Shuma-tastic

Sorry I haven’t written in a while, I haven’t had very good internet access and have been to busy to deal with it.

So last time I wrote something I was still doing my initial PC training in Medhia, I am now with my host family in a small town outside of Fes. A lot has happened over the last week and I’m sure you want to know all the details. During the two days of training we had some other volunteers, from the youth development, health, environment and small business development, come visit use to share their experiences and brief us on what to expect with our host families stays during the next three months of CBT (Culture based training). The three main topics where 1) dealing with Turkish toilets, living in a culture that doesn’t use toilet paper (i.e. you use your left hand) and how to deal with the gastrointestinal problems that you definitely will have, 2) dealing with the language barrier and how to communicate with a family that you’ll be living with for three months when you don’t speak the same language 3) the main cultural barriers and how to deal with the many faux pas that you (again) definitely will make, such as forgetting that in Morocco you don’t use your left hand for most things, like eating or handing things to people, or even covering your mouth when yawning, this is because from now on the left hand will be the bathroom hand and if it’s used for anything else it will be shuma (shame).

After the briefing the volunteers stuck around for a while and would eat meals with use and hang out and such in order to have more informal conversations with all of use new volunteers and to answer any questions we may have. The one thing that was said to me by a certain environmental volunteer that I will never ever forget, was that he told our entire dinner table that during our 2 years and three months in Morocco we will join the “I have shat in my pants club” and that we need to remember “don’t trust your farts”. HAHAHA! There is nothing like that to get you excited for 2 years of hands on intensive development! Later, in another briefing session that we all had before we left for our respective CBT sites/host communities, when we were all talking about our biggest concerns and worries (i.e. not knowing how to use the Turkish toilet or how were going to live with a family that we couldn’t really communicate with or how we were just going to walk into a community with the title of peace corps volunteer and have the patience to deal with/wait for everyone to get over the stereotypes of Americans and accept us) one girl said to all 90 something of use new volunteers that if ever anything is hard or we begin to doubt to just “suck it up and love it”. I couldn’t agree more and feel that all of us immediately accepted this as our PC mantra… just suck it up and love it!!!!

Next post will be all about the new fam. Hopefully I can get back to the internet sometime soon.