Home sweet home

I just got back from my first long absence from site. I was gone for about 2 weeks, traveling to and from and working at spring camp. One of the things that Youth Development volunteers do for the Ministry of Youth and Sport (for whom I work) is attend English language immersion camps. In the spring, the volunteers are spread out around the country at various locations, but we are all at the same camp for the summer. I was sent to a town about an hour outside of Casablanca. I think it might have been my first experience with culture shock in Morocco.

I have been getting used to the culture of my site for the last 4 months. My town is reasonably conservative; parties are always separated by gender, the other volunteers and I have gotten used to always being the only women at the café, most women wear a large, black, full-body wrap when they go outside, and even men wearing shorts is considered by many to be inappropriate. So I was a bit surprised to be confronted with campers at the camp wearing tank tops, dancing in mixed company, and the most shockingest of all, kissing cheeks of the opposite sex (including us!) to say goodbye on the last day. I was like a fish out of water among them. I didn’t know how to act. My Moroccan side was feeling scandalized by it all, my American side was thinking how much worse it must have been to watch me and my friends at that age (I think I would faint if I had to chaperone a Maret go-go), and I just sort of sat there with wide eyes wondering what people from my town would think if they could see me.

And now a major success story: Yesterday I went to have couscous at my host family’s house, like I do every Friday. I was standing in the kitchen with my host mom and her sister, talking, making couscous, etc. Then my host mom told me a fabulous tale about Ayman, the 7 year-old son of her brother, who lives in the house next door. He’s a great kid. He always runs up and greets me with a big, sloppy kiss. He speaks really quickly so I rarely understand anything he says, but he’s wonderful nevertheless. He told me once about how you can go knocking on the doors of the RVs that tourists from Europe drive down here and camp out in town and say “Bonjour, je voudrais bon-bon” and they give you candy. He suggested we go do it, but I thought it unlikely that they would give me any candy, so we just stayed at home. Anyway, while I was at camp apparently a neighbor was asking Ayman about the taromit (foreigner) staying at the house. Asking where she was, or something like that. Ayman said “What taromit?” The neighbor again asked about the foreigner, specifically alluding to me and Ayman said “Oh, Brooke? She’s not taromit.” So it’s official, in the eyes of one 7 year-old boy, I am no longer a foreigner.