Fellows' Reflections: Laura Robinson

My boss was skeptical about my plan to get to Chefchaouen – a small town painted entirely blue about 7 hours from my home-base of Casablanca. It was a trip that would require a total of five transfers between various taxis, buses and trains. “I’m sure your Arabic will help a lot!” she said – a running joke in my office considering that I showed up to Morocco for the first time in August knowing a grand total of zero words of Moroccan Arabic. I set out for Chefchaouen, hoping to get by with French and hand gestures, but expecting a fair amount of trouble communicating. What I hadn’t anticipated was to find such profound kindness from complete strangers all piled together in an SUV for a 3 hour road trip.

A 75-year-old man wearing a traditional Moroccan djellaba sitting two seats away wasn’t a predictable person to bond about American and English pop culture with, but as soon as I sat down, he asked me if I spoke English and if I had ever heard of Charlie Chaplin. He then queued up a video on his phone, passed it up to the front of the car, and proudly played a Charlie Chaplin skit for all eight of us in the car to watch. He showed me photos of his grandchildren and told me that he loves to play them songs by his favorite American singer, Cat Stevens. I told him that I had named my old car “Car Stevens” as a pun on the folksy singer’s name – it was a joke that understandably none of my friends back home found funny, but my new Senior Moroccan road-trip buddy responded with a belly laugh (sometimes it takes moving across the world to find the right audience for a joke).

The man sitting between us only spoke Darija, and the three of us continued to trade stories for the whole ride as the older man translated everything that I said to Darija for him, and translated his responses back into English or French for me. As we left the taxi, they even offered to walk me to the next stop to make sure I didn’t have any trouble finding the right station for the next leg of the trip.

While not much about the past four months or life in Morocco as a whole has been consistent – the one thing that has been an absolute constant is the welcoming nature and willingness to help that I’ve experienced from friends and strangers alike across Morocco. Whether it’s been strangers in a taxi going out of their way to help me even with no language in common, or my coworkers teaching me a “Darija word of the day” and welcoming me into their homes – the warmth I’ve felt in my transition to life in Morocco has been immensely fulfilling and makes me beyond excited for the 8 months still to come.