On Development, Part II

Now that I’ve been here in Freedonia for a little over a month, I’d like to stop and take stock of what I’ve done so far and how I’ve lived and worked. So far, I’ve mostly only given classes in English, met people who I’ll hopefully be working with in the coming years, and tagged along with the other clubs and associations working out of the Dar Shebab. This last has probably been the most surprising, and, at times, the most developmentally frustrating.

You see, when I showed up here in town, it wasn’t as though I’d walked out of a vacuum and into a new world of development work. I’d studied international relations for 5 years, discussing and analyzing the various theories and techniques of development, and done a nearly 3-month long pre-service training preparing me for the specific needs and challenges of working in Morocco. Despite all this, however, I’ve found myself largely sitting on the sidelines in Freedonia, caught between my desire to initiate projects and the restriction that projects initiated by me are contrary to the ideology of development, as I am not a sustainable resource. Normally, we have to seek out parties interesting in taking part in the development of their community and work with them to build their capacity to do so. In my case, however, they’re already doing that without me.

At first, I took this as a sign that the powers that be in the Peace Corps had made a mistake in assigning me (or anyone) to Freedonia. Obviously, this was a place that was not at all in need of a volunteer, but rather a medal for initiative. And I think I’ve come to realize why I felt this way. My pre-service training, as all pre-service trainings, was done in a different community. Although it was a town fairly close to Freedonia, no two sites are in equal states of development, and my initial impressions and experiences there gave me a certain impression of what I would be doing in my final site. Unfortunately, because there is still a volunteer working in that town, a fact that will be unavoidable considering what I’m going to write about it, I can’t use it’s true name, either. Instead, I’ll refer to it as Truck Stop Number 9.

Truck Stop Number 9 is, as the name implies, more-or-less just a stopping place for people going to larger, more important cities on the other side. People in the town will tell you that one of its neighborhoods is known for being the second best place in Morocco for getting prostitutes, but, as I’ve learned since leaving, they may be making a mountain out of what is really a licentious molehill, and are only the fourth best place for prostitution, tops. And similar to its ranking for pleasurable company is the Dar Shebab, which is about as active as Disco Night in a retirement community. As a result, because there were really no associations working in the town, my five training mates and I were able to roll up into town and become local celebrities with the youth almost immediately, and, by the time we left we had gotten two clubs going that are hopefully still active, as well as reviving the English language learning for the current volunteer.

And it was from this mindset that I moved into Freedonia. I expected youth to flock to my classes and then stay around eager to become part of the new movement to put the town on the map for something other than an exaggerated sex trade. In reality, what happened was I got a lot of kids showing up for my classes, and then moving over to the clubs and associations for their activities once I finished teaching them. In fact, we have so many clubs working in the Dar Shebab that they fight over room space and time, and I tend to find myself sitting on the side of room watching as they lead the youth in their activities.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see this kind of involvement in town, it’s just that it’s caused me to have to rethink my earlier preconceptions of Peace Corps volunteer work. But I think I’ve begun to figure out how to deal with Freedonia and its particular level of development. Firstly, the Peace Corps spent a good deal of time telling us to just take things easy at first, reminding us that many volunteers are really only teaching classes until the end of their first full year. I don’t know if I’ll really wait as long as that, but I can see much of the wisdom of their advice now. Until the end of January, I’ll be living with a host family, which is wonderful, but is somewhat restrictive of my time. For example, if I have a meeting of some kind, and it’s anywhere near the time appointed for eating, then my family will insist that I simply reschedule. As an American, of course, I would tend to just eat that which I had time to eat, or delay the meal entirely, but this is not a luxury I have while I share my schedule with that of the family. It makes good sense in this context to keep a mostly empty calendar and just go with the flow, especially since I’m still meeting the people who work and live here, anyway.

Secondly, I’ve come to realize that it’s great that there are so many activities already going on with the Dar Shebab. The more the merrier. I mean, after all, the idea is to help create a self-sufficient community, and Freedonia is well on its way to achieving this. But there is also plenty of work to be done, and plenty of activities and associations that are still missing before Freedonia can be considered a closed site. For example, there’s no coordination to speak of between the various clubs already present, a problem I am attempting to resolve with the development of a Dar Shebab Majlis (parliament), which I’m sure I’ll write about more in the future. I’m also working on a small inter-elementary school soccer league to address the lack of organized sports here in town, as well as an environment club. And there is a healthy demand for information technology training all over the town. Hopefully, these are things that will become part of the fabric of the community, and if I’m successful, there will be a structure in place to deal with new needs as they arise.

So, that’s the story of four months of volunteer life. It’s mostly a matter of just taking each day one at a time and doing whatever shows up, all while trying to get a general feel for everything that’s happening around you. I get the occasional remark that I’m not doing as much work as the volunteers who’ve come before me, but that’s easy enough to shrug away, and it keeps me motivated to make as much of a difference here as I can.