Morocco, Day 2

Saturday, November 15th

Well if I thought day 1 was rediculously long (or perhaps if you all did reading this) then day two was even more exhausting.  Exhausting in a good way…the way where you sit and think back on what you did for a day and realize that the day’s activities could have easily spanned 2 or 3 days.  I like that our schedules are kept jam packed with activities….

More interesting than what we did are the reactions/reflections to the day’s experience(s), so here’s a quick rundown of what happened (sin commentary) and then afterwards, the reflection….it’s more fun like that.

• Rabat Mosque + Mausoleum of King Mohammad V and Hasam II: The mosque never was completed so it’s more or less a giant fort with low walls and these pillars everywhere that were knocked down in an earthquake.  The Minaert (the tower from which the call to prayer is said) was only built to 2/3 of its planned height, and stands awkwardly, looming over these non-existant pillar/columns.  The mausoleum was cool, mostly just because I knew a lot about the two former kings (we talk about them at length in my poli sci class)

• Tea with Mohammad Baghdadi and family, future director of IES Rabat:  A fun addition to the day- apparently most of the other groups meet with a professor at one of the universities to talk about the “class of civilizations” between the Arabs and the West, but our group got the chance to meet the director of the new IES program in Rabat.  Basically, this guy, his wife, and their family were SO kind to us.  They invited all of us into their home and made us traditional Moroccan tea and a traditional Moroccan bread/pancake called meloui.  After reading the recipe form Meloui (because I will make it and you all will get to taste a little bit of Morocco!), it’s mad hard and takes awhile.  So either there was some pre=making and freezing involved or else Mrs. Baghdadi spent a great deal of time in the kitchen that morning.  Regardless, it was cool to learn about the new program and to get to speak to a family that was on a different side of the spectrum from our host families (more on that in the reflections).

• Roman ruins, Chellah:  To be honest, they kinda resembled a lot of other roman ruins.  In fact, all ruins are starting to look very similar, minus certain archetechural differences (the romans have lots of stairs, the Muslims have a lot of mosques, etc)…..there was also a pool with eels.  Thrilling.

• Lunch with our host famlies: We ate a traditional chicken dish cooked in a tangine (not my picture) which is what almost everything in Morocco is cooked in.  Also, here’s a fun math problem: the family style tangine + no utensils + lunch with a hungry 4-year old = ….well, you can only imagine what occured.  Sharaf-din (my host brother) was SO adorable just grabbing at pieces of chicken and potatoes.  Also, he was a mess, but an adorable mess, nonetheless.

• Afternoon with Moroccan students:  We split up into small groups (I was with 2 other girls from my program) and were paired up with a few Moroccan students from a university program that teaches students English.  It was a really fun afternoon just chatting with the students and learning about their lives in Morocco.  My little group hung out for awhile at a cafe and then walked through the market in the older part of town for a bit.

• Hamam:  So in my last post, I talked about the bathroom situation and mentioned the interesting shower conundrum.  Well, it was night 2 in Morocco and we were feeling a little gross.  Not overly gross, just gross enough to desire a cleanse.  Morocco’s answer to this (and really, the whole Arab world’s answer to this) is the Hamam, the Arab bath.  The Arab baths are like the Roman baths….three rooms, one hot, one warm, and one temperate, that function as, well, public bath houses.  There are separate male and female hamams, and for the majority of people, the Hamam is probably their only true “clean time” each week.  Anyway, the Hamam was the coolest cultural experience ever, just because we were doing something that is part of everyday life.  There was nothing touristy about it.  One of the host moms took a group of six of us and just laughed at us because we were so awkward.  Also, the communication in the rooms was funny too, because you’d have these old women trying to tell you that you were behaving incorrectly.  Apparently, standing up is bad….but still, the experience was fun and the whole being clean thing was quite nice, too.

• Evening-ness:  After the hamam we were all in this zen-like mood and all we wanted to do was lounge.  Alan, our guide, set up Henna for those who wanted.  I’m not a henna fan, so I just watched while all my friends got it/chilled with those who also weren’t getting henna.  After henna-time, we went back to our homes to have dinner.  While not traditional Moroccan by any means, our spagetti dish was yummy and very home-y.  Plus, we watched a 4 year old eat spagetti (with a fork…sorta) which was just hysterical.  We spent more time with our host parents just relaxing and watching American TV shows, which seemed kind of ironic.  After a little while, the three of us realize how exhausted we were and went back to our couches and passed out.

Long day, no?

