The City of Several Languages

The only rule my parents enforced during my trips abroad—besides their consistent refrain that I send more pictures—was that I not travel alone in Morocco. As close family friends who grew up around Tangiers warned, it was not safe for a #solowomantraveler. Since my travels, this rule has been modified, but until then I had to make travel plans with a friend.

During my semester in Cameroon I realized how easy it would be to change my flight home. After all, my flight from Yaoundé had a layover in Casablanca from which I could easily push the connecting flight back one week. Easier said than done. So my friend Grace, pictured above in sunshine yellow, and I coordinated our flight changes so that one of us would not be stuck in Morocco without the other. When her flight changes fell through, my parents were …miffed. Naturally, I called up (meaning I went to an internet café and sent a Facebook message to) my best traveling friend from Sweden, Sandra, who rearranged her schedule to travel with me for a week in the Maghreb. As Grace was finishing her research in rural Batoufam, Cameroon, she pulled some strings and got on my flights so she could be there too.

Comfortable speaking non-native languages, Sandra went up to any vendor, waiter, or passerby and used her impeccable English to engage with them. When it was preferable, Grace and I would use our French, which had become slightly accented thanks to our semester in Cameroon. In Chefchaouen, the Blue City, we were geographically close enough to Southern Spain and farther from the French influence. Walking into a café for breakfast, Sandra would ask “Is there food here?” after a blank look, Grace jumped in with « Est-ce qu’on peut manger le petit-déjeuner ici ? » which also garnered shaken heads. Then I would try to pull out my high school Spanish which had been most recently used in Barcelona over Halloween with friends from the Geneva program. “¿Hay comida aquí?” Sí, había comida en el café.

This scenario repeated itself whether we were in another restaurant, buying soap, or listening in to conversations on the street. Despite being one of the more well-known tourist cities in Morocco, it was also one of the smaller ones, so we all had the chance to stretch our linguistic muscles.

 

Sarah Reibman ’17 is a French Studies major earning the International Relations certificate. She studied abroad in Nairobi, Geneva, and Yaoundé. In her free time, she enjoys fencing, reading about wine, and planning future trips.

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