A Day in the Life of a PCT

I’m excited to say that I’ve made it through my first full week of CBT (community-based training)! I feel as though it’s been much less than one week and also much more than one week, both at the same time.

I already have so much to write and tell everyone about, but there isn’t nearly enough time left over to cover it all here, even if I wrote for hours! Rather than trying to cover everything, I thought I’d give a general picture of what a typical day looks like in my new life as a PCT (Peace Corps Trainee)! This post is going to be long, so hold onto your hats! J

- CBT in brief: For about 8 weeks, we train and live in a community known as our CBT site. There are 6 of us in my group, plus our LCF (language-cultural facilitator). We’re living in a neighborhood called Marja, which is on the outskirts of the great city of Fes and has a breathtaking view of some small mountains. We each live with a different host family in the neighborhood and come together during the day for language and cultural lessons.

- My host family: I live with a wonderful family in an apartment right around the corner from the Dar Chebab where we have our lessons every day! I have a host mom, host dad, two host sisters and a host brother. My host sisters are ages 17 and 26, and my host brother is 16, so it’s a really fun dynamic in our house. Plus, the rest of the family lives in the apartments next door and across the street from us, so there are usually various people coming in and out, saying hello and visiting with us. My host family is incredibly generous – they’ve welcomed me into their home with a level of hospitality that amazes me every day. My host sister made me a beautiful bracelet with my name sewed into it with beads, and they bought me a pair of Moroccan house slippers to wear as well! Just when I thought the generosity might have reached its peak, they surprised me with two gorgeous Moroccan outfits to wear and threw a huge party for me with henna and everything! I am so blown away – I feel as though even in English I don’t possess words to adequately express how thankful I am for them!

     

     

    

Here’s a look at our typical daily schedule:

- Wake up around 7 and have breakfast with my host family, which consists of various delicious breads with jelly, cheese, olives, and eggs. (Don’t worry – I will of course dedicate an entire post to describing all the wonderful food of Morocco in more detail very soon J). My host dad is the principal of the school near our house, so sometimes after breakfast he takes me by there to meet the teachers and say hello to some of the kids. It’s really a wonderful opportunity, because meeting with local teachers and students will obviously be a key part in developing new activities for the Dar Chebab later in our training.

- Intensive language lessons all morning at the Dar Chebab (youth center) with the CBT group, led by Omar. Our Darija is progressing, shwiya b shwiya (little by little)! Some of the sounds in Arabic that were really difficult to pronounce in the beginning are starting to be more familiar, and we are actually putting together some nifty sentences now! We work hard and learn a lot each day, but we also have a ton of fun together, laughing at ourselves and having fun with the new language. Just as an example, we’ve discovered that the phrase for, “Do you need help?” -- “Wesh en Eawnik?” sounds a lot like, “Wash an owls neck!” It sounds silly and cracks me up every time I think of it, but you know what?: I’ll never forget how to say that phrase! I’m finding that a sense of humor and at least a few good belly laughs every day can make anything more manageable.

- We each have lunch with our respective host families from around 12:30 – 2. The lunch break here is typically long like this, and it seems like Moroccans often come home from school/work to eat and spend time with their families for a bit during this time. As someone who’s been busy and eating lunch on the go a lot in the past, I have to say that the built-in long lunch break is awesome. It’s such a great way to recharge, especially when my brain feels fried after hours of language classes. My host dad usually talks to me about my day in Darija, such as inquiring about what we learned that morning or what I think about the weather. It’s such a great feeling every time I have a full conversation in Darija, and those moments are happening more and more often, shwiya b shwiya!

