Going into this, I knew there would be a language
barrier. Even in Jordan, where the
languages were either Arabic or English, there was a language barrier. So
it would stand to reason that there would be one here as well, especially
considering the many spoken languages of Morocco. Knowing some of these languages (Modern
Standard Arabic, Spanish, and a little bit of French), I didn’t think
communication would be nearly as difficult as it is. Certainly, there was some level of vanity in
my previous assumption: I assumed that because I could speak a fair amount of
Modern Standard Arabic, that I could also speak Darija- the Moroccan dialect,
or that I would catch on quickly. This
was similar to my assumption that I would succeed in French because I know a decent
amount of Spanish, and that clearly I was mistaken there as well.
My host Mom understands Modern Standard Arabic but can only
respond in Moroccan dialect, meaning that there is a lot of repetition and
gesturing in our conversations, which has proven to be effective thus far. We have had a number of misunderstandings,
but nothing outrageous this far. The
other day, unfortunately, I scared my host mom into locking all of the shutters
in our house because of some crazy animal outside. Of course, I was trying to explain that there
was a lizard on the wall of the house across from us and that I thought it was
cute. Not knowing the word in Darija (or
let’s be real Standard Arabic either), I tried to convey this with charades and
I may have led her to believe there was a deranged bird outside. Needless to say, our communication needs
work.
Just when I had gotten the swing of things communicating in
a mix of Standard Arabic and Darija, we started our internships. Mine is with
the Organisacion Democratique du travail, and as the name suggests, they are a
French-speaking organization that deals with the Humans rights of Sub-Saharan
Migrant workers. One person speaks a bit
of English, but otherwise, people only speak French. Although I have taken one semester of French,
my French is quite awful, and more often than not we have to repeat ourselves
(me, because I am saying things wrong: the workers, because they have great
patience with me). The organization
seems very cool, and it looks like I will be helping them publicize their
accomplishments for the purposes funding and of attracting more Sub-Saharan
migrants to their organization. I am really excited for all of the things I
will be doing there - I just hope my lack of French does not get in the
way.
Look at how pretty this Arabic writing is:
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