May 7, 2008 Shades of Summer Camp

Sometimes, at odd moments, Peace Corps Pre-Service Training reminds me of summer camp. I’m not sure why. It might be the smell of the kitchen or the fact that we’re all sharing communal meals at big tables, but something reminds me of the camp I attended a few times as a kid. I’ve thought of camp more often in the past two months than in the previous 10 years.

There are obvious dissimilarities. We’re all full-grown. Nobody has to pass a swim test. (Blood tests, yes.) Waterskiing is definitely not on the agenda. But there are some obvious similarities, too. We’re a group of peers under the very laid-back supervision of a few adults. The adults are different from us in obvious ways. (At camp, they were all 10-20 years older. Here, they’re our age, more or less, but they’re all Moroccan nationals.) We’re here to learn, but it’s not school. We’re showering less than daily. We’re walking on a lot of unpaved paths. Also, we play a lot of goofy games, usually as “energizers”. The day we all returned from site visit, there was a round of Sardines, which I haven’t played since camp. We’re sleeping semi-communally; at camp, we were in cabins with 7-15 beds, and here, we’re in rooms of 2-4. I’m in a room of 4. (Quick shoutout to J**, N**, and B**, my fabulous roommies!) And y’know, learning to conjugate in Tamazight shares a lot with learning to shoot a bow and arrow. Both are hard, both take practice, both can be frustrating, and both are tremendously gratifying when you nail a bull’s-eye.

PST, like camp, has routines that shift regularly…food that ranges from awesome to avoidable…laundry that has to be washed by hand. Our CBT groups, like our cabin groups, put us into intense proximity with people we might never have spent time with otherwise, and therefore forges powerful relationships. My CBT group, lhumdullah, has worked harmoniously, and we’ve made some good friendships. My friends in other groups... have other stories to tell.

Oh, and we have scheduled snack time. :)