From Rochester to Morocco: Kleins Have an Exciting Trip
By Martha Slater

Peter and Becky Klein of Rochester are back at their home on Jerusalem Hill after an exciting trip to Morocco, where they visited with their daughter Heather, who is a Peace Corps volunteer there.

Heather, who is 25, graduated from Rochester High School and then from UVM in December 2005. She joined the Peace Corps in March 2006 and was sent to Morocco, to live and work in a little town named Tabant, in the high Atlas Mountains’ Bougamez Valley.

Heather teaches classes in hygiene and water sanitation to adults, as well as English to middle school age students. She lives in a small three-room apartment attached to a larger home, and although she has no heat or running water, she does have electric lights.

"The valley she lives in is a very rural area and most of the people are farmers," Becky Klein explained. "They grow all their own food without modern farm machinery. They also raise sheep and goats."

Becky noted that the homes in Heather’s village and all through that part of Morocco are made of stone covered with mud. They aren’t heated and it gets cold enough to snow in the winter.

"With no trees for fuel, they don’t have fireplaces, so the people dress very warmly in layers and sit under blankets when they’re at home," Becky explained. "I was really cold when we there, but we did get used to it after a while."

Excited to see their daughter for the first time since she left a year ago, the Kleins left Vermont for Morocco March 29 and returned home April 9. In Morocco, they stayed with Heather in Tabant for three days; then spent the rest of the time touring the country with her and another Peace Corps volunteer named Ben.

One night, they traveled out into the desert on camels and slept there in tents. The following morning, after leaving the desert town of Merzouga, they encountered a roadblock that stopped the taxi they were riding in. The roadblock was caused by striking taxi drivers, and things got tense for a little while, but eventually they got through.

The Kleins spent a night in Tingehr, where they visited immense gorges, forests of date palms and old Berber ruins. They also spent three days in the large city of Marrakech where Becky noted, "We shopped and learned more about the culture. We found that as Americans we were really welcomed and treated well. The people we met were friendly and were very pleased to find that Heather could speak their Berber language. She couldn’t speak it when she arrived, but she’s gotten quite fluent in it."

Her mother noted that recent developments in the political climate may pose problems for Heather and other Peace Corps volunteers, but if all goes well, she is scheduled to spend another year there.

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