The summer light is slowly ebbing away. Dying embers of the African sun drop through the incoming Sea clouds and splash on the sides of the mountains sending bright shafts of dusty light sliding back down into the valley. The radiating warmth that only a few weeks ago was suppressing heat is now welcome company in the quickly chilling air. Fall warmth that forces a smile on my face. The red dirt is parched from a very long dry season. Every step I take kicks up a hanging cloud that marks my path on the side of this empty potholed road. Give me a drink! it seems to cry. Give me a drink, and let me begin the messy business of settling down. Striking me as true, I think in agreement, "I’m ready for change too, for the quenching rains of winter, for the unknown that lies beyond Peace Corps, but shwiya b shwiya (little by little). Basking in the sun was fun, and like dry dust, being picked up here and dropped there, it was exciting. But I too am ready to soak up the rain, settle down, and help grow the seeds that have been sown".
These solitary walks through the Beni Snassen Mountains are becoming more contemplative, full of doubt, wonder, and a strong sense of excitement for the things to come. I have six months left in Morocco.Not long ago that would have seemed like a pretty substantial chunk of time. Certainly enough to accomplish projects, see the sights, and develop some meaningful relationships. No longer! Six months now seems like barely enough time to decide what I want to take home with me. And I don’t even need any bureaucratic stamps to figure that out. Yet here I am with 3/4th of my service past, and I am ready, oh so ready, to make something of my service. Over the last six months I have slogged through the sticky muck feeling of Peace Corps worthlessness. I have tried and I have failed at projects. I have been on the verge of calling it quits. But now, as I stagger out of that slog, I see my service for what it really is, and I see my life after for what I want it to be.
My worth as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tafoghalt, Morocco does not lie in physical projects. Fresh water available to all: check. Electricity: check. Education: check. Trash collection: check. Wifi in the school: check. No. I think I always knew that my physical contributions as an unqualified, unskilled, unconnected volunteer with a poor grasp of Arabic would probably not move this community up the general income scale, but it has taken me until now to be able to find professional worth in what I AM doing. Everyone wants to see quantitative results from their hard work. Some people are able to wait for a long time for that. Others, like myself, like to see continual development build upon itself in real time. In the world of individual relationship building this is possible, but in the world of community relationship building results can be agonizingly slow and even when they come to fruition they aren’t always positive.
Here’s an example: Over the last year and a half I have been trying, sometimes hard sometimes not, to build at least some relationship with all the people I see every day. Of course doing that in the States would be a task, but here where the spoken language is often not even the one I’m learning (Arabic. They speak Tarafit), the names of the people are hard to remember, and the nature of friendship is so different from what I’m used to, the task often feels impossible. But slowly I am accomplishing this shallow community wide relationship while, simultaneously chipping away at a few more meaningful individual relationships. Being an American in a highly Arab, Muslim society, however, means that building relationships isn’t always smooth sailing. Whether I agree with American policy or not, I’m often seen as the guy to direct anger against Israel or US foreign policies. As people in my community have become more comfortable with my presence, a few with anti-American sentiments have approached me and directed their anger at me.
As an employee and, therefore, a representative of the United States government, I don’t feel like this anger is wrongly directed nor have I ever felt threatened by it. On a personal level, however, it has become one of the hardest things I deal with. When I try so hard to represent a different side of America, its hard not to resent accusations of violence, manipulation, and greed. I’ve come to a point of acceptance though. Of this, and of all the other rasps that used to grab at me and hold me back. More than anything else I am here to represent the United States, to build relationships, and to show Americans that Morocco, as different from the US as it is, deserves respect and a fair perception.
As my professional life and personal life are so intertwined here, acceptance of the limitations and challenges of the one have led to happiness in the other. Yes, I still resent certain aspects of Moroccan culture. But, I have come to accept these things as they are. It is not my fight to fight.
And just as the dust that follows me will eventually settle back down in its rightful place, so will I. As I follow the paths through the mountains (the same paths that I discovered with such excitement when I first got here), I often dwell on these thoughts. They have not always been good or constructive, but they are the one thing that I can see building off each other. And now, as the sun of my service is hitting its western horizon I am realizing the true value of what I have here and what I want after.
But more on that later.
