Words I put into sentences......

Sorry that I have not posted in a while. I could make up a ton of excuses as to why but to be honest I haven’t really felt like it and I sort of have been forgetting. But any who here is a story to hold you all over until I actually sit down and write down some new stuff. That post will be soon I promise! 

I wrote the following article for a newsletter that another volunteer puts out.

A Whole New Morocco….One Year In

By: Socorra Camposanto

Environment Volunteer 2010-2012

 

 

I’ve been in Morocco for a little over a year (13 months to be exact). I came to country in March of 2010 and since then I have been inundated with information that I don’t understand. Everything from culture, language, gender roles, transportation, food etc, was all different and new. And over the past year I have come to grips shwiya b shwiya (little by little) with the differences between Morocco and America, the good and the bad.

 

I live in Guefait which is a fairly conservative community about an hour and a half south of Oujda in the Oriental region of Morocco. Women tend to stay in their homes doing the usual housework, cooking and taking care of the children, while the men work outside tending to the fields.  Since coming to Guefait I have made a lot of friends in my neighborhood, mainly little girls. We all sit outside of my house and play soccer, sing songs and they tell me about their days. After a little while I began to notice that the age range of these girls who I hangout with were between the ages of 5 and 13 years old haha. Girls who are 13 and over seem to just hangout and watch but never participate. So for the past year I have been used to girls being this way and since I don’t spend much time in the city, this is all I knew and could reference to. Even when I lived near Ouarzazate in the south of Morocco, girls tended to act the same way.

 

This all changed when I worked Spring Camp just this past week in Figuig. Figuig is about 6 hours south-east of Oujda near the Algerian border. It’s a beautiful place where the people are mainly Berber and speak Tamazight. I would definitely recommend hitting up Figuig if Morocco is on your travel list!!! See the picture below.

 

Anyway, back to the girls of Figuig. I expected girls to act the same as they do in my site and could not believe how wrong I was! First of all, everyone in Figuig seems to have bicycles and rides around everywhere. This is very different from my site where although we have a paved main road, few people have bicycles. I think I am one of the few people in my site who rides his or her bicycle around! Seeing all the kids riding their bicycles reminded me of something out of the Sandlot and a sign that summer was soon approaching. I loved it!

 

As I said before my experience with young women in Morocco has mainly been with the timid and shy type but not in Figuig. These girls are feisty, sporty, hangout with the boys, speak their minds and wear clothes I’ve never seen other girls in Morocco wear. Of course no tank-tops or shorts but they definitely seemed to have a style all their own. Two girls in particular probably between the ages of 15-17 years old, the first couple of days were rocking trucker hats backwards and playing volleyball and football with the other kids and Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). I didn’t know what to think but here were girls that I could relate to a little more, girls who rocked a tom-boy style and who liked playing sports. No one looked the same, even the veiled- girls didn’t act quite as I expected and maybe this had something to do with being at camp but still, the change was awesome!

 

 

Many times I find it difficult to connect with young women in Morocco because on the surface we don’t seem to have anything in common to use as conversation starters. Plus I can be loud and crazy and most young Moroccan women and girls that I’ve met are the complete opposite of me. Not to say that there isn’t something deeper there but it’s just hard to get to and sometimes I never do. But here I was in Figuig where these girls dressed more like me, talked more like me (although in Arabic/Tamazight), acted more like me etc. And although I am 24 years old and these girls are 19 and under, I felt more of a connection with these girls than I ever had before in Morocco.

 

One night during camp I called a good friend of mine, Jackie, who was doing camp in Ouarzazate and we talked about how camp was going and the kids etc. She had kids from Rabat and Casablanca coming down to Ouarzazate for camp and she talked about how much of a culture shock it was for her because they were city girls and Jackie lives in a small Berber community and speaks Tashleight (another Berber language). I told her about the girls in Figuig and we both agreed that it was a whole new Morocco for us. A year in and we are still finding out new things about Morocco every new place we travel to.

 

Another girl I met, Meriam who is 17 years old told me that she wants to go to university in Rabat to become a sports teacher. I told her, “Wow Rabat is so far from Figuig” and she said “But that is where I want to go. They have good programs for sports teachers there.” She also told me about wanting to go to an English speaking country like America or England to improve on her English but that her mother won’t let her go. She had a look in her eye that she was going to keep trying to change her mother’s mind and that hopefully sooner or later she was going to get her chance.

 

And right there is one of the most interesting parts about Morocco. Just when you think you’ve seen it all in a culture that seems very homogeneous all over the country, you find these differences and of course you notice them right away. I’m not saying that conservative quiet girls and young women are bad or boring, no not at all, but it was nice to see another side of women in Morocco. Since gender roles are very important in Morocco it was interesting to see the girls of Figuig and try to imagine how their lives would turn out in the future and if they would keep their spunk, curiosity and courage. I certainly hope so!

 

A view of the southern part of Figuig and in the distance behind the mountain, Algeria. Photo courtesy of Ina Boatwright, Small Business Development Peace Corps Volunteer in Figuig.