Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Ruth and the Advent of Nura

Nura is my Moroccan name - and that's Nura with a rolling R to you. Ruth is too hard to pronounce, so Nura I will be for the next two years!

We left Mehdya this morning and were bussed ~4 hours to our hub site, which is further inland - about an hour south of Fes. While driving the scenery all changed - we're now up a lot higher, and closer to the mountains - which also means colder! It's not cold at the moment, but definitely cooler, especially at night. And apparently we're also in thunderstorm country - massive storm this evening, which led to power being out for a good chunk of the evening.

I met my host family, who seem great, although I can't communicate with them a whole lot. My host-dad is the šeyx of the town (pronounced shechk) which is an elected position in Moroccan hierarchy. It means that he reports to the official above him all the goings-ons of the town - so he knows everything. My host-mum is a housewife, and her son and his wife also live in the house, although I only my host-brother very briefly tonight. Lucky for me there is a western toilet in the house - although I did use a Turkish toilet today during a gas station break. That was fun. I'm not going in to the details, but let's just say I'm very happy with having a western toilet for the next two months. And sorry, but I'm sticking with toilet paper until I feel braver.

We had lunch at the hub site, which is where we will go be every couple of weeks or so, for training with the program leaders, and follow up shots (more Rabies this Friday - woohoo!) and then left all the other SBD volunteers to go to our CBT sites in our individual groups. So, six of us (seven including our LCF) crammed in to two taxi, with a bunch of luggage and made the 30 minute drive to our town. And we saw monkeys on the way up here! There are tons of animals around everywhere - donkeys, kittens, dogs, sheep, chickens, roosters…

I don't have easy internet access in my CBT site just a small cyber cafe, which I will be able to get to once/twice a week. But, then you'll get several blog entries all at once.

R./N.

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