one day soon i will wake up and it won't be pomegranate season anymore and that makes me sad.

here we are again. i’ll try to keep this short. updates will live, weather, progress, work, etc.

we are half way through our week-long women’s conference. we ran a training of trainers a few weekends ago to teach educated women how to give health lessons to rural women. then, for the women’s conference we are bringing them to various rural villages and having them do these lessons. they include pre- and post- natal care, maternal health, nutrition, hygiene, HIV/AIDS prevention, and moudawana jdida (the new women’s law giving moroccan women more rights with divorce and child custody). we are handing out goodie bags to the women that come, a toothbrush, bar of soap, health pamphlets, a pen, and a notebook. so far we’ve visited three areas and have had about 150 women show up. overall, it’s going really well. there have been a few snags with transportation (various associations promised vehicles and didn’t follow through), language (the women that are trained only speak arabic, and many of the rural women only speak a local dialect), and monetary compensation (the women doing the lessons have expressed a need for payment, even though from the begining it was clear that this was volunteer work and regardless the grant can not cover labor costs)... but it’s still working out suprsingly well. women are showing up for the lessons, listening, and, i hope, learning something. best of all, it’s the local women doing this... therefore building local capacity. oh, the upside of sustainable development... peace corps would be so proud.

the library is coming along. we just got a shipment of 100 books or so from an american organization. i’m also in the process of writing the grant for some additional books. the teacher is still devoted to the project, and he’s really excited to get it off the ground.

the funding for the piped irrigation project should come through in a few more weeks. i had to send some additional information before peace corps can process the check, but hopefully it will all work out and that association can start construction by the end of the year.

the teacher responsible for the library is also in the process of translating the trash management proposal (god bless him). i don’t think anything will happen with it, but at least the commune will have a step by step plan to implement the project if they are ever willing to. that’s the other side of development work, it’s important to know when to give up and know that everything that could be done at the time was.

winter is coming fast. so so cold. i miss central heating already. but, knowing that it’s my last winter here certainly provides some relief.

still no running water in my house. it’s been 3 months... i need to schedule a meeting or something... but i don’t really know what to tell them, i’m just hoping having them talk about it might encourage some action.

alright, i think that’s all. i’ll post some pictures at some point of the women’s conference and irrigation project. happy almost-holidays and i hope that everyone is well.

p.s. random note of morocco in action: i just thought i heard a street cleaner. i looked out the window only to find that it was a van with a half-ton of reinforcement bars (they're about 20 feet long and terribly heavy) hanging from the open back dragging along the street making a whole lot of noise. oh morocco, i will miss you.

p.p.s. update from one day later: so, i heard the street cleaner again this morning. this time i looked and it was a poor sap on his bike dragging reinforcement bars behind him. honest to god. the van probably broke.