The news from Tunis, and etc."

Last week in the first session of my history class (The Islamic World and the West), we had a surprise guest speaker. Tom DeGeorges, a historian and former student of our professor who heads the Centre d'Etudes Maghrebines* in Tunis, had only a day or two before caught an evacuation flight from Tunis to Rabat. Professor Schaar invited him to come tell us about his experiences in the past week or so and explain the situation in Tunisia. DeGeorges turned out to be an excellent speaker, and his explanation was pretty illuminating.

First he explained the relationship between Tunisia's wealthy coastal cities and the relatively impoverished rural interior. As some of you may know already, the current uprising originated in small rural villages in the interior of the country, which have been largely neglected by the government in terms of both infrastructure (rail lines, etc.) and media coverage, which is state-controlled and based solely in Tunis. DeGeorges argued that the global financial crisis is also a major contributor to the unrest, as it has affected Tunisians both directly and through a decrease in income from Europe (tourism, investment, remittances, etc.). He also argued that the movement was made possible largely by new social networking technologies like facebook and smart phones; protesters used these technologies much as their Iranian counterparts did last summer to organize and inform each other in defiance of government attempts to silence and contain resistance.

When regional police proved ineffective at quelling riots in the rural villages (DeGeorges noted that it would be hard to convince New York City police officers to fire on other New Yorkers - and I can't help but think it would be even more true in a tiny rural village where everyone knows each other), the now-deposed president, Ben Ali, asked the army to intervene. The rumor, DeGeorges said, is that the army generals then refused to do this, possibly led by a general named Rachid Ammar. Meanwhile, media from the cities started covering the rural uprising in graphic detail. This had a dramatic affect on city-dwellers, many of whom still have strong ties to their villages of origin. Eventually, Ben Ali attempted to appease protesters by announcing that he did not intend to run for president again in 2014; according to DeGeorges, this was a huge mistake because upon this announcement he lost all authority and found himself on a slippery slope towards his eventual evacuation.

A few notes on random things about daily life in Morocco. First, cats. There are cats EVERYWHERE. Actually, some of my classmates have a tumblr of cats they see around Rabat.

I would feel sorry for them, except they all look pretty healthy, so they're not so much strays by American standards as collective municipal pets who are regularly fed by Rabat's residents. One of the cats at Chellah actually climbed into my room mate's lap when we visited, but mostly they don't want you to come too close. Dogs are much rarer, but there are a few that we see regularly on our walk to school. One morning we saw one of the dogs cross the street and had to admit he was a little better at it than we were.

Another issue I want to address a little bit is street harassment. Actually, my room mate Sarah, the journalism major, just wrote an excellent blog post on the subject. Street harassment takes lots of forms. The funniest, in my opinion, is a sort of drive (or run, or bike) - by shouting of the one English phrase that some dude happens to know, such as "I am fine!" or "Nice people!" There's a lot of "Bonjour!" too, plus plenty of Arabic we don't understand. One thing I didn't notice until our program manager mentioned it was the constant kissing noises that follow us down the street like theme music. The scariest is when some guy walking past leans in close and sort of whispers in your ear. Luckily those ones are usually too creepy to know much French or English, so I'm not as affected as I might be if I knew what they were saying. The other day I was pointing at some fancy Moroccan dresses (called kaftans, often worn at weddings) in a shop window and some dude walking by shouted "Le mariage!" It's  mostly tolerable, but sometimes it feels like walking a gauntlet just getting from point A to point B.


*A center for American researchers working in Tunisia.

The plague, boyfriends, and public nudity

I had a weekend of fairly high highs and very low lows. Friday as we were leaving AMIDEAST some of the English teachers (American and British) invited us to come with them to the local bar - which is to say, the bar down the street frequented only by foreigners and the most frenchified of the frenchified elite. It was sort of a bizarre experience because it felt like being in the states for an hour or so.

