Sign the petition:

If you would like to sign a petition started by fellow PCVs from Morocco to get me back to service, please follow the link here:https://www.change.org/p/petition-for-christen-corcoran-s-return-to-peace-corps-morocco 

Thanks so much for your continued support

The blog with no title

I am having a really hard time writing this blog because I equal parts want to share everything with you all that has been happening to me and don’t know how to express it in a way that makes me feel good or vindicated. This is neither a fun nor happy blog post, nor is it a situation that I feel I have any control over. I have been having a hard time figuring out the tone and the content that I wish to share. I want to be thorough but I am finding that hard to do that in a way that is without bitterness and resentment.

Without being melodramatic, I am going through a period of loss right now: loss for words, loss of any semblance of sense, and a loss community.   I am reading Amy Poehler’s book and she says "Any painful experience will make you look at things differently" and I find myself fighting demons that threaten to taint the memories of an amazing past 16 months of my life. These past few weeks have been an extremely sad, painful and mind-boggling. On March 27, I got a call from Peace Corps, very unexpectedly, that I was being medically separated from my service. Meaning that I would not be allowed to return to Morocco to finish my service.

If you are someone who knows me, you may understand how deeply and truly devastating this news was received. This devastation was only expounded by the vague and misused information in which Peace Corps used to justify this decision. 

Peace Corps as an organization often reminds us that we have to accept certain aspects of our community… i.e. that we cannot change everything about our host country. For volunteers in Morocco, this comes in the form of dealing with a heavy amount of sexual harassment and unwanted attention or even worse. For me, this has come in forms such as: men stalking me, men publically masturbating at me, sexual propositions, a home break-in attempt, a threat to my life, two separate sexual assaults…

Peace Corps as an organization also tells us that we need to advocate for ourselves. I am told that I need to accept these acts against me as things that will not change, but I did want, and still do want, to advocate for a change in the way that Peace Corps deals with these acts with systemic policy changes. Mental health policies and victim blaming attitudes within Peace Corps should change. Period.

I have expressed this sentiment to Peace Corps Washington DC and in a sexual harassment focus group last winter.

My experiences that I have shared and suggestions that I have made have, sadly, not been received well. Someone with a relatively high-up position within OMS responded to me when I told him of a naked, masturbating man following me that perhaps it was a “sign of his romantic interest” in me. **Oh you’re right, I should be so flattered** (bitterness coming out). It seems that things that I said in this confidential focus group are being used as grounds for my medical separation because they feel “concerned about my wellbeing.” Concerned, or uncomfortable by my honesty?

I am a strong volunteer, and I am happy with my life in Peace Corps. After getting a site change in early Fall last year because of an unsafe site, I felt so at home in my new community. Within a few months I had already created such a healthy, positive network in site--- both with my work and with the community. I did not even get to say good-bye to any of these people who have done so much for me. For that, I feel so much resent and sadness.

There are so many details about this decision and process that are flat out lies or were used out of context and the unfortunate part is that none of it is something that I can swallow because none of it makes any sense. I have no medical condition.

Staff members in DC have told me that I seem “unable to adjust to my host country” which infuriates me in so many ways, most of all because it is being said by people who don’t know me at all. They are just reading from a list of crimes that have been committed against me and blaming me for them in the actions they are taking.

I have been absolutely amazed, touched to tears, drowned in, feel so undeserving of, (the list goes on and on) the support and love that I have received from those of you that I have told this information to. So many people have reached out to the Country Director or other people on my behalf and for that I just feel so grateful to my Peace Corps family. You all mean so much to me in the most sappy and cheesy way that I can express.

You are all welcome to visit me in Germany because, so bizarrely, I find myself applying for grad school now a year or two earlier than I expected.

For those of you wanting to know more, I am not ashamed or embarrassed to share more details and would love to send anyone more information.

As of yesterday, April 27^th,  I have been told that my appeal was not accepted and that I will not be returning to Morocco. 

