Oh, Morocco

     A friend told me once that it doesn’t matter where you are, it is the people you’re with who define your experience.  I think this has certainly been the case in Morocco.  While we all know that there are bad apples and good apples everywhere, I have been pretty blessed to have the opportunity to meet some of Morocco’s best apples.  When strangers halfway across the world make one feel at home it certainly inspires some sort of renewed confidence in humanity.  While they would say that they didn’t do anything extraordinary, I would say their kindness and hospitality have made all the difference in the world to me.  If I ever have a home (chances of that are looking pretty grim), I hope I can pay it forward.  

When I leave Morocco tomorrow I will have been here for 8 days.  When I arrived, seeing as though my phone doesn’t work, a nice young gentleman who sat next to me on the plane offered me his phone to call my friend who was picking me up.  When we arrived it was off to Casablanca.  I spent the weekend with three Moroccan tennis players--two of them brothers.  They all went to Lindenwood.  They were quite the entertaining bunch, and though I had never met them in person before, hanging out with them was effortless.  They reminded me of swarthier versions of my brother, Harley, which is a good thing most of the time--big goofballs who like to make fun of people.  We spent a couple nights at a resort in Marrakech, where they took me to a couple of really nice night spots.  Marrakech is the Vegas of Morocco, as Karim described it.  We went to a place called So, which was a swanky lounge/hotel thing with hookas and outdoor couches--I felt like I was in Ocean’s 12 for some reason.  There was a Canadian band who sang all the best American music--Eminem and Rihanna, Michael Jackson, etc.  I got to see some Moroccan dancing, which I didn’t wholeheartedly participate in mostly because my dress was really short and I was afraid of having a Tara Reid-esque moment in a conservative Muslim country.

Karim knew someone who had the hook up in the area, so we hopped around to a couple other spots so I could see what else Moroccan nightlife had to offer.  The clubs looked super fun and one of them looked like a legit palace.  Pretty different from Fat Moe’s in Paducah.  I had a chocolatini that was amazing.  Surprisingly just one.

After heading back to Casablanca and watching Real Madrid get tore up by Levante, we went to the brothers’ parents’ house in Casablanca for dinner.  I ate some sort of traditional meal of beef with a delicious red sauce on it.  Their dad was a hoot.  He informed me that Morocco was the first country to formally recognize the U.S. as an independent state.  A fact that I didn’t know prior to coming here.  So our ties go way back.  The brothers’ dad told me all about how he studied to be an oral surgeon (I think that’s what he said--meaning may have gotten lost in translation) in Germany, and he wants to go to the States, but he needs to improve his English.  He was absolutely charming--showing me pictures of his dad who was an Imam in Paris during the occupation of WWII.  Evidently he sheltered Jews in the Mosque there.  Pretty interesting stories.  

On Monday we headed to Karim’s family’s house in Meknes.  Again, the house seemed palatial to me.  Huge carpets and 10 foot wide hallways.  It was quite comfortable.  At dinner (or afternoon tea maybe? I can’t tell which is which since I’m used to eating dinner at 5 and they don’t eat dinner until 9:30 or something) I mentioned wanting a silver teapot I had seen in the square in Marrakech and Karim’s mom gave me one of hers as a gift.  I am in love with it.  It is beautiful and is my favorite thing I have acquired on my trip thus far.  At dinner we had some turkey dish with cheese in the middle.  YUM.  And just as an interesting side note, they eat fries with everything here.  It’s like in Puerto Rico when you order Chinese food and get fries as a side every time.  I guess they co opted french fries, which I said is an American specialty---co opting, not french fries.  Karim’s brothers are quite the gentlemen.  I told his mom she was brave living with 5 males, but she said she enjoyed being the only female because she has prestige.  Smart lady.  

In Meknes I was up to my eyeballs in existential angst trying to decide what to do with my life.  My quarter life crisis is kicking hard core right now.  There is a TEFL class in Marrakech the month of October, and I was signed up and ready to go, but I couldn’t really decide.  It would mean I have the proper certification to teach English, but it doesn’t guarantee a job.  So the question is, do I take the course, drop 2,000 USD to maybe get a job afterward?  Or do I keep traveling, keep applying to jobs and hoping something comes up?  Applying to jobs online seems like a pretty colossal waste of time since the unfortunate truth is that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  This I learned from my esteemed colleagues at the prestigious PNC Bank.  I decided not to take the course.  Basically I will be broke if I take the course, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a job.  So while I would love to take it, I don’t have 2,000 dollars worth of desire.  So I am back to just traveling...tomorrow to Madrid, then Barcelona, then Prague, Budapest, etc...

