I am outside of the Arab World now and reporting to you from Bob's Youth Hostel in Amsterdam. There have certainly been numerous moments of what my traveling partner Zak and I have been referring to as "reverse culture shock." For example, while walking down the street past restaurants here, the proprietors do not to try to physically drag me into their stores. It seems as though they don't even want my business. This is similar to way all business transactions are conducted in this country. Product? Money? Done. No conversation, no tea, no hours of a day passing by. I almost feel used. It was all about the money for you? For shame.

It has been interesting for me to see how the cultural norms communities can differ in subtle ways. Here in Amsterdam, there is no problem with me picking up a Walk 2 Wok (EXCELLENT Chinese food) take-away box and picking at it as I walk down the street. In Morocco, public eating was a fairly serious no-no. I once had multiple people move away from me because I took a bag of potato chips to a film festival. It seems that since the act of eating is so social in Morocco, to walk around with food, implicitly refusing to share it, was a borderline taboo act. Just an example, chosen among many.

So what great revelations have I come to during my time abroad? I don't want to overstate an ecstatic rebirth as a world traveler. No, I do not plan on dropping out of Haverford, buying a Gore-Tex hat, and wandering from hostel to hostel like some of the people I have run across. Still, though, I am glad that I went abroad and still more glad that I went to Morocco and not to Europe. If for no other reason, the Euro is absolutely KILLING us. The Canadians have a more powerful dollar that we do. The CANADIANS. But besides the obvious monetary advantages to coming to the Arab World, it was still (albeit moderate and as Western as possible) still the Arab World. And I'm glad I had the opportunity to see for myself what that label entailed. But I've learned that I certainly enjoy a change of pace and a new scene, I will be happy to come back to the good ole USA. While the deprival of creature comforts may be an illuminating experience, I certainly miss some of those creature comforts. I plan to continue, retroactively, my Moroccan Thoughts section once I am safely ensconced in my room in Portland. While they won't have the "hot from the presses" freshness of my previous dispatches, hopefully the process will keep the journalistic impulse alive a little while longer.

So, starting this evening, my travel plans are thus:

18:25 train from Amsterdam to Paris
Spend the night in Charles de Gaulle Airport WHERE
I'll catch a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt
Thence an 11 hour flight to San Francisco
Thence an hour and a half flight to Portland, OR
Local time: 8:01pm

And I'll be home. It will be a transition, to be sure. Anyone reading this in Portland? Drop me a line and I'll be sure to catch up. We can swap a few stories, perhaps.

Moroccan Thoughts Contd.

I've decided to make an effort to record some of the day to day things that I see around here. In addition to providing a justification to continue procrastinating, hopefully these little notes will allow me to remember what life was like here after I return. I also recently learned that one of my classmates has produced two hundred pages of journaling since the beginning of the semester. One should never underestimate envy and pride as motivating factors. Maybe if I start with a record of the mundane.

• The King. Morocco is one of the last monarchies in existence where the king wields actual (and ultimate) power. Its very interesting to notice how life is just a little bit different under a benevolent authoritarianism. Portraits of the king beam down from billboards along the side of the road and from frames adorning the walls of most shops and restaurants. The exceptionally politically aware will know that Morocco held a series of elections a few months ago. The even more aware will know that the voter turnout rate was extremely low. This is owing to the fact that the elected representatives are little more than advisors to the king. Sometimes they also serve as scapegoats. I don't know very much about Moroccan politics, but the king is very revered by everyone I have spoken to. He's seen as a father figure of sorts, and everyone counts on his good intentions. Needless to say, the shift from the American political sphere was abrupt.
  
• So how is it living under the thumb of a ruthless totalitarian? Well, there are police men and soldiers stationed at the city limits of every town. Sometimes they ask where you're going and why, but not often. Moroccan students call the soldiers "green men" and think of them as trees placed there by the government. They do very little, but their presence is a constant reminder of the government's authority and commitment to order. It's really interesting learning about the Algerian civil war and realizing how the fear of something like that (probably) affects a lot of Moroccan policy. Its why democracy is seen as an ideal to work towards, but one whose implementation could go very nastily. It's also interesting how systems of political control here are much more visible but less pervasive. Police are there, but they don't do much. They don't record your car's license plate number and store it in a database, like EZ-Pass. Just a thought.
• Most of the girls here do not wear a head scarf, although I would say about ten percent of the students and all of the female staff do. The dorms are gender segregated. As a consequence of this rule, Shakespearean balcony scenes are commonplace. Even as the temperature continues its plunge.
  
