Elections, cooking, & more

Hi everyone! Wow it has been a while since my last post. Let’s see, what has happened since last Tuesday.
Friday of last week was election day in Morocco for local elections. The embassy in Rabat and consulate in Casablanca sent representatives to observe the polling locations in their respective areas. We split up in groups of 3-4 to travel in certain nearby cities with 3 groups remaining and observing in Casablanca. I went with the head of the Econ section and we went out to two cities: El Jadida and Safi. We also stopped at some polling locations on the way to those cities. Overall I think we checked out maybe 7 or 8 polling locations. We would generally just walk to the poll and introduce ourselves as reps from the American consulate and that we wanted to observe how things were going. We asked if there were any problems throughout the day. We also observed security forces outside and we would take note of anything out of place. In one location, a voter thanked us for coming and observing. In another location, a police officer asked us if their elections looked like the ones in America. Not all reactions to our presence were positive. At one location, we had to show our IDs and the police we talked to called their bosses, then their boss’ bosses were called and eventually, maybe 15 minutes later, we were allowed inside the polling location. This hullabaloo eventually reached the ears of some very important people and our bosses called us up and told us to lay low when we observe. For the rest of the day, though, there weren’t any problems like this for the most part. Most of the locations that we went to were schools, both rural and urban. We also went to some magistrate buildings that were polling locations. I enjoyed observing the elections but I also enjoyed seeing more of the country. It was determined that there were no irregularities at the polling locations observed by all the consulate people. A significant amount of the voters were female. Additionally, adults would bring their children to the polling location. I thought that this was good because it would create a culture of voting in the society starting at a young age. Unfortunately my personal discovery of the day was that I so naively believe in and support democracy that I didn’t critically observe the practice here in Morocco as much as I could or should have. I heard later that vote buying can be prevalent and that oftentimes voters are persuaded to vote one way or the other. One woman we spoke with, who is I would say mid-upper class, said that she and her husband didn’t vote. Usually poor uneducated people vote here in Morocco. She asked us how the uneducated voters could understand what they are voting for if they can’t read. It is an interesting situation. People don’t vote because they don’t believe what they are doing makes a difference or they do vote but may be persuaded to vote because they don’t entirely understand the system.
For more information on the Moroccan elections:
http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2009/06/14/feature-01
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/06/200961322143190653.html
After the election observing on Friday, I went with a group of consulate people to go to a different city called Meknes to take a cooking class & tour the imperial city. (More Meknes info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meknes) Meknes was very beautiful. My favorite part was seeing the Moulay Ismail’s mausoleum. I will post pictures so you can see for yourself how beautiful it is (unless you have already seen the pictures on Facebook). The city itself is one of the four imperial cities of Morocco. It was founded by Moulay Ismail. The story goes that Moulay Ismail wanted to marry King Louis' daughter of France. He wrote the king asking for her hand but Louis refused him (Moulay Ismail, legend says, had 550 wives). Moulay Ismail’s was upset and his response was to build a city that would rival Louis’ Versailles, thus creating Meknes. In its day, Mekens was elaborate and extravagant. It has been nicknamed the ‘Versailles of Morocco.’ Today it is still beautiful, and the water reservoir, stone wall and elaborate entrances built by Moulay Ismail as well as his mausoleum are still standing two and a half centuries later. After the tour we had our cooking lesson. The owner of this cooking thing is an American that moved out here to live and teach people how to cook. Check out their website: http://www.savormorocco.com/ and if you are ever in Meknes, I highly recommend taking this class. We broke up into two groups, one toured in the morning and the other cooked in the morning. After lunch we would switch. My group cooked beef tajine and the other group cooked chicken tajine. A tajine is a traditional Northern African stew-like that is named after the pot in which it is cooked. We didn’t use a tajine (pot) when we cooked but a pressure cooker instead. My favorite was the chicken tajine. Although these are stews, they are traditionally not eaten with utensils. Usually pieces of bread are used to scoop up the veggies and meat, making this meal significantly more fun to eat. :-) I had one on Friday when we were observing the elections. It was actually a kind of funny situation Friday because we stopped in this very small town for lunch. As couscous is a traditional meal for Fridays we were kind of on the hunt for that. We drove around looking at the “normal” restaurants in the town but some were closed and none of them really looked appealing. So we kind of come off the beaten path and pull into this strip with a fruit stand, a butcher stand and a convenience store, and some other misc shops. In the back corner wedged between two shops there was a tajine restaurant. But to call it a restaurant would be a gross overstatement. It was just a couple guys in a hole-in-the-wall kitchen cooking tajines. Seating