This is really happening

Happy New Years everyone!! Can you all believe that its already 2015? I arrived to Morocco almost a year ago, oh boy how time flies.

A view of my site taken on a hike. Photo credit: Olivia Dinucci (she has a really nice camera)

Things have been going great for me lately. Before the holidays, work was really taking off, and then during the holidays I got to spend a lot of time with some amazing PCVs. With the stress of the move behind me now, inshallah, I finally feel like my priorities are back on track.

Action shot of the mudir of the youth center (right), the self proclaimed "King of Chess"

As a "youth development" PCV, sometimes my job description/goals can be somewhat, um.... vague. Starting out again in a new site has actually proven to be really good for me because of this. I felt like I kind of knew what to expect and what boundaries to set this time around. Right away I started teaching a few english classes, a creative thinking club and computer classes in site and Ive been having a bit of a bureaucratic argument with the mudir to get women's aerobics set up... which inchallah will start in the next 2 weeks. I will also be starting a music club this week and hopefully start a soccer club with the middle schoolers (basically Im hoping my semi-authoritative presence will help them get some time on the field). My creative thinking class has been really rewarding for me to work with because we are able to have a lot of discussions about more..... interesting topics. We talk about: local politics here and some problems with the government/police corruption, people with physical and mental disabilities, what the kids actually want for themselves and the community, religion, American culture like Thanksgiving and Christmas, etc. My last class with them right before Christmas, I showed them some pictures that my mom had sent me depicting Christmas themes and we talking about the story of Santa Claus. I was worried that there might be some confusion about my intentions of sharing about Christmas, but it was received really well. I showed them the movie "Elf" (fast forwarding through some....7shuma, or culturally inappropriate parts) and I was astounded at how much they loved it. They even stayed after class to finish it. Even the most "tough" of guys were roaring at the fart jokes. I was surprised that they understood the jokes about Buddy pushing all of the buttons in the elevator and running around the revolving door, both of which I am sure most of them have never seen in real life before. Im excited to keep introducing topics to them to discuss. 

High School english textbook on "Women and Power" with the first description reading "A strong woman works out every day to keep her body in shape"  

Here is a picture that I took one day of our daily vegetable souqs. People from the outskirts of town usually take these donkeys into town to load up and take back

Here is the view from my roof. What you see on that concrete parking-lot-looking-place is an olive souq. My area is known for olive oil and this is where they are sold to be press at the local presses around town.. More on this later

One thing I love to do is bake american things for my host family and other people around town. I made these buckeyes for my host family and it was received with mixed reviews. In a recent care package I got some fruit roll ups that I passed out. The store owner couldnt figure out how to unwrap it because of the plastic wrapped around it. After tasting it, his eyes lit up and asked me in arabic "Is this from the countryside" (this comes from the notion that most things like honey and olive oil are more delicious if they come from the countryside and are more fresh). I had a really good laugh at this because fruit roll ups couldnt be more processed

The Sunday before Christmas I got my first visitors to my site. Olivia and Kabir (with whom I spent L3id Kbir) and Blake all of whom have been some of the most important people in my service. It was great to get to show them my site and get to just hang out without all of the stress that had been going on with the site change. One of the cooler things that we did was we went on a hike towards this natural spring, but realized we didnt have enough time (we had a bus to catch to Figuig, where me and Blake were going for Christmas) so we turned back, but went a different route. As we were walking, Olivia noticed that there was an intense olive smell next to this barn/shed along the trek.

