1 Year In

March 19th marked 1 year since I officially began my Peace Corps journey. 1 year since, exhausted, nervous, teary-eyed, and weighed down with too many bags, I walked through the Detroit Metro airport to catch a plane to Philadelphia. 1 year since we gathered for a 1-day introduction called “Staging” in Philadelphia, and the whirlwind of forms and procedures and papers and vague answers made me dizzy with stress. And 1 year since I met for the first time some of the people that would come to be my anchors, my sounding boards, my dearest new friends.

March 21st marked 1 year since we first set foot in Morocco as Peace Corps Trainees. 1 year since we all waited at the airport in Philly for hours, trying to get to know one another and relax, but mostly trying to calm down and enjoy our last bits of greasy American snack foods or ice cream or beers for awhile. 1 year since, 10 minutes before our plane was boarding, a group of us gathered in the airport bar and toasted to our hopes for the next 2 years with Sam Adams mugs. 1 year since we landed in Casablanca and were greeted by Peace Corps staff on our way to retrieve our too many bags. 1 year since I sat next to Kitty, Ted, and Eugene on the shuttle to Rabat, gazing at our new surroundings and showing each other pictures of our loved ones back home. And 1 year since, slightly rested after a nap but still jet-lagged beyond reason, we gathered for our first of many training sessions in Hotel Oscar, eagerly collecting whatever information we could from the staff we’d just met.

In many ways, those first days in country feel close – I can still remember how I felt, who I talked to, and what we ate – and it’s truly difficult to believe that an entire year has passed since then. In other ways, though, I look back and recognize just how far I’ve come: how much I’ve learned, how much I’ve grown, how close I’ve become with new friends, how much I’ve experienced, the roller-coaster of emotions that I’ve learned to cope with, the cultural understanding I’ve developed, the changes I’ve made, new life I’ve created for myself from scratch here in Morocco.

In 1 years’ time, I’ve left my home and loved ones behind; learned a new language; adjusted to new foods, and learned how to cook many of those foods; learned all about a new, unfamiliar culture; learned how to [attempt to] succeed at a new job; moved to a new city in a new country; learned to call that city and country home; re-learned how to do everything, from buying vegetables to going to the post office; taken 12+ hour bus/train/taxi trips all around the country; made new friends, both American and Moroccan; built a program at my Dar Chebab, hosted numerous events with Moroccan partners, worked at 3 youth summer camps; worked at a girls’ leadership camp; spent a year’s worth of major American holidays away from home; welcomed family and loved ones to Morocco for a visit; trekked into the Sahara by camel and gazed at the stars from atop a sand dune; swam in the Atlantic; learned to live alone, and enjoy it at least a little bit; hitch-hiked with a random Moroccan lady I’d just met; bargained for goods in the market with skill; learned to adjust my expectations according to a new lifestyle; and above all, learned more than I ever could have hoped about myself, my country, my culture, and the customs and culture of the Moroccan people.

Life around the 1 year mark is infamous amongst PCVs: its known as the time when most people experience a severe low on the emotional roller coaster, due to fatigue or jadedness or a general recognition that, though you’ve come a long way, you still have a heck of a long way to go. I feel very lucky to be able to say, however, that I’m currently riding a nice high wave on my roller coaster, and have been for the past few months. Since the GLOW camp last January, which I wrote about most recently, I’ve been busy with lots of meaningful, successful work, and I’ve been feeling the best about my service that I have since arriving in country. In addition to all the great work I’ve had, this year’s new group of PCVs finally arrived to their final sites last week, and we all had a blast welcoming them to the region. There are 2 new PCVs in Taroudant, a large city only about 20 minutes from me, and it’s been really rewarding prepping the site for them and helping them get acclimated into their new home. Moreover, interacting with new PCVs provides an interesting perspective on my own service: how far I’ve come, things I wish I’d known, the things I love about Morocco, and how I want to spend the remainder of my time here. In short, a lot of factors have come together to make life at the year mark not only positive for me, but a time of meaningful reflection and perspective that is much welcomed.

There’s a lot to say about my first year of Peace Corps service, and it’d be impossible to accurately sum up all that I’ve felt and experienced in that time. Instead, I thought I’d give you my thoughts on a few important areas of life here that might give you a picture of where I’m at: lessons learned, community integration, language, and looking forward.


