Saturday, October 30, 2010

Ruth and the Super Exciting Trip to Kech

So, currently I am on a coach (the most scary coach ever, but I have a modem, yay!) to Marrakech. We've just departed a beautiful city called Beni Mel'al, which has the most amazing mountainous backdrop.

To backtrack - the last 24 hours have been a bit nuts - we all found out our final site assignments last night, and I think I lucked out once again! My douar is called Ain Chaib (Sha-yab), which is all the waaaaay down South. I'm in a town of 1600 people (which sounds perfect), 2 km from another, bigger town, Ouled Teima (which is on Google Maps!) and is about 60,000 people, and I will be less than an hour from Agadir! Agadir is one of the big beach towns in Morocco, a tourist site for sure, but I'm sure will be great for getting away. Ouled Teima sounds like it has a lot of commodities that'll come in handy, banks and the such, but I'm excited and glad to be somewhere slightly smaller. The next week is going to be very interesting and exciting!

The work that I will be doing looks to be with a group of women that produce I think wire crochet goods, but there's also argon oil, ceramics, leather making and tailoring in the area. I'm super excited, and I'm plan on coming back an expert in crocheting. I spoke to a PCV who's COSing next month who knows my town and the current PCV there, and she said it's a group of amazing women, super motivated, and making great product, so I'm excited to get involved. And sounds like there's a fair bit of opportunity for things like teaching, and other secondary projects. There are a number of other PCV's in the area (not in the same town) but 4 or 5 within about an hour of me.

So, as I said, I'm now on a coach to Kech, which is about 3 hours from my final site. We (who is me and 2 other PCT's who are in the same general area) will stay the night, and we're hearing reports that there are a number of Youth Development trainees also staying there tonight, so we'll be able to have some good catch up with them. Tomorrow I will make the rest of the trip (on my own, in darija - oh yes!), from Kech to Agadir, and then into Ain Chaib, to meet my new host family.

Unfortunately, all the way in the south, I'm far from most other people in our SBD group, and from most of the people in my CBT... boo. But, last time I checked, people always want to come to the beach, so hopefully I'll have lots of visitors.

That's all for now, before the computer dies, but I'll be sure to give another update soon - complete with pictures of Marrakech!

xoxo

1 comment:

  1. Welcome to our area! My wife and I are in the next town over (Ouled Teima). We are excited to get to meet you! You are honestly so close to us you are pretty much our site mate! We will meet very soon! MarHaba!

    ReplyDelete