(sorry, had to screenshot this because instagram is weird about downloading pictures)

I realized that I recognized the house as somewhere that I had eaten one time, so I went and knocked on the door and pretty soon we were getting a tour of the press. Just for your point of reference, this is pretty far away from the village itself, so it was quite the stumble-upon. The tools that they use to make the olive oil seem straight out of medieval times. Everything is either man- or donkey powered. The girl showing us around told us that we should eat with them, and she proceeded to give us olive oil that was pressed that day, olive oil that was a little bit older, butter, strawberry jelly, local honey from date palm trees, almonds and fresh bread. It could be one of the most rustic, delicious dining experiences yet in Morocco.

hiking in the forest by my house, has an eeiry  gnarled beauty about it 

After that I spent about a week in a town called Figuig with close to 30 volunteers from Christmas Eve until New Years Eve. Figuig is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the ksars which tunnel through the neighborhoods of the city pretty mich made out of clay and hay. It is also an oasis town, which I had never actually seen before even though they are all over the south of Morocco. This basically means that the town is covered with palm tree forests, and through that makes up a winding irrigation network which made exploring through the palmry so fun. Also for some reason the town felt very empty, it was as if the town could potentially hold about 60,000 people but only 10,000 actually lived there. It felt like we were the only ones there.

Just outside of Figuig, those mountains are Algeria

Me taking in the sunset..... or not because Im looking the wrong way

My friends surprised me with this cake, I really wasnt expecting it, nor really wanting to make my birthday anything special, but it was really nice that everyone took the time out to do something for me. I was really touched

cheesin

Some of the crew...... and you can get a feel for the palm trees in this picture

The Xmas day crew

Here are the stragglers after a couple of days. BTW if you are wondering why we are wearing so much clothes and blankets.... its because it is pretty cold all the time. No indoor heat=no salvation from the cold indoors. 

model poses in the palmery

New Years was spent in another friend's site (JD) with Blake and Peter (seen in the picture above in the middle) and it was fantastic. JD made the most excellent pad thai and chocolate chip cookies and let us take a hot shower and he had 6.... yes 6... space heaters set up. It was so cozy and we shared some sparkling wine for NY2015. It was a really good time for some healthy reflection and laughs and just goofing around. I love spending time with other PCVs because we can all get deep with each other or just laugh at stupid things we find funny. The next day we went to Blake's site to spend the night with his host family which was wonderful. I wish I could have spent more time there, but at the same time I was excited to get back to my own site which was a really good feeling to have.

The next few weeks should be nose-to-the-grind for me in site building up my schedule more. As of now, I am really feeling the love for Morocco and my Peace Corps community. Here is to 2015, a year of new news and positivity. 

Though we live on the US dollar, you and me we've got our own sense of time

Welcome back to the old blogeroo. Thanks for being patient with me and checking in on my site here and there. I just want to take the first paragraph or two of this blog post to address my absence from the virtual communicative world.

Peace Corps really made it clear to us at the beginning of our services that we should "blog on our good days, journal on our bad" so as to not blog in anger and perhaps misrepresent the country to which we are trying to serve. I guess I sort of took that to heart and really wanted to make sure that I didnt talk about Morocco in any negative light. Nothing against Morocco specifically, but I just dont think that my personal experience can be expressed without some sort of critical look at this country. It took me a while to come to terms with this, and in the meantime, I decided staying "dark" so to say was better than sharing my experience with friends of the blog. Furthermore, a lot of my "good days" were those spent travelling with friends, camping in Morocco's beautiful nature, integrating with Moroccan families, breaking fast during Ramadan with friends, or any myriad of other things I was doing without access to the internet. My blogs kept getting pushed further and further back.

I think that some of you should know by now that I had to move from my previous site. There was a safety and security issue there that caused my country director to ultimately pull the trigger to get myself and my sitemate Jenna moved. My late summer into early fall was extremely hard. I had to live out of a backpack with no site for about a month. I had no work because I had no site. I just felt like my original reason for entering Peace Corps--to work with youth and to learn from host country nationals-- was all taken from me. All the work that I had done in my old site was ended abruptly, with no explanation to the community members. I had, and still do have, a lot of guilt to my old community. My host family didnt know what happened. I recently spoke with them and they thought that I had left for America. They didnt deserve that.

