Summer Camp in El Jadida

Summer time in Morocco.  The thermometer reads much higher than you would ever like to see it.  Juicy melons cost mere pennies.  Laundry dries in an hour or two instead of all day.  Beaches are crowded with different groups of campers.  Youth Development PCV's take their turns working at summer camp in El Jadida.  This is summer time in Morocco.

After having had a few days to rest and recuperate, I am now ready to describe my experience at summer camp.  As some of you may know, I was partially dreading camp because of stories I've heard from years past.  I was also excited about it because it was camp.  Who doesn't love camp?!  I arrived a few days late because I needed to finish up a few things in site but arrived at the same time as the campers so I didn't miss much.  We started off right away with get to know you games and general shenanigans.

Campers were given a language proficiency test when they arrived at camp and then were divided into English classes, clubs and teams.  The teams they were put on were able to gain and lose points throughout camp for good behavior, bad behavior, helpfulness, attendance, participation and winning challenges.  Clubs varied from arts and crafts to dance to games to creative writing to theater.  English classes were from beginner up through advanced.  Every day they would line up for announcements and songs and then go to English class, followed by an activity, lunch, another activity, club time, snack, an activity, dinner and then more activities at night.  At least for the first few days before Ramadan but we'll talk about that later.

The beautiful schedule

Some of the activities included a fashion show, team competition of talent, a trivia game, a talent show, a presentation from an astronaut, workshops, field trip to neighboring Azemmour and going to the beach.  The fashion show, as you can imagine, contained some true fashion, some out there fashion and some just plain old, "what were you thinking?!" fashion.  We had four categories, modern, hip-hop, crazy and traditional.  I am happy to say that one of my girls, Zora won 1st place in the hip-hop category.

Some of the team captains showing their team pride on fashion show night

The team competition of talent went well with some skits, songs, physical demonstrations of strength and team cheers.  There were two trivia games; one was more like jeopardy and the other required teams to search for the clues based on the number of spaces they had moved on a game board.  The astronaut who came to camp (no she wasn't wearing a flight suit....) was an American astronaut brought to Morocco by the American embassy to promote girls to follow science studies.  We had several different workshops on leadership, environment and gender.  The trips to the beach were enjoyed by all and one day we even went swimming in an indoor pool!  I was just as happy as the campers that day.

Ben, Beth, Donniell, astronaut, me and Rachel

The day before Ramadan was supposed to start (we'll talk about that later), we went on a field trip to Azemmour, a town about 30 minutes away.  The trip started out slightly chaotic since we did not know what to do and we were in a small market filled with lots of other people.  Once we started moving it was much better.  The old town of Azemmour has murals painted all over its walls.  The murals are new but beautiful and colorful.  There is also a wonderful park next to the river where we sat for awhile.  We also were able to go into a section of the old town where we could climb the outer wall of the city and take some amazing pictures of the town.  It was a really cool old town in the sense that it was old and touristy but not completely taken care of.  There were buildings in need of repair and doors that you can tell are the first ones from when the city was first built.  I liked the mix of traditional with modern.  We returned to camp just in time for dinner and found out that Ramadan would not start until August 2nd.

Looking at the "new" through the "old"

One of our night time activities during Ramadan was Halloween.  The kids were encouraged to wear costumes (most of them just dressed up) or get their faces painted.  The PCV's put together a haunted house which I heard scared most of the campers.  There was also bobbing for apples, face painting and we showed them the movie Hocus Pocus.  It was a great way for the campers to enjoy one of the best American holidays.  On our last night at camp we had the talent show.  Campers were able to dazzle us with their singing, dancing, drumming, acting, poems, and overall thoughts of camp.  We also celebrated everyone who had a birthday during camp that night.  There was delicious cake to follow our dinner outside.

My girl drumming her heart out!

I don't want to get into too much detail about Ramadan as that will be a future blog post but I'll give you some basics.  Ramadan started on August 2nd.  Those of us who were fasting, woke up around 4am to eat a quick snack before the first call to prayer and fasting began for the day.  We continued on with our normal schedule, only a few hours pushed back, and broke fast around 7:30.  Breaking fast is an amazing experience but like I said that will be in a later blog post.

Camp ended on the 5th and as the campers left so did many of the PCV's.  About 5 of us ended up going into Rabat for medical reasons after but we've all recovered, hamdullah.  There is talk of redesigning summer camp so we'll see what happens but I hope next year will be just as much fun as this year. Either way, next year I'm only going to look forward to camp, not dread it.  And for those PCV's out there who didn't like camp, I ask you, what's not to love about camp??!!!