To Keep in Touch...

So I guess it's been awhile, huh?  Sorry if I kept anybody waiting, but I'm pretty sure you all incredibly busy lives right about now and don't need lots of blogs to clutter your life more.

This is just going to be a catch up blog session.  I'm in the process of trying to write you a blog about migration, but it's not coming together very well.

I think the major event I need to tell you about was our village stay.  We traveled a few hours into Morocco, near Khouribga and Boujad, visiting an NGO in each town.  Though very different organizations both in size and target groups, both the BDD and AFVIC work to train and fund small, sustainable cooperative businesses for return migrants and/or their families here in Morocco.  I don't know much about it, but I guess that Morocco has been incredibly successful introducing microcredits into these community development projects.  Our mini-seminar on migration and development (Said broke the migration seminar into various segments concerning its interaction with culture, human rights, the Mediterranean and development) has been really interesting and I'm thinking of building my independent study project around an internship with one of these organizations.  But nobody hold your breath - I've gone through about seven vague project proposals in the past four days.

Morocco is the fourth leading national recipient of migrant remittances in the world, which makes sense given that roughly 10% of her population lives abroad (though this includes Moroccan citizens who have never set foot on Moroccan soil).  Still, until I think last year, the official remittances alone represented the largest category in the GDP, beating both agriculture and tourism for something like thirty years running.  And still most remittances come in cash form through friends and neighbors, sometimes regularly and sometimes only during the summer holidays when just a little under half of all Moroccan migrants return home to visit family.  I was not around to see it, but every official and unofficial source we've spoken to mentions the massive traffic influx as well as the astronomical increase in lavish summer weddings.  There's several national and international efforts now to try and manipulate this income for more progressive development (though I sometimes I have a hard time understanding why raising 10% of migrants' families entirely above the poverty line doesn't qualify as a developmental improvement, not to mention another 20% of them from the lowest levels of the poverty spectrum).  

One of these efforts is some kind of UN Fund that I've yet to fully understand, but that takes a percentage of migrant remittances and builds local projects in regions with high-migratory rates in order to provide employment for those left behind.  This is the most comprehensive plan we've heard about.  Many of the others seem to be vague aid plans from Europe to cheap labor providers.  Most European nations don't want to keep the migrants anymore, for well-publicized economic and social threats as well as fear of terrorism, and have latched onto this new concept that halting migration requires fixing the causes of migration, namely poverty, infrastructure and employment.  The phrase we use as shorthand for this in class is "aid and trade," which has a dark ring to it that I find perpetually amusing when authors use it in unbridled optimism and self-righteousness.  Actually, we read (well, in fact I think only two of us students read it, but I'm the one who counts in this blog, so...) a fabulous article by Hein de Haas that breaks down this concept that traditional developmental improvement will stop the desire to migrate, if for no other reason than that foreign investment will manage only to further highlight the relative development discrepancy between destination country and host country.  

I'm also inclined to think that institutionalizing remittances for national investments will weaken Morocco's political cards when negotiating the many various labor contracts with European nations.  Such as, for example, the current proposal by Spain to pay Moroccan migrants to move back to Morocco and not return for three years (I think three years, but maybe not exactly).  An even stronger dependence on European currency combined with Morocco's new Advanced Status with the EU ("everything but membership") and Sarkozy's Union for the Mediterranean, which along with other EU initiatives, which plans to create a completely free trade region around the Mediterranean ocean by 2010 or 2012 - well, I guess I find it all a little disturbing.  But I'm not a politician or an economist and you never know.  By the way, on TV the other night, I saw an advertisement for a Sarkozy voodoo doll  - could have been a joke, but I don't think so.

So, armed with these kinds of intellectual theories based on extremely limited information, we lived for a weekend with host families in a very rural area who had members living abroad.  And as could be expected, the view's a little different from the ground.  I mean, separate from a tiny bit of agricultural work and a seasonal carpet sale, I think that remittances were the only source of income for my family.  

I lived in an extended family with another girl named Caitryn.  I had a host sister, Hanan, who's seventeen (though she's not exactly sure) and amazing.  Of all the people I've met here so far, she's communicated with me the best, partially because she speaks clearly and slowly, but probably mostly because she has a vast database of sound effects and descriptive faces.  I also had two little siblings, a brother and sister, named Osana and Serham, respectively.  Osana is hilarious.  About five years old, surrounded by a family almost entirely female and louder than any thunder clap or firework I have ever heard.  He throws temper tantrums to best my childhood bests and was convinced that I was no smarter than the chickens he regularly tormented.  We had good fun.  