If anyone would like to know more precisely why I left, it is not too sensitive to talk about. Feel free to call, email or fb message me.

But alas I did move, and I now reside in the Atlas Mountains nearby to Beni Mellal (about 3 hours from Marrakesh directly east). It is already such a vast difference from my service in the Rif mountains. This town is 10,000 people and as a whole was so completely welcoming to me. There is a rich history of Peace Corps presence here, including the late Ambassador Chris Stevens who died in the attack on the Benghazi embassy in Libya, who served in this community. The day after I got here, an NGO was setting up a computer lab in the local boarding home kids who live in extremely small villages an come into the town during the week to go to school. Ive been teaching introductory computer classes there as well as an English class at the youth center. Life here, although not as fast pace as a city, is so much more fast pace than my old village. It seems like things get done here far easier. The first day I moved into my own place, my electricity wasnt working yet. The next day, the LQaid (basically the mayor) called me into his office because he heard I didnt have power and was going to personally handle it. Within 3 hours, my lights were working.

That story leads me to the hospitality of the Moroccan people. I have never been a part of a culture where people are this generous to help out another human being. This has nothing to do with me being a girl or me being a foreigner and everything to do with the nature of the moroccan people to help others out. Just within the past couple of hours I have examples of people here going out of their way to help me. So my oven and stove both run on propane canisters and the tubing for them was damaged during my move so I needed to get that fixed. I went downstairs to talk to my Mul-Hanoot (store owner) about the problem. He immediately got up, shut down his store, and told me he would help. He came upstairs with me and completely installed the whole thing, checked everything to make sure it worked, all the while giving me safety tips for handling the gas lines. Afterwords he said "May God bless you" took no money and said if I ever need any help in my house to ask him. I had only ever bought 1 carton of milk from him before. About 5 minutes after that, I was heading into town to buy an extension cord. As a general practice, I make it a point to say "hi" to as many women and little kids as I can. A group of 3 women pass and I greet them "Peace be with you, I hope you are all fine." One lady starts speaking in rapid french to me and I tell her in arabic that I dont speak french. She asks in arabic if I am from England and I tell her that I am from America but speak english. She gets very excited and says come with me! She takes me inside a pharmacy and introduces me to a woman there. She is a moroccan female doctor who speaks fluent english! She was asking me more about what I am doing here and said she wants to help with projects that I have. So cool! These both happened just earlier today.

There are a lot of really hard things about service. I feel this constant pressure around the clock to be doing something for/with the community. Every time I leave, I feel extremely guilty. I feel selfish so much of the time, especially because I know that almost no one in my community can travel their own country like I have the liberty to do (especially as a woman). Moroccan culture is very family driven, and once you are friends, you are family. I get invited to people's houses very regularly and it is pretty tiring on top of my regular schedule so I feel guilty and selfish saying no. And then I have some bad days too. The bad days mostly come from the men. Across this county, the public spaces are male-spaces. Some men feel very comfortable harassing women in the street. I find that I am a target of this harassment a lot. On my good days, I feel like I can handle it, and their words slide off of me like nothing, but other days, it can be extremely depressing and demoralizing. People touching me, people saying extremely vulgar things to me, people following me.... its something that I dont know how to handle. I dont know what the correct response should be. Ive run the gambit of publicly shaming people very loudly to saying nothing. I still dont know what makes me feel the best.

This site is helping me fall back in love with Morocco. My Peace Corps friends are also a big help. I have a phone-full of numbers that I can call on my bad or good days to talk to. For the most part I really like my life here. The problem that I had back in America (as I probably discussed in my blogs last year) is that everything becomes predictable and routine. My life is just so much more exciting when I am abroad, and to me that adds meaning to what I am doing. Even the mundane becomes exciting.... like talking to a store owner. Communicating with others is an exciting challenge. Friendships with Americans becomes much stronger due to our shared experiences and shared goals.

