Un/trustworthiness

I have been so fortunate as to have been able to do a fair amount of traveling around Morocco between going to Peace Corps meeting across the country or visiting different cities with friends. For the most part, the trips have gone well but there is a constant tinge of negativity that taints each trip long or short when in the company of others. The palpable distrust of Natives.

Natives. Sounds like such a dated and harsh word. I could say the fear of Moroccans, but that’s not exactly it either. It’s not a fear of all Moroccans, just the ones that appear to be from wherever we find ourselves, and in close proximity to us, especially in non-commercial interactions.

I am not afraid of Moroccans, or ‘natives’, though I know I tend to be a bit more trusting than the average person. But that’s it exactly, the idea of trust. I have found myself in many group situations that have turned the Moroccans around us into suspects, people to not be trusted in their own land.

And that makes me feel awful. I assume it is empathy caused by growing up black in America. I have not been ignorant of others’ misguided fears of my own people in our own country and to see similar tensions perpetuated here is uncomfortable for me to endure. But maybe I’m too affected by my own experiences to be objective? But maybe they are not situations where my objectivity is required.   

Here in Morocco, I have seen the vicious cycle of ‘Natives’ versus ‘Visitors’ that I’ve noticed all over the world.

Here’s how it works:

-       Visitors are told to be wary of being pick-pocketed, price gouged, sexually harassed and every other bad thing that can happen to a person outside of the safety of their own four walls

-       Visitors regard (too many) Natives with distrust sometimes bordering on hostility

-       Natives to the ‘vacation destination’ come to expect certain populations of people to be exceptionally generous, wealthy, promiscuous, etc. and approach Visitors with the set expectations

-       In cases of certain minorities (which depends on the land), some Visitors are mocked for their innate ethnic characteristics

-       Animosity arises between the Native and the Visitor when the Native treats the Visitor according to whatever stereotype they have been inculcated to believe as a Fact about all people from the assumed land of origin of the Visitor

-       Visitor begins to feel ill at ease in foreign land and raises their ‘defense wall’ even higher than when they first arrived

-       When friendly Natives offer genuine advice (especially unsolicited counsel) visitors’ progress slows to a halt as they FREAK OUT and try to evaluate if they are will be expected to offer money for services unwanted and if the help being offered is true or will lead to some perilous outcome

-       Throw in not fully understanding each others’ language and expect delays of all kind as fear paralyzes rational decision making

This is the basic pattern I’ve seen in country after country, though most especially with interactions between Natives and Visitors who look different from one another OR (seem to) come from a different cultural legacy.

I cannot speak at this time to how I regarded it before, but now that I have the (sometimes) privilege of existing somewhere between the worlds of the Native and the Visitor I feel it puts me in an interesting predicament. I want to trust the Natives and most of the time I do… despite having heard a fair share of instances of unfortunate events, but I take those to cases to be exceptions not the norm. It has usually served me quite well. But on the flipside, I have the double blessing/curse of understanding the fears and, miraculously still, the perceptions of the Visitors. I am not so far gone that I cannot still see out of pre-arrival eyes. And sometimes things are ‘scary’ if only because the manner in which things are done is different. I can understand how a Native may think that a Visitor is kind of silly when after they get directions they stop in their tracks and change their path contrary to the directions given, but I know the doubt that plagues the Visitor, and what’s more, I know that, by nature of being human, not all Natives have good intentions and sometimes it is better to ignore the advice.

So what’s a person to do?

I don’t know. And it still stresses me out.

I was talking to a young man from my town, Rachid, who I encountered one day in Marrakech and he told me that in the past to be illiterate meant to lack the ability to read and write. He continued to say that today it means to be confined by knowledge of only one language. I shared that thought with one American who kind of laughed and said, “Not if that language is English.” And now, as I reflect back on the predicament of the Native and the Visitor, my conversation with Rachid seems all the more poignant. In exchanges where people do not share the same first language or have not acquired the a same second language (i.e. where someone is speaking a native language and some party is not), or when the Native is forced to speak to the Visitor in their first language, there will likely be some kind of societal tension and social illiteracy that will result in a miscommunication.

I am not proposing that every Visitor must learn the language(s) of the Native where they intend to go, but I think I am proposing that there should be an awareness of anticipated difficulties and perceived ‘irrationality’ in the foreign land that are can be attributed to social illiteracy. I am not proposing that one should be naïve, but I do think that in general, Natives should be given the some of benefit of the doubt that would befit a native in the Visitors own land. But I recognize if the Visitor comes from a place that lacks a culture of hospitality it becomes easy to see why fear may so easily overcome a Visitor in a place that appears to be hospitable and difficulties that may occur if the inverse is true.

Speaking especially to volunteers, there is a tendency many exhibit that usually strikes me a bit funny that stems from us inhabiting the weird space between Native and Visitor. Many volunteers get annoyed when Natives greet them with ‘Bonjour’ or other French salutations.

One volunteer effectively articulated to me that he was upset when people in his own town (who do not speak French and know that he does not either) greeted him as such (to try to show off to their friends at the expense of the volunteer), or when holiday season arrives and family members who live elsewhere return back and, they being the ‘foreigner’ treat the established community member that is the volunteer as the ‘newbie’… that, I get. What I do not get, is when volunteers, who could not pass for Moroccan are upset when they are not greeted in Arabic but in French or Spanish or whatever else that is not often spoken in the villages of Morocco. Perhaps I am biased because I can kind of pass for Moroccan, though I often get French too because I don’t dress that typically Moroccan, or at least not as they do out where I live.

Is a Moroccan supposed to know that in our t-shirts and hodgepodge Moroccan articles and khakis and denim and sneakers that we’ve been living out in the boonies of their country speaking their language on sight of us when we’re likely speaking English in un-hushed tones to one another walking down streets or through their alleys? I don’t think so.

I think it also bothers me because I have gathered that these volunteers are offended by it because they are being greeted in a ‘foreign’ language as ‘foreigners’ but it seems to have escaped consciousness that this is a Francophone country, and as we leave our villages and go to big cities it is likely that most people, even the small kids, do actually possess some degree of French knowledge such as may not be the case where we live. It seems to escape some people that Moroccans may in fact just be trying to be friendly in their own native tongue in what they perceive may be a shared language… and even if it isn’t, is it not true that they do still understand ‘bonjour’ as a friendly greeting? Yes, they do. But perhaps they are hearing it with some attitude or in some jest that just doesn’t get hurled at me. And to be fair, if that is the case, I will let them revel in their animosity and nurse their offended pride.

At the end of the day, I think that too is a trust issue. Can we trust that these greetings are coming from a place of benevolence or are they merely trying to point out our differences and cast us in the role of the outsider? Is this a greeting an expression of power relationships? Would it be better if no greeting were presented at all? Again, I think I may be somewhat impervious to these issues because in my life I am so often cast in the role of the outsider that being a part of the apparent majority tends to make me uncomfortable. Ha, I never said I was ‘issue-free.’