New blog baby! Thought it had been long enough and time for some new spice in this thing.
In my site and so far in my service, it has not been well understood what my purpose is here in Morocco. The job title I work under is “Health volunteer,” and I can claim to work for the Ministry of health here in Morocco. But what sort of work is paper clipped onto my vague title? There is a project outline given to us by the ministry of health. We are technically supposed to talk to “x” amount of women about birthing routines (when to go to the local clinic, when and what shots they need before and after birth, why breastfeeding is so important), talk to “x” amount of families about general hygiene/family planning (How to cook your food, wash you face and hands with soap, etc.), and try to educate or train “x” amount of health workers to do traditional health work (i.e. train traditional birth attendants). But even this leaves something to the imagination.
The health sector of the Peace Corps can be extremely difficult because our work isn’t always clearly defined. Yes, we are told “x” amount of people should be trained in sanitation, but how does one go about starting a bathroom project or assessing that a village even needs such a project? We are largely given handbooks on doing grassroots assessments of our communities and bits and pieces of how to do other projects, but the rest (figuring out logistics, deciding budgets, figuring out who to go to for supplies or ideas) is left to the imagination. Although this is difficult, I can’t really complain, after all, didn’t I just spend four years of my life learning how to educate myself on new topics, think creatively, and problem solve? Isn’t that the basis of a college education (I guess I left out writing, but I’ll leave my skills up to you to decide)? So what have I done in the five months I’ve been here and what do I plan to do?
For the past five months, I’ve been creating a sort of routine that varies day to day, but here it is. I work in the mornings in a local sbitar (a local clinic) with an English/Arabic speaking doctor who doesn’t know Tamazight and a Tamazight/Arabic speaking nurse. The nurse is in charge of giving immunizations and taking blood samples while the doctor is in charge of diagnosing and prescribing medication. My job is to try and talk to the women that come in about general hygiene and all that was said above. Unfortunately most of these women travel outside their duar (neighborhood) only once in a blue moon and never really have to think about listening for another person’s accent when speaking their language. This results In a bunch of confused tribal women who can’t understand the annoying white guy who won’t give them their medicine. But to each his own, soon enough I will get this language and people will have some idea of what I’m trying to talk about. After lunch I take about 4-5 hours just trying not to freak out in my house while reading books, cooking, and studying. After that I may wander around trying to talk to people to practice the language and build community trust.
Now that you’ve seen the short term, lets look at the long term of what I’ve done. As part of the new PC training plan, I’ve spent the first few months just trying to learn the language, getting to know the people, and getting to know the problems, needs, and wants of the community. The past two months have been a lot of sitting around being hungry and tired (thanks Ramadan!) and recently trying to assess my community and get some projects off the ground. By assessing, I mean talking to the community and just seeing what the complaints are. Because of gender roles I mainly talk to men and have heard there plights. This includes:
1.) Lack of nutrition: Most of the people here eat potatoes, bread, some carrots, onions, and if you’re lucky, some tomatoes and peppers. Very few people have fruit, although I’ve been seeing more apples since they’ve come into season.
2.) Lack of education: The younger generation is learning to read, write, and count. But the distance of schools only allows for education up to the 5th or 6th grade. Most of the older men and almost all of the older women don’t know how to read or write. In fact, most of the women don’t even know Moroccan Arabic, the standard of language here. I’m assuming that this is because of the lack of schooling in the past, but this new generation seems promising.
3.) Lack of sanitation: Very few people have bathrooms here resulting in people having to go outside to use the bathroom. This could be a huge problem as many of the kids run around barefoot and could aquire a hook worm from the human feces that is dropped around. Also, what do you do if you have your period? This is a question I’m waiting for a female volunteer to ask. Needless to say, bathrooms are required.
4.) Lack of cafes: Don’t hold your breath!
My plan of attack is this: Do some small scale projects that can be repeated throughout the two years I’m here, and focus on doing one larger project. This means trying to do health education and English lessons once a week in the schools while working to get a women’s literacy project and a bathroom project going. Unfortunately everything moves slowly in this place and something that would take me a day to do in America can take me a month here. One example is my encounter with the school system so far. I waited all day for the new director of the schools in my commune to show up today so I could get permission to speak in the schools. Unfortunately he never showed up and I have no way of reaching him, especially since he lives somewhere hundreds of kilometers out and I don’t even know his name, let alone his number. My best chance is to talk to the Moqadam (town know-it-all) or to the new school teachers that just arrived in Anemzi to see how I can get in touch with this director. Of course, if this was America I could just look the director up on the internet and call him in under ten minutes. But I suppose that’s part of the adventure of living in a third world country.
Anyway I will let you in on what develops after this crazy system works itself out. Thanks for tuning in, and now you have a taste for what it’s like to work as a health volunteer for the PC.
