Last night I came to the town of one of my fellow PCVs, between Marrakech and Casablanca. She and I were in the same small CBT (community-based training) group together during our PST (Pre-Service Training) in our first couple of months here in Morocco. Yesterday, I visited the Dar Chebab (youth center) here in her town. I was watching my friend teach English to a dozen people, mostly children. I asked her if they come regularly for English class, and she said that they do. I've felt challenged insofar as I've started teaching English at various points in my town and usually people stopped attending class after a few classes, which I found frustrating. I've also been frustrated by teachers saying that they want to work with me, but then when I ask them what activities or projects they want to do together, they don't tell me any. I also find it frustrating that they don't want to work on activities or projects I suggest to them. I get frustrated by these responses partly because the Peace Corps wants our activities to be sustainable: they want host country teachers to be carrying on our activities and projects after we COS (close, or finish our Peace Corps service).
After I visited my friend's Dar Chebab yesterday, perhaps I saw my challenges and benefits in and related to my site in a new light because I wasn't in my site, and thus had some distance from my daily situation in my site. As I was walking back from my friend's Dar Chebab before she finished teaching her class so I could get some work done at her apartment before she got home, I thought about her regular English class students. It suddenly brought the benefits and challenges in my site into focus from a broader perspective. I pondered that I tend to see the consistent, predictable benefits in my service as not being related to the work that I actually do, whereas I tend to find challenges in my service as being related to my work.
I'm thankful to God that I can attend a Bible study group with other Christians an hour from my site, especially given that I'm living in Morocco, which is an overwhelmingly Muslim country. I'm thankful that I'm not extremely isolated. The closest other PCVs to me are about one hour away from me. I'm thankful that I'm only a little over an hour from a small city. I'm thankful that I have a palmerie, which is a massive grove of palm trees, and hills and mountains, where I can go for a quiet, serene, contemplative walk in nature in my town.
As opposed to these predictable benefits, which don't arise out of my work, and some of which don't even arise out of my town, I find some of my most consistent challenges as arising out of my work, and thus as arising out of my town. In my town, I often find it difficult to get people to attend classes and to otherwise engage in activities and projects.
I'm thankful to God for the benefits I do have. I'm just also very conscious of the challenges, and not quite sure how to effectively address them. I've told myself that I can run activities and projects by myself, despite how those activities and projects nevertheless will probably not be sustainable. Essentially I sometimes tell myself that it's better to do some work which might turn out not to be sustainable in the long run rather than not be working at all. It has also occurred to me that although an activity or project might appear to be unsustainable, I don't know what effects it will have. Work we do as PCVs which seems unsustainable might profoundly effect a certain individual, having long-term impact on that person, improving that person's life, and we might never know it. Thus, for this reason, and for many other reasons, I try to live my life following the guiding light implicitly described by 2 Corinthians 4:18: "We set our eyes on what is unseen."
After I visited my friend's Dar Chebab yesterday, perhaps I saw my challenges and benefits in and related to my site in a new light because I wasn't in my site, and thus had some distance from my daily situation in my site. As I was walking back from my friend's Dar Chebab before she finished teaching her class so I could get some work done at her apartment before she got home, I thought about her regular English class students. It suddenly brought the benefits and challenges in my site into focus from a broader perspective. I pondered that I tend to see the consistent, predictable benefits in my service as not being related to the work that I actually do, whereas I tend to find challenges in my service as being related to my work.
I'm thankful to God that I can attend a Bible study group with other Christians an hour from my site, especially given that I'm living in Morocco, which is an overwhelmingly Muslim country. I'm thankful that I'm not extremely isolated. The closest other PCVs to me are about one hour away from me. I'm thankful that I'm only a little over an hour from a small city. I'm thankful that I have a palmerie, which is a massive grove of palm trees, and hills and mountains, where I can go for a quiet, serene, contemplative walk in nature in my town.
As opposed to these predictable benefits, which don't arise out of my work, and some of which don't even arise out of my town, I find some of my most consistent challenges as arising out of my work, and thus as arising out of my town. In my town, I often find it difficult to get people to attend classes and to otherwise engage in activities and projects.
I'm thankful to God for the benefits I do have. I'm just also very conscious of the challenges, and not quite sure how to effectively address them. I've told myself that I can run activities and projects by myself, despite how those activities and projects nevertheless will probably not be sustainable. Essentially I sometimes tell myself that it's better to do some work which might turn out not to be sustainable in the long run rather than not be working at all. It has also occurred to me that although an activity or project might appear to be unsustainable, I don't know what effects it will have. Work we do as PCVs which seems unsustainable might profoundly effect a certain individual, having long-term impact on that person, improving that person's life, and we might never know it. Thus, for this reason, and for many other reasons, I try to live my life following the guiding light implicitly described by 2 Corinthians 4:18: "We set our eyes on what is unseen."
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