Hello Maroc

We are very happy to be here in Morocco. We never really thought that our trip would take us to Africa where we would learn to speak Derija (Moroccan dialect of Arabic)! We feel a little surprised to be here despite the fact that we had been planning to come here for a least a month before arriving and have been here two weeks already.

 Brandon is in the kitchen now making bread pudding in a Tagine (the clay conelike pot that many Moroccan dishes are made in). The round 12,” thin loaf of bread came from our neighbors from whom we buy bread everyday and the milk came from another neighbor’s cow. The bread is eaten with every meal. At meal times we eat from a large communal plate and use small pieces of bread in the first three fingers of our right hand to scoop up small bites. It’s a really nice way of eating slowly!

We feel very lucky to be here and to be able to live with the people in this village as their neighbors. They are incredibly kind and giving. The first day we were here in Farraha, one of our neighbors came by around lunch time and brought us a platter with bread, two bowls of homemade yogurt with a kind of wheat cereal in it and a plate of French fries! Brandon was ecstatic about the French fries. People here are very worried that we won’t be able to feed ourselves.

 During the day we work at the center which is a 5 minute walk along a trail. The view from the center is amazing! Clearly our limited knowledge about Morocco did not prepare us for the lush, beautiful, green foothills dotted with olive trees that surround us on all sides. Despite the green, however, the countryside has been in dire need of rain which makes itself very apparent in the diminishing level of rainwater in the catchments that feed the toilets and bathroom sinks at the center. The center is a newly built building for the children of the area to come after school. Jennifer has been working with the founder of the center to create a self-sustainable system for the center that can exist with or without her and with or without volunteers. The idea is to create an after school center where the children have a quiet place to work but also to create a place where they can develop their curiosity and thirst for knowledge.





Everyday is a different type of adventure. Language is a funny thing as everyone speaks Derija, an Arabic dialect, and some people speak a bit of French. Our language of comfort has become French. How strange, especially since neither of us speak it comfortably. Sometimes it feels like driving out of control in an arcade car racing game. The only way is forward and even if you take the turns too close and smash into the rocks you can still get up and keep racing.