A Check-Up for My Goals

I wrote down the reasons why I left Lancaster, with my kind housemates, my growing church, my endless opportunities for involvement in society, and my interesting job. The check-up is in italics beneath each reason for why I came here.

To learn to teach.
This is happening. 

To live near the desert.
This is true, but I haven't seen much of the desert just yet. When I came here in August, I wasn't sure this city wasn't a desert: dry, dusty, without a sliver of green. If the ocean hadn't been a half hour's jog away, I would have felt bereft. 

To live near the ocean.
I live near it, but see it so little. The sand sticks to your feet, and a few young boys walk around with their thirsty donkeys, offering rides along the water's edge. Men show off and proposition you and yell English phrases at you. 

Still, it's the ocean, and I will be going there tomorrow for an hour or so. I won't even bring a book, the waves are such good company. 

To escape the crush of scheduling (for which I took full responsibility).
This has temporarily, no doubt, solved itself. I spend my time teaching, grading, planning, and making food. It's a simple kind of busy, with far fewer deep relationships. 

To ask God how to stop being so angry.
I'm still pretty angry. I get the most angry about how women have such a raw deal the world over. I'm more impatient with so-called "women's issues" than I have ever been. Women's issues are men's issues, just like men's issues will always be women's issues. Regardless, anger is so often an outcropping of fear in my life, so I wonder what I'm afraid of.

To produce nothing, be known for nothing, be right about nothing, defend nothing.
This one was about me not building my own little comfortable kingdom. This is here to remind me that I am God's child, and that is enough. I don't need to see fruit to know that he loves me. 

To confront my loneliness, and befriend it.
I have found my loneliness. I have begun to look it in the eyes. We are not friends yet, merely occasional walking companions.

To be out of the country during the 2016 presidential election.
That happened, but it was painful on this side of the ocean, too. God, bless America. And Morocco. And...

To know Muslims.

Relationships take time and, for me, language. I love the conversations between Christians and Muslims: we have so much to talk about.

I have zero interest in meeting Muslim men, who frankly scare me; but I have lots of interest in meeting Muslim women. The Moroccans I know (though just a little bit) are my co-workers. I am mostly letting work take up that relational space for this year. You don't do everything at once. 

My Moroccan co-workers are understandably guarded in getting to know American teachers. Turnover is as high as you'd expect among young, American, traveler-teachers. For perspective, I'm far less a traveler than most of the Americans I work with.