The first leg of the journey to get to Morocco presented a series of challenges…

We had all been accepted, passed all the clearances, and then given the long-awaited ticket to staging in Philadelphia. There were roughly 2 days in Philadelphia for admin elements and then we were to take a bus to JFK and head out to Morocco.

The morning we were scheduled to travel to leave for the airport there were several potential roadblocks. The first was waking up to a 6 am news report of the devasting earthquake in Morocco. There was panic and a flurry of emails about whether we could even still go. That morning we were told that everything was still going on as planned. No volunteers thought about backing out. Later that morning after hours of waiting with all our luggage and bags we were told the JFK flight that was supposed to take off early evening was delayed until midnight but we still had to arrive midafternoon. This would turn out to be very wise considering all that happened once we finally got on the two coach busses.

Unexpectedly the tire blew out on the second bus (the bus I was on of course). We were somewhere in NJ when it started smelling of burning rubber in the bus and the driver had to pull over. There we proceeded to discover the rough-looking tire and thus began the waiting for the mechanic. Two hours into the waiting Mother Nature decided to torrential downpour and even produce bits of hail. The bus leaked. People were hungry and wondering if this was a sign because this day had been quite the struggle and we hadn’t even made it to the airport.

Meanwhile, the first bus had made it to the airport. Since we were so many people and so many bags we had to pack many bags on different buses. It was a matter of space, not where the owner of the bag was. So now the first group of people were stuck waiting at the airport with dozens of bags they couldn’t leave and then finding out that the second group of people (us stranded on the side of the highway) had all the passports. The airport group really couldn’t go anywhere now. The airport security and gate attendants were huge fans of the PeaceCorps now.

Waiting 4 hours total before getting the repairs to our broken bus at least gave us plenty of time to talk and get to know one another. The next part involved our driver deciding to take backroads in a huge coach bus.. backroads that had very very low bridges. One of the volunteers had to get off the bus and help navigate the driver through them. Thankfully there was no action movie-style roof ripping off here!

The airport also had its challenges of baggage limits, missing tickets, and of course, 68 people trying to pass through security and the most fun part of finding space at the gate to wait.

Despite all that we eventually landed in Morocco, gathered with country staff, hopped on a bus for another long ride to the orientation hotel, and then the real difficult part could begin!