2/10/2011
Newcomers, les droits de l'Homme, Tangier and Apple Pie
Blogging. Right. As some of you have noticed, it’s been over a week since I posted anything. Ironically, the only excuse I can offer is that I’ve been really busy doing interesting things which would have made for fabulous blog posts. I’ll just have to try to make up for it now.
Where to begin? The last post I wrote contained what was then the news fresh from Tunis, but as I’m sure you’re all aware, the Tunisian revolution has since been a bit overshadowed by Egypt exploding. Inshallah, the Egyptians will soon be rid of that parasite who’s been pretending to govern them for thirty years. I’m curious to hear from you if you’re seeing gas prices skyrocket in the U.S. as I’ve been told they would. The head of AMIDEAST Morocco told us that prices in Morocco will actually be less affected because the Moroccan government exercises some control over that sort of thing – which, given what happened recently down the street, as it were, is probably a wise policy. Nothing brings people out onto the street quite like a sudden inability to buy bread. One way in which I am being affected by the events in Egypt, however, is the sudden arrival of about twelve students from AMIDEAST’s Cairo office and American University in Cairo. Through some clever maneuvering on the part of their program director, our Cairene counterparts managed to catch a flight to Athens around the time the American embassy sent their families home. They were given the option to come to Rabat or to go to Jordan, and about half of them decided to join us in al-Maghreb. It seems like by far the wiser choice to me, given that Jordan is having its own troubles with unrest at the moment. It makes for kind of a drastic change on our end in that it almost doubled the size of our program. As it happens, one of my new classmates in Rabat is a Grinnellian anthropology major who was in my Ethnographic Research Methods class last semester, which is bizarre in a my-worlds-are-colliding kind of way.
Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that in addition to my classes and, you know, living in Morocco, I’m also doing an internship. I didn’t know this was going to be an option until shortly before I left, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like a good idea. After translating my resume into French, I was placed (through the auspices of Doha, program manager and miracle worker) with Association Adala,[i] a tiny[ii] NGO advocating for reform of Morocco’s judicial system. Adala, in cooperation with nine other Moroccan human rights organizations, has written a “Memorandum on the Reform of Justice in Morocco” which it will be my chief responsibility to translate from French and Arabic into English. I can’t tell you anything more about it, however, because the memorandum’s contents are confidential until they’re released in an upcoming press conference. Most of my interactions with my co-workers take place in French, although one of them speaks a smattering of English[iii] and they sometimes speak Arabic to me which I pretend to understand. The exciting moments of the internship are when interesting people come into the office, as seems to happen often while I’m there. Yesterday, for instance, we were visited by someone from the Moroccan office of the American Bar Association, which I found out sometime after he had come in. I’m awkwardly the first person anyone sees upon entering the office[iv], so when he came in I stood up and introduced myself, in French, as an intern working on translation. At some point they mentioned that I was American and he came back out and said: “Now I can properly introduce myself.”[v]
In other news, I’ve been doing some fun weekend things. The weekend before last, several of my classmates and I took a trip to Tangier, which I ADORED. First of all, it is a hilly city, and I love hilly cities, even if my calf muscles do not. It is also beautiful. My favorite moment was standing on this cliff near the Kasbah Museum, which is to say near the highest point of the city, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. The water was an incredible turquoise color, the city behind and to the side of us was bright, blazing white against the bright blue sky, and Spain looked almost close enough that you could swim from one shore to the other.[vi] Tangier is a larger city than Rabat, and while it has a lovely and ancient medina it also has skyscrapers the likes of which I hadn’t yet seen in Morocco.
We came by train[vii], leaving Rabat at about quarter to five on Friday afternoon and arriving at our frighteningly-located[viii] but affordable hotel at around 9. Saturday was spent wandering through the medina and the Kasbah and down to the beach, while the weather alternated rapidly between bright sunshine and sudden downpour.[ix] We had calamari sandwiches for lunch at a little place near the beach, and stopped at an incredible gelateria for dessert. I opted, largely out of curiosity, to buy a first class ticket for the trip back, which entitled me to a large, comfortable, assigned seat in a small compartment with a sliding door.[x]
This past Sunday nearly all of my original classmates and I had a sleepover at AMIDEAST so that we could stream the Super Bowl over the internet when it aired starting at about midnight Morocco time. This is ironic in my case as I couldn’t care less about the Super Bowl, but it was fun to hang out with friends even though I woke up sore and cold on the floor about twenty minutes before class. We all made American foods to bring, and my contribution was an apple pie. I made one for my Moroccan host family, too, but I don’t think they appreciated it quite as much as my compatriots. This is probably because Moroccans don’t think anything is sweet enough unless it’s about fifty percent sugar, and if that’s an exaggeration it isn’t much of one. In any case, I made a valuable discovery about the utility of chilling pie dough overnight, so I consider it a good experience.
I can’t believe so much time has passed so quickly! I’ve already been here a month. This weekend, our first official excursion, to Fes, Meknes, and the High Atlas Mountains.
[i] Meaning “justice” in Arabic
[ii] I am employee number five.
[iii] They’re also excited for me to help her practice.
[iv] Adala is located in a sort of pleasant residential area, about a fifteen minute walk from the AMIDEAST building and in the immediate neighborhood of the Mohammedia, an elite engineering school (“Our own little MIT,” said Hassan, who works for AMIDEAST, when he walked me to work on my first day) and also of several government buildings, like the Ministry of the Environment.
[v] I’m a little vain about the fact that Moroccans rarely pinpoint me as American right away. Actually, my host brother Yassin has begun habitually teasing me about how I look French and not American. I wish I could chalk this up to my aura of grace and impressive sense of fashion, but I think it has more to do with my complexion relative to, for instance, my blonde and freckled roommate, Sarah.
[vi] Come to think of it, if people have swum the Channel, I’m sure someone has swum the Strait. I’d recommend the ferry, though, which my friend Julianne took with her parents some time last fall and which, according to her, takes about 35 minutes.
[vii] On the train, we met an incredibly nice young woman named Lubna who not only helped us find seats but then befriended us and eventually invited us to visit her in her hometown of Suq al-Arb3. She spoke perfect English and is apparently some kind of rock star who has toured in the US. No surprises in Morocco, as my friend Carson says on a daily basis.
[viii] Perfectly fine except that it was in maybe the sketchiest alley I’ve ever dared to venture down. I guess one shouldn’t always trust Lonely Planet.
[ix] I got caught in incredibly heavy rain while wearing the new dark jeans I acquired in the Rabat medina, and consequently my legs were dyed blue for about a week until I could go to the hammam and really scrub them.
[x] A la Hogwarts Express. I was thrilled.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)