Elections in Morocco

This past Friday, local elections were held throughout Morocco. There was a significant amount of hoopla leading up to the elections, with gatherings in the sports hall across the way from my apartment, and indeed, all over town.

Each of the political parties (and there are a LOT) has its own symbol, and the symbols actually seem to have meaning. Of the parties with exceptionally good symbols, I like to consider the disembodied eye, the rearing horse, and the smattering that appear in the photo I've included.

Parties explain in their lit how to vote for their candidates: "put an X over the ____ " with the symbol for the party. Many of the tracts have, what looks to me like "NO" signs over the symbol for the party, but it's just the X that explains how it's done.

Shipping and handling

Just mailed my first package from the post office to the States -- a small box of books weighing in at 7.5 kilos. In theory, I've got several more to go.

::: Poste Maroc :::

I sent today's box "economy" and paid 554.50 MAD for it, which seemed quite expensive. I've just done the conversion and now know why that seemed so pricey: $75!!

So, if that's roughly a 15 lb. box, at $75 for shipping, that's $5 per lb. I guess it could be worse (like the two-page letter that DHL wanted $125 to send, or the three cards I mailed yesterday that cost $10 in shipping!), but it's still giving me pause to think about unloading anything that's not books or electronics or a gift before I leave, to save myself the money in shipping/transport.

Royal Air Maroc has an interesting baggage policy where "sending" 23 kilos with them in the form of an extra bag is 1500 MAD or $200. In hindsight, I should have held back on the post office shipment, and stuck everything I've got to get back in an additional bag in the hold of the plane.

Next Fulbright .... I'll know.

The collaborative nature of time

Time is a human construct. We all seem to agree that when the sun is at the highest point in the sky, that is "12" and not "37" or "42" or "boo". There are 60 minutes in an hour and not 79, and 24 hours in a day. None of this is pre-ordained; it is simply agreed upon.

Daylight savings time is another temporal element that is agreed upon. In Morocco, we entered Daylight Savings on Monday, June 1. On the appointed day, my computer's time didn't change. When I look, Microsoft gently tells me that Casablanca is GMT, and that it does not move to a summer hour. Microsoft is wrong, and I've had to tell my computer that I'm in Lisbon in order to have the correct time display.

Today, in the last exam that I'll proctor in Morocco, students wanted to agree that we had started 15 minutes late so that they could continue answering the question for another 15 minutes. I couldn't actually agree to that based on my understanding of the 60-minutes-to-an-hour thing, and since I was the proctor, my take on time held.

Interestingly, there are NO CLOCKS in ANY ESI classroom. None. This explains, in part, why the students want their phones out during the exams -- to read the time. Despite the Director's recent prohibitive memo, phones were still out and white out was still madly being passed around today.

Time may be a collaborative constuct that is considered in different ways in different cultures (see prior blog posts about this), but for the first time in my life, I'm realizing that exams can be too.

While things like visits to the library, study, exams, and scholarship in general are fundamentally SOLO events in Western culture (although I admit this may be changing), the Moroccan culture is not Western. If the culture here is clan-oriented and group-based, why can't the approach to exams be as well?

And why wouldn't it be entirely logical to have a discussion about time with one's neighbor during an exam? Right after borrowing her white-out and handing it off to one's other neighbor?

Checking things off the list

I've had a mental list of things to do while in Morocco. Some have been work-related, many have been relative to living in a place so very different from other places I've called home.

Getting on a bus was the last thing I *really* wanted to do. Abdelaziz came and met me in Rabat and we took a bus to his new apartment yesterday evening, on the spur of the moment. To my surprise, there were two employees on the bus: the driver and the ticket lady. The ticket lady took our money, the driver drove the bus. It was very efficient, actually. I'm not sure what happens, though, when the busses get so crowded that it's standing room only.

Abdelaziz and his wife greeted me like royalty. They opened their home to me, offering me first a round of sweet Moroccan mint tea, then coffee and goodies. I also got to look at their photo album from their recent wedding -- the photos look like other Moroccan wedding album photos I've seen: very solemn and formal. They remind me of the photos of my grandparents' marriage in 1941. The "serious" wedding photos is a tradition that's all but lost in the New World, I think.