1 Year In: Lessons Learned

First and foremost, I have learned that Peace Corps is about adjusting to the fact that your expectations for your service may not be met, or may change drastically from month to month. I had a certain set of expectations of myself and my service when I came to Morocco, and almost every aspect of that has been turned upside down from the moment I arrived – by the difficulties of my site, by my primary assignment, by my working conditions, by cultural issues, and a whole host of other factors. Adjusting all of your expectations – especially when in the midst of adjusting to life in a new culture and learning a new language – is HARD. It was much harder than I’d expected, and I admit that it really threw me for a loop during the first few months of my service. Looking back on that time now, I realize just how far I’ve come in this regard; how well I’ve learned to go with the flow, to expect the unexpected, and to adjust when things don’t go as planned. Most importantly, I’ve learned that although my service isn’t what I expected, it is still meaningful, challenging, fulfilling, and beautiful in its own right.

On a similar note, learned that every single person’s Peace Corps experience is different, and that shaping my own expectations around the experience of someone else is foolhardy. Each PCV's conditions vary so widely – site location, culture, language, students, Mudir, counterparts, weather, resources available, needs of the community, I could go on and on. – that each person must navigate their own path according to their own unique set of circumstances at their site. This part can be especially hard to remember, especially with the availability of the internet and Facebook here in Morocco; when I’m having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad month, it can be hard when reading about the successes of fellow PCVs to not get down on myself and wonder what it is I’m doing wrong. The truth is, though, that everyone has their own challenges and their own successes – and blaming myself or being too hard on myself for the unique challenges of my situation at that moment is not only unwarranted, its also counterproductive. In America, there may be a lot of ways to get something accomplished, and a lot of back-up plans/resources when things don’t work out as planned with a project. Here, though, that may not be the case; some roadblocks in the developing world, especially for a foreigner who just showed up a matter of months ago, might be too immense to overcome within a span of 2 short years. Learning to be at peace with the progress I’m making, no matter how small, and training myself to not be so hard on myself has been one of the most valuable lessons of my service thus far.

Though I’ve adjusted by leaps and bounds since arriving in country, I am continually in the process of learning the hard lesson of patience, and of accepting that things in the developing world don’t necessarily happen at the same pace or with the same precision as they do in the United States. From simple tasks like going to the post office or shopping for basic supplies, to larger things like getting a project of the ground or arranging a meeting with a local association, there is a definite element of uncertainty: something could be closed unexpectedly, somebody could be out due to a family function, the meeting could get cancelled due to miscommunication or the weather. To put it bluntly: things here happen SLOWLY, much more slowly than any of us realized, and all things, especially important projects, TAKE TIME, and lots of it. At the very beginning of my service, I would often blame myself for these shortcomings: “All I wanted to do today was attend that meeting, go to the post office, and get the supplies for the event tonight, and only one of them got accomplished – I am a failure at this!” A year of this however, has taught me that this sort of self-blame is unwarranted and a waste of mental energy; no matter how much I plan, there are bound to be obstacles and changes to those plans, and that is O.K.

I have also learned the necessity of working with local Moroccan counterparts in order to execute projects and achieve goals. In the beginning of my service, I regarded a counterpart as an important factor to success as a PCV; I now regard a counterpart as not just important, but as an essential part to success in any project. Every single success I've had during my service has been in partnership with a local counterpart, be it my Mudir, an association, or another interested community member acting as a counterpart for a particular project. Counterparts are necessary for a number of reasons, including logistics, cultural relevance, language, resources, and most importantly, sustainability. It may be true that a project can be completed without a local counterpart, but it will take a lot longer to accomplish, take a lot more work, and be generally more difficult for the PCV than if it had been done with a counterpart. Most importantly, if that project does succeed without a counterpart, it will most likely fail to have any real element of sustainability, since no local community members were involved or invested in the project. I have learned that our projects are important not merely for their completion, but for the skills transferred to community members along the way while collaborating, such as project planning, grant writing, etc.


1 Year In: Community Integration

A year of living in a foreign country has taught me that community integration is a process made up of severe ups and downs. On the one hand, I have experienced days when I feel completely integrated into my community, and that everywhere I turn I seem to run into somebody I know. For example, I run into women from my aerobics class on an almost daily basis, and I've come to be known by women in my community as the "one who does sports for women." The Taxi men know me, and can usually tell based on the day of the week and what I have with me whether I’m going to Taroudant or Agadir. When I do my shopping, I have a “vegetable guy,” a “bread guy,” an “egg guy” and “supermarket guys,” all of whom know me and greet me with smiles when I visit their shops. They’ve come to know what I’m probably going to buy and what I need, and they help me out with things I don’t know. There is, however, a flipside: for as many days as I feel completely integrated, there are an equal or perhaps greater number where I feel completely alone in my community. I have spent entire days walking around town, shopping, or sitting in the park, hoping to have a pleasant interaction, only to be met with harassment from young boys, anxious stares from women I haven’t met, or old men muttering the word for “foreigner” under their breath as I pass.

