Post-Summer, Pre-Fall

Summer has come and gone and the days I thought would be long, hot and unbearable were merely

long and hot. I anticipated this summer to be something of mythological proportions where I would be constantly at the brink of melting under the sweltering heat of Morocco. My premonitions of heat came true yet I am still here and solid.

Ramadan, during the month of July was a time of hardship for me but as the days wore on I adapted. I fasted this Ramadan 21 of 30 days and I will be the first to tell you it was difficult. Not only can you not drink water or eat from 3:30am until 7:43pm but it was also was consistently 110 degrees. This month was definitely some of the longest sustained mental hardship I have gone through in recent memory. Sure there have been run-ins with a snow-storm at 9:30pm on the side of a mountain where your physical and mental fortitude is tried, but this was 30 days of body-altering hunger and thirst. Now it is not nearly as dramatic as it sounds but going one day from being able to eat/drink whenever to being restrict the next for 16 hours is tough. Ramadan was a great lesson in cultural understanding and empathy, both of which are my job here. I think the hunger and thirst might have made me a more patient person which is a positive! I also learned about why Muslims love Ramadan so much. Every night at the breakfast there were great dishes reserved for the holiday and it was a time when everyone became even more inclusive of one another in an already hospitable country. It is serious family bonding time and never have I felt more included in a foreign culture with relatively random people than I have during Ramadan here. Random encounters on the street would lead to Lftor (Breakfast) invites. This was a great time to work on my integration and I definitely feel as though I got closer with my community over that month. 

During Ramadan I was able to travel to my friend Andy's site to help him with a Grassroots Soccer Camp. Grassroots Soccer is an organization which teaches HIV/AIDS education via the worlds game, soccer. The camp was held at Andy's site in the city of Kenitra, home to more than 800,000 people. The kids that came to camp were so different than the kids in my small town. Many of them knew english well and had advanced ideas and thoughts for their ages of 10-17. It is a liberal city just north of the capital and was really striking to see the differences. The camp went well and the kids definitely came away from it with new ideas but at the end of the camp we concluded that Grassroots Soccer in Morocco must be designed differently than Sub-Saharan Africa's program. Due to cultural limitations, and a language barrier the curriculum was tough to navigate through in a culturally appropriate way. We also concluded that a very educated/liberal, english speaking counterpart was necessary in order to convey the message appropriately. This is a common factor in our work here as PCV's how to teach somewhat radical ideas to a conservative Muslim culture. The motivation for social change is not high yet there are often glimmers of promise which make it all worth it.

After Ramadan I did some more traveling around the country and worked another camp for English Immersion at the costal city of El Jadida. The camp went well and we had many opportunities to go to the beach and swim and play with the campers. We also did some teaching. 

A week after the camp I was faced with a tough decision. My grandfather John had, for the past couple of years, been increasingly ill. I had known that he was approaching the end of his life and was faced with the tough decision whether or not to go back for the event. It wasn't until the third week in July that I got a call from my father telling me of the news. After much internal deliberation and the weighing of the pros and cons I booked a flight. It was a weird feeling getting on the plane in Casablanca, heading for Paris and then NYC. It was even weirder to step out of the B train on 79th street in Manhattan. Just 12 hours before I was a world away, somewhere I was used to. A place where everything has got just a little more wear, a little more tear. Where people move slowly. 

Being in New York and Philadelphia was like a dream. 5 days of action, drinking real beer, eating pork and being in a place where every car is seemingly new and everyone speaks your language. It was a sad event to go home for and while at home I did have some hard moments explaining myself and what I do here in Morocco to family and friends. At the same time the wide-eyed, drop-jawed reactions by family-friends made me feel really proud to be taking on this challenge of Peace Corps. 

As I rode back to the airport in Radoune, my Moroccan Uber driver's car, talking all things Morocco in the middle of Queens I knew it was time to go back.