I love the times in life when you're handed lemons and you choose to go to Morocco. One such time came approximately 4 Fridays ago when I decided to participate in a tour of three Moroccan cities named Tanger, Tetuan and Chefchaouen for a weekend. After hours of bus and boat travel, I finally reached Africa. This was my second time in the Motherland. What I came to realize, though, was that this African nation was nothing like South Africa, which I had traveled to three years prior. In fact, the entire weekend I was there, I only saw about 3 other people with black skin. I was also made aware of the rarity of my visit and presence as a black American in Morocco by several people on my trip.
Thankfully, all of their comments and jokes were in good fun and never meant to harm me. But I did find it hilarious that our tour guide and his companion insisted on calling me their "Soul Sister" and that other men in the streets felt comfortable re-naming me "Mama Africa" and "Obama." The irony was priceless: I was being reminded that I'm black more openly in Africa than in any other place I've ever been. No this wasn't the Africa where people had been segregated into different castes with a system of separation and degradation. I wasn't in a post-Apartheid African country. I was just as much (if not more) an anomaly in Spanish-Arabic Morocco as I am living on the Upper West Side of New York City. And yet there was something playful about the black American and Arabic Moroccan dynamic that I encountered in those few days.
I had an extreme connection to them because the African continent is something that we, meaning myself and the Moroccan people, hold close to our hearts. However, we felt that way for very different reasons. For them, it's their homeland but we definitely don't share a racial identity. For me, merely being on African soil had an almost indescribable significance, as if I had returned to sites close to "home."
As I started thinking through my days and my time there, it really dawned on me that there are definitely some values and interests that are shared between Western and non-Western cultures. Morocco and the U.S. had similar, yet vastly different opinions of me: they both agree that I'm black and somehow an "other," but while Morocco celebrates that,the U.S. has yet to make up its mind about me. Similarly, the two countries share a bit of pop culture. My guide insisted that he be called Michael Douglas because he knew in his blessed heart that he was the actor’s doppelganger and said he was looking for his Catherine Zeta-Jones. The weekend was filled with similar antiquated pop culture references that would've been fitting 10 years ago and I was charmed by every last one of them.
It's really creepy and hilarious at the same time to think of two wildly different nations sharing some of the same cultural and racial images. Why is that wherever an American travels, she can't go long without being reminded of some element of U.S. life? Our American tentacles reach all corners of the globe, whether the women in that country are culturally and socially permitted to show their faces in public or not. Sure, they had to try to establish connections to us in order to make us feel comfortable in their environment and so that we'd be more inclined to buy one of their beautiful but overpriced rugs. But it strikes me as odd that in order for us to get on the same page, we harkened back to U.S. idols and delicious U.S. presidents( I do intend to be Mrs. Obama one day....sorry, Michelle) in order to feel each other out rather than Moroccan public figures. At the risk of sounding very naive, I'll ask this: why the hell do they know so much more about intrinsic parts of American culture (our racial schizophrenia, our utter OBSESSION with Michael Douglas, the list goes on....)while our only image of North Africa and of Arabic countries in general is either of war zones, burqas and Aladdin? Furthermore, how is it that no matter whether I travel to North Africa or stay in the U.S., the very fact of my existence is a constant source of curiosity to all those I encounter (as evidenced with silent stares or elated shouts of "Baila, baila, Morena!"= "Dance, dance, Black girl!" in Chef Chaouen)? More importantly, now that I've returned to the States, why should I be deprived of the pleasure of being called Mama Africa every 20 minutes? Life's really just so unfair. What's up with that?
