Day 7 - Tangier

We are just over a week into our travels in Morocco! While it has only been a week, we have met with a variety of educators and other professionals in Morocco to learn about a breadth of subjects–a visit to Parliament, lectures on history and architecture, linguistic diversity, and panels on higher education in Morocco. As today is Sunday, it was a good day to be tourists and have some time to rest.

This morning we visited the Hercules Cave which is located 14 km from Tangier and has been a tourist attraction since the 1920s. While it is unclear which civilizations or peoples utilized this cave for sure, it has been used by humans since around 5000 BC, often as a place to carve out millstones. It is named for the Greek mythological figure who completed one of his twelve works here. After walking through the cave and learning more about the mostly unknown history, I can’t help but wonder about the many people throughout millenia who may have carved out a stone to grind their wheat or take shelter from the sun or rain and who have walked the same stones and marveled at the same view of the brightness of the sun reflecting on the blues and greens of the ocean from the darkness of the cave.

The second activity this morning was Cap Spartel which is where the Mediterranean Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet. There is a lighthouse at Cap Spartel, the oldest lighthouse in Morocco and was begun in 1861. The location is strategic because of the number of shipwrecks in the straits of Gibraltar and has been in continuous operation since it was completed in 1864. We had lunch at the restaurant overlooking Cap Spartel and the lighthouse and had a delicious lunch of what has become a predictable and delicious Moroccan lunch: a salad (nicoise in this case), fish with zucchini and carrots, and a dessert–tarte au citron for the rest and a fruit salad for me.

As always, we have been impressed by Moroccan hospitality and had our delicious lunch today before having our first big chunk of free time in Morocco. I felt like I needed to do more–to see more and visit all the places we didn’t have time to see during our medina tour–but instead, I decided to take it slow and not have a plan.

We have expectations for what we will do and see and eat and learn, but ultimately–it is not “my trip”--it is the experience that I am privileged to have in a culture that is not my own. Morocco is not my home, it is home to nearly 37 million people who have their own needs and wants and ways of life. It is their experience that I am fortunate enough to briefly share with them in fleeting moments and passing glances. Sometimes I am able to share more fully in the lives of others–our tour guide and the wonderful MACECE staff that I have come to know and love, but the purpose is to understand and appreciate that we all interact with our environments and cultures in different ways but that we all share the experience of being human.

I walked out of the hotel without a clear plan, but decided to head across the busy beachfront street towards and took a deep breath to appear confident as I walked into fully flowing traffic that I knew was supposed to stop for me. I’ll admit that I’ve shamelessly followed groups of teenage girls through traffic during our first few days in Morocco. Once safely across the street from the hotel, I walked over the Corniche (a paved walking area that stretches along the beach) and down the steps to the beachfront. On the edge of the Mediterranean, I watched dozens of young boys playing soccer on the beach–anywhere and everywhere that there was a flat stretch of sand. The beach was completely full of families out on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and there was an atmosphere of pure joy. As I made my way through the maze of people under the umbrellas with their beach towels and toys, I laughed out loud as I saw a fully grown Moroccan man completely buried in sand from head to toe–his friends catching my eye and giggling as I passed by.

I waded knee deep into the ocean and took a deep breath and took in my surroundings. From the water you could see the crowded and densely constructed buildings of the medina and kasbah on the hill and these buildings transitioned from left to right–from the fortified old city to the newer high rise hotels on the beachfront, with cranes in the background building even newer construction. As the waves slowly rolled in, I watched a young father pass by in front of me and struggle with his two sons, holding each of them by one hand and guiding them through calf-deep waves along the beach. He clearly was having a hard time containing the joy of the younger son who was absolutely enthralled with the experience of splashing around and jumping as high as possible as if it were the only natural movement. We met eyes and shared a knowing smile–in that moment without a single word, we shared the feeling that it can be difficult to manage the instincts of children while keeping them safe but letting them experience the world on their own terms.

I didn’t stay long at the beach–I was on my own and just wanted to stand in the water and take in the view for a few minutes. I slowly made my way back towards the street, stopping just before the sand ended to take photos of the old town and a video explaining each section visible of the city because I knew that I wouldn’t remember all of the details once I was home. I took a moment to stop and enjoy the breeze and the cool sea air as we have had quite a few hot days here in Morocco. I walked towards the stairs up to the street level and as I ascended the stairs, I felt a shift in the atmosphere that had felt so carefree and joyous just a few moments earlier. A crowd was gathering and there was a man on the ground on the road with a delivery bag lying just a few feet away and a motorbike overturned in the right lane of the street. He was clearly hurt badly–he did not move and I could hear screams in Darija that could have been from him in pain or a bystander calling for help. Soon the few people around had formed into a crowd, and many people were trying to help by blocking traffic while others were standing around and watching. I knew that there was nothing that I could do to help, despite that being my only instinct, so I began to make my way across the street in exactly the same crosswalk in which he had been hit–the one that I had been nervous to cross earlier–now with the addition of beeping horns, frustrated at the block in traffic that the accident had caused. The honks were coming from cars that could not see or could not have known that there was a man lying in complete misery just yards away from where they were frustrated at the minor inconvenience of a few moments to wait in traffic, when the complete trajectory of a man’s life had been changed. I quickly crossed the street and stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to the hotel, noticing all of the hotel staff were watching the unfolding situation across the street and I took a moment to send every bit of hope and healing I had in me towards the man lying on the ground. An ambulance arrived, and I watched them unload the stretcher and move it towards the ground before finally turning my back and heading up the stairs and back into the hotel.

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind. –Anthony Bourdain

As Anthony Bourdain said, the journey leaves marks. Sometimes those marks are hard to see–you may not realize the significance even in the moment, but in the coming weeks and months and even years, I have found myself profoundly changed by moments like the ones from today–the silly moments like burying yourself in the sand or realizing the shared experience of parents across the world, but also by the fact that at any moment our life as we know it can change in an instant. In our daily lives we spend so much time hurrying from one activity or place to the next, trying to complete all the work and tasks necessary for our busy lives while trying to enjoy the little bit of leisure time that we have–much like the families on the beach today. I am constantly reminded that as humans, no matter our history or culture, we are so much more alike than different. We want to have fun in our free time. We want to protect our children while giving them the best experiences possible. We want to avoid catastrophic injury and pain and sometimes can’t look away when we witness it through another. Travel is full of memories both good and bad, it is a way to expand the consciousness of what it means to be human while increasing empathy for all those you encounter whether you share the same lived experience or one that is virtually unrecognizable from the outside. My heart has been both full and completely broken in half–sometimes on the very same day, even as short as a quick 20 minute trip to the beach. My body bears the scars of a tumble down a gravel street in Costa Rica and there is a small dot on my left foot from a rusty nail in Laos that went through my shoe. The marks that travel left on me today were not on my body, but were on my heart. I did not have anything to leave behind except for a laugh, a smile, and an urgent desire to help that was left unfulfilled. I am taking so much with me: an education from distinguished professors on the linguistic diversity and the educational system, the tangible souvenirs, and a sense of what it is like to live in the world that has been at the crossroads of both ancient and modern civilizations and has been influenced by both familiar and unfamiliar cultures. I can only hope that those who I encountered today were at the least, unencumbered by my presence and at the most that our short interactions left them with a good impression of the lone American woman traversing their streets and beach. I hope to find a way to leave something good behind here in Morocco.