The Question is to See It All
Two days in Marrakesh, five in Mohammadia, two more days in Casablanca, and a final two in Rabat rounded out my last two weeks. This was supposed to be a one-week travel for “In Service Training” – a program focused on our Moroccan counterparts and grant writing… or at least it would have been if USAID hadn’t been shut down last month. Instead, I spent two days on the way to Mohammadia in Marrakesh, five at training, and then two more both in Casablanca and Rabat.
To say that Morocco is diverse would be an understatement. Here are the highs and the lows of my last two weeks:
Highlights:
- Rooftop evening at Kabana followed by meeting friends in an Irish pub in Marrakesh. Excellent conversation, great people, friendly faces and the free feeling that we could finally travel the country. It’s hard to explain the warm and full feeling you get after having a few full conversations in your native language after the grind of foreign language immersion.
- A night walk in Casablanca with Harry, Birhanu, and Tim. Great group of guys, conversation flowed in Arabic and in English. Hard topics but the vigor and hunger were there. An utterly classic feeling, walking around the city with the bros late at night.
- Rabat. There’s really too much about Rabat to capture it in a sentence or a paragraph. The seat of power in Morocco for a reason. I also got to meet a retired Peace Corps Volunteer on the train ride out! She knew a ton about the country and is chief editor at a major news publication in the capital! Very cool city, if you visit wear your nicest clothes and travel by taxi.
- Also: football on the Mohammadia beach (both kinds), the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, having actual conversations in Arabic with people I meet all around the country, the English Bookstore in Rabat, Karaoke in Mohammadia after training was over, and the food of course.
Lowlights:
- Going to training for grant writing and counterpart project planning…. Without grants or counterparts. I’m not going to lie, this one hurt.
- Having to buy back my own passport in Marrakesh from some scammers (7 USD was still too much to pay scammers)
- Booking hostels the night before because I figured why plan ahead?
- Marrakesh taxis. “Sir buhidk” means “go alone” which is my go-to phrase when someone gives a crazy price.
- Answering any questions about US foreign policy at the moment.
- Also: bank troubles, being obviously American in the Rabat medina, messing up the past and the present tense, losing water weight and getting told you look “too skinny”
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And yet when I return to my town it is so incredibly different from the cities that it is hard to believe that I am still on the same continent, much less the same country.
Morocco is not all desert, but the vast expanse of sand and rock that surrounds my city is like a blank canvas with no paint. I’m sure… no I’m positive that people can make a life for themselves here, but that is not why people live here. For me, I enjoy the serenity. The lack of expectations. The power of creativity. The harshness of life. The faith.
It is difficult living here not to fall into the trap of believing that the desert is all there is. The men in their ankle-length foqaya and jellaba robes, the women in their head-to-toe niqabs. I was told that this site was not conservative, and yet I have seen more women with only their eyes peering from beneath their garments here than in the rest of Morocco combined.
Life here tells you about how people survive. Religion and language are the bedrock of the culture, I believe that in my bones after living here.
I worry sometimes when I read the news. I feel that we are slipping from our foundation as Americans. Perhaps I am just losing touch. I’ll make a better attempt going forward to embrace Morocco while keeping my spirit American.
Sending love from somewhere between Marrakesh and Essouira.
