Casa and contemplations

Back from another weekend of traveling, this time to Casablanca, which is only an hour south of Rabat. Leaving on weekends is definitely becoming habitual—this Saturday my entire group leaves for our week-long “southern excursion” to Essaouira, Marrakech, the Sahara desert (riding camels and camping), and a few other southern towns. I think I like this trend, because honestly, there are not exactly endless options for weekend activities in Rabat. I would probably wind up watching television and eating perpetually with my host family, which I do enough of already.

So anyhow. I spent the weekend in Casablanca with five of the other students. We took the train down from Rabat early Saturday morning and found a really cheap hotel to stay in—and I truly mean cheap, it was about 8 dollars per person. The rooms had sketchy tiger-print comforters and no toilets--you had to go down the hall to use the nasty general one. But we did specifically ask for rooms with western-style showers, and amazingly, we got them.

We spent most of Saturday just wandering around, stepping into cafes to see what looked promising, and lazing on the grass in the Park of the Arab League (lovely). Also, we’ve all gotten to a point now where we really miss American food, and within a few hours of arriving in Casa someone mentioned McDonald’s. We promptly determined that we wanted nothing more than to eat lunch at McDonald’s. We couldn’t find one just by wandering around, so eventually we hailed a cab (cabs are absurdly cheap here) and told the driver to take us to the nearest McDonald’s. Three of us had gotten into the cab, and a fourth person was about to squeeze in next to me (she had the door open and one leg partially in), when the taxi began to DRIVE AWAY. Terrifying. We had forgotten that Moroccan cabs never take more than three people, and rather than politely telling you that they can’t accept a fourth person, they simply start driving. So we got angry, and the driver got equally angry, and we wound up getting out and giving up on McDonald’s. In retrospect the whole thing was pretty hilarious, especially the fact that we got desperate enough to take a taxi. I hope I never hit that low again in my life.

Moving on. One of the girls I was traveling with, Teresa, goes to Yale, and she knows a Yale alum named Amam who grew up in Casablanca and returned there after she graduated. This proved a verrrry valuable connection. Saturday night, Amam and her friends picked us all up for dinner at an amazing Indian restaurant, and afterwards we all went dancing together—although this part of the night only lasted for an hour, as it was already midnight when we got to the club and it closed at one (way to go, Morocco). It was an incredibly fun night, not at all intellectually stimulating and exactly what we all needed.

On Sunday we slept in, checked out of the hotel, went to a cafe for brunch, and then met up with Amam and her friends again—talk about hospitable. They invited us to an acquaintance's beach house for the day, and we obviously had no objections, considering it was cloudless and 70 degrees outside. When we got to the house, about a block from the beach, we were kind of shocked by how enormous and nice it was. Nicest house I have yet seen in Morocco. Not many people here can afford to live that way. We lounged in the backyard for a few hours, had a Moroccan barbecue, then spent a gorgeous early evening hour on the beach.

So yes, it was a wonderful weekend, but it also forced a lot of reflection. For example, there I was, spending my Sunday at an upper-class beach house, when back in downtown there were street kids accosting us at every corner and asking for money. (I should mention that whether all of them actually need the money is another question entirely—one problem with begging in this society is that some people do it because it is lucrative, even if they don’t need to. Still, some of them desperately do need the money, so it’s impossible to pass judgment.) Not to mention the extensive slums that we passed on the train on our way into the city. The point being, when it comes down to it, there is really no way to balance the two in my mind. Things are just plain unequal around here, and everywhere, and being confronted by it so openly is uncomfortable.

Okay, sorry, I don’t want to bog everyone down with intense contemplations. But I guess it’s honest to include some of them, because not everything that I am participating in or thinking about here is pretty. A lot of it is extremely difficult. Another example: Coming from the culture that I do come from, I am having a hard time coping with the role of women in this society, especially compared with the relative freedom of men. Although educated and upper-class women have a little more mobility, women here in the medina are by and large still inferior to men in the public eye. They are expected to answer to their husbands, ignore the whistling from men on the street, and dress and behave “modestly” (whatever exactly that means). This has to do with customs, it has to do with interpretations of what Islam and the Koran command in terms of women’s behavior—it has to do with a lot things. Even within my SIT program, there are major differences for male versus female students. The girls (the majority of us) are uncomfortable walking around by ourselves after dark, are expected to return home early in the evening, and deal with street harassment at every waking moment. The guys are constantly going to pool halls or bars at night, and they head home at any hour they like.

As an anthropology major and an outsider who does not fully understand gender dynamics here, part of me wants to keep judgment at bay. But it is impossible not to form opinions, and so far my opinion is that change would be a good thing for women here. The alterations to Moroccan family law that the king made a few years ago were a major step in the right direction, but they were not all-encompassing. I’m curious as to how different demographics of Moroccan women feel about this, and I’m thinking about writing my independent study project on this topic.

Okay, to sum up and leave off: I’m still having a wonderful time and thinking pretty deeply about a lot of things, which ultimately augments my having a wonderful time, because it’s exactly what I wanted out of this semester. I am learning a lot both explicitly and implicitly.

This is it for a few weeks, since I’ll be traveling all of next week. Also, I should mention that I’ve given up on loading any more photos to facebook for now. Some are already there, so you can see those if you’re interested (let me know if you’re not on facebook, I can give you a link), but our internet at school is dreadfully slow. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll try again. For now, you will have to subsist on my beautiful words.

Love!