Sunday, October 7, 2007

The Road to Morocco

My last day in the United States was, you could say, event-filled. I spent the morning walking around Philly near the U-Penn campus, and after trying an interesting concoction at a breakfast chain called Cereality, perused the Penn bookstore looking for gifts for the families I would be staying with the first few months of my Peace Corps service. We had already packed and checked out of our rooms at this point, so after settling on a few small calendars showing the National Parks (and fully realizing I'd have to explain to people half a world away that the America they'd see if they visited looked nothing like that!) it was back to the hotel to, well, wait.

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We scrambled onto the buses around 1 pm, and then it was off to JFK Airport. Along the way, we stopped at a gas station/rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike, which is every bit as disgusting as you've heard it is. However, that gas station was a gold mine as our last glimpse of American culture. Myself, I dove straight into the soda section and nabbed a Mountain Dew Livewire, and grabbed some beef jerky and Charleston Chew to round everything out. Other volunteers got stuff like potato chips, gum, candy, but it was my prime rib beef jerky that stank up the whole bus, thank you very much!

About two hours into the bus ride, through the smog on the Jersey Turnpike, I got my first and only glimpse of New York City. I've never been there, so I guess driving through Manhattan to get to JFK (and along the way, seeing Shea Stadium where the Mets play, and the place where the end of Men in Black was filmed) was as iconic as you could get. Of course, we were stuck in traffic for an hour, so that part of American culture wasn't lost on us either!

Finally we get to JFK, and luckily we were the first large group at our airline's counter, and I was at the front behind only a few other people. I swear, the entire flight showed up minutes after we did, so we were very lucky to get there first, and even then it took well over an hour for the entire group to get boarding passes. Security was a breeze (and really, it's never taken me more than 15 minutes in ANY airport on three different continents, so I never get what the fuss is about) and then all we could do was, well, wait.

After a while, a few of us realized that at JFK, the fast food concourse is outside security, and by the gates all you could get was booze or a panini. Good job, JFK... Anyhow, a few of us decided to leave security and head to the concourse upstairs, and slyly snuck by the people still trickling past the metal detectors (and who were asking us where the food was, I might add.) We get upstairs, and lo and behold! McDonald's. Sbarros. Shitty Chinese food. Organic sandwiches. We wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get back through security, so we had maybe 10 minutes to order our food and eat. I must have eaten that double quarter-pounder with cheese, large fries and Powerade in no more than three minutes.

Once we were back at our gate, I absentmindedly watched the football game (Chicago Bears and somebody else I think?) and knew that the time was coming to make my final goodbyes. The ones where this time, they would likely be the tearful goodbyes. And finally, our flight was called.

The plane ride was interesting, to say the least. I sat next to a very polite woman who didn't speak a word of English, and I didn't speak a word of Arabic. However, by the end of the flight, I would gather I was becoming quite proficient in the art of crazy hand gestures. I was near a few volunteers, and we went over our tourist books, read, slept, got anxious, etc. Ironically, I had the best airplane meal of my life. I'll never forget that lasagna. Seriously, best airplane food AND the best lasagna I've ever had. It settled me down to the point where I decided to try to sleep, and, luckily, did. By the time I woke up, we were over Spain with less than an hour to go.

Of course, I almost forgot to look out the window. When I finally did, we had already passed over Casablanca and were about to land at the airport. And Morocco looks like...

California.

Anyone who's ever driven on Route 101 during the day knows exactly what Morocco looks like. Well, subtract the occasional suburbia and replace with sporadic little adobe or whitewashed homes. Some with tin roofs, others fully enclosed, and some with none at all. But ALL of them with satellite dishes!

We eventually come to a grinding halt at the airport, and step out into a warm sun and onto a dusty airstrip. Buses transport us to the terminal, kind of a mix between Dulles and any small-town airport you've ever flown into. We got to use the diplomats' line at Customs, and apparently that was a once-in-a-lifetime privilege. Whatever; it actually didn't go any quicker! Once we have our bags we're ferried outside to yet more buses, and by this time the business casual clothes we were requested to wear into country are getting absolutely battered by dust and grime from 24 hours of traveling, jostling, and general wear and tear.

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Once the head counts are over, we get onto buses where the AC is so freakishly cold, we try in vain to close the vents, but the air pressure through them is so great we're shivering in a hot country. The buses creep out of the airport, and for the first time I notice a sign absent any English words on it (from now on it will be French and Arabic.)

We head towards Casablanca and the coastal road leading to Rabat, where we will spend our first few days. I see countless houses and buildings, none more than about three or four stories tall. You'll wonder why, until you see the towering minarets from the many mosques that dot the city skyline. And of course, every house has a satellite dish (or several.)

At first glance, you wonder why this is the so-called Third World.

And then you leave the city. You pass by stretches where houses are built by whatever the industrious people can find to use as flooring, walls, or roofs. And if they have electricity, of course a satellite dish (and I'll explain this phenomenon later, because it took weeks to find out why!) In the United States, we're used to all the amenities, such as electricity, running water, supermarkets, even trash disposal. The ride from Casablanca to Rabat showed us that yes, Morocco is an entirely different world. One where the people may not be so entirely different from us, in their dreams and aspirations, but one where reality shifts your focus from luxury to sustainability; individualism to family.

With our first lesson about our new home complete, I promptly fell asleep from exhaustion and woke up an hour later in Rabat, with the first real glimpse of my new home but a fading, tired memory replaced by the concrete buildings, glass facades, and flowing fountains we are all too accustomed to.

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