Perhaps the most difficult part of community integration has been the fact that I can never fully by myself in my community, even with those whom I know really well. My community is very conservative, and there are a lot of cultural factors that need to be taken into consideration with almost every aspect of my life. In order to not be considered hshuma (shameful), I have to lie or otherwise bend the truth about aspects of my life such as my romantic relationship, my male friends, my favorite foods and drinks, my clothing preferences in America, my political opinions, and my general life back home in the U.S. Though I can share a lot of myself with my Moroccan friends and have made many genuine friendships, a large part of me always feels removed at some level, because of all of the things I need to hide about myself. Some days, I think that maybe I’m being too cautious, that maybe I can be a lot more honest with people about who I am culturally. But then I hear the women in my community relentless gossiping about one-another, never letting a single thing about each others’ small town lives go unnoticed – and I decide once again to err on the side of caution.


1 Year In: Language

I’m happy to say that my language skills have continued to progress since training. I felt relatively confident when I first got to site, but I’ve learned a ton since then, and I know that my communication skills are light years ahead of where they were last summer. This is partially thanks to ongoing tutoring – I meet with an Arabic tutor, who is also a great counterpart of mine, once a week – but mostly it’s due to continued interactions and discussions with people over time. With every conversation I learn a bit more, and after every week I can cite a least a few new words, phrases, or grammar structures I’ve learned. Though it makes some things more difficult, the fact that my Dar Chebab Mudir and most of the people I’ve worked with only speak Arabic has definitely helped my language skills progress considerably.

My host mom, with whom I’ve spent countless afternoons talking and hanging out, has helped a lot as well; we’ve had many complex conversations, such as things like women’s health, the environment, war in Syria, American cuisine and culture, gender norms in Morocco, abortion, raising kids…I could go on and on! She’s always open to a good conversation, and she’s great with being patient and explaining new words to me so that I’ll understand.

I still have moments where I feel like I’m not understanding anything – mostly when I’m talking with someone who doesn’t speak clearly or keeps using Standard Arabic instead of Darija – but all in all I’m very proud of how much Arabic I’ve learned and how well I can communicate. Perhaps the most important thing is that I still, after all this time, find it fun and fascinating to be learning a new language, right down to all of its nuances, idioms, and slang.


1 Year In: Looking Forward

With a little over a year left in country, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I’d like to accomplish and how I’d like to spend my remaining time here as a PCV. In the short-term, I’m looking forward to coordinating Taroudant Spring English Language Camp next week – the biggest spring camp in the country! The next few months will also be busy with planning for the region-wide girls’ soccer camp that myself and another PCV are trying to put together for the end of June; we’ll be meeting with potential venues, applying for a grant, finding coaches, putting together a program, etc. After the camp is completed (incha’allah!), it will be summer, and Ramadan, and a trip to Europe for taking the GRE/vacationing that I’m planning with some fellow PCVs. For the rest of the school year that follows, I’d like to continue the high presence of girls at my Dar Chebab, and bring in some more new faces. The girls’ soccer team will incha’allah be going stronger than ever, and we’re planning to hold matches between teams from various girls’ teams in the region. I’m also hoping to hold a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camp, potentially during the winter break, for girls in my site and surrounding areas. Sometime in late winter or early spring, I’d like to hold a TOT (training of trainers) for Moroccan women interested in learning how to lead an exercise class. This project was inspired by my desire to hand over leadership of my women’s exercise class over to the women in my site before I leave, in order to make it sustainable after I go. This will in theory be open to women from across the country, particularly women identified by PCVs as good candidates to take over the many women’s exercise classes being led by PCVs around the country. After that, it will be close to my COS (close of service) date – ah! All of that is a full year away at this point, and though that’s a long time in many ways, it’s beginning to feel shorter and shorter the more I think about it. At the beginning of my service, 2 years seemed like a vast expanse, stretching out before me into the horizon, where anything was possible and most everything was unknown. Now, I can look at the calendar and, albeit very loosely, map out what the next year of my service might look like. It’s an eerie thing, really.

But, you know what? It’s still Peace Corps, and it’s still Morocco, so things are anything but set in stone; I never know what the next day, let alone the next year, might throw at me. So here’s to 1 year in Morocco, to all the ups and downs, the challenges and the successes, the insanity and the beauty, the loneliness and the friendships, the blazing heat and bitter cold, the hopes and the let-downs. Here's to what’s been both the most incredible and the hardest year of my life. And here's to a little over 1 more year to go.