Those in mud houses should not pour water.

The reason it is impossible to discuss the “Peace Corps” experience is because every single experience is different. Vastly different. Even when those volunteers are serving in the same country. Take Morocco for example.

I serve in a pretty large city. It is located on the southern coast, influenced by centuries of occupation by different forces, and the immigration of people from the south and south east. Most people speak two or three or four or five languages with equal poetic fluency. I have access to French-owned grocery stores which have things like tampons (not found elsewhere in Morocco – they take your virginity for future reference) and peanut butter. 

My girlfriend served in a different yet stunningly beautiful environment, surrounded by mountains atop an oasis. She had access to a destination many from Europe travel to on holiday and was surrounded by people extremely proud of their Tamazight culture.

I’ve had the luxury of traveling to quite a lot of other sites. Each one has been breathtaking. Each one has been a place I could see living for two years – yet each one has completely different challenges and opportunities.

In the days leading up to our mid-service training I took a different long trek. I ended up 52 km from the start of Timbuktu. The houses are equal parts mud and concrete, you fight sand flies and camel spiders, and to get here I had to change buses 4 times despite being told it was the most direct I could get.

It is stunning. With scenery out of a Jurassic Park set in the desert, an unforgiving sun, and generosity immediately extended to me by association. I’m happy here.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing what a fellow volunteer does for part of his service – meeting the band he has worked with and hearing them play around on brand new equipment. After much work they have a grant to create a music studio to teach folks how to keep the music of this location alive.

I got to sit, in a tank top dress, sipping Moroccan mint tea expertly prepared by a close friend, listening to absolutely incredible live music performed by four talented musicians, under an enchanting banquet of stars, until dinnertime. For dinner? You ask. A glorious meat and vegetable tajine made with care by the same friend.

We slept under the stars.

I woke with the sun, put sunscreen on my face and lay studying darija (Moroccan Arabic), going over verbs that I have forgotten since our intensive language training. I stayed that way until the boys came back over to practice – this time, with renewed excitement as they broke out the new speakers. Huge smiles crept across their faces as they ran head first into meshing perfectly.

They are unreal. I can’t wait to help promote them in anyway – I know their music will be appreciated by my friends worldwide.

In the meantime, check out their soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/search?q=daraa%20tribes

When you are rightly awed – remember this is what they sound like recorded with a regular garage band microphone. They just opened the new equipment up this morning. It’s about to blow your world from half way across it.

After that I was lucky enough to accompany two volunteers to the house of their friend, an elderly blind man who speaks excellent English – which he learned by communicating with folks via a special e-mail program which reads him what is typed. After a long wonderful conversation he asked us to teach him some proverbs.

He could remember part of one having to do with glass and stones. Ahh, yes “Those in glass houses should not throw stones.”

A fellow volunteer chimed in “but those in cement…”

Of course it was followed by laughter.

The man replied, with a truth I can't forget...“Ahh yes and perhaps those in mud houses should not pour water.”


#WaterSavesLives

Our Beauty Is Not Scale Deep [A Test in Bragging Through My Insecurities]

Everyone loses or gains weight during Peace Corps.

Your diet changes from what you have known your entire life to something very different.
Often you are eating meals generously provided by others that you have no control over.

There are less chemicals (or different ones).
There are more/less meal times.
You are invited to more/less celebrations.

You are teaching more/less aerobics than you ever have.

You have more/less opportunities to do all the working out your body is used to.

Everyone gains or loses.

Some people more or less than others.

Some people’s bodies change drastically.

I’m going to MST (Mid-Service Training) in a couple of weeks.

I’m going home in June.

I’m nervous about a lot of things seeing a whole bunch of people who haven’t seen me in months and months or years. The number one thing I’m nervous about, based on the limited conversations I have had with my home world, is what people will say in regards to my current physical appearance.

My weight should not concern you.

At all.

Ever.

Don’t tell me I am more beautiful now.

Don’t tell me I look healthier.

Don’t tell me I look stronger.

Don’t tell me my body is better.

I have been beautiful, healthy and strong with a great body my whole life. None of that has to do with my weight.

My beauty is not scale deep.
My health is not contingent on the highly critical public eye curve meter.

I could have kicked your ass two years ago.
My heart has been beating since birth, that’s a pretty great body.

I, like every other female human I know from my American life, have seriously struggled with body image.

I’ve counted calories.

I’ve cried in front of mirrors.
I’ve worked out till I puked.

I’ve run until a website told me I burned as many calories as I took in that day.

I’ve been sick.

That was years ago.

Since then I tell myself every day: my beauty is not scale deep.

It has nothing to do with what you think about me.

I don’t want to go back to a PC function or America and have you try to convince me it does.

