Submitted by Taylor Lawrence on the 2016 winter session program in Morocco sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures…
This Monday was a national holiday here, Moroccan Independence Day! Very much unlike America there were no fireworks or a special meal or gathering of extended family, at least not in our host family; but most people did enjoy a day off work and/or school. But not the UD students! We went to the very empty American School in Tangier and enjoyed a day of class occupying only two classrooms in the whole campus.
However, my Arabic class and professor decided to go enjoy lunch and a walk around the old city in Tangier after class time. This is where things got a like wonky. My classmates and I got ripped of on the taxi ride there, the taxi ride back and our lunch. The waiter at the restaurant blatantly ignored our orders and brought us too much food and then demanded we pay way over what the food would have cost. Afterwards, we alerted the police and they basically laughed at us. So this was a bit of a shocked and reminded us how vulnerable we are here as non-natives.
Aside from that, we did enjoy large amounts of fruit from the local market that was not expensive at all in comparison to prices in Delaware—one kilo (around 2 pounds) of strawberries was roughly one American dollar, which is staggering. It’s the same for all the produce and even the meat here! But when I went to buy a can of Pringles it was 20 dirhams, which is roughly two American dollars; so clearly the freshest food is the cheapest and the processed food is the most expensive, which is obviously not the case in America. I could get used to this low grocery-shopping bill!
On the topic of shopping, I touch upon a topic I know a lot of people are interested in: gender roles. Yes, there are prescribed gender roles here that are more prominent than in the US: women usually stay at home and do the grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning; and the men go out and work. While this is the case in many families, many families enjoy more modernized gender roles where both parents work, and, as I learned the other day in a lecture: women’s rights are on the rise in Morocco, which is very exciting. In my host family, yes, my host mom is a stay at home mom who does all the housework and cooking and such, and my host father is a professor. But all my host sisters, ranging in age from eleven to twenty-three years old, go to school. My oldest host sister is a law student living away from her husband in order to continue her studies and get her licensing.
On the subject of marriage, my oldest host sister and my host mom only cover their heads when they leave the house because they are married. My younger host sisters choose not to cover their heads. When in the streets of Tangier and most other Moroccan cities we have visited so far, you will see covered girls and uncovered girls walking down the street arm in arm. With the newer generations, covering is a choice, which many people don’t understand.
This week, my group had the opportunity to visit a couple different religious sites around Tangier, which is already such a diverse city. We visited an ancient Roman burial site overlooking the Mediterranean; then we visited a French synagogue in the old city; and we were able to glimpse inside a couple different mosques. I say glimpse because as foreigner non-Muslims, we aren’t allowed inside mosques in Morocco. Most people would be offended, but, personally, I don’t mind. This law restricting non-Muslims from entering a mosque exists from the days of French occupation. I strongly believe that if it were up to the people running the mosques, they would be more than happy to allow non-Muslims in to see their place of worship because Morocco has been such a religiously and socially inclusive place throughout its history.
My group recently met with a group of Moroccan high school students studying at the school where we have our classes, The American School in Tangier. These kids are taught only in English and learn formal Arabic as a foreign language. The students we met with were so well spoken on many different political and social issues facing their country and the world. Honestly, some of the problems they asked our opinions on, I had no clue what they were talking about! And upon meeting other students around town that are also very well spoken on current events, its made me realize that, though education here is low and illiteracy is high, there is not as much ignorance (or obliviousness?) as there is in the U.S. because people do live hard lives here. That is not to say that some people in the U.S. do not have hard lives, but for the majority, myself included, we have the luxury of ignorance that we all take for granted.
