A Moroccan Ski Season

Last weekend I skied in Africa. Never thought I would be able to say that. I guess they can take the girl out of Colorado but can’t take the skiing addiction/mountain out of the girl.

Getting charged on the side of the mountain by 50 or more Moroccan schoolchildren in a snowball fight

View from the top of the mountain

I talked about my crazing skiing experience which included riding a horse to the top of the mountain, among other things, in my Dickinsonian column this week:

For the last few weeks, Moroccans have been glued to current events in Egypt. Everywhere I go there is a television turned to Al Jazeera or another Arab station with up to date coverage on Egypt and the status of the State.

From what I heard things were pretty calm in Rabat last weekend when Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down in Egypt. There were demonstrators in the street showing their support for the Egyptian people and all they have been through, but nothing too outrageous or out of the ordinary transpired in Rabat.

So why did I travel last weekend and not camp out near the Parliament building at the center of the city when all this was happening? While Morocco is considered a neighboring country to Egypt and there were Moroccans advocating for the removal of Mubarak, the political situation in Egypt is widely perceived here as distinctly separate from Morocco.

People, Western media especially, have been offhandedly wondering whether political events from Tunisia and Egypt will incite a reaction in Morocco. But if you walk around the streets of Rabat, watch the news here and talk to locals, you will probably find that while there is a fascination with current events in Egypt, Moroccans will be the first to tell you how different their situation is from that of the Egyptians. They will tell you that for starters Morocco does not have a president who has dominated elected office for around thirty years and blocked out all opposition. Furthermore, the religious features of the Moroccan monarchy demand an extremely different approach for examining the Moroccan state.

Consequently, I skipped town last weekend to travel to the Switzerland of Morocco on a Warren Miller-esque ski adventure. Mischliffen, a ski resort bordering the Middle Atlas town of Ifrane, has been boasted (both in my guide book and by Moroccan friends) as the second best ski spot in the country after Oukeimden near Marrakesh. I had been told that the town of Ifrane itself was worth visiting because of its fresh mountain air and scenic views. In addition, I am from Colorado and have been having major ski season withdrawl. With all this in mind, I decided that I had to take a ski trip up north when I heard about this small ski resort in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

Well, when I got to the famed “second biggest ski mountain in the country” it turned out that there were only three runs, two ski lifts of which neither were operating, and I had to summit the mountain via hiking and horseback riding on horses dressed up in regal Moroccan outfits. Not to mention there were Barbary apes on the mountain, and the only ski gear that I could rent was circa 1986. The snow was awful. There were rocks and branches everywhere and at one point I think I was just skiing on rocks with frost. Additionally, turning was impossible and every time I tried I would either jam into a rock or get stuck and fall.

However, as disastrous and dangerous as this little ski weekend was, I enjoyed every moment of it. I was reminded that I will put myself through crazy ridiculous situations if it means I get to go skiing. Morocco is not really known for skiing, and now I can attest to the reason for that. Yet many people have been surprised or even shocked that there is skiing in Morocco, including even current study abroad classmates of mine. In fact, especially for its size, Morocco has some of the most dynamic types of terrain in a single country that I have come across. Any chance I get, I will tell people how this country has every setting you could need: gorgeous beaches (Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts), desert, rolling hills in the countryside filled with olive trees and vineyards, gorges, lagoons, fresh water and mountains!

When people first hear Morocco, they often automatically envision camels, desert, sun and turbans. While there are parts of Morocco where all these things are present and maybe I was guilty of seeing this picture too, I cannot emphasize enough now that I am here how different places can look when they are close up—something worth keeping in mind when it comes to both terrain and landscapes and, of course, the politics in a place.

Click here to read the column on the Dickinsonian website

What’s all this talk of revolution?

For my column this week I decided to hit on some current events. Here’s the full length:

A month in to my second semester in Rabat, Morocco and I am already trying to figure out spring break destinations. I can tell you where I won’t be traveling for obvious reasons: Tunisia and Egypt.

Before returning to Rabat for the spring, I had been talking with one of my friends about regional places we need to visit while living in North Africa. For fall break we trekked into the Sahara desert, camped under the stars and rode camels, so we wanted to make sure our spring break would outdo or at least equal the previous one. Somehow the idea of venturing to Tunisia came up.

Spring break in Tunisia sounded intriguing because we have been studying Tunisia in our political science and history courses as it accompanies Morocco in the Arab North African world. Tunisia is a fascinating place. It has been characterized as one of the most progressive and forward-looking countries in the region, yet paradoxically has had an intensely authoritarian regime that has imposed such modernism. My friend and I were curious to see this in real life in a country that was, at the time, a relatively safe place for foreigners to visit. Also, Tunisia has a similar dialect of Arabic to Morocco, and French is prevalent so we would be able to get around using our developing language skills.

Tunisia just got a whole lot more intriguing since the former President Ben Ali has fled the country. I had not even been in Rabat for a week when my political science professor pulled me aside during the Amideast “Welcome new students” dinner and asked me, “Hey did you hear what just happened in Tunisia?” Looks like we’ll have a lot to discuss in my political systems of the Maghreb course.

Spring break Plan B: Cairo to see the pyramids and the Nile. That trip got cancelled too, and we are moving on to Plan C. I’m glad I waited to buy plane tickets.

But enough about spring break. The real question which I’ve been asked a lot lately has more to do with how these revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have or will affect Morocco.

My parents and some friends have sent a few panicked emails asking if Morocco is safe, inquiring about Morocco’s status in the midst of regional revolution. At first when I got these messages I almost laughed because at times Morocco feels so removed from these movements and I feel completely safe here.

If it were not for broadcast news feeds showing footage of demonstrations in the streets of Cairo, protestors taking the streets, Baradei’s return to Egypt and foreigners flying out of Cairo on the Arabic and Moroccan news stations, I would not even know that I am living in the same general region as Egypt and Tunisia. The streets of Rabat are calm, the Parliament is carrying on with its business, students are going to school and employees are going to work.

Things in Rabat are distinctly different from Tunis and Cairo. In fact, nine students who were evacuated from Amideast in Cairo will be joining me in Rabat next week, one of the most clear-cut ways of saying that Morocco is considered as a stable place for American students to come study.

Though there are certainly some shared characteristics among countries in the Arab world and the Moroccan political system is an interesting one to watch, the Arab world is so large and dynamic that it is not fair to just group all the Arab countries together in talk of revolution. I understand where concerned people are coming from, especially when the media in America is most likely depicting scene after scene of riots with headlines talking about Arab revolutions and uprising in the Middle East moving like wildfire, but please take these with a grain of salt.

The question of whether anything will spread to Morocco and take hold has been tossed around in day to day conversations amongst my friends and my host family, and it has been brought up in the local media—do not get me wrong, it is worth asking. Just realize that the scale of how things are portrayed is different and the Middle East North Africa region is not homogenous, especially when it comes to politics.

I knew my second semester in Rabat would inevitably be different than my first one because of the very nature of study abroad, but I can now say that confidently. Oh, and I’m glad I decided to wait until second semester to take the course on political systems of the Maghreb since the students from last semester have to scrap a lot of what they covered on Tunisian politics.

Link to article on Dickinsonian website