Saturday was terrible because I woke up deathly ill at about 5 o'clock in the morning. I had been expecting something like this because they told us that at least some of us would get sick due to water differences and such. I guess I went first. I am extremely lucky in my room mate, Sarah, who took AMAZING care of me. My host sister, Rehab, went with us to the clinic AMIDEAST types are supposed to use, which involved the worst taxi ride of my life. The doctor diagnosed an intestinal infection and they made me lie in the hospital room with an IV in my arm for what felt like an eternity. After a while, they sent me home with a list of about six different prescriptions. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure this is all just overkill because after about twenty-four hours of lying as still as possible and not eating, I woke up the next day relatively refreshed.

Sunday afternoon our host sister borrowed her father's car, an ancient BMW, to drive us first to AMIDEAST (to show us another route we could walk, and so we could use the internet),  then to the mausoleum where Mohammed V and Hassan II are interred, and then all around the city FOR HOURS to visit her boyfriends, and yes, that is a plural boyfriendS. She has two boyfriends in Rabat, one of whom is a 32-year-old police officer and the other of whom is a 28-year-old...guy with slicked back hair and wearing a track suit. Somewhere in the picture is a 45-year-old Saudi man who's supposed to come to visit this Spring. Rehab also got lost like 15 times and kept turning around and backing up and essentially driving as though her goal were to incite car sickness in her unfortunate passengers. Anyway, we didn't get back to the apartment until 4 pm, by which time the couscous Rachida had made for lunch was fairly luke warm. Sunday night was much better. Sarah and I met some of our classmates at the train station downtown and walked to a movie theater, where we saw Pegasus, which is an excellent Moroccan film that I think I'd read about it before. Miracle of miracles, there were English subtitles!

The most eventful part of Monday was our trip to the hammam, or public bath, with Rehab, who we are beginning to understand is slightly insane. Since Moroccans don't shower much, they all go to the hammam a few times a week where you can get all the hot water you want for 10 dh (a little more than a dollar). They usually wash themselves with a special kind of black soap and then scrub themselves all over with a sort of exfoliating mitt which gets rid of the dead skin. Or at least, that's what I think you're supposed to do because Rehab didn't really explain what we were supposed to do. It was also pretty shocking to American sensibilities in that everyone just strips down to their panties and starts pouring water over themselves. Anyway, it was nice to be clean. I also discovered that this girl I know from Grinnell had the same host family that I do because as we were getting dressed Rehab's friend pulled on a Grinnell t-shirt.

Host families, the medina, and urban rovings

Day Six! We met our host families for the first time yesterday, which was both exciting and terrifying. We're placed in families as pairs; my room mate, Sarah, is from New Hampshire and goes to American University in D.C. We were REALLY EXCITED to discover that we are both post-structuralists. Given my life at Grinnell, this made me feel totally at home.

Anyway, after a morning session on the subject of street harassment (don't dress provocatively, ignore verbal harassment, ask shopkeepers and taxi drivers for help, etc.) and our second "Survival Moroccan Arabic Class"* (my name is, thank you, give me, coffee, tea, water, here, there, etc.) we all gathered nervously in one of the classrooms and waited for the host families to arrive. After a few minutes, the host mothers started coming in and, soon enough, Sarah and I were introduced to our host mother, Rachida. The first few moments were slightly painful, as we had been strictly instructed that we should speak Derrija with our host families and try to avoid French so that our families didn't get into the habit of speaking French with us. Unfortunately, coffee, tea and directions were not particularly relevant to the context. After a few minutes, though, as we wrestled our luggage outside, we started speaking French and fs-haa, which is what I've been studying for three semesters. Rachida told us that her family comes from the southern city of Essaouira, but that they all live in Rabat now.

