It is early on Saturday morning, way to early to be respectable... before 7 am early. Little sleep was had last night, as seems to be always the case when too much red wine is drunk. We had our first proper night out in town with three of our colleagues. A straight out from work for Friday drinks kind of night... definitely not the done thing in Morocco, but we made it work non the less. We went to the 'pub' with beer garden overlooking the lake. Somewhat disappointingly we were not allowed to sit outside in the empty garden to have a beer and had to sit in the gloomy and empty restaurant style interior where they were blasting out Celine Dion and other dodgy artists. I see a return to my late teens on the horizon, with purchases of coke from the bar to be topped up with vodka from the bag. The early morning and late afternoon weather is too good here at the moment to be cooped up inside on a Friday afternoon.
This weekend is the weekend we needed last weekend. Last week after surviving the first week of school by holding out for the weekend in desperation, we had to go on a school picnic. This was designed to welcome all the parents to the new American/International school system and for them to meet with the teachers on an informal basis. Our community is strange, you bump into your students and parents at every turn, so it is a good idea to break the ice with something fun. Apart from taking up a Saturday we would have liked free for planning and recovery, it was nice to meet new people and play games with the kids. On that note I have found that quite a few of the monsters who were screaming constantly and causing havoc on the playground all those days before school started are now in my class. The one who screamed the loudest is anyway.
Last weekend we went to one of the apartments across the way for a 'carpet educational'. Arranged by some of the foreign teachers it was designed with new teachers in mind as a way of stopping us getting ripped off when we went and bought the inevitable Moroccan carpets. Apparently most people who live here end up developing quite an obsession with carpets and buy far more than they have the space for. The people who went had around twenty huge carpets to sell or swap. It got quite intense at times with many people getting very into their descriptions of 'earth movement', 'joyous rebellion' and even 'women’s womb' representations, but it was lovely to walk through an apartment door and be handed big wine glasses and a bottle of tasty red and welcomed into the fold of a very established social community. There is so much more going in here than you'd expect. Most of it is far more Americanised than I am used to, but this is said in the nicest possible way as people here are remarkably generous. As well as being offered lifts, church money until the bank sorted our ATMs, and the loan of a car, we also had one lady send her husband back from his Friday evening out just to change our gas bottle. She had mentioned in school that her husband usually kept spares and as ours had run out he would swap it and then go and replace it. She forgot to mention this to him until he was halfway to Azrou to watch a local Berber concert. He dropped her off, came back to ours, collected the empty bottle and then went to the marche to get a new one as he didn't have a spare. He then came back, carried it up three flights of stairs, replaced it before accepting only a beer in reward and then drove 20 minutes back to Azrou. It often amazes me just how far out of their way complete strangers can go for you.
We are learning more and more about our international community, as well as the Moroccan community in the area. We have a mixture of very wealthy, highly educated Moroccans and less educated farming Berber communities. Through the university and the local markets and travelling souqs we have chance to interact with all sorts of people and most are lovely. Sadly I have heard some unpleasant things about some of the more privileged. It is not uncommon out here to hire Filipino teachers or nannies for wealthier children. It is also not uncommon for these international hires who are so far from home and family to be incredibly badly treated. A few years ago there was a case of one woman being locked up and starved and having to be rescued by concerned university staff. Thankfully all the Filipinos I have met so far seem to be happy and treated well, if somewhat overworked. It is something of a dark side to an otherwise friendly and welcoming community.
Seem to have deleted all my pictures from this week... slipping into slight chaos of ridiculous long hours of planning... working much later than required in order to get organised... hopefully be better in the next few weeks.
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