Kinza - Rabat, Morocco - Week 5

Week 5 - Mawazine!

This past week was by far my best week in Morocco! Thanks mostly in part to Mawazine which is a week long music festival celebrating music from all around the world. This festival has multiple venues and featured well known performers such as Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Ne-Yo, Stromae, Nancy Ajram, Ricky Martin and many more. I wasn’t able to go to all the different venues but I got to see most of the one’s that I wanted to see.

As fun as Mawazine was, it was frustrating at times. Frustrating due to all the harassment caused mostly by older men who felt it necessary to grab at us while we were just trying to have fun.  Some of our older male students joined us for several shows and they would form a protective circle around us which helped keep strangers away from our personal space. As nice as it was for our students and friends to do that for us, such steps should not be necessary. As a female, I should be allowed to go out in public and have fun without the fear that someone will violate me.

This one time, I kicked someone to make them stop touching me inappropriately and doing so also resulted in another person getting kicked. So that guy came and asked me in English why I had kicked him, I screamed that “someone’s touching me!” which resulted in him laughing and I screamed back “that is not funny” several times.

Harassment is a serious issue here and one that is treated way too lightly, when others see someone getting harassed, rather than try to stop it, they add fuel to the flame by encouraging the action. A conversation with a Moroccan man about this led to him saying that “Moroccan woman like being harassed” that they like the attention. I may not be Morrocan but I flat out refuse to believe that anyone, male or female, could enjoy such a thing irregardless of where they are from.

VOLUNTEERING

This week we were joined by another volunteer, Layla, who had switched over from her other project. Having her was a great addition and it allowed us to split up the classes into beginner and advanced. The students instantly liked her and she is wonderful to have around since she knows more Arabic and can communicate with the students better than I can.

MARRAKECH

I went to Marrakech, the Red City, for the weekend. It wasn’t as pretty as the other places I’ve been to in Morocco so that was a bit disappointing. The coolest thing about this place was all the elderly women I saw riding motorcycles, I imagined them to have boss personalities even if I couldn’t manage to talk to them. There was lot of pretty architecture but not much else asides shopping.

 Justin Timberlake from over 500 ft. away, that's the equivalent of having a restraining order and never being able to touch him! :(  But he looked over in our general direction and told us to make some noise. 

Brains and Livers…yes people eat these here (cooked) 

Goat Heads….I was being stalked by a random stranger as I was trying to get this picture

 Pretty flower at the Saadian Tombs…worth the visit!

 Saadian Tombs

There was a massive store that was filled with all sorts of knick knacks. This gnome was the creepiest thing ever!