Our host brother Yassin came in the car to pick us up. As it turned out, there wasn't enough room for Sarah and me and our luggage and Rachida in the car, so we climbed in to ride with Yassin and Rachida took a taxi.** Yassin is 23 and a university student studying politics. After a thrilling ride,*** we arrived at the apartment in Rue de la Resistance. The apartment is fairly large, but has relatively few rooms compared to an American residence. Sarah and I are staying in the guest room, which is to say the fancy room where you spend time with guests. There's one bedroom, where the host parents, Rachida and Hamid, sleep, and where much of the family keep their clothes. I think our host sister, Rehab, sleeps in the big living room with the television. Many Moroccans eat in these room on couches, but we always eat in the kitchen.

When we arrived, the neighbor from across the hall, who Rachida said is like a sister, was over at the apartment. Her family has also hosted AMIDEAST students in the past, so we talked a lot about their previous students while we ate a delicious lunch of what seemed to be leftover tagine with chicken, rice, and, for some reason, french fries, which seem to have been absorbed as a fairly ubiquitous part of Moroccan cuisine. In Morocco, it's normal to eat with your hands, and all from a common dish. This is one reason why the ritual of hand-washing before a meal is so important. There's also a constant stream of tea, which is served in little tea glasses with mint and a formidable quantity of sugar.

After lunch, our host mother suggested that we lie down a little. Later that afternoon, she said, she would show us the route we should take to school. When I woke up, however, I was surprised to see that the sun was setting. It was nearly six o'clock and the apartment was empty.**** Soon, however, he heard someone unlocking the front door, and after struggling with the locks for a moment (I've noticed that difficult locks seem to be a bit of a trend in Morocco) our host sister, Rehab, appeared. Rachida and our neighbor had described Rehab as "crazy" and "always dancing," so Sarah and I weren't sure what to expect, but Rehab turned out to be perfectly nice, if consistently overenthusiastic. Rehab had a friend with her and didn't seem overeager to entertain us, so Sarah and I started asking if we could go for a walk just at the moment that Rachida came back. We'd probably rather have stayed with Rachida, but it seemed we were past the point of no return, so we ended up following Rehab and her friend towards the medina. Not to the medina, but towards it, because when we came in view of the medina they were like, "Ok, there it is! See you later!"

We ended up wandering through the dark and twisting streets of the medina, glancing at street vendors' wares and trying not to make eye contact - but, you know, in a good way. We came back for dinner at 9 or 10, and then fell asleep pretty much immediately.


(Note: This took me forever to write because there's no internet at the apartment. In the future I'll have to be less detailed or long-winded or something.)






*Morocco is by far the most multilingual place I have ever been. Derrija, the Moroccon dialect of Arabic, is what people learn from birth. Then everyone (or at least most people) learns fs-haa or formal Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic, in the language of American course catalogs) as well as French in school. AMIDEAST is an American organization, so everyone in our building speaks English, and most highly educated people or people whose businesses sometimes attract tourists (waiters, street vendor) speak at least a few phrases. For instance, in addition to their mother tongue of Derrija, all members of my host family are fluent (or near enough that I can't tell the difference) in both French and fs-haa. My host father, Hamid, and host brother, Yassin, also speak excellent English, and my host sister Rehab knows some English phrases. Our neighbor seems to know a fair amount of English, too. She says she understands everything, but has more trouble speaking, which suggests to me that she may have learned from American television and movies.

**Or more accurately, said that she would take a taxi but later told me that she hadn't been able to and had had to walk. It's about a 35-40 minute walk from AMIDEAST, which is in a district called Agdal, to our apartment, which is in l'Ocean. That's a walk we intend to do once in each direction every day. Also, taxis are actually really inexpensive here. Today we took one from downtown to the AMIDEAST building for 10 dirhams, which is a little more than a dollar.

***There aren't really traffic laws in Morocco, which is to say that such laws technically exist but in practice it's every pedestrian or motor vehicle for hirself. Traffic lights and lanes are sort of fluid concepts, and we were warned always to look both ways, even on one-way streets.

