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Profile Information
- About me:
- Hello! I am Audrey, I love the outdoors and photography!
- CCS Volunteer Status:
- Enrolled Volunteer
- Length of Volunteer Program Stay:
- 3-4 weeks
- Date I Volunteered or Will Be Volunteering
- December 20, 2008
- Region/s of Interest
- Morocco
- Volunteer Interests:
- Caring for Infants & Children, Teaching Children, Teaching English, Assisting Teachers, Working with People Affected by HIV/AIDS, Working toward Women's Empowerment, Sharing Professional Skills/Experience
- Occupation:
- U.S. Forest Service, Human Resources Department
- School or University Attended:
- Folsom Lake Community College
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Comment Wall (4 comments)
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Yes, definitely do the desert. Even just one night is bliss. I must admit that I re-used some of my Morocco comments from a previous e-mail. Still, I gotta encourage everyone to go. It's a great country. Also, I loved the book The Caliph's House.Great to hear from you! I know...your trip is coming so soon! Seriously..I can't even tell you how much you're going to adore Morocco. It's such a beautiful country in every way...such a peaceful, lovely place.
Have you started reading any books about Morocco? There are so so many great ones! You probably have read a bunch already...but if you haven't, please start with "Dreams of Trespass" and "Caliph's House." They're both on amazon and they will definitely get you in the Moroccan frame of mind!
Let me know if I can help!
Shokran,
Sharon
Morocco was a delight.
Our only minor complaint is that the CCS home base is in a suburb and it was easy to let the isolation become a comfort. Living that far out of the centre of Rabat and being so well looked after by the staff had the surprising effect of dramatically reducing our interaction with the general populous, and since Moroccan society is so different from home, we easily slipped into the habit of just relaxing away our evenings at the home base. If I had to do anything different, I would have jumped in a cab a half-dozen times during our three weeks and just gone somewhere in or around Rabat to explore.
That being said, the staff did get us out to some interesting local tourist sites. But traipsing around in a minivan with eight other Westerners is not the most enjoyable way to do that, in my book, anyway.
My wife and I volunteered for three weeks, so we had two weekend adventures and I recommend them both. We spent one weekend in Meknes, which was a truly enjoyable city to explore. There’s a restaurant deep in the maze of the old city that I insist you try if you do go to Meknes. Absolutely incredible location and great food. I’ll dig up the name somewhere.
Outside of Meknes is Volubulos, a ruined Roman city and I do mean city. We walked the streets and oooooohed over the mosaics for hours. Volubulos is about 25 km (15 miles) outside of Meknes and our hotel organized a taxi for us, no problem. We stayed at Volubulos about two hours, but if you were able, I’d try for more time, even a picnic, because you just don’t get to visit a ruin that’s a full city very often. And it’s a lot of walking. The place is a couple of square kilometres of Roman ruins. Back in Rabat, there’s a museum with all the Volubulos archeological finds that is the best museum we found in Morocco (they don’t really have a lot of artefacts in their society). The home-base staff will take you to the museum, but we found it was better on our own. We arrived during opening hours and it appeared to be closed but we were persistent and tried every door to the museum until someone finally popped over from the nearest bar (I think) and let us in. We had the place to ourselves for awhile and got a surprisingly good guided tour as well.
Our second weekend was a weekend-long trip to the desert to spend a night with the Berbers, organized by the home base staff. Do not miss this. My mind still drifts there to this day and the thought of the moonrise over the dunes makes me shiver as I type this. Take a small digital camera, sit in the front passenger seat and shoot out the window (lens against the glass) the whole way. Stunning. If I can figure it out I’ll attach a picture.
After our volunteering we went on a weeklong driving holiday to Essaouira, which was definitely worth a week. Again, I’ll look up our hotel name, if you like. To split up the driving, we stopped in El Jadida which is a nice city with a Portuguese fort about half way to Essaouira.
On a social level, be prepared for a shock. It hit home for us when we witnessed a man in the street verbally harassing a professional-looking Morrocan woman because her hair wasn’t covered. It’s possible to not encounter this kind of attitude, but it’s there and it’s probably a good idea to think of Morroco as being from another century. Expect the unexpected.
The volunteering is pretty straightforward, but be forewarned, half a day of volunteering is surprisingly wearing on your mind and body. I think that’s why we lounged so much at the home base. I was placed at the children's hospital. It's huge and the kids were either in a cancer ward (therefore, long-term stays) or in the respiratory ward (slightly less long-term, but still lengthy). Surprisingly, you're really there to entertain the parents and siblings as much as the ill kids, because they are all there for interminably long periods of weeks and months with little to do. Distract the siblings so the mom gets a break. Distract the mom so the kids get a break. Distract the overworked staff. I found one brilliant technique to share with anyone dealing with kids – always carry a red-foam clown nose. Clowns are a part of their culture and the school officials have clowns visit the schoolkids once a year. Be sensitive, though, some of the more rural patients were a little touchy because of their strong beliefs in spirits and the like. If you're a real showman (showperson), try putting on the foam nose as you enter from the hospital parking lot to the sick ward. For supplies, I recommend crayons because, unless you are multi-lingual, colouring will probably be the closest you come to sustained conversation. Bring the simplest colouring books you can find, with big black borders. The youngest kids will be able to scribble in them and the older ones will know to trace the images to conserve your supplies. This hospital houses kids from every region, including the most remote, poor areas. I taught one kid to colour since I don't think she'd every seen a toy. To help you communicate, somewhere in Rabat you might be able to find a French-English-Arab translating dictionary. The triple-language version would be way better than just English-Arab, but that would do in a pinch. Toy cars are popular, up to about six inches long. I played with several really sick kids on their beds and you need six-inch-long cars in that situation. The home base has lots of supplies. Don't sweat it if you're not prepared. The kids will just be glad you're there.
Have fun. Say hi to Mohammed and Khadija and Ismael and Simon and Abdul and Loubna. They were great hosts.
Bob R.
All the Best,
Mary