Adventures with the Brits

It has been a busy month and a half and hence I haven’t written in a while. I apologize, but I’ll try to make these next updates worth the wait. I left off with how Operation Smile went and I just want to say again how great of an experience it was.

So what happened after Operation Smile? Oh you know… just helped host a group of British teens and helped them build a bathroom. Very random, fun experience, which I wasn’t even going to be a part of until the day before. Such is my life in Morocco. The best adventures so far are the ones not planned for. But let me explain how I got involved with this bathroom project…

An environment volunteer about 2 hours away from my site, texted saying she had a group of British people coming to build a bathroom and wanted to know if I could help her translate between the kids and the builder. I had been working out of site a lot lately, but decided to go for. **Side note: Pretty sure landlord was/is taking advantage of my foreigner status and getting me to pay wayyyy too much for electricity. So I reduced my usage to almost nothing… I was desperate to leave site. **

When I got to her site, she gave me the full scoop on what we were doing, since I basically said yes having no real idea of what was going on. Good times. She had met a Scottish guy who owns a rafting company in Morocco, who has a friend in London who works for an adventure company. This guy’s company takes British teens/young adults to developing countries where they first do a development project, which they fund, and then do a hike or some other outdoorsy wilderness type of adventure. So through the wonders of networking, this PCV got a bathroom project funded in one of her outlying villages. The kids would be coming to her site and would help build a bathroom at a two room school.

Believe me I was excited. A SUV and a mini-bus pulled into this tiny mountain village and they drew a crowd. I think every village boy was around the bus trying to discover what was going on. It was a weird feeling of being in a huge crowd of non-Moroccans. Once in a while I would approach one of the boys and start speaking Tamazight. They were quite surprised by that little trick.

The first day on the bathroom project went well. The walls went up, half of the pit was dug, a door was painted, and kids were entertained by a Frisbee. The next day rained and threw a kink into the groups plan. I left the kids later that day and last I heard they all decided to head back to Marrakech. They were great group of kids, but not quite what I would call the mountain hiking types. I mean they were from London. True city kids.

Random right? Well it gets even crazier, because that wasn’t my last adventure with Brits. Nope! The month ended with my best experience in Morocco! Thank you Scottish guy with the rafting company and environment PCV.

So our In-Service Training started November 1^st and so we had to be at the hotel on Halloween. I decided to go to Marrakech a day early to hang out with friends, relax, and just enjoy city life (i.e. McDonalds and adult beverages). I was waiting in Ouaouizerth around noonish and going to head north to the big town of Beni Mellal, take a bus, the usual. As I was waiting, the environment volunteer I had just helped out pulls into the taxi stand and is also heading to Marrakech, but going a different way. We catch up about how the rest of the bathroom project is going and she convinces me to head to Azilal and so we can travel with another guy volunteer in our province. I say… Why not!

It turns out we had to buy out the whole cab the three of us… but so worth it. Then she convinces me to come see the Riad (nice house/hotel) she always stays at, who is owned by the Scottish rafting guy. It didn’t take much convincing, I’d heard a lot about it and he was also nice enough to host a Halloween party for PCV’s the next day. I was hoping to join this party, so of course I wanted to see where it would be.

It was tucked into the medina and souk area. The souk in Marrakech is a wonderful maze and this guy did good finding a great place. His riad has…. A flat screen! What? Comforters on the beds? Three levels? What luxury for a PCV like myself and I was handed a beer when I walked in the door. It doesn’t get much better than that.

After hanging out a bit, the Scottish guy brings up to the environment volunteer that tomorrow he is going to be hosting two British celebrities for their television show. They wanted to do an adventure themed show and would be featuring his company. Now this is really cool in itself, but it gets better… For the filming they needed four extras! Just turns out that there were four of us PCVs staying at his place that night.

Yep people! I went white water tubing (nope, not rafting) for free and will be on British television in April or May on a show called Location, Location, Location with Kristi and Phil. It was amazing! We went an hour outside of Marrakech to Ourika Valley and got to go tubing. I had a wet suit, helmet, and the whole nine-yards. The river was a little low, because November is just the beginning of the season, but there was still quite a bit of white water.

It’s official… I’m an adrenaline junky. There were always hints of this… sky diving, driving too fast... oops, and well yeah other things. But whenever I have money to blow on vacations, my vacations will probably have some sort of adventure element. I really want to go white water rafting now and tubing is even more intense I think.

So those were my October adventures with the Brits and when I visit Chloe in December I’m sure there will be plenty more. I mean I’ll be in their backyard and New Years in the UK again! Adventures will be had.