Peace Corps, Morocco....Here I Come!

At 6:50 P.M. today, I and other Peace Corps Volunteers will fly non-stop to Casablanca. From there we take a bus to the capital of Morocco, Rabat, to begin our eleven week training to become “Rural Health Volunteers”. Until training is over we are still considered trainees. While in Rabat I will learn such things as Moroccan Arabic, a dialect of Berber (since the three are not intelligible to one another), technical skills related to my job (being a double major in English and philosophy I assume that they will teach me a lot about rural health), and how to cope with being far away from home for a long time. And tell us not to drink in public…at least until we have become accepted.

To say that I am scared and excited is an understatement. To say that I am probably preparing for leaving last minute means you probably know me. Only now am I starting to ponder what to bring. Since I am limited to 80 pounds it should be easy. As for everything else involved with leaving the country for 27 months I am pretty sure that if I haven’t taken care of it by now it should just go away when I get back. As for the internal preparations, well, I have been writing about it on the Cardoner blog, and I will continue to write about it there. I will also be writing about my Moroccan adventure in a different way at my personal blog,

http://radicaljosh.blogspot.com/.

I was pressed for time when I came up with the link. I had thought it would be the podium from which I would inform the world of my views and change it. But then I realized no one cares what a 23-year old guy in Omaha, Nebraska has to say about anything and so I have toned down my ambitions for the blog. So far I have one comment. It is from my uncle, however, and he says he loves me. It’s really not the hardcore radical page I had hoped for.

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What do I hope to get out of my Peace Corps experience before I leave (so you can hold me to it when I get depressed, upset, and frustrated and just want to return home)

Mellowness of heart

To be humbled (Since you wouldn’t have seen me at last call on a Friday night you probably don’t know I need it. However, you might have seen the need for this when I can’t convince a Republican he/she is just wrong.)

Adaptation to a culture which might put my so-called tolerance and open-mindedness to the test
Learning how to put a face to this “other” and “community” which I have thus far only learned how to deal with in abstraction and ideals

Despite the fact I joined the Peace Corps because I wanted a secular volunteer experience, hopefully somehow I encounter my own spiritual/religious nature more fully and gain a deeper understanding of the layers of vocation—just because I worked for Cardoner

Patience

Ability to sit still and be completely bored

Learning how to deal with the heat

And other stuff.