes one ninth grader. The remaining spellers are split about evenly among 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th graders. The spellers will compete in two events, a team spelling bee and a solo spelling bee. Teams of three spellers each from five schools will compete for the team title. Seventeen spellers will vie for the solo title.

I’ll be sure to let you know how it all turns out. In the meantime, you can follow “Spellbound,” the blog for Spelling Bee Morocco™  by providing your email in the app on the blog page. You can now also follow us on Facebook. Please go there and “like” us.

And now…I’m busy. I still have a championship word list to create.

The top finishers of the Kalaa City Solo Spelling Bee

My Own World Book Day

Happy World Book Day to everyone!

As a person who worked in the book business for 37 years, most of my working career, this is a day that is close to my heart. There are several things that make it especially dear to me this year.

The first is that the U.S. has adopted a great idea from the U.K. and created World Book Night, run by my old friend Carl Lennertz, one of the great enthusiasts for books in the U.S. On this day, 20,000 people in the U.S. will give away 1,000,000 books to whomever they choose. What a great way to share the love of reading and show how you value the worth of books. You can see the list of books being given away in the U.S. at the World Book Night site. And here’s a link to the U.K. site as well.

The second is that Ann Patchett, one of my favorite novelists – and also a bookseller – was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world for 2012. In an op ed piece in the NY Times recently, in which she lamented the Pulitzer Prize committee’s decision not to award a fiction prize this year, she wrote this:

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Joe reading Neil Gaman's American Gods in my courtyard

The third is that my son Joe is visiting me, and he spends a significant chunk of every day with his nose in a book. It warms my heart that this boy – now man – that I read with every night for the first 13 years of his life has rediscovered reading. What adventures we had – Tin Tin, the Little House books, the very first Harry Potter book – too many to list. And what good times we’re having now as we each talk of the books we’re in. He recently finished Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Heller’s Catch-22, and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and has just started Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

And the fourth is that, after living in a small village in Morocco for a little over a year now, I see even more clearly the important role that books play in changing individual lives, culture, even a country. In my town, except in my own house, only one time have I seen a book other than a textbook or a Koran. I have never seen a person reading for pleasure, or, for that matter, even for information. This is a good town, with good people, but it is also a town with a narrow vision, and a short vision.



This “bookless” culture is not confined to small villages. The city of Agadir, with a population of about 700,000, does not have a public library. In most schools, the libraries, if they exist, are locked most of the time and primarily contain textbooks. A recent report found that Moroccans spend an average of only 1 dirham (about 12 ½ cents) on books a year, and only 1,000 new books are published in Morocco each year.



Fatima "reading" Goodnight, Gorilla, by Peggy Rathman
in Tamazight to a couple of local children



But there are individuals, of course, who are fascinated by books. I’m speaking mainly of children who, like children everywhere, thirst for stories – stories that help explain their own lives to them but also, in Patchett’s words, help them imagine lives other than their own. And there a few adults, too. In my village, I’ve found one so far (there may be others) - Fatima, one of my host sisters. In February, on my return from the Marrakesh Marathon, I gave Fatima and Sulayman, my 6-year-old host nephew, each a book in Arabic – the first book either of them had ever owned. So that was my World Book Day, I suppose.

Since then, I’ve gotten a few wordless (or nearly wordless) books from the States. Fatima has become the storyteller, supplying a Berber text to these wonderful stories. My plan is to create a library here in my village in connection with the women’s association I work with. I’ll tell you more about that in a future post.

I guess the best way to close is to mention what I’m reading. I recently finished, Cry, the Beloved Country, and Things Fall Apart, two African classics which, aside from their intrinsic beauty and power, help me understand a little bit better what I’m experiencing here in Africa. I’m currently reading Arabian Nights and Days by the Egyptian Nobel laureate, Nagoub Mahfouz and a very funny unpublished novel, A Speckled Axe, by James Quackenbush, a friend of mine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn't want to begin with an apology, but I know I'm waaaay behind in posting to this blog. I've been busy! And I have lots to tell! And I will soon...insha'allah.

