As we began to near the end of our program in Morocco, it struck me that once the study abroad was over I would be left with a vacancy that would be hard to fill. After spending nearly four weeks travelling, amassing new experiences and learning exciting things, I was expected to return to “normal” life.
Mines d’Ahouli, located besides the Moulouya river about an hour’s drive from the town of Midelt, was once a bustling mining town where lead, antimony and galena were mined by the French. Today it is abandoned – or so you would think! No matter how deserted a corner of Morocco you go to, you will find someone there. Aouli is no different.
Merzuga lies at the edge of the Sahara desert. Sand dunes stretch out behind it for as far as the eyes will go. We rode camels for an hour to camp in the middle of the Sahara. It was close enough to still be able to see the town lights in the distance from the top of a dune, but far enough to experience the sun, the sand, the wind and the stars, and to imagine what it must be like to get lost in the endless ocean of sand in search for the kind of land that men could “conquer”.
Our visit to Ait Khlef, a small village nestled deep within the Atlas Mountains and barely accessible by any motorized vehicle, was one of the biggest highlights of the program. Moroccan villages are often arranged in duars, small clusters of houses located at a distance from one another, with each cluster making up the residence of an extended family. The village we visited was arranged in this manner, with the school at least another 2-3 km (1.24-1.86 miles) away from the first residence where we spent the night.
Over the first week of our study abroad in Morocco we met with NGO workers, policymakers, researchers, university professors and students, and entrepreneurs in Rabat and Marrakesh, our first two destinations on this trip. Sustainable development was a focal concern for all these stakeholders. I noticed that while talking about sustainable development, Moroccans were constantly in a reflective internal dialogue with themselves about how to define sustainable development and how to embed it in the solutions they derived.
On May 14, 2016, I landed at the Casablanca airport to begin my adventure in Morocco. It was the start of an intense, immersive, absorbing, and exciting experience; but I did not know it then. There had been very little time between the end of the spring semester at school and the start of the study abroad to prepare myself mentally for what was to come. As a result, I was excited but not overwhelmed when I stepped out of the Casablanca airport.