was limited to plastic patio chairs and tables with Coca Cola advertisements on it. I was there with one Moroccan and one Foreign Service guy so I felt comfortable just eating whatever they gave me (if you know me you know that I am very picky about strange food.. I don’t even eat seafood! But it seems that Morocco has released some of my reserve). Anyway, I ate this tajine with some kind of meat in it (possibly beef haha) and with the most delicious vegetables imaginable. (I am really going to miss these fresh vegetables when I head back to the hyper-productive, commercialized, industrial America.) The whole meal and experience was just absolutely wonderful. Afterwards we were allowed to walk into their hole-in-the-wall to use their one rusty sink to wash our hands. Man, oh man I love this culture. So anyway, the cooking school will email me the recipe for the meals that we cooked; I will be happy to forward them on to anyone that is interested. Here’s the wiki page for the traditional tajine meal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajine
On Sunday we slept in after getting up ridiculously early (for college kids) for the past 10 days. We headed out to the shopping district here in Casa around 2pm. We just kind of wandered around shopping and we headed back to the apartment early. I am sad to say that after such an elaborate description of the wonders of Moroccan food illustrated above, on Sunday night Nora and I ordered pizza. Not just any pizza, though, Pizza Hut delivery. We decided on delivery because we were just not interested in going out and we pretty much had no food at the apartment. So we ordered the pizza and 45 minutes later, we were still sitting around wondering where why it hadn't come. Nora called them back and apparently the Pizza Hut delivery boy couldn’t find our apartment. So after some huffing and puffing (on my part) we decided to walk to Pizza Hut and pick up our pizza. The guys at the restaurant were very nice and sorry about the mixup. They gave us a free 2 liter 7-Up for our trouble, and they also asked us if we were American to which of course we said yes, and they promptly said “you are very welcome.” In the two+ weeks that I have been here, I have not encountered any hostility or negativity due to being American. Truly, I think for the most part that Moroccans like Americans. I walked into a grocery store alone one day and the workers were falling all over themselves to help me. To add to it, this culture is very consumer oriented. Service people, I have noticed, are the ones that are the most helpful and least likely to stare. They are friendly and all around just genuinely nice. I definitely see a class divide, though. There are the Moroccans (usually men) that I see sitting at the same café every day, every time that I walk by. No job, no income, really some of the lowest social and economic standing. Men like this are all over the place. Next are the service people, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. They are making money (probably very little) but nevertheless have an income and there may be room to develop and improve. Next are the educated. These are the doctors, politicians, any government worker, police etc that can be seen at social gatherings but not seen on the streets. Most of these people have been educated in France or America and speak several languages. The economy here in Morocco, for the most part, is service. There is not a very high demand for educated people. For this reason when Moroccans leave to study, they often don’t return because they have a better chance in these other countries to get jobs. The major cities are the places that educated people can get jobs but one must keep in mind that the rest of Morocco is mostly farmland and countryside. If a person leaves their farm for the city, they probably won’t come back. And it is unrealistic to say that they leave the farms to go to school; the illiteracy rate is exceedingly high. Additionally, as observed at the elections, the poor people are the ones that vote in Morocco. And a significant amount of the voters are women, which surprised me. In some rural areas that we observed, the rate was as high as 40%. In the cities the rate was lower, more like 20-25%. This was surprising as well. The official number I think released is 53% but I never saw a rate that high during my observations. Overall we noticed, as non official observers, that the elections seemed free, fair and consistent.
After this exhausting weekend of traveling all around the country, we tried to get back to work. Things at the consulate are going well. I am still working with the motor pool. Maybe next week I will be getting into the Homeland Security stuff. I am pretty much just taking the work as it comes for the moment. But as of this week, the summer semester at GMU for my internship credit has begun and I will be writing papers every Sunday for a grade. Oh so much fun…. Luckily they are only 2-3 pages and the topics are narrative/analysis/reflection on different topics or experiences I have had. So anyway. As the excitement of being here kind of dies down and the work begins, I am really missing everyone! 10 weeks is going to be a long time away from America. Nora and I have begun craving food that we really can’t get here, like Chipotle burritos or Taco Bell. Although the food is good here and almost any restaurant style can be found, Mexican/Tex-Mex is the one major exception. But I’m sure I will have plenty of chances to eat that stuff when I get back, but it is just kind of funny.
I am going to try to write my blogs more often so that they aren’t as long, like this one. This has taken me about three days to write because there is just so much going on and so much to write! Anyway all is well out here. I am still having a good time and everything is working out. I miss you all and thanks for reading and also thank you for the comments!