As far as lifestyle goes, I'm just going to list a few items of interest.  There was no indoor plumbing.  The closest homestead was a ten minute walk away while the primary school that marked the center of the village was fifteen or twenty minutes away and not visible because of the hills.  We walked ten minutes to the well twice in one morning and yes, we had donkeys, who are indeed a miserable looking species.  We also had two horses, which apparently marks my family as fairly well-off by village standards, two adult cows and two baby cows (super cute) and a host of chickens, roosters, chicks, turkeys and what I think pheasants, though I'm not positive, having previously believed they only lived in old British tapestries.  The chicken sleep in their own little dunes, but prefer the outdoor bread oven, which we had to shoo them out of several times.  (I think the oven's considered more aromatic by chicken standards because the primary source of fuel is petrified cow and horse dung.)  The horses and cows consumed one and a half to two well trips' worth of water in less than ten minutes.  

This water consumption was eye-opening for me because we'd had a lecture about the growing water crisis in Morocco and I simply had not understood.  But our well is mostly replenished by rainwater and the country is far more prone to draught than rain.  Hanan told me that when the well's good, you can just dip your hand into the water.  When I was there, the water was at least four times my entire length away.  When the day got really hot, everyone retired inside where Caitryn, Hanan, my mother, Caitryn's mother and Caitryn's sister danced to music saved on a cell phone, washed our hair, played cards and generally lazed about.  

At one point during the trip, all of the students and a bunch of the community members (mostly male) got together in the schoolhouse where Badr translated a discussion between us.  It was really an amazing thing.  We went back and forth, talking about migration, political corruption, the American presidential campaign, US universities and government educational support.  We eventually had to stop because it got dark (a reaction that seemed natural at the time, but in retrospect is very foreign to both my life in Rabat and my life in the States).

Hey, while we're on the subject, I have some stories to tell about voting here.  I apologize now if they prove anti-climatic, but I found it all quite exciting.  Our absentee ballots took a very long time in coming.  We panicked and decided to take advantage of the emergency absentee voting system, which is very convoluted and a royal pain in the ass.  A group eventually headed off to the embassy to figure out what was necessary and report back to us all.  After many taxi rides and phone calls and hurried .gov online searches, roughly half of our group put in their emergency ballots.  Then, of course, the real ones came in, which instigated a violent rush up three flights of twisty staircases to our mailboxes.  I didn't realize that each state's ballot would be formatted differently - silly me, I know, but it's amazing.  I though we were from different countries for a while there - they're nothing alike in form, procedure, what have you.  Well, one girl filled hers out during the forty-five minute ordeal that accompanies picking up an international package at the post office.  One of the girls filled it out in our trusted Cafe Arab (free wireless - we've commandeered the entire upper floor of the establishment and the two waiters have memorize my order) and, upon reflecting that this was a historic moment, proceeded to photograph her ballot in the mouth of another student, against the mirror on the wall, outside on the street and probably several other locations between the cafe and her house.  All ballots passed through at least four different students for inspection, comparison, witnessing and general revelry/awe.  And I mean that literally.  In a final effort to avoid the Moroccan postage costs, we called the embassy to make sure we need not individually accompany our ballot, and sent Heather off in a petit taxi with a backpack full of our votes.  

To top it all off, the CCCL, in recognition of  the global nature of this election and all future elections, will be holding its own election, open to all staff, faculty, students, guests speakers and community members.  As Abdelhay explained, "We will be the first to announce the results of the 2008 American presidential election, at 4pm in the afternoon of November 4th."  Rest assured, I have not met met a single McCain supporter in the whole of Morocco.

As far as personal news goes, I'm a little sick - as are most of the students in my program at the moment - but other than that, all is well.  And - I've started music lessons!  I'm learning how to play the hajooj (my transliteration), a traditional, three stringed instrument used in Amazigh and Gnawa music.  It's pretty much impossible to play as far as I'm concerned, but it sounds fantastic when my teacher plays it.  

I'm going to cut this short now because my time with the free internet is coming quickly to a close and I am experiencing one of my frequent needs to relieve myself of the food I've recently consumed (sorry to be gross, but it's a frequent topic of conversation and comparison these days).  I'll write soon and I send all my love to you guys - let me know what's happening in your lives!