Overwhelmed

Somehow, over the last few days, the number of projects I'm working on seems to have doubled.

Current Projects:

1) A day of AIDS (or the French "SIDA" as we say here) activities for kids in a nearby town next week.
2) Continuing to try and start the environment club, and organize Environment Day for March 16th, and find resources for the flow of information into the environment club to be maintained
3) Helping organize a SIDA training for Moroccan association members for the end of April, to be followed by organizing information tables in regional souks, as well as a free SIDA test in the regional capital
4) The expansion of the dar chebab library with a grant, after developing a functional board of members (students) to be responsible for the monitoring and maintenance of the current library
5) A "Reading Days" period in the dar chebab, tentatively scheduled for March, to involve two weeks of a reading competition (modeled after ones we did in summer camp). Kids can participate daily during normal library hours (5pm to 8pm). Certain books will have certain numbers of points, and whoever reads the most in each age group will get a prize. The last day will involve a party.
6) Finding PCVs to participate in a Youth Festival to be put on by a local association, with workshops about anything, such as health, environment, or leadership
7) Helping organize a workshop for local youths who have their high school diploma and still can't find jobs, with the objective of teaching them some essential skills in starting businesses
8) Restarting girls' sports at the dar chebab
9) Pipe dream about putting on a girls'/youth empowerment camp (or "GGLOW", as we say, "Guys and Girls Leading Our World") in my town; at least preparing to start GGLOW activities on saturdays in the dar chebab, if they're willing (just requested the manual from the PC librarian)
10) Continued work on collaborating for the Women in Development conference
11) Continuing women's aerobics
12) Revising the grant proposal I sent in about getting wool for Fatima's association
13) Preparing to work at a week-long English immersion spring camp next month, running a club and teaching English
14) Setting up a peer tutoring program and/or ping pong club in the dar chebab
15) Going to the local hotel to see if the employees want english lessons, in order to infiltrate and urge the hotel to involve the community more in the economic benefits brought by the tourists

...This makes me sound a lot busier than I actually am, and many of these don't involve that much work, and a lot of them involve other PCVs being in charge and me just helping, and many might not work out at all. But I still find it overwhelming. I find I'm having to be freakishly organized lately (I bought a new notebook).

That meeting for the environment club was a bust--at the exact time when people might have started showing up, there was a huge downpour. Aziz and I are meeting Monday to discuss our next step (I think we should just try the meeting again).

There was a play at the dar chebab today. It was very hot and crowded, but pretty impressive (it was the story of a king and a queen, but with a secret, political message) (guess who the oppressive king represented?). I saw a certain group of former students, who didn't respond when I said hi. Oops. You know, I think I offend people more often than I realize.. And on that note, I did a turn standing at the door and asking for donations for the kids' group so they could pay to go to a competition. I said, "Give me a dirham, Madame" in French, and "Give us ten," in Arabic, which is what children say to me CONSTANTLY....not a lot of people laughed. Mohamed did!

Moroccan Cultural Note: At the little stores that are scattered all over every town, you can usually get a few dirhams worth of a variety of nut-type foods. The two I discovered here are sugar-covered peanuts and toasted chickpeas. Deelish. The store owners make containers for you out of their kids' old homework assignments, by twisting the paper all up into a little package.