Strep Throat and Grungy Parks

A little bit of venting and complaining.... it was bound to happen some time during the trip! :(

I can't swallow... I make a cringing face every time I have to swallow my saliva. If that weren't bad enough, eating is probably 10 times worse. And of course, I have to be sick in Morocco, where they eat TONS of bread... bread with every meal. It's not the soft type of bread either, but the dry scratchy kind that feels like corse sandpaper as it goes down your throat. For every meal today I've sat at the table, only eating because it would be rude not to, painfully taking my meals one swallow at a time, and on the verge of tears. I don't want to complain to Mounia, but I also want to make sure she knows this isn't just a cold. I just looked in the mirror and both sides of my throat are red with little white boils. It seems to be getting worse, despite the Zithromycin anti-biotics I started today. Of course, when I got back from walking 1 hour in the 100 degree heat (30 min each way to the pharmacy... as just about every pharmacy is closed on Sunday), I found out that Strep Throat is best cured with Penecilin, not zithro. I guess I just have to give this a go for and see if Western medicine gets it...

I went down to the park with Faisah (either 6 or 7 years old) tonight. It was a beautiful sunset and I sat with all of the mom's in the community who were watching their kids play. I got some stares, not only because I was a westerner wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but also the only adult male there. Everyone above their teens (which were women only) were fully covered and wearing their hijabs. As you can image, I pretty much stuck out like a sore thumb. I'm thinking all the women starting gossiping; "who is this white guy bringing a Moroccan boy to the play ground?" At least it gave them something to talk about :)

It was great to see that at 9:30 at night, there were still about 100 kids at this park. By American standards, this park was pretty much a dump, not even suitable for the Bronx or South Central LA. There was trash everywhere, dirt, rocks, weeds, and broken cement. As I sat there watching the kids play, I just thought how ironic this was. It made me think about parks in America. First of all, there would be no kids out playing at 9:30pm on a Sunday night in America. Kids' bedtimes are now 7 or 8. Not these kids. I had to drag Faisah back home around 10pm, and the play ground was still packed with long lines for the 4 foot metal slides. This park... old, all metal, a dump, and swings informally made of thin rope with a cardboard seat... was more than enough for these hundred+ kids. In America, new parks are built to meet to the demands of both kids and parents. Cork ground is put in (instead of dirt or broken cement), slides are made of plastic, and still, after all this, kids could really care less that there's a park down the street. They would much rather stay at home and play Playstation or Wii. In America, we are so busy trying to protect our kids, make parks cleaner and safer, when all we are doing is raising the standard to an absurd level. Fewer kids are falling off the monkey bars, bruising their knees, getting in fights and learning how to wait in line in the playgrounds. This is a necessity of growing up. Without conflicts on the playgrounds, how will these kids learn to deal with conflicts in the "real world"? The real world is more about the playground than it is about Playstation, Wii, or a computer game. If I were able to step outside the realm of reality and had to choose to be brought into this world again, I would choose the dumpy playground over the clean over-protective suburban neighborhood where the kids are inside spending countless hours in front of an electronic box.