Spring Camp!
Every year, USAID in Morocco funds week-long English language learning spring camps for Moroccan youth in cities all over the country. Peace Corps volunteers, led by those in the Youth Development sector, provide the formal English instruction throughout the week, as well as participate in and organize, along with Moroccan staff, other fun activities and games for the kids. During the second week of April, I had the opportunity to volunteer at one of these camps in a city near where I live, Missour.
Six volunteers, including myself, came from around the country to hold 3 hours of English lessons each morning, and party to the wee hours of the morning each night. Now, I can only attest to the spring camp that I attended, but Moroccan kids are night owls and won’t let a little thing like exhaustion keep them from boogying into the late night hours. If pressed, I’d say the theme of our week was definitely DANCING. Now, don’t get me wrong, everyone (well, almost everyone) was fastidious about the English learning, and from 9-12 each morning, our classes were mostly on excellent behavior. We spent the first day of camp doing individual English interviews so as to divide campers into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced classes, and were fortunate enough to have previously-designed lesson plans to accommodate each level (compliments of our volunteer coordinator, Phil). But after dinner was cleared away each night, the speakers were turned up, the DJ was in the house (yes, there was a DJ), and Justin Beiber’s melodious tunes probably came close to blowing out a few windows. It’s silly to think that every time I hear “Baby” by the Beibster now, it will make me think of Moroccan line dancing with a bunch of 12 year old girls. With the exception of the 12 year old girl part, I’d never have guessed that would be my association therein.
We volunteers were not to be shown up by the impressive dancing of our campers, however… ohhhh no. On the third day of camp, in the morning after breakfast, we were informed that there was going to be a Talent Show that evening. Knowing that it would be a good idea to contribute to the show, and not wanting to deprive our young charges of the FABULOUS dancing stylings of their English teachers, we spent our entire afternoon siesta carefully choreographing a dance number set to Shakira’s “Waka Waka”. Well, not ALL of us choreographed it. SOME PEOPLE took naps, and woke up just in time to be taught the dance, while others slaved away all afternoon… ahem… Angelica… but anyway, it was worth it.
And so, that evening, dressed in makeshift costumes, four of us proudly took the stage before the judges and shimmied our way into THIRD PLACE! Ohhhh yeah. The fact that one of the dancers in our number was a judge most likely had nothing to do with that. Probably.
Besides silliness and dancing, the week also included a Dental Hygiene session taught by a local dentist from the Ministry of Health, with the help of materials from a Colgate grant that the Ministry had received. Overall, the experience was really fun and very rewarding. I rarely get a chance to work with middle and high school-aged kids due to how rural my site is, so it was interesting. In my beginner English class, we really developed a fun rapport by the end of the week, which was either on account of my enthusiasm about games like Hangman, Bingo and singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”…. Or despite it.
And so, in conclusion (hoping that it actually uploads)… here is our Third Place talent show performance of “Waka Waka” by Shakira. Enjoy!…. and please don’t judge.
…… so I can’t upload it actually, but I will put some pictures of us in our outfits, striking poses from our dance (that my friend Alexa liked to call our “screen shots”) as a consolation:
Jazz hands, used liberally throughout performance due to their show-stopping visual value, definitely not to make up for a significant lack of dancing talent
high-kicking
A few of my english students from the week, cuties!
my favorite English student, Oumayma
Missour Spring Camp staff
