More on the Moroccan desert

What ideas did you have about Morocco before you started reading my blog? If you imagined deserts, sand, camels, and nomads and their tents, you weren't alone.

As I hope my blog has illustrated for you, though, Morocco is a geographically diverse country. I didn't see any camels until I had been here for a few months, and my recent trip to the desert was the first time I saw a landscape that I thought might be described as "stereotypically" Moroccan or North African.

The transition to a desert landscape really begins south of Midelt. The mountains are always close by, but the land slowly becomes dustier, and the vegetation becomes more sparse and scrubby.

There was an unexpected number of hotels along our route from Midelt to Merzouga. Some of them were shockingly (and, we all agreed, too optimistically) grand. As we drove by these hotels, we saw that the vast majority had virtually empty parking lots.

We had originally made reservations at such a hotel (although not nearly as new as the one pictured to the left) in Erfoud. It was such a depressingly outdated and empty place, though, that we quickly ditched it for a smaller and grubbier – yet less deserted and more comfortable  – hotel.

The way people look changes, too, as one approaches the desert. Skin gets darker, and by the time we got to Erfoud, we hardly saw the faces of any women, most of whom were covered from head to toe with abaya-like black garments, some with brightly colored embroidered patterns on them. The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Erfoud gives one "a first, powerful sense of proximity to the desert, with frequent sandblasts ripping through the streets." We arrived in this normally dusty town during a time of unusually strong winds, and the coating of grit that quickly accumulated on my body, along with a  constant sense of impending danger to my eyes, made me immediately understand the benefit of full body coverage.

In a nutshell...

...a tiny, oversimplified nutshell.

Fondue, glass pickles, fire bowls, and other German things

During my senior year of high school, I was friends with a German exchange student, AC. After that year, I always thought it would be neat to visit him in Germany. This was a casual wish, though, with Germany on a long list of other places I "wanted" to visit, including Australia, India, and Hawaii. I don't think I ever really thought it would be possible for me to visit him, and I never had a strong sense of why I wanted to go to Germany or what I would even do there.

That was until I moved to Morocco. Now Frankfurt is just a 3 1/2 hour plane ride away (plus a couple of hours in a car). So at the end of December, T and I finally visited my friend AC in Rosbach, Germany. We spent close to a week with him and his wife IC and their two young children MC (boy) and MC (girl).

MC is just about ready to go to bed.

One of the great things about staying with a German family is that we got to learn some details of German culture we may not have been aware of otherwise. For example, because they took us to a New Year's Eve party with several of their friends, I now know that fondue is a fairly common New Year's Eve meal. It also seems that virtually everyone in the entire country sets off fireworks at midnight– a lot of fireworks. And while I thought staying at a New Year's Eve party until 3:00 AM was quite late, when we said good-bye at that time, we were the first ones to leave the party – probably because AC and IC's little girl had refused to be cared for by her grandparents and ended up accompanying us and thus needed to get home at a "reasonable" time. (Don't worry, she slept for a good portion of the party.)

SingStar fun

Another wonderful thing about visiting Germany (for English-speaking people, anyway) is that many Germans, especially those in the younger generations, are very comfortable with English and can easily switch back and forth between it and German. Virtually everyone at the New Year's Eve party knew English. At first, though, people seemed reluctant to speak to us, perhaps because we were strangers and because everyone (I think) is more comfortable speaking in his or her native language. As the night went on, though, more people were kind enough to talk to us. They were surprised to learn that we were not visiting from America, so the topic of how one ends up living in Morocco helped keep up the conversation.

It also helped when my friend AC broke out the PlayStation game SingStar. By the end of the night, even I had come out of my shell, and I was belting out Abba songs with IC as my teammate. Champagne seemed to loosen peoples tongues, and almost everyone was making comments about the game using English for our benefit.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving international potluck

 I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old, and since then, holiday meals have generally consisted of a set of rather bland side dishes--vegetarian stuffing and gravy, green bean casserole, black olives, etc. (I don't even get to eat the mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie anymore, thanks to food allergies).

The food was eaten so quickly that I hardly had a chance to get a picture.

American, Canadian, Brazilian, Portuguese...maybe we can all get along!

But that wasn't the case this year! On Saturday, T and I hosted a vegetarian Thanksgiving international potluck dinner for a small group of vegetarians (and veg-sympathizers). This year's Thanksgiving dinner featured red lentil pumpkin soup, roasted root vegetables, spicy Indian chickpeas and vegetable korma (with precious basmati rice), curried lasagna, fruit cobbler and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.

Right now, I think I have what is traditionally called "the holiday blues," exacerbated by being so far from home and by a fairly high degree of uncertainty about my future. Because of this, yesterday's dinner was a much-needed opportunity for me to reflect on what I have to be thankful for. One thing I keep coming back to is the high quality of people I've had the great fortune to meet. I've written about this before, but it's worth reflecting on again. Every place I have lived, I've met remarkably intelligent, kind, generous, and interesting people. It's easy for me to dwell on how much I miss those I've left or who have left me, but I also need to be thankful for the wonderful people I have met here.

