One Last Time

Of all my expectations and challenges on this trip, I never expected for a tajine to take so much time and effort to send home. The tajine itself is a massive piece, as our van driver in Fes commented, “big enough to cook a lamb.” For the last few weeks it has been sitting in my closet waiting for a chance to be shipped, the Marrakesh trip and attempts at being a social butterfly made me all too willing to delay mailing. On some level I was avoiding mailing the tajine because it would really mean I was leaving AUI. Today I ran out of excuses, the tajine had to get shipped, no ifs ands or buts. Before I could wrap up my parents gift in protective layer after protective layer of packing materials I needed tape, thankfully Sarah helped explain to me the French word for tape( I have no idea why there is no Arabic word for tape), “scotch”, providing me the last piece of material I would need. I have lost track on how many people have commented to me about the fragility of tajines, imbuing me with a sense of paranoia on tajine transit. Layer upon layer of cardboard, tape, and random padding supplies were wrapped around, boxes were cut and molded to provide as best I could quality spacing, after forty five minutes of packing I had created, what I hope to be, a cocoon of safety that will keep this memento of an amazing Moroccan adventure.
At the AUI post office I was told two distressing tidbits, firstly that my package would be unable to ship until Monday, not that bad actually, the second one which concerned me far more, was the comment by the postal worker after he learned I was mailing a tajine stated simply that it wouldn’t make it to the States intact. In 3-5 weeks I should hopefully receive a call from my parents stating that the tajine magically survived its 7000 mile journey. With the tajine packed and ready I was left with the task of clearing my room for departure, which took far more time than anticipated as the housing officer I needed to get cleared with became rather stealthy around the time I was ready to take care of all of my paper work. One feature of Morocco that I will be ok with no longer having to deal with is the French system of utterly idiotic bureaucracy, where not only do you need signatures from members of various departments who have spread themselves around campus and will only stamp your paper after receiving a phone call from some other official. After spending all of the effort on getting my room properly cleared and ready to go, I was done as the International Office closed down for the day making it necessary to drop off my form tomorrow in Building 38, another thing I never really understood about AUI is why are all of the buildings simply numbered and left unnamed, while I appreciate the university is only fifteen years old I just feel someone who AUI likes or an Alum must have done something worth naming a building for.
With paper work complete, but alas un-submitted I decided that would be a good moment to sit down and start typing this entry. My stay in Morocco has been a phenomenal one, allowing me to experience a culture that I will spend quite a bit of time digesting and trying to understand. Of all things Moroccan, that are food based, that I will miss most is tajine cooked food with particular emphasis on lemon chicken tagine, cooked in such a way that you can tear away pieces of meat with chunks of bread. Of the cities I visited on this trip Rabat has at least one adventure I will have to come back to, grabbing a drink at the Alaska Bar and Restaurant, with the hopes that I can get some kind of discount or at least special drink, if I can prove to them that I am in fact Alaskan. Hardest for me has been adjusting to the chaotic hustle we experienced in every city we visited. While I thought I could deal with crowds and insanity of city life, the medina is another creature entirely, the order I find so important when trying to survive other cities, Tokyo, New York, or Boston, just isn’t there in Morocco. Alleyways are tight, people ebb and flow around eachother, and the hustle of conversations in Arabic and French as well as the cries of vendors asking you to buy something in English, made it very difficult to want to stay in the medina’s for more time than was necessary to achieve whatever limited shopping or touring that was planned for the day.
My friendships in Morocco have been intense, chaotic, and wonderful. Adapting to my Moroccan friend’s sense of timing and seeming lack of willingness to make coherent plans has been interesting to say the least. While we were warned by Mrs. Fishburne at the beginning of our time in Morocco that the local concept of when and how things should be done, it never really stuck. Even after god knows how many delayed meals waiting for Ahmed to get his deal together, we always seemed to hope that just this once someone would show up at the allotted time, or at least tell us that there plans had changed. As far as I can remember only two Moroccans I have spent time with would actually update me with any changes of plans, Fadel and Sarah, both of whom who I will miss tremendously when I get back to the states, this is not to say I won’t miss others, I just felt like singling them out for punctuality.