As I sat in the last aisle of an Air France flight crossing the Atlantic at 500 miles per hour, I knew that moment would be one of those in our lives that form a rift – a moment where you know you are about to become a transformed person; that you will never be the same, but in which hindsight has not yet given you any of the details. Months, years later, I might look back and think “That’s when it all started:” new experiences, passions, identities. Or perhaps on days I miss home “That’s when it all ended.”
Throughout my gap year in Morocco, I often pondered the return version of that journey. I pictured myself sitting in the cold, dark cabin. Would I cry? Would I be anxiously anticipating turning off Airplane Mode so I could recount my adventures to my friends? Would I have the same friends to catch up with, or would the months and miles mold into something between us?
Of course, Air France flight 23687 Salé to DC by way of Paris occupied just a small space in my mind as my new life in Rabat, Morocco sprouted up around me. Colleagues at the community center where I volunteered became friends. Unknown streets became well-trodden paths.
One November day, the first day I sensed the specter of winter’s chill, I went to the park to work out. Kids from my volunteering placement were playing there, enjoying a Sunday out with their families. They ran up to greet me. Exhausted from exercise, friends and I stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant. It was the restaurant where, a few weeks earlier, I realized I had lost my wallet on the street, and a passerby miraculously stepped in and returned it. Down the road was the high school where I sat in on some classes. It was a Sunday so the baby blue Peugeot of the English teacher who gave me rides – and has a cousin in North Carolina- was missing. The street perpendicular was the one where the kids from my community center and I had marched in an environmental awareness parade, proudly raising recycled puppets the kids spent weeks making: climate mascots of sorts. Sitting in the restaurant, eating grilled sardines with a squeeze of fresh lemon, a dish I hadn’t learned to love but was learning to appreciate, surrounded by friends and memories, I felt that I had the community I had always been looking for. My life felt like a Moroccan Sesame Street.
In December, I got sick with a virus. My community became limited to the parameters of my twin bed. When I tried to explain my symptoms to the pharmacist, any Arabic I had learned left my body with my hacking cough. Sickness brought me back to the basic insecurity of travel. The comfort of home felt irrevocably lost, and the duties of my service work more daunting. Christmas came and went without distinction. Despite my strong desire to author a completely new lie, my desire for a piece of what I know also strengthened.
A few things changed. The opportunity arose to assist with English teaching at an after school study center. I fell in love with language teaching. I felt that through teaching my language, I was imparting a piece of my experiences; a piece of myself. I taught my students about American wedding etiquette and Buc-ee’s gas stations. I tried to impart a love for the language that, although problematically occupying a hegemonic position in the globalized world, is beautiful, and, for many, a vehicle for upward mobility. By starting to ‘give back’ in this sense, I realized that despite being in Morocco to do service work, I had been greedily taking in Moroccan culture, without considering my own cultural output or my positionality in the space I occupied. As I accepted the umpteenth invitation for tea, I wondered if I was too eager to accept the often sacrificial hospitality of my Moroccan hosts.
I joined an impromptu band and we began performing at open mic nights, performing mostly covers of American songs. I also begin to purposefully engage more with the international communities that call Rabat home: making cookies at the Swazi embassy and leading an American delegation at an international Model UN conference as examples. Engaging in these international communities enabled me to come to terms with, although falling in love with Morocco, not being able to fully ‘fit in’ being, of course, not Moroccan.
I found new ways to volunteer that were very different from my initial expectations. I joined a youth media and development association. We hosted board game nights, organized a talent show and photography competition, and provided iftars for students away from home during Ramadan. Hampered by limited, albeit improving, Arabic skills, I was blissfully unaware of many of the leadership decisions made at the association. Instead I helped in the ways I could: setting up chairs, making some English language materials, serving food, providing comic relief. This differed from my grand, privilege-tinted plans made upon embarking on the gap year, but I think it was ultimately more valuable to my new community and to myself than any volunteering plans I made in the vacuum of idealism.
