Morocco...where do I begin? I've been back in the country for a week and a half, and I am still processing EVERYTHING. So I won't begin with completion, but feel free to read my incomplete thoughts and questions about the most difficult trip I've ever been on.
My grandma said she saw it in my eyes: the anxiety, the knowledge that this trip would be different. She is much wiser than I am. I wasn't conscious of that knowledge I carried as I was scrambling around on the morning of Friday, December 28th--departure day. I should have known all along. The planning process was hectic...even more so than normal. I remember one Thursday when I’d spent over four hours in the Center for Civic Engagement watching my plans and my confidence as an Alternative Break trip leader (and leader in general) spiral downward. I got back to my room that night around 10:30 and melted against the closed door. When departure day arrived, I had given up all hope of the trip going “according to plan.” I didn’t even want that anymore. I hoped instead for the flexibility to respond to the chaos I was sure would happen.
And chaos happened.
The travel days were a nightmare I am not ready to relive, nor can I see the good in the experiences yet. Our first full day at the homebase (Sunday), my group of junior and senior Bonners had our orientation with Cross Cultural Solutions (CCS), a truly incredible organization that facilitates sustainable international service and productive cultural exchange. Mohammed, the country director in Morocco, is absolutely fantastic, and as he introduced us to the basics we needed to know about Morocco and about our three service sites, I felt relief sink in, all the way down to my socks (which, in an effort to make a good first impression on the CCS staff, actually matched that day). As a trip leader, I was hyper-aware of the impressions my entire group was making on the Moroccan staff and of the reactions of my group to what Mohammed was saying. There was nervousness when he talked about women in Morocco (Morocco is an Islamic country and most women wear head coverings. We were also unsure at that point how society treated them.) but a definite sense of excitement when we heard exactly what we would be doing at our service sites. I’ll talk more about that in a later post...still processing a lot...
We learned some Arabic after our orientation, and even though I consider myself blessed with the gift of quickly picking up languages, I still only know a few phrases: la, shokran, kidayr, smiti Elizabeth, snu smitek, bslama. Oops. It was fun to try, though.
The afternoon was completely free for us to explore and adventure, and in a moment of swift decision-making, Eliza (my fearless co-leader who also might be the single most amazing person in the world) and I decided our group was going to take a walk to a nearby park.I had low expectations...a park in Morocco? But as we wandered through beautiful, luxurious streets where the homebase was located, I spotted a vibrant green polo field, houses of ambassadors to Morocco mushroomed with satellite dishes, and flowering plants dripping over tall walls. I let my guard down a bit. I was in desperate need of some beauty after a day of international airports, lost luggage (just mine), a seven hour flight next to one of my trip participants who vomited the entire time, and a general lack of sleep.
The park, le forêt urbaine, was breathtaking. It was an expanse of land filled with trees straight out of Middle Earth and sudden soccer fields and playgrounds. There were trails that people were walking and running. It shocked me because I have, up until that point, made generalizations that exercise is a luxury to which only Americans are privileged. I assumed people in other countries do not have the "luxury" (really, it's an issue of enough capital, I think) of eating so much they need to exercise or the luxury of time and space to do so. I was wrong. Green space in a big city also used to feel like a luxury only in the States. Again, I was wrong. People in Morocco have those luxuries, too; at least the people in that particular wealthy neighborhood in Rabat do. What other places in the world defy my assumptions? Do Moroccans see spaces like this park and moments of exercise as luxury? This was the beginning of Morocco shocking me, making me think twice about everything...
We spent a while in le forêt urbaine, soaking up the sun (Morocco is a cold country in the winter with a very hot sun), meandering along paths, attracting all sorts of attention as Americans have the tendency of doing in other countries. We took pictures of the sunlight mystically filtering through tall white trees and scoped out the people of Morocco. It was restful and thought-provoking and everything I needed for the day.
Hope. Hope fell over me on Sunday. After great chaos, Sunday was a day of reclaiming: reclaiming why I was there, why I love travel, why I love languages, why I love service. Strangely, though, it wasn't me who got to do the reclaiming; Sunday reclaimed me. I needed that. Why? You'll see...oh, you'll see.
