Last week I compared the life of a Peace Corps volunteer to theater. The story is chalk full of adventure, drama, love, tragedy: all the makings of a success. Well we volunteers are not only the protagonists in our own stories, but also the front row audience to everyone else’s. With so much going on, sometimes we need to take a break, stretch, go pee, let off the tension, and remind ourselves of reality outside the playhouse. This weekend, it was intermission time for Socorra, Brian, and I.
I’ve heard Peace Corps Morocco referred to as the Posh Corps. I imagine it’s for many reasons. For one, very few of us live in isolated villages, hours by rickety transportation from the nearest refrigerator or TV and the food, while sometimes weird, is pretty mundane. I can think of a few things that specifically make me feel like I’m in the Posh Corps. 1) I live within an hour of two relatively large cities, 2) I have electricity, water, and internet in my site, 3) there are 3 Marjanes (Walmartish stores) all within 2 easy hours from me, 4) I can see the Mediterranean and its beaches from site, 5) I live within 2 hours from Spain.
Now, at this point, some of you are probably pointing out that Spain is close, but 2 hours? Maybe by plane, but that’s deceiving. In describing this one method of escape, I have to describe where we escape. It is Spain, but its Morocco. I wont go into detail about its history, but about 1497 years ago Spain established and began occupying the city of Melilla on the Moroccan Mediterranean coast. To this day Spain still lays claim to it, much to the dismay and denial of many Moroccans. In order to hold that it is in fact their land, Spain has set up a proper border complete with high, barbed wire fence, guards, and a relatively quiet border crossing. This is the Spain I live 2 hours from. A couple of taxis and a bus and I can be sipping a Sangria, eating pork tapas, and not being judged or harassed for doing any of it. We like to refer to it as our “Vegas.”
Like Vegas, it’s an extravagant place of escape that we can rarely afford. Unlike Vegas, we don’t go there to get hammered and find girls. We go simply to escape what often feels like a stifling, repressing Moroccan culture. It lifts our hearts to see women doing what they want, dressed as they wish, people eating and drinking what they want where they want, different ethnicities, respect for animals and the environment, and not being watched everywhere we go.
This weekend Socorra, Brian, and I made our escape to Melilla: the land of the more familiar. Socorra and I had been there before, but for Brian this was a first time. After trying to describe exactly our status within Morocco’s system, the Moroccan guards let us through and we preceded to timidly squeeze our way past the queue of Moroccans awaiting to see if they would be granted passage into Spain.
I remember the first time passing through the Spanish gates. The change hits you immediately. The air smells differently, there is much less trash on the streets, buildings are in less of a state of disrepair, nobody is waiting there to harass you. It’s so welcoming.
A few blocks of walking and you come to the beach. There you find trash cans, swimmers in all sorts of revealing attire, free/clean bathrooms, a play ground!, and restaurants (of multiple ethnicities) and bars along the beach. Throughout the city there are bars, restaurants, stores, and neighborhoods that seem to exceed all of the variety I’ve yet seen anywhere in Morocco.
In the few times we have been to Melilla we have found a bar that tailors to our limited language abilities (being limited to English and Darija.). Because we speak Darija and so do the bar tenders, we have managed to avoid Europe’s wallet busting prices. So after spending a day wandering around the city, admiring the neoclassical architecture, stopping for a few tapas, and eating our first Asian food in months we headed to our bar. They remembered us and between the cheap drinks and the great Flamenco band it was easy to forget that we were only 2 hours from home and a whole different reality.
The next morning that reality hit us hard though. If the difference crossing the border into Spain was striking, crossing back into Morocco was a solid punch in the face. It seemed like before we even got passed the guards, people were coming up to us harassing us for money or to take their taxis. On the public bus back to the bus station, a group of teenage boys were harassing a sick woman and a fight broke out between two men. The trash was more noticeable and the lack of variety in anything mocking.
It was easy to remember why I wanted to escape as I made my way back into Morocco. It was even more difficult to remember why I wanted to be there in the first place. But, I’m home now and I remember. Like many people, Morocco is not what it appears to be and learning its true nature, while often difficult, is a true joy. A new act begins and I’m ready to tackle it.
