A weekend of field trips

Hello! I had a restful weekend here in Rabat and am gearing up for my last week at the orphanage. I can hardly fathom saying goodbye at this point so I need to begin to prepare myself. We went to the medina on Saturday and the Hassan Tower and down to the water on Sunday. It was absolutely gorgeous!

Getting around during Ramadan can be a bit tricky; we've learned the hard way that if you haven't reached your final destination by about 5:30pm, you're going to be hanging out where you are until 8:45pm! Muslims break the fast at sundown and so there's a mad dash to get home and get the food ready for the special meal. Taxis are almost unheard of at that time and the streets become eerily quiet. Last night Mary Fran and I joined Khadjia in her evening walk at 5:30 before breaking the fast. I guess it's super popular to go exercise right before the evening meal in order to keep your mind off of wanting to eat and drink and to lose weight during Ramadan, as well as to curb your hunger so you don't eat a lot. I'm going to bite my tongue on this subject for now!

Instead, let's jump to some pictures:

This is the Hassan Tower, originally intended to be the world's largest mosque in 1195AD

The Mausoleum of Mohammed V, where the tombs of the late king of Morocco and his sons lay

The Moroccan flag in front of the Hassan Tower

My new buddy

The other side of the Atlantic Ocean! A little inlet that is a popular hang out with the locals

Mary Fran and Jin

Week three down, just one more to go!

This week in photos...

McDonalds in Morocco! Just about the only restaurant open during Ramadan...

Siesta time. We really do a lot of this. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. It's emotionally exhausting and we need our beauty sleep! Someone rings a little bell when we're "summoned", and we've all been trained to sleep through every sound but the one that welcomes us to afternoon tea ;)

Clean underwear day!!!! We send our laundry out to be clean for a very cheap price. Clean underwear is worth it!

Khadija does henna

Lindsay's way cool henna (Pete not photographed)

So, back up to siesta time. Picture lying in a deep sleep upstairs only to be awoken by... Well, a noise as loud as a herd of elephants. Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.

Boy was it fun!!

Kudos to these guys; they're all fasting for Ramadan and still managed to put on a hell of a show!

I was going to head to the Roman ruins tomorrow but my travel buddy has come down with a bad headache. My other travel buddy and I will probably hit the medina here in Rabat and just chill. Everyone else from our group is headed home tomorrow and 16 new girls are coming in! Despite having more downtime than at home, I am completely and utterly exhausted both emotionally and physically, and am excited for some extra sleep.

Roman ruins on Sunday, health permitting :)

Motherly Love

Another day has come and gone at the orphanage with not much new to report. I noticed an extra bed in the newborn room this morning as I was feeding and quickly scanned the room to see a brand new little face in the corner that must had been dropped off in the last 24 hours. It’s overwhelming to think of not only what this little guy has in store for the coming years, but what his mother went through and continues to go through. Some of you may wonder why so many women leave their babies, a heartless and incomprehensible act to many of us Westerners. Allow me to explain a little bit of what I’ve learned.

Many of the children at the orphanage are born to prostitutes and majority of them are born out of wedlock. Women that become pregnant out of wedlock are quickly shunned by the community, and either asked to leave their town or leave on their own out of shame. Forget single parenthood; unless you’re divorced or widowed, you and your children are not accepted in the community. With an orphanage in all of the major cities, some of these women from smaller cities purposefully travel to a place where they know their child may have a chance at life.

Abandoning a child is a whole other challenge. As it is illegal in Morocco to abandon a child, it’s important for the women to leave a baby where they know someone will find it but where she won’t risk being known or caught out of fear of imprisonment. The medina, a busy and crowded location, is a popular place, as well as: hospitals, besides trash cans, and virtually anywhere where people will be guaranteed to be are prime locations here in Morocco.

So, some of you still may ask, “How could they ever do that?” While I don’t know the answer to that and I’m still baffled myself, I learned that unfortunately the story doesn’t stop there. It is common for the husband’s family to inspect bedding after a married couples first night together. If there is no evidence that she is a virgin, the consequences can be tragic. So despite being shunned from her community, moving to a city where she doesn’t know anyone, birthing a child by herself in a dangerous environment, and leaving the tiny being that she grew and brought into the world… Many of these women can never get married and have the family that they always dreamed of and are expected to have. Because of this, the women that weren’t prostitutes before tend to begin to prostitute to make a life for themselves. Don’t even get me started on the women who were impregnated from sexual assault and then blamed for the event!

