I can’t believe that this Thursday (July 1st) will mark my 4 month anniversary (no…I don’t think it’s been too short of a time to call it an anniversary) with the Peace Corps. Really, the journey started over 2 years ago, when I first submitted my application in January of 2008. However, I won’t count back that far…
July 1st will also mark the first night that I will spend (alone) in my new home. The house on the top of the hill, which you can see almost all of the surrounding duwars from, will be my new abode. With four bedrooms (one reserved for my future furry companion), a kitchen, a bathroom (with a shower!), and a garden in the outdoor courtyard that connects of the rooms…this is my new home. Although it was previously the former volunteer’s house…it has been transformed (literally…tons of repairs have been done) physically and psychologically to be my new refuge and safe space. It’s the place where I will likely cry from frustration, the place where I will contemplate leaving Morocco when times get really tough (I’m sure this will happen AT LEAST once a month), the place that will be filled with laughter when other volunteers come to visit, and it will be the place where I learn to truly live the Moroccan way (with a buta gas EVERYTHING…I will heat water, light my stove, warm my oven, and warm my bedroom with a butagas tank). Not to mention, this is also the place where I saw my first scorpion (I guess I’ll be living with a few more “companions” then I originally expected).
With all of that said and done, with the MANY downs and ups that I’ve experience in the past four months…I have spent a lot of time reflecting (when I haven’t been moving all of my stuff from one town to the other…via bicycle…on unpaved roads…as I weave in and out of the grazing sheep). I remember reading the first journal entry from my first day in Morocco…I always enjoy reminiscing on my thoughts, feelings, anxieties, and expectations from before. This journal entry has been my motivation to dig deeper, share more, and experience everything to a greater degree…there is so much that I had dreamed of for this experience. Athough I have already been blow away by the many things and people I’ve encountered (in good and bad ways)…I still have 22 amazing months to live in a world so far from the one that I am used to…and to become a wiser person because of it.
March 3, 2010
Dar Journal,
All of the buildup, the anxiety, the waiting, the excitement, and the frustration ...and I’m finally here! I’m in Morocco as a Peace Corps trainee and I’m determined to become a Peace Corps volunteer. I can never understand how I get so worked up for trips (Australia, Uganda, etc.) and once I set food on home soil…it’s calm…Peace…like a quite, serene lake. It feels so good stepping out of the Casablanca airport, it feels like I’m at home but I don’t have any memories. I’m sure that will change soon.
Today was the beginning of in-country Peace Corps training. Yesterday (two days ago, East Coast time) I said goodbye to Mom and Aunt mom at the hotel n 4th and Arch in Philadelphia. Just months ago, I had been dropped of there to attend the PAHA conference where I was nervous about the presentation I was going to give…I thought I was nervous then? As we drove to Philly and [I] felt all of the could-have-been memories between the three of us, over the next 27 months, I wondered…’what could be better than being with the people I love? Why am I leaving this?” But I knew in the back of my heard that this was something I really wanted and needed in my life. I couldn’t quite articulate it at the time but I knew it was there.
So I went through the motion at staging [in country training] and as I met ore and more people, I began to engage. I quickly found out [the other PC trainees’] names, where they were from, and where they went to school…but then I began to see an emotional/personal layer of the “human onion” that usually takes several layers[and lots of time] to reveal. I saw the aspirations, the hopes, and the fears that [we all] had for this [new] experience. We had become a family…a young one, still learning our roles and our fellow family members, but we were a group of people who never had to justify whey were doing Peace Corps [to each other]. That is what reminded me…why I’m here. Because I want to surround myself with people and [an] environment that will push me and allow me to push them. I want to improve myself and my surrounding…and do it on a global stage. I had fallen back in love with the Peace Corps…my Peace Corps experience…and I had never had a better sleep.
So today, as I rest my head on my pillow in Marrakech where I have officially been welcome by my new Moroccan family (Peace Corps Morocco staff)…I’m ready to explore my new home (the ups, the downs, and everything in between).
Good night,
Ayanna
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