Watching Jane Austen in Africa

Hey everyone!! Things are going really well out here! This week we are a little shorthanded at the consulate because several of our FSNs are away on training. So to help make up for the vacancies, I have been given charge of managing the consulate motor pool. It has been quite challenging to receive this huge task with very minimal understanding of the operations and logistics of a motor pool. Nevertheless it has been a beneficial learning experience (ie, it makes me not want to be in the management section of the foreign service..haha.) Plus it means I get a lot of experience working with Moroccans (all of our drivers are Moroccan). I definitely started out with this task running around like an idiot trying to figure it out, but things seem to be coming together.
On Saturday Nora and I took the train to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. Casa to Rabat is a 1 hour train ride at about 13$ (110 dirhams). We walked through the medina (old city marketplace area) and went to the beach. We also ate at lunch at a traditional Moroccan restaurant. The trip was exhausting but we had a good time. We are making plans to go back again because it is hard to see everything in one day, especially without much understanding of the city. We have been in Casa for almost two weeks but still have not seen all it has to offer, either.
One of the ladies at the consulate let Nora and me borrow her copies of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion. We have been keeping ourselves occupied with a little (or a lot) of Jane Austen. Ruby Lee, I am sure you are happy to hear that! Unfortunately we have now watched all of them and are on the hunt for some more movies. In the meantime I am up to my ears in the motor pool and missing all of you.


Love from Casablanca.

PS, Drey I told you I would give you a shout out but I don’t really know what to say.. I hope you are having a good summer!! Love you Drey baby

Pictures, finally!!

Outside Rick's Cafe on Wednesday night. 

Big street corner in Casablanca. Note the gazillion pedestrians..

The Hassan II Mosque

Fountain at the mosque

Atlantic Ocean!! Hassan Mosque to the right.

Mosaic design in the Hammam (Spa) in the Hassan II Mosque

Door to the Mosque.. Note the person in the left corner in comparison to the entrance.

Fountain at the Hassan II Mosque

Entrance to the Hassan II Mosque

The Hassan II Mosque

Street outside the apartment

Street sign with Arabic and French

They have palm trees in Morocco!!

A street in Casablanca

Street in Casablanca; outside the Hyatt.

Below is a picture of Casablanca from the window of a room in the Hyatt. That tall thing over there is the Hassan Mosque.. you can see the size of it compared to the Medina, which is the ancient city with the markets and such.

Week 1 Reflections

Hey world! As my first week comes to a close, I am reflecting on a week of new experiences, new people, new cultures, new food and a new lifestyle. I am still not completely adjusted but I am getting into a routine. Yet at any moment I think I could wake up to a normal life. In the meantime, I am waking up in Africa.

