Rabat, Revisited

“I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.

I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.

I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.

With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation.

Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.

Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.

I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court.

Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.”

-Rumi

I've long been away from North Africa, but it's high time I write one final update from Morocco. Our final weeks there passed by in such a rush that it's hard to say exactly went on. That and the fact that it was almost three weeks ago... Oops. It was, of course, mostly an endeavor to fit as many guest speakers and site visits into our remaining time as possible. Some of our guest speakers were incredibly interesting, such as a speech from a leader of the Moroccan Farm Bureau, or a visit to the offices of the Peace, Justice, and Democracy Party, the moderate Islamist party that is the ruling party in the Moroccan Parliament.

The political situation in Morocco becomes more interesting, and more sinister, the more I learn about it. In Vietnam, there was the constant presence of the government, and the constant feeling that people never felt comfortable expressing their own views (with very few exceptions). In Morocco, there are similar levels of government censorship, mostly regarding the king: elected politicians are forbidden from disagreeing with him, and there are heavy fines and other punishments in order for journalists who dare to criticize anyone in the royal family. At the same time, however, it's clear there is genuine public reverence for the king: every house has his portrait hanging on the wall, and most speakers we talked to carefully avoided criticizing him, even if they were extremely harsh critics of the government in power. Even the elder we talked to in Ben Smim village, who faced heavy fines for his protests and probably would have gone to jail if he had been caught speaking with us, claimed that King Mohammed VI had been on the side of the protesters the whole time (he clearly wasn't). People who protest for a more representative democracy edge around saying anything about the king, even when he is the ultimate power in the country with everything from religious decrees to economic policies. It helps, of course, that the Moroccan royal family also owns a ridiculously wealthy multinational corporation that coincidentally receives a healthy cut of whatever development project the government is involved.

My final week in Morocco, I spent whatever free time I could find exploring new neighborhoods of Rabat, trying street food I'd never had the chance to try before, and walking along the sea cliffs enjoying sunsets. One of the most frustrating things about my stay in Morocco was the degree of control the program constantly exerted over every aspect of our lives. Rabat is a bustling, cosmopolitan city, with modern business districts, delicious international food, and progressive Moroccans slamming down beers in pubs, but we never really had the change to experience any of that. The organization SIT partners with in Rabat, the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning, did their best to monopolize everything we did, from where we slept to where we ate and had class. Breakfast and dinner were with host families, and lunch was served at the CCCL building. Host families themselves were picked from a very limited pool that lived inside the Medina, the old section of the city. Almost all of the families have been hosting foreign students for years or decades, meaning that we were absolutely nothing new. While our host families in Vietnam and Bolivia have mostly treated us somewhat like real family, in Morocco I felt more like a paying guest. Of all the countries we've been to, I understood Moroccan people and culture the least, and was looking forward to the host family experience in order to learn more. Unfortunately, my host family never really showed much interest in a genuine cultural exchange. It didn't help, of course, that my French is poorly conversational at best and my Arabic is even worse, or that our days were so filled with work that by the time we returned home, most of what we had time to do was paper writing and research.

All these factors, combined with a couple of small nuisances that became progressively more frustrating, such as the constant lack of toilet paper at home (how do you possibly go for two weeks without having any toilet paper in your only bathroom? It shouldn't be humanly possible), the slaughterhouse directly below my room (nothing like waking up at 7AM every morning to the tortured squawks of dying chickens), and the Moroccan habit of throwing lit fireworks into the street at random intervals (some of us really aren't fans of surprise explosions) made it quite a bit easier to leave Morocco than it had been to leave Vietnam. The difficult schedule, disconnected host family, and other personal issues made me feel much less like I'd found a new home, or integrated much with a new culture. I understand far more of Moroccan culture than I did two months ago, of course, but not nearly as much as I had hoped to.

On my last day there, a few hours before our bus departed for the Rabat airport, I took a walk through the main street of the Medina at sunrise. Moroccans of all sorts bustled past doing their morning shopping, spice vendors hawked their wares from exotic-smelling stalls, and Berber men from the mountains sat in front of their traditional pottery and clothing, staring at goings-on from beneath their huge, brightly colored hats. More conservative passersby gathered into lines and got on their knees as the second call to prayer sounded from every mosque. Suddenly, I felt more regret than relief that I was leaving. There's so much of the country I have yet to experience, and perhaps I could have if I'd tried harder during my limited time there.

Then again, I was about to embark on a two-day, four-continent journey back to one of my old homes, Bolivia. I had lots to reflect on, but even more to look forward to. Morocco will be missed, but boy is it good to be back "home".

This kitten followed me through the city for two blocks, mewing pitifully and wanting to be petted (and probably fed). In retrospect, it's probably a good thing I left Morocco, because every day I spent there was a day I became closer to just giving up and becoming a crazy cat lady.

On the way to a site visit, we stopped for lunch in the seaside town of Assilah. I wish we could have spent far longer there, because it's absolutely lovely.

Our final site visit was to the Parc Eolien Tangier (Tangier Wind Park), one of the largest wind farms in Africa. Buffeted by winds from both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and with few cloudy days, Morocco is blessed with tremendous potential for both wind and solar power. However, the government still has to import electricity from Europe via an undersea pipeline, partly because of an unsavory free trade deal they signed a while back. In an attempt to gain a little more energy sovereignty, and hopefully sell some of their electricity back from Europe. At the same time, the country's electricity demands are skyrocketing, and the government hopes to continue producing much of this through renewable means. Unfortunately, it won't increase the proportion of energy from renewable sources, merely keep it even. 42% of the national renewable energy quota is to be produced via wind, and this gargantuan wind farm is going to be a big piece of that. It's hard to appreciate the scale and (in my opinion) beauty of windmills until you're on top of a mountain watching the sun set behind a 200-foot wind turbine. It's an incredibly surreal, confusing, and beautiful sight. Which is kind of how I feel about Morocco in general.