Friday, August 26, 2011

Water Deprivation

This past month has been full of a lot of water deprivation. Not only has Ramadan been in full effect, but other situations have arisen this past month concerning my water supply. The chateau that supplies my house with two spickets of running water typically goes dry mid-day because the supply is too low for the town in the summer due to a lack of rain, but that typically clears up by evening. In another instance, however, I had a pipe burst near my house and I was without running water for a much more significant amount of time and had to resort to carting buckets of water from a nearby well. You don’t realize till you have no water how much you use it and need it. Cooking and drinking water wasn’t so much the problem as was needing water to wash dishes, clothes, hands, body and flush the toilet. And I don’t think I ever fully appreciated how heavy water is until I had to carry it up a hill multiple times.

But onto a different realm of water deprivation—
Ramadan.
Dun Dun Dun.
I’m not going to get into full-fledged details about what Ramadan entails, but the basic gist is that everyone fasts from approximately 430am until 730pm. You cannot eat or drink anything during this time period, nor are smokers allowed to indulge in their cigarettes, music to be played other than those songs with religious affiliation and couples are not permitted to have sexual encounters. I’ve also found that the people, as a whole, are much more dedicated to their mosque attendance and overall praying rituals in their homes. The result of all these factors is a very tired, unmotivated and (sometimes) cranky community. There you go ladies and gents—Ramadan 101.
I decided to take on the beast of Ramadan and attempt fasting, and let me tell you—I don’t blame the community at all for not wanting to work. You are exhausted. (And another reason I found it good to fast is that when you are anywhere but in your house, it is very frowned upon to eat or drink in the presence of anyone who is fasting, so you are basically forced to do it anyways. My friend and I cheated one day while we were out and had to chug some water in an alley way. So scandalous.  And another random fact—Islamic law rules this country. That means that a Moroccan can be arrested if caught eating or drinking during fast hours.) By the end of that first day I was so dazed and infatuated with the thought of water that I just chugged half of my Nalgene when the call of prayer sounded at 730p and ended up with the worst stomach cramp I will probably ever experience in my lifetime (and it didn’t end for at least an hour). My host family poked and prodded at me while I lay curled in a ball on their floor after they told me not to drink my water right away and instead to sip tea and eat bread. Trust me I learned my lesson.
After breaking fast, people tend to go to sleep a little earlier (10 or 11pm. Whereas they usually go to sleep at midnight, in general) and then they awake at 230-3am to make a “dinner-type” meal (i.e. tajine, douez) and then they eat that before the call of prayer at 430am to being fasting again for the day.  After saHor (3am meal) everyone tends to go back to sleep until about 9 and sometimes 10am. The funny and cruel joke of Ramadan is that you don’t lose weight. If anything, you gain it. I’ve found this to be because your metabolism shuts down because you go so long without any food or water, then you stuff yourself with carbs in the evening, sleep a couple hours, stuff yourself with some more carbs at 4am. (This country loves their carbs.) Sleep more with a full stomach. Then you do it all over again.
Everyone and every family acts a little differently though. I have broken fast (the meal is called “lifdur”) with many a family in site. This really is a great time to integrate and build relationships because everyone is so inviting for you to share lifdur with them. At one point I felt like I needed to carry around a sign-up sheet for my community. I am truly starting to build some great connections and I’m finding my “niche” here. My house/apartment is starting to really become a “home” and the familiarity with my community is definitely on a roll.
Speaking of my house—to make a very, VERY long story short—I did not end up staying in the first house I was originally speaking of (look at previous post). My landlord did keep his work and installed a bathroom with running water and electricity. So move-in day came and a good amount of my neighbors helped me transport all of my things down a rocky dirt road from my host family’s to my new and improved mud mansion. (Yep, mud MANSION. It was pretty big. Too big in fact.) Ok, so now it begins—I’m livin on my own, get to finally have some “me” time, eat what I want when I want,  wake up and go to bed when I want, stay in and go out when I please-- Yay.
Wrong.
When I started living in the house, I happened to notice how many bugs had infested the place. Cockroaches, beetles the size of your big toe, centipedes at least 6-inches long, mosquitoes, other bugs I can’t even give a name to, rats, bats….okay, okay, I can handle this. Duh, this is Peace Corps. Well, after only a couple nights in the house I woke up one morning (I had moved around to different rooms of the house to sleep) with hundreds of bites covering my arms, legs, back, sides and even some on my face.
What the hell (to say the least).
After this horrifying realization and the fact that bites kept accumulating, I talked with medical staff, sent them photos and then came to the best conclusion that it was a combination of fleas and bedbugs. I was told I had to clean my entire house (remember me mentioning that it was a “mansion?”) including floors and ceilings. After many a discussion with many a people and after many more bites, it was concluded that this house was in too poor of a condition to ever be rid of the bugs (aka: too old and falling apart). After feeling immense guilt for leaving my landlord with an empty house that he had spent a month’s hard labor on along with many material costs, I moved back with my host family and then was able to find a MUCH better house (technically it is an apartment) at a neighboring community (my previous old house was the only available option in my first community). Needless to say, things have improved tenfold since July. The hassle of moving multiple times, having to wash EVERYTHING I owned and simply the fact that there were bites all of my body made the month of July a challenging one. Even after everything was taken care of I still had a mental fear that I wasn’t rid of the bedbugs. I am still getting bit a lot by mosquitoes and quite possibly other little bugs occasionally, but it is nothing like before. I have conquered that scary chapter of Peace Corps. I also know of other PCVs having traveled and stayed at hotels infested with these demons they call bed bugs, so to say the least, I’m a little paranoid.
Ok on a different note
I've been working on creating surveys and questionnaires to take to my local clinic, commune (“men's association” that facilitates and monitors community affairs) and just around to different neighborhoods and friends to ask them about what changes they would like to see in their community or what they would like to learn more about--health/environment-wise (and I’m trying to do all of this an informally as possible because no one likes to have a piece of paper shoved in their face by a strange foreigner. Especially if they’re illiterate.)
First and foremost though, I am simply trying to get the community to see me as an actual “health worker” and explain more as to why I am living with them here in rural Morocco and what I’m trying to accomplish. The funny thing is that a lot of times, people don’t even acquire as to why I am here. They simply have seen me or heard of me and want me to come spend time with them. Because of the language barrier, it is easy to just tell them, “I work at the sbitar and teach about health.” (The sbitar is their definition of a “hospital” but it is more like a clinic with a nurse or doctor.) However, this really doesn’t justify why I am here. I’ve learned to go in depth about how I am here, in large part, for cultural exchange between Morocco and the United States. Through that exchange and relationship building I’m hoping it will help the people open up to me and shed some light on what they want to see improved in their community. This is all part of the Peace Corps “outline” of how to effectively integrate and execute successful projects. (I mean, Volunteers can choose to work however they want, but Peace Corps gives us general guidelines to help us construct effective project framework. And this organization has been going on for a solid 50 years now, so I like to think they know what they’re talking about.) They always stress how it's important to find out what the community WANTS as opposed to what you think they need.
For example, I really wanted to conduct a series of teaching lessons about garbage and the dangers of littering outside in the environment and have a big trash pickup day (there’s quite a bit of garbage in certain areas of my community) eventually followed by grants funding the installation of garbage bins and burn barrels for the commune and community to control themselves. Phew. BUT none of this is going to work if the community doesn’t want it or care about it. So, first I am just doing a lot of research and community analysis and integration. Maybe one day my whole trash idea will take flight, but who knows, the community may actually really want a series of maternal child health lessons with Ob/Gyn. Doc visits with free paps. I don’t know. To be continued…

