The journey to Morocco - and more specifically the journey to my hotel in Rabat - has truly been an occasion where fact is stranger than fiction. The Morocco I read about has not prepared for the Morocco that I have found. The country's grand themes of European and Middle Eastern fusion, Islam, transition to democracy, etc. may be and probably are an important framework for Moroccan society, but they say nothing about the day-to-day operations that keep the country alive and make possible these grand themes. Here then, is a summary of my observations of the living-breathing Morocco based on the first 24 hours I've been here.
As strange as it may seem, my first impression of Morocco when I first glimpsed it from my plane window as it passed by the Straits of Gibraltar was a sense of inexplicable peace; not nervousness, anxiety, or even excitement, but tranquility. Even after being confronted with a customs form from the TAP (a Portuguese airline) stewardesses that was only in French and Arabic; even as I saw the baggage carousel stop, with my 38 pound duffel bag no where to be seen, even as I spent an hour trying to find the lost baggage claims office in the Casablanca airport using my passable French, and especially as I sat in the lost baggage office looking at the picture of King Mohammed VI in the filing cabinet while I waited for my claim form to be entered into the computer, the calm stayed with me. I still don't have my duffel yet, but I've heard that I should get it back tomorrow, so all I can do is hope and push it from my mind as I begin adjusting to life in Rabat.
Once I finally got out of the airport, more than 2 hours after the flight had landed, I and 3 other students (who all happened to be from AU) from the program were greeted by huge crowd of Moroccans. At first we thought it was just for us, but then we realized that no, they were waiting for their friends and family who were getting back from the Hajj (which would explain why there were so many Moroccans wearing the white dishdashas at the baggage claim). Then, as Conor and I were riding in the taxi out of the airport, watching goats, cows, and sheep grazing literally right next to the freeway, I suddenly found myself thinking back to images of western Texas that I had seen when I visited my grandparents one winter during grade school. If you don't look too closely, the countryside we drove past could almost be mistaken for Texas, if Texas was Muslim, had tajines, and was right next to the Atlantic Ocean. For the Midwesterners, it also felt a lot like southern Minnesota or the rest of the Great Plains, if they were a bit drier, had a orangish-red hue to everything, and had walled-in farmsteads and orange and olive orchards. The land's resemblance to home was so striking that as the plane was landing it almost looked like I was landing at MSP in August during a drought, complete with farm fields of grains (wheat more than corn) divided into rectangles with wide-open roads running between them.
But once I turned my attention back to the road in the taxi, the similarity all but ceased. Driving down the center of the center of the white dividing lines at 120 km (about 75 mph), honking the horn for seemingly no reason, and pulling up onto the sidewalk for parking is as common as jello salad at a Minnesota Lutheran potluck. I was fine with it, but I knew that if there were a few members of my family that I will not name in the taxi with me, s/he would..., well let's just say that s/he wouldn't have had a great and pleasant experience.
Before ending this post, I want to step back and look at the big picture; the broad themes of a society may not always dictate the day-to-day operations, but they do give meaning and purpose to any group of people, which I would argue is one of the most important things to have in life and is a huge motivation for how people act. In Morocco, the family and relations with people are incredibly important. Without having met my host family yet (which I will do later this week) I can already see the importance of maintaining bonds with each other from the way children stand guard at the entrance to their parent's little convenience shop to the way old friends stop and hug each other in the street. I'm not part of that connection yet and am excited about plugging into it; but, I'm sure that in a few weeks or even days I'll be asking myself why I ever wanted to leave the comforts of Western individualism and come to a place where private property really just means communal property. Anyway, I'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
As strange as it may seem, my first impression of Morocco when I first glimpsed it from my plane window as it passed by the Straits of Gibraltar was a sense of inexplicable peace; not nervousness, anxiety, or even excitement, but tranquility. Even after being confronted with a customs form from the TAP (a Portuguese airline) stewardesses that was only in French and Arabic; even as I saw the baggage carousel stop, with my 38 pound duffel bag no where to be seen, even as I spent an hour trying to find the lost baggage claims office in the Casablanca airport using my passable French, and especially as I sat in the lost baggage office looking at the picture of King Mohammed VI in the filing cabinet while I waited for my claim form to be entered into the computer, the calm stayed with me. I still don't have my duffel yet, but I've heard that I should get it back tomorrow, so all I can do is hope and push it from my mind as I begin adjusting to life in Rabat.
Once I finally got out of the airport, more than 2 hours after the flight had landed, I and 3 other students (who all happened to be from AU) from the program were greeted by huge crowd of Moroccans. At first we thought it was just for us, but then we realized that no, they were waiting for their friends and family who were getting back from the Hajj (which would explain why there were so many Moroccans wearing the white dishdashas at the baggage claim). Then, as Conor and I were riding in the taxi out of the airport, watching goats, cows, and sheep grazing literally right next to the freeway, I suddenly found myself thinking back to images of western Texas that I had seen when I visited my grandparents one winter during grade school. If you don't look too closely, the countryside we drove past could almost be mistaken for Texas, if Texas was Muslim, had tajines, and was right next to the Atlantic Ocean. For the Midwesterners, it also felt a lot like southern Minnesota or the rest of the Great Plains, if they were a bit drier, had a orangish-red hue to everything, and had walled-in farmsteads and orange and olive orchards. The land's resemblance to home was so striking that as the plane was landing it almost looked like I was landing at MSP in August during a drought, complete with farm fields of grains (wheat more than corn) divided into rectangles with wide-open roads running between them.
But once I turned my attention back to the road in the taxi, the similarity all but ceased. Driving down the center of the center of the white dividing lines at 120 km (about 75 mph), honking the horn for seemingly no reason, and pulling up onto the sidewalk for parking is as common as jello salad at a Minnesota Lutheran potluck. I was fine with it, but I knew that if there were a few members of my family that I will not name in the taxi with me, s/he would..., well let's just say that s/he wouldn't have had a great and pleasant experience.
Before ending this post, I want to step back and look at the big picture; the broad themes of a society may not always dictate the day-to-day operations, but they do give meaning and purpose to any group of people, which I would argue is one of the most important things to have in life and is a huge motivation for how people act. In Morocco, the family and relations with people are incredibly important. Without having met my host family yet (which I will do later this week) I can already see the importance of maintaining bonds with each other from the way children stand guard at the entrance to their parent's little convenience shop to the way old friends stop and hug each other in the street. I'm not part of that connection yet and am excited about plugging into it; but, I'm sure that in a few weeks or even days I'll be asking myself why I ever wanted to leave the comforts of Western individualism and come to a place where private property really just means communal property. Anyway, I'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
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