If I had to give the day a theme, I think I would call it something like “The Moroccan Spectrum”.  Or at least “The Rabat Spectrum”.  On one hand, I saw parts of Rabat that were modern, new, and looked like they could have been in any European town, maybe even the states, too.  But then there were other parts of Rabat that were the complete opposite.  Essentially, I talked with three different types of people today- the Baghdadi family, the Moroccan students in the afternoon, and my host family.  Each painted a different picture of life in Rabat.  Mr. Baghdadi showed us the relatonship between the Arab world and the West in everyday life.  He met us wearing a Western style business suit but then changed (once at home) into a traditional Moroccan outfit.  His son and daughter we wearing western clothes as was his wife.  We were sitting in their living room on traditional Moroccan couches/beds/benches while staring at the ipod stereo system and flat screen TV at the head of the room.  They were obviously in an upper eschelon of society, though nothing close to what would be considered upper class in Europe or the states.

The Moroccan students are a little harder to place on the spectrum, but their lives were different from the Baghdadis we met in the morning.  While they dressed very Western and spoke at length about American movies and music, they had their struggles.  Both guys we were with expressed a desire to travel away from Rabat but were slightly disheartened at the prospect of that happening.  They were both very fortunate individuals to be in higher education program, but I can only imagine that the resources they have don’t even compare to what I have at GW.

My host family, though, provided the best contrast to the students and to the Baghdadi family.  The apartment had three rooms, a small kitchen, and a bathroom.  My host mom teaches Arabic during the week, and her husband is a musician at night, plus, they host students whenever they can as an extra source of income.  When asked if she wanted to have more children, my host mom responded by saying “no, it’s just so expensive!”  Everything was treated as a precious commodity, especially water and electricity.  At one point on the first night, the lightbulb in the main eating/living room went out.  Had this occured in Chicago/DC/Spain, appropriate actions would have been taken to change the lightbulb without a second thought.  My Moroccan host parents spent a bit of time seeing if they could get it to go back on, but then just started dealing with life sans-light in their main room.  It was a very “well, this happens, we have to deal” attitude.  At the same time, the center of life in the house was the satelite tv….

So television in Morocco is a big thing.  I would say that if “futbol” (aka soccer) is the national pastime of Spain and Baseball or American football (depending on the time of the year) is the national pastime of America, satelite television could be the equivelent in Morocco.  Apparently, it is fairly cheap to have a satelite put in, and once that occurs, you get infinite channels.  But television has a dual purpose- lots of people use it to learn English.  Unlike in Spain where everything is dubbed over in Spainsh (annoying as all hell, personally), every American show was in English with Arabic subtitles.  My host mom had only been learing English through an official program for a month, but she knew WAY more than you could learn in a classroom in a month, and she credited this knowledge to watching American shows, with Oprah and Dr. Phil being among her favorites.  It was just crazy to see how many apartments had satelites hanging off the balconies!

But anyway, we got a nice view of different types of people and different lifestyles in Morocco today.  All very urban, but that’s because we were in one of the largest urban centers of the country.  Tomorrow we are visiting a family in rural Morocco and that should add a whole other element to the spectrum.  Granted, Rabat-style urban life is nothing like Chicago-style urban life.  While big, it was still small.  While hectic, it was still quite calm.  idk, it was just a cool contrast and nothing like I had ever experienced before.

The last thing I want to comment about is gender roles in Morocco.  I talked about meeting with the students yesterday and talking about the hijab and the female role in society, but after spending two nights with a family, I’ve got more to say (shocking, no?).  So I thought that Morocco would adhear to strict gender roles, as that’s the image that is portrayed in Western media quite a bit.  While I knew that every family would be different and that some might break the mold, I figured that thing were pretty traditional and that “breaking the mold” wouldn’t occur too often or be too drastic.  We learned on our first day that Morocco is really big on public vs. private space: the men exist in the public space while the women exist in the private space.  There are places women never go (cafes, epsecially) and there are places where some men never go (roof tops where laundry is drying….odd, I know).  So imagine my surprise then when I found out on the first night that my host dad prepared dinner.  And then imagine my surprise when my host dad went to buy bread and warm it up for breakfast that first morning, in addition to making the tea.  And then imagine my continued surprise to find out that my host mom wouldn’t even be home for lunch because she had a class and that my host dad would be preparing another meal for us.  So yeah, that stereotype got broken down really quickly.  I ended up with a host family that broke down traditional gender roles, and honestly, it was facinating.  My host mom and dad seemed to share lots of roles- both worked, both cared for their son, and both spent time in the kitchen.  While it is impossible to know anything beyond that (did dad spend a lot of time at cafes hanging out with other men?  did mom do all the laundry and cleaning?) it was cool to see that in a society that often holds onto the specific gender roles, there are people who are moving past that, even if it is out of necesity.  I would be interested to know what my host parents’ friends thought about their crossing of traditional gender roles.  Was it weird to my host mom’s best friend (who lived upstairs) that while she (the BFF) was doing the childrearing and cooking in her family, her friend’s husband was doing lots of cooking and also helping to look after the kids?  Just something to think about, because I found it a very interesting element to my time spent in Rabat….

seems like this all is enough for one day….tomorrow = time with a family in rural Morocco and then time in Chefchaouen, a much more toursity town.

xoxo

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