Nador/Al Hoceima/Bades – The seventh week of the program took me to northern Morocco to learn about the history of the region and its inhabitants. The Berber people are an ethnic minority that have traditionally lived in the Riff mountains and have worked to maintain autonomy from the monarchy in central and southern Morocco.

The Berber population played a key role in fighting for Moroccan independence throughout the beginning of the 20th century. The mountainous region proved difficult to colonize, and many Berbers hoped that they would be privy to their own independence when Spain and France left. This was not the case, and the Berber’s have been the victims of 60 years of oppression since then.

The scars of the 1958 tragedy were still very apparent when we visited a small village outside of Bades. An old couple that lived in the village and tended to a small shrine let us in on the lore of the land. They told us that in 1958, Moroccan police had come to their village and decimated a field of olive trees. Ghosts now evidently haunt the village.

Northern Morocco is a strange place to visit in mid-October. Following the brutal repression by Morocco’s Monarchy, the country instituted a preferential visa application process that made it easy for Riffian citizens to obtain documents to travel to Europe.

Today, many of the houses are abandoned, evidently owned by migrants living and working all across the west. They spend their summers in Morocco, and send remittances back all year round, but their absence is profound.

Sitting at a cafe in Al Hoceima, overlooking the bay, we spoke with a migrant who had lived the entirety of his adult life in a small town in Holland. He said that he hoped to move back to Morocco one day to start a business, but that the country was still too corrupt.

He said that he still didn’t feel Dutch, even though he had lived their most of his life. His Dutch friends viewed him as the exception to the “Moroccan problem”, but he experienced racist stereotyping everyday.

What was so striking to me about Northern Morocco was the physical beauty of the cities that we visited. Dark grey cliffs tower over white sand beaches and turquoise water in Al Hoceima. We spent one afternoon swimming in the salty waters of the Mediterranean, watching the sun slowly dip beneath the tallest crags of the Riff mountains. Bades is nestled in an enormous national park with rolling orange and red hills and sky scraping cliff faces.

Cities like Marakesh and Casablanca, while beautiful, are choked with tourists and vendors. The vendors cling on your clothes and scream outrageous prices for fake wares in your ear. We didn’t experience any of that in the North. In many ways, the things that make Morocco Moroccan were not present in the Riff.

Before embarking on the excursion we watched an interview with the son of one of the most important figures in the Rifian independence movement. He said that to him, the greatest tragedy of Moroccan domination of the North was more insidious that people think. It wasn’t the widespread murders and rapes that characterized 1958 and 1959. It wasn’t the lack of political autonomy or the economic degradation that has plagued the region since. It was migration. The fact that the Moroccan government had not only forced the Riff to fall under Moroccan sovereignty, but that they had so thoroughly done so that they had convinced the Rifian people to willingly give up their land and move to Europe.

Rabat/Tangier/Chefchaouen – Though my French is spotty at best, and my Arabic puts me on par with the local preschoolers, I have managed to speak fluently in certain contexts. Soccer dominates Moroccan culture. It can be seen inside the Moroccan markets, called souks, where vendors sell knockoff jerseys and name brand cleats. It can be seen on the beach, where roughly one in two shirts bear the names of foreign players. And it can be seen on the small stone courts which can be found throughout every city in the country.

I spend a few afternoons every week at a court near the Kasbah, on the Atlantic coast of Rabat, playing five-a-side soccer games with local men of all ages. The younger players juggle on the sideline while their fathers and older brothers play fast paced tight control games all day long. You only need to know a few words to play.

“Salam, c’est d’accord si je joue?” I ask when I arrive at the Kasbah court. Locals are usually excited to see me running around like a chicken with its head cut off as I try to keep up with this different brand of soccer.

The goals are tiny, and are guarded by older players who no longer have the stamina or bone strength to play in the field. Most games only last about 10 minutes before the next team wants to play, and often end with penalties.

I spent the long weekend traveling through Northern Morocco; first a two day stint in Tangier, and then a two hour cab ride (which cost me about 80 Dhs – $8) to Chefchaouen for another two nights.

Tangier is a short ferry ride from Spain, across the Strait of Gibraltar. It is a tourist destination for adventurous Europeans who want to visit the relaxing coastal city. In parts, Tangier is indistinguishable from Miami. Tall bone-white skyscrapers encroach on the golden sand beach, and brightly colored cocktails can be purchased from local cafes.