Weekend in Asilah

Asilah is a small, quiet, beautiful but unpretentious town along the Atlantic coast of Morocco. T and I went there once about a year ago for just a couple of hours and were wanting to return ever since.


View Larger Map

This weekend, we got our chance. I went on the trip with three goals, all of which I accomplished. First, eat a vegetable tagine at Al Kasabah. Second, drink wine under the stars on the rooftop terrace of our guesthouse. Third (and most importantly), go to the beach.

I had read a lot about Paradise Beach and intended to go there, but our hostess suggested we go to a less-well-known but even more beautiful part of the beach, which involved driving on unmarked, winding, rutted, and rocky one-lane roads.

She told us to walk two kilometers south once we arrived at the beach, which we did. This brought us to Mounir's place, a clean and simple bamboo structure overlooking the water. We ate lunch there, sat in the shade, sat in the sun, got in the water, and enjoyed having a gorgeous, clean beach practically all to ourselves.

A downside

One of the upsides to international living is that one gets to meet many people who are from and/or have lived in different places all over the world. A downside is that those people, some of whom become one's friends, often leave to go back to those other places.

There is an inherent transience to this lifestyle that I was warned about but that I didn't dedicate much time to thinking about – there were just so many other "more important" things for me to consider before and after moving here. I became more aware of it after we moved here and found it difficult to make friends with the more established members of the University community. The fact is, many people who have been here for several years don't bother to get to know the new people because we are all just coming in and out of a revolving door. Why invest emotional energy and time into establishing a relationship with someone who's just going to leave after a few months?

The flip side to that viewpoint is that, because so many of us are new to this place, relationships can be established somewhat easier and more quickly than in other settings. It's almost like college all over again, and I love that sense of being in a community in which it's okay to rely on each other, to borrow popcorn or rice, and to drop by each others homes unannounced.

Nevertheless, I have to learn to cope with my friends leaving. As I gave LW a big hug yesterday (she and her family are returning to Connecticut today), I realized that I'm used to being the one who leaves! I have always thought it's easier to be the "leaver" than to be the one who is left behind, and now I know that's true. LW and her family have become such an integral part of my life here that their sudden absence is almost tangible. (Now I have to do yoga by myself in the mornings. Who will I get coffee with? Who will we watch Modern Family episodes with? Whose garden will we hang out in now? Who will help me decide what to cook with all the random vegetables in my refrigerator?) And the Ws have reminded me that, as long as I stay with this mobile lifestyle, I will keep having to say good-bye over and over again.

On socializing and making friends

One of the stressors of moving to a new place is, of course, not having friends in that place and needing to make new friends, something that has always been difficult for me. When I meet a potential friend, it takes me a long time to put the label of "friend" on that person. I don't usually have very many friends at a time. For most of my life, I had only one or two close friends at a time.

I have also always had a tendency to be drawn to the "outcasts" or to those who don't entirely fit in (sorry, my dear friends). I have met a lot of interesting people this way. When I was in high school, I got to know exchange students from Czech Republic, Japan, and Germany, while many of my classmates didn't bother to take the time to get to know those people. in Morocco, though, who are the outcasts? Who are the people who don't fit it? The other expatriates, of course. T and I are starting to hang out with some great people – most of them Americans. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but we are finding it a bit difficult to get to know Moroccans, and we both agree that part of having an enriching experience in another culture involves getting to know members of that culture.

So what's standing in the way of my making Moroccan friends? Well, as I mentioned above, there is my tendency to be drawn to the misfits. There is my introversion (yes, I am an introvert). But there are also some interesting Moroccan cultural factors. T and I have noticed a great deal of separation between Moroccan and expatriate faculty members at the University. We talked to an American faculty member who has been here for 10 years about this. He didn't seem to think that establishing friendships with Moroccans was going to be very likely for us. The reasons seem complicated, but I think they are partly related to the strong emphasis put on family in Moroccan culture; a lot of Moroccans are busy spending time with their families, and I think they assume everyone else is doing the same. Religion also plays a role. Islam is a religion that pervades every aspect of the lives of its devout followers. Whether I'm comfortable with it or not, I understand that religious differences create some divisions between people here. And actually, if I think about it, I realize that things aren't any different in the U.S. People tend to spend time with those who share their beliefs. Think about your own political affiliations, for example; if you are a Republican, are most of your friends also Republicans? If you are a Democrat, how many Republican friends do you have?

One of the main things we do with our new potential friends is go out to eat, even though our choices are fairly limited here in Ifrane. This tagine with French fries on top, which T was surprised to discover he had ordered, is one of the tasty offerings in the Ifrane restaurants. (I've been waiting for weeks to have an opportunity to post this picture.)

For now, I'm not going to worry too much about the nationality of my friends. I'm going to remain open to the  possibility of making Moroccan friends. But I'm also going to be patient.