How do the larger questions of geopolitics impact the day-to-day struggles of Moroccans?

Before coming on this trip, I had no idea how much Morocco had been impacted by the outer world.  Of course we talked about the French invasion through the discussions of Fatima Mernissi’s “Dreams of Trespass”, but I still couldn’t grasp just how much it still impacts Morocco today.  Throughout our lessons, we have discussed how Moroccans are constantly struggling to be their own country as others have invaded and taken much away from them.  For example, we have learned how the French invaded and essentially changed the social structure of Morocco.  It seems that one of the biggest changes is the education system.  We learned that the education system was struggling even after independence because the French had established an education system that was quite different than the traditional Moroccan education system.  The educators that remained after independence were trained in French and therefore it became difficult for students who had yet to learn the language.  This became clearer to me as I spoke to some of the students from the private university of Fes.  One of the students, Youssef, spoke not only Arabic but French and English as well.  He explained that he attended a school where French was taught at an early age and then later learned English.  However, there were other students who only knew Arabic and it limited their communication with others from Morocco and around the world.  It was interesting to see the different languages spoken in Morocco and how it all worked out with so many people in one country.  When we learned about the public and private working sectors, it became clearer to me why speaking so many languages was beneficial to Moroccans.  Also, while reading Binebine’s “Welcome to Paradise”, it became more evident to me just how much Morocco has been impacted by the outer world. We read about stories from various Moroccans trying to flee the country to get to Spain for different reasons.  In the end, most of them didn’t make it.  The effects of the outer world became much more real to me while reading the individual stories of each character.  It made me realize just how much Moroccans struggle on a day-to-day basis; so much that they were and are willing to drop everything and flee the country.

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