الحمدلله

"So he who does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and he who does an atom’s weight of evil will see it."

Zilzal 7.8, Quran

It's been about two and a half weeks since I arrived here in Morocco, but it feels like I've been here for months, in both a good and a bad way. On the one hand, I'm sitting in a house I virtually have to myself in one of the coolest neighborhoods I've ever visited, typing a blog entry after just being well-fed and finishing up one of my last essays of the semester (not that I had many to begin with). On the other hand, there's no internet here, I don't really know whose house I'm actually staying in, and the street children won't stop setting off fireworks in unsafe locations. In other words, it's really just the creature comforts that are getting to me, so I really have no room to complain about anything.

But that's getting way ahead of myself.

My group departed Vietnam in the afternoon of the 22nd, and began our longest day of plane travel yet, flying from Hanoi to Rabat with two stops in between. The couple phrases of Indonesian I've randomly picked up ended up coming in handy in the airport in Kuala Lumpur, where a plate of chicken rice cost about $7 and a glass of draft beer cost $12 (or at least that's what my friend told me... the last thing I'm looking for in an airport is expensive alcohol). Paris, our next layover, was dazzlingly modern compared to what we'd been used to, and that was reflected in how much I had to pay for a bottle of water (hint: about $4 more than water should ever cost, anywhere). Finally, after a solid day or more of travel--it's hard to keep track when you're flying across the whole planet--we arrived into the warm sun and brisk breeze of Rabat, Morocco.

I think the first thing I noticed when we exited the airport was how dry the air was. It's right on the coast, which helps to moderate things, but it was a welcome change from Vietnam, where it felt like we were always just a few percentage points away from being able to swim through the air. The second thing was the roads. All of the roads we drove on in Vietnam were more congested than a hippo with a head cold, and narrow and bumpy to boot. Morocco's, on the other hand, are nice, wide, and well-paved, and often almost creepily free of traffic. So I guess you could say my very first impressions of Morocco were fairly positive.

Note: what's written below are only casual observations I've picked up in my first couple weeks in this country. I'm not an expert in Moroccan history, culture, or politics, so take everything with a grain of salt; it could easily be embarrassingly inaccurate.

The City: I'm spending most of this month in Rabat, which is Morocco's capital city. It was founded sometime back in the 11th or 12th century as a port city for trading, and then later became a colonial stronghold for France after a couple of stints as a pirate hideaway. That means it's a fascinating mix of old and new, Arab and colonial. We're staying in the medina, which is the oldest section of the city. Most of the houses were built in the 16th or 17th century (very young compared to most medinas in Morocco), and as such the streets are mostly very thin, fairly dark, and very confusing.

Something like this.

Most parts of the medina make me feel like I've just stepped into the 16th century; the buildings are mostly unchanged, most people still wear their traditional dress, and there are virtually no vehicles, except for in the largest streets. In the evening, the street vendors open up their stalls, and the air fills with the smell of cooking meat, baking bread, and mixed spices. Stepping out of the walls of the medina, though, you're instantly transported back to the 21st century; there's a very modern tramline, some big glass office buildings (though nothing to compare with Hanoi), and lots of cars and counterfeit name-brand clothing.

A view of the Ville Nouvelle from the roof my my classroom

The Culture: After being in Vietnam, a relatively homogenous country, the first word that comes to mind in describing Moroccan society is diverse. I've seen skin tones from lily-white to pitch black, and hair from blonde to brown to red to black; and most of those people were speaking fluent Moroccan Arabic. There are women on the streets wearing shorts in tank tops, walking past women covered head to toe in the niqab. Men sit in bars drinking beers and watching guys with long beards and skullcaps hurry past to their evening prayers. It's not to say that there's not an array of different issues in the country concerning race, class, gender, and religion, but there's quite a bit more variation in all of these than I had expected.
Moroccans apparently consider Islam and Judaism to be the only two legitimate Moroccan religions, since those are the only two that have had a large historical presence. There are only about 5,000 Jews left in Morocco today, after the vast majority of them emigrated to America or Israel, but most cities have a large Jewish quarter, and Moroccans in general seem to be a big fan of the tribe, which is interesting. Religions like Buddhism and Hinduism aren't really even considered legitimate religions at all.
The one almost universally spoken language in Morocco is Darija, or Moroccan Arabic. For those of you not familiar with Arabic linguistics, calling different dialects of Arabic the same language is like calling all Romance languages the same language; Moroccan Arabic and, say, Egyptian Arabic are about as similar as Portuguese and Romanian. Almost everyone who's been educated (and education rates are staggeringly low in Morocco, especially among older or rural populations) speaks French, which is also the language of business. Fus'ha, the standard dialect of Arabic spoken throughout the Arab world, is also widely spoken. Finally, the Amazigh Language is spoken by the indigenous Amazight people who make up about 45% of the population of Morocco (though that number is hard to know for certain because of high levels of intermarriage), whom most of you probably know as the Berber people. Those four languages all share something in common, which is that I can't speak any of them. More about that in a bit.

