My Moroccan Weekend!! (+Gibraltar)

Wow. Morocco. Where do I even start? The adventure I've had over the last five days was definitely the most different and amazing and enlightening experience I've had this semester thus far and I doubt anything else will top it. But I guess I'll start at the beginning, doing my best to put into words everything I saw and experienced this weekend. I'll also give you fair warning that this is about to be the longest blog post in the history of this blog.

The first day of our trip took us to Gibraltar, the British territory on the Southernmost tip of Spain. Did you all know that Britain owned a city at the very bottom of the Iberian Peninsula? I didn't. Clearly I need to brush up on my knowledge of these things. Anyway, after our drive from Granada we settled into our hotel which was located just on the Spanish side of the border. After a quick lunch, we began our walk to the border, where, just like at any border between two different countries, we presented our passports to the border control woman, and just like that we were in Britain! The signs were in English and a red British telephone box greeted us on the other side of the fence. Too strange. We then met up with our guide for the afternoon who would take us on a quick driving tour of Gibraltar and up the rock to see the sights!

We began with the caves which were really quite cool, reminding me of some of the lava tubes in eastern Oregon. Next, we drove to the side of the rock where the monkeys live. Our guide was a zoologist who has worked with these monkeys for years, so he was quite at home with them. I, on the other hand, was terrified they were going to jump on my head like they did with some of the people in our group. Regardless, it was pretty amazing to see them up that close. We finished our evening with a small hike up the side of the rock and a traditional British meal at a pub called The Clipper. You gotta love the British!

Day two arrived bright and early as we boarded the bus to Tarifa, Spain, where we took an approximately 45 minute ferry ride to Tangier, Morocco, going through passport control and customs on the boat. And then all of the sudden the ferry docked, we grabbed our bags and we were in Africa!! Our first stop in Tangier was an ATM to take out Moroccan dirham to be used later for shopping. Honestly, standing in the center of Tangier was really overwhelming, mostly because of the stark difference in culture. Within ten minutes we had gone from a developed country much like the U.S. to an Islamic country where few women could be seen in the streets, and those that were were almost entirely covered from head to toe. I'm used to getting stares, but the stares our large group of blonde Americans with women without headscarves received in Tangier was a bit much for my first 15 minutes in Morocco.

Our first official stop in Tangier was a women's center called Darna, where we were served a traditional Moroccan meal of couscous and participated in a discussion with some young Moroccan women about cultural diversity and women's rights in Morocco. They gave us a tour of the center, which helps unmarried women and other young women gain skills to support themselves. We also discussed how they feel about life as a woman in Morocco. It was particularly interesting to hear their explanations of why they choose to wear a head scarf or not. After studying Islam in many of my classes this semester, I was aware that most women who wear the scarves choose to wear them, they are not forced to do so by their families or their culture, but many of the people in our group were surprised to learn this. The women in the center were a great introduction to the country, as many of them were just like us, taking about school, boyfriends, and their families.

With our friends from the women's center in Tangier!

At the beginning of our drive from Tangier to our next destination, our guide pointed out a shantytown on the outskirts of town. She explained how these shantytowns have been created in recent decades due to the increase in wealthy Moroccans or foreigners who come to Moroccan cities and buy homes in the Medinas (old towns), forcing out the traditional inhabitants. These inhabitants have little money and no place to go so some of them have taken to living in these shantytowns on the outskirts of the city. Our guide then brought up the topic of terrorism and it's link to Islam. Personally, I find it horrifying that so many Americans believe that Islam has a direct link to terrorism because the Koran specifically says that you cannot kill another human being and if you do you will have a terrible afterlife. However, our guide told us that many al-Qaeda sects have been sending messengers to these shantytowns and convincing these desperate, uneducated people of the opposite. They are told that the Koran tells them that if they do these terrible things to others that things will be better for them in the afterlife that will await them and out of desperation, some of these people fall for it. I found this interesting because it was the first time all semester that someone addressed the correlation between Islam and terrorism instead of simply vehemently denying it. Clearly there is no link between educated Muslims and terrorism, but I can see how those who have never read or cannot read the Koran could be convinced of the opposite, as in any religion.