****I think our host mother was probably with the neighbors. It's very common for Moroccan housewives to spend lots of time in neighbors' homes; socializing is their chief means of entertainment.

Flying, Arriving, Exploring (reposted from an e-mail to family)

So despite having booked the shuttle to take me from the hotel to Orly (which, thanks to e-mailed receipts, I know that I did) I was actually taken to Charles DeGaulle, which I embarassingly didn't realize until I asked a nice lady at an information desk to help me find my airline. Then I stupidly thought the train would be faster than the bus and, despite the efforts of multiple kind French women to help me do things like get off at the right stop, I missed my flight. Jet4You was not particularly helpful, as their next flight was going to cost about 300 euros or almost half of the total amount I had in the bank. After panicking, spending about 10 euros trying to call all the AMIDEAST numbers in my possession and/or Mom (I eventually managed to talk to one person at the AMIDEAST emergency number for about two minutes until I got cut off and was out of coins) I found an internet console and paid more money to try to get online and figure out if there were any flights. I found an easyjet flight out of CDG for a little over 100 euros and took the bus. It took me about half an hour of walking back, forth, up and down through CDG before I even found the easyjet ticket counter, at which point it was too late to buy tickets. I found  a starbucks, paid yet again to access wifi, got back on the internet. Another Jet4You flight was leaving Orly at about 11 PM, which I knew I could make. (This is when I sent the first e-mail.) I got back on the train. When I got to Orly, there was no longer anyone at the Jet4You ticket counter. I walked around looking at the check-in places until I found a flight going to Casablanca, which happened to be Royal Air Maroc. I ran up to the Royal Air Maroc ticket counter. A little less than 200 euros. Possible. Of course, Chase was freaking out and would only let me do some things with my debit card and not others, so I had to pay for my ticket in cash. I was incredibly relieved that something had finally worked out, although still nervous that no one at AMIDEAST would know where I was or when to come pick me up. I sent the second e-mail while waiting to board the plane. I finally landed in Casablanca at about 12:30 AM local time, and was already trying to think about how I was going to call someone when I saw a man in the baggage claim holding an AMIDEAST sign. What a relief! I got to the hotel around 2 AM. I have an entire, very large room (most hotels in the US would call this a suite because there's an area with a couch and a TV) all to myself because I was the last to arrive.

I had to be up fairly early the next day for the start of orientation. I met most of my classmates at breakfast in the hotel. There will be 16 of us total, but that includes three who were here last semester as well and are therefore skipping orientation. All thirteen of the new students are women. We spent yesterday morning in meetings about AMIDEAST as an organization, schedules for the program, how not to get mugged, etc., etc. In the afternoon we all climbed into a van and Mohammed, who is in charge of AMIDEAST Rabat's academic programs, took us on a tour of some of Rabat's important sights. First was Chellah, which was originally a Roman outpost called Sala. It later became a military encampment for soldiers on their way from Marrakesh to Spain. I think it might be the most beautiful place in the world. There is a fabulous view towards the river, Bou Regreg, and Sale on the other side.The area around the ruins is basically a beautiful garden. Storks roost on top of some of the structures, including the remnants of a mosque which lost its minaret in an earthquake around 1600. They make a sort of clicking sound, which Mohammed described as a "love song." Storks, he said, are monogamous and this is the sound the single ones make in order to attract a mate. We also went to some of the potters' shops in Sale, and to les Oudaias, the Kasbah (fortress) of Rabat. Les Oudaias reminded me of Le Mont St-Michel in Normandie - winding, uphill streets and interconnected buildings like a honeycomb. At the top there's another lovely view of the beach. The water is very cold for swimming, but there were lots of surfers. (Rabat's first surfing club was established by the king,Mohammed VI.)

Today we're taking Arabic placement tests.Slightly stressful, but not too bad. I'm remembering more than I thought I would. Surprisingly, some of the other students have neither French nor Arabic. I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to come!

No pictures because my camera was out of batteries, but there are some nice ones here and here.