A Moroccan Hoodie and Other Stories

I’ve been remiss in making posts to this blog. Good reasons – I always have good reasons – but you don’t want to hear my excuses. Today, I’ll try to bring you up-to-date on my life for the past five weeks, saving details on my work and travels for separate posts.

The Travel Bug

It’s a kind of illness – a delicious kind of illness – this travel bug. When I got back from my vacation on the Atlantic coast in early January, I fully expected to launch into my work and get a lot done. It turns out I was not as productive as I’d expected to be. The trip had rejuvenated me, yes, but it also infected me with the travel bug. I spent a lot of time researching and planning future vacations – Central Europe (Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Budapest), Turkey and the Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa. At least one of those trips I will surely take. Others will remain – like most thoughts of travel – on the shelf of dreams.

Cookie Baking



Sulayman decorates a star



In mid-January, I had a baking party with my host sisters. They’re very good cooks, but for a variety of reasons do little baking, except for bread, which they bake every morning. They loved the cookies I served at our Christmas celebration and made me promise to show them how to make them. On January 22, Aicha, Ouardia, Fatima, and Sadiya, along with her children Sulayman and Ayman, came to my house. I served them lunch of chili and corn bread. Corn bread they’re familiar with. The chili was new, but they loved it – it has lots of meat, after all! And then we spent the rest of the day making oatmeal cookies and baking and decorating Christmas cookies. What fun!



The Marrakesh Half-Marathon

Adam and me after the race

Near the end of the month, a PCV friend, Adam Richie-Halford, and I went to Marrakesh. The first two days, we worked at Marche Maroc, an event put on several times a year by PCVs in the Small Business Development sector for the artisans they work with. There were workshops in the morning; in the afternoon, the artisans sold their wares from booths set up on the margins of the famous Djemaa el-Fna. On the third day, Adam and I ran the Marrakesh Half-marathon. It’s the longest race I’ve run in many a year. I was happy with my result – I finished, I never walked, and though I felt the effects for the next day or so, I had no injuries. And I ran a respectable time for me – 2:09:05, a little under a 10-minute per mile pace.

When I got back home, my family was very interested in my photos and my participation medal. “What place did you get?” one asked. I didn’t understand. “First, second, third…?” “Oh, two thousandth,” I replied (actually, I lied a little – it was more like 2,164^th, but that number was too difficult for me to figure out how to say). First, there was a look of incredulity, then a roomful of laughter. The look of incredulity surprised me a little. What did they expect from a 67-year old? But then I think of people’s reaction to me when I’m out running in the country. They often will point out a short-cut to me, or invite me to stop for tea. I think most of them have a hard time grasping that I’m running in order to run, not to get somewhere. By the same token, I think my family had a hard time grasping why I would run in a race if I wasn’t trying to win. But they liked the medal and the pictures.

My Moroccan Hoodie

Me in my bespoke tajlabit

Every now and then through this cold dry winter, I’ve seen a tajlabit made of a salt & pepper weave fabric (ašhعabi) that I really liked. Whenever I asked where I could get one, people would tell me I needed to look in a fabric store. I did that, to no avail. But while I was working at Marche Maroc, I made some purchases to help support the artisans. I’d just bought a bottle of argan oil for my host mother and father, and I looked up and saw a bundle of fabric in the adjacent booth. It was just what I’d been looking for. I went over and admired it. It turned out it was made from hand-carded, hand-spun, hand-dyed, and hand-woven wool. I asked her if it was enough to make a tajlabit. Yes, she said, three meters, the standard. I bought it. When I got home, my host father took me to the tailor he goes to. After some oohing and aahing from the tailor, which reassured me about the fabric, he took my measurements. Three days later, I had my own salt & pepper, winter-weight tajlabit. There was enough fabric left over for him to make a hat (tarbush) for me. I’ve never had a hand-tailored piece of clothing before, but now I have a completely hand-made piece. I can tell you, it’s quite warm as well as handsome.