The first stop we made after Tangier was a wide spot on the road outside of Asilah. At first, we were a little confused why were were making a stop here…until we saw the camels. And the saddles. And their handlers. Let me just tell you, I think the camel ride was the highlight of my trip. The photos are pretty self explanatory.

Our next stop on our journey to Rabat was a small, coastal town called Asilah. The Medina was beautiful, as it has mostly become a vacation destination for wealthy Europeans or Moroccans living in Europe. Because these families who own the homes in the Medina usually only live there two weeks or so out of the year, the city was almost deserted and eerie. It was a breathtakingly beautiful city, but everywhere you walked you could feel the sadness that it is not longer a living, breathing Moroccan city.

After our stop in Asilah, we continued our drive to Rabat, arriving just after dark. To be honest, my first impression of Rabat is a bit hazy, as I think I got some kind of food poisoning in Gibraltar and was pretty sick to my stomach that first night. I did, however, make it to my Moroccan host family's house and was able to attempt conversation with them for about 20 minutes before I started getting sick in their bathroom. I remember being thankful that they had a flushing toilet, unlike other families who only had squat toilets and buckets…

The next day I (thankfully) felt much better! Our first stop of the day in Rabat was the IES Rabat center where we listened to a lecture by one of their professors about immigration from Africa to Europe, specifically through Morocco. I really enjoyed hearing all of the parallels between immigration here and immigration from Mexico and South America to the United States. It's very similar, with immigrants living just on the other side of the border for months or years, waiting for the right time to make their move to the other country and a better life.

We then drove to the Chellah Roman ruins in Rabat, where we got to play tourist for a while, as well as the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V - the father of the current Moroccan king. Following those stops, we returned to our host families for lunch. My Moroccan host mom made us a dish that had cooked onions, raisins and some kind of meat in it and we ate it with their traditional Moroccan flatbread. Our host mom didn't speak much English, but her daughter, who spoke perfect English, was there for dinner our first night and lunch the second day. I was fascinated to learn how she went to school to become a lawyer and then worked as a judge in family court for a while before deciding that it was too emotionally taxing to hear cases of things like divorce every day so she now works for the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior. I was also interested in the fact that she dressed like all of us in pants and a long sleeved shirt, but no head scarf or anything. I'll also point out that her 18 month old son was the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Our home stay was a traditional Moroccan-style house, with the home built around an open patio (with no roof) and each floor having balcony-type hallways wrapping around the patio. Our family owned the second story of the home and another family owned the first floor but this was completely normal to them and we were expected to not acknowledge that there were people living right below us who we could totally see and hear every day.

The room where we slept!

Our home was the second floor

The door to our room opened to the open patio.

That afternoon, while the rest of the students in my group were paired with Moroccan students to explore Rabat, I sneaked away to meet up with Hilary, my friend from school and freshman year roommate. I can't even tell you how wonderful it was to see a familiar face and have her walk me around Rabat! I was thoroughly amazed at the conversations she was having in Arabic with people around the city (after knowing no Arabic 7 weeks ago) and how comfortable she felt walking around this city where verbal sexual harassment is a normal thing for women walking alone on the streets of Rabat.

I was soooo sad to say goodbye to Hilary but eventually I had to meet my group for our trip to the hammam (the public arab baths). Traditionally, hammams are where the arab people would bathe once or twice a week. We were taken to our hammam in a group of ten girls by a young Moroccan girl. We arrived and were given our scrubbing mitten as well as some olive oil exfoliating scrub stuff and told to go inside! Upon entering the small, sauna-like room, we encountered naked Moroccan women bathing and scrubbing each other, per tradition. As further detail is unnecessary (what happens in the hammam stays in the hammam), I'll just say my hammam experience was pretty awesome. I feel thoroughly scrubbed and exfoliated and indoctrinated into Moroccan culture.

After our hammam experience, we were taken to have get henna tattoos, another traditional Moroccan experience. Upon returning to our home stays, our Moroccan host mom insisted on dressing us up in Moroccan caftans. While I was slightly offended that she insisted on me wearing the man caftan because it was longer, I forgave her since her first impression of me clearly wasn't the greatest (see above).

