Disco in Morocco

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the following are mine alone and do not reflect that of the U.S. government or Peace Corps.

Most Moroccans love to dance. This is not something I discovered recently, but knew since attending my first traditional Moroccan wedding back in September. When it comes to dancing, it doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, young, or old; I have yet to meet a Moroccan who doesn’t like to dance. This was the inspiration for my Women’s Day activity last week. We did an hour of art, an hour of yoga, and an hour of American dance. The turn-out was WAY more than I expected (about 30 women between the ages of 4 and 50) and it was probably the most fun I’ve had since coming here.

Believe me, I'm no expert on dance. In fact, of everyone in my training group I probably have the least experience in dance. But I wanted to offer something that women would be interested in and aside from teaching yoga I decided to try teaching the only two dances that I happen know: "The Hustle" and "The Electric Slide." And considering I learned these dances from a friend on New Year’s Eve a few years back, it’s only by chance that I even remember them, let alone teach them! But after downloading the necessary music and refreshing my memory with a series of Youtube videos, I was ready to go!

Here I need to insert a little side-note about Moroccan time. The majority of Moroccans will inevitably show up late to any event. That’s just how Moroccan time works. If you have something scheduled, don’t expect people to start showing up until at least a half hour after it starts. This can be frustrating at times, but you learn to live with it.

Now, the exception to this little rule is if you’re offering a yoga and dance class for women. The schedule at my Dar Chebab clearly listed art from 3:00 to 4:00, yoga from 4:00 to 5:00 and American dance from 5:00 to 6:00. The reason I even had the art class was to make sure women were there for the yoga and dance. But most women actually started showing up for yoga before 3:30! I had at least 15 women sitting in my yoga/dance classroom nearly a half-hour before it was even supposed to start! By the time 4:00 rolled around, about 30 women were waiting to start yoga!

Before last Saturday, I had never taught yoga or dance before in my entire life and yet before I knew it, the time had come and I was teaching it in my broken and heavily accented Arabic to 30 Moroccan women. I only wish I could have video-taped those 30 Moroccan women doing “the Hustle” in nearly perfect unison. They absolutely loved it. We had such a great time they talked me into doing it again this past Saturday. Not as many women showed up, but we still had an awesome time learning the Cha Cha Slide and dancing to Linkin’ Park.

I still consider last Saturday one of the best work days I've had here. The level of motivation those women had was amazing. They really wanted to learn complex yoga poses and dance steps and be able to do them right. They even had me watch them a few times just to make sure they were getting it. With as many bad days as I've had here and as many times I've considered early terminating my service, the good days like last Saturday make it all worth it.