10/18 – 11/13 Eurotrip and the Return. Some things are becoming illuminated.

It’s been just short of a month since my last post.  I feel a bit guilty…this is something I keep promising to get better at, but I fear I keep coming up short in that endeavor.  Hopefully this one can make up for all those would-be posts that I didn’t have the time or the guts, or at least the words and the clarity, to write.

To be fair, I have been gone for just under 2 weeks on fall break, and before that was midterm week (which was quite breezy).

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A warning: This entry is going to consist of me sorting out things in my brain (or trying). I am anticipating it to be quite muddled and perhaps repetitive. Bear with me.

Break was wonderful. Pretty much a purely fun, extremely indulgent temporary escape from the realities and challenges of home.  It felt a little ridiculous, vacationing in Europe after living for 2 months in Africa. It certainly reminded me of my privilege in being here, the luxury of choosing to live here and having the means to up and leave. Break was all of these things, but it turned out to be a crucial period of reflection for me, something unexpected and very welcome. My time away, particularly in Portugal where I felt very at home and was able to do some serious thinking, helped illuminate things I’ve been long trying to articulate about my experience. Being away gave me the perspective I have been needing to formulate the things about here that have felt so tangled in my mind, so stuck. Thoughts that, because I have had trouble freeing them, had been stagnating, and causing me anxiety due to the fact that I've seemed unable to mull over and sort them as fully as I needed.

And I still don’t yet feel I have the words I long to have. But they are coming, gradually, and the slowness is teaching me patience and kindness to myself in a way I haven’t quite experienced it before. It is something stark, unapologetic, and necessary, and I feel that if I do not abide by it, I cannot survive; this sounds dramatic but it is very real. I am finding, slowly, this patience with my processing and growth with my own being-in-the-world, is something I feel I grapple with at some point almost every day. Patience with sadness, with uncertainty that sometimes verges on paralyzing, patience with days that jump from all of that to a deep, swelling happiness, leaving me feeling unstable and confused and helpless to these swift changes in disposition.  “Everything is gestation and then bringing forth”…in art and in life, for I am learning too that to live fully with all the awareness and with all the love that life demands, is to live artfully. “There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing….patience is everything.”

It is strange how much being here makes me feel like a newborn, or at least as close as I could feel to something that I can’t remember. It is disorienting, sometimes debilitating, and in ways and moments, wonderful. There is certainly wonder in all of it, in the happy moments and in the sad/hard, and from a distance at least I can appreciate the latter.  Seeing the difficulties as important and good, a reminder that life was never supposed to be straightforward (and that I came to Africa with this knowledge, that it was going to be a challenge. I think up until recently, however, I didn’t quite understand what “challenge” meant, the weight of it, and was still expecting that things should be easy), has been one of the biggest lessons, and one that I am certainly still right in the messy, sticky midst of.  Again, I am reminded: “almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious.”*

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During break, specifically in Porto, I felt content and settled in myself and in an environment in a way I haven’t felt in Rabat. I felt it almost instantly – calm, relieved, not at all tense or anxious. It jolted me, and I confronted something I have known for a while but have avoided coming to terms with, that being that I don’t feel at “home” here.  It is strange…I came here for a challenge, not to necessarily find a ‘home’, and while this was my rational expectation, and the reason I came – to be challenged and to grow from it – a part of me, a big part, was also expecting to love it, pure and simple, the way so many people report back from their study abroad experiences, “IT WAS AWESOME.” Well, it is awesome. It is beautiful, alluring, fascinating…it is also uncomfortable, bizarre, frustrating, sometimes infuriating, and many things in between these extremes. And often it just feels…normal. After all, I am living here, studying here, working here…I have, to a large extent, a routine. Not every moment is going to be shocking, either positively or negatively. And this in its own way something great - that I have adapted. There is not one word to encompass all that is here, certainly not a single generalizing and/or superficially positive word. If I had to pick a word, it would be something along the lines of...confusing/complex/layered/strange. “Awesome” will never be enough.

But anyway, who says I have to pick a word.

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So...why did Porto feel like home. I have been thinking about how impossible it is to have an objective experience of a place (or of anything, but let’s not get distracted). You are always coming from somewhere else that has affected you, a place with its own feel and its own people and its own personality, and you bring all that baggage to every new place you visit. "Home" is relative, it is a changing and dynamic concept. At this point in my life, anyway. So anyways, with that in mind, I think I connected with Porto so much for several reasons:

1) because it wasn’t Morocco, and I needed a break, for perspective and also just for a change…as much as I love the absurdities of here, they can begin to grate on a person.  (Rabat in particular is not my favorite place, which is something I’ve realized. Other parts of the country have touched and affected me much more than here. The city certainly has its gems – the ocean, ruins, the medina.. – but overall it is a typical capital city – not super interesting, not a ton going on compared to other cities in the country.)