I commend these women for going through such lengths to ensure their child has a chance. I can only imagine what the mother of the less than one day old newborn is feeling right now. God Bless her!

Yes, this is heavy stuff, and it’s probably not a lot of fun to read. I promise it’s not always like this here, and there have been some fun times as well. But I promised myself this blog would be about what’s on my heart, and not an “Everything is wonderful and I’m saving the children of Africa” blog. I’ll try to mix it up a little and tell you of all the awesome and fun things I’ve been doing as well tomorrow. For now, B’slaama and goodnight!

PS- Thanks to everyone for posting comments!! It totally makes my day to hear from you all!

“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned” ~William Somerset Maugham

Happy Wednesday to you all!

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, and it’s another beautiful day here in Africa. I have yet to use the sweatshirt and raincoat I brought; never mind the one long sleeve I brought “just in case”. After all, I’m in AFRICA!

Today was another eye-opening day at the orphanage. After feeding some super cute newborns, I made a mad dash down to the toddlers and took two little boys out today. Most of the girls are adopted by the age of 18mos, so it’s just a room full of boys and a few disabled girls. I was put in charge of Speed Racer and Koala Bear, otherwise known as Safeen and Nazir. Safeen spent his time running around watching me chase after him with his buddy on my hip. I was rescued by another volunteer and got to spend some time with my little Koala Bear.

Nazir latches onto you with both hands in a grip that can’t be broken. He has got to be about 15mos and his eyes are half-shut most of the time with the most sorrowful look on his face. The second you sit down, or, heaven forbid, set him down on the ground, he begins to let out this very sad little cry and usually won’t stop until you’re up and swaying again. Today was my first day with him and I decided to rock him sitting down and started singing to him,

“Draw me close to you,
Never let me go…”

His crying slowly dissipated and I continued to sing all the slow paced worship songs that came to mind. He leaned his little head on my chest as I continued to rock and sing. When I stopped he pulled his head back, looked up at me, and put his pointer finger on my lips and slowly opened my mouth again. When I started singing again his eyes locked onto watching my lips move, and then slowly moved his focus onto my eyes. My voice cracked, and tears started coming down my face as I looked into those sorrowful eyes! How I wish I could take all the pain away and lift the burden off of his tiny little shoulders.

“He loves us,
Oh how he loves us…”

It's hard not to get angry and question why such things are happening to such little souls. The only option is to have faith that it will get better for him. That he will be in the small 25% that will be adopted at one point in his childhood, and that someone will love him very very much.

Afterall, that's exactly what faith is; hope in that which we do not see.

"Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility" ~Kate Douglas Wiggin

Today was Day 2 of my new schedule at the orphanage. It is SO MUCH BETTER than the class of the WWW! Allow me to back up…

The orphanage is an old hospital that is two stories. I’ve been on the first floor with the older children this whole time and was finally able to go upstairs and see the babies yesterday! Mohamed (our Country Director) led me into a large room separated into three smaller areas with…Drum roll, please… 38 newborns. The oldest can’t be more than four or five months old and the youngest are easily preemie and still not yet at their correct birth age (we’re talking days old and some less than 3lbs). I was quickly given a little girl of about 6 weeks and told to feed her a scorching hot bottle (for the moms out there, we’re talking 8oz 4+hours apart at just days old because they don’t have time to feed 40 newborns 2-4oz every 2 hours as we would back home). As she was sucking down her glass bottle with a giant plastic nipple that has an opening as long as the width of my fingernail, I tried to console Mustapha who was having a coronary over not getting his fix first.

It’s crazy. To think about how I ran to the little girl I nanny back home when she was a newborn at every and any random sound or squeak she made, and how there are now 15 newborns around me crying louder and harder than any sane person would ever want to hear… Well, it was a bit much to say the least. These kids don’t have a mom, dad, and nanny to run to their every need. At just days old, it’s already survival of the fittest and a competition. I tried to feed the babes as fast as I could and still give them some personal time before setting them back in their see-through plastic “You’ve just been born” crib before moving on to feed another starving face. After all the babies are fed the nurses shoo us out the door so they can sleep, and we move on to the toddlers down the hallway.

