Ramadan Challenge: The Clinic

caveat: the power in my site went out. These have been posted at a later date.

I decided to start going to the clinic a week early. Not doing anything in my house was beginning to take its toll. Throughout the month, I had done two main activities; writing my novel and reading Buddhist scriptures. I enjoyed the silence the days gave me; In America, during my days off, I would sometimes go the entire day without speaking a word. But I knew that I wanted to start early. I have only eight more weeks until in service training (IST), and I wanted to get a good handle on the situation at the clinic before I go back.

I had created two main posters to teach to the women when they go to the clinic. The nurse had told me that the women go on Wednesdays for vaccinations and pregnancy checkups. Using that information, I decided to create two projects; one with five basic health lessons and one for a pregnancy meditation to reduce stress. The nurse told me that I would talk to the women while they waited in the clinic.

In reality, regarding the situation at the clinic, I had told the nurse that I would start going after Ramadan, but after repeated knocks at my door of people telling me that the nurse kept telling them that I never came to the clinic, I decided to go the week early. The nurse told me that on Wednesdays he opens the clinic at 8 in the morning, so try to be there early. I woke up early on Wednesday morning, packed up the lessons with the speech and my laptop, and hiked the one and a half miles to the clinic. I arrived at 7:45, where I saw the locked doors to the clinic. I sat on the steps and waited. The nurse, who lives next door, awoke and opened the doors to the clinic at about 8:30.

I went inside and opened the lesson posters I had made. Though he liked the first poster, he was confused about the meditation poster. He pointed out the words that I wrote on the poster and said that I wrote them wrong. I replied that I would make sure to tell my host family that they don’t know how to write their own language.

Throughout the day, women came into the clinic. However, I didn’t think that there would be a pack of children with each of them. All of my prepared speeches were based on me talking to the women. The women, actually, went inside with the nurse and I was left with the children. On my first poster, four of the five lessons were addressed specifically to pregnant women. The only lessons that I could really give was in regards to the healthy foods. So my elaborate five lesson plan turned into an introduction on the benefits of twenty types of food to children.

The nurse came back into the waiting room with the women and told me to talk to them all about the other poster. I began to talk and made sure that I tried to stay with the speech as much as possible. Throughout most of the speech, though, the nurse and the women kept laughing at each other, and the children just stared blankly at me. The nurse told me that I spoke with an American tongue. Had I not been upset, I would have replied that I see with American eyes and smell with an American nose, too.

The nurse closed the clinic at around 11:30 and invited me to break the fast with him that night. He actually wanted me to eat with him right then because since he was diabetic, he didn’t have to fast. I told him I was fasting, and that is when he invited me to break the fast that evening. His wife told me that since my landlord owns a big field to pick figs and peaches for them before I returned. I said yes and went home.

I returned at about 6:30 that evening with figs and pomegranate in hand because the peaches were gone. I was let into the house, the call to prayer took place, and we sat down to eat. During the conversation, the nurse pulled out his pipe, stuffed it with marijuana, and offered me some.

“No thank you,” I said, “I don’t smoke.”
“Oh, you gave it up for Ramadan?”
“No, I don’t smoke period.”
“Oh, but you smoke cigarettes?”
“No, because I’m a health teacher.”
“Oh, well the previous volunteer used to smoke. Some of the children in our village saw him in another town.”
”Well, I don’t smoke.”
“But yes,” The nurse said as he turned to his wife, “Everybody loved him. He knew four languages; Spanish, English, and French, and he learned our language quickly.”
“Doesn’t he know German, as well?” I asked.

This has become my standard response to every time someone complimented the previous volunteer on his language skills.

“I’m sure he knows German, too.” I continued, “Maybe Italian, too.”
“Maybe. Everyone loved him, didn’t they?” he said, taking a puff, “Not you. You’re worthless.”
“Yes,” his wife agreed, “You’re worthless. You don’t know anything.”

In America, people invite guests to a dinner party, only to insult them the entire time. It’s called a roast. However, in America, they usually tell the person being roasted so that they can have a chance to write a rebuttal speech. Also, in Morocco, people in the villages tend to throw around those two sentences regularly. I normally don’t go a day talking to people without hearing “You’re worthless,” or, “You don’t know anything,” at least once. I hear it multiple times on days that I’m very sociable. I wonder if that has made me enjoy the silence of Ramadan even more.

“You know I only open the clinic Tuesday through Thursday?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “I remember. You go to Er Rachidia on Monday and Friday for your insulin shots.”

Because I’m not the one who smokes marijuana, I thought, so my memory isn’t shot to hell. But rather than comment back, I finished dinner and said goodbye to my gracious hosts.

It was nightfall as I walked the mile and a half back to my house. I thought about the conversation the nurse and his wife had about me in front of me. It’s strange how flippantly the people her use those two sentences. While I studied psychology, I learned that if you repeatedly tell someone that they are useless, they eventually believe it. If the people here use those sentences so often towards each other, I wonder whether or not it has had an effect on their psyche. I, on the other hand, am actually used to people not having a lot of faith in me.

In high school, my English teacher never wanted to look at my creative writings to give me any guidance. Rather than point out that she looked at other students’ works, I took my stories back and burned them in my backyard.

In college, I had professors who didn’t care to debate my ideas, but instead replied with pithy sayings such as, “I don’t know why you’re wrong, I just know that you’re wrong.” Rather than ask for an argument, I learned how to be quiet and write what they wanted to read, rather than tell them my ideas.

Before my banking job and before coming into the Peace Corps, my nicknames at my other jobs included “Princess” and “Trixie”. Rather than swipe back, I learned how to work in the freezers of restaurants, clean salad bars by myself, and put on a smile when I heard my nicknames as they started from the managers and moved down to my fellow employees.

I heard that in the Peace Corps, the people on the medical staff like to make a list of who they think is going to leave as an early termination (ET). I don’t doubt that I’m on that list.

I am fortunate, though, that I have always been just oblivious enough to not really put any import into what people around me say. Looking at my life, I know that I have become successful. I’m in another country, doing my best to teach health to people. I’m obviously already successful at teaching about the benefits of foods. If I can have faith in myself with that, maybe I can have faith that I can learn the language and being useful here. If I can have faith that I could write a novel, maybe I can have faith that it will be published.

And maybe, if I can just keep having faith that, regardless of what people around me say or do, they are inherently beautiful and good people, then maybe I can have faith that eventually, those people will see the same light in me that I see in them.