Development and Peace

The following quotes are from an article off The New Yorker. If you are interested in the quotes you should read it. I will respond with some responses to the quotes. This article really made me think about my purpose here and it is very well written. It has been circulating around Peace Corps blogs the last month or so. I am sorry if it is repetitive by now but it’s a great article. I hope you enjoy it!

The New Yorker: The Doorknob

“The problem with Peace Corps is that the 27-month commitment is a major deterrent for young people"

-Nicholas D. Kristof

Before joining the Peace Corps I never met anyone who was a volunteer. Most people I do know who service oriented things like the short term projects. Leaving things like family, friends, and country is very difficult. I don’t know if I call it a problem. I think the time is about right because if you are not serious about developing others this would not be too big of a deal. Development does not happen overnight, or even in a 27 month period sometimes. Development in my mind is best described as a journey.

Peace Corps Volunteers as “résumé-driven, undereducated provincial American BAs with, all too often, little or no knowledge … even in teaching (or speaking) their own native language.”

- John Brown, Former Foreign Service Officer

I understand where he is coming from here. I feel this way when it comes to teaching. I have never taught English before. Sometimes I feel underprepared to teach something about a language I just naturally speak. For example, what in the world is a modal and what is its function? This is a question I got from one of my students. I had to answer him by saying, “I am not sure. I don’t know this kind of stuff. I just speak English but I am not a teacher.” Though it seems my primary job now is to teach English. I have no clue what I am doing most of the time.

“I’ve tried to educate Congress that P.C. is not really a development program. Nor is it a cross-cultural program. It sits on a sliding scale between. It’s about living humbly and understanding, and making lifelong friends."

-Rajeev Goyal, President of Push for Peace Corps

My primary job has not been teaching English. It seems my primary job has been peace. Imagine that. We promote peace just by getting a better understanding of the people here and also them understanding our culture and country. Getting people to understand misconceptions of American culture and its people makes peace more attainable. Development is a part of my job but without living humbly or understanding I could not do development. True development is done when you are at the level of the people you are with and they trust you. That way the journey of development is done with the people, not separate. Development is great but peace is better.

Thanks for reading :)

Negativity and Good Things

Camp Taroudant is over. It was a long exhausting week. I learned one big lesson in the week: I need to chill the crap out. The whole week I was stressed out. I guess it was mostly psychological. I think way too much about everything. It's the normal stuff like not knowing what to expect, and never doing it before. The thing is that everything went great! The Peace Corps volunteers were amazing and were taking things with stride. I blame it on my introversion (get energy from being alone). The thought of having to be around 110 different kids around that I have teach, talk to and entertain sounds like my worst nightmare just because people in general exhaust me. I am working hard to fix this but I am having little success. I think for the rest of my service I am going to try hard to work with kids of the amount of 15 or under. Then I can be my prime :)

Anyways, part of my chilling the crap out I am going to try and be more positive and that includes blog posts.

Things that I am excited about:

-My sisters upcoming visit. She is coming in the middle of June.

-London. My favorite city on earth. Tanie has never been and I hope she likes it as much as I do. We will be there at the end of May and a few days in June.

-Packages that are coming. Packages always make a bad day better. Thanks everyone for sending them.

-IST (In Service Training). This is time for us to get together with other Peace Corps volunteers. I am excited to see them again. We train for random things but the training isn't what I am looking forward to.

-Summer. This will be a great time to explore Morocco and relax in the scorching hot weather here around this area. I hear that everything shuts down during this time. Ramadan is something that will be very neat to be apart of again but in a different city.

-End of May. This is when my classes will end for awhile. We might be able to start up things like a film club or something else. Who knows.

-Broadband internet. My internet is now by a wireless stick that runs from cell phone towers. Needless to say the internet for us is very slow. Very soon we want to get broadband connection. It is a little more expensive but it will be worth it.

Thanks for reading :)

Matt

Pre-camp

I traveled to a nearby city be apart of a spring camp that we put on along with the Ministry of Youth and Sports here in Morocco. I am excited to be a part of it but also a little nervous as well. As of last week we were expecting 60 kids at our camp but as of yesterday we had over 100 conformations.This means that I will have a bigger class and almost guaranteed over 25 kids. I have never taught over 15 kids at one time. I hope that I can control them! The campers are mostly in the age of 14-17 with a few that I know of that will be a little older and younger. I am teaching beginner high which means they should know like, "Hello. How are you." etc. I have a lot of activities planned. I hope they go over well. It feels like I am back at a camp that counseled at a while ago. We are singing the same songs and doing some of the same stuff. It should be great. I still have a little to plan and I need to get to it! Wish me luck on a hopefully great week!

Matt

Bargaining

Before I came to Morocco I assumed that everything that I would buy here would be by bargaining. Most of the guide books I have read tell you to make sure you are good at bargaining because most shop owners will jack the prices up because you are foreign. I have found that I rarely bargain (even though I would like to say that I am very good at it). Food (most of the time) has a set price when things you buy at a hanut (store). You mostly bargain at the suq (weekly market) or at side stores but to be honest I try to avoid it. I have found that I can almost find just about anything I want without the need for bargaining.

In the beginning we had to bargain for things that are bigger like our bed, ponges, (sort of make-shift couch) fridge, and other things but not so much now. Now I only do it from time to time. Most of the time in small cities if you do get overpriced it will only be by a little bit. Places like Marrakesh and Fez are notorious for the prices to go up big time because of the tourism through these cities. I have found that the Moroccans are mostly right when they say that Moroccans will get the best deals so make friends with the locals!

Main thing to remember while bargaining is that it is a game to the person whom you are bargaining with. Most of the time I have found the other person has a smile across their face because they are having a good time. The best thing to do is to smile back and stay calm and enjoy the experience.

