Bidding Farewell

This post may be somewhat long. It has been a little bit, and so much has happened since I last posted. In short, I have received my site placement, had my LPI, and also will be sworn in as a PCV in just a short 2 days in the big city as a large group.

So as I said, I have received my final site placement. Its funny how things kind of go. I remember telling a number of people that finding out your site is like Christmas. So whatever site I got would make me happy, but you always have preferences. Well, I received a site that was not really on my preference list. But like I said, there are really good things about it and then some not so good things about it.

Of course I cannot disclose my location exactly, but I can give generalities. I will be living in a town near Eastern High Atlas National Park. This town is in the Khenifera province, and I am just about in the middle between the actual city of Khenifera and the city of Midelt. While the town I am living in is quite large, approximately 8000 people, my actual site encompasses a large area, and most of the work I will be doing will be well outside my town.

My town sits at about 6500 feet (2100ish meters) above sea level. So being over a mile in elevation instantly should make you think cold. In fact, the town has very cold winters, and a fair bit of snow. Just to the south of my town lies a peak of 11,000 feet. The summers make up for it by being mild (Here in Morocco mild means 100-105F). So the negative aspect is the severe cold.

On the positive end of things, my site area is large. The reason is that during winter many of the villages I will be doing work in will be snowed in for periods of time (think weeks), and so if I were to live there I would also be stranded. So I am staying in the plateau valley below. When I am able to do work, I will be doing a lot of hiking. When reading about my site, some of the villages are a 2 days hike away!

I will be replacing not just one volunteer, but two. They are a husband/wife duo, and they have been doing some really great work. In fact, I already have proposals for projects waiting for me when I get there. One project dealing with tree planting (750 apples,walnuts), the other dealing with oversight in an installation of a grain mill. In addition, I will be trying to integrate myself into the school system, and work with teachers to provide environmental education training to them and work with students also. These all excite me, but they are a little overwhelming as I have not even seen the area yet. I am excited that I have the challenge of filling the role of two people however, and hope to pick up where they are leaving off.

Another challenge my site will contain has to do with language. Here in Morocco, each environment volunteer is matched with a counterpart from the Dept. of Water and Forest resources. Together you do work and any idea you have needs to fit with the Department’s plan of action for the area. It just so happens that my counterpart will not be speaking the language I have been learning for the past two months (Tamazight). Instead, he speaks a very small bit of English, but also Darija and French. So mainly the work I do with my counterpart will be in French. However, the area I am living is highly Berber, and therefore Tamazight is widely and regularly spoken. So I will be using both French and Tamazight on a daily basis, whether is it dissecting French documents, or translating between Forester and villager.

So as I said back at the beginning, I recently had my LPI (Language Proficiency Interview). The LPI is an oral test, and you can receive a rating of Novice, Intermediate, or Advanced. Within these three ratings are levels, for example Novice Low, Novice Medium, Novice High. The Peace Corps in Morocco states that you need to pass your LPI with a level of Novice High in order to be sworn in as a volunteer.

So the good news is I passed my LPI, and therefore can be sworn in as a volunteer. The disappointing news is that I only received a level of Intermediate Low. I was close to the Intermediate Mid, but no dice. The reason I am disappointed, is that I thought for sure I would be intermediate mid. Language went quite well, and I thought it was a realistic level to set a goal for at the end. I felt like I busted my tail with study and learning language, and wanted to have shown more for it all. So with all that said, I have to keep telling myself that I went from having no language, to a level somewhere near the middle of being proficient in a language in the span of just 7 weeks. It makes me happy to think that within the next two years, I will have a great chance to become fully proficient, not only in Tamazight, but also in French. I will be getting a tutor that can teach both of these languages.

The last thing I wanted to write about is leaving my CBT village. I am leaving the place that I have called home for the past two months. As like most partings, it is a bittersweet one. I feel as if I have become slightly immune to the all the goodbyes, and the people I part from. I have moved around a lot in the past year or so, from Oxford to Europe, Europe to Cincinnati, and now Cincinnati to Morocco. I probably have just accepted that people need to part ways, and it is a simple fact of life. It doesn’t mean that parting is easy… its not. But I have parted with so many people recently that I care so much about that sometimes parting from people is just okay. I usually do not forget people that mean something to me, so I will always have the memories.

While I will be leaving, I will forever be grateful to my family here in O-Ville as well as all of the other people around me here. I wish them all the best, for they are all good people, caring for me, teaching me, and accepting me as one of their own (My host mom here has now called me her son, and shed tears about me leaving… So to my parents at home in Ohio, I have been taken care of incredibly here by a wonderful family that I now call my own Moroccan family.) While I have said this before to people, I feel like I am a teen again, parting ways with my family so I can go off and do my work.

I have had an incredible time here, learning about the language, struggling at times. I have learned about the culture here, and seen a communal way of life that amazes me (at some point I will talk about culture and various things I have seen and done). It has been a pleasure for me to be the first Peace Corps group here in O-Ville. I am able to see pure reactions, and all of my reactions are pure as well. There is a “learning about each other” phase, where my family has no idea what to do with me, and likewise from my end. At the beginning I knew no language, and they did not know mine. We just met in the middle and learned from each other.

I hope that in leaving, the people of the community have learned as much from us as we have learned from them, even if they are small things. The way of life here is simple, but it is filled with incredible culture and wonderfully nice people.

Much Love!
Me.

PS. I probably will have more regular internet access in my final site. More on this later.