Bringing the World Home (the Peace Corps Third Goal)

"The logic of the Peace Corps is that 

someday we are going to bring it home to America." 

President John F. Kennedy, 1961 

What makes Peace Corps service unusual (amongst many other things), is that service continues long after volunteers leave their host countries! I have written in previous posts about the goals of the Peace Corps that volunteers are expected to work towards - Here's a quick reminder:

1. Helping the people of the host country with technical skills.

2. Helping to promote to the host country a better understanding of Americans.

3. Helping to promote to Americans a better understanding of the host country.

Goals 1 and 2 were very much a part of my time in Morocco. I was able to take small steps towards Goal 3 during my service: through this blog, through time spent with visitors, through a pen pal program with a home school in Connecticut, and a few guest blog posts here and there. But the real work on Goal 3 started when I came back to the US.

A lot of Goal 3 seems to happen informally as we catch back up with friends and family, but I am also on the lookout for chances to speak about our experiences in larger settings, and Justin and I were recently fortunate to have our first opportunity to speak formally about Morocco; in this case, to the 8th grade class of The Emery/Weiner School from Houston, Texas! 

How did I manage to connect with 8th graders from Houston you might ask? Through my lovely friend Nishta, a high school classmate and teacher at The Emery/Weiner School. Nishta and I have been able to stay in touch through the wonders of Facebook and I even wrote a guest post for her fantastic blog while in Morocco. When I got back stateside, Nishta and I reconnected and set up a time to speak to her students when they came to visit Washington, DC on a class trip. So earlier this month, Justin and I put on our coworker hats once again and collaborated on a powerpoint presentation to deliver about our experiences - ranging from why we joined the Peace Corps, to the type of projects that we did, to some of the key lessons we would want Americans to learn about Morocco. We weren't sure how our presentation would go over, but to the credit of these mature, respectful, and talented students, we spoke to an excited and engaged crowd of 60 with tons of interest and lots of questions!

Huge thanks to Nishta and the wonderful folks at The Emery/Weiner School for the work that they do with these great students. We were really impressed by their interest in Morocco and the Peace Corps and questions that showed real thoughtfulness, but beyond that, when having a dialogue with the students about volunteerism and service, we were also incredibly impressed by the volunteer activities that these students were already doing back in their own communities.

Incredibly thoughtful thank-you notes from Nishta and her students.

It was truly a fantastic Goal 3 experience and we're looking for lots more of them! If you're interested or know of opportunities, please let me know. And if you're interested in seeing the presentation that we gave to Nishta's students, you can download it from here.

One Month Back

Today marks 1 month since Justin and I returned to America. In some ways I feel like we never even left the US and in other ways I am reminded daily of our 2 years spent away from it. It’s been a whirlwind for sure and I cannot believe that it’s been so long since my last post! I do plan to continue blogging, to talk about our experiences transitioning back, teaching others about our time spent in Morocco, and maybe some other fun stuff in between :)

So, where to start?

So many people have asked about our experiences in Morocco, and it’s hard to give a concise answer about something that has changed and affected me in so many ways. Truly, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life – to learn about a culture and way of life quite different from my own, to have the opportunity to affect other people’s lives, to figure out how to solve difficult and uncertain situations with limited language and technical skills, to be able to truly experience another country for more than a brief visit…  each of these would take days to expand on how they have affected me.

If you’re curious about some of the work that I did in Morocco, you can look at my Peace Corps Description of Service, which you can access by clicking here. This is an informal version as Peace Corps limits us to fewer pages, but I wanted to include as many details as possible!

Since coming back, we’ve spent lots of time in between New York and Washington, DC (our new home) and in the coming month we’ll be moving into an apartment, starting a new job, starting school (Justin), going to a wedding (my brother’s), catching up with lots of old friends, and continuing to adjust to our new lives – so I’ll have lots to cover in future posts! In the meantime I’ll leave you with a photo from one of our last trips in Morocco and our favorite city to visit, Essaouira.

Things I Will Miss

The countdown has begun. On Wednesday we will begin our closing paperwork with the Peace Corps, and then if all goes smoothly, by Friday or Saturday we'll be heading back to the US. It's all felt very surreal recently, but last night as we took some photos with our wonderful host family after the Ramadan break fast, things started to set in and I spent some time reflecting on the last two years of our lives.

Justin and me with our adoptive family.

A while back, I put a sheet of paper on the wall with 2 columns: Things I Will Miss About Morocco and Things I Miss About the US. As we near the end I thought I'd share the list here.

