birthday getaway to... the developing world?

Friday was my 21st birthday. Based on that information, most of you would gather that I’m about to regale you with wild tales of drunken follies in the clubs of Madrid. But I’ll actually be catching up on that birthday partying a little later this week because I spent my 21st in Morocco, where there was certainly no alcohol to be found. In spite of my sobriety (or perhaps because of it) it was the most memorable birthday weekends I’ve had. While I found myself a bit outside my comfort zone at times (specifically in the bathrooms) and I’m glad to be back in a developed country, it was an eye-opening experience that really gave me some perspective on the world outside of my North American/ European bubble.

Here are some highlights from the four-day trip:

The Hamam:
I only showered once between Wednesday night, when we took the overnight bus to Algeciras, and Monday morning, when we returned. And what a shower it was. A hamam is a traditional bathhouse where women and men (separately…) go to scrub themselves clean once or twice per week. When we found out we would be going to the hamam, we were slightly peeved that no one had told us to bring bathing suits on the trip. Little did we know what a silly notion that would have been anyway. In our American modesty, we determined that we would go in underwear and bras or t-shirts, but when we got into the hamam we were told that would be exceedingly weird. We had only one option: take off the tops. Needless to say, it was a bonding experience. We each received our own bucket upon entering the steamy room, which we filled up at the vats of scalding hot water and dumped over our heads to bathe ourselves. Other women sat in circles scrubbing each other vigorously, but we decided we could live without going to second (or third) base with twelve of our friends. One of my friends did slip and fall directly onto a naked Moroccan woman, though, and we could not stop cracking up.

Turkish Toilets:
This doesn’t need much explanation beyond a description of a Turkish toilet. Basically, it’s a hole in the ground with a porcelain base and places to put your feet when you squat down on your haunches to do your business. You flush by filling a bucket with water and dumping it into the hole. Occasionally, people fail to flush, even when they have made a complete mess of the toilet. And there is almost never toilet paper in a public bathroom.

Homestay:
The program we went on puts students up in groups of two or three with middle class Moroccan families in Rabat. We stayed with an adorable woman, her husband (who we rarely saw), and their two daughters, 17 and 21. They didn’t appear to be very religious, but the 17-year-old daughter did reveal to us in broken English—which she learned solely from watching TV—that she has a secret boyfriend of three years that she cannot tell her mother about. They met in a McDonald’s. There was a definite language barrier, but it was really enlightening to see how they live and what their daily lives are like. The food was delicious, too. Couscous with vegetables and chicken is the traditional feast food in Morocco, and everyone ate out of the same big bowl in the middle of the table. When we visited a rural family, they ate it with their hands, tossing it until it made a little couscous ball and then inhaling it. The house was completely open to the sky in the middle, and every room was lined with couches (so we reclined around the table at mealtimes and slept on couches in the bedroom). It was clean, but small and definitely nothing like anything we would consider “middle class” in the United States. And when we walked to their house, we encountered all sorts of foul odors coming from the market, ranging from raw meat sitting out in the sun to live chickens awaiting their impending death to cat urine. (There were feral cats everywhere in Morocco. At one point, when we were visiting some ruins, Ally and I found ourselves trapped against a pond, surrounded by at least twenty cats. At a market in Chefchaouen, I accidentally stepped on or kicked a kitten, which apparently amused some Moroccan guys standing by.) Overall, our homestay family was very accommodating and made the experience much more enlightening than it would have been had we stayed in hostels or hotels.

Talking to Moroccan Students:
We had several opportunities to speak with Moroccan students. Our first day, we met with three religious women studying for their Masters in English at a university in Tanger. While they were all religious and had chosen to wear the veil, or hijab, they did have varying opinions on whether or not it was okay to “date” before getting married. One woman had met her husband because he was a friend her brother’s since childhood, another said she wanted to marry traditionally and not date her future husband prior to marriage, and the other seemed to indicate that it wasn’t a bad idea to hang out with a man before committing herself to marry him, although her parents had had an arranged marriage. At one point, the discussion got a bit heated and uncomfortable when the topic turned to al-Qaeda and 9/11. The girls weren’t convinced that al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks, and conspiracy theories are apparently widespread here, which made many of my friends angry or at least incredulous. And we didn’t even want to bring up Israel (we’re all Jewish)…
The next day, we had time to hang out, go shopping, and smoke hookah with some young Moroccan guys, which was great. They were relatively liberal when it came to dating (one had a girl coming to visit him from England), but they still didn’t drink alcohol. Those conversations were much tamer but still very interesting. One thing that was striking was that these guys, and many other Moroccans, know multiple European languages but have never been outside of Morocco. No one we met had ever left the country, and they were all middle class people of reasonable enough means to attend university for years, etc. Much of that has to do with how impossible it is to get a visa from Morocco because of the issue of illegal immigration. So when we remarked that it was really great that they could speak so many languages, the guys were sort of blasé about it. After all, what use is Italian if you can’t go to Italy?

Crossing the Border:
On the way back, we took a different route, crossing the border on foot from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. According to our guide, that border has the widest income disparity of any in the world (more than US-Mexico, Israel-Syria, etc.) and the difference was striking. People living in the provinces surrounding Ceuta are allowed cross into Ceuta, so many are better off than others because they can sell their goods across the border and then spend their euros back in Morocco. Nonetheless, it went from a dirty, slum-like border town to European seaside villa in a matter of minutes on foot. Equally striking were the massive shantytowns between Rabat and Casablanca. Millions of Moroccans squat in these settlements, and the government just began providing them with running water. Near Asilah, a budding beachside resort town, the shantytown was directly across the street from the construction site for a massive golf course and resort.
Overall, it was an unforgettable experience. While I’m not rushing to get back to the Third World, I am very glad that I went and had the opportunity to participate in a cultural exchange and meet people whose lives are so drastically different from mine.