• The nighttime sky here is far far darker than any back home. I'm talking ink-black. We're several thousand feet above sea level, and there is very little light pollution (I've always thought that was a strange term) outside of little Ifrane.
  
• Terms of greeting are very interesting to me. Howzit going? What's up? In Morocco one may say the formal "Peace be with you" or "Lebbas?" (no harm?) or "Everything good?" For the last one, the response is "El-hamd'ullah" or "Thanks be to God." The problem with gaining proficiency in greetings is that the cab driver or sandwich maker often makes the mistake of assuming that I know how to say anything else in Arabic. I don't really. But you never know how things could turn out.
  

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been to the Desert. After three abortive attempts to make my way to the Sahara, I finally found a group that didn't dissolve at the last minute. It was quite an experience.

We took off from school around 8pm on Friday. As a group of ten, we still only needed two Cold War-era Grand Taxis to get to Meknes. Grand Taxis provide an incredibly useful, if oftentimes terrifying, mode of transportation around the country. A significant Moroccan Thoughts entry will someday be devoted to the institution of Grand Taxis. So we arrive in Meknes and buy tickets for a seven hour bus ride that will take us to Erfoud, one of the last towns of any respectable size before the desert. I passed a surprisingly restful bus ride and awoke in Erfoud where a man offered to take us all to the Desert. We waited while he served us tea in an outdoor cafe and scrambled about to make the necessary arrangements. This was just as the sun was beginning to rise and people of Erfoud were beginning their day.

After about forty-five minutes of huddling over our cups of tea in the cold desert air, two grand taxis arrived to whisk us away to Merzouga, the last town before the desert swallows pretty much everything up. The ride there as the sun was rising was beautiful, but not for the usual reasons. Never in my life have I seen such flat flat country. Imagine driving through Nebraska but, instead of fields of wheat or corn flanking the road, there were only rocks. But then suddenly you see this giant sand dune in the distance, with patches of green at the base, indicating a small village and the oasis that enables it.

Upon disembarkment, we (there were ten of us, by the way) engaged in an hour and a half haggle-session over the price of being lead into the desert on camels, where we would spend a night. Having been ripped off on all sorts of goods and services before, we took our time and made sure to get price estimates from various auberges. 500 dirhams? Seriously? After a few pots of tea and several accusations of my being a Berber (cheap?), we got him down to 300.

While Hassan's assistant prepared the camels, he took us to the oasis that was the reason for the town's existence. I must admit, it was pretty crazy walking from desert to badlands into a lush oasis. Having seen this it makes a lot of sense that nomads would conceive of paradise as an oasis or a garden. The disparity between the hot, dry, sandy desert and the green, lush, shady oasis couldn't have been more pronounced. Small canals carried water all through the oasis, with patches of land growing trees and peppers and fodder for the camels. Adults planted and watered discreet patches of earth while little kids ran to and fro with buckets of water, doing chores for their respective families.

We weren't in Merzouga for more than a few moments before we had seen all there was to see. It's a desolate place. There's a picture of a typical dusty Merzougan street on the photo album. The buildings all appeared to be made of mud brick and there weren't very many people outside. It struck me as a very lonely place, but I'm sure people get used to it.

After a meal and some music in the hotel, we were introduced to the camels that would carry us into the desert. The procedure for mounting and riding a camel is very different from that of a horse. Firstly, you get on a camel when it's sitting on the ground and its legs are folded underneath it. Then, the great beast stands up, back legs first. This leaves you dangling precariously for a moment, looking straight down at the back of your new friend's head. Then the front half raises itself and you're struck by how high in the air you are. Then the camel starts walking. They lack the skittishness that plagues many horses, but their gait is pretty crazy. There's a lot more back and forth than up and down movement. It seemed so unnatural to me that it felt like I was riding some kind of mechanical walker. That is, until the thing swiveled it's serpent-like neck 180 degrees and looked at me. THAT was an unnerving experience.

