When I arrived in Rabat Youssef, one of the Projects Abroad staff members, was waiting for me. He drove me to the outside of the Medina, the enclosed old part of the city where all the volunteers live.
We met my host father Saiid at the entrance to the Medina becacuse cars can't go inside (motorcycles/scooters aren't allowed inside either but plenty make it in anyway). The rest of the city was built around the Medina and is more modernized, but inside the Medina things are very old. The walls are very tall, giving you the impression you're walking through a huge maze. The streets are very tiny and there are vendors crammed next to one another selling everything from fish to clothes (western and traditional Moroccan djallabas) to cell phones.
From outside the house all you see is a tiny door which should belong to a home resembling that of Bilbo Baggins, but inside it is huge! The celing of the central roome xtends all the way up to the ceiling of th entire building and is oly partially covered so sunlight and breeze flow in.
Beside the central room are two long skinny rooms which seem to be parlors, one of which is also used for prayer. Two girls who wowrk in Saiid's bakery (which is actually inside the house by the door -- a long skinny entry hall leads to the rest of the house) sleep in those rooms. They help prepare food and clean but are acepted basically as family. Off of these rooms are two small bedrooms which belong to the Grellane children. Chaimae is 17 and speaks some English. It was sucha relief to be able to communicate with someone, even though it was ina mix of very broken English and French. El Hachmi is in Merrakesh studying to become a Police Officer. In El Hachmi's room reside the family cat and her four teeny tiny kittens only a week old. I look forward to them becoming old enough to play with - right now their eyes aren't even completely open.
Upstairs are two bedrooms with two beds each where volunteers stay. Right now two other girls - Lise from Belgium and Viola from Germany - are here, though theyboth leave soon. Apparently another girl is arriving Thursday but I know nothing about her yet. Mr. and Mrs. Grellane's bedroom is up here, as well as a small kitchen space and sink used for laundry, and a bathroom with a spot that doubles as a shower and a toilet. I use the more American bathroom downstairs. There is also a big breezy terrace where Mrs. Grellane does a lot of sewing and an opening onto the roof where laundry is hung, and where Zambu, the dog, has his pen. Zambu is hilarious and has huge paws, one of which he really likes to put in yoru hand to shake.
A word about the bathroom. I always have to think of my friend Alex and how appalled he would be by this bathroom. Fish are sold right byt hte house, and the bathroom has a normal stinky bathroom smell plus the fish odor...I just don't breathe through my nose when I'm in there. The shower has no door or curtain and is basically just a square cut out in the floor about 4 inches deep. The water pressure and the hot water work fine. The volunteers are supplied with their own toilet paper as people here don't tend to use it. We are also supplied with huge hugs of water so we don't use the tap water and get sick (although I have to say I haven't been feeling the slightest bit ill, despite all the warnings about the supposedly inevitable "Traveler's Diarrhea").
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