Things I Will Miss About Morocco

• The relationships that we've made with the wonderful people we met here.
• The smell of fresh bread baking in the community oven down the street.
• People saying "Bssaha" to me when I run through the community (it means "To your health" and it's like I have a group of cheerleaders along a race route, I love it!).
• The stars at night (particularly during the summer when we have clear nights, it is breathtaking).
• Walking everywhere in town, and always seeing people we know.
• Going to the daily market to buy cheap vegetables, fruits, and meats and being able to spend several hours cooking amazing meals with all fresh ingredients.
• The unbelievable hospitality and generosity of Moroccans. I can't even begin to describe it.
• Amazingly crazy color combinations in homes (we're talking pink and orange couches with purple and lime green curtains - sounds crazy but it works!).
• Delicious olive oil, cheap and straight from the press.
• Minty wonderful sugary tea.

Things I Miss about the US

• Our friends and family, of course.
• Gyms and exercise classes - Some days I could kill for some Zumba that's not just on my computer screen!
• Movie theaters. I'm already gearing up for some summer releases :)
• An array of foods that are hard to come by here, most notably cheese, portabello mushrooms, and black beans.
• Air conditioning and heating.
• Restaurants and take-out food.
• Knowing that when I speak to someone I am definitely understood (and I understand them too).
• Microwaves! Reheating food on the stovetop or in the oven can get old.

A Musical Interlude

The days are going by very quickly and Justin and I are excitedly planning for our upcoming return to the US! To get us in the mood, we compiled a thematic playlist. The list of songs is below and you can click here to listen to the full thing.

If you have other song suggestions, please leave a comment!

1. Rock the Casbah, The Clash
2. Stop, Pink Floyd
3. The Letter, Joe Cocker
4. Wait, The Beatles
5. Coming Home, Diddy feat. Skylar Grey
6. Homeward Bound, Simon & Garfunkel
7. Home, Cowboy Mouth
8. America, Simon & Garfunkel
9. Empire State of Mind, Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys
10. America, Neil Diamond
11. Homecoming, Kanye West
12. I'm Going Home, Tim Curry from Rocky Horror Picture Show
13. Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans, Louis Armstrong
14. New York Groove, Kiss
15. Walking in Memphis, Marc Cohn
16. Sweet Home New Orleans, Dr. John
17. L Train, Shootyz Groove
18. New York State of Mind, Billy Joel
19. Closing Time, Semisonic
20. We'll Meet Again, Johnny Cash

Drew U. Visits Tiflet! [Guest Post]

GUEST POSTER: Justin
When I was in college, my school had a pretty amazing program called the Drew International Seminar (DIS). Participants enrolled in a course at Drew focused on a particular issue related to a specific country (occasionally two countries). Then for three to four weeks after the semester ended, the students visited the country/ies they had been studying for an on-site seminar to continue studying the same topic. The DIS program was like a mini study abroad, and in addition to the academic component, students had time for sightseeing, to learn about the country and its culture more generally, and to meet people from the country. 

In February of 2012 I happened to be on Drew’s website and was suddenly curious whether the DIS program still existed. Several years passed since I had been a student, and given the way the economy has been the last few years, I knew many schools have had to cut costs due to financial difficulties. It turned out that not only did the DIS program still exist, but two professors would be bringing a group of students to Morocco in May or June of 2013. Their DIS is on mobility and identity in the context of globalization (seminar description here).

I got in contact with the professors to offer to help however I could, met up with them last July while they were in Morocco making arrangements, have been in correspondence with them, and last week they and sixteen students visited Tiflet during their DIS. It is exam time in Morocco, so a lot of young people are busy studying, but we were able to bring the DIS together with a group of five strong English speakers from our site, and it was a great opportunity for Goals 2 & 3. We have of course explained to our Moroccan students about American diversity, for example, that we have people from all over the world and with all kinds of backgrounds. But us telling them is different from them seeing a group of Americans where the people look very different from one another. The Moroccans loved the opportunity to practice speaking English and both groups seemed to enjoy meeting the new people.

Here's a group photo (a few more are on the DIS Facebook page):

The DIS spent most of its time in Morocco in large cities – Rabat, Tangier, Fez, Meknes, and Casablanca. While in Rabat the Drew students met up with some Moroccan university students, who told them that they needed to get out of the big cities. Some Peace Corps Volunteers also will dismissively tell people that those are not “real Morocco.” It’s not true, as there is no single “real Morocco.” As with anywhere else, Morocco is multifaceted, and particularly since the majority of Moroccans live in urban areas (source: CIA World Factbook), large cities represent a large facet of Morocco. The DIS also visited Chefchaouen, which while small receives a lot of international tourists. But in Tiflet the DIS participants got to experience yet another facet, seeing a minor city that is not often a destination for foreigners and meeting with its youth. While Tiflet is by no means the smallest community in Morocco, the mere thirty-five miles which separate it from the capital city make it far removed from big city life. According to one of the professors at least, the Tiflet experience provided a good point of comparison to some of their other experiences.

An ocean in between

For the last week or two I've found myself glued to the computer, constantly checking for news updates - watching every movement of Hurricane Sandy, reading reports of the damage, and looking at photos of the aftermath. Sometimes I feel very connected to everyone and everything happening at home, but at times like this I am reminded of the large ocean that lies between us and our friends and family in the U.S.

