Ok, I know I wrote yesterday about how projects are just time fillers. Not unimportant, but not the most important. I am holding to that. All the same, I’m now going to write about that work.
People keep asking me what sorts of projects I’m working on or if I’m even doing any “work” at all. In answer to the second question, yes, barely. In answer to the first, here’s a look.
Oh and keep in mind that I go through these project ideas like Tiger Woods goes through mistresses. Yes! One point to me for keeping up with outdated pop culture.
Project #1: One-day celebration of the UN Year of Forests at the local Tafoghalt middle school.
Also known as E Day, this project is the most likely to happen. The idea has been brewing in my mind since last summer, but until about a couple of months ago it was not a perceivable reality. In theory it’s very simple. In weird, new-American-in-Tafoghalt reality, it turns out, it’s actually pretty difficult. It took nearly a year before I even felt comfortable enough with the people and place here to really start foreseeing any potential success or sustainability. Anyway, the premise of the project is this: Bring together local educators and leaders to celebrate forests with local students by doing educational games and activities. Its taken two months, lots of back-and-forth clearing up misunderstandings, and a few date changes, but I think finally things are lined up as well as they are going to be. One local environmental non profit will be showing some short films and having discussions on them, Socorra will be doing some activity of her choosing (pressures on now that everyone who reads this knows), a few Department of Water and Forest representatives will be planting trees and illustrating tree anatomy, and another environmental organization will be doing a drawing contest and painting the winners as murals on the school walls.
Project #2: Environmental Education teacher workshop for rural educators
This project is a little more ethereal. Another idea that’s been a brewin in my head, though this one was little more than a passing thought in our heads a month ago. Socorra and I hope to bring educators and Water and Forest reps from all over the Morocco Orient region together with Moroccan trainers to network and do a two-day hands-on training on how to incorporate environmentally related lessons into their curriculums. We can both attest to its organization being as difficult as you might imagine. To add pressure, we want to do it at the end of the school year which is fast approaching. Right now we are just trying to figure out logistics like a place to stay, who will cook, who will train, who wants to be trained. We haven’t even begun to worry about struggling through the government red tape and finding the money. I think I can safely say that, if it happens, this will be the defining project of my service.
Project #3: Tourism association
We are just going in order from most likely to probably never going to happen. This project falls somewhere in between. A few months ago, there seemed to be a lot of momentum for starting an association to help develop sustainable tourism. Things like creating brochures, hiking maps, advertising, community events, and guide training. It was an idea of the people, they were excited and motivated, and than after the initial woohoo moment and me telling them that they should start organizing the meetings themselves things sort of halted. I have recently discovered that some of the people who want to start it don’t like each other. In a place where personal issues seem to take precedent over business issues, I think this will probably be a project killer. Something, anyway, that I have neither the social standing nor language ability to deal with effectively.
Project #4: Budget training for local women’s associations and cooperatives.
Recently in the “most likely to happen” slot and now in the “probably will never happen” slot is this training for a local women’s association that weaves rugs for added income. Jonathon, the volunteer before me, was passionate about helping these women and I sort of promised him when he left that I would try to keep up with them and help them when they needed it. He had helped buy looms and materials for them to begin weaving in their new building. When I went down to talk with them a few months after I had been in site, I discovered that they (this being the couple of women I talked with) had used all their materials, had no money, and thought the building was too far away to be practical. They got financial help from Jonathon and so, I think, expected it from me. I thought, however, that instead of giving them more money to continue spending ineffectively, I should train them how to more wisely use the money and then, if they thought building another new building was worth THEIR money, they could build it. I should have seen then that it wasn’t really about walking a kilometer that was the issue; there were politics at work here too. Some women didn’t like some of the other women and felt the system that they had been given wasn’t fair. I wanted to give up after discovering this, but I persisted. Recently, however, I’ve been informed that there is longer a legal association and that plans are in the works to restart it with a different leader than the one I have been working with. That is why this one is now at the bottom of the list. Unless I get a huge kick of motivation, I don’t foresee reviving it. But, then again, I don’t foresee a lot of things that end up happening here. Mostly for my, but also for Jonathon’s, sakes I hope some surprising happens and this turns into a success.
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