Politics: Oof. I have lots to say about the politics of Morocco, not all of which I'm going to say here. The first important thing I should note is that the Moroccan state is way less oppressive than Vietnam. There's a parliament, which holds actual power, and which is elected directly by the people. It's okay to speak out directly against the government, and people probably won't be visited by secret agents in dark sunglasses if they do. So in that aspect, you could say it's pretty democratic.
But then on the other hand, they still have a king, and one who acts as an absolute monarch whenever he wants to. The king can overrule any decision made by the parliament, and he also acts as the supreme head of religion, business, and everything else. Any fatwa passed by a religious figure must first go through the king before it actually becomes a law in the country. A lot of people here seem to like that, since it helps to avoid stupid or useless fatwas, but on the other hand a very conservative king could probably use it to enact some pretty intense oppression if he wanted to. The Moroccan Royal family also owns a pretty powerful multinational corporation, and since the king ultimately makes all business decisions they always get a pretty nice cut of whatever industry is being encouraged by the government.
The current king, Mohammed VI (affectionately referred to as Moe 6 by my classmates) is fairly progressive, and has sponsored many important reforms in the country, such as having Amazigh taught in schools, liberalizing trade (there are disagreements as to whether that's actually a good thing), and greatly increasing the use of renewable energies in the country. On the other hand, it's still illegal to criticize or disagree with the king, and he shows no signs of wishing to allow the country to become a constitutional monarchy, something many young people and liberals within the country would like to see happen.
During the Arab Spring protests, there was a pretty strong social movement in the country demanding more equality, better social programs, and an actual democracy. The king acted very quickly, agreeing to some of the protestors demands and satisfying most of the country. Protesters argued that he had made only symbolic reforms and not actually done anything to curb his own power, to which he responded by arresting most of them. People in Morocco seem to almost universally love the king, at least in public. Some of that is because his father, King Hassan II, was somewhat of a jerk who committed a lot of human rights abuses, so Moe 6 is a really great leader in comparison. Some of it, however, is also because people are still legitimately afraid to speak out.

The Host Family: Like Vietnam, we're all placed with host families here, the difference being that we're staying with them the whole month this time. All of our host families live in the Medina of Morocco, which means that most of them are middle- to lower-middle-class families who have lived in Rabat for generations. The great part about that is that we get a taste of what traditional Moroccan daily life is like. The problem is that nobody in my host family speaks English. At all. They do speak French, which is what I've been communicating in the whole time. My French, however, is very, very poor. I've never taken a French class, and I know only what I've picked up from listening to friends speak it, looked up on Google Translate, or learned here in Morocco. I speak Spanish and Portuguese, which are fairly closely related, and English, which borrows almost half of its vocabulary directly from French thanks to centuries of colonization. That means that I understand most of the complicated words, but hardly any of the easy ones. I can read sophisticated policy documents and magazine articles with about 80% comprehension, but until recently I didn't even know how to tell my host family I'd be back home before 10.
That means that I'm really not able to communicate with them at all except for very simple things (and not really even then). I'm sharing a house with one other guy on the program, and then two of my good friends live across the alley with the same family. My friend Kenya and I both speak a little French, and then the other two, Jamie and Chris, speak none whatsoever. We really don't know which of the people always in the house are our actual family, and who are just friends or cousins coming to visit. We only know the names of a couple people, and the family doesn't really feel very keen on actually introducing themselves to us. SIT has a very strong tradition in Morocco, which means that families in the Medina, including ours, have mostly been hosting foreign students for years. That means we're basically just more people who sleep in their house and eat their food, but aren't actually part of the family. It makes me miss my my host family in Vietnam, who treated my housemate and I like we were their actual sons. I'm also very much looking forward to being in Bolivia, where I'll actually be able to communicate with my host family and get to know them as real people. That said, my host family are all great people, and my host mom cooks a mean tajine, so I can't complain too much at all.

The Pictures: The people who only read my blog for the pictures (hi Dad!) have probably scrolled down to this point in frustration so don't worry- I've got lots of those. Rabat is kind of a photographer's dream.

The city cemetery, just a couple blocks away from my house.

One of the first things I did when I reached the city was to take a walk down to the beach, which turned out to be a really good idea. There's a long pier out into the ocean, with a lighthouse and one end, and then the hulking form of the kasbah (old castle) on the other.

Cats- one of the best things about Morocco. They're not really too big on dogs here, but boy do they love cats. The Prophet Muhammad SWT loved cats, so street cats are actively encouraged here. People always save a fish to feed to the cats, and our host dad is always sure to leave our dinner leftovers on the street, just for that purpose. Maybe the Muslims are right and the prophet was a perfect human being...

The pier was also a favorite spot for couples to hang out; the amount of PDA I saw there would put a college campus to shame.

The kasbah is in the background.

A friend and I also explored inside the kasbah, which is the oldest section of the city; most of the buildings are painted blue and white, considered good luck colors. Most of them also date back to the 12th century.