Yesterday I was in charge of a little black her named Iman who is said to be about 2 ½. She is absolutely gorgeous and just a kick to be around! She is one of the few girls left in her age group and I believe she has some sort of mentally disability because she still doesn’t talk at all (her disability means she will never be adopted). She knows what she wants though, and is a fast little bugger as she runs down the forbidden halls, clueless that I’m getting dirty looks and shakes of the finger from all the nurses! Today I was asked to take little Illyas out, who must be about 14 months and is not yet walking. It looks like he had some sort of leg surgery around his upper calf area, and I found a lump on his foot. I’m dying to know- was he given up after they found the lumps, or did he just get dealt a bad hand with being both an orphan and having some sort of illness that causes tumors?

The work continues to be a challenge, and I’m still beyond grateful that I’ve had this opportunity. As I walked into the newborn room, it was as I jumped in a time machine and could picture doing the same thing several years from now as an adoptive mother. I don’t know how it will work, when it will happen, and what the circumstances will be, but I am beyond certain that it WILL happen. There is no way I could ever walk away from what I’ve experienced in just these couple of weeks. I wish I could take the entire clan of 250+ plus at the orphanage home with me, but I will remain hopeful that one day (a long time from now), I will grow to love a similar little soul as my own.

I couldn’t be more excited!

Putting the RAM! in Ramadan (Okay, so I just made that up...)

Salam!

I had a great long weekend despite still being sick with bronchitis and some random stomach thing. As you saw in the last post, I spent a day in Fes, came home early and slept all day to my little heart’s content, and then took the train over to Marrakech where we spent the night checking out the nightlife. I’m definitely on the mend and am ready and rearing to go for a full week at the orphanage!

On Saturday Ramadan started! This is what Wikipedia has to say about Ramadan:

Ramadan (Arabic: رمضان‎) (also written Ramazan, Ramzan, Ramadhan, Ramdan, Ramadaan) is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and indulging in anything that is in excess or ill-natured; from dawn until dusk ^[1] Fasting is meant to teach the Muslim patience, modesty and spirituality. Ramaḍān is a time to fast for the sake of Allah, and to offer more prayer than usual. During Ramaḍān, Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance and help in refraining from everyday evils, and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds. As compared to solar calendar, the dates of Ramadan vary, moving forward about ten days each year. Ramadhan was the month in which the first verses of the Qur'an were revealed^{[Qur'an 2:185]} to the Prophet Muhammad.

I highly recommend you check out the rest of the page! It’s been relatively the same around here except for eating and drinking in public. It’s actually in the constitution that a Moroccan is required by law to fast, and if caught eating without a valid excuse (pregnant women, children, people that are ill), they can be arrested.... Kinda serious stuff!! As foreigners the law doesn’t apply to us but it’s highly recommended that we refrain from eating or drinking in public out of respect for those that are fasting. Many locals have asked me if I’m going to be fasting as well. As much as I would love to and will probably try for one day, it’s the no drinking when it’s over 100* that I’m worried about! So for now I eat and drink as much as I can at home and try to refrain while in public. Some volunteers have decided to continue to eat and drink in public and many have gotten yelled at. There is also no smoking and drinking allowed and we’ve seen a cigarette black market beginning for those who still need a fix.

Today will be the first day in the orphanage during Ramadan. I dressed super conservatively (you're supposed to be extra conservative and not wear make-up) and I won’t be bringing my handy water bottle. After some thought I decided to switch rooms and leave the WWW to her ways. As much as I love those boys and feel bad for leaving them to the misery of the Witch, I had told myself at the beginning that I wanted to experience more than one room. Who knows, I may still get stuck with WWW and her posse, but we shall see where I end up! I feel like I haven’t been at the orphanage in forever and I’m so happy to have a full week there.

