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Spain/Morocco: Modern Morocco

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Spain/Morocco: Modern Morocco

By Saritha Ramakrishna

I heard that Morocco has embedded within it a series of contradictions. After visiting Rabat and Marrakech, it seems as if Morocco exists in a kind of gray space, between the expectations of the modern present and its past foundations. Though I’ve heard this said about many different countries, experiencing it firsthand allowed me to understand what this really means.  The landscapes of many developing countries, at least in my experience, have been so characterized. I think Westerners find it strange to see computer parts being sold on the floor of a marketplace, or to find familiar cartoon characters printed on t shirts sold in the next shop. It’s kind of like an incomplete collage, part of the organized chaos of modern Morocco.

Visiting with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, a professor representing a nature reserve, the U.S. Embassy, a government subsidized school for rural women, and a few other places are representative of what I understand this country to be. The government is on track to modernization, but at the same time, is taking huge risks to ensure that this modernization actually occurs. High subsidization and spending, in addition to the reliance on foreign investors creates a situation where these initiatives must work. My own focus of research, the agricultural system, is composed of this same dissonance, the contrast between what intensified, industrialized, modern agriculture is supposed to look like, combined with the consequences and difficulties of actual realization. Leaving Marrakech and continuing south has given has an understanding of this that. The smaller towns we’ll be visiting  are so different from Marrakech, and the volume and pace of everyday life will likely continue to decrease in intensity as we continue on into the desert. Rural Morocco feels like another world. Along this same vein, today, we were able to visit with students from a school created for the education of rural women. When we asked how they felt about moving to the city following their education, they said they were determined not to stay where they were raised, adding that they must continue forward, instead of falling backwards. Though the clarity of their convictions didn’t surprise me, it’s less clear in this country, what is forwards and what is backwards, especially in considering the real meaning of sustainable development.

We’re on the move constantly, and we’re not sleeping much. I feel like we live four days in one, with all of the things we do. But there’s time to sleep later, and we’ve all gotten used to suddenly nodding off during a five hour bus ride. There’s still a lot to see, especially as we grow to understand the less developed southern region of the country, inciting even more curiosity about the national identity of this country.