Internet Party!

Among the first things any astute American will look for in a foreign country is, of course, a way to feel more at home. The easiest way is usually the internet, and here in Morocco, cyber cafés outnumber people 3:1. Or at least that's the way it seems.

In all reality, there were no fewer than four "cybers" (tsee-bears) within a block of our hotel, not including the ridiculously overpriced computers near the lobby. Generally an hour of internet access anywhere in the country will cost between 4-6 dirhams, or roughly 50-75 cents. That sounds pretty cheap, at least until the first time you sit at the keyboard and realize that half of it is in Arabic, half in French.

In the United States and in many other countries, we use the QWERTY style (look left to right starting at the Q and you'll get it.) For whatever reason the French decided this was not adequate and changed a few keys around to make things more "efficient." Basically, the AZERTY style is annoying as sin. That's right, A and Q switched spots, and W and Z as well. M moves over to semi-colon, comma moves over to where M used to be, semi-colon moves to period, and period just disappears altogether. Shift+semi-colon produces period, according to the French. To you, that would be Shift+comma. Confused yet? The number keys are inversed, so now the characters above them are what you type when you hit the number keys, and you have to hold Shift to type the number. Not only that, but the exclamation point is no longer above the 1. It replaces backslash down by right Shift, and doesn't require Shift at all! And question mark moves to the left one spot, and I still haven't found apostrophe to this day.

Basically, my first experience with an AZERTY keyboard sucked. It took me fifteen minutes (15!!) to write a three sentence e-mail. The French are on crack. A month later, or at the time I'm actually writing this, I finally figured out how to change AZERTY to QWERTY, thanks to an obscure setting in Windows that has nothing at all to do with keyboard setup and instead fudges with how numbers are displayed. At this point though, I have access to internet in my house most of the time with my laptop and don't need to go to a cyber, but now I don't have to teach myself to type all over again.

Anyways, I'm pretty computer oriented and the AZERTY keyboard was a huge challenge for me. My fellow trainees? Some took one look and vowed to find wireless internet somewhere in Rabat so they could use their laptops instead. The first night I tried various portions of the hotel without much luck. The second night we struck gold. Luckily, from just about anywhere in the hotel faint wi-fi signals could be picked up, but only at about half the strength needed to surf the internet. Then one of the girls got a connection in her room to a cyber down the street, and soon over a dozen volunteers (including myself) were clustered in her room for our first real connection back with the States. So after trolling through the mdina and the Casbah, I promptly got back online to upload the first pictures I had taken to that point.

The next night, so many people had heard the myth of the wireless that they spilled out into even a nearby hallway, which itself attracted tourists and soon there was a Russian and an Italian out there with them! I didn't feel like fighting for a spot and instead went to get my camera for this spectacle. Unfortunately, on my way to my room, one of my roommates decided to try an appliance in a wall socket, and promptly blew out the fuse for the half the floor with a resounding BOOM! and flash of light from our room. In case you don't know, American appliances run on 110 volts, and everywhere else in the world appliances run on 220 volts. So if you don't have a "dual voltage" appliance, expect fireworks! By the time I got back, most folks had run out of battery and gone to bed, but...enjoy!

Some would call this addicted to the internet. I call it addicted to America!

By now it's Thursday night in Rabat, our last in the capital before moving on to Fez. Downstairs, rumors of a belly dancer had drawn a crowd, but apparently she was only the warm-up act for some dude on a keyboard singing French pop songs and I got there too late. Instead I spent most of the night up on the roof just relaxing, having forsaken exploring for time just to relax and read a book (or procrastinate attempting to learn Arabic script.)

At this point, we had spent the previous six days in a fairly large group of almost 70 people. The next day we'd be going to Fez and the SBD folks to Ourzazates, so there were some heartfelt goodbyes, because a lot of these people were our friends and the only people we knew in the country so far. The SBD group outnumbers our YD group by over 30%, so we felt that loss quite a bit.

However, the next day we would of course be going to Fez, the most spiritual city in Morocco. Concurrently, Friday, September 14 was also the first day of Ramadan. Even though no one in our group is Muslim, the overwhelming prevalence of religion in this society has dictated changes even in our lives and habits for almost a full month at this point, which I'll explain in more detail later. At the time though, none of us had a clue how it would truly affect us, and the emotions towards the start of Ramadan varied from apprehensive for those worried about the changes to excited for those trying to participate, down to apathetic for those who just went with the flow anyways, and in my case, curious.

Friday morning dawned, and by the time I awoke, the SBD folk were already gone, having faced an 8 hour bus ride compared to our just over 2 hours. I had already packed, so I simply lounged in the lobby on plush couches while my counterparts toiled madly to fit everything they had brought (read: suitcases packed to bursting) with everything we had already been given (read: to this point useless books and lots of paperwork.) Then our turn came, and we hopped on a bus that was itself packed to the seams with luggage to the extent it took up the extra seats we had.

At last, we snaked our way through Rabat, eventually leaving the coast behind and heading inland. We left a Mediterranean city that was as much the secular seat of the Moroccan government as Washington, D.C. is for us. Now, we were headed for our first true interaction with Muslim society.