Volunteer Wrap Up

After being home sick for two days, I was really looking forward to my last day of placement at the University because I wanted to see my students and say goodbye before leaving Rabat. But if there is one 'rule' in Africa, it's that things never seem to go as planned; I'm telling myself that the three hours I spent working on unused lesson plans were not wasted, I just saved the next volunteer some time! But, I did get a chance to see some of my favorite students and exchange contact information before the end of the day, so it was not a complete bomb.

I've been thinking a lot about my volunteer placement and the work I've done here in Rabat – this was an absolutely different experience from my time in Tanzania last year, where I felt as though I had been scrubbed raw from the inside out. Instead, my Moroccan volunteer work seems to have been more for me than for the people I worked with. I feel like I personally gained much more from this experience than my students could have possibly gained from me.

To be quite frank, I was a little scared of Islam and the Arab world before I came to Morocco. I knew that the images we see in the news at home are sensationalized and the stories very one-sided, but that was still where my preconceived ideas were formed. So of course I was nervous and not sure what to expect. Because I wanted to break through my own prejudices and learn the “other side” of things, I asked my students to teach me about their religion and culture – yes, that helped them practice English, but I am truly the one who benefited most from our classes.

I realize that we only scratched the surface of Islam in our discussions, but I do feel much more informed than before. I cannot say that I agree with everything my students told me, but I was able to listen with an open mind to concepts that were new to me or even contradictory to my own beliefs. And I can say that with every question and explanation we exchanged, I learned more about them as individuals, as Muslims, as Moroccans, and as human beings.

In Tanzania I was overwhelmed with the question of “WHAT DO I DO?” to help people who were literally dying from poverty and disease. There is definitely poverty in Morocco, but here my journey has been more about acknowledging the fact that we are all dying a little each time that we fail to see the humanity in one another.