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Full Circle

May 18, 2009

(Written 15 May 2009)

I write this from Rabat’s Hotel Majestic, less than 24 hours before leaving Morocco. Being here reinforces the feeling that we’ve just arrived: We spent our first week in Morocco at this hotel before moving in with our host families, and now we’re spending the final week here after ISP. It’s as if the intervening months were some sort of temporal phantom.

In these very rooms where we’re now wondering how to get all our accumulated gifts and mementos into our suitcases, we once fretted over the unknowns that faced us: We’re going to a rural village where the only toilet is Mother Nature?

We have to plan, research, and write a 20 to 40 page paper in three weeks, all on our own, on a budget of 200 dirhams (about $25) per day? What if nobody in my host family speaks English? How will I stay in touch with my friends and family back home? I’m spending three and a half months in Morocco? How am I going to survive!

Oh, if only our wiser selves could have sent a small message back in time, nothing much, just a few words: Don’t worry so much, everything works out fine. But then, maybe it’s learning to live with the uncertainties—the pit in the stomach feeling, as my father calls it—that gives the experience its value. Remove the unknowns and you remove any opportunity for growth.

Speaking of growth, I should talk about the project that owned my life the last three weeks. Most SIT programs end with an independent study project (ISP), which are usually the last month of the program, though ours was only three weeks. When ISP started, we moved out of our homestays and became responsible for our own room and board, which we had to cover with the aforementioned 200 dirham a day stipend. After two and a half months of packed and structured days, we were once again in complete control of our schedules. By that point in the semester, we were all itching for more independence, and ISP was the “scratch” we so desperately desired.

ISP completely changed the way I felt about living in Morocco. I tend to be solitary person, and I place a very high value on my own autonomy, so the combination of regimented days and the lack of personal space in my homestay got to me after a while. Regarding the latter, my host family was very respectful of me and my possessions, but because of the nature of the house and the family structure I was hardly ever alone. Moreover, living in the old medina I developed a specific—and admittedly narrow—conception of what living in Morocco is like. During ISP I lived in the French-built new city, just a few blocks the medina, and it was like living in a different world. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Beyond just the change in accommodations, I felt more connected to the Moroccan culture and people during ISP than during the preceding two and a half months. This may have something to do with my new ability to have rudimentary conversations in Arabic, or it could be that ISP finally gave me the time to interact with people at my own pace, on my own terms. Mastering the art of taking taxis and making a day trip to Ifrane (four hours from Rabat each way—it was a long day trip) on my own enhanced my sense of independence. It was something I really needed.

I could happily have done ISP for half my time in Morocco. For one thing, I love research—I think I’ve always been an academic at heart. But more than this, ISP facilitated the everyday experiences with Moroccans that finally convinced me that Morocco is a place I want to come back to—not just as an intellectual decision, but something based on an emotional connection.

This time tomorrow I will be en route to Spain—I’m spending a week in Oviedo with Nieves (my host mom from last semester) before heading back to the states. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I’ve spent eight of the last nine months outside of the US, and I marvel at all the things I’ve experienced since I took off from Orlando last August as an apprehensive 20-year-old who’d only been out of the country once before—and for just 10 days at that.

Since then, I have been to five other countries, two of which I lived in for more than three months each; attained near-fluency in a second language and a usable knowledge of a third; traveled on everything from planes, taxis, and public buses to donkeys and camels; interacted with people from more cultures and walks of life than I can count; and seen firsthand that whatever our language, whatever our religion, whatever our income, we are all more similar than different. I may forget some details of my two semesters abroad—what I ate the first night at my Moroccan homestay, how many times I mixed up ser and estar while I was in Spain—but I will never forget this fundamental lesson. I hope my entries from abroad have inspired others to explore the world and discover this for themselves.

Photo 1: The wall of the old medina, Rabat
Photo 2: Ave. Mohammed V, the main street in central Rabat, which starts in the old medina (seen here)
Photo 3: Ave. Mohammed V in the new city. What you see is a broad, tree-lined side walk that runs between the two directions of traffic.
Photo 4: Al-Akhawayn University, Ifrane, where I went to interview students for my ISP. The city is completely different from the rest of Morocco.
Photo 5: The Oudaia gate of the Kasbah in Rabat

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