I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself...
Miranda Lambert, known to some of you perhaps as Mrs. Blake Shelton, is our host this week...
I live on the top floor of an apartment building which itself is perched atop a hill. As I type this in my living room, I can raise my head and see the ocean. If I walk about the place, I can see for miles across Casablanca. Pretty neat. What I find much more interesting is the area that immediately surrounds campus, campus being an appropriate yet misleading term. The school and adjacent apartments are surrounded by a tall wall and patrolled by guards. What with the buffer of fields, the police substation outside the front gate and the nearby soldiers guarding the king's compound across the road, I'm not losing any sleep over my safety.
What captivates me are the buildings at the edge of the fields. I believe I can fairly describe them as slums. So-called poor people in the U.S. sitting on their asses in their subsidized apartments with cable tv, yapping on their wi-fi smartphones about how bad they have it with their subsidized medical care, food stamps, welfare - I hate them even more than before if it were possible. Come over here and see what poor looks like! From my unique perch, I am closely surrounded by grinding poverty yet not of it. I try not to stare - these people aren't zoo animals - but I will sit and people watch from my window, or just look around as I travel about the city and just be amazed at what some people do to eke out a living.
I'm not a bleeding heart; I'm just the opposite, whatever that term is. But it's hard sometimes to see people who have absolutely nothing, through no fault of their own, working like dogs, and knowing it ain't never going to get any better for them. I guess its because of some of the things I 've experienced in recent years, that I get emotional real easily, like from sad songs or scenes in a movie. Makes me crazy, but maybe it's a good thing, letting your self just go and do its thing. I'm sure some of my friends and family are picking their jaws up off the floor right about now...
It is still a real trip when I see people here, in this cosmopolitan city, in this more liberal of Islamic nation, try to be like Westerners. I almost forget where I am, until maybe when I see someone wearing a djellaba or hear the call to prayer. The conversations I have with locals about Islam, or with my many colleagues of faith about Christianity have opened up my mind about religion like never before. I am almost certain I will try attending Mass after winter recess. I'm taking a trip tomorrow to a university in the city of Ifrane for a Christmas concert by the school choir, if I remember the details right. Should be interesting - given where the city is located, it may be the only chance I have this year to see snow. I loved seeing the Christmas decorations in my new neighbor's apartment last night. Being away from home, little things like that have actually made me care about the holiday at all for the first time in years, a decade at least.
Something else about the people here has struck me. Actually, it's probably the other way around. I am largely surrounded by a sea of colored faces, in every and all shades of brown. I am the minority. That doesn't bother me; I only get frustrated, at myself, when I cannot communicate effectively. Anyway, not just visiting here, but living here, it has also had an effect on the way I see race. Morocco is every bit the melting pot that the U.S. is, just in a different way. It is generally easier to see back home what someone "is". Black, Asian, whatever. Here, it's a lot trickier, if you're stupid enough to even try. Everyone here looks the same to me, even if they aren't. They're all just people to me - a whole bunch of different things, none of them being brown...
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself...
Miranda Lambert, known to some of you perhaps as Mrs. Blake Shelton, is our host this week...
I live on the top floor of an apartment building which itself is perched atop a hill. As I type this in my living room, I can raise my head and see the ocean. If I walk about the place, I can see for miles across Casablanca. Pretty neat. What I find much more interesting is the area that immediately surrounds campus, campus being an appropriate yet misleading term. The school and adjacent apartments are surrounded by a tall wall and patrolled by guards. What with the buffer of fields, the police substation outside the front gate and the nearby soldiers guarding the king's compound across the road, I'm not losing any sleep over my safety.
What captivates me are the buildings at the edge of the fields. I believe I can fairly describe them as slums. So-called poor people in the U.S. sitting on their asses in their subsidized apartments with cable tv, yapping on their wi-fi smartphones about how bad they have it with their subsidized medical care, food stamps, welfare - I hate them even more than before if it were possible. Come over here and see what poor looks like! From my unique perch, I am closely surrounded by grinding poverty yet not of it. I try not to stare - these people aren't zoo animals - but I will sit and people watch from my window, or just look around as I travel about the city and just be amazed at what some people do to eke out a living.
I'm not a bleeding heart; I'm just the opposite, whatever that term is. But it's hard sometimes to see people who have absolutely nothing, through no fault of their own, working like dogs, and knowing it ain't never going to get any better for them. I guess its because of some of the things I 've experienced in recent years, that I get emotional real easily, like from sad songs or scenes in a movie. Makes me crazy, but maybe it's a good thing, letting your self just go and do its thing. I'm sure some of my friends and family are picking their jaws up off the floor right about now...
It is still a real trip when I see people here, in this cosmopolitan city, in this more liberal of Islamic nation, try to be like Westerners. I almost forget where I am, until maybe when I see someone wearing a djellaba or hear the call to prayer. The conversations I have with locals about Islam, or with my many colleagues of faith about Christianity have opened up my mind about religion like never before. I am almost certain I will try attending Mass after winter recess. I'm taking a trip tomorrow to a university in the city of Ifrane for a Christmas concert by the school choir, if I remember the details right. Should be interesting - given where the city is located, it may be the only chance I have this year to see snow. I loved seeing the Christmas decorations in my new neighbor's apartment last night. Being away from home, little things like that have actually made me care about the holiday at all for the first time in years, a decade at least.
Something else about the people here has struck me. Actually, it's probably the other way around. I am largely surrounded by a sea of colored faces, in every and all shades of brown. I am the minority. That doesn't bother me; I only get frustrated, at myself, when I cannot communicate effectively. Anyway, not just visiting here, but living here, it has also had an effect on the way I see race. Morocco is every bit the melting pot that the U.S. is, just in a different way. It is generally easier to see back home what someone "is". Black, Asian, whatever. Here, it's a lot trickier, if you're stupid enough to even try. Everyone here looks the same to me, even if they aren't. They're all just people to me - a whole bunch of different things, none of them being brown...
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me.
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