Transitions

Hello from southern Morocco! This is my first post coming to you from my final site - and boy, is there a lot to tell. The last few weeks have been full of changes and adjustments – we’ve said goodbye to our first host families, left the first cities we called home, and returned to the first place we knew in Morocco: the good ol’ hotel in Rabat. After site announcements on our first afternoon there – and the subsequent gabbing with other volunteers, pointing at the big map of all of our sites, obsessively googling the names of our sites (even when they wouldn’t show because they’re too small) and writing to family about our new homes – we had 5 days to spend in Rabat with each other before going our separate ways. During those 5 days, I…

• Spent tons and tons of time with my closest volunteer friends 
• Attended the Mawazine music festival next to the river, and danced my heart out with friends

• Visited the ocean, sat near a lighthouse, and watched the sunset

• Attended some training sessions
• Ate delicious Lebanese and Chinese food, plus some of the best ice cream I’ve had since Egypt

• Walked around the big city wearing a t-shirt, since it’s more or less okay to wear such things there
• Returned to the shop in the old medina we visited during our first trip to Rabat, where the shop owner had invited us for tea and talked to us in our very limited Darija – this time, we were able to say hello, ask how he’d been, and have a little bit more of a conversation with him 
• Reminisced about training and freaked out a bit about us all leaving for our final sites 
• Took a shower every day! 
• Swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer! Details below 
• Visited the Peace Corps library and, after finding out that they would SHIP whatever books we wanted to our final sites, exhibited my typical complete lack of self-control when it comes to books, along with a few friends who did the same (I will be receiving an embarrassingly large box next week). 
• Packed up all my things 
• Wondered how the hell I was going to make it to site with so much stuff 
• Received MORE stuff from Peace Corps 
• Seriously considered the possibility that I was never going to be able to make it with all of my crap 
• (Somehow) fit all of my things into 3 bags and departed Thursday morning for the train station with a group of other volunteers 

Swearing in was Wednesday morning, the day before we left for our final sites. We dressed in our best – some of us in newly-acquired Moroccan outfits – and headed to the office of Youth and Sports, in the part of the city where all of the government buildings are housed. It was a lot like a graduation ceremony - except instead of that free-spirited, school’s-out type atmosphere, there was an excitement/fear combination looming over all of us at the prospect of setting out on our own the next day. A member of the cabinet in charge of the Ministry of Youth and Sports was in attendance, as well as the US Ambassador to Morocco, his wife, and all of the Peace Corps Morocco staff. We were also lucky enough to have in attendance 2 members of the first group of volunteers to come to Morocco, 50 years ago this year. After some speeches and a few video slideshows with pictures from training (which made more than a few of us tear up), we stood up to take our oath of service. We raised our right hands, repeated the oath, and were suddenly no longer PCTs, but real, official PCVS. 

                                                                          

After the ceremony, we enjoyed some snacks and juice in the lobby (and by enjoyed, I mean devoured - perhaps due to the crazy range of emotions we were all feeling, we went crazy with the snacks. The juice, cookies, snacks, everything went so quickly it was comical!), and then took a walk over to the Peace Corps Headquarters. The headquarters is a absolutely beautiful compound of buildings, complete with offices, a medical unit, some temporary living quarters, and the library. We had a picnic lunch, looked around, and went hog-wild in the library. I think for some of us, the trip to the library was almost as exciting as swearing-in itself – so many books, and so much time for reading coming up during Ramadan, when everything will be closed.

Thursday morning came bright and early. In the hotel lobby, standing between suitcases and backpacks galore, we hugged and said goodbye to the folks we’d become so close with during training, and promised to visit each-others’ sites as soon as possible. A huge group of us heading south boarded a 9:45am train to Marrakesh together, and overwhelmed the poor train with all of our stuff. I again seriously wondered how I was going to make it to my final site with all of my bags – how did they suddenly get so heavy?? 

From there, everyone in Region 5 hopped on a bus to Agadir, and we were met by a group of current volunteers from the region at the bus station when we arrived. Though some of us are only an hour away from Agadir, we all stayed the night at a hotel in the city, in order to give ourselves a chance to rest, talk, and meet some current volunteers in the region before heading to meet our new host families in the morning. Agadir is a beautiful city on the coast, and we treated ourselves to an awesome dinner at an Indian restaurant on the beach that night! 

The view from the train

First glimpse of the beach in Agadir

Friday morning, I headed to my new site with Hannah, the volunteer currently in site whom I’ll be replacing. She’ll be here with me for about 10 days, until she closes her service and heads back to the US for graduate school. In many ways, it’s really nice having her here – she’s been able to show me around, introduce me to people, and help me adjust a little. Plus, I’ll have her apartment to move into! Most volunteers have to hunt for an apartment on their own, and furnish it from the bottom up – a task that isn’t easy in America, let alone in a new country, culture, and community. I feel so incredibly lucky to have that daunting task taken care of – it’s at least one thing I won’t have to worry too much about!

The last few days have been a whirlwind – and even with Hannah to help me get acclimated, it’s been overwhelming. Unlike training, there's no language-culture facilitator (read: teacher/translator), no support group of 5 other Americans around all the time, and no schedule of classes and activities all nicely planned out. It's just me, my community, and my toolkit of past experiences to guide me. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared out of my pants and freaking out a little bit – but shwiya b shwiya, I'm making some progress. Over the past 4 days, I’ve:

• Met my new host family 
• Begun to learn the ways in which the Darija here is different than in the north 
• Met the Mudir (director) of the Dar Chebab (youth center)
• Played soccer with a group of girls from the Dar Chebab 
• Gone into a few of the local haunts (shops)
• Went for a walk through town all by myself, through streets full of people staring and wondering who the hell I am, and struck up a conversation with a group of women in the park. I’m going to be real with you – it was pretty awkward, and my Darija wasn’t as good as I’d hoped due to the dialect difference. At more than one point in the conversation, it was me standing in front of a huge group of women, smiling awkwardly and making small talk about how pretty the park is, wondering what in the hell to say next. Still, it was good to feel that I was meeting people and at least making my presence known in the community. One of the women works at the Nedi Neswi (women’s center), so I’ll hopefully be working with her sometime in the future.

Truth: this is unfamiliar, difficult, scary, overwhelming, and altogether far different from anything I’ve experienced in my entire life. I’m not sure where to begin, who to talk to, or whether or not any of my ideas will be successful. And that’s okay. I’m reminding myself to take things step by step, shwiya b shwiya, and to laugh along the way. For the past 50 years, volunteers have been doing this in communities across the country, and have felt lost and confused when entering their new sites. And yet, for the past 50 years, volunteers have adjusted over time, and found success in ways big and small. We are all part of that legacy – and that’s something to remember each day.