Three Cheers for American Bureaucracy!

Our country director sent out her weekly update today. In it was a link to the FVAP – Federal Voting Assistance Program. It’s a program designed to help Americans living overseas in the armed forces or any other capacity exercise their right to vote. I went online and filed my request for absentee ballots for all of the elections in my voting district for the upcoming year. I was able to select a preferred method of delivery – email, mail, or fax. It was simple and fast – about two minutes.

Except for applying for passports, I didn’t have many encounters with government bureaucracy until I reached the age of 65. Then came Medicare and, a year later, Social Security. I have to say that all my dealings with those agenciess have been positive. Efficient, friendly, helpful, and respectful people and pretty straightforward and clear procedures. And now this. It’s enough to make a citizen happy.

I compare that with my experience here in Morocco.

After I was sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer last May, I had to apply for a carte de sejour (residence permit). That required 10 passport sized photos (can’t imagine why, since the card itself has only one), an equivalent number of photocopies of my passport, attestation de travail (work certificate) and attestation de residence (certificate of residence), several tax stamps, three trips to the Royal Police office (gendarmerie), and one to the city hall to get all of them notarized. After I finished the application, I received a receipt, which I had to carry with me at all times. During the period while I was waiting for my card, I had to return and get the receipt renewed every month. That took five months, which meant five more visits to the gendarmerie. For me, that meant only about three hours out of my day each time. I’m fortunate. For some of my Peace Corps friends, that means a whole day and travel by bus or taxi to a distant city. I’m also required to inform the gendarmes whenever I’m going to be away from my site overnight.

So I say, “Three cheers for the American bureaucracy!” It’s a snap compared to what I face here.

P.S., I didn’t really forget that I have an encounter with the bureaucracy every year on April 15. I’m not really looking forward to filing my taxes from Morocco for the first time, but I actually think it’s going to go all right. Filing taxes is not so straightforward. Like many people, I get help with it. But, you know, that’s not really the fault of the bureaucracy. It’s the fault of those politicians who, as either policy or payback, have created all the windfalls and loopholes in the tax code.

Christmas in Morocco

My artisan-made cookie cutters

When I first tried to explain to my host family that Christmas was coming, they said “Bonani?” I did an off-the-cuff etymology of the word and figured it was a borrowing of the French bonne nuit (good night). So I said, yes, I thought so. Of course, I was wrong. It’s actually a borrowing of the French bonne annee (Happy New Year).

For several days we went along in blissful misunderstanding. When I finally realized the mistake, I explained to them that, no, Christmas was a different holiday, always a week before bonani, and it was big, the biggest American holiday of all. I said it was comparable to Leid Axatar. My host father said, “Do you slaughter a sheep?” I said, no, that we traditionally eat turkey. “Skram,” he called me – “cheapskate.” We had a big laugh.

A plate of cookies I made up for Sulayman, my host nephew,
who was still at school when the party started

But I set about preparing a celebration for Christmas, which was clearly totally unknown to them – in fact, I have yet to discover what the word for it in Tamazight is, if it exists at all. A friend in the States sent a tiny tree with tiny lights and tiny ornaments. I had one of my dagger-maker brothers make some cookie cutters for me. Two of my Peace Corps friends came to my house and helped me get everything ready for the little feast.

The afternoon of the 23^rd, my host family (10 of them, anyway) came over. We had Christmas music playing and served cookies (frosted Christmas cookies, oatmeal, and jelly-filled) and apple cake, along with hot chocolate. After eating, I explained that gift-giving was also a Christmas tradition. I gave them each a pair of good socks filled with apples and oranges, M&Ms and candy canes. They were thrilled. “Not skram,” my host brother said.

My tiny tree with some presents for America around it.

