Unconnected Thoughts Awkwardly Compiled into One Post

“Opposite Day” by Andrew Bird

It sounds really obvious, I’m sure, to say that Peace Corps is a great opportunity for anthropological research. Well, folks, I’m going to go ahead and be really obvious.

I don’t even know where to start. Walking around every day I get so many ideas for research I don’t even know what to do with myself. For instance, I could probably write a huge linguistic/anthro paper on when and why my host brother calls me by my Arabic name (Amal) or my American name (Alli—it’s easier than Allison and now I prefer it). When he’s around kids or at the Dar Chabab he always calls me Alli, which is what the other kids call me. But at home or if it’s just the two of us he typically calls me Amal. It’s like he uses my different names to signify that he is in the “in” crowd at any given time. I feel like calling me “Amal” at the Dar Chabab would be the humiliating equivalent of calling your teacher “mom” in front of all your friends. Not that I’ve ever done that.

Also, I sat in on a French tutoring session at the Dar Chabab this afternoon, and it was truly eye-opening. The same room that I use to make up goofy handshakes, get into yelling matches about why two kids don’t need four basketballs, lose miserably at chess and break into impromptu ballet demonstrations was transformed into a classroom full of quiet, behaved Moroccan children. Same tables, same chairs, same general décor. The only variable that changed was the person standing at the front—a French teacher from the local high school rather than a weird American that makes faces and has no experience teaching English. This may be why my English classes don’t tend to be that effective. It was crazy, though, watching the same kids that scream and run around like maniacs sit still, speak French and even take notes. They’ve been conditioned since they were very young to fear and respect teachers, but they don’t necessarily know how to react to Peace Corps Volunteers. The line between friend and teacher is very blurry—to the point that I don’t even know where I stand. As I sit and reflect with an imaginary pipe hanging loosely from my mouth I wonder if that might be an identity I should work on defining.

Anyway, the French tutoring session served me up a nice two-fer: it gave me a good outlet for thinking ethnographically and simultaneously made me feel incredibly inadequate as a teacher. Good thing I don’t want to be a teacher anyway.

Other things lately: crazzzzzy mood swings. You’d think I was a woman or something. I had a streak of three or four really good days where I felt competent, aware of what the hell was going on and healthy in body and mind. Then Monday came. I woke up to lots of work-related emails that did nothing but make me stress out about my ever-growing to-do list (a list I knowingly force upon myself), then I made the mistake of leaving my house. A poor choice indeed. All I wanted to do was check my mail and instead I got accosted by a creep who’s been bugging me for English lessons. The rest of the day was spent wallowing in my house, stalking people on facebook, getting the latest gossip from the southern half of the country and eating a lot of Triscuits and Teddy Grahams (Dad: stop sending me food. I clearly am not responsible enough to handle it.).

Yesterday was a little better, if not slightly frustrating. We had a planning meeting for an upcoming environmental education activity, and I thought I got all my questions answered/ understood the gist of the meeting pretty well. However, it seems that in the sea of Darija, Fusa (standard Arabic) and French being spoken I totally missed the part where my counterpart said Peace Corps is just going to give us money for the event. Nedi nedi nedi. So I have to go back today and explain that in order to even ASK for money from Peace Corps we’d need to write up a grant proposal, a process I don’t even know how to do yet, and we should have started that months ago, like before I was even in site. All is not lost, there are other financial options, but it’s still pretty frustrating.

One last thing. I’m finally starting to remember some of my dreams, and now that I do I realize why my subconscious never really bothered before. Man, are they boring. The one I remember most vividly involved me trying to borrow a tall man’s bike but not being able to reach the pedals. I politely declined the bike, but the man didn’t understand why, and it dissolved into a pretty scientific discussion of why clown cars are funny and how this situation is the exact opposite. As in, a clown car is hilarious because there is way too much clown per square unit of car, but in the case at hand, there is far too little clown per square unit of car. That’s seriously a dream I had.

Coming up on the calendar: I get a free trip to Rabat! A perk of living near Peace Corps headquarters is that when they are holding some sort of event or training seminar (in this case they are training the new Darija/Tashelheit/Tamazirght teachers for the incoming Health and Environment stage) and they need to bring in a Volunteer they call me and I get to come to Rabat for a day or two, stay in a hotel and eat free food. And all I have to do in exchange is talk a bit about giving and receiving feedback when working with Peace Corps Trainees. Not a bad deal. They invited my friend, Ryan, too, so I will even have some much-needed American company.

The weekend should be pretty nice, too. There is a holiday so I don’t have to work Saturday. Lots of time for lying around my house, watching The Sword in the Stone, and getting some planning out of the way for upcoming projects.