Last night I hosted a young lady who has been in Morocco for the past year working on a fullbright scholarship. She only has a little bit of time left and is reflecting on a lot of things that I will have to think about soon. What was the most valuable part of her project? Was her time here well spent? What is she going to do when she gets back to the US?
I have heard a lot of Peace Corps Volunteers musing on these subjects as they approach their Close of Service dates. It makes me wonder whether we are not more similar to each other than it seems at first blush. On the one hand Fullbrighters are here to do research, and not necessarily provide technical assistance as such. However, they are put in situations that often demand that they lend a helping hand.
We are told that we are supposed to be ambassadors for the United States from the first day we are in country to the second we leave. Fullbrighters are just told to do good research. Yet we are often placed in sites wherein American Culture is so out of the normative experience that it is difficult to find a common nomenclature, much less actually convey our value system effectively. Fullbrighters on the other hand mostly live in large cities whose populace is much more exposed to western media through advertising, magazines, and television. They actually have a good starting point for a common understanding, and based on our conversation last night they often are able to articulate our culture very effectively. Then again, a lot of what they study, we live. A lot of the people they interview we eat dinner with on a regular basis. They research and we experience.
The fact of the matter is that Fullbrighters often talk a lot of trash about Peace Corps kids and vice versa. We, the Peace Corps, dominate this country's experience of Americans, even more so than tourists in many cases. There are over 200 of us and the Fullbright program only has 15 kids in country. They have a much harder time explaining what they do, because most people assume that they must be Peace Corps Volunteers or something just like it. It's easy to see how they could resent us. Then again, they get paid four times the amount that we do. They get to live in large modern cities with most of the amenities of home and a much smaller culture gap. It's easy to see how we could resent that too.
Be that as it may, after hosting a Fullbrighter for dinner, after hanging out and watching the office, and after reminiscing about home I have to say that we have much more in common than not. I miss the same things that she does. We shared many of the same experiences, and struggled with many of the same things. We both feel a call to help those without the opportunities that we grew up with in America and we both feel changed in a fundamental way by our experiences here. We both love living abroad and we love being with the people to whom we have become very close. We are strangers in a strange land that is getting more familiar every day. We are united in so many things that the differences seem to pale in comparison. This post goes out to Steph. Thanks for the Apple pie, the laughs and the perspective. I have talked smack about Fullbrighters for the last time, and I wish you all the luck in America, life and love. See you soon Nsha'allah. ;-p
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