I am a Peace Corps volunteer assigned to be an environmental educator in a small village in the Errachidia Province of Morocco, where I have been for more than a year.
You are probably picturing a stereotypical Peace Corps image: an insect- and rodent-infested mud hut in a desolate desert.
However, I live on the second floor of a cement home where I have electricity, running water and fairly reliable Internet.
I live without heating or air conditioning in a climate that ranges from 130 degrees in the summer to well below freezing in the winter. I speak Darija (Moroccan Arabic) with my neighbors and friends.
This has been the reality of my daily life since I came to Morocco on March 17, 2011.
I decided to apply to the Peace Corps during my last year of college; the economy was slipping and my liberal arts degree wasn’t going to get me a job right away.
I had been daydreaming about the Peace Corps in the years prior, so I submitted my application, was interviewed, nominated, underwent rigorous medical examinations and eventually was invited to serve in Morocco.
I crammed the necessities of my life into a large rolling suitcase and camping backpack and met my fellow volunteers in Philadelphia. I left for Morocco with 60 or so eager health and environment volunteers who were beginning this journey with me.
I arrived in the midst of the “Arab Spring,” and not quite a month later, the country experienced its own pro-democracy demonstrations.
Osama bin Laden was assassinated while I was training to become a volunteer. Muammar Gaddafi was in the news through the first blazing hot summer of my life in Morocco. People all over the world continue to follow the stories coming out of Syria and other Arab nations.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI responded to the pro-democracy movement here by changing the constitution and allowing free parliamentary elections. I went with my host mother when she cast her vote.
There are still demonstrators who feel the king has not gone far enough in his reforms, but out in the country, life has been generally unaffected by any of the changes or rabble-rousing. People here are too focused on making their daily lives function to care too much about what is happening in the capital, Rabat.
I teach English to elementary students and am working with my village environmental association to help them find the money to build a community center.
I share American culture with my neighbors and friends; this ranges from the fact that I own a dog, which is unheard of here, to showing video of my mother’s recent wedding, which could not be more different than typical Moroccan weddings.
I have learned to do my laundry in an irrigation ditch and to do dishes without benefit of a sink.
I clean my cement floors with a squeegee instead of a mop and buy my food at the weekly market in Tinjedad, 7 kilometers from my home.
At some point last fall, these daily realities became blissfully normal, and I generally don’t miss the comforts of home as much; this is helped by the steady supply of care packages containing black beans and grits.
The third goal of the Peace Corps is “Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”
So here I am, living in a Muslim country that is making successful democratic reforms, which aren’t being discussed in the news media, and I want a chance to share my life here with you.
With the editors of the Sun Herald I have decided to open myself to questions South Mississippians may have about the Peace Corps, life in Morocco, Islam, and so on. Feel free to email me at mississippi2morocco so we can begin this exciting dialogue.
Helen Rose Patterson, reared in Hinds County, attended Bennington College in Bennington, Vt., and graduated with a BA in Environmental Studies and Social Science in December 2010. She has called Ocean Springs home since 2007 and entered the Peace Corps in March 2011, became a volunteer in May and will be in Morocco until May 2013.
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