Last year, the Arab Spring started while I was applying to study abroad in Cairo. Besides causing numerous revolutions that are still happening today, the unrest that spread to Egypt around January 25 prompted the University of Chicago to move their Middle Eastern Civilizations study abroad trimester to Rabat, Morocco. I knew that Morocco had mostly been spared the unrest of the Arab Spring, so I was surprised when a student sent an email to our program's listhost with a link to this article. Two days ago, while I was eating ghaif and drinking sweet mint tea and watching Arab Idol, protesters set
themselves on fire in the main square of Rabat. And if the student
hadn't alerted me to this fact, I would have never known.
I always thought that cities would have a certain buzz when protests were happening. Some feeling in the air of unrest, of excitement. However, on the walk to school this morning, the air held only exhaust fumes. I walked past parliament, visible in the video accompanying the above Al Jazeera article, and the streets were clear except for crushing traffic. The only crowd was a small one, maybe 20 people, mixed civilians and officials, outside the Egyptian embassy, perhaps anticipating a demonstration on the upcoming anniversaries of Egypt's revolution. My host family didn't say a thing about the protests. Our center only commented that we should not go.
I'll try to stay abreast of Moroccan politics, but with the language barrier, it's difficult to know what's going on. My Arabic is not nearly good enough to read a newspaper, and international news organizations don't seemed to be overly concerned with Morocco. Right now, making friends and perennially attempting to catch up on the 200 pages of reading every night occupies most of my time. But hopefully I'll wake up soon and realize that I'm in Morocco, and the Arab Spring is still happening, here.
(Reassurance to family and friends that I will never do anything that could remotely cause any bodily harm. And, also, I still haven't eaten a sheep.)
I always thought that cities would have a certain buzz when protests were happening. Some feeling in the air of unrest, of excitement. However, on the walk to school this morning, the air held only exhaust fumes. I walked past parliament, visible in the video accompanying the above Al Jazeera article, and the streets were clear except for crushing traffic. The only crowd was a small one, maybe 20 people, mixed civilians and officials, outside the Egyptian embassy, perhaps anticipating a demonstration on the upcoming anniversaries of Egypt's revolution. My host family didn't say a thing about the protests. Our center only commented that we should not go.
I'll try to stay abreast of Moroccan politics, but with the language barrier, it's difficult to know what's going on. My Arabic is not nearly good enough to read a newspaper, and international news organizations don't seemed to be overly concerned with Morocco. Right now, making friends and perennially attempting to catch up on the 200 pages of reading every night occupies most of my time. But hopefully I'll wake up soon and realize that I'm in Morocco, and the Arab Spring is still happening, here.
(Reassurance to family and friends that I will never do anything that could remotely cause any bodily harm. And, also, I still haven't eaten a sheep.)
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