Hey, so I haven't actually gone to Morocco yet (still got about 2 weeks to go). Seeing as how I can't very well write about what's happened to me in Morocco yet, I'd like to start this blog with what happened before the start of my Peace Corps service.
Some people have asked me why I joined the Peace Corps in the first place. Others want to know why Morocco. Still, others have actually asked me for some advice about how to get in. I’m hopefully going to answer those and a few other questions in my first few blog posts. So let’s start somewhere close to the beginning.
When filling out my Peace Corps application, I had to answer two essay questions. Here’s what I wrote/submitted:
Essay #1Cross-cultural Experience
Peace Corps Volunteers must be open to ideas and cultures different from their own and may need to modify their appearance or behavior appropriately. Give an example (between 250-500 words) of a significant experience that illustrates your ability to adapt in an unfamiliar environment. Please highlight the skills you used and the perspectives you gained. You may draw from experiences in your work, school, or community in the U.S. or abroad. Please list the date(s) of your experience.Honestly, I think that since coming to college, my life qualifies as a cross-cultural experience. I was a nice Jewish boy with a Jewish day-school background, and so were almost of my friends. I lived a pretty sheltered life. Now I have Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist friends. I’ve sat down to lunch with the homeless and listened to their lives’ stories. I’ve prayed alongside the University of Maryland’s Muslim community, and learned some fundamentals of Islam from them. After a year of studying Bible with a Korean missionary, I went with her family to their church. I’ve helped edit a Nigerian man’s book, I’m involved with several charity organizations; and am very proud of being a founder of one involving sending Ugandan refugees to vocational school. Together with the rest of America Counts, I’ve tutored math to minority children here in the U.S. My life has become a cross-cultural experience.
Still, if I had to choose one cross-cultural experience, it would have to be my time in Africa. I spent the best part of summer 2008 in a small Jewish village in Uganda. Uganda is home to roughly 800 natives whose great-grandparents, without ever having met a Jew, decided to join the tribe. It was Africa, it was a community in which my parents would grudgingly let me volunteer, I had to go.
I met with the headmaster of the primary school my first night there. During our conversation, he casually mentioned “So, you will be teaching Hebrew.” Shocked to learn I would not be teaching my native English, my next words were something along the lines of “Okay…can I start tomorrow?”
Hebrew had been taught by the headmaster, who taught himself to read and write the language. My first day, he walked me to our first class, and then just left me. He left me with 5 grades to teach. I volunteered myself to the high school later, totaling seven classes. I had never really taught, and did not know the level of proficiency of any of the classes. Their resources were fundamentally lacking, there were certainly not enough “Hebrew Primers” to go around.
So I improvised. I tested the classes on the Hebrew letters, vowels, and words, discovering where each class was. From there, I created my own lesson plans. I found a beach ball, and used it to teach words such as “you,” “me,” “they,” “have,” “the,” “ball” “under,” “on,” “table,” “outside,” “tree,” etc. One week in, the students were starting to build simple sentences. But my time was limited. So every day after class, I had each student write one word he or she wished to learn. I incorporated these words into my lessons. I requested a notebook from the headmaster, and in it wrote lesson plans and the students’ requested vocabulary words, so that he could continue to teach not just reading and writing, but comprehension of a relevant vocabulary once I left.
Essay #2Motivation Statement
Peace Corps service presents major physical, emotional, and intellectual challenges. You have provided information on how you qualify for Peace Corps service elsewhere in the application. In the space below, please provide a statement (between 250-500 words) that includes: 1) Your reasons for wanting to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer; and2) How these reasons are related to your past experiences and life goals.It seems stupid now, the silly fantasy of a naive little boy. I always wanted to be a superhero, always wanted to save the world. I saw Peace Corps as my chance, work in a developing country for two years, do my part, and that would be it. So, like Batman before me, I started to train. I’ve tried to learn everything about everything. I took courses in creative writing, drawing, nutrition, kinesiology, African history, Latino history, world music, music theory, and teaching. I joined America Counts last year and was a math tutor for minority students, I joined the campus Wushu club and learned martial arts, I volunteered in Africa, and took up a musical instrument. That was the plan, spend college preparing for my time in the Peace Corps, for my big adventure as a hero, as part of a larger group of heroes, and spend two years saving the world. But the plan, it lacked a fundamental understanding of what makes a hero.
It’s cliché, you know? To be a hero, Spider-Man had to lose his Uncle Ben, Batman had to lose both his parents, Superman lost his entire planet. I never understood, not until I lost Albert. He was one of my best friends, he couldn’t afford college, he wanted to be a doctor, so he joined the army and became a medic. All he wanted to do was laugh, to live life, he was never a kind stranger but a lifelong friend to everyone he met. He was a medic, all he did in Iraq was save lives. And they took his life, we lost Albert when his vehicle was hit by an “improvised explosive device.”
I get it now, it’s not some fun adventure, it’s not a game, the stakes are real. If you’re going to save the world, if you’re truly going to make it a better place, you need to keep working at it. Saving the world doesn’t end after a two-year stint as a volunteer. I get it. I finally understand why Superman calls it the “Never ending battle.” But I’m going to argue that. For all his battles, Superman’s only made more enemies, hell-bent on killing him, threatening his city to do so. To battle, to fight, only creates more fighting, more intense fighting. It creates wars, and it kills people like Albert Bitton.
It’s a struggle, a never ending struggle. We all need to talk, to argue, to conquer our differences with dialogue, not weapons. And I will spend the rest of my life struggling, struggling until the fighting ends. I’ve always wanted to be a superhero, so it’s time I stop training and start doing. So let my struggle begin, the never ending struggle, it starts, not ends, with Peace Corps.
