Training: Octoberish

My CBT (Community Based Training) group made up of 4 other PCT’s(Peace Corps Trainees) was assigned to do our training in a small Berber farming village named Zaouiat Sidi Abdessalam located in the Middle Atlas Mountains. It is recorded that there are 240 households here and I am almost sure more animals than people. Inhabitants are believed to be related to the founder of the site, Sidi Abdessalam.

Abdessalam reportedly was a very religious man who decided to move away and live in solitude. He found this scenic landscape in a little valley with a stream running through its heart and decided to set up his abode. In intervals his family followed him to this site and when he died they erected a modest sized mausoleum on site which is still visited. It has been customary for inhabitants of Zaouiat to marry within the family and most people here are either married to first cousins or friends of relatives. Zaouiat in all its forms illustrates a collectivist community in which one looks out for the other.

Zaouiat feels like one large house and people walk around visiting each other unannounced and sit for hours drinking tea and conversing about the weather, how three cows died the night before due to cold and if one’s family is well. Due to the comfort of everyone being comfortable with one another, women here walk around in pajamas unless they go into the nearby cities for shopping in which they outfit themselves in jelabbas. Another characteristic of women’s dress here is a bath towel fastened onto their shoulders cloaked over their front acting as an apron and another defense against the cold. Men here on the other hand appear to be more modernly dressed and enjoy wearing various track suits and the young ones are fitted in the classic white and black converse. Since men have more freedom to travel and are generally the ones who go to the cities it only seems to make sense they would be more contemporarily dressed.

When my community based training group (CBT) and our Language, Cultural Facilitator (LCF) arrived into Zaouiat we were all delivered like babies in a basket to our home stay families. Everyone was very nice to us but with our limited vocabulary it was difficult to explain ourselves. We arrived with a vocabulary bank of 5 or so words which couldn’t get us past “Thank you” and “How are you?”. The first day I walked around with a little notebook and pen recording everything I could point to. At arrival, two of the home stay families pulled out last minute and two of the girls in my CBT group were periodically destitute. Fortunately within fifteen minutes of inquiry two families graciously opened their homes to them and we all were successfully placed within a family. We all were fortunately only a few steps away from one another. My family consists of my mother father and my 15 year old brother. I have three sisters. One is 23 and lives and works in Ifran, another is 20 and lives in Meknes and one is 22 and lives in Zaouiat with her husband. After briefly settling into our housing situation we went straight to our LCF’s house to being language lessons and make lunch.

During the time which we arrived, the whole community of Zaouiat was fasting for Ramadan and we had difficulty finding bread. An endearing woman over heard that we were in need of bread and she brought out a fresh loaf she had just baked to give to us. For a people who are said to live in poverty, the hospitality emanated is rich in quantity and quality. From the beginning our group felt welcomed and protected by the community. Everyone’s host mothers even insisted on accompanying us to class on the first day, afraid and assured that we would get lost despite literally being around the corner from where we all lived.