Last week I spent 6 days in Akka, a town about 2 hours south of mine in the Tata province. The 2nd-year volunteer there had written a large grant to have ten youth from other Dar Chebabs, and many youth from Akka itself, attend a space-themed camp during the mid-year holiday. She came up with the idea in her first year and implemented it with youth from only Akka last spring. Since it was such a hit, she decided to expand the camp this year, and I was lucky enough to be able to bring my kids along for the ride.
Space Camp was probably one of my highlights of my service so far. While it was an exhausting 6 days, it was fulfilling and fun. I brought 5 girls, 3 boys, and one male counterpart. I was excited to take a counterpart to a Peace Corps event for the first time. He’s one of my English students but a little bit older than his grade. This does not mean that he is not intelligent—he is one of the brightest and most intuitive kids I have met, and speaks very good English. Most recently, he wrote a poem about a mermaid.
The science curriculum, like most subjects in Moroccan schools, does not leave much room for hands-on activities or creativity-expansion. Because of certain lines in the Koran, many Muslims challenge modern theories of the universe and life on other planets. For these reasons, the great majority of our campers had never really pondered just how vast our universe is, or that perhaps there could be other forms of life. On the first day, I sat down with my counterpart Karime and shared some facts with him about the planet we were assigned, which just so happened to be Uranus. I needed him to help me translate ten facts and explain them to our planet group so we could present them to the whole camp in a creative way. I told him that Uranaus is the coldest planet with winds reaching 900 km/h. He immediately remarked “This is not possible! No one could ever survive in a place like this!” And I said, “Yes, humans could not. But maybe some other form of life.” But no, no, he kept insisting it was not possible. I told him to remember we were talking about literally another world. Karime finally conceded and continued scribbling the Arabic translations as I read different facts. It was really exciting for me to watch his perceptions change and his imagination expand, along with that of the other kids, as the week went on. Toward the end of camp, Karime started writing a short story about waking up on a new planet with flying rabbits and dragon-like creatures.
Activities included a “planet walk,” where we started from the sun and counted feet as a ratio for the distance between each planet, space-themed games, and a hike into Akka’s oasis. There, we ventured off to secluded spots and pretended we were astronauts discovering a new planet. To implement Life Skills and gender & development work, we gave a presentation on Muslim/other minority women with unique, empowering careers, like Malala Yousafzai, the Queen of Jordan, and Mae Jemison (the first African-American female astronaut). A discussion followed the presentation, which gave both girls and boys and chance to share their opinions about Morocco’s progress on women in the workforce.
One of the most remarkable moments for me, probably of my entire service so far, happened on the night we built campfires and set up telescopes on a field far from the center of town for prime start-gazing. One of the telescopes had an awe-inspiring view of the moon, so much so that you could see the deep craters and waxing gibbous shadow hugging the sphere of our great moon. One of my girls, Ija, who is my host-mom’s niece and also one of my students, stood in line with me to look at the moon. When she put her eye to the telescope and saw it, she gasped, grabbed my hand, and said in clear English, “oh my God.” When she pulled her face away, she looked almost dazed with pleasure.
I feel this experience truly contributes to the “Youth Development” goals I’m set here to reach. Creativity-expansion, educational development, gender empowerment, all fall under the umbrella of my job assignment. It was starkly different from the last sleep-away camp I worked at this past summer, because those kids had paid to attend the camp, while these kids had gotten the lucky opportunity to go to a camp for free. For many of them, it was their first time traveling without their families. I know my girls will remember it for the rest of their lives. A few days afterward, I sat having tea with Ija, my host-family and my friend Emma, who had come to visit my site during the break from work. Ija rattled off all the activities she had done at camp and then pronounced, “I didn’t know anything about space before this week!” I can only hope that seeing that glowing moon through the telescope might have inspired her to explore what else is out there, and that our gender discussion might have got her thinking about some out-of-this-world careers.
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