Morocco!

Hey everyone! Let me just start by saying that my trip to Africa was the best trip I have ever taken in my entire life!! It has truly changed my outlook on life and what I want to do with mine. Ok - now we will start the story telling and get to the life altering parts ;)

Thursday, Feb. 26
We stayed in a hostel in Algeciras, Spain (southern coast) on Wednesday night so we could catch the ferry to Morocco at 8 AM on Thursday. The wind ended up being so bad that day that all of the ferrys were cancelled and we ended up taking a slow boat which we were on for about 3 hours!! We got to Tangier very late, but when we arrived at the DARNA women's center, they were very excited to talk to us and show us around! DARNA in arabic means "our home" and it is a place where girls and women can go to learn different trades. It was a beautiful place with plenty of classrooms and sewing equipment and we ended up eating an amazing lunch there of chicken tagine and really good Moroccan desserts! At lunch we talked to a few Moroccan students who spoke very good English (which is not common in Morocco because the language of business is French). We talked about the U.S. and also about daily life in Morocco. It was very interesting to hear about their views on the U.S. They continued to stress that the American people are not viewed in the same way as our government, and that they had met so many nice Americans. After leaving the center, we drove to Asilah along the Atlantic Coast, and we stopped along the way to ride camels on a beach at sunset!! It was sooo fun and the workers were so nice to us! We then walked through the Medina (old town) of Asilah and learned about the different colors on the buildings. Blue is the color of Judiasm, and the town at one point had a large Jewish population so you will see a lot of blue in my pictures. Green is the color of Islam, so whenever we saw a Mosque, it would have a green door and a minaret (tower) that could be seen from a distance. We also went to the coast and took beautiful pictures, but we didn't stay for long because of our very late start. We then drove 3 hours to Rabat to meet our home stay families! 3 of us stayed with each family, and the minute we walked in the door we were being hugged and kissed and welcomed. We could not communicate at all because no one in our family spoke English except for the 14 year old daughter who spoke very little. We were offered tea and cookies, and met about 15 people that were in the family or just staying as visitors. Our 23 year old brother came home with a girl from Egypt and a guy from France that he had just met and were invited to stay at his house. They all spoke English, so it was easier to communicate with the family. The bathroom in the house had a turkish toilet (which is a hole in the ground) and the house had no hot water so we could not shower (I will tell you more about that later). Even though we were exhausted, we went for a walk with our brother and his guests to the river and saw a beautiful view of the city lit up at night. Dinner was served in one large round bowl and everyone sat around it and ate the portion nearest to them. Most of them ate with their hands, but we were given spoons. We had lamb and potatoes. Historically the left hand was used in the bathroom because they do not use toilet paper at all, so it is very rude to put your left hand anywhere near the table and it was really hard to remember that! It was such an interesting experience!

Friday, Feb. 27
We woke up early to eat breakfast which was big pita-like bread with jam and more tea. (We drank the traditional Moroccan hot tea for every meal.) Then we met at the Agricultural building of the university with a Moroccan professor to talk about "West and Islamic worlds - Images about each other." It was sooo interesting to hear from her about life in Morocco and again her views on the U.S. I think for the most part she tried to be politically correct, but I certainly learned a lot about Moroccan culture and how progressive it is! She talked to us about women wearing the veil and women's rights and about culture. None of the daughters in the family I was staying with wore the veil, and they were much less conservative than I was expecting. There was a wide variety of degrees of conservatism in the people I met, and I was not expecting that. After the visit with the professor, we went to Chellah or the Roman Ruins and they were absolutely gorgeous!! There were hundreds of storks nesting there which I thought was so cool for some reason! haha and along with the storks there was a fertility pool there where women were feeding hard boiled eggs to the eel in the pool to bring fertility and easy childbirth. A few of us threw eggs in so we can have babies some day ;) There were also TONS AND TONS of stray cats there along with everywhere in Morocco. It was very strange because they were not scared of people at all and they were just everywhere. After the ruins we went to see the most famous Mosque in Rabat and the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V where he and his two sons' tombs reside. I have a million pictures from there because it was so huge and cool. Then we went back to our homestays and ate lunch which was couscous! I really liked it, but I guess it expands in your stomach and I ate a lot! haha After lunch we met with some students in Rabat who studied English and we talked to them about their views about the U.S. Almost all of them were males and we asked one of them about stereotypes they had witnessed in Americans. He said he didn't like to listen to stereotypes and most of the Americans he had met were really nice...then he went on to tell us about how Americans are "closed" and how it is not a stereotype, it is a fact. At first, I was really offended, but as we talked about education systems and culture, I stepped back and looked our similarities and differences on a larger scale and compared our perspectives. I thought about that conversation a lot afterwards, and I think I am still going to continue to think about it as I meet new people and learn new things about them. The cultural exchange that I experienced on this trip seriously changed my outlook on life. I think it is so important to learn about other people and experience new things in their environment. The first-hand experience taught me so much. We went to a pool hall with the students and drank more tea and talked more about culture and language and interests we had. It was truly a learning experience. After we said goodbye to the students, we met in someone's homestay to talk to a peace corps volunteer and a fullbright scholar who was studying in Morocco. After everything that had happened so far, and the cultural awareness I was feeling, I was really able to connect with the peace corps volunteer, and I am now looking into joining the peace corps after I graduate. After the discussion and getting all of my questions answered about peace corps, we went to a public bath called a hammam, and on the way we stopped and saw a celebration for Mohammed's birthday. There was music and people dancing, and everyone looked genuinely moved and happy. =) They have hammams in Granada as well because of all of the moorish influence, and they are kind of like spas (Ryan and I are going to one when he visits!) but this was an actual bath for bathing purposes because most people do not have hot water in their houses in Morocco. This was also a very cultural experience! We had our skin exfoliated by a moroccan woman. (She literally exfoliated our entire bodies - I have never felt so clean! haha) We wore our bathing suits, but we were the only ones who did. At first, I felt really uncomfortable, but by the end I didn't even think about it. Thinking about our reactions to nudity showed an apparent cultural difference and how our perspectives are shaped and formed. After the hammam, I felt greatttt! And we went back to our homestays and ate dinner with our families. It was some kind of noodles with meatballs, but when we asked our mom what kind of meat it was, she started cooing like a pigeon and saying chicken, so I still don't know what kind of bird we were eating! haha After dinner, our sister gave us henna tatoos. She was soooo good at it, and she told us (the Egyptian girl was our translator) that she used to work at the royal palace as a henna artist! Our one year old sister or cousin or something was adorable, and of course she wanted henna too! So she drew a small design on her hands and 10 mintues later she was holding up her hands asking for more, and it was all over her face which will now be orange for a whole month! haha - This was another moment that I stepped back and saw that laughter and kids and art and family are all the same. We all have them and value them in our culture, and despite our differences, we have so many similarities.

