I bet you all thought I forgot about the blog! To be honest, I kind of had. My Internet options here in G-town (I can't tell you where I actually live lest you should try to use this information to stalk me...) are pretty non-existent, so until I got Internet set up at the house last week I couldn't really update the blog. Even now my Internet is so slow. Like seriously, the only thing slower than my Internet is the speed at which my sleeping bag is drying after I washed it to get out the puppy poo. But even if the Internet is slow, I'm gonna try really hard to get better at updating this thing.
So, some of y'all in America have been asking me what I do here. That's a decent question, as I'm not always sure myself. The last couple months I've been focusing on "community assessment," which is basically me hanging out with people and asking them stuff about G-town and what goes on here, what kind of stuff is important to them, what they want me to do, etc. This has been somewhat complicated by the fact that I originally found the way they talk out here in almost-Algeria to be incomprehensible. I won't go into all the linguistic differences, but here's an example: There's no second-person masculine out here. So that's been an on-going struggle. Even today, I was telling a kid I liked her shoes and she told me that wasn't the word for shoes, and I'm like, "Um, that's def what it said in my book," and she's like, "Yeah, but that's what people in the West talk like. We don't say that." Cut me a break, kids. This book is from Rabat. Rabat is in the West. Can't you just be impressed that I know any word for shoes, even if it's not the right one?
But it's not all hanging around and assessing stuff. I teach English sometimes, too. I play monkey-in-the-middle a lot, like pretty much everyday. I got some theater projects in the works. But yeah, honestly, there's a lot of hanging around and trying to integrate into the community. And....the strength of my Internet is fading fast, so even though there's probs a lot more I could say, I'm gonna go ahead and post this while I still can....if I still can....
So, some of y'all in America have been asking me what I do here. That's a decent question, as I'm not always sure myself. The last couple months I've been focusing on "community assessment," which is basically me hanging out with people and asking them stuff about G-town and what goes on here, what kind of stuff is important to them, what they want me to do, etc. This has been somewhat complicated by the fact that I originally found the way they talk out here in almost-Algeria to be incomprehensible. I won't go into all the linguistic differences, but here's an example: There's no second-person masculine out here. So that's been an on-going struggle. Even today, I was telling a kid I liked her shoes and she told me that wasn't the word for shoes, and I'm like, "Um, that's def what it said in my book," and she's like, "Yeah, but that's what people in the West talk like. We don't say that." Cut me a break, kids. This book is from Rabat. Rabat is in the West. Can't you just be impressed that I know any word for shoes, even if it's not the right one?
But it's not all hanging around and assessing stuff. I teach English sometimes, too. I play monkey-in-the-middle a lot, like pretty much everyday. I got some theater projects in the works. But yeah, honestly, there's a lot of hanging around and trying to integrate into the community. And....the strength of my Internet is fading fast, so even though there's probs a lot more I could say, I'm gonna go ahead and post this while I still can....if I still can....
Meetra!!! I'm so glad you updated your blog! I lol'd a lot. That's weird they talk differently over there, but at least they still speak Darija. I tried to work on my community assessment report all day but I was way too lazy. I better do it soon.
ReplyDeleteI always thought Georgetown had a copyright on the term G-town. From here on out, I'm just going to assume you're talking about Georgetown.
ReplyDelete