Morocco

For a bit of background, I'm currently in Morocco for a month volunteering with the organization called Education For All.  They run 4 boarding houses where girls from poor families and rural villages are given room and board so they can continue their education.  There are no secondary schools in the villages and it is too far for the girls to walk every day. The organization brings in volunteers as a sort of cultural exchange for the girls.  I am living at one of the boarding houses called Dar Asni which houses 27 girls ages 11-15.  

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In the other four countries I've visited during this trip I've kept an ongoing list of "Things I Don't Want to Forget," but I've been in Morocco for 3 full days and I have yet to add anything to the list.  It's not because I don't want to remember anything, but because I want to remember everything.

The Strait of Gibraltar from the airplane. Two continents are in this picture, Europe and Africa.

I want to remember the way Moroccan tea is made, with fresh mint leaves and blocks and blocks of sugar, and how the first thing I am greeted with each morning is a friendly bonjour and a cup of freshly brewed tea.

Tea on my first day

I want to remember the way the girls greet me not with the formal (but still lovely) handshake followed by touching your heart that is the standard greeting here, but by pulling my shoulders close and pressing their cheek up against mine.  Four or five kisses above the two typical of friends is standard now.

I want to remember the funny gesture people did when they saw the photo of me and the girl I mentor.  "Ta soeur??" they asked, while rubbing their index fingers together.  I later learned the gesture means sisters, and I want to remember that this is a culture where family relations are so close that there are gestures that means certain members of your family.

Notes from the girls

I want to remember the way the girls will carry my massive journal off to a quiet corner of the house and flip through each page slowly.  I want to remember how they are filling the pages with their artwork and how I have no idea what I'm going to do when I run out of pages (soon at this rate!) and how I don't care one bit.

The girls working away on a page in my journal

I want to remember the way one of the girls spent nearly an hour trying to translate something from Arabic for me.  Even though she could have asked one of the adults with better French she kept at it.  I want to remember that desire to connect that transcends language barriers.  And I want to remember how somehow we came to some understanding despite French being my second language and her third.

The view from the terrace outside my bedroom door

My first day here I was walking down the stairs and I had a moment where I couldn't believe that all this was real.  That I have been so unabashedly welcomed into this culture by not only the girls and staff at Dar Asni but by nearly everyone I've met.  By the driver at the airport who gave up his seat so I could sit down while I was waiting.  And by the shopkeeper who bantered with me in French, and enthusiastically repeated bienvenue (welcome) over and over when he learned it was my very first day in Morocco.

My days are long.  I roll over for a few extra hours of sleep after the call to prayer sounds at 5 am, and am surrounded by at least 3 enthusiastic, chattering girls until all 27 are herded up to bed at 10 pm.

Although I've been abroad for a while, in countries where other languages are spoken, this is the first time I've been in a country where virtually no one speaks English.  Straining to communicate in French and having 30 new Arabic words and phrases thrown at me daily (which I am immediately expected to remember) is exhausting.

The heat is exhausting.

The girls are exhausting.  As soon as one group settles down it's time for them to go to school and shortly after the next group arrives.

Trying to remember customs for a very different, conservative culture is exhausting.  I cannot use my left hand at meals, despite being left handed.  Each morning I stare at my small selection of clothes, trying to judge what is conservative enough to be appropriate, while not stifling in the heat.  I never know how often kisses on the cheek are appropriate, as some girls greet me every time they see me, while others have not since I arrived.

My precious journal that I usually carefully guard has things falling out after being flipped through by so many little hands.

I have called adults the offensively familiar tu, and the girls the cold and formal vous more times that I like to admit.

I've choked down olives on several occasions and had "vegetarian" meals served drenched in meat juice.

All food safety advice I was given has completely gone out the window.  How do you politely turn down a salad that has been prepared specifically for you when you know you should avoid anything that can't be peeled?  And when you know it has been washed in the very water you are trying to desperately avoid?

The town near the boarding house

By 4 o'clock I am toast and desperate for a moment to myself, but then one of the girls will slip me a little note, written in 3 languages "I love you Laura, tu es très joile, شكرا لك لورا."

Or I will catch one of them flipping through the photo album I made, and I will see them give the the baby photo of me a little kiss.

Or the girls will crowd around me when they learn I used to teach dance, begging me to teach them and our night will conclude with a tap/ ballet/ Shakira/ traditional Berber dance party.

The days are long but they are full.  Full of new, amazing, definitely once-in-a-lifetime, wonderful, indescribable, overwhelming moments.  One right after the other.  My list of things to remember is not confined to a few moments each day, a few subtle cultural differences, a new museum, an interesting dish.

My list of things to remember is woven into the very fabric of every single moment here in Morocco.

My first ever sentence in Arabic "I love my family very much"

I have realized during this trip that I am not a typical backpacker, if there is one.  I like to settle in, to have time to get to know a place, to develop favorite places and dishes.  I am nearly always sad to leave a destination and still after dozens and dozens of transitions I still struggle my first night in a new location.

When I was back in the U.S. I imagined that this trip would turn me into someone who could just arrive in a destination with no plans, just going wherever the wind blew me.  The reality is that I've realized some of the things I like best about myself are fundamentally incompatible with that type of personality.
But if there's one thing this trip has taught me is to be flexible and let go of my expectations.  I am not a bad traveler, just a unique one.  The fact that I didn't manage to only pack a small backpack does not negate my growing expertise at choosing the best hostel.  The fact that leaving a destination fills me with dread while my fellow travelers are chomping at the bit to explore somewhere new does not invalidate the stamps quickly accumulating in my passport.

I have spent the first 21 years of my life planting deep roots in California and that is not a habit that is easily broken.  And the more I travel the more I realize I really like that about myself.

After a lot of back and forth about calling off my trip completely and questioning whether I could handle the inevitable culture shock in Morocco, what has been most shocking is just how easily I've adjusted to life in a tiny village in an Islamic country in Africa.   I am truly, unreservedly, heart-breakingly happy here.

If there's a right way for me to travel the world, I think I've found it.

My home for the next month