The center hosted a gala to celebrate its graduating members and I was assigned the role of ‘welcoming committee usher.’ My task was to welcome guests and, if they had not done so already, direct them to a table to sign in. Miraculously, my job went by without a hitch. If any failing on my part perturbed or confused guests, it went unnoticed by me. When the event was over, I was giddy with happiness. I had done the smallest of tasks, but it was mine, and I had worked to get to that point. I felt that I had found my place in a way more profound than just being invited for tea.
In the spring, I began a research project studying the urban life of my city and its environs. I loved Rabat, Sale, and Temara (its two neighbors to the north and south respectively) and I wanted to know their history, design, and what makes them tick. Before the project, I could tell you that I loved Morocco and I loved my gap year, but by adopting a new lens with which to analyze my experience (in this case an urbanist one) I gained the ability to express what, exactly, some of the things I love are. I loved the healthy, mixed-use streets, their dynamism and spontaneity lending themselves toward fun, memorable experiences, like when I busked in a plaza, or played Parcheesi with fellow loiterers at a street-side table. I loved also the forms of community an environment rich in street life produces. When I think back to how I met some of my closest friends on my gap year, it is surprising. Often, we met on a bus, in a cafe, or in one notable case, when a now friend of mine asked me for directions.
By living life with my friends, I gained access to new and unique cultural realms. I often accompanied friends to their workplaces, getting to know the inner workings of a cafe, a butcher shop, a bookstore, and a wholesale ingredient store. I encountered a lot of very different, very strong opinions. A friend that came to Rabat to study from Oujda, near the Algerian border, felt that my adopted city was too rushed and money centered. One friend lamented the lack of teaching of Morocco’s indigenous languages to the new generation, while another claimed that Morocco is an Arab nation and should embrace Arabic solely. In these situations, I did not have my own insight to offer, but rather, more importantly was forced to challenge what it takes for me to accept something as ‘truth’ and form my own opinions. An ever present experience of someone who has taken a gap year or traveled is being asked “How was it?” “What was it like?” Before my gap year, I could have told you what Morocco, Moroccans, are like. Eight months later, I have no answer.
In a way, to talk about my gap year as I am doing now is to betray it. Hindered by my biases, by the affectations I’ve printed on the memories of the experience, I cannot express the complexity of the experience: the highs and lows, the historical and cultural contexts that I am as of now still ignorant about. But I think I should try. I should try because maybe my own experience might inspire someone else. Maybe the way in which my service work changed not only how I view the world but how I view myself, can offer an encouraging example to someone else.
My time in Morocco was bookended by two internships before and after at a community center in my town that serves resettled refugees. My job was to work on programming for kids, meant to aid their transition to the US and help with English development. I was stunned by how different it felt; how differently I approached the situation. Having spent hours standing before my own classroom trying to instill the English language with sometimes disastrous results, I had a better idea of how to impart knowledge to kids, and how to make it fun. After the gap year, I spent much less time at the internship trying to drill grammar, and much more fostering a comfortable and safe space to learn. After all, I had just been in a very similar situation (albeit without the complex struggles facing refugees). I now knew what it is like to be in an unfamiliar country hearing an unfamiliar language and feeling unrooted. I knew the power of the friendly smile of a compassionate stranger. I knew also the pang of missing home.
When I boarded the flight back home, perhaps as a side-effect of spending all year thinking about that very moment, I felt nothing. I was tired and didn’t know how to process the gigantic experiences that had just come to an end. It took me a while, laying in the sheets of my bed at home, walking my dog down the streets of my neighborhood, to understand what had just happened. I had learned a lot about service, but had not lost it. I could apply it in my new internship and in seeking empathy in my interactions with others. I had made so many friends, and I had not lost them. They were thousands of miles away but memory and Facetime and time and space have a way of bending to our wishes.
Take a gap year not because of who you are, but because of who you will become. I am the sum of my experiences and if anything the experiences of my gap year have expanded me, made me a larger and more grounded being. Take a gap year because you are interested in yourself, you are interested in the world, and you are interested in connecting the two. After my gap year, the world is a smaller place, and that feels pretty nice :)
