Salaamu Alikum (that's hello) from Morocco

 Our long plane ride (20 hours from arrival at BWI to Rabat) was largely uneventful. We met up with two volunteers in Paris and were met by the CCS director and driver at the airport. The ride to the home base was about 30 minutes. We are in an upscale neighborhood with lots of beautiful homes, trees and gardens. The home base is lovely. It belonged to a Spanish ambassador at one time and now CCS rents it for $3000/month. Harold and I have a room on the first floor next to “our” bathroom. The bedroom has two sets of bunk beds and lots of storage. There are four bedrooms and four bathrooms on the second floor (several with decks overlooking the large, well-maintained gardens). There is also a large dorm-like room in the basement but no one is there now. There are two women volunteers who came many weeks ago; they are away for the weekend so we haven’t me them yet. There are nine of us new volunteers-eight women and Harold! Poor guy! Two are from Canada, one from Australia and the rest from the U.S.

The Home Base

After we arrived we had our first glass of mint tea – so delicious and refreshing – and our first “bread” called msmn (that's correct - no vowels). We toured the house, got settled in, and chatted with the others. Our first dinner was wonderful – lots of local vegetable/bean/lentil dishes cooked with spices such as cumin, coriander and local paprika. There was also a meatball and cheese dish cooked in a tajine. A tajine consists of two parts: a base unit that is flat and circular with low sides and a large cone or dome-shaped cover that sits on the base during cooking.

Dinner - notice the two tajines

Mohamed, the CCS director, gave an introductory talk. He told us that CCS Morocco began April 14, 2007 and has had 1100 volunteers. Then, we were introduced to the rest of the staff, many of whom speak perfect English after having worked with Peace Corp volunteers in Morocco.

After a fairly good night’s sleep, we had breakfast in the sunny garden. We then met with the program director to hear about our placements. There are four: a children’s hospital (there are only two in Morocco) where four volunteers will work to entertain the children who are awaiting treatments; IBNY, a school for street children where two volunteers will be “teaching” 3-5 year olds; East West Foundation where Harold and two other volunteers will teach English to some Moroccan youth and others who are sub-Sahara refugees; and finally, Feminin Pluriel , where another volunteer and I will teach English to women. More about our placements in the coming days/weeks.

Following another wonderful lunch, we had our first Arabic language lesson. We had free time to walk around the area and discovered the nearby banks, food stores, bakeries, and ice cream parlors!  Now it is almost time for dinner. B’slama for now.