In Seven Days...

Leaving on a jet plane
I am leaving this country in seven days. In seven days a year of my life will be left on the other side of the ocean and I will return to a place where people will not understand me when I say things like "schnoo?", "bizeff" and "inshallah"- convenient Moroccan vernacular that has warmed its way into my everyday speak. In seven days I will be around people who, although they may know me incredibly well, will still have no clue exactly as to what I have experienced this year. And, despite their best intentions and efforts, they will never be able to really understand the changes that have taken place inside of me because of this year away. I can show them my pictures and share my journal entries, but this experience is uniquely mine, which is both a phenomenal and isolating realization.

In seven days I am going home, but I am not sure how I will fit into that home anymore. I have undeniably changed this year because of the people and places I have encountered and the adaptations a year away from the familiar and convenient has forced me to make. I like the changes I see in myself. I am friendlier, more open-minded, more flexible, more independent and ironically also more comfortable being dependent. I can communicate more aptly in Arabic and French. I know a good deal more about Morocco, obviously, and a bunch of other topics like poverty, Islam, development, and gender relations. I have developed a love and knack for travel, an ability to communicate nonverbally, and a special affinity for being out of my element and charmingly awkward when language and cultural barriers are just too tough to crack!

But I right now, with one foot in Morocco and the other getting ready to board a plane for the United States, I am anxious about how my experiences this year and their effects on me will manifest in my life from here on out.

If my life were a book, I think this chapter would be my favorite so far. It is that pinnacle point in the storyline where the protagonist enters a situation in one state and emerges with a new outlook and previously unknown strengths. In this chapter there have been new characters who markedly influence the growth of the protagonist. There is humor, hardship, and discovery. There are encounters that cause the protagonist to confront her own stance in the world. She is forced to ask herself what she believes on certain issues and how that defines who she is and how she interacts with the rest of the world.

I think what really unnerves me about going home is that I am closing this new chapter that I have just started and no one at home will really be able to read it and understand it. However, despite the fact that this experience is uniquely mine and that this chapter is largely illegible to others, I believe it is an experience that will stick with me. People might not know the stories of how these changes came to be, but they will see this renewed protagonist and in that way my experience will last.

On an academic level, I cannot imagine my education without this time abroad. For two years I learned about and discussed Islam, Middle Eastern politics, cultural imperialism, development, and other issues in a classroom among other academically-minded people who are predominately, like me, American. I watched Arabic language DVDs on repeat until my eyes were bleary and the voice of the DVD’s main characters Maha and Khalid were continually ringing in my ears.

My education up until my abroad experience was excellent, but it was not complete. Those two years, I believe, were preparation for this one. I was given a springboard of the knowledge and tools I needed to take what I had learned into "the real world" (in my case this happened to be Morocco) and test it and build on it. It was a chance for me to see if what I was learning "made sense" beyond the classroom. Although I did take traditional classes here as well, my time here in general was an opportunity to learn in a new way that involved more than just reading, writing, and discussing but encompassed my whole life entirely. I learned walking down the street and bargaining in the souk. I learned talking to people on trains. I learned living with my host-family. In short, I never stopped soaking up knowledge. I saw things I did not understand and I asked about them. The more I learned the more I realized I did not know and the more I asked…the cycle was addictive.

Like I said, I cannot imagine my education without this year abroad, but I can also not imagine a year abroad without the base of my university education, which fueled my fire to learn so much about the world in the first place. They compliment one another beautifully.

On a last note, it has been humbling to be "an immigrant" so to speak in a new country. At times I was treated the better for being an American and at times the worse. Often I felt ridiculously childish, as if I had regressed from being a 21 year old independent woman to a bumbling child who could hardly order a sandwich at a café or carry on a conversation past a few sentences. But, as so many people do in this situation, I adapted and became very comfortable being a little uncomfortable. Gradually, I picked up the culture and customs of my new environment and little by little I did a better job of blending in. I went from blatant outsider to outsider who can at least get around and speak the language and who people came to respect and accept.

I have come to believe that one cannot ever truly and fully integrate and belong entirely to a culture that is not one’s own. This is not, however, a negative thing. I think one can adapt, learn and grow from living in another culture. One can pick up new customs and take on new outlooks. But to lose oneself entirely in another culture, I believe, is both nearly impossible and also unhealthy. The reason I have learned so much from this year abroad is that I have been able to look at my own culture and beliefs from a new perspective. I have not traded them in unquestioningly for those of another culture but rather have been able to reevaluate my views, values and habits through experiencing another set far different from my own. I have grown and my perspective on so many things has become deeper and more complex by virtue of exposure to another way of living and thinking.

In seven days I am leaving Morocco. I am leaving friends, memories, and experiences. I am leaving a culture that, though once unknown, has over the months become familiar and comforting to me. I am leaving all of this behind; however, in seven days I am opening up the next chapter of my life. I am returning home but it is not a backwards move at all. I am sure that all the events, people, places and changes that have made this chapter so amazing will stick with me. I hope someday to come back to Morocco, but until then, I also hope I can in some way carry with me everything Morocco has meant to me and everything it has done for me on an academic, social and personal level.