Kamil vs. Morocco

I officially announce that my excitement about this country is over. I don’t say that I’ve stopped liking it. It’s just that for the past 4 months I’ve managed to see quite a lot (I’m sure there is still a lot of places that would totally surprise me). Or maybe it’s not possible to live in a place and enjoy it or being excited about it all the time.

I also wrote you about this duality of Morocco – either you want to explore real Morocco (e.g. crowded Medina) or you want to see the parts of the country influenced by Western culture (especially French) which although are in Arab country they look really European. To be honest, recently I’ve been only enjoying this European part. I’ll give you a few examples. Two weeks ago I went to Marrakesh – after one day of wandering inside the city I was only thinking about going home (I mean my home in Rabat). A few days ago, I was sightseeing Fes with my family. Although I like Moroccan medinas visually, I cannot spend there too much time. It’s just so tiring. Streets are too narrow and crowded. People seeing that you’re not Moroccan want talk to you, sell you things etc. For me it’s just too exhausting. I wanted just to escape this city and I promised myself that I would never go inside Medina of Fes or Marrakesh. That may be hard because there are still some friends of mine who want to visit me. I know that what I’ll say may be rude but I think I’ll just give them my guidebook, some tips and let them go there on their own. Seriously, I may not survive going there once more. It makes my mentally exhausted.

On the other side there are some places that I just love. Sandy beaches or small charming cities like Bouznika where my parents and me went yesterday. Or Casablanca – I just adore this city! Many people say that there is nothing interesting there and it’s just another huge, polluted, crowded and noisy metropolis. To some point they are right. But I just love it’s architecture. It’s so gorgeous! Huge and massive buildings (either for some offices or for apartments), spacious parks. I was observing the buildings and looking for a potential flat for which I could kill just to have it :) My dream is to live in a big city – a capital, somewhere in the downtown, have a flat in an old apartment-house and just enjoying living such urban lifestyle somewhere downtown in the heart of a city. Casablanca as a city fulfills such criteria. Rabat is nice as well but although it’s a big city it’s very slow and calm. I need it to be a bit faster. Casablanca has its soul and spirit. Even if the streets are crowded and noisy at least the avenues are really wide which I love as well.

I’ve also discovered something else about me which is very actually very interesting. People here are very open. I like the fact that when you establish an eye contact you can at least hear “bonjour” or “ca va?”. But sometimes there is more. People start talking to you, asking questions and then inviting you or offering help especially when you travel. Then I realized that it makes me feel weird and I don’t like them being so open. I’m not that open for all this “activities”. It’s not about me being intolerant – I don’t have problems with this! I just feel really uncomfortable in such situations. I don’t trust people even though I know that they don’t want to hurt me, cheat me or something like that. When my Polish friends and me were in Berbers’ house I felt extremely weird. I just felt like leaving that place as soon as possible. I felt weird when e.g. he was showing pictures of his family. I know that there is nothing weird about that but this feeling was just somewhere inside of me. In the train to Fes a few days ago, a nice man started to talk to me. He was really nice but all the time I just wanted him to leave me. I didn’t feel like getting to know him or something. It’s not anything about Moroccans that make me feel like that. I just feel they enter my comfort zone and I’m not safe inside it. I guess that’s my mentality and the way I was brought up so it won’t be that easy to change it. Or maybe there’s no point in doing this. I need to keep some distance from certain people. I think it would be hard for me to live here for good.

Once I heard from my friend who was working in an AIESEC country in 2006/2007 that at first she was extremely enjoying here international experience but after 3 months she started seeing things differently and her excitement kind of disappeared. I couldn’t understand that. I thought that at the beginning you just start liking or disliking things and then nothing changes. I was so wrong. Maybe you just need 3 months to realize some things and starting being aware of them. Maybe it takes 3 months to explore the culture and find some things in it that you actually don’t like at all. Maybe some aspects that you enjoyed or at least knew about are tiring and not thrilling anymore. Maybe, you’re just being bored after a while. We’ll see how things will be. Challenges – as Cebula wrote they contribute to your growth. Still 282 days of possible challenges. So let’s move forward :)