According to my good friend (code name Panda) my spirit animal/patronus (PC is full of Harry Potter nerds -- including me) is a flying squirrel, because at first I seem all cute and sweet and then I do something BA like fly (or drink lots of really crappy vodka).
But these past few months I've felt the very opposite of BA. Instead I've felt mostly guilty. Guilty that I don't automatically love Peace Corps and Morocco. Guilty that I'm still not so secretly hoping for evacuation. Guilty that I'm not integrating at the speed Peace Corps expects me to and guilty that I still have no freaking idea how to start or do work here.
But it's sort of hitting me that even if I'm hiding in my 50 dirham hotel room, eating pasta salad made from canned veggies, and facebook hating all of you in America, I'm still at least a little BA. Because every time I and any other female volunteer leave our houses we have to deal with ridiculous male machismo harassment and that takes strength. Something as simple as buying plates for my new apartment requires riding a souk bus for two hours and haggling in a language that I am daily told I know nothing of and that takes determination. And at least once every month having my insides explode out both directions and the only outlet being a Turkish toilet, that takes perseverance or stupidity or something.
And after my trip up north to Azrou for PPST (post-pre-service training -- gotta love government acronyms) I've realized I'm really, really fortunate to be in Morocco. Just in the past two weeks I've walked through a park that would have fit in in any town in the US, ate sushi (real, tasty sushi!), had an honest to god caesar salad (a salad without cinnamon, sugar, ketchup, and/or mayonnaise is a miracle in Morocco), and watched a bootleg version of the latest Harry Potter movie. All these little reminders of home and they're in my PC country. That's definitely something to be thankful for. And on top of all of that I got to explore a little bit of Fes, buy a supposedly real Berber carpet in Meknes (I don't really care about the realness, because it's beautiful and I can fake it if I have to), go on a fruitless search for wild monkeys (but still there was the possibility of monkeys!) and had a couple of Moroccans be disproportionally pleased about my Tash skills, which after months of "walu! walu!" is beyond refreshing.
The point I'm poorly trying to make with all of this is if you're (my fellow PCVs) feeling down, remember that A) just existing and doing your day to day thing over here is pretty bad ass and B) it could always be worse. We could be in a country where we don't even have the possibility of monkeys.
But these past few months I've felt the very opposite of BA. Instead I've felt mostly guilty. Guilty that I don't automatically love Peace Corps and Morocco. Guilty that I'm still not so secretly hoping for evacuation. Guilty that I'm not integrating at the speed Peace Corps expects me to and guilty that I still have no freaking idea how to start or do work here.
But it's sort of hitting me that even if I'm hiding in my 50 dirham hotel room, eating pasta salad made from canned veggies, and facebook hating all of you in America, I'm still at least a little BA. Because every time I and any other female volunteer leave our houses we have to deal with ridiculous male machismo harassment and that takes strength. Something as simple as buying plates for my new apartment requires riding a souk bus for two hours and haggling in a language that I am daily told I know nothing of and that takes determination. And at least once every month having my insides explode out both directions and the only outlet being a Turkish toilet, that takes perseverance or stupidity or something.
And after my trip up north to Azrou for PPST (post-pre-service training -- gotta love government acronyms) I've realized I'm really, really fortunate to be in Morocco. Just in the past two weeks I've walked through a park that would have fit in in any town in the US, ate sushi (real, tasty sushi!), had an honest to god caesar salad (a salad without cinnamon, sugar, ketchup, and/or mayonnaise is a miracle in Morocco), and watched a bootleg version of the latest Harry Potter movie. All these little reminders of home and they're in my PC country. That's definitely something to be thankful for. And on top of all of that I got to explore a little bit of Fes, buy a supposedly real Berber carpet in Meknes (I don't really care about the realness, because it's beautiful and I can fake it if I have to), go on a fruitless search for wild monkeys (but still there was the possibility of monkeys!) and had a couple of Moroccans be disproportionally pleased about my Tash skills, which after months of "walu! walu!" is beyond refreshing.
The point I'm poorly trying to make with all of this is if you're (my fellow PCVs) feeling down, remember that A) just existing and doing your day to day thing over here is pretty bad ass and B) it could always be worse. We could be in a country where we don't even have the possibility of monkeys.
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