Our two Berber guides (each of whom spoke a little bit of every language on God's green Earth) led our little caravan into the desert. We kept looking back until eventually the town of Merzouga was slid behind a sand dune and out of sight. And then it became very quiet. It was the kind of deep silence that I had read about people finding in the desert. Sometimes a camel would make some bizarre sound and sometimes the wind would pick up a little bit, but by and large the desert is a very quiet place.

After a few hours spent traveling and becoming increasingly uncomfortable on our unfamiliar steeds, we stopped at some tents set up in a dell (I guess would be the word) between two huge sand dunes. As our guides tended to the camels, a group of us started climbing the tallest dune we could find. I won't waste too much space trying to describe the view. Needless to say, it was an absolutely incredible sight. It's so strange how the dunes move in the wind. Little bit by little bit. When we were perched on the crest of one, we could feel the stinging of an endless stream of sand blowing up against a static wave. As though an ocean wave took years and years to reach the shore.

Oh, and our trusty Berbers happened to bring a beat-up old snowboard for what they called "Ski Berber." I got a few runs in, enough to satisfy my curiosity. Of course, however, the fun of sailing down a sand dune was mitigated by the knowledge that I would have to trudge every step back up it. Despite the cold, it looks like I'll be sticking to the snow.

We spent a bitterly cold desert night in our tents, arising to watch the sunrise. Again, my words will fall pitifully short in describing what it was like to watch the sun slowly creep over a vast ocean of dunes. So I won't try. Maybe the most fun part of being in the Sahara (at least for a history nerd like me) was imagining what life was like living in such a place. How that would change how you acted and interacted with people (tribal hospitality as a prerequisite for survival) and how you thought about the world and your place in it. Food for thought that I enjoyed while looking out over a limitless expanse of sand.

http://haverford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012854&l=f04ad&id=7501428

It has been pointed out to me that this blog "needs some love." In an effort to keep my public happy and avoid another moment-by-moment retelling of some trip, I am including what I call "Moroccan Thoughts." I've been walking around with a notebook in my pocket filled with Arabic vocabulary and that same notebook has served as a place to jot down notes about interesting things that I see before I have a chance to forget. So, without further ado:

• This weekend I spent the better part of a Saturday hanging out in an apartment some of us rent off campus. Both Moroccan and American students were there. A guy named Ibrahim taught me the darija (Moroccan dialect of Arabic) phrase, “Do you think I’m stupid?” It’s idiomatic slang and should convince overzealous shopkeepers that I have SOME idea of what I should be paying for a wool hat or a taxi ride. Here’s hoping.

• That same weekend, a student named Yassin told me the story of why humans have differently colored skin. As he carefully explained to me, there is a story of how God put all of humanity in the oven to let us bake to life. Some people came out sooner, and some later, thus darkening their skin more. “So,” he went on, “Blacks from Africa stayed in the longest, and Arabs somewhere in the middle, and then, well . . .” His voice trailed off because the conclusion was obvious. The story-telling had been triggered by the sight of my pallor, sunning myself on the balcony.

• One interesting thing about Moroccan culture that I have observed almost every time I’ve entered a medina is a good old-fashioned shouting match. Here’s how it works: You’re walking through a narrow street with merchants on either side peddling their wares. All of a sudden, you’ll hear a commotion from around some a corner, turn it and see a crowd eying a pair of men whose voices are rapidly escalating in volume. The fight’s catalyst is impossible to determine, but money or a faulty weighing device is usually the culprit. The two men are now really into each other’s faces, gesticulating wildly and looking skyward, imploring the Almighty for justice. Just because they are nose-to-nose, though, doesn’t mean that a fight is about to break out. People here can hold this pose (while yelling at the top of their lungs) for an impressive amount of time. In the States, it would seem, someone would have backed down or thrown a punch long ago. Different ways of resolving conflict, I guess.

I forgot the pictures. You know the drill.