Im going to try to be more consistent with the blogs coming up. I hope this blog gave a kind of window as to why I wasn't blogging. Ill leave you all with some pictures of the last few months:

I have such a new and different (much like the blog title) relationship with food. I love creating something out of very very basic ingredients. We have a lot of access to spices and a limited amount of fruits and vegetables and it is such a creative reward for me to cook now.

Above is my old sitemate/roommate Jenna. We spent a lot of time together..... 

This was the first time things got really really HOT at the beginning of the summer

This is in Akchour nearby to Chefchauoen. On this particular day I was there with Brendan... but I had also gone with PC friends and camped out next to a huge waterfall. It was one of my best memories of Peace Corps so far and the people who I went with continue to be my biggest support system

Chefchauoen from above!

Birthday party for Weam

Brendan riding a donkey in the village

My host family from my village!

My host brother from training. Brendan an I went to visit them and Mohammed kept saying "Sawrni, Sawrni!" (take a picture of me, take a picture of me). He is growing up so fast!

Brendan, my real brother, and Mohammed (not the same Mohammed as above) my host brother, playing soccer together. A really meaningful picture for me

Me and Brendan before a wedding goofing off

This is another one of my favorites. This is Brendan eating lunch with my first host family. My host mom in the middle calls me all the time to see how I am doing. I told her around the time this picture was taken that I was going to have to move. She called Peace Corps to try to get me moved there to live with them.

Camel trek with Brendan in Merzouga!! The dunes were unbelievable unlike anything Ive ever seen. I could not stop laughing

DUNES!

The docks of Essauoaria

Also Essauoaria with Brendan

....sorry if this picture is too graphic. Last month I celebrated 3id LKbir, which literally means "The big holiday" and is the most important holiday in the Muslim calendar. If you look up the story in the Quran or Bible, this holiday commemorates Abraham's willingness to kill his son in the name of god. At the last minute, and angel came down and replaced his son with a ram (sorry if I got any details of that wrong, Im going off of memory). So every year, Moroccans across the country slaughter a sheep to eat over the next week. That morning, I saw 3 slaughters and ate so much sheep I am still a little bit traumatized. Everything is eaten. First, you eat the liver, lung and heart wrapped in the stomach fat and bbq-ed over a fire. It is not too bad in all honesty. From there it is tagine after tagine of sheep. Sheep ribs, sheep leg, sheep stomach, sheep brain, sheep face, sheep innards... you name it, we ate it. Because I did not have a home at this point in my service, I spent it with two of my friends and one of their moms. It was nice to celebrate it with them and we spent it on the countryside. 

One of my favorite weeks of peace corps so far was last week. We did a 100 km hike into some of the most remote parts of the countryside to do health workshops alongside 12 moroccan doctors, nurses and social workers. We got to camp for 7 days in places that I can only call paradise. Then during the day we would hike and work with some great kids to teach them about health. The doctors and nurses would give the women of the community a more in-depth health seminar on things as simple as brushing teach and hand washing-- to things more complex like AIDs awareness and how to do a breast examination

One of my favorite days of the hike and one of the most beautiful pictures Ive seen yet of this country. Watching the sunset while swimming in the ocean.

4 Months in Morocco

So today marks the 4 month that Ive been in country serving with Peace Corps. Ive been in my new house for nearly 3 weeks now (its a slow process getting settled in) and Ill give you a brief photographic tour of the house and the village before diving in:

So here is my house! and my PC issued car....just kidding, that is my neighbor's. We share this "compound" so to say with 2 other apartments--two lycee teachers and an elderly couple. I share my apartment with my site mate Jenna, whom I am sure you will hear a lot about over the next 2 years of my service.

Safety! look guys, multiple locking doors and a wall. The window you see on the upper left is our kitchen. 

This is my street! That dairy co you see ahead of you is Jenna's host family cow named "Shakira" --Our youth center is towards the hill on the right side of the picture.

