Life after Peace Corps in Morocco is a bit surreal. Suddenly I don’t have to call the duty officer if I leave my site and hey guess what? now what was my “site,” is now my home.
I felt like my site became home long before I married my husband and long before the people living in Taza realized I was the “Americania.”
I finally traveled to Fez and saw parts of the city I never got the chance to see during Community Based Training (CBT). I also enjoyed walking, window shopping and eating at the new Fez Mall with my friend Angie. I am seeing Morocco with new eyes because now its just me living in Morocco without Peace Corps.
Its nice to know I don’t have to worry about how things look any more from the perspective of a PCV – I am just me in Morocco with my husband. I can now go ahead and tell people off when they are rude – such as the guy who tried to cut my friend Angie off in line at Carrefour’s in Fez, call people out for gossiping about me for no good reason thinking I don’t understand Moroccan Arabic just because I have pretended to not understand what they are saying for so long and just me without second guessing if I will cause an international incident.
So on that note I think I should share with my readers that I will be writing inshaAllah a series of posts entitled “TANS – PCV Life Morocco,” TANS stands for There Are No Secrets. There are a lot of stories and experiences that I or other PCV’s have had that never get talked about or shared outside of our tight knit circle of fellow PCV’s because most PCV’s are scared to do so because of how we have seen PCHQ Morocco staff handle similar issues in the past – some of these stories will be just down right funny, others heart wrenching and others will fall into the WTFWTT category.
So keep an eye out for those specific stories.
My husband and I continue our journey to get his IR-1/CR-1 visa. We have now been waiting 128 days on my husband’s I -130. Everyday I check online to see if anything has changed and we are still in “initial review.” So then I decided to send in the K-3 visa paperwork hoping maybe we could get home faster and now that is sitting in “initial review.” *Sigh* Morocco is nice but I miss home.
As today is Chrismas – Merry Christmas to those celebrating from myself and my family in Morocco.
American Muslimahs Musings 