Rabat, Morocco

I have made my first visit to Morocco since it became a Projects Abroad destination.

The first thing I’ve just got to mention is the food. Saad Rbiai and his partner are looked after by Saad’s childhood nanny who is the most utterly amazing cook. We started our dinner with chicken and mint pasties, a subtle blend of flavours in perfect puff pastry. The main course was a traditional Moroccan tajine, a kind of excellent beef casserole. The pudding, for which I thought I had no room but somehow had a second helping, was a lemon pie which I will still remember after several years in heaven. STUNNING!

I am pleased that Projects Abroad Morocco is based in Rabat. It is rather an attractive city with lots of walls and castles, including a splendid fortress called Chellah overlooking the river and inhabited by many storks who nest on the turrets and towers of the old castle. I went back to the airport at the end through Casablanca which is really just a huge industrial city and not at all in keeping with its romantic image - Bogarde and Bergman and all that.

I met all our volunteers who work on a variety of Teaching and Care projects, and these all seem to be going well, doing work that’s really needed. I was also able to see a brilliant new care project where we’re soon going to start work, a highly imaginative scheme for street-children from the shanties surrounding Rabat. In this project, kids do ordinary school lessons and get a square meal – and just a few are residential as well – but, impressively, they also have drama classes and learn how to do circus acts. It’s great to see kids in difficulty not just doing the necessary things but also having a great time just for fun, not just kicking a ball around the yard but doing something really special and unusual that will always be a part of their lives.

From Morocco, I headed to Togo. The most important thing there is that we will be able to have human rights projects for French-speakers. These will be at the Organisation for Women in Law and Development, where volunteers will be able to help set up and run educational campaigns and can help to deal with the individual cases of the women who come for help.

Morocco and Togo have in common that they are both French-speaking African countries. We in the English-speaking world tend to forget about French-speaking Afrca – yet there it is – to return to the theme of food – a mix of baguettes and fufu, of Côtes de Rhone and mint tea.

… oh, yes, I forgot the mint tea – we finished off our meal at Saad’s place with mint tea – amazing mint tea – the mintiest, most honeyish, subtlest, spiciest, sweetest …. – get me back to Rabat – get me back to Saad’s nanny – NOW!

Peter Slowe
February 2008

Part of my job here at Projects Abroad is knowing as much background and information as is humanly possible about all the countries we work in, which is basically the perfect job for a self-professed geography geek like myself. I thought I knew a lot about Nepal but I guess I didn’t realize how beautiful it is. Here is a great video of the country by one of our volunteers there. I hope you enjoy it!

Conservation in South Africa and Botswana

Why you should go to Botswana in four sentences by Gerrit Prinsloo (our Conservation director in Botswana and South Africa):

We need to ensure the survival of species and sustaining the environment for future generations to experience. We can only achieve this through the help of other likeminded people and by showing them what could be lost if the rest of the world isn’t made aware of what we still have.

I like to get to know people from all over the world and their different cultures. The best part of my job is to have the opportunity to show people with the same passion how awesome Africa is and get them to experience its humbling effect and absolute wildness.

Gerrit and a Monitor Lizard

What is happening at the Conservation project by Harry Kent

7 months into the project and were still going strong, after completing our first water hole a short walk along the river , we have decided to begin another right in the front of the camp, this will eventually mean the further attraction of wildlife making the Legodimo camp even more of a paradise retreat.

In our last update I commented on the progression of the Elephant hide we were building in the north of the reserve, since this the Elephants sadly destroyed all of our hard work, they were obviously not keen on the design or location, we are now looking at possible new areas for the hide taking into consideration the Elephant tastes.

Brian the Porcupine is still up to his old tricks, he has began bringing his lady friend to the camps kitchen restaurant, all cannot wait for the eventual long line of Brian juniors, he has now become so tame we can even get down to give him a stroke, yet his demanding hunger gets out of hand when no ones home, the state of the cupboards, cooler boxes and anything else for that matter are no sight for sore eyes.

Harry with Brian the Porcupine

A current social activity is dance classes from fellow volunteers. Surely I can’t be the only one who wants to see that. Maybe Gerrit doing jazz or modern dance…priceless!!!

That’s it for this month, let’s hope next time we can share some good news on the dreaded viewing hide.

We at Projects Abroad would like to wish all of our hard working staff members and current and future volunteers in China a happy and prosperous Chinese New year!

Did you do anything special to celebrate the New Year?

