The Less you know..

Generally speaking, I am fully aware of how little I know. This is clearest with the language. Oujdiya is tough. Tomorrow, Krista and I will attempt to lead 5 hours of classes on the environment, organic vs. nonorganic waste, and make some wallets out of old juice cartons with some kids. We will try to do this in Arabic. Will we succeed? Hell no. 

I have the language capability in Oujdiya that you would expect to have in Spanish if you lived for about 8 weeks in Spain. Guess how you say 'biodegrade' in Spanish? 'Biodegradarse' It's tHllel in Arabic. And that "H" sound doesn't exist in English. Or in Spanish.

Anyway, in addition to speaking like a child, I can be remarkably unperceptive. In early Peace Corps trainings, we were told about something they called RADAR. I forget what it stands for exactly, but the idea is that you must be aware of and assessing your security situation all the time. You know, head up, eyes open, fairly basic. And yet, somehow, I still manage to miss some things. (I'm sure that forgetting what the acronym stands for has nothing to do with it).

Great example from yesterday- it turns out there's an entire family living in one of the youth centers that we work. I've been here more than 9 months and I just found this out. The youth house is not big. I'd seen some laundry hanging up but I figured they belonged to the guy who opens and closes the door. Why does a family live there? No idea. All I know is that the father is Mohamed's brother. Probably 95% of the male population has at least one brother named Mohamed, so that doesn't give me much to work with.