Site Visit

Site visit in Tata.....

We left Ouarzazette on Saturday on the 2:30pm bus. Things were not so bad. We arrived in Tata around 10ish. Current volunteers welcomed us at the bus station. We had a fun sleep over at a current volunteer's house and it was fun. They made a nice feast for us which included Thai chicken with peanut sauce, rice, steamed vegetables, cakes and more. It was totally delicious!! On Sunday we all headed off to our sites.

In my site Kasbah Ait Herbil there is currently a volunteer there and she is amazing. She introduced me to everyone I was able to meet my host family, meet a lot of people in the community, and visit facilities in which I may work. My host family is the same host family of the past volunteer which could be good in some ways, but annoying in other ways. They compare my every move to the other volunteer who obviously is great with the language after two years and I come into the community for five days and some people expect me to be as fluent. In the host family I have four sisters over the age of 30 and a host mom. Everyone seem to have the potential to be great, but I will just give it time. They occasionally tell me "ur tssnt walo" which translates into you know nothing. It was kind of funny in the beginning because it was expected and the current volunteer warned me that she advised them not to say that to me because I am still learning.

My room.... I sleep on top of dirt with a carpet and a blanket. It's actually not uncomfortable, but at first site you would say to yourself seriously lol. I actually had some good nights rest; besides fighting flies and being terrified of being bitten by a mosquitos.

These four days were jam packed. I walked around with the other volunteer meet a lot of the officail people, got a P.O. box, visited another Duoar near me where the Souk market is each week, and also helped out a group of Swedish Optometrist check the vision and prescribe glasses to those that needed them.

There is so much more to add to this Tata adventure, but I am tired and internet is limited. Tata claims to have a Cyber which I hear has One slow computer and mainly men go inside there so I will try other alternatives for communication. I am going back to my old host family tomorrow for this last week. I will type up an outline of my week in Tata and post when I have connection again.