Krista and I have successfully
completed (survived) our first summer camp. The Moroccan education system, and youth work in general,
differs from the American system in many ways. The most immediately obvious difference is that violence
against the children is not merely condoned, but ardently encouraged. At the camp, each American volunteer
partnered with a Moroccan counselor to look after a team of kids. Not much of the camp time was
scheduled, and that, along with the heat and enclosed spaces, created the
perfect environment for lots of arguments and fighting among the kids. The country nationals’ response,
broadly speaking, was to smack the campers.
There are a number of ‘moves’ that are
commonly used. I find it fairly
easy and morbidly comical to imagine a Moroccan summer camp video game, perhaps
something along the lines of Super Smash Bros., involving various fight
combos. The ‘square’ button would
have to be the ever-popular smack across the face, perhaps with a clock-wise
swipe to make it backhand.
‘triangle’ button would have to be knocking the top of the head with the
knuckles, and the ‘circle’ could be the
take-off-your-sandle-and-smack-the-kid-across-the-back-as-he-tries-to-run-away
move. Then, you also have a number
of extra credit complicated combinations.
The most extreme one I saw at camp was when a counselor straight up
Zidane headbutt a rowdy camper, who I had come to believe may have some sort of
learning or development disability.
I also heard of someone chasing their campers with a two-by-four at
another campsite. Unfortunately,
the only way I’ve found to effectively deal with the child abuse is with a
little bit of light humor.
One
of the counselors had to leave the camp early. In his departure address, he told the campers that he had a
great time at camp, and that he was sorry to anybody who he had hit, but it was
for educational purposes.
Of
course, when your counterpart willingly doles out physical punishment, it’s
difficult to get campers to listen to you, when all you can really do is yell,
oftentimes in nonsense Arabic. I
also have to admit that I was sorely tempted at times to “adapt” to the culture
and hit a kid. Particularly one named Mohamed who got his kicks by teasing and
throwing balls in Mahmoud’s face.
Mahmoud also happened to be a gentle guy with down syndrome, who was
probably my favorite of the male campers.
He had everybody falling out of their chairs when he got up during a
talent show and did impersonations of the counselors. I’d say I got along best with the ‘red flowers’ team, which
was 6-9 year-old girls.
Sometimes
it seemed as though the counselors should have had counselors of their
own. One of them had a tantrum when
his camper messed up the lion drawing he was working on, while another one
thought it appropriate to openly flirt with the team of 13-14 year-old girls,
who usually broke down crying while fighting over his attention.
Now
it’s day three of our second camp, an over-night one with a bunch of orphans
and a sprinkling of fake orphans (actually have parents). The counselors here have pointed to the
Quran for support in hitting kids.
They say once they’re ten years old, they can and should be hit because
they have ‘hard heads’. Then they
kindly explained that it’s the only way for kids to learn. Then again, while here, we haven’t seen
very much physical punishment at all.
This
second camp is much more official.
It’s name sounds reminiscently Soviet, or maybe Maoist: the camp of
national co-operation. And the
team names are fun things like “freedom” or “education”, which all the kids
yell repeatedly as they quasi-march around in twos. Krista and I have each been given responsibility of a team
of about 12 campers (mine between the ages of 11 to 14, with one troublemaker
who happens to be the camp director’s son). One of my campers is named “S3ad
son of the tailor”. This is very
difficult and tiring, in part because we have to fill out various forms in
Arabic, but also because it doesn’t seem as though the higher-ups in the camp
care very much about the kids’ health and safety. Dinner last night was a classic Moroccan dish of pasta with
cinnamon, peanuts, and a heap of sugar on top. Granted, it was delicious. Few of the kids have toothbrushes and none have been taught
how to use them, and a day at the pool yesterday featured plenty of running and
diving into very shallow water.
The
radically different sleeping schedule is also throwing us off. There’s a three-hour nap time in the
afternoon, but the day starts at 7:30 and the counselors have meetings at night
until 1 am before eating a meal.
Krista and I have so far avoided this meal, which last night was ground
beef, coke, and watermelon.
I
am terrified of Ramadan, which is fast approaching. It looks as though the kids will be allowed to eat while we
may not. I believe I heard in one
of our meetings that there are activities for the kids until 2 am during
Ramadan, but I hope I misunderstood that.
On an unrelated note, we've been given a new job, as of about a week ago. The higher-ups recently sent us an angsty email about how we are here at the invitation of this government ministry and must work for them and they can rescind the invitation. Apparently, we went from being development workers to unpaid, lowest-rung government employees of Morocco. Without the benefit of bargaining rights. It seems to many of us that the Peace corps went to the market of the Moroccan government, but didn't realize they were supposed to bargain. A good analogy is when I go to the store and buy a 1000 dirham mattress and learn later that it's only worth 400: getting totally screwed. When we first came here, we were told to teach English at the dar shabab in the beginning as a jumping-off point for other development work of our own design. Now it's not clear what we're supposed to be doing, other than hang around until the ministry tells us to do things (see earlier post about miscommunication).
Isn't working at a summer camp the best?!?!
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