Living In Exile

At times during my Peace Corps service here in Morocco, I've felt like I've been living in exile. I'm in a land which is foreign to me. I didn't grow up here. Although I've been learning about the culture and customs here, there is still much I don't know. And even when I do know of cultural norms, often I still am not naturally predisposed towards them. While I've been learning a language which Moroccans speak, namely Darija, that is Moroccan Arabic, I'm not fluent in it. In short, at times, I have felt as if I have been in exile here.

But then not too long after feeling like I'm living in exile here, it occurs to me that I am not in fact in exile. Generally, when one is living in exile, one doesn't know when one is returning to one's native homeland. I, however, am blessed insofar as I know when I'm going to be heading back to the US. Barring any unforeseen occurrences between now and November 2012, I am currently scheduled to COS (close my service) next November.

Also, when one is living in exile, typically one has been either forcibly removed to the country of exile, or has fled to the country of exile to escape persecution of some kind. However, I am blessed also in the sense that I did not come here to Morocco under such circumstances. Rather, I came here to Morocco of my own free will. As another PCV said to me months ago, when she experiences rough patches, she sometimes tells herself, "No one made me come here. I decided to come here."

Thus I too remind myself that I decided to come here to Morocco. And I remind myself why. To help people, and more specifically, to help impoverished people, and, even more specifically, to help them better themselves.

It was in this vein, of learning how to live well in a foreign land, with all of its attendant challenges, when reading the book "Run With The Horses" by Eugene Peterson, that I found a certain passage especially helpful. In the book, Peterson analyzes the prophet Jeremiah, and why he was as admirable as he was. Given the context in which Jeremiah lived his life, partly during the exile of the Jewish people to the land of Babylonia, Peterson discusses how one can live well in exile. Although there are some significant differences between life as a PCV in a host country, and the life of the exiled Jewish people whom Peterson discussed, there nevertheless still are some important words of guidance one can derive from his book as a PCV. Peterson writes:

Exile . . . forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself? It is always easier to complain about problems than to engage in careers of virtue. George Eliot in her novel "Felix Holt" has a brilliantly appropriate comment on this question: 'Everything's wrong says he. That's a big text. But does he want to make everything right? Not he. He'd lose his text.'

Daily we face decisions on how we will respond to these exile conditions. We can say: 'I don't like it; I want to be where I was ten years ago. How can you expect me to throw myself into what I don't like--that would be sheer hypocrisy. What sense is there in taking risks and tiring myself out among people I don't even like in a place where I have no future?'

Or we can say: 'I will do my best with what is here. . . . God is here with me. . . . It is just as possible to live out the will of God here as any place else. I am full of fear. I don't know my way around. I have much to learn. I'm not sure I can make it. But I had feelings like that back in Jerusalem. Change is hard. Developing intimacy among strangers is always a risk. Building relationships in unfamiliar and hostile surroundings is difficult. But if that is what it means to be alive and human, I will do it.'

Fenelon used to say that there are two kinds of people: some look at life and complain of what is not there; others look at life and rejoice in what is there. Will we live on the basis of what we don't have or on what we do have?

After reading these words, I felt that I was led to examine how they could apply to my life here in Morocco. As PCVs, some of us focus on what we don't have, and bemoan what we don't have. And I myself have certainly done that, so I find that tendency understandable. Especially during the first six months or so of living in one's host country. But it also certainly seems to be such a better approach to redirect one's attention and energies toward how one can live well in the present in one's host country. How one can best help people there, since, after all, that was the whole reason for joining the Peace Corps!