The big conference for Homeland Security has come to an end. Consultations continue for some of the participants but most have caught their flights back home. We had visitors from all over the world. I sat in on some of the discussion. The topics included human trafficking, sex tourism, and forced labor. Everyone had interesting insight through the perspective of their respective jobs, countries and experiences. I was not aware that these issues are as prevalent as they are, but of course I am a quite sheltered and secure American. But all of the issues discussed affect many people in the world, specifically in the source countries of Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. But as the United States is what is referred to as a destination country, trafficked people often end up there and many American companies may benefit from forced labor. We certainly have our ties to these issues despite not being in the forefront. As I said the discussions were intriguing, and I think the Law and Order writers would have endless storylines had they sat in on the discussions.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the conference group went out to dinner. The first event was at a four star restaurant owned by a Moroccan-American that is a very close friend to the US Consulate. As we loaded the buses for the restaurant, I looked around for anyone I knew so I could have someone to chat with during this dinner. I did not want to seem like the antisocial and timid intern in a group of well-educated and successful representatives of the world. As my roommate had other plans, and only about half of the conference attendees signed up for this dinner, the possibility of finding someone I knew and then end up sitting next to that person at the table seemed unlikely. So I prepared myself for an evening of politeness and fake smiles, and I tried to remember my dinner etiquette that may have escaped me after two years of college etiquette; I was sure to sit next to some boring USG employees with not much interesting to say. I tried to slowly walk to a chair so that I could see where the others were claiming seats. This plan failed and I ended up grabbing a chair quickly out of anxiety of the forthcoming boring meal. My attempts were in vain, but this failure actually worked out to my advantage. I looked around and saw myself surrounded by seven men ages 30-45, none of whom I had met during the conference. Alright, I thought, this could be good. There was an Italian to my right, a Dane across from him, a Finn across from me, and four Americans to my left. The Dane, Finn, Italian and I spent most of the dinner discussing the Italian Mob, life in Italy, life in the Netherlands, life in Denmark, life in Finland, life in America, fishing off the Adriatic and Red Seas, fishing in Boca Grande, moving to the Canary islands, the Carabinari, drug lords, drug problems, Hell’s Angels (Denmark chapter), Italian gypsies, Italian food in Venice vs Italian food in the South, and the Italian mob in Venice vs Italian mob in the South. I spent most of the time talking with the Italian that maybe loved talking as much as he loved eating. He was a very nice man who fit all of the stereotypes of a classy Italian; he was clean, friendly, suave, well dressed and well spoken. Although about 20 years my senior, these men seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say on the matter of all things American. Although I assure you, what I had to say was not very enlightened or eloquent. In the end, this evening that I worried would be awful and awkward turned out to be such a pleasantly enjoyable event. At one point as I sat surrounded by these truly exceptional people, I tried to take a memory-photograph of the sights, sounds, tastes, and people because I never want to forget this experience nor what it taught me about myself and my world.

As awesome as Tuesday night was, Wednesday night was unsurprisingly uneventful. We went to Rick’s Café as a group. Yep, that’s Rick’s Café, as in the movie. I was stuck in the middle of a long table with discussions going on all around me in English and Spanish. Unfortunately I was not involved in any of these conversations and the French woman across from me was just as bored. The food was okay, the company was quite unfulfilling, and the ambiance was not as good as everyone said it was. Wednesday fell short in comparison to the night before.

Before dinner on Wednesday, I went to the Hassan II Mosque here in Casablanca. It is the third largest mosque in the world, next to the two in Mecca and Medina. It took six thousand people working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week (in shifts of course) five years to build this mosque. It is stated in the Quran that God’s throne was over water so to illustrate this, they created a man-made peninsula in the Atlantic ocean on which the mosque sits. It is of French design. Every material used to create this mosque is from Morocco, except the chandeliers and two certain pillars are from Venice. My written descriptions could never do justice to the magnificent grandeur of this place. I can only offer pictures, and they will be posted as soon as I can get enough internet to do so. In the meantime, here is the Wikipedia page with full details of the mosque.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_II_Mosque

As I have been here for one whole week, I am still very taken aback when I am stared at in the street. Yes, it is true. Imagine people staring at me. I often find myself laughing at the situation! Can you believe it?? Because I certainly have not gotten over it myself. It has been said that Arab men hold Western women at a different standard than their own women, and also there are so few Western women here that they can be simply surprised to see me. Ha, imagine.. ME, this totally normal American that has never done anything outrageous in my whole life is now turning heads and requiring second and third glances in the streets of Casablanca. Long pants decrease the stares but they nevertheless continue. And it is often not rude or anything like that, they just stare. A lot. I myself cannot completely understand this, so I cannot explain it to you all. It is part of the culture that I accept but cannot completely understand. A similar part of the culture that I accept but cannot explain is the massive amounts of tea that is drunk in Morocco. They drink it all the time! If you are not familiar with the traditional Moroccan tea it is mint, often sweetened, drunk in small, thin glasses (not teacups), and poured from a brass teapot held about 2 feet above the glass. Moroccans claim that the reason for holding the teapot so far away from the glass is to aerate the tea, but I think it is just that Moroccans want to show off. Hahaa.

So, after one week, I still cannot believe I am here. They really do not speak English here. I mean REALLY. And the Moroccans don’t see a lot of Western people on a normal basis. Also, I don’t get a lot of information about what is going on in America. Morocco is just so physically, technologically, culturally, and socially very far away from America. This place is very different from home. Not better or worse but just SO different. And as you can tell, one week is not long enough for me to get over the culture shock.

Thanks for reading..

PS, love and miss you Natalie