Out of Africa

I left Morocco on May 15 and spent the following two weeks traveling around Europe. It was great to do some more sightseeing and cultural adjusting before I returned home. It goes without saying that living in Morocco was such a vastly different experience from any I'd ever had before, and it gave me a new perspective and taught me about myself. The experience also set me up for amusing and embarrassing moments of culture shock. In Paris, I heard a protest chant and initially thought it was the call-to-prayer. I visited Starbucks for the first time in 4 months and my friend had to stop me from reaching into the garbage to retrieve a fallen coffee lid. I had to get used to tipping again, to being able to wear semi-revealing clothing, and to seeing so many white people. I think I annoyed my travel companions with my awestruck exclamations about everything from traffic lights to women walking alone.

Delta security was highly concerned about me on my flight from Prague to New York. After they learned I had spent 4 months in Morocco, they unpacked and x-rayed every single item in all of my bags (several times). There is a common Moroccan souvenir that especially worried them: it is a wood box that has a key hidden inside. You can't get the key out without performing a long series of complicated maneuvers on the box. Moroccans call it the "magic box", but airport authorities were not amused by this sealed box that contained unidentified metal.

I don't really know how to wrap up my Moroccan experience here; I am still reflecting on my experiences and learning from them. And I don't want to sound trite, but this was one of the best experiences I've ever had. It was so challenging at times--I was often frustrated, confused, and scared. But I discovered that it is in those moments that you learn the most. The lasting learning you get doesn't come from listening to a lecture on a comfortable chair in a warm classroom. I already know that my lasting learning is coming from the struggle to converse with my Moroccan host sister, from having to look down and walk quickly whenever a man passed me, from getting in arguments with Moroccan waiters and landlords, from living off of only bread and tea for a week, and other such moments. In some ways, I've started to learn from this experience how to travel and how to live.

When I compare one of my first memories of Morocco to the way I was living at the end of the program, I realize that it is eventually possible to be at home anywhere. During the first, nerve-wracking weekend with my host family, my host mother told me I should leave the house. I hadn't made any plans with friends yet and I had never walked around Rabat without the group, so I was terrified walking the unfamiliar streets by myself. I remember at one point, I was so lost and everything was so foreign--I was lost on a new continent in a whirlwind of new smells, sounds, and sights. I couldn't stay still or I would get harassed, but I couldn't keep walking because I didn't know where I was going. I couldn't go home because my host mom told me to get out of the house. I just burst into tears and ended up making a very expensive phone call home. But by the end of my program, I knew Rabat so well that I was possessive of it. What were these tourists doing here in my city?! It's amazing how we can adjust to anything.

I made great friends on this program, and we became close not only because you're never by yourself in Morocco, but also because we went through challenging experiences together. Being stuck on a bus full of flies and rotting meat on a flooded road can unite people like nothing else!

I have so much to say about Morocco and my experiences there, so talk to me in person about it sometime. I'm hoping to go back in the next few years, insha'Allah!

Until then, as-salamu alaykum (may peace be upon you).