- In the afternoons, our CBT group gets together for various cultural and community education activities. Some days we have conversations about specific topics such as norms and values; sometimes we walk around, familiarizing ourselves with the community; and sometimes we simply sit at a café drinking kahuwa (coffee) and talking about our experiences with the culture so far. The café chats together are truly therapeutic for us – it can get really exhausting constantly feeling as though you’re struggling to communicate, so it’s nice to sit with each other, talk, listen, learn from one-another, and be understood. I honestly don’t know what I would do without my CBT group! Support systems manifest themselves in various ways during Peace Corps service, and it’s already obvious how important we will be to one-another during these weeks. We’ve also met with local officials and seen the women’s center in the area, which is really amazing. Just as there are Dar Chebabs in communities all over Morocco, there are many women’s centers like the one in here in Marja, dedicated to empowerment, literacy, various clubs, and much more. I’m sure I’ll write more about this soon, but I was really encouraged and inspired by what I saw of the center here, and I hope to be involved with one like it in my final site, wherever that might be.

- I return back to my host family around 6 or 7pm, and hang out with them the rest of the night. We have the pre-dinner “snack time” when I get back, and its usually some yummy combination of breads, jam, cookies, olives, peanuts, eggs, and other appetizer-type things. My family is super excited about helping me learn Darija, so oftentimes they teach me new words and phrases through conversations, or they point out objects and tell me the Darija words for them while we watch the Turkish soap operas or Moroccan Idol (that’s right – Moroccan Idol. It’s pretty awesome, not going to lie). I feel really lucky to have a family that is so eager to help me with the language – there are many words or phrases that I’ve learned from my family even before encountering them in the language class. When I brought out my Darija book a few nights ago to study before dinner, my host sisters immediately gathered around me to have a look and learn some of the English translations of phrases. It was truly inspiring to see how excited they became for the opportunity to learn – they were asking me how to pronounce things, pulling out notebooks and copying phrases down, and practicing alongside me. I wouldn’t have really expected this, but teaching them the English versions of phrases actually helped solidify my Darija on an entirely new level. Plus, it helped to significantly reduce the self-consciousness that I experience sometimes when I have trouble pronouncing words - hearing them learning (and sometimes stumbling over) new words and asking me questions really boosted my confidence and reminded me that learning a new language is a process for everyone.

- We eat our actual dinner around 9pm, which is early compared with most of the families in our group - it’s actually fairly common for Moroccans to stay up late and eat dinner between 11 and 12 at night! Dinner is usually a smaller meal compared with lunch, and my family goes to bed soon afterward, which also seems to be fairly less common amongst Moroccans. I usually head to my room and journal a bit, listen to music, or whatever else for a few hours before going to sleep – it’s my much-needed “me time!”

Whew!! As you can see, our days are extremely full! CBT is designed to be an immersion into Moroccan culture, and it definitely succeeds at being just that. The language classes and cultural discussions provide us with some structured learning and guidance, while our interactions with host families and other community members serve as real-life learning experiences with Moroccan customs and lifestyles. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel utterly exhausted from time to time – nearly every interaction with Moroccans is an exercise in the new language, and you can imagine how that can get overwhelming after awhile. Even so, I’m really impressed and happy with how thorough our training process is, from the LCF’s structured training to our integration through host families. I think some people have an idea about Peace Corps that we are just dropped in the middle of a new country, with no more than a handbook and a “good luck,” and that couldn’t be further from the truth! These two months are going to involve a lot of effort to learn Darija and become comfortable with a new culture, but I truly feel confident that we’ll all be ready to work when our training period ends and we move to our permanent sites. Of course we won’t be fluent, and of course there will be much yet to learn, but we’ll be ready. With a host family like mine and such a wonderful CBT group, I feel more supported than I think I expected. Shwiya b shwiya, we are becoming more comfortable – and it’s only the end of week one!

To those back home: thank you so much for all of your love and support! I miss you all, and I think of you every day! I don’t have a lot of spare time just yet, but I look forward to talking with some loved ones back home on Skype sometime in the future. Check out the “Contact Me” tab for information about how to mail me letters, if that’s something you’d want to do (p.s. I love letters J )!

Much love!

KAZ