The next day, one of my friends and I went to another PCVs house to celebrate the holiday with Americans. There were seven of us in all. We each contributed a dish and had a real feast – a chicken tajine, mashed potatoes, green beans, deviled eggs, cauliflower-cheese pie, apple cake and apple sauce. We went for some long walks in the countryside around their house and played games. I must say, it’s fun and a great comfort to be around countrymen and women at times like this.

On the 27^th a friend and I took off on my first real vacation in Morocco. I’ll fill you in on that in my next blog. I know I keep promising that. This time I’ll keep it.

Bonani!

A potted olive tree with homemade decorations made a
great stand-in for an evergreen at our PCV Christmas

My contribution to the Christmas tree decorations



Our PCV group on one of the hikes



I visited a manger and found sheep. The mother fretted
a bit.

Our PCV feast.

Surf, a Spelling Bee, and IST

Sunset over the Atlantic

We arrived in Mehdiya last Sunday after dark. Though I couldn’t see the ocean, I could smell it. When I went to sleep that night, I went to sleep to the sound of surf for the first time in nine months. And when I got up in the morning and looked out my window I saw a broad beach, a long breakwater reaching out into the ocean, and what looked like a dredge working at the mouth of the channel. It reminded so much of Grand Haven and my home on Lake Michigan.

Walking the beach with a friend, Adam, during
lunch break

The fifty-two remaining volunteers of the 60 who started with me (eight have ETd – early terminated – for personal or medical reasons) all converged on Mehdiya, a beach town a little north of Rabat. The occasion was IST (In-service Training), held six months after swearing in for each staj. On our first day, we had another LPI (Language Proficiency Interview). I did all right, moving up one notch to Intermediate Mid. At least I’m moving in the right direction! The next day, we shared our experiences so far and our plans for the next phase of our service. That was followed by a couple of days of workshops on grant-writing and teaching ESL (English as a Second Language).

I feel lucky. Many PCVs are still “integrating,” but I have plenty of work with my three days a week teaching in the elementary schools, plus work at the sbitar, middle school health club, and with the women’s association I’m helping get started.

Going through the rules prior to the start of the
IST Spelling Bee

I’m also working on a new project – Spelling Bee Morocco – that I hope will eventually create a national spelling bee for Moroccan students. I used the gathering at IST to present the idea to my fellow PCVs, and we held a late-night Spelling Bee at 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Fourteen PCVs participated and about 20 others formed an audience. Much to my surprise, very few of them had ever participated in a spelling bee back home. But they’re a bunch of smart, confident people, and they really got into it. It took eleven rounds to crown a winner. She won on “hippopotamus” and “aggraded” after the runner-up stumbled on “euphemism.”

The winner and a disconsolate runner-up

IST has ended. We’ve just had dinner. There will be a “Souk Prom” later tonight. And tomorrow morning, we’ll all head back to our sites. This is the last time all of us will be together at the same time until our COS (Close of Service) conference, a few months before we complete our Peace Corps service, so there’s a bittersweet tinge to the evening.

I spent a day in Marrakesh on my way here, and I’ll be spending a couple of days in Rabat on my way back home. I’ll tell you all about that, and some other travels I’ve taken in the last couple months, when I get back to my site next week.



Mehdiya has a beautiful wide, flat beach





Work boats entering the channel at dusk



A Challenging Question and a Rain Day



A French association is building this well at one of
my schools.



A Challenging Question

At school this week, while I was having tea with the teachers during recess, one of the teachers asked me what my goals were. I naively thought he was asking about my personal goals. Because my language is limited, I gave a simple answer – that I wanted to help people.

I had misunderstood. “But what about your organization,” he said, “will it do something to help us?”

I said, “I guess I’m the help.”

He didn’t exactly guffaw, but he did get a smile on his face. “But that’s just words,” he said, referring to my teaching, I suppose. “We already know that stuff. But will it do something to help us?”

“You mean money?” I asked.

Rain shrouds the Dades Valley today

He nodded, then proceeded to tell me that a French association had dug a new well for the school and that another French association had planted some olive trees.

