Comfortable Rabat and Funky Fes – Michelle Rodriguez

Inhaling the mixture of urban air and ocean breeze, the city of Rabat begins to settle within my lungs as the final remnants of Fes gradually become snapshot memories. Upon stepping into the new city and arriving in the center where our classes will be held, neurons began to sizzle, spark, and fire away in pursuit of assessing this change in environment.

Rabat is modern. Familiar. Relief was a foreign feeling, and like the local tap water, my entire being rejected the alien substance until it was coaxed into an agreement of overall accpetance. Rabat was so similar to home that I’m positive I could search my home address and it would be a ten-minute car ride away. In fact, I can hear the echoes of my mother’s voice laced with the beginnings of a lecture – confronting my laziness 90% of the time – and nudging at the edge of my long since busted eardrums. Although feelings of familiarity and relief are not arguably unsatisfactory in nature, Rabat invokes my existing memories, feelings, and experiences not unique to this city. The reality is that Rabat does not incite any particular feelings, and in my opinion, builds its visual impact and reactions from previously formed sentiments the general urban setting evokes.

Fes, in comparison, was a cyclone of emotions spiraling near exhaustion, confusion, occasional fits of anger, and perpetual weariness over the unpredictable circumstances of each lively day. If Fes were a chip flavor, it would be spicy mystery-meat tajine with a ranking of eleven-out-of-ten burnt tongues**. Despite emerging from the city of Fez nearly traumatized – in a good way? Still questionable – these experiences and emotions were something entirely outside my sense of comfort. Replicating these encounters is near impossible, and nowhere will I ever see the hidden yet dazzling riads, the equilibrium among old and young alike in the same social spaces, the lively night scenes overflowing with mothers and their playful children into the late hours. Fez has ingraved its distinct atmosphere and immediately visible culture at the forefront of my study abroad experience in Morocco.

**No chip reviewers were harmed in this theoretical process (to our knowledge).

My Fez host mother and I

Regardless of being biased towards the anomaly termed Fes, this comparison doesn’t condone Rabat as cultureless or substantially lacking in any area. Rather, I want to emphasize that the urban setting and (seemingly) higher standard of living within Rabat signifies development with potential for progress. Additionally, with an increasing mobility of individuals upon a global level, large cities share characteristics that provoke recognition and familiarity that might comfort migrants forced to move thousands of miles away from home for varying reasons. Simply because an object, location, or local culture may not be perceived as unique does not alone give substantial reason to regard it as unable to positively impact local individuals.