Writing the words in the title above, it´s unusual and exhilarating to think that I will soon (9 months) reenter the francophone world, where I might say a phrase like that and the majority of people around me would understand it: let the good times roll! But the irony is that for many here, things are only getting a great deal worse. That I have been offered a place in M##, to live and work for two years, to have somewhat of a sense of stability in knowing where I will be and what I will be doing beyond the immediate future, is a rare opportunity in these hard and fearful economic times.
In 2008, for most of the year I was in Bolivia, Peace Corps #B47, living in a community named Candelaria, population 200, at 10,000 feet elevation, between Tarabuco and Icla. On the slow days I would walk three hours down the mountain for a chess game with my friend and fellow volunteer Chris, from Amish & Quaker country in the US. Accordingly, he is well-versed in the great environmentalists to come from that region, John Muir, Leopold, and the others. On the fast days, I´d either be planting apple trees or being shuffled to a secret location to await for an ammelioration of the political/security situation, with the potential of being flown away to safety. The first time, all was well and I went back to my home. The second time, we were airlifted in a military jet and sent Home. Permanently.
In contrast to the Andean desert where I went to live last January, this next September the sands of Morocco will be a place already known to me. It was my first international destination alone, in 2005 , when I went to compete in the 150 mile ultramarathon, le Marathon des Sables. My work will be Youth Development, and when pondering the past month whether this was the right thing to do or not, I looked at the skills I had, and inquired in what skills might a Moroccan child wish to grow. Put more bluntly, is there anyway I might be useful?
**Rule #1 for the American Sophisticate: don´t presume to matter, no matter how much money has been spent on you in your 20-40-60 years of life**
I discovered one promising and meaningful way to pass the time: geographically, Morocco is at the intersection of my interests for the past several years. Above it you find Portugal, Spain and France. And their languages are the ones I know best. And while I spent much time teaching English whilst in Bolivia, I hope to find as much excitement among them in pursuing fluency in those languages. And possibly to inspire them with a repeate performance at the MdS, an endurance zenith with great national and international exposure.
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I just had this conversation with my mother:
-M: What language do they speak there? Have you started learning it?
-B: I have an old book on Arabic upstairs that I bought two years ago. But they speak French, so it is OK. I hope to do my best in the next year and prepare before leaving for there. I certainly understood the advantage I had while there in South America for already knowing Spanish. I saw volunteers who didn´t know any Spanish at all. They caught up with me by the end of training, but for them it was a hard 11 weeks before that happened. I had to accompany some of them just to help them buy in the market.
-M: Because you´re living with a family all that time and they don´t know English.
-B: Exactly. So the more Arabic I can learn before leaving, then life will be a great deal easier.
Beyond this, there is an important consideration. Do I want the first Arabic I learn to be Moroccan Arabic, or Modern Standard? That´s something worth a second thought.
It´s fine and rewarding to learn a special dialect and the different take a region or country has
on a language, especially when you will be surrounded by those such speakers for a great many days. But it´s also nice to know how it is different from the usual practices, and to be aware of this differentiation--understanding the Berber influence--as this process occurs. Like I told Mama, this will be a good way to focus my energies so I am not any more overwhelmed than will happen naturally during the transition to the new culture.
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The paragraph above points to a few very important lessons learned from my time in Peace Corps the first go-around.The great understanding gleamed from my first service was what became my life motto: I do that which complicates my life the least., because other people will complicate it enough already. Now, I can already hear the complaint: but going to live in Muslim North Africa does not fit that particular qualifier for personal conduct. Because your life will get very complicated very quickly doing that! How masochistic can you be?
This question spent many days of my energy in the pursuit of an answer. And what I found, much the same as what truth I uncovered during my times as a budding extreme endurance enthusiast, is that there is a difference between difficulty, complexity and pain. They are distinct, and while living in a town with more goats than people far from my loved ones was painful and often difficult, it was a very simple, straight-forward existence. All of the complexity was that which I had left behind in the United States, with its frenetic, break-neck pace and impossible demands. In Bolivia, the people were happier, life more tranquilo and the essentials of existence more accessible and their inference less convuluted. There, the desert offered me peace of mind and a space apart to more readily listen to my heart, my mind, the people around me (even if they spoke Quechua). I have the satisfaction, then, in the coming months to already personally know that the same is true of the Moroccan Sahara.
In my first, still-unpublished book I wrote how New Orleans was the sole city in USA that resembled Barranquilla, Rio de Janeiro, or Trinidad, cities that in the past celebrated Carnaval and the people celebrated life even admist the poverty and drugs that threaten their exuberance and optimistic joie de vivre. There, people created the spirit & music that defined a nation--jazz, samba-bossa nova, calypso--showing us how much they could accomplish even when having so little. If you´re looking for ways to reach world-peace, universal brotherhood and joy on earth, then, it´s those towns in which you´d want to invest. But time and again, from Katrina to much earlier, the people in charge have failed to do so.
In a sense, this is why I support Peace Corps so much--it empowers people that have so much to offer, but too many obstacles to do so--and why I am eager to go and do a better job than before. In my second entry, I hope to expound on the happenings of the Christmas season, the differences seen between watching There Will Be Blood and Benajamin Button as they relate to my life motto, and what Paul Newman has to do with anything.
My mother and I spoke this afternoon about giving, and how some give from the enjoyment of sharing, while others give to be seen and known for it. I used to think that it wasn´t so important the motives as the consequences. But now I see there is a third group: those who publically give in order to lead by example.
So, there seems to be good news on the horizon: I received a good back and forth email between those people today who were the ones who made my first entrance possible into the most progressive and open Arabic country on the planet, one who enjoyed peace between Muslims, Jews and Christians even when Europe above it did not. This hopeful email is below.
Hi Lisa and Jay!
How are things? I'm back in the US after an insurgency problem in Bolivia, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer. I was there about 8 months, long enough to fall in love with the people and the place, to start planning my work, then we had to go. We flew out on a military plane, all 100 volunteers, and went to Peru. Now I've been accepted to reenroll as a volunteer, and so the first place I said was: Morocco.
It turns out that is one of the oldest countries in Peace Corps, since 1963. I'll be leaving to go there in September, and so naturally I'm wondering how I might be able to participate in the MDS for the two years that I am there, 2010 and 2011. Is there a person there I should contact? I'd be living on a budget, probably less than 200 dollars a month. But I hope to get there, fundraise for a local NGO and do a lot of things to help the community as a youth development worker. Participating in their biggest, hardest athletic event would be a great way to do that.
I heard there's a waiting list made for the 2010. I understand there's a chance I already missed my opportunity, but if you could please advise me, I'd be very happy to participate as fully as possible in this thing, which really changed a lot of things for me when I did it in 2005.
Hope you're well! My number one activity now is to read the PC blogs by volunteers there now, so I can know what to expect: http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com/mo.html
Ben Pennington
Hi Ben,
Great hearing from you…in fact, we were just talking about you the other night! Sorry for the tardy response, but your note went to my spam folder. Glad to here you made it out of Bolivia safely and Morocco sounds exciting…I hope it’s a great experience.
Yes, there is a waiting list for the 2010 MDS, but we might be able to get you in somehow…I’ll see what I can do.
Let me know how serious you are and we’ll see what’s possible…
--jay b
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