Le Sport Club

Up to this point, my experience in Morocco has revolved around two polar opposites - working in a quartier populaire such as Akkari, or doing the high class thang with more privileged members of Moroccan society.

Yesterday, for example, I spent a day, at the invite of Youssef, VP of Reseau Maillage, at the Bank al-Maghrib (=Maghreb, the collective term for North Africa) Sports Club. Played some rusty tennis on nice clay courts, lounged by the pool, worked on my, ahem, "jump shot," and ate plenty of burgers and fries - plus the obligatory "Whiskey Marocain," otherwise known as Mint Tea or The a la Menthe.

It was a good time, I got to spend some chummy time with Youssef talk about his plans to travel and buy a Mercedes SLK in Germany next year, etc. What makes these experiences valuable, besides getting both ends of the spectrum of life in Morocco, is that the people here that I've met, who are more upper-class, are genuinely concerned with the people in Morocco and their greater community. Of course, I dislike amking blanket statements - and this is also a byproduct of me meeting people that are in contact with the NGO I work with, but it's definitely reassuring to see.

Anyways, I'm revisiting Casablanca for the day - I'm in a lab in a school here right now. We're working with the new Casa chapter of AIESEC, so we'll get to play some AIESEC Orientation games, etc... should be a good time. The unfortunate part is, I definitely still dislike Casa - wipe all romanticized Humphrey Bogart images from your head. This is a thrid-world metropolis founded by the French in the early 20th Century - it has very little culture and identity that I can see, and is definitely just too much for my tastes. Cheers for now.