This is probably the room in the house that I get the most questions about... so here it is. Although we have a shower, we dont have any hot water so we bucket bathe (although on some hot days I dont care and go for the shower), this is also the laundry room. The toilet that you see is our turkish toilet and it flushes with the bucket beside it.

Here is our kitchen. It is well stocked with a fridge, stove, oven, blender, and toaster oven. We have to drink boiled well water and make all of our food from scratch, which will definitely take some getting used to. Ive been reading blogs and forums about people in the US who make all of their food from scratch to get some tips. Making the most basic thing can take forever here. I decided that Mondays, because the dar chebab is closed, Im gonna experiment with food. I made some handmade potato chips last monday that took about 2 hours to make a batch and it was gone within 20 minutes. Ive been experimenting with good pizza and tortilla recipes and will continue that tonight. Ive been drinking smoothies galore both because of the heat and because the fruit is so fresh and delicious here. Ive been virtually a vegetarian since living on my own and I find myself really enjoying this experience of cooking, albeit frustrating at times how long the process takes.

The two pictures above are my bedroom. The top picture is a sort of collage that I made with gifts people have given me both in morocco and right before and little mementos. 

Here is another picture of my house with the blue doors on the left and then my street and Jenna's host family looking after Shakira.

Here is the front of the Lycee, mere feet from my doorstep.

Here is the view from the front of the Lycee. (Lycee btw is the high school and it is a french word so you bilingual Menschen out there might have already figured that out)

Here is the courtyard between the Lycee and the College (high school and middle school, respectively) and a soccer game going on in the distance with a crowd of fans.

This is one of the buildings in the college with the mountains in the background and the Misqua village behind that. We went on a lot of hikes up there and there is a reservoir about 25 minutes walk away.

Here is our home away from home: the dar chebab. This is the youth center that I work at. It has an office and then a classroom and a big auditorium hall where events are held.

Here is the view from the dar chebab ^^^

In the left in this picture you will see the largest store in town and then to the right you will see the people slash animal pharmacy of my village.

This is the "beb" which just means door in arabic but its considered an important part of the village

This is the post office slash bank slash private residence. Me and Jenna took this picture yesterday when trying to pick up an envelope. The director of the bank/post office as still eating lunch so we were told to wait a little and so I went over to play with the two goats in this courtyard, at the bank of course, and the attendant came over and grabbed the goat's udders and asked me if i wanted any milk. Another day at the post office!

This is the police station. Its pretty nice, and it has a western toilet. We go there a lot. They give us free coffee or orange juice and stuff and we just talk to them about ho we are doing. The like it because we are information sharing and we like it because we get fed!

This is the main street in the town, not much to say about it other than its pretty much full of men all the time

This is the mosque of my village, its really pretty, but we cannot go inside because we are omen and we are not muslim.

So I hope that answers some questions about the village and my life here. If you all have any questions or want me to take pictures of different things just let me know, i got two years. 

So one thing that Ive been thinking a lot of the past few weeks is about the concept of developmental work and what role I play in that. I feel like lately there has been self reflection by the west as to how much "change" should be implemented by the developmental projects. Me and Jenna are constantly faced with women who dont know basic things about their bodies like what their period is. There is a belief by some here that if you shower when on your period that you will bleed out and get cancer. As Jenna says, knowing how your body works is a basic human right. Her host sister is 20 years old and pregnant with her husband's baby. She has no access to information guiding her through this process. We live in a small village where if children want to go to college they will likely be the first in their family and need to navigate convincing their family that moving to a different city and spending a lot of money on education is the right step.I dont know really how to end this paragraph. I have a feeling that "development" is going to be something that the west continues to examine, but I can say that with my own eyes Ive seen very basic things that I personally believe should be helped.

More on that later I suppose.

Life is good. I have a post box so message me if you would like to send me anything!