Branching Out

“Limitations live only in our mind, but if we use our imagination our possibilities become limitless”-James Paovinett

            From the moment I got the call from Lisa Marie saying I was officially going on the trip to Morocco, to showing up at the school on Monday, I have had endless stress about being able to teach again and having to handle the responsibility that comes with these trips.

            However, once we arrived at Abda Salam Sayah Middle School where we were about to begin teaching English for two weeks, my stress slowly began to disappear. First we met the director Touria. She has been at the school for 16 years and is one of the most dedicated people I have ever met to teaching kids. Touria is willing to do whatever it takes to help the kids in their journey of life. Touria gave our group some amazing words of wisdom from her life story and what she had been through to get to the spot she is in now. Shortly after this I was inspired to teach again and all of my doubts faded away as I realized no matter what we do, the kids will always be thankful for us coming and helping them pursue their dreams. As the past couple of days have gone by, I have not only seen how happy the kids are to have us here, but also how eager the kids are to learn. One experience that stuck out the most to me was yesterday. At the end of the day, we were reviewing nouns and verbs. It was getting closer to school being out and the kids acted like they didn’t even care about leaving. They were all raising their hands and trying to come up to the board to answer the questions. In the US, kids know it’s the end of the day and start packing up and heading towards the door before the bell rings. Here in Morocco, when the bell rung at 6:00 after a 3 hour English class, all the kids ran towards the board yelling the answer and jumping up and down with excitement. When this happened I realized that what we were doing was going to pay off. The kids really do enjoy learning from us, and are interested in what we have to teach them.

            Another “limitation” of mine before arriving was the fact that Morocco is an all Muslim country. It could be dangerous at times, but people that judge Muslims for what extremists have done, have not experienced the real culture. The real Muslim culture includes welcoming people with open arms and minds. For example, as soon as we walked in to our Riad, which is similar to a bed and breakfast in America. Ali, the director of the volunteer program, along with Jihane, the volunteer coordinator, greeted us with hot mint tea and delicious cookies. We couldn’t have felt more at home or excepted in our soon to be home for two weeks!

            Following this, another time we saw the welcoming culture was at our home visits. After school we got separated into groups of three and were off to go met different families. The family that I got the opportunity to experience was Youssra’s family. As soon as we walked in, we got a warm welcome with cookies and mint tea from her mom Rashida and her brother. Once we broke the ice, we started asking more personal questions. Through this we found that only her father works and his job is very unsteady and not economically stable. However, the mother couldn’t have had a better outlook on her situation. She never complained, she just told us how life was and that she does have stress but learns how to cope with it. For example, her house was covered in amazing and vibrant paintings and she described them as her way of stress relief. To me this was a very wise piece of advice because no matter what the circumstances she found a positive look on it.

            Through all the emotions leading up to this trip, it is crazy that it’s almost the fourth day and we have already experienced so many amazing things. From seeing a whole new culture, to teaching enthusiastic kids, Morocco has continued to amaze me. With every turn I take I can’t wait to see where the rest of this adventure will lead us. There are so many more “limitations” we will overcome.