2) Europe…obviously, feels easier, and more familiar. There is more English, people keep more to themselves as compared with aggressive and sociable Moroccan culture. So, big surprise, Europe wasn’t a challenge after Africa. It was easy, breezy, beautiful (that just happened, I am sorry).

3) Related to 1 & 2. Strolling the streets of Porto, I never once reflected about the fact that I was a woman (until I had this realization, obviously). This hit me hard, and I realized how much the constant voice in my head regulating my behavior on the basis of gender affects my general mood/attitude/disposition back home. This voice (in my own head or whispered in my ear by a strange boy/man) that keeps me acutely aware of how I am walking, if I am smiling too much/too little (which basically results in a continuous and unrelenting scowl, whenever I am walking past men, which is always), if I am getting too close to men and might be giving off the impression that I am inviting attention, etc. etc. In Morocco it is a very rare moment when I am in public and am not silently reviewing all of this in my brain.  I am constantly reminded and made aware that the space is not mine. (Of course this is due also to my being a foreigner, which is another, important, issue.) So, being apart from all this was quite a relief and I was able to breathe, walk, and explore with ease and a peaceful mind. 

4) There is some kind of magic about Porto. Even if it is impossible to fully and objectively experience something, there is something to be said for an innate attraction, however in the world it happens. For some unexplainable reason, that feeling when a place/environment can make you feel so at peace internally (even when you just arrived feeling like a mess). The anxieties that have been eating at me on and off all semester back in Rabat (about my experience, about my future…this is a big one…) seemed to fade instantaneously, or at least, I felt a peace with them that I hadn’t before. I’ve felt that strong of a connection to few places, and I felt it there. 

And it was, to be honest, somewhat disheartening to realize that I felt it in Porto, and not here. It was like I failed at my challenge to love Morocco despite and because of its challenges. But as I said earlier, I have to remember to appreciate what “challenge” means, that it is not an empty word.  The world is vast and multiplicitous and different, and of course I won’t have the same feelings, the same love, for every place. My feelings for Morocco are distinctly about Morocco. They are complex, and varied.  While gone I was able to begin sorting out, thoughtfully, the ways Morocco continues to challenge, the ways it is not for me, and all the things I love and appreciate about it. I am very glad I didn't choose to study in Europe, though it was a welcome respite. 

I was talking to a good friend** about the difference between internal balance and feeling balance in a place/the world.  What I’ve found is that balance in my environment definitely affects my own sense of balance and peace with myself. I felt that in Porto. But finding that internal balance itself is something that requires an arduous process, it has for me, anyway. It demands wrestling with and doubting yourself, having gloomy days. And this process I have found in Morocco. I don’t think I would have found a deep stillness in that beautiful Portuguese city if I hadn’t earned it, in a sense, here. If that makes sense. She told me this and I agree: the more strange and different and demanding your environment, the easier it is to find this balance – in which you confront yourself, and learn to trust yourself. While my process has been by no means easy and certainly is not over, at the very least I feel with certainty that I am learning, and I feel good about that.

I have had to eat many many slices of humble pie*** and accept and affirm my inability to understand everything right now, and the things going on inside myself, which really are the greatest mystery and the most difficult/serious and important to take the time to tackle.

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Coming back since break has been mixed. The trash, the catcalls, all feel more vivid than before.  But I also have a fresh pair of eyes for everything, the good and the not-as-good, which I have been grateful for.

It is getting colder, shwia b’shwia, alhamdulillah. It’s getting down to the low 60s later this week! I am ready I am ready I am ready.

It has been most wonderful coming back to my family here. Biria and Yacob are cuter and more affectionate than ever. (I have gotten so many bear hugs from grandpa lately!) And the FOOD. I am glad to be back to Biria’s home cookin’. It is prime pomegranate, orange, and avocado season currently, which is favulous. Yum yum yum. I am feeling quite at home and happy with my friends here as well. This weekend I’ll be heading to Marrakesh with the gang for my friend Taylor’s 21^st. Should be quite a time.

Just a few of the "salads" Grace and I get to eat every day. That eggplant (denjel in Darija) is the most phenomenal I have ever had the pleasure to eat. 

the best, reddest pomegranate that ever was. 

Will post pictures of break SOON! I have been working on this baby for several hours and it is going to take another hour+ to upload photos. Also, will talk more about Spain/Malta/Portugal and the saga of Halloween. So, check back in a few.

Thanks for being patient with this one.

Sending all my love across land and sea.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

sonya.