Finally, I was invited into the home of a friend (perhaps the last thing on my list). The new apartment is their pride and joy. Abdelaziz and Mounia only moved in last week, and they've already made a lot of progress toward turning the place in Salé into a home, and I wish them lots of luck with it.

Moroccan music festivals

Morocco's THE place for music these days... during the last part of May, the Mawazine festival took place in Rabat. For roughly 10 days, stages all over town featured performances by local and internationally known groups: programme. For example, the Morrocan female rap group that one of the Fulbrighters is studying played on May 19th. The concerts were free, although it was also possible to purchase tickets if one wanted to be really close to the stage.

Stevie Wonder performed at the closing Mawazine event on May 23, and my free spot on the lawn was better than some $50 tickets that can be had in American stadiums for similar events. The lights, stage, musicians, and sound were all excellent -- and I enjoyed watching the monitors to get a good view of Stevie and his daughter singing together. Unfortunately, at another concert that night, 11 concert-goers were killed in a stampede.

Fès is currently sponsoring its annual 10-day Sacred Music Festival. The concerts aren't free, but are a huge draw for the city. I know at least two Americans up there as I write this.

I had the good fortune to hear about Stevie Wonder from Fulbrighter Jaci and to hear about the festival in Fès from Fulbrighter Kate. It's nice to be part of a network that's so well-connected and cultured. I should also mention that both Abdelaziz and Jallal knew all about the Rabat festival and graciously shared information about it over coffee.

Final exams and proctoring

ESI has just started the two-week exam period. Like French schools and universities, they have a very intensive exam period at the middle point in the academic year, and they have an even more demanding schedule at the end of the year. Students have one exam per day for most of the allotted two weeks.

I proctored my first exam yesterday (94 students in the first year), and noticed several differences between what I saw at ESI and what I'd seen in France.

First, students were allowed to have cell phones on their tables during the exams. They were also allowed to share materials (pens, white-out, rulers, etc.). There was a lot of movement during the exam, especially in the back half of the lecture hall.

Things that did NOT happen that I recall from proctoring French exams were the following: proctors didn't seem to move around the room and hover (other than me) -- proctors stayed in the front of the room. None of the students asked to use the rest room (whereas in France, we had a line going).

Lastly, unlike the French university classes in languages and literature that I experienced (both as a student and as a proctor/teaching assistant), there were no oral exams to balance out the writtens.

From my outsider's perspective, the exam structure and application is another case of borrowing from one or two systems, and making the end-product uniquely Moroccan.

In French it's bad luck to wish someone "good luck" -- so I'm wishing all of the ESI students "bon courage" and "bonne continuation" as they prepare for and take this round of exams.

Tolerance, tradition, and going incognito

On a given day, I don't tend to draw too much attention in the streets of Rabat. I dress more or less like the Moroccan women my age (long sleeves and sometimes tunics, pants, etc.). There are a lot of Europeans who live in the capital, and they, like me, don't care to be treated like tourists. There's plenty of room for everyone, and in general, everyone's very tolerant of differences.

On the street, folks will automatically speak to me in French. Men greet me with "bonsoir" at just about any hour of the day, and I also often hear "salut" or even "pardon". There's just a lot of French here, even if Morocco isn't fully a Francophone country. And White people are assumed to be French.

Nadia, Eric and I went to the local popular market last weekend to get veggies for Sunday's feast. Nadia did the buying, I watched, and Eric took photos from afar.

Not one person spoke to me in French when I was in my jellabah and headscarf. A few spoke to me in Arabic. And more importantly, no one bat an eye. Of course, I never would have gotten the scarf on properly without Nadia's help. It was her idea that I go incognito in the first place.

It's interesting the reactions that folks have based on preconceived notions about appearance. A woman in a headscarf is modest and laudable in Morocco, whether she has pale skin or dark skin. Frankly, I don't really want to imagine the reaction that I would have received in a mall in the United States in the same attire, as I fear many of my countrymen are a lot less tolerant than the average Moroccan.