The fourth day of our trip began a little rocky, with our host mom not waking up to give us breakfast until about five minutes before we were supposed to leave…and then going off to prey so we almost didn't get a chance to say goodbye…but it all worked out - we ate some almonds in the van. We said goodbye to Rabat and spent a few hours driving to the Rif Mountain region of Morocco. We made a quick stop in the small town of Quezzanne for tea and restrooms (side note: Moroccan tea is usually mint and usually the sweetest tea you can possibly imagine - think five sugar cubes per small cup) and were pretty thoroughly stared at by the local inhabitants. But at this point we were pretty much over it so we got back in the car and drove to where we were to meet a Moroccan family living on a farm in a rural village of the Rif Mountains.

Moroccan tea!! With extra sugar…like anyone actually wants it...

Upon arriving at the family's home, we explored their land a bit before being served couscous and vegetables and other foods for lunch. Our lunch was followed by a discussion (through a translator) between the fifteen of us and the family which included the father, mother, 16 year old daughter, 20 year old female cousin, and another cousin who was older and pregnant. Our conversation quickly took a pretty sharp turn to women's rights and the treatment of women in Morocco. For someone who does not consider herself a feminist, even I was pretty frustrated to listen to the father talk about the treatment of women and his opinions on how women present themselves and how if they put themselves out there they deserve to be objectified. I, however, did my best to remember that he was simply explaining his culture and he didn't know any different, even if I did feel very sorry for his 16 year old daughter.

The room where we ate lunch and talked with the Moroccan family.

Our final stop of the day after leaving the family's home in the Rif Mountains was Chefchaouen, a beautiful tourist town on the side of a mountain that was filled with beautiful blue and white architecture and vendors ready to sell us their Moroccan gifts which was perfect because this was our opportunity to shop. And we did. Moroccan Christmas presents are definitely in order for a couple of you. We finished our evening with another traditional Moroccan dinner and a corny discussion of what we had seen and learned over the last four days.

Chefchaouen

I'm pretty sure I ate the heart.

Day five included a bit more last minute shopping in the morning as well as many, many hours of traveling. The most fascinating/sketchy part of the day for me was when it came time to cross the border from Morocco into Ceuta (a city owned by Spain in northern Morocco). While the border crossing in Gibraltar was very orderly and easy, this was not even close to orderly. First our guide gathered all of our passports to take them to get stamped, but we ended up walking through cars, around barriers, and past Moroccans trying to cross the border for about 20 minutes before we eventually ended up at a checkpoint designed for diplomats, where they stamped all of our passports (we waited outside, dodging cars). We then took our passports and walked through a temporary covered area on our way to the Spanish side. The most striking part of the journey for me (besides how clearly sketchy it was) was the moment we passed the Moroccan guard into the tunnel that would take us to Spain. The guard did not check for the stamp we had worked so hard to get. He did not check our Spanish visas. He did not even check to make sure the pictures in our passport matched our faces. All he did was flip to the front cover to the passport to check if it was American and if it was he waved us through. It took me a while to get over how amazing it is that all they cared about was if we were American or not, especially when I thought about how difficult it was for anyone from Morocco or other African countries to get to the other side. We were clearly racially profiled and given special priorities because we were from the U.S.

This small fact brought a lot of the things I had learned and experienced throughout the trip home for me. We truly are blessed to be from the United States. Not just because it makes it easier to cross international borders, but because of the rights we have as women and as individuals. We don't have to worry about weak infrastructures that could cause a woman to die in childbirth like the rural family we met. We don't have to deal with verbal harassment walking down the street every day. We aren't faced with racism from people from the western world who think that if we are Muslim we are associated with terrorists. These things aren't true for every Moroccan, and in fact Morocco is one of the most progressive Islamic countries in the world, but this border crossing highlighted for me even more the stark difference between what it means to be Moroccan and what it means to be American and as I listened to my Luke Bryan/Florida Georgia Line playlist on the ferry back to Algeciras, Spain and, later, the bus ride back to Granada, I could feel my American pride coming out. But not only am I proud to be American, I am grateful, just as I am grateful for the experience I had this weekend, experiencing another culture not just as a tourist, but living with a Moroccan family and talking with Moroccan students and girls my age. The things I saw and learned this trip will stay with me forever and I am grateful for that, just as I am grateful for the golden eagle on my dark blue United States of America passport.