Hope all is well back home! I was going to leave you with the call to Prayer over the Jama F’na Square in Marrakech, but after 2hrs it still hasn't uploaded. We hear the call five times a day beginning at around 5am and ending at 9:45pm. It’s called from each Mosque by a guy called an imam, signaling that it’s time to recite the Koran at prayer. I occasionally wake up at the 4-5am one because it’s super loud and the guard dogs around us all howl. However, as I’ve said before- if you’re exhausted, you will sleep through anything!

Off to the orphanage!

Self entertaining on the 5 hour train ride to Marrakesh (Sock puppets not pictured)

The view from dinner. Bread is considered holy and sacred and it's against their beliefs to throw it out. Instead, it's fed to the stray animals and birds (and let me tell you- we eat a LOT of bread!!!)

The door to our Riad. Apparently people were shorter hundreds of years ago?

The Square in Marrakesh. There are dozens of these fresh orange juice stands- so yummy!

The evening view from dinner. If you look closely, you will see the black speakers on the middle to top right corner that the Imam's call to prayer comes out of

Storytime with Fes

This is a story of three girls, countless arched doorways, vegetarian leather, and much, much more.

The three girls began their journey on a three hour train to one of the oldest cities in the world. It was there that they ran into a man at the train station who had ridden the train with other volunteers an hour earlier. They all decided that he was a part of the Fes mafia. (His mafia friend would be their guide in the medina the following day)

After a sleepless night in the 100+ degree (absolutely stunningly BEAUTIFUL) inferno, a breakfast feast was enjoyed on the roof. That's right, 4 different styles of bread, just to be on the safe side! It was splendid!

With tummies full and bags packed up, the girls made a quick exit through the 2-foot-wide alleyway.

They passed thousands of beautiful doors,

random medina children that very well may have never left the walled city but were nevertheless happy as could be,

and a humongous tannery for leather dying!

The girls watched as the men were hard at work dying, cutting, and drying their future purchases

What they were unable to photograph was a stench unlike any other. To sum it up, it is easy to say it was not a vegetarian's dream come true.

However, the vegetarian was also a photographer, and the latter title easily won overAs did being a girl in a room of thousands of shoes...

Did she mention the shoes?!

After drinking several liters of water to stay cool in the super sweltering heat, they decided to find a trash can to toss the bottles. Silly them, there is no such thing in the largest urban area of the world!

They toured a very old Arabic Medersa (school)

And even saw the Qarawiyyin Mosque, claimed to be the oldest university in the world.

After hours of sightseeing, the next stop was a co-op run by the government that sells legit Moroccan carpets in every size, color, and design imaginable. The Fes Mafia tried his best to convince the girls to buy, but their student budgets left them unable to commit.

Oh how they upset the Fes Mafia and friends!

After exhaustive bartering, the three girls and random new friend from New Zealand went to lunch. They asked for a salad and were presented with this. Did the vegetarian mention how Moroccans love their food?!!

The girls were full and ready for a siesta, but needed to finish their tour of the never-ending medina. They considered taking the only type of taxi allowed in the medina (pictured below) but decided to press on by foot

All of a sudden, one of the most colorful rooms EVER was presented to them! There were weavers, and more blankets than any Canadian town would need in a snowstorm

The colors would have put a rainbow to shame.

After walking 8 hours, the girls jumped into a car and took a tour of the tombs,

(but they weren't told what they're tombs of....)

the kings palace,

and the pottery making place.

The two girls then dropped the vegetarian off with another three girls that were catching a train back to Rabat. The vegetarian needs to give a shout-out to these girls, because they illegally caught a three-person geo metro sized taxi with her out of fear of missing the train. You can follow their blog here: Majmouat M.K.C.
The vegetarian was sick and just wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed!

And that I did. For 14 hours and all. After hours of coughing up a lung (which I learned you can't barter for at the medina, despite it appearing you can buy EVERYTHING), I asked Khadija and Aicha (the House Manager and Cook at HomeBase) for some hot water to drink. They in turn went outside, cut fresh limes off the tree, and made me a wonderful remedy of lime juice, honey, and hot water!!


They pretty much rock.


Tomorrow is Marrakech for a night before returning Sunday, Inshallah (God Willing). It is also the first day of Ramadan tomorrow, which will have to be another post.


Because now, it is time for the vegetarian to sleep once again. Bonsoir!