July 19, 2015

Today we went to the Morocco Mall, which is the largest mall in Africa. We took the tram there, which was cool because I’m not sure if I’ve ever been on one like that before that goes through a city. I’ve been on an above ground subway but I feel like that’s different. At the mall we split up to look around and shop, but Micki, Imari and I just went to Venezia Ice and sat down outside and ordered Sundays. This was my first experience with Venezia and it was out of this world. I’ve been obsessed with passion fruit for years after I got introduced to it in Rwanda, and I love travelling to places that also eat a lot of passion fruit/ passion fruit flavored things. Needless to say then, they had passion fruit ice, and the frozen yogurt was different than any I’ve tasted before, in a good way. We sat and talked outside, enjoying the beautiful view, and it was nice to bond with the other girls.

I’m usually very shy and therefore bad at making new friends, but for some reason, so far this trip I haven’t struggled with that too much and felt relatively comfortable with the group from the start. I think it’s because even if these girls are very different from me, we still have one thing in common, which is that we want to be on this trip whether fro similar or different reasons, it still gives us a starting point and connection. It was interesting in class and in one of the pre-departure orientations to hear everyone’s different reasons for selecting this program and what they were hoping to get out of it. I feel like even though those answers may be different, they still have somewhat of a common goal.

The mall was insanely huge, but I honestly let myself go pretty unimpressed until I realized I was doing that because I’ve been in malls like the King of Prussia in Philadelphia and the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Then I remembered that we’re not in America, and it’s impressive to see a mall that looks exactly like any mall in America or Europe, indeed in Africa. It’s not like anything I’ve seen before in Rwanda or Burundi. It’s interesting how much more developed Morocco is than the places I’ve been in East Africa, and that makes me even more curious about the divide in cultures between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. I want to better understand the complexities of this relationship between the two.

We ate lunch at the mall, which turned out to be a hectic ordeal with everyone attempting to eat food at different places but still have it paid for by Soumia and Saurav. We ended up taking way longer than wanted as we were in a rush to get back as we were suppose to meet with the professor who had come with us to the mosque yesterday and some of his students. Originally he had told Soumia five o’clock, but then had changed the time to four as if it had been that way all along. We had also been so long because Soumia was told by the same professor that the mall was a fifteen minute walk from the tram stop, but as she had never done it before, we had no idea it was actually upwards of a forty-five minute walk each way. Saurav says we can’t blame him for giving us this information as he had probably never actually walked it before either and wasn’t sure himself how long it took. Soumia was so stressed out by the whole ordeal, because she was upset with the professor for changing the time last minute, but she also wanted to give us the opportunity to meet with his students even though we were running far behind. We ended up getting there around six and the professor and three of his male students were waiting for us. We went out for Moroccan tea at a nearby café, but Soumia didn’t come because she was upset with the professor but she didn’t want to accidentally say anything rude to him, so she just avoided the situation by staying away. This is an example of face work, which is a concept we discussed in class. Soumia was saving the professors face by not coming, but at the cost of her own. In situations like these you need to decide if you want to save your own face or that of the other party involved, but as she wanted to continue a healthy relationship with him for the sake of her student’s learning, she sacrificed her own.

Regardless of all of that, getting a chance to sit down with the Moroccan students and take a dialectic approach with meaningful conversation felt like exactly the type of thing we should be doing after our class. We got to implement some of the concepts we learned and observe others. This was also the first day we were experiencing Morocco after the end of Ramadan, and I was absolutely amazed at how much things had come to life- it seemed like an entirely different city now, unlike the relative ghost-town we had experienced the first two days. It's amazing how much influence Islam has on the way of life here, but it's very beautiful. Before coming here I didn't entirely understand Ramadan, though I knew it was a sort of more intense version of the Catholic lent. Sarah explained to me that she thinks it's beautiful because it puts everyone on the same level. Men and women, rich and poor- everyone is equal during Ramadan because everyone is sacrificing together. This is also an example of the way in which Morocco is a collectivistic culture, unlike the individualistic American culture. In some ways I used to have the ethnocentric view that individualistic culture is better, because it allows everyone to be themselves. But after experiencing Morocco for several days I have realized this was a very one sided view, and there are many beautiful aspects of the collectivistic culture that brings the people of Morocco together in a way that the people of America's individualistic culture are not united.