mlive.com
Jackson woman back home after two-year stint with Peace Corps in Morocco
Aaron McMann 12/29/2011 10:00 AM
Alex Cash says she always considered herself a quitter. Granted, she had quit only a couple of significant things in her life, including dance when she was younger.
But she needed a nudge, a push to get out and experience life a little more.
“I used to be afraid of change,” the 25-year-old said. “I needed a catalyst to test that and make it happen.”
Cash returned home to Jackson on Nov. 22 after a 26-month stint in Morocco for the Peace Corps. She was placed in El Gara, a small town of about 20,000 southeast of Casablanca, and assigned to youth development.
From 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, Cash led a class that taught people ages 6 to 20 arts, music and other programs they didn’t receive in school.
“I wanted to be able to offer them something to do and some new ways to learn life skills,” she said. “It’s something that they want, it’s something simple to do. Once I got to know them better, I could kind of see what they wanted.”
For the young ones, Cash said supplying them with colored pencils and paper kept them entertained. Parents showed little interest in their kids’ schoolwork, so she made a bulletin board to show off the drawings.
“They don’t ever get a chance to draw and color,” she said. “They don’t put them on their refrigerator like we do. They would show me these drawings, and I would just applaud them because their parents don’t.”
Away from the classroom, Cash received a firsthand account of the Moroccan culture. She was placed with a host family for the first five months, per Peace Corps rules, and then was allowed to live on her own in an apartment.
Cash said she was provided $325 in U.S. dollars each month, enough to pay for rent, bills, food and a little bit of travel. She considers herself a frugal person and was able to live on that, even saving some money for lodging and entertainment on trips to Paris and Edinburgh in Scotland.
“You’re pretty poor, but if you play your cards right, you can save,” she said. “I value experiences more than going out and spending money on restaurants.”
During her time away from home, she was able to communicate with her parents, Tom and Sara Cash, through Facebook and Skype. Her mother even made a trip to Morocco in April — the first time she had ever flown — to visit.
“For the two years prior (to her going), I knew she wanted to,” her mother said. “I wasn’t real happy because it was so far away. But I wanted to see how she was living and what her life was like.”
Alex and Sara Cash both pointed out the differences in living quarters between the U.S. and Morocco. Sara said her daughter’s apartment did not have a shower curtain, and recalled an instance in which the two went to a nearby bathhouse and bathed with a group of women. Alex Cash said a lack of hot water helped teach her the value of conserving water — and how to take shorter showers.
Living in a Muslim-dominated country also was different. Cash said she was treated “like a queen” by the kids in school, but women were still treated “almost like second-class citizens” by men. Cash said women were looked down upon if they were caught holding hands in public with a man, and she was cat-called several times on the street.
“If I was seen walking with a man, they would ask if that was my boyfriend or husband,” she said. “I never felt the repercussions of it, but they don’t really have public male-female relationships.”
Cash has taken it easy since returning home, shifting her attention to obtaining a substitute teaching job to help pay off student loan debt from college. She earned a degree in journalism from Michigan State University in 2009. Her heart belongs in public radio, she said, and it would be a dream to work for NPR.
“I know dreams don’t come easy, nor they should,” Cash said. “Right now, I’m in a transition, just trying to get through the holidays.”
She considered her time in Morocco an eye-opener and said she turned into the person she wanted to be and the person she knew she was. She just needed that nudge.
“I learned I could do anything,” she said. “And that’s what I wanted the most.”
