Life as a Sponge

No, not that kind of sponge.

It's the best metaphor I've thought of for our current position in the Peace Corps life cycle. With our Dar Chabab closed for repairs for the foreseeable future, we've entered an unglamorous phase focused on the patient work of community integration. A lot of the work of community integration is "show up, see what happens," and by your presence and participation around your neighborhood and town you gradually earn trust and build connections that allow you to contribute meaningfully to your community.  You can learn a lot from being a sponge (that you should have been studying Tashelheit instead of Darija; or that you're mispronouncing a staggering number of words, including your Moroccan name). Only for us -and I suspect for a lot of PCVs- community integration also means "show up, see what happens, understand nothing, and feel maddeningly passive and utterly useless." So a lot of what you're absorbing doesn't mean anything at all to you.

Here's an example. Since we arrived in site we've been participating in weekly meetings and activities with a local chapter of the Scouts (surprisingly, a unisex operation here in Morocco). It's an impressive group with active young leaders who seem genuinely committed and a consistent attendance of about 50 or 60 engaged kids. And I don't understand it all. Literally, I don't understand the Darija (and Tashelheit) words that are spoken. I don't understand who is in charge (and maybe they don't either, because I also don't understand the arguments the leaders get into every week). I don't understand the drills (in French this time) they make the kids do. I don't understand how they can spend so much time singing, or the way they teach the kids songs. And I sort of can't comprehend how the kids keep coming back every week when we always seem to do the same thing.

Well, except for a couple of weeks ago when the Scouts organized this big day hike. Over 100 kids came, and so did Britt and I. We met at the Dar Chabab at 7:00am. Well, between 7:00am and 8:30am. My contribution to the day was to lead English songs ("Baby Shark" and "Father Abraham") for about five minutes. That left 12 hours and 55 minutes to fill just sponging it up.

See the mountain back there? That's where we're headed.

One of our Scouts pals.

It's getting harder for you to feel sorry for me, isn't it?

I admit, it was picturesque. And incomprehensible.

One of us is making the Scout salute correctly. I won't embarrass the other person by saying whose is right.

It was a lovely day, as you can see from the pictures. It was also just an agonizingly long day, made longer by not understanding my role, or what I was there to learn. Ultimately we're choosing to have faith that life as a sponge will be meaningful; that putting ourselves through some cultural and intellectual discomfort (but not without some griping about it!) will lead to some very rich new cycles in our Peace Corps life.