But, you want to know a nice thing that has happened here since the hurricane? I cannot even begin to count the number of Moroccans who have reached out to Justin and me about our friends and family - Are they okay? Have we spoken with them? What are people doing to rebuild? Many don't even know where we are from in the U.S., they just know that a terrible disaster happened in America, and perhaps we might have connections to it.

It's been really hard to be so far away from home when such awful damage has happened to many on the East Coast. But while there's an ocean between us and our fabric of friends and family back home, I have realized that on this side of the ocean, we have been able to weave our own fabric of friends and family here. One that from now on will always feel connected to our world. A friend who just returned to America from Tunisia posted a comment from one of her students that stuck with me: "For the first time, I feel worried about other people without knowing them just because I know you."

So maybe that ocean in between isn't so big after all :)

Goal #3

Pop quiz! Who knows what the 3 goals of the Peace Corps are?

Just kidding, I'll tell you, they are quite simple (and I am paraphrasing here):

1. Helping the people of my host country to develop new skills.

2. Helping to promote to my host country a better understanding of Americans.

3. Helping to promote to Americans a better understanding of my host country.

Goals 1 and 2 are part of my everyday life - teaching English, doing activities with women, talking to people about American culture, lots of the things that I often write about on this blog. What I don't often write about is Goal 3 - teaching Americans more about Morocco and Moroccan culture. That's where all of YOU come in - part of the purpose of this blog, in addition to chronicling our travel/cooking/work adventures, is to teach you a little about Morocco - its people, culture, religion, food, history, geography, you name it. And hopefully I've done a bit of that over the past year.

One of my intended goals over the next year is to do more "Goal 3" activities - and I've started it off with my first pen pals! Through a Peace Corps program, I have been matched with a family who runs a home school in Connecticut and I will be starting a monthly correspondence with them, talking about my experiences and teaching a bit about Morocco along the way. Check out excerpts from my first letter - Got a little excited about writing real letters and had some fun with the markers :)

What I would LOVE over the coming year is to have more opportunities to talk to people in the U.S. about Morocco - with so much ignorance and misinformation out today, particularly about the Arab/Muslim world, I think it's important for Americans to hear voices of people (particularly other Americans) who are actually living here. And I knew so little about Morocco before I came here and have discovered that it truly is a wonderful country with an amazing culture that others should know more about. So, if you can think of any opportunities for me to speak about Morocco, I'd love to have as many as I can! Some ideas could be:

- Writing a guest blog post

- Skype calls or taped videos with a classroom or another group

- Articles in a local newspaper, journal, or magazine about culture, travels, recipes, music, etc

- Corresponding with a religious group, or a religion class in school, about things I've learned living in a Muslim country

- Setting up an information exchange with one of our English classes

If you might have opportunities for groups with which you are associated, please leave a comment or email me. I'd love the chance to tell more people about this great country!

Back on American Soil

Well... sort of. These are the U.S. and Morocco flags flying at the U.S. Embassy in Rabat (technically American soil!), where Justin and I spent a few hours last weekend waiting to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton was traveling through Morocco on business in several North African countries (chiefly Tunisia) to lend support to democratic movements there. We were fortunate that she left time in her schedule for a Meet & Greet in Rabat, and that her people opened up space to Peace Corps volunteers (and living only 45 minutes from Rabat, we jumped at the invitation!).

Keeping myself busy, taking photos around the Embassy while awaiting Clinton's arrival:

 

After lots of time prepping for her arrival and arranging children for a photo, the moment finally came!

 

Clinton spoke for just a few minutes, namely praising American support in Morocco and thanking us for our contributions (a few shout-outs to the Peace Corps - you can listen to a short clip here, posted by a fellow volunteer).

After speaking, Clinton posed for a photo with Embassy, Peace Corps, and other local children, and then made her way through the crowd to say hellos. I efficiently positioned myself right next to the mass of children, so I was in a perfect position for her to cross right over from the kids and SHAKE MY HAND!

The above is just after she shook my hand. I don't have a photo of it but am awaiting photos from the Embassy, so we'll see if they got it. So very exciting, a quick brush with an amazingly powerful and smart woman. It was also interesting to feel like a part of Morocco's ex-pat crowd, a whole group of people just like me, trying to learn the in's and out's of a new culture and way of life. I'm so grateful for this and many other experiences that I have been fortunate to have in only 6 months here!

Here are a few photos goofing off after Clinton left:

 

  

And just outside the Embassy, Justin and I discovered "Rue de Tiflet" (the name of our town!):

 

In other news... I have a busy month ahead - Launching a website for Peace Corps Morocco's Gender and Development Committee, planning my first program outside of English classes, and a trip to Marrakech with Justin to play tourists. Lots more on these soon!