AdventuresintheMaghreb

Today is my first rainy day in Morocco!  I’m sitting near an open window, listening to the rain splattering cozily down onto the street below.  I was beginning to believe that rain didn’t exist here, so I’m glad to be proven wrong.

I’ve started keeping a journal of my days here, just a couple words that will help me remember everything that’s happened, or else everything passes so rapidly that I’m afraid I’ll forget all of the wonderful things I’m doing.

Top of my list is that I met my language partner this week.  We had the option of being paired with a Moroccan student who is studying English, with the idea that you meet frequently with them to practice speaking English on their end and Arabic on ours.  My language partner, Chahrazad, is seventeen and is applying to universities in the U.S.!  She’s been studying English for five years, so her English is much better than my Arabic.  This is really helpful because I can say an idiomatic English expression and she can give me the equivalent, both in classical and in Moroccan Arabic.

I’ve definitely had to reevaluate my perceptions of language a few times since I’ve been here, and I’m sure that will continue.  What I’ve been studying, Modern Standard Arabic or fus-haa, is the Arabic that’s spoken on official news stations, at diplomatic conferences, and among educated people who speak different dialects.  But there are a lot of people in Morocco who don’t speak any classical Arabic at all!  Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, truly is a completely different language, with different verb structures, different vocabulary for what seems like almost everything, and no written form.  So the challenge that I confront every day is basically trying to learn two different languages simultaneously, one from the ground up, the other that I only have basic conversational skills in, with the added bonus of speaking French a large part of the time!  My conversations meander from language to language, and somehow get my point across, but I worry about how much my language skills can actually improve if I have to divide my attention so much.  I’d like to learn darija, the Moroccan Arabic, because it’s what my family speaks to each other and what everyone on the street uses to communicate, but it seems a pretty daunting task at the moment!

I am very grateful that I speak such good French though, because I’m realizing that it opens doors here that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise.  For example, Chahrazad and I went yesterday to a retirement home in Rabat where she volunteers.  She and some friends organized a mini-party for the people there, with juice and cakes out in the garden and old Edith Piaf tunes crooning in the corner.  The retirees were all of French origin, who had either been born in Morocco while it was still under French rule, or married Moroccans and moved here from France.  It was a bit surreal to be in a place where Westerners predominated, because I’m so used to being the only one on the street!  It also made me very glad that my experience here is so down-to-earth, because I can see how easy it would be to get sucked into the expatriate circle, speak only French, drive around in an air-conditioned car, and basically forget that you live in Morocco.  That being said, I really enjoyed speaking with the people who live there.  One gentleman had lived for a time in Australia as a cattle rancher, and was keen to revive his English skills, so we talked for about a half hour.  The one awkward moment came when he asked me my opinion of President Obama, and I answered enthusiastically.  He responded that he was “un peu raciste,” and started talking about his opinions of race relations in Morocco, which is an interesting topic, given the complexity of the society, but not a conversation that I particularly enjoyed, given that I had to bite my tongue the whole time!

I also spent time out in the garden with the Moroccan students, two ladies who were significantly more lucid than the others, as well as a young Moroccan architect in his twenties who was visiting one of the ladies, his mother.  We had heated conversations about whether Morocco is a closed or open society, with the younger Moroccan students, who are educated, Westernized, and activist, arguing passionately for their country, and the architect arguing that the circles that they move in don’t represent the real Morocco.  I was fascinated, and thankful that I could follow the mix of rapid-fire French-Arabic well enough to contribute!  I was aware the whole time though, that the two Frenchwomen spoke to me more as an equal than they did the Moroccan students, even though the students spoke flawless French.  It was as if I was immediately accepted into an exclusive club of Westerners just by dint of being white, regardless of my nationality, socioeconomic status, language ability, or personality.  Like I said, I’m glad my experience in Morocco is shaping up quite differently.