On top of this work in my site, I have traveled around to other areas in the country, working at a summer camp teaching health awareness lessons and leadership building skills (on top of usual “camp” activities), went backpacking in the mountains from Tamtatoucht to M’smrir and taught nomads about general hygiene and gave them some basic health products like toothbrushes, toothpaste, bars of soap, and shampoo, and then mid-September I am traveling up north near Imichil to work at a festival  to teach about the risks and factors of high blood pressures as well as getting to use my EMT skills (so glad I got certified before coming here!) and performing blood pressure screenings of the interested festival-goers. Peace Corps also requires random training sessions and regional meetings during our service which have been helpful overall. I had a post-pre-service training (PPST. Gotta love all of the Peace Corps Acronymns. Definitely a Government-run organization) up in the northern region of Morocco in a town called Azrou. This was with my entire health and environment staj. It was great to see everyone. We also will have other trainings together randomly during the rest of our service called IST (In-service training). On top of these, there are regional meetings that are with the volunteers in our same geographical region of the country. These are with volunteers who are all at different stages of their service and from different sectors, such as, small-business development volunteers and youth development volunteers included with the health and environment. 

Well that is just a brief description of what I've been up to. Honestly though, despite this long entry, I do have a decent amount of free time on my hands. Ramadan has been a huge factor to that, but also because of the work pace here and the nature of my work as of right now, is very slow.  I spent two whole days in my house a couple weekends ago, and I’ve got to admit, those were quite possibly some of the weirdest days I've ever had. I don’t think before coming here I was ever secluded to my own being for more than a few hours, let alone two whole days. Being all alone in your head is a very powerful force.
One more thing, to end on a happy note—I got a new nurse at my sbitar! It felt pretty great to hear him tell me that I'm popular amongst my community. It's pretty easy to have a lot of doubts and questions as to what people really think of me. That has to do a lot with language, for starters, and also because I still think that a lot of people are unsure as to why I'm here and that I’m just some random, weird American girl who lives by herself. That's another thing--because that there are so many cultural differences it’s difficult to interpret what some people think of me.  (For example, a 23 year old Moroccan woman from my community would never move to another continent alone and live by herself. It's just a completely foreign concept to them.) But anyways, that's why it felt unbelievably great to get some confirmation from my new nurse that I'm well-liked by the community. I definitely know of certain families and friends that love me to death, but as a whole, it was nice to have some reassurance.

Kudos to you who made it through this whole post!