This was my first personal encounter with such a direct “show-me-the-money” attitude. I have some thoughts about it, but I’m curious to know what yours are and how you would respond to such a situation. I may be opening a can of worms by soliciting your opinions, but I’d really like to know.

A Rain Day...

Water cascades down a path we
usually walk.

I woke this morning before my alarm to the sound of rain spattering in the courtyard and pattering on the roof. I got up and went through my usual morning routines, then got ready for school. When I went outside I saw puddles standing in my front yard - a first for puddles there. When I rode down the narrow path between buildings and turned the corner I was astonished to see a torrent of red water rushing down the wadi below my house. I’d never seen water in it before. I pedaled on along paths that were fairly slick with mud and filled with water in the ruts. When I got to the main road, a piste (dirt and gravel), streams of water were running down the two tracks. I was already pretty wet and pretty cold. I dearly wished for the gloves I bought at souq yesterday and promptly lost.

I began to think about how miserable I was going to be in class, cold and wet in the unheated schoolrooms, trying to be energetic and interesting to kids who were probably also cold and wet and hunched up braving the cold. But then salvation occurred, of a sort. I got to the bottom of the hill that separates my town from the neighboring village and another torrent, about ten yards wide and a couple of feet deep was rushing across the road. I’d never seen water here before either. I got off my bike and studied the terrain to see if there was a place where I might wade across. None in sight. Even if I did make it across, I still had another two kilometers to go. I knew there were a couple places ahead that habitually turned into streams during a rain. I figured they would be full too, and decided to turn around and go home.

The road was flooded and there was no good place to
ford the stream

There’s no phone at the school and I didn’t have any of the teachers’ cell phone numbers. I felt bad that I would just not be showing up, but I hoped the teachers would figure out what had happened. Shortly after I got home, Rachid and Fatima, one of my host brothers and sisters, knocked on my door. They came in, shoulders hunched, muttering “asmid” (cold) and “tagut” (rain). While we warmed ourselves over glasses of tea I told them I hadn’t gone to school because of the rain.

“Oh, there’s no school today,” they said, “not with a rain like this.”

In Michigan, we get snow days off when the snow makes it impossible or dangerous to go to school. I never imagined that here in Morocco I would get the equivalent – a rain day. And just as I would if it were a snow day, I’m reveling in it. At this moment, I’m bundled up in dry clothes, sitting at my desk, with a little space heater –the only non-sun-assisted heat in this large house of mine – warming my feet. I’m toasty, and the burden of guilt I was feeling for not showing up at school has been lifted from my shoulders. A rain day. Another thing to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.

Leaves are changing color...

…and Other Stuff

It’s fall (lxrif) here, just as in the States. The weather has definitely changed. With all the precipitation of the last week, the Atlas Mountains have acquired a mantle of snow they won’t shed till next April or May. Here in the valley, the leaves have begun to change and fall. And, though it seems like just a few weeks ago that I was sleeping with just a sheet over me, I now wear longjohns and flannel pajamas to bed and I’ve discovered why people in the olden days used to wear sleeping caps and socks. Yesterday at souk, I bought a knit cap to keep my bald head warm at night and also bought two more blankets to add to the two I already had. I think – I hope - that’ll be enough.

Here’s a link to Peace Corps Postcards, a project to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the Peace Corps. In it you’ll find some short videos of current Peace Corps Volunteers and see what wonderful, creative work they do. It includes two “post cards” from Morocco, one of a hip-hop group, another of a baseball team.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

The fig trees shedded their leaves in just a few days. Townspeople have
gathered them and chopped them up for animal feed. Not much goes
unused here.

Fall means pomegranates, limes, these small oranges
(about the size of a lime), and apples are in season.



My house revealed its leaks this morning - several
of them. Fortunately, like this one, they were all
over bare concrete.




























The preferred method of sweeping is with this natural broom
called ifssi - not surprisingly, the word for shrub.






















The Atlas Mountains are capped now in snow, probably till April or May.