More excited to visit a single mother's NGO in Casablanca than excited that I wasn't puking my brains out and naseous every time I rolled over, I decided I was well enough to travel yesterday.
It was a brilliant idea until around noon.
Story time:
I woke up (early, because I'd been sleeping for virtually 24 hours straight) and met my friend Cassie at the corner outside my house in the Medina. Kim dropped by to tell Cassie she was sick and not coming. Cassie had to walk really slowly because she was still sick, but we made it to the train station where Jennette told us that though she was sick, her family told her, "Go to Casablanca. You won't get better sitting around here (again, common sense piece coming shortly)." Whereupon we board the train and two stops down the line Meg decides that she's too sick to go the rest of the distance, gets off there, and turns around to head back to Rabat. Dropping like flies. I should have seen it coming.
I was going to visit La Associacion Solidarite Femmenine, an NGO servicing single mothers. Others were headed to an NGO dealing with street children in Casablanca, so it was up to me to haul myself to the final Casa Port train exit and get a cab to the Association.
My cab driver didn't end up knowing where it was, the address was the incorrect main office, and it wasn't near the landmarks denoted in the directions. The cab also couldn't break my 200 Dihrams. I was still feeling no pain though.
I arrived at the first center where we were to have lunch, and though I couldn't break my money for the cab, a woman from the restaurant pulled fifteen dihrahms out of her purse to pay for me. I was so grateful but didn't want to use it so I went across the way to see if the hotel could break the money. The woman at the front desk couldn't, so she walked out onto the street and had the men working parking break it for me. I feel I'd be hard pressed to find people as readily generous to a foreigner in my own country, though I'd like to think the best in my country.
Happy to be out of the house, and confident in myself from my past travels. My broken French can take me a long way, I've discovered. After walking circles in the sun and around roundabouts, I finally found the Association after dropping in a bar where someone (for a change) knew what I was looking for. I walk into the Association and learn right away that we were not informed the tour would be in French. I gave a little, "Shnu smitic?" and they were thoroughly impressed with my (ahem, lack of) Arabic. They love my horrible Arabic. They eat it up. Right up.
I was about an hour and a half early so I got to play with all of the children! They led me into the play area where I helped the nurses take care of the kids. The first girl I sat next to immediately crawled away from me. Meh. One boy, Mohammed, had what I at first glance looked like cuts all over his head. After seeing first hand how much of a trouble-maker he was, I looked closer and realized he just had marker all over his head, neck, stomach, and legs. He was put into time-out behind the door once while I was there because he kept slapping all the other kids.
Three other people showed up for the tour. They were thirty minutes late because they had equally as difficult of a time finding the place as I did. Four others never showed up. They were amazed that I found it without knowing French, which was quite the ego boost! Little did they know I'm the charade master (Oh! Best charade of the experience has been when my host sister was charading/asking me if I had diarrhea. They apparently have only been aquainted with the explosive kind). The tour started and I immediately felt faint. The rest of the day continued with a splitting headache and fevor.
I was determined to go to Hassan II Mosque, the third largest mosque in the world (behind one in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia), but struggled immensely through it. I felt so rude, but was so exhausted and ill that I had to sit down for most of the tour.
I got home and slept from five to eleven, where my family didn't understand that I didn't need a doctor, I needed them to stop waking me up and forcing me to eat. I havn't had such a bad fevor since I was a kid though. I was worried about it for most of the day. I got shivers in the middle of the night and decided to skip school this morning. I've been to one class today, and am taking it very easy. I feel like I got off easy though.
-Raleigh
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