Tears of Ras L-Ma

Today was my last day in my CBT site and I think I said more goodbyes here than I did when I left the United States. Since it is such a small town everyone knew us and everyone was sad to see us go. The day was filled with the statements, tella f rask (take care of yourself), ana gaddi ntwasHtk bzzzf (I will miss you a lot), and ana gaddi nrj3 u nsufk karim insh’allah (I will return and see you again soon).

Life here had become very routine, I had become a member of my host family, I became a regular guest of my friend Rachel’s host family, we all had become great friends with our school cook Bahia, we went to the same two hanoots multiple times a day, and we saw the same kids every day who had grown accustomed to asking us if we were going to the Dar Chabab every time we left our school building. So today we had to say goodbye to all of those people. All of the people who had so warmly welcomed us into their community, who dealt with our inability to speak their language and who, everyday, did anything and everything possible to make our lives here more comfortable.

The first goodbyes were yesterday when I went to Rachel’s house, like I did everyday for the last two months to meet her on our way to school, and like every morning I went inside to say hello to her family. After Rachel finished up breakfast and was ready to go her host mom informed us that it was goodbye. Her and her two children, two of my favorite children in all of Morocco, were leaving to go to a baptism party and wouldn’t be back until after we had left on Sunday. Then the tears started flowing, it took us a good 10 minutes to say goodbye to them, constantly reassuring the two kids that we were coming back soon, insh’allah. By the time we finally left the front door everyone was sobbing and Fatim-Zahara, Rachel’s 12-year-old sister, was choking on her sobs and couldn’t even look at us. Both Rachel and I were crying too at this point.

This morning when I went to go get Rachel it was only her and her grandma, but Jadda (grandma in Darija) was crying when I got there, she has been sad for the last month that we are leaving. We again reassured her that we would come back.

Then midway through today, our hanoot lady realized that we were all packing up the schoolhouse because we were leaving. She asked me why we were leaving and why we couldn’t stay in Ras L-Ma? As I had explained to many other people in our town, it wasn’t our choice to leave, but we had to because we had been assigned to work in other Dar Chababs in other cities. She then invited us all over to her house before we left, and I regretfully had to inform her that we were all leaving really early in the morning and that there wasn’t enough time, but that we all would come back and we’ll come over the next time, insh’allah. She gave me a long hug and when she let go I looked at her and she had started to cry. I went back to school and told my group mates to go say goodbye to her and a few minutes after I walked back over to her hanoot and her eyes had become red from sobbing.

This afternoon we had a goodbye party with all of our host families and we had to say more goodbyes. At the end of the party we all stood up and gave a speech about how thankful we are for everything and then gave our host parents with certificates of appreciation from the Peace Corps. We each gave them individually to our host families and one by one every host mother, and even Rachel’s host dad started crying.

On the way home from the party I had to say goodbye to our amazing school cook Bahia. This woman had done so much for us, when I said goodbye the simple phrase shukran bzzzf (thank you so much) wasn’t nearly enough. Not only had she cooked us some of the most amazing food I’ve had in Morocco every single day, but she also went on countless excursions with us even though it was her time off. She went to souk with us every day on her one day of the week off, she took me and Rachel to the hammam after knowing us for only two weeks, she came to all of our parties with our crazy host families, she even came to Rachel’s birthday party on our fourth day in our CBT site. She had endured weeks of our struggles with Darija, she continually answered our ridiculous questions about whether or not things were hshuma (shame full) for us to do, she helped explain to Katy why her host sister had freaked out when Katy had asked to wash her pants (she had accidentally asked to wash her vagina!). Bahia had become a loved member of our Little America and one of all of our most favorite people we had met in Morocco.

Tonight is my last night with my host family and even though I am excited to move to my final site, it will be extremely hard to say goodbye to them. Tonight my host aunt Idrissia said I was like her own daughter, and that’s exactly how I feel about them, they part of my big extended Moroccan family and I will miss them dearly.

After our site visits Rachel was telling me about a girl who was in the region that we are moving to who ET’d (early terminated) after one year. Et’ing from your Peace Corps Service is basically stating that you couldn’t hack it, for whatever reason. Rachel was telling me about how the PCV that she is replacing had explained to her how bad and unfair it was for this girl to ET after her first year because it’s in your first year that Morocco is giving to you, and it’s not really until your second year of service that you can really give to Morocco. Now that I am leaving my CBT site this statement is really resonating with me, the people here have given us so much. It is the people here, especially in our host families who have had to deal with our crash coarse of adapting to another culture. Only two months ago I was sitting outside with my host aunt Fatiha while she helped me practice counting from one to ten in Darija. Amina graciously catered to my vegetarianism at every meal even though meat is such a staple part of diets here. Idrissia laboriously scrubbed me down during my weekly hammam. Ghita repeated and rephrased things ten times until I understood them. I was taken care of when I was sick, I was dealt with when I was having a bad day, I was given presents for holidays and I was adopted as a member of the family. I will never be able to thank these people enough and they will always have a large place in my heart as some of my first and most important memories of Morocco.

B’slama Ras L-Ma, twasHtk bzzzzf bzzzzzzf bzzzzff!