I am seriously considering doing an MATESOL now.  Which is just plain annoying, since I considered this 2 years ago when I finished undergrad, but I wasn’t 100% sure that I wanted to teach English, so I didn’t do it.  Nowadays English is the only consistent interest in my life, which is saying something because I change my mind 800 times a day about everything else.  To me, a nice recreational session diagramming sentences or reading poetry is fulfilling.  Mildly lame, but hey, to each his own.  So now I have to commit to some sort of plan...applying to schools again, staying in Europe a while longer, going home, getting a job in the mean time, bleh, who knows.  We all know what happens when I try to make plans.  They literally NEVER work out.  That’s why I’m so indecisive I think.  Because I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a plan through to fruition. I just wing it. So I’m gun shy about committing to something. I’m short term goal oriented.  Like China and their five year plans.  Once my short term plan is up (or falls through, which is more often the case) I’m stuck thinking, oh hell, what now? UofL, changing majors 7 times, changing my career goals, relationships, law school, moving cities, grad school...all of these impulsive decisions I make that don’t really follow any overarching theme.  It’s as though I’m playing a high stakes connect-the-dots game and just hoping I like the picture it makes at the end.  

Even though I wish I could be one of these people who says at 18, “I want to be a lawyer” and then they major in Poli Sci and marry their college boyfriend, go to law school and practice law for their remaining days, and have their stuff together, a major part of me is completely bored by that.  When I Freud myself I think that maybe I purposefully act flighty and impulsive out of some deep seated urge for romanticism and fantastical awesomeness in my life. Again, I blame movies and novels for this.  Namely, Casablanca and Pride and Prejudice.    

Okay, I’m done. I really need to get out of my head.  Tomorrow I go to Spain to see Cathy, an old friend I met Puerto Rico.  Perhaps this will bring a fresh dose of perspective.  

I feel as though the true essence of my Morocco experience would be missed if I didn’t share this quick little anecdote.  One day I was eating in a cafe in Marrakech and I met a young gentlemen who was very, very pretty.  We struck up a conversation and he seemed very nice and well put together.  Turns out he plays soccer here in Morocco for the second tier or something like that.  He did play in France but ended up coming back to Morocco for whatever reason.  We sat and chatted over a couple beers for a while, speaking some awkward combination of English, Spanish, and French.  He said he was going for “musculation” which I took to mean working out, and then we would meet up to watch Real Madrid suck and Barcelona tie.  

We went to a cafe where I was the only white person and the only female, but no one seemed to really notice as they were concentrating on the game.  The guy, we’ll call him Pete, proceeds to pull out a little Moroccan Surfboard (aka pressed hash) and smoke it.  Everyone around me was smoking it. In broad daylight outside at a cafe.  I was like, oh my god, great! This is super fun! 

After the game we decided to take a walk.  By this time his eyes had glazed over and he completely stopped talking, which was not really a problem for me.  We went to McDonald’s--awesome right? I can’t escape it--where he ate 4 chicken sandwiches and I sat on my computer in silence chatting with friends and writing.  On the walk home it got weird.  I guess he was over his silent phase because he started talking about how beautiful I am, my eyes are dangerous, he can’t read me because I hide my feelings behind my eyes, blah blah blah...he said he liked me sooo much because he is happy around me, blah blah, so I told him I wasn’t feelin’ it.  He should just not try to get at me.  At this point he says he doesn’t understand why I don’t feel the same way and he starts singing to me at the top of his lungs in Arabic in the middle of the street.  People were staring and driving by on scooters honking and pointing. Not a great moment for me.  I started booking it back toward the square because this dude is obviously crazier than a betsy bug.  It figures, right? An attractive, polyglot soccer player who is interested in me, and whaddya know--bat shit crazy.  Anyway, he caught up with me, I told him I was tired and wanted to go home, so I agreed to meet him the next day when he got off work.  Of course I didn’t show up. I have avoided that area like the plague ever since.  So that was quite the night. Lesson learned--hopefully.       

   Just a couple general observations in Morocco:

Among the population here that doesn’t appear to be very ethnically or racially diverse, there is a wide variety of styles.  There are women here who dress like a typical American or European, those who wear a veil and skinny jeans, some who wear a veil and the more traditional long sleeved colorful dress thing, and there are those who are completely covered, with a mesh thing over their eyes and their hands completely covered.  It was an interesting moment when I sat on a bus next to a woman covered head to toe, including her eyes, in black.  I was chillin in a floral tube dress (it’s hot here) and next to her I was painfully aware of my hair and my skin and my tattoos and my makeup. I felt vain and arrogant for some reason, and at the same time it was like a nice little moment of female camaraderie--that we could both peacefully coexist, sitting next to each other, with vastly different beliefs (I assume we have different beliefs--I guess I didn’t really ask her what she believes). I smiled at her and I’m choosing to believe she smiled back. 

This picture is disgusting.  I was not a happy camper at first.

Brittany, Karim

My new teapot!

I accidentally ordered entirely too much food. 

Another observation--when I was walking around with the boys I was not really bothered.  However, when I am by myself it’s like shark bait.  I got a henna tattoo completely against my will after some lady just walked up and grabbed my arm and did it without asking.  She then immediately demanded 250 dirhams, and I complied because I didn’t have the remaining life force necessary to argue with her.  Walking down the street men and little boys are constantly shouting rude things to me.  One kid threw rocks and a soccer ball at my head.  Mean little ankle biters.