Class today included both a test and presentations, so it was a pretty high stakes morning. After class, we all rushed over to the nearest café to watch the Morocco-Portugal match. Normally, I hate watching sports on tv, but this was fun. I think that’s in part because professional soccer has no commercials and doesn’t stop the clock, so a 90-minute game is 90 minutes, not three hours; and in part because the level off pure hatred for Christiano Ronaldo was all but tangible. That said, Morocco’s team is pretty bad, and they lost 1-0. They will play Spain later this week, but they won’t be moving past the initial round.
My parents are arriving in Fes tomorrow night (they’ve been in Italy for the past week), so I had to go over to their hotel and arrange for a taxi to pick them up at the airport. However, when I arrived, I discovered that the manager only spoke French and my host dad who was with me only speaks Arabic, so we had to find a housekeeper who spoke Arabic and French to translate between us. I feel confident that a taxi will pick them up at the airport, but I have absolutely no idea why the housekeeper gave me a complete tour of the hotel, or why it took an hour to arrange a taxi.
After the match, we tried to go to the taco place, but it’s under construction right now, so we got some street shawarma instead. No complaints there.
After dinner, my host mom and I talked for about an hour on the boycotts and strikes that have been going on in Morocco for the past month. Moroccans are rightly concerned about the closeness of the government to many businesses inside and outside of the country and have responded with boycotts on certain brands of milk, fish, bottled water, and gasoline. Additionally, there is a boycott of the government-sponsored music festival that is going on right now, and the videos from it are crazy. Moroccans are upset that their government can pay foreign musicians millions of dollars to come and play a 2-hour set but can’t find money for education or health. As a result, they’ve decided not to go, and footage shows huge festival stages with big name artists (Bruno Mars and Wiz Khalifa both come later this week) and crowds of maybe 15 people. The king is expected to speak out soon and hopes seem high for positive change (contrary to what I expected, the king is actually seen as more of a champion of the people than the parliament is here, because the king doesn’t have to worry about money for elections so he can’t be bought off as easily). We will see where things go from here.
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