My weight has fluctuated based on any number of things. Namely, stressful jobs deserve 2 am pizza, in my opinion.

Yes, I weigh less now than I did a year ago. No, I have NO idea how much.

I have worked out almost every day of Peace Corps. Because I have time and space and will. Not because I want to lose weight. Not because I want to look like I have no ribs. Not because I want you to approve of my body.

I eat considerably healthier here, because I have no choice but to cook for myself most days. Because fruits and vegetables are the cheapest things. Because processed foods are expensive.

So yes, I weigh less now than I did a year ago.

I’m here, begging you.

Please.

I have enough neuroses for both of us. For all of us.

I’m beautiful, healthy, strong, and proud of finally loving my body, no matter what form it comes in.

I don’t want comparative compliments.

Feel free to compliment. But please don’t say I am "better than I was" because the scale reads a smaller number.

I’m not better than I was - in the way you think.

I’m better than I was in eleventh grade.

I’m better than the sick girl who couldn’t find confidence anywhere.

I’m going to stay this way and to do that I need your support.

I need you to acknowledge that right now I am happy and healthy but not relate it to my current or previous waist size.

I also need you to not talk about your weight in front of me.

You're beautiful.

When you say you aren't. When you say "I'm fat." 

I think, look at this stunningly beautiful woman. She thinks she's fat. If she thinks she's fat, she must think I am a blimp. She thinks she's ugly. She must think I am hideous. 

This cyclic mess damages both of us.

Look, you're beautiful. I'm beautiful. You'll be beautiful no matter how much you weigh or how old you get or how many pimples show up or how much hair grows or how much you shrink or how defined your muscles get. So will I.

A final word.

Curves are f*cking awesome. Hips mean you are able to have a child. YOU CAN CREATE LIFE INSIDE OF YOU (if you so choose).

STOP DOUBTING THE BEAUTY OF THAT!!!!!

Anyway,

I'm beautiful.

You're beautiful.

Don't forget that.

p.s. If you are struggling with eating disorders, please reach out for help. Getting help is not about being weak, it’s about knowing how heavy your load is and how much easier it would be to carry with help. Quit Facebook, turn off the TV, put down the magazine, and call someone.

The Other Street Sells Plastic

I’ve moved into a new apartment!!!

While this is typically exciting news in my case it is the most exciting news possible at this point in time.

I’ve had a rough go of my first year housing situation. Stress, noise, theft, a person being murdered just outside my apartment building (someone took a brick to his head), harassment, all rounded out with (this is literal) two cups of pee thrown at me through my 4th floor window from the roof of another building while I was tutoring.

Everything was more or less manageable except for being followed.

Being followed is terrifying.

Being followed throws your heart into your throat. 

Being followed in a place where telling people you are being followed gets you no allies is the kind of things that makes you lose your mind. 

It was really bad. 

I ended up with a whole pile of creeps who knew exactly where I lived and waited outside my house for me to come out - at which point they would level things as charming as “F-ck you c-nt.” 

My neighbors were silent on the matter- but put up a security camera facing just their door. Just feel the community spirit.

After a particularly harrowing day I got on a bus to Rabat. I didn’t have permission to leave here or go there. I just did it. I figured it was better than punching someone and I was at the brink.

In Rabat I started the process for a formal request for more money to switch which community I lived in.

I got approval - for not quite enough but for enough that if I supplement with a bit of my other things stipend I can do it just fine. 

I moved immediately into a house that a friend’s husband found me. 

How's that for the privilege of movement.

I was scared. I said so. I was taken care of. 

I moved to a place that is: safer, more well lit, with warm water, with more physical space, with less noise, with less neighbors, with more people watching out for me, closer to a mosque, and closer to all things I might need like a post office, bank and various stores. 

It’s like the privilege of movement home. 

It’s knowing that if there was an emergency America would get me home as quick as possible.

It’s knowing that I leave here in a year. 

It’s knowing that I could do Peace Corps again if I decided to and have the same privilege in whichever country I got sent to. 

It’s knowing that if I needed to leave here my bank account would allow me to.

It’s incredibly overwhelming to have the privilege of movement. 

I am thankful for it and surely won’t ever forget about it. I also fully intend to get right back into the inclusionary zoning political debate upon returning to the US. 

As for the process of movement I am guided by the system here under the same restrictions, both legal and societal that all single women moving in my town would face. 

My new landlord insisted on having a male present at the meeting where we wrote the contract. He went so far as to say he would prefer my new sitemate to me as the person doing the negotiations despite the fact that the contract was for me not him, and that he admits to not yet having a strong grasp of either of the local languages. 

My landlord also followed up asking if I had had relations with the men who followed me looking to blame my assumed promiscuity on why those assholes felt entitled to scaring the shit out of me.

