livin it up in the ville nouvelle

So I’m actually not living it up by anyone’s standards, but ISP has been pretty great so far. We moved out of our home stays about a week and a half ago. As expected, it was sad to leave, but I’ve already been back twice, once for tea and once for lunch, and I’m going again this Friday for couscous—sorry if I’ve mentioned Friday couscous about a dozen times already, but it bears repeating that it is probably one of the best meals known to mankind.

I spent the first week of ISP living in a cheap hotel in the medina with some of the other students. The first few days were pretty unpleasant because a) everyone was freaking out about their research and b) I got really sick, I think because my home stay family fed me sketchy cheese the weekend before. Also, there was a mosque right next to the hotel, which became a problem because the loudspeaker projecting the call to prayer was right outside our window (they have these loudspeakers all over the city). The call to prayer is extremely loud and happens five times throughout the day, the first of which is around four in the morning. At my home stay the call to prayer was audible but more distant, so I never woke up during the night. In the hotel it was positively blaring.

Still, it was a lot of fun to stay in a dirt cheap place with friends and eat what I wanted when I wanted and not feel obligated to be home by seven for tea time.

Last Friday we upgraded to a hotel in the Ville Nouvelle. By upgraded I mean that I am now paying 65 dirhams (about 7.5 dollars) a night. The walls here are a pleasant off-white rather than bright blue and pink like the first hotel, the rooms are bigger, and there’s a shower downstairs that you can pay extra to use. Plus the room I’m sharing with Elizabeth has a really nice view of a café terrace and Avenue Mohammed V, the main boulevard though the city. The Ville Nouvelle is right next to the medina, so still within easy walking distance of the school, the souk, and my home stay family, but it’s a very different feel. This neighborhood was built by the French during the colonial period (early twentieth century), so the architecture is more European and the overall feel is very different. Lots of cafes, restaurants, open space, big streets, parks…more modern. A very different and nice place to stay, and I’m glad I’m experiencing a new neighborhood, but I kind of miss the craziness of the medina.

As for what I’ve actually been doing…some work, lots of play. Lots of going out to different restaurants and to our favorite ice cream stand, lots of wandering around, lots of time spent watching bootlegged DVDs from the souk. But yes, also research. Like I mentioned, I’m studying the mudawana, so I’ve been doing a few different things for that. Some library research, but mostly I’ve been conducting interviews. I did a few interviews with women who live in the medina to see what they think about the family code and whether they agree with the changes that were made in 2004—really interesting discussions, but I had to get English-speaking acquaintances (Moroccan university students) to act as translators, because none of these women spoke English. I also visited two different nonprofits and did interviews with English-speaking employees. I went with my academic adviser (Souad, who is a gender studies professor and speaks excellent English) to this thing called the “Caravan for Equality” that one of the nonprofits was hosting, where volunteers set up camp in a poor neighborhood on the fringes of the city and talked to local women about their legal rights, leading workshops and group discussions. There was also a free medical clinic, which drew a huge crowd, because most people in this neighborhood never have the opportunity to see a doctor.

I also got the chance to interview a woman who wrote an Arabic book about divorce in Moroccan society. She went through a really awful divorce before the mudawana changed—her husband was abusive, but before 2004 it was really difficult for a woman to get a divorce (whereas a man could just kick his wife out of the house without prior warning and that legally constituted divorce, for women it was both legally difficult and socially unacceptable to ask for separation). It took her four years to finally get her divorce, and then her husband ran off with her son for five years. She went to the courts time and time again to get her son back (she had legal custody all along, but custody isn’t always enforced), and she finally did, but from when he was three to when he was eight, she didn’t see him. This is the sort of thing that is incredibly difficult for me to confront here…things are definitely better now that the mudawana has been revised, but change in legislation does not mean that everyone is cooperating with or enforcing that legislation, and deeply engrained patriarchy does not disappear overnight. I feel like this is one of the difficult things about striving to be the perfect anthropology major…in theory, I want to look at things from a distance and examine them for their cultural significance before I make judgment calls. And I know that universalist principles of human rights do not perfectly apply in every situation. But on a basic emotional level, I can’t distance myself from the things that women deal with here.

Back to the lighthearted and fun side of things, on Friday I am heading north to Tangier and Asilah for the weekend. I’m excited to see more of Northern Morocco, because Chefchaouen was splendid. Right after that we’re taking a bus all the way south along the coast to return to Essaouira and spend the last week of ISP writing and relaxing.

Then our last week as a group back in Rabat, and then the program is over and I fly to Paris. I really can’t process how soon I’m leaving.