Also it is not uncommon to be asked to drink tea with shop owners. This is all part of tactic on both ends. The nicer you are and the more time you spend with the shop keeper shows him that you are serious about the purchase you are about to make and the more time you spend in his shop the more likely you will buy something. During the tea you make small about everything.

I recommend not wasting your time over 10 drhms on big items unless you just want to get to know a Moroccan a little more. If you have tea with them, most of the time, you will become friends. I have shop keepers all over my town who every time they see me they usher me over want me to drink more tea with them. I love this about Moroccan culture.

My wife refuses to bargain because she does not have it in her to be aggressive and you do have to be too to get a good price. It is normal to say things like, “This is too much for me.” Or “Bring down the price.” Or “Give me a good price.” Also, it good to know that you should point out defects in the product (if there are any) this helps you get a better price. These things might seem a little forward or like I said aggressive but it really is not. You will soon get used to it and it will become natural. Or maybe you will be like my wife and have someone else do it for you ;)

I hope this gives you an idea what goes on in the marketplace here in Morocco. Although these things that I have shared are not universally true, I have found them to be mostly right. Every town has a different feel so explore and have fun.

Thanks for following me!

Couscous and Hospitality

Every Friday Tanie and I go over to the host family's place for couscous. Moroccans eat later than Americans most of the time so we got there about 1:15pm. We rang the door bell and waited. Then a floor above us a girl called out "Skoun?" which means who. I said well it's us and our little host sister came down and spoke to us and said, "Nobody is here." We were like okay see you later. She said, "Wait come up stairs." "Okay" we said and we skirted up stairs to sit and wait for nothing. We figured that we were not eating anything there because nobody was there but we were wrong. We waited for ten minutes and then up the stairs from next door we were presented with couscous for two. Come to find out someones uncle was sick and they were with him all day but we did not receive a call or anything to tell us not to come so we came like normal.

We thought how funny this was. This would not happen back in the States. Can you imagine going next store and saying, "Um, we have some visitors but no food can we take some of yours." They might let you but then think, "Our neighbors are a little funny." Hospitality is hard to be out matched here. Food from the next door neighbors plates just so we would have something to eat. Amazing.

Frustrations and The Baby Behind Bars

This past week has been a freak out week. It seemed like everyday I had a little bit of a breakdown. Questions like, "What in the world am I doing here?" or "What do these people expect of me?" or "What exactly is my job here again?" My language has seemed to have plateaued. Which if you heard me speak Arabic you know that is not good. My Arabic is poor or at least it seems that way. I speak about main events and I can tell people what I want and need but the details are nonexistent in the conversation. With all of these thoughts and frustrations it helps me to think about why I came in to Morocco in the first place.

To promote peace.
To get outside of my American bubble.
To learn another language.
To develop my skills with a degree that was basically worthless.
To travel to other countries.
Countless more.

All this to say that sometimes it is okay to be frustrated. Experiences like this make people stretch and grow. Frustration is life. Things like walking into your place where you work and thinking these people don't need me to be here. To travel down the street and get spoken to in four different languages and to not know any of them so I don't speak at all. To feel lost in your own hometown not recognizing any faces. To be the only white person in several kilometers feeling abnormal every time people look at me. Sometimes I think that you need to feel like a baby in the window looking out into the world wondering what world am I doing here.

PPST, The New Group, Language, and Confusion

Sorry my faithful followers. I have been away for a couple of weeks and I have not had the energy to update anything. I have been in a city near Ifrane for training for what they call PPST (Post Pre Service Training). This is a training consisting of some training on technical things such as teaching, camps, clubs and associations. All that was great but it was better to speak with other volunteers about their different experiences. I am truly surprised that people had so many different experiences. It is great to take these experiences to heart and be able to use them like they are my own. Now it is great to be home.

I read a lot of blogs on peacecorpsjournals.com. I must admit that I find it funny reading the incoming group blogs that will be leaving to be at staging in two days. The reason why I find it funny because I remember the feelings I had before I came here. Feelings of adventure, making a difference in the world, going to some far away land, excitement, and doubts.

After being here for just about 6 months in country I have some thoughts:

The language, in my opinion, is the hardest thing about the Peace Corps. If you consecrate hard on the language then most of the other stuff like culture, technical things just kind of fall into place.

I am utterly confused about what my job is here exactly. Youth Development is the title of my program but it is really broad of what my responsibilities are. Peace Corps Morocco seems to be pretty unstructured even with Health and Environment sectors its not so straight forward. Focus your energy to goals 2 and 3 while you figure out exactly your role in your community is going to be.

You will learn a lot about Americans. What is funny is before I came here I had a sheltered experience of life. People here in the Peace Corps are amazing but completely different than most people I knew back in the states. My point of view has been stretched by the differences of people. Get to know your group mates you'll love them.

The excitement will eventually wear off. All this mystery of adventure, world peace, and all of this will adventually come to a point to where everything around you is completely normal. Example: The other day I was walking to the Dar Chebab (Youth House) and along the way I heard a woman screaming. I looked up and a saw a woman running toward us and a man behind her completely naked. Completely naked! So after I saw him I said to my wife calmly, "Lets cross the street there is a naked man coming toward us." It was a little strange but I didn't even think anything of it until I thought about it later. Back in the states I would have felt completely weirded out but I think after being in a different country for so long you just kind of see it as the way it is. Everything is so different you sometimes wonder if you are watching a movie or living someone elses life. Excitement turns into weirdness. Weirdness sometimes turns into frustration. There has been times where I felt like I am tired of the Moroccan people. Then I come to understand this is just me. My worldview is just being tested everyday but after a while all these things become normal and its not so much an adventure anymore, just life.