Spring Camp

Last week most PCVs in Morocco were working at one the various English immersion camps throughout the country. Eight of us lucked out and were assigned work at El Jadida, a beach town with pimp weather and much, much less conservative inhabitants. I guess coming from Bzou that’s not saying a lot but still, when those 16-17 year old girls in sun dresses and tight jeans started showing up and things began to take an interesting turn.

Day 1:

All the kids have been divided up by the English level and I had the luck of being given the highest level group and thus spend the two hours going over song lyrics and playing various loosely language related games.

Cue first teenage girl wardrobe change

Sports time: throw mad TDs after teaching kids a watered down version of what they insist on calling rugby.

Second teenage girl wardrobe change

Lunch: stuff face with free food, don’t wash dishes, scrounge for leftovers as the kids leave

Third teenage girl wardrobe change (I wish I was exaggerating, but there more to come)

Club time: In the camp’s infinite wisdom, myself and two other dudes are assigned to lead a 2 hour dance club. After covering the basics of the chicken dance, country line dancing and (of course) the cupid shuffle, we just threw on some MJ and let those kids break it down for a good hour.

4^th change

This is where things get Moroccan. The next two hours consisted of watching five different AIDS awareness themed plays with the exact same soundtrack, a song much like the theme from The Hunt for Red October. It is difficult to describe how absurdly overacted, and needlessly metaphorical theses skits were, but let it suffice to say that most of them involved some sort of slow-mo street fighter style battle between white blood cells and the HIV. My personal favorite moment was when one kid answered his cell phone while performing. After the last piece an instantaneous dance party breaks out to Akon, Rihanna and what sounded like something out of a Wiggles concert, except in Spanish. (Note: after some research I discovered that the original version of this song was a top 40 hit in the Netherlands 10 years ago. Depressingly enough, the singer, Jody Bernal was actually born in Bogota before being adopted by a Dutch family. Also, a translated version of his Dutch wikipedia entry feels it is important to mention that he has an IQ of 96. As a method of comparison, fellow Colombian Shakira supposedly rocks a score of 140. )

Dinner: see lunch

Last wardrobe change

Talent show: sit through hours of brutality before being dragged on stage to help a girl crumbling under the lights finish off the last bit of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” We eight white people finish of the event with an air guitar/karaoke performance of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Immediately after, a second all out dance party breaks out.

So the next few days pretty much fell into this sort of pattern so neatly that the absurdity of it all was almost entirely predictable. Every day came with a promise of increasingly ludicrous Moroccan shenanigans, and usually not by the kids. Example: on the second to last day, the camp was scheduled to go on a field trip to the old, Portuguese city and see its historic cistern. The counselors boarded the bus believing the previous statement to be a fact. Nevertheless, after an hour-long bus ride we found ourselves at an industrial phosphate port which had not even been notified of our visit. All of the day laborers initially seemed absolutely stunned at our presence, (Port Jorf Lasfar not being a popular tourist destination) but soon their faces shaped creepy smirks as they suddenly became excited at the sight of 40 or so scantily (for Moroccan standards) dressed teens. So unprepared was the staff of this place that we couldn’t even get someone to show us around, we just wandered aimlessly beating a drum and chanting songs for 2 hours. This pretty much summed up the effectiveness of our camp’s administration.

The only things that helped me retain my sanity throughout the week were my fellow PCV counselors, the prospect of an all out party upon the camp’s conclusion, and, of course, the fact that on the second day several of us went to the barber and got matching moustaches and mullets. Yup, camp was pretty awesome.