Not to be repetitive of other PCVs posts, but the schedule went a little something like this:
I'll be using italics to differentiate Marrakech camp's idiosyncrasies from the other camps.
7:00 am - Wake up call and shower time
This involved the Mudir's freaking cute but super obnoxious 8 year old blowing a whistle and knocking on every door until a quarter to 8.
Showers consisted of either coldstream or lukewarm chugging.
Awkward.
8:00 am - Breakfast
8:00 really meant line up in militaristic fashion singing at least a handful of clap-based songs before a ear-drum destroying rendition of the Moroccan National Anthem. Breakfast actually happened around quarter to 9 and consisted of dense baguette with jam and diabetes inducing coffee, for which there was only 4 glasses to a table of 10.
9:00 am - 11:00 am - English Classes
They usually started around quarter past but were great fun once they started. I was a drifter during this time so spent each day with a different level which was a great way to get to know all the kids at camp and not just one class. Activities included poetry writing, short story reading, superstition discussion, tongue twisters, and the like.
11:15 am - 12:30 pm - Sports
Being in Kech offered the unique and pretty badass opportunity to use the El Harti Stadium as our place of recreation. It was located just next to the Centre D'Accueil, where the camp was held, so we spent each day playing soccer, frisbee, and American football at the professional field.
1:00 pm - 3:30 pm - Lunch and Siesta
Lunch time was generally the tastiest meal of the day, but as we had 75 kids and around 15 staff, the food was stretched and pretty repetitive. We had a starter of 'smida', the English equivalent being 'gruel', and a main of some sort of questionable meat product and rice. The redeeming factor was the tastiest apples I've had in country. Massive, juicy, and not mushy. Thus, most likely imported. Siesta time usually involved the six of us PCVs huddling around a mini-comp watching The Office with questionable volume control. I'm so happy PB&J are finally together!
3:30 - 5:30 - Club Time
Our camp offered the following choices: dance, theatre, trust games & oragami, and the environment. Now, as you've probably guessed, I manned the environment club, yet not by choice, I was 'Brendaned'*. Our entire camp was environment themed, our field trip was to a water treatment plant, and we had two viewings of environmentally themed movies. I freaking worked for Greenpeace and I was over the environment by the end of the day. Though 9 very sweet kids were down for my club and we had a good time. Yay for the water cycle song!
5:30 - 7:00 - Insert random activity here
In Kech this usually meant the Moroccan staff took over and did some sort of trivia game in Arabic, or a walk in the park, or one day, much to the surprise and bafflement of the PCV staff, they began to circle up on the floor and place a bottle at the centre... now what would you think was going down?? Apparently 'spin the bottle' takes on more of a truth or dare without the dare type model in Morocco. The person who spins asks the person who it lands on some silly teenage giggle-induced question. Still relatively inappropriate and staff stepped in to set some ground rules after one girl answered she has had 16 boyfriends. Awkward.
7:00 - 9:00 - Dinner and general chill out time
Dinner sometimes made it out by 8 or 8:30, but it was always a surprise. Dinner was generally as lack luster as lunch, but on the last day we definitely had some couscous and hariria. Totally made up for the carb overload we ingested earlier in the week.
9:00 - 11:00 - Fun activity time
Okay, so, as I mentioned start times were totally up for interpretation in Kech, most of the activities scheduled for a start at 9, usually started at like 11. So talent shoes, movie nights, closing ceremonies, usually continued until around 12 or 12:30 am. Kill me. Around the midnight mark I was already cursing the little boy's presence with the whistle the following morning.
All in all, our camp ran pretty damn smoothly. No arms were broken, no alcohol drunk, no girl's got pregnant... insha'allah. One girl got her laptop stolen, but apparently the room was left unlocked, so whoopsie. Saturday morning was definitely a sob-fest, however. I've never seen that many people simultaneously weep outside of a funeral. The most ridiculous part is that most of the kids live in Marrakech. I mean, suck it up. She lives like 15 minutes across town honey, invite her over for dinner next week. The kids were great though, some of them I really adored, and six of them happened to be from Sedona-miz, so that was a pleasant surprise.
Highlights include:
Singing songs on the bus to and from the water treatment plant fieldtrip. Edit: singing songs always.
Muriel, the oldest serving PCV in the entire world at 85, calling Brendan a 'pain in the ass' and following it with the fact she's never told anybody that before. In 85 years.
Teaching kids how to Ceilidh in the dance club.
Having a couple lessons on poetry and haikus and having them desperately want to share them with the class.
Learning more Moroccan camp songs than I think we taught them in English.
All in all - success.
*The term being 'Brendaned' relates to the fact that Brendan was a few hours late in arriving to camp the first day, so thus got stuck with the stuff nobody else wanted to do. Thus, the rest of the week, whenever someone got last pick or stuck in a shitty situation, they were therefore 'Brendaned'. Ex: Aw man, I was just using the bathroom and I totally got Brendaned. Now I have to supervise movie night.
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