The other weekend I took a day trip to Fez. How did I get there? Shameless parasitism.

There is a group of students here from Wooster Polytechnical Institute. They're only here for another two weeks, but they come equipped with a faculty adviser and a group travel schedule for the weekends. Hanging out with two WPI kids on a Friday night, I heard a rumor of empty seats on a van going to Fez the next morning and inquired whether I might play stowaway. Victor told me that he would ask the prof if it would be okay. He seemed optimistic so the next morning I found myself sitting in a rapidly-filling van, wondering if I was usurping someone's seat. Eventually, though, the resident professor (with the interesting nickname "Bland") arrived on the scene and said "Well, it looks like we've got another" in a rather jolly tone. And I was on board.

Traveling with a group and tour guide and everything had its perks. This guy talked to shopkeepers in the medina on our behalf and got prices lowered. It's always nice to have a local in your corner, even if he was probably getting a cut from the places he took us to. They showed us what can only be described as a ceramics complex, a series of buildings where they made all things pottery related. There was one man there who worked with a large slab of clay on a foot powered wheel. He would fashion a bowl out of a section of this giant block of clay, cut it off, and do it again. He repeated this process every forty seconds or so. Quite impressive.

From there we toured the medina, or old walled section of the city. Picture any movie set in the Middle East. The medina is sort of like the prototypical bazaar. The streets are very narrow, windy and steep. Shops of all kinds line the road, crammed with all sorts of food and merchandise. The medina in Fez is well known for being especially big and especially old. Throughout the day, we saw the tannery, a weavers, a shrine for the long-dead patron of Fez, a madrassa, and a synagogue in the Jewish quarter. All in all a good time. Although, owing to it being Ramadan, it would have been imprudent to have a bottle of water with me on this long, hot day. More on Ramadan later.

Last night, I personally reenacted the first half hour of The Mighty Ducks, The Little Giants, and The Big Green.

A little after dinner, some Moroccan kids approached me and a friend named Victor and asked if we would like to play in a pick up soccer game. I had heard rumors of some informal games being played during Ramadan (more on this particular holiday later), and it sounded like fun. I mean, neither I nor Victor had played soccer since we were about ten. I remember that at that time Chris Woods and a few others tried out for the Classic team and started traveling long distances to games. Me, I still preferred my Saturday morning cartoons. But still, an informal soccer game would be a good opportunity to rub shoulders with the locals and get a little exercise, right? Kind of.

At 10:00pm, Victor and I walked into a converted basketball court in the gymnasium and our jaws collectively dropped. The stands were packed. If I had to ball park a figure, I'd say there were about as many people there watching the games as during a better-than-averagely attended Haverford Mens Basketball game. And they were rowdy, too. But then my attention turned to the game being played out before ours. The quality of the game was certainly several notches above anything I've seen in the states. And it's not like it was the varsity team, either. From my perspective, it felt like I had been invited to a basketball game in Chicago, only to find myself thrust onto the boards for a match between St. Joseph and Loyola Academy. It was like I had handed a Moroccan a lacrosse stick, given him a half hour of instruction, and sent him into a game. Disconcerting, to say the least. Then we noticed another team warming up: our opponents.

And this is where I had my first flashback to the aforementioned underdog movies. Remember when the Mighty Ducks first step on the ice and see the Hawks skating lines and taking shooting drills on the goal? It was worse than that. These guys had matching jerseys, ran choreographed drills, and - the icing on the cake - had a team picture before the game started. Having gotten a good look at the opposition, I turned to look at the team we were fielding. There were five Americans (bad), none with recent soccer experience (worse), and most of whom had the same wild-eyed look that I'm sure I was sporting (worst). The Moroccan captain seemed on the verge of tears before the game even began. And it didn't get any better.

I will say this for myself, I had a lot of fun. And I credit myself with using hustle and scrappiness pretty valiantly in the face of overwhelming technical superiority. The vocal crowd made things really interesting. They cheered for every 50/50 ball and everything. I'd like to thing they were rooting for the team of misfits and underdogs, but who knows. As far as the score, some things are better left unsaid. But, we held them to single digits, and that's something that should be recognized. Small victories, right?