Or at least that's how my mind wants to remember it. A more honest examination of my memories, journal and blog entries of the past eighteen months presents a less frantic, more balanced settling in. Yes, things are new, yes I don't quite know what I'm doing, but that's alright. Let's see what happens. Life here has long since attained a sense of normalcy, as perhaps indicated by the lack of wacky situations and entertaining awkward beginnings related here. They have, with the occasional exception, been left at the beginning.
Initially my purpose was more of an assignment-- an obligation shaped by Peace Corps literature, lectures, and expectations. I was to take actions toward the fulfillment of certain goals during my time here. The assumption was that something was indeed needed-- thus PC's choice of the area and my subsequent placement here-- and that I now had the capacity to affect that change. That wasn't quite how I found it.
The steps toward understanding my environment and assembling a somewhat solid base from which to work have slowly formed in front of me. The picture as a whole has come into greater focus as I've gradually identified the pieces and players, learned the history, the complexities, the relationships, the cycles and attitudes, and have made connections between them. This has happened through the help of friends, observation, and many "mistakes", false starts, wrongful assumptions-- feeling my way along in the dark-- though the light brightens a little bit more each time I hit a wall or become completely lost, the former often resulting in the latter.
My capabilities toward doing have evolved as my understanding of the place and people has clarified. The process has been a tug-of-war between what is realistic, PC goals, and the boundaries of my own comfort zone. My approach has been to use PC goals as a reference, but much more so to simply respond to the realities of my unique environment, and to find and exercise the potential in it. What I find may or may not pertain to one of PC's small business development-specific goals, and though one can almost always stretch any activity to appear relevant to those aims, doing so is not personally a high priority.
The relationships I've had the fortune to build here, both within the volunteer community and among the Moroccan community are by far my most valued aspect of the experience, and are the core around which everything else moves. I find them immensely fulfilling, and how interesting that anything I would deem a "success" here has been due almost entirely to the development of these relationships.
It's almost impossible for anything to be hurried along here and result in any lasting prosperity. This is old news, but it remains stubbornly persistent. Perhaps this is true for any place, but this one seems to recognize and exist in accordance with the idea, rather than opposition. Initially and still occasionally frustrating, but it showed the desire to "get things done" to be a machination of the ego-- to appear successful with tangible, immediate and specific results at which to point. See, I know exactly what I'm doing. See how on top of things I am?
As there are periods of momentum and of considerable down time, the challenge is to learn how to make the best use of both-- learning when to take steps, when to wait, when to let things evolve out of your hands. To trust that they always are happening as they should, even if you can't see. Again, old news, and I hope to not belittle it through writing of it here, but time and again this theory has proven itself true to me, and has profoundly reshaped my approach to living. I hope to be able to carry the virtues found in life here back to life in America, when the time comes-- to that new, strange place.
1 comment:
A sage assessment. For some reason, for me, "PC" always reads initially as "politically correct" which puts an interesting and ambiguous spin on what you are trying to convey.
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