Saturday, Feb. 28
We woke up early, had a quick breakfast, said goodbye to our families, and drove up to a village in the Rif Mountains. We were supposed to hike for 30 minutes to meet a family, but the rain made it almost impossible for us. It was so muddy! Little kids with no shoes or socks were running around with goats and chickens. Women were picking vegetables, men were bringing goods to the market to sell on donkeys, and groups of people were standing around talking. I felt like I was in another world. We were invited into another home which housed many families and 3 generations. We went inside and sat down in a kind of living room area where we were accompanied by three men. The translator that we had picked up on the way as well as our tour guide were outside, so we had no way of communicating with these people. All of a sudden one of the men (who was grinning at us the entire time) starts asking us if we speak French and saying any English words he knows, and before we know what is going on he is teaching us how to count to ten in Arabic. It was absolutley hilarious! We were all repeating him in unison, and then we taught him 1-10 in English. (There were 9 of us girls) It was a great icebreaker! haha Once the translator and tour guide came in, (The translator was a second cousin of the two brothers who owned the house and land and our tour guide was a 24 year old from Atlanta who is studying in Granada as well) we started talking about our time in Morocco and about their jobs and daily life in the village. They told us about farming and the funny guy told us about how his father was a musician and about being a soldier (he was retired). They all seemed genuinely happy with the simplicity of life and they all said they were happy to live in their village. We asked them about economic challenges and they told us that everyone helps everyone else out. We asked them about marriages and they talked about how a guy has to ask a girl's parents to talk to her, but parents will rarely force their daughter to see someone she does not want to date. We asked them about education and the translator told us about how hard it is to go to college even though it is free, it is almost impossible to pay for living expenses (because there is obviously no university in the mountains). He was the first person in the family to get his degree and he was extremely intelligent. We talked to him about his masters thesis which was on the U.S. war on terror and about peace corps and other organizations. He was not for peace corps or any organization that has someone telling you what to do, so it was good to hear both sides of the spectrum even though I still think it is an absolutley amazing organization. We ate couscous and sandwhiches for lunch which were delicious, and we ended up talking to the family for 3 hours! Our tour guide told us it was the longest and most successful talk he had ever had because they usually last 45 min to an hour before people run out of things to say. The family was soo nice and welcoming and they even asked us to stay with them. The hospitality that I experienced throughout the whole trip was like nothing else I have ever seen or experienced. After saying goodbye to the family, we drove to Chefchaouen which was absolutely GORGEOUS! It was a very touristy area and many people spoke Spanish and English as well as Arabic. We went to our hostel and then went souvenir shopping before going to a nice dinner where I had a chicken shishkebab which was awesome and very different from the kebabs we have in granada! After dinner, we went back to our hostel and had a reflection time where we shared our favorite experiences and talked about where to go from here and what we can do to make a difference. We talked about not getting offended by the things people say to us about the U.S. and looking at things from different perspectives. One of the girls said something that I really liked and kept with me. She said something along the lines of, "We can't expect to get answers right now, or today or even tomorrow. We have to just swallow it and think about it and come back to it as life hands us new experiences." I totally agree with her, and I now know how much more there is to do and see and experience before settling down in the U.S.

Sunday, Feb. 29
In the morning we were supposed to go on a hike to see a view of the city, but it was pouring when we woke up so we just walked to the van and started driving to Ceuta which is an autonomous city of Spain located on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar which seperates it from Spain. It was really pretty and we had to cross the border on foot here in order to take the ferry back to Algeciras. We talked a little bit about immigration and compared it to the U.S. The disparity in income is the greatest in the world at the Spanish-Moroccan border. Many people die trying to get to Europe on rafts or boats. Every minute of this trip was eye-opening for me. I learned so much about another culture who already knew so much about mine. It truly amazes me how little I know about the rest of the world but how much the rest of the world knows about me. I feel like I have so much to learn, and there are so many ways that I can help people and make a difference, and this trip made that such a reality.