A monthly update from the Taricaya Reserve and our Conservation Program in Peru

By Richard Munday

With the arrival of a group of vets from Lima, we quickly arranged a day in Puerto Maldonado for all the volunteers and most of the staff to help out at the local zoo with enclosure maintenance. We were doing any repairs, putting sawdust on the floors, and health checks of all the animals – checking for wounds, taking weights, checking diets and worming the animals.

We began as soon as we arrived in Puerto by transporting all the volunteers, vets and most of the staff to the zoo to let the staff there know that we had arrived. Then taking some of the volunteers in the truck we went to collect the sawdust from a local saw mill. Even the destruction of trees in the rainforest can have a small benefit for us. Sawdust is an important material in helping to keep the enclosures clean and tidy, without it the floors get muddy and fruit quickly becomes rotten, attracting many insects and parasites.

Volunteers with bags of sawdust

Whilst the sawdust group was busy, the rest of the volunteers and the vets set to work with the animals, going around to each enclosure, checking weight and overall health of the animals and of course worming all the animals. This is something that we have been doing with our animals for some years now in full knowledge that animals in the wild, although they would still have parasites, would be able to rid themselves of them by eating certain plants, which of course animals in captivity cannot do.

The whole task, as you can imagine, took the whole morning and started to eat into the afternoon but once finished everyone had a feeling of accomplishment as the enclosures look 10 times better than they did in the morning and we were now 100% sure that the animals were all in good condition.

Volunteer checking on the health of a monkey

We are planning on working at the zoo again in the future, making this a regular 3 month activity so that we can help keep the zoo in good condition.

A little note for those of you who may be slightly concerned that Taricaya is helping support a zoo in Puerto Maldonado, we do have ulterior motives. With the end in sight for all the paper work to do with our animal rescue centre, we will soon be receiving animals from Puerto Maldonado and most importantly from the zoo, so it’s in our best interest to help keep these animals healthy so that we can release them in the future.

Adventurous Rose and the many planks of wood on the Worthing beach

Those of you who have attended an Open Day in the UK will have heard from Peter Slowe how our office is not in the most exciting part of the country and is full of the retired. Last week excitement hit Worthing with a bang. We even made the front pages of the national newspapers.

The coast was strewn with wood. The Ice Prince ran into trouble off Portland Bill where I used to live. The wood that came off the boat took a few days to come ashore many miles up the coast at Worthing.

Our very own Rose Yelland who keeps the UK marketing team in order ventured out for a Sunday stroll and couldn’t believe what she saw. It wasn’t just a few planks of wood it was an amazing site as you can see.

Police have tried to stop people taking the wood off the beach and banned people from walking along the beach although if you have any wood requirements feel free to email Rose as I’m sure that she will be able to do you a deal!!

Our Scots members of the office were upset it wasn’t a rerun of the Whisky Galore story which happened off the Scottish Coast more than a few years ago. It is well worth seeing the film or reading the book by Compton Mackenzie of the arrival of not wood but crates of whisky on the Scottish coast.

- Ian Birbeck

By Scott Mcquarrie

When James Caan from BBC’s Dragons Den first approached Projects Abroad about setting up in Pakistan nobody really knew what to expect. For anyone that’s not familiar with the show, it involves entrepreneurs pitching ideas to five Dragons (successful entrepreneur’s themselves) in order to secure funding for their business. In return for their capital the Dragon’s receive a stake in the entrepreneur’s company. Therefore, it was quite strange to be sitting in a London office listening to James Caan’s pitch regarding Projects Abroad setting up in Pakistan.

Why did James Caan approach Project Abroad? Well, quite simply he was looking for a professional organisation, to facilitate young people travelling to and helping out in Pakistan. Hearing him discuss the positive impact volunteers could make in Pakistan it was obvious this type of project is particularly close to his heart, no doubt due to his own Pakistani origin.

There is also a more specific aim to setting up in Pakistan - trying to engage both Pakistani youths and the wider Pakistani community, to bridge the gap between the UK and Pakistan. An important issue was raised during our discussions - how can someone of Pakistani origin who is born in the UK but has never travelled to Pakistan fully understand their culture? Of course there is a lot passed on by parents, education and self research but this still leaves a lot unaccounted for. It stands to reason that you learn more about a place if you actually experience it firsthand. Therefore a solution to help bridge this gap is for more young people to visit Pakistan. This is where Projects Abroad comes in. Using our vast knowledge of cultural exchange and supporting volunteers in-country, we will provide a safe environment for volunteers to help and explore their heritage. Volunteers will be able to take part in Teaching, Care and Sport projects at a range of different placements based in Lahore.

The project has many challenges but we feel it is an extremely worthwhile exercise and one Projects Abroad is well suited to, due to our extensive experience.

Expect to hear a lot more from us on Pakistan over the coming months.