Hot, dusty & happy in Morocco
I’d often walk to the grocery store when I lived in Nairobi — by choice, since I could have easily hopped in a matatu, a minibus system that transports you most anywhere you need to go in that buzzing city.
Instead — the handles of my reusable grocery bags painfully digging into my shoulders — I’d hoof it all the way there and home again. I’d dart across a few busy intersections, sweat through my shirt and stain my shoes with red dust. I’d smile at the woman who operates a small roadside fruit stand, and nod (I’m friendly, not all out outgoing, people. You all know that by now) to the several people tending flowers a bit further along.
I did this every week. A colorful, comforting ritual.
When I moved back to the U.S. — briefly to Iowa, of all places (never, ever again) — I remember feeling empty when I’d drive to the local Shnuck’s. There was no dust, no palpable energy, no overwhelming signs that life is unfolding all around me.
Getting groceries had turned back into the chore it’d always been for me in the U.S.
I had lived in Nairobi for just over a year, and I had loved it. But there’s a guiltiness associated with the sensation of feeling more alive in some of the developing countries I’ve spent time in. It isn’t my country to feel at home in, after all.
I certainly won’t say it’s because life in Nairobi is “simpler” — because I don’t know what that means. Life is a complex, messy thing for everyone, it’s the complexities and the degree of complication that differs. Nor does my love for developing countries come from a place of wanting to “save” it or its people — there’s a slew of blog posts on that problematic viewpoint and it’s not something I’ll get into here. It’s absolutely not because I need to be a voyeur of people — strangers — I blindly assume “have so little but are just so happy,” a common, cringeworthy observation I hear when traveling.
I know everyone wants more, is working hard toward more for themselves and their families.
I’m currently in Rabat, Morocco for the month with Remote Year. I so enjoyed our months in Valencia and Lisbon. What gorgeous, fun, and all too easy places to live. What tame walks to the workspaces and what pristine ocean views as I dined on fresh seafood and gulped wine. Sorry I didn’t write more about those experiences. They were wonderful, and I am so thankful for them, I promise you. But all the time, I was itching to get here!
Morocco hasn’t disappointed.
I spent the weekend in Fes with several of my fellow remotes. It was like nowhere I’ve ever been. The dusty, narrow, broken streets of the medina wind labyrinth-like. Doorways far too short for my tall frame appear on both sides, the long, dark passageways or steep, uneven staircases behind tempting me with the unknown. Men sit in the street, hammering the stunning copper cookware you might find at Williams-Sonoma. At the tannery, cowhides stew in mixtures of pigeon poop and cow pee to create the supple leather you’ll covet in your next purse.
Acrid smells attack your nose, the 104-degree heat attacks your body and it’s completely overwhelming, completely invigorating.
The AC — weak, mostly warm air that sometimes ekes out of tiny vents, which you can feel if you stick your entire face an inch from it — on the train home to Rabat failed to work. Someone yanked open the train door; another man went around unbolting the long windows near the ceiling to allow hot desert air to flow into the stifling cars.
I watched parched earth fly past out the open door of the moving train. For more than three hours, sweat trailed down my back, down my legs, gathered at my hairline until the dam broke and perspiration stung my eyes. Absolute hell.
“Why, again, do I love shit like this?” I wondered.
I think it comes from wanting to be part of a culture where new ideas still feel welcome, where change and adaptation is a constant, where there are so many people doing small, brilliant things (not sure opening windows on a train that probably would’ve killed people otherwise counts, but you get the idea) every day to improve their lives and the lives of those around them.
And yes, as a storyteller, where there are countless stories yet to be told. So really all I know is that I was the happiest I’ve ever been during the time I lived in Kenya, and I haven’t felt anything similar until I arrived in Morocco.
Last week, I dashed across four lanes of traffic and ventured down a small alley to find the Moroccan Center for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship headquarters for a meeting I’d set up. My head is still spinning with the number of incredible local startups here. I don’t even have enough time to tell all their stories.
This isn’t to say that Rabat and Nairobi are overly similar, or that any two developing cities are like one another. They’re really not. But the charged feeling in the air — one of opportunity, of ideas still welcome because change is inevitable…that’s why I left D.C. and why I know I’ll be sad to leave Morocco and thrilled to head to Vietnam and Cambodia later this year.
