The Idarab

After I made my way back from Figuig, I got stuck in site for almost a week. No, there wasn’t a late snowstorm, although I did, ironically, loose power. It begins to seem that if I am stuck site, I will also loose power. :) That was the result of a little windstorm, though. The reason I got stuck in site is the same reason we still haven’t had the Women’s Wellness Workshop, even though it was scheduled to occur last Monday. The greater part of Morocco has been more or less immobilized for the past week due to the striking of all road bound public transport. People say "they are doing an Idarab." The deal is, they want to change one of the accident laws, and there’s a big meeting of all the transportation big wigs soon, and they wanted to get their attention. Well, they got a lot of peoples attention, alright! The only functioning public transport was the train, expensive bus lines and those local transport you could convince to risk running the gauntlet of the striking transport folk. The most reliable form of transportation in the bled (backcountry) was to try to catch a ride with someone. People were either thumbing it or pulling strings to get around. I just hunkered down in site and decided to ride it out, after much frustration trying to get to the W.W.Workshop.
I and my two chosen women attempted to leave for the workshop, but got no further than my souk town… we were informed by text that the workshop had to be postponed because most of the women couldn’t make it due to the strike. We rescheduled for 3 days later. But had to delay again, because the strike still wasn’t over yet. And then we had to push it back again… by this time, we decided to push it back by 10 days to be sure the strike would be well and truly over! The interesting thing is that even the people who would normally carry vegetables to market aren’t going, and so there’s a temporary food shortage in many places. I myself got caught out and had to borrow some little carrots, a zuccini and one old, small, but delicious tomato from my best friend in site. To give you an idea of the scope of the strike, the Safety and Security Coordinator for all of Peace Corps Morocco was sending out texts telling us the status of the strike and what the travel policies were concerning it. So, this morning, I finally received the text telling me that the strike was OVER, lHamdulillah!! All prayers that it will not commence, and that the Workshop will go smoothly and wonderfully, and that both of my women will be able to go!