Upon filling out the paperwork everything had to get stamped all the requisite times at all the appropriate places. 

I have to refile residency paperwork.

I have to refile all my Peace Corps paperwork.

I had to get another volunteer to come here and 'okay' this house.

I had to pay a bunch of money to move my internet, my electricity, my water etc. 

Beyond that making an empty apartment into a home has been a trip.

My big settling in gift to myself was a couple hundred dirhams worth of plants (have I mentioned I have incredible sunlight and a gorgeous private roof?).

Many things still need to be done. My shelves are sitting on the floor waiting for electric tools that might be a couple weeks off. My schedule has to get back to regular.

My current struggle is looking for a bath mat. My bath is REALLY slippery, as is my whole bathroom. 

I don't know the words and have tried just about every explanation I can think of.

The most recent response I received from a store owner after a really long discussion of what I wanted and why was a sarcastic, 'the other street sells plastic" not actually referring to any other streets.

For some reason when I heard it I chuckled and thought, "Yeah, the grass is always greener."

For once though, I surely do have the greenest plants. Now I just have to keep them alive. 

Anxiety 'straight from the heart.'

"The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshipper or lover. The daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”                                        - Robert Pirsig

When the list of things you have to do is really short but full of seemingly unaccomplishable tasks and you are like me, you make it extremely long with accomplishable tasks. 

Delete 600 emails

Practice Spanish for 10 minutes

Practice Portuguese for 10 minutes

Write a blog post

Workout for 30 minutes. 

etc.

You do this to avoid sitting down and doing the real overwhelming year-long projects. You do this to avoid the anxiety of timelines and long-term goal planning.

In the process, you give yourself serious anxiety because you are consistently not making progress on the big projects. 

It’s senior year of college thesis time all over again.

A cup of coffee focuses you, but it makes your heart race. 

A glass of water settles you, but now you have to get up and pee in the freezing cold outdoor bathroom.

A song is centering, but they hit high notes that make you realize just how stressed you are. 

Making the big project into small goals is nice - but then someone else asks you when the big project will be done. 

Another person adds another great idea, which adds another month. 

“You are going to have to run these units in focus groups in a Peace Corps volunteer's classes.” 

You plan to fill a void. 

Then you realize just how large the void you are trying to fill is.

You plan pretests and post tests. 

Then you realize you have to write every pretest and every post test.

You realize somewhere along the lines that no matter how ambitious you are, writing a Content Based English Health Curriculum is a huge project. 

You like huge projects, but not alongside working every evening in the youth center, working to make the sexual health committees work accessible and valuable, working to make the community blog a place people realize they can share in. Not alongside trying to muster a meaningful "See you later," for the person you love. Not alongside trying to cope with just how far away "later" will actually be. Not alongside trying to hold yourself accountable to all the other things you said “Yes" to.

I don’t like it alongside long journeys north for something Peace Corps asked me to do only to be denied permission to do what I want to do. 

(I also don’t like it alongside e-mails that say my diversity related experiences are not valuable to the new staj - I chalk it up to Peace Corps consistently unaware writing style slip-ups but jeez, “you aren’t gay/atheist/in a meaningful relationship enough” to have anything valuable to say to the new staj seems like a pretty shitty thing to imply, but who the hell am I to know.) 

Some of you have been asking. This is what I have been doing. I have been working on a Content Based English Health Curriculum. I have been compiling the work of other volunteers and writing lots and lots of lesson plans, so that hypothetically, down the line, students being taught English by a PCV will also be taught how to protect against STDs, how to keep their bodies and minds healthy, how to respect each other and themselves, empathy and all the other objectives of Peace Corps Youth Development Work. 

PCVs will enter site with a lesson plan and a workbook and can hit the ground running. They will have a guidance my group and groups before mine have not. They will have a way to turn to other volunteers and ask best practices for particular units. They will have a base of knowledge about how to broach sensitive topics without putting themselves or their reputations at risk. They will have lesson plans without the anxiety of researching grammar they don't understand yet.

In order for this to happen though. I have to continue to make time for the big goals.

It's hard, but I am working on it. 

And this right here, is what an upswing looks like. I have copious amounts of meaningful work - so much so that I find it hard to make room to try to meet my me-goals. 

So much so that my anxiety is through the metaphorical roof. 

So much so that I’m finally out of what was a dark mid-service crisis where I contemplated ending my service [more on that in a different post, when I am less anxious ;) ]

So much so that I’m happy and proud and fulfilled and crazy busy.

So much so that I am extremely grateful to be here. Now if only I could get all my fingers to stop twitching.

At least I can still make a straight line with the computer: Write a blog post.