Chefchaouen is only a short cab ride away, but it feels like another world. Often called the Blue city, Chefchaouen served as an ancient stronghold from foreign invaders. Protected on one side by towering mountains, today, Chefchaouen boasts one of the world’s most prolific Marijuana economies.

Both cities featured stone and gravel soccer courts that were buzzing with activity throughout the whole weekend. In Tangier, the courts were fenced in and players competed against the backdrop of the Mediterranean. In Chefchaouen, games were played on a gravel parking lot with full sized goals and a stand for fans to sit and watch.

Morocco is a diverse country in many regards. There are many languages and local Arabic dialects that separate people from the north and south. Entirely different forms of industry and levels of development further distinguish Moroccans from different cities. Soccer is a point of unity. Moroccans everywhere watch with apprehension as the Moroccan national team competes in qualifying games for the African cup of nations. Moroccans everywhere cheer when Messi scores a goal. (All of the Moroccans that I have talked to support either Real Madrid or Barcelona, without fail. This in interesting because Northern Morocco was a Spanish protectorate until 1956).

I would advise any potential travelers to Morocco to spend as much time on Dueling brushing up on their French as on the ESPN site following world soccer updates. In Morocco all you need to start a conversation or make a friend is a soccer ball and a rolodex of famous soccer player names.

“Neymar?”

“Yeah! Neymar! Hamdullah.”

Rabat – Having handed in a midterm paper on the strengths and weaknesses of various theories and typologies of transnational immigration, I am coming to the groundbreaking realization that I am already five weeks through my 15 week program.

Time has simultaneously moved faster and slower than ever before. I have experienced more in these past five weeks that in the previous year, and I would like to think that it has made me grow up a lot. I am beginning to make conversation with my host family in broken Fus’ha (Modern Standard Arabic) and I have mastered the 28 letter beginner alphabet. I have spoken with Moroccan immigrants in Holland and Moroccan policy makers in Rabat in an often misguided attempt to understand global immigration policy. Perhaps most importantly, I have gotten to know an amazing and inquisitive group of American students from all over the country.

I have had moments of homesickness, moments of feeling lonely, but for the most part I have felt so welcomed into a culture so different from my own. I have learned to love the odor of the mom and pop pet shop across the street from my window, welcoming me home every night to the warm smell of feline urine. I have learned to live with a different set of table manners, and laundry detergent so strong that my shirts stand up on their own after being washed.

I miss cold cereal late at night eaten with friends. I miss fresh vegetables and humus. I miss the comfort of my own bed and a dog without rabies. Morocco is a beautiful country but it is also a profoundly difficult country. Nothing goes according to plan, nothing happens on time. Dinner is eaten at 10pm, except for when it is eaten at midnight. We typically have Tagine, except for the nights when I am presented with nothing more than a plate of sautéed pickles and told: “kul, kul” (eat, eat).

Morocco is also an incredibly energetic country. The air in the Souk buzzes with at high frequency 24 hours a day. Pushing through a crowded street while a man clears a path behind his ram, another man revs the engine of his motorcycle behind you, a shopkeeper screams hugely inflated prices in your ear and the smell of boiled snails enters you’re nostrils. All the while every mosque in the country blares the call to prayer over loud speakers high above the crowded street.

The train ride from Rabat to Tangier entailed a quintessential Moroccan experience. Five wide eyed American students boarded a train headed for the coast. The train was an hour late, and we found ourselves huddled in a small circle near the bathroom, which empties directly onto the train tracks and reeks of week old piss.

Our tickets were for the first class cabin, a compartment is reserved for us and one other lucky guest. Unfortunately, when we arrive at the door of the compartment, our seats were taken. Flustered and overheated we migrated to the bathroom and draw up a plan of attack. The only reasonable response was to present our tickets to the voyagers in our seats, but this proves difficult.

You might expect that our seats had been taken by a group of boisterous Moroccan teenagers, looking to get a rush of adrenaline. The reality is that a family has moved into our compartment. An older gentleman in a suit calm checks his email, a mother and her child play a game to pass the time. Not only were these people probably more deserving of our seats, but they made the whole interaction painstakingly difficult. They pretend to not understand, even when we speak Arabic. Confused and uncooperative, the interaction takes a few minutes before we finally free our seats.

As soon as we sit down the mood changes. The family that we just kicked out is all smiles, suddenly happy to meet the American tourists. It’s all just a game. Of course our seats were taken. There is nowhere else to sit, and the compartments are air conditioned. Of course they pretended not to speak French or Fus’ha, it almost gave them a first class ticket for the price of second.