Workcamp: First days

a cybercafe; Sale, Morocco
arrival to Sale, day 1

• the workcamp takes place in the new quarter (some 10 years) of Sale - it's rather affluent, there are a lot of families having moved from Rabat
• Moroccan volunteers - more of them than European ones; they organize a lot of voluntary work here in Sale during all the year (including some 4 international workcamps); they are students, from well-off families, there's just one girl
• we're not going to clean the beach; instead gardening and painting the school we reside in
• Moroccans in general - very proud of their nation, not criticizing it (and on the other hand a lot of them move/would move to Europe...)
• other international volunteers (2xFrance, 2xSpain, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy) - fine people; some of them are too tourist-like (as opposed to traveler-like ;-) the "tourism" is even reinforced by Moroccan vols - we work some 3 hours a day and they consider us more as excitement than workforce
• I'd prefer more working and less leisure, sometimes there's little to do

day 2

• bad organization, really bad
• the schedule - monday to friday (both weeks): 9-12 work; late afternoon: visits to Rabat, Sale, beaches (3 times, quite too much for me); the weekend: visit to a big city
• language troubles: Moroccans talking among themselves always in Morrocan (a variety of Arabic), English, French; nothing understood universally
• lunch - prepared by Moroccan vols - lentils (a lot of legumes used here); using tons of spices (typical for Moroccan cuisine) - quite good to eat, but really too much spices; also wasting a lot of food (which I've seen in Morocco before as well)
• afternoon - going to the moussem (a Moroccan town festival, 7-30 days, a lot of them) Fantasia in Sale: groups of horse riders firing from rifles during the ride - traditional rifles, clothes...
• "culture" in Morocco - stemming from everywhere, but it's linked to conservative values (and Islam) - as it was ( and in many parts still is) in Europe (with Christianity) -- how to create "culture" without resorting to stupor and conservatism - when I return, I'll have to observe how such "culture" originates in the Czech Republic (if it does)

day 3

• morning - gardening, clearing out two grass squares in the school, pretty abandoned
• an introduction to the arabic script and sounds by a moroccan vol - some phonemes are pretty ...exotic; arabic language as such sound unusually sharp to me
• afternoon - visiting the Sale's artisan center (mostly pottery, but other stuff as well) - others not really interested, ended up in a nearby cafe; talked with a potter for a while, he liked me and gave me a cup as a gift, incredible!!!; spent a lot of time there, there was a lot of artisans (Sale being the main pottery city in Morocco, besides Safi and Fez), others thought I was lost and set off to search for me
• news about an unsuccessful terrorist attack in Meknes