Where do I stand?

Currently I am attending a Master's program in Social and Cultural Anthropology through which I have been able to spend a three months research period concerning a topic and country of choice. Because of my Moroccan roots and love/hate relationship with the country I ended up being in Rabat, even after having over thought many other options. After hearing, reading and seeing the stream of information concerning the 'Arab Spring' revolutions I became more curious about this topic. Even more when the demonstrations reached Morocco and it was soon labelled as a ‘Moroccan exception’, I started questioning myself whether that was true. Even though Morocco has witnessed an economic and social growth during the past (now almost) 14 years of King Mohammed the sixth’s reign I could not believe the entire media portraying of this exception.

After having read many scientific articles, books, websites and hearing stories from people of various stands in Moroccan society I have come to learn that there is no such thing as a Moroccan exception. Just like many facets of Moroccan culture, there is always a ‘but’ halfway through the story. When the demonstrations started on the 20^th of February 2011 the King quickly responded with a highly exceptional public speech on the 9^th of March 2011, in June 2011 the new constitution was acknowledged with an enormous high acceptance rate of 98%: one which has never been reached in the history of any democratic structure. According to the (inter)national media the Moroccan demonstrations stopped, as almost the entire population was in favour of these top-down reforms.

But.. what the media hardly covered were the demonstrations which frequently proceeded and expanded in amounts of 25.000 participants in Rabat, after the King’s 2011 speech and constitutional reforms. As the new constitution legally acknowledged the freedom of speech and public mobilization, human rights were being violated in front of the Moroccan parliament in Rabat. Through the use of Baltajya (poor Moroccan citizens who receive a daily payment to beat demonstrators while official policemen look the other way) counter demonstrations are being held in favour of the new constitution or prevailing system of rule.
                Now, almost two years after the first demonstrations I have come to hear about some of the activists’ stories. How they have been beaten by police men or illegally paid counter demonstrators in order to weaken their movement. I have come to know how current activists are being suppressed through various manners and how complete authoritarian rule remains to exist. Activists are being mentally, physically and emotionally shut down through beatings, spread of personal sensitive information during public demonstrations, prison sentences under the heading of ‘disobedient behaviour’ towards officials and other forms of daily threats.

As time proceeds in Rabat the list of Moroccan paradoxes becomes longer and longer as I have to prevail my objective position within this entire stream of provided information. People now start to ask me what my opinion on these happenings is. The answering of me not being able to give an opinion about this is no longer sufficient as I have come to know more people within the movement, their stories, past happenings, fear of suppression and brave struggles to proceed their activism. Conducting an anthropological research in my country of origin and entering debates my parents have never introduced me to makes me realize a lot. Not only am I experiencing how to conduct research, but even more how little I know about Moroccan history, daily struggles, challenges, shortcomings and heroism.

Where do I stand?

Like life in the Netherlands has always taught me to shift seats from being an ultimate feminist Dutch to a ‘traditional’ Moroccan while developing a balanced path for myself, I have come to realize that this ‘shifting’ comes of good use in Rabat. As I have to shift from being Moroccan to a privileged Dutch citizen and upcoming Anthropologist I am still in search of a balance. One which equalizes my feelings of ‘guilt’ for not knowing enough about Moroccan daily life and its accompanied struggles to the status of having to conduct a professional research while maintaining my distance. Even though this is a little debated field in anthropology I wish past pioneers would have written and taught us more on what happens to researchers while being in another environment which stands so far away and yet so close to us.

Where do I stand? In a circus of Moroccan make belief while balancing on a rope which is called ‘conducting research’.

Choices

Choices. We all face them in life, whether it is from how to plan our day, career, housing, investments till politics and friends. The notion when years after you have entered a street or turned a corner and question what would have happened if you hadn't taken that lane or had chosen another instead? Point made that we can never travel back in time to replace one happening by another. Instead we have to learn to live with our errors, blessings and gained wisdom instead.

But what happens when you cannot find your tranquility and the itching feeling of incompleteness remains to exist? Many decide to live in the past while holding on to coupled feelings of happiness, success, sadness or mistakes of that time. It is a waste of a lifetime when one does not acquire lessons from these happenings, but rather decides to re-live them everyday instead..

I would like to hold on to my notion of life as something that should never be caged. When you do so, you decide to live in 'another time' and will never be able to learn, enjoy and live in the present while blocking possibilities which could be offered by the future. Lesson learned that one should let go, live now, enjoy, learn, cry, laugh, dream about- and realizing our aims. Life is not made to be spent in the past, it builds on what you do now and goals which you love to achieve tomorrow..