Morocco cont: The Dance of Terror

“ What can happen is you may get stuck in duality, in judgment or confusion or in an inability to decide because you are in a state of separation from true self.”…………………….Joseph Rael

Morocco offered so many new experiences to the family and the Peace Corps. They certainly were not prepared for what the family vs. the individual might need. From the Grand Hotel we went to a small town named Asfi for in-service training. During this time a woman named Dada was our child care provider, and to our pleasant surprise her methods were perfect. She potty trained our son David, by eliminating all lower coverings, so that he never had the experience of being soiled. It worked really well because he never needed training after that. After the Peace Corps training Dada was offered to us as a live in helper, and they suggested she could sleep in the kitchen. To most, this would be a logical transition, but to us this was like offering her life to us, which was a little too close to my historical memory of slavery. So…I refused. This was a big mistake which caused several complications in our adjustments to life there, and though I did not know it at the time, it left Dada without a home. I never found out what happened to her.

So we went about our lives, with my husband beginning to find a place for his expertise and I minding the children and supervising their education. Their first school was a traditional Islamic one which lasted only a few months because the adjustment to the strict process I felt too much for them. We then found a school, Jean d’Arc which was attended by the nationals and foreign children as well. The children were transported to and from school by a small bus. The children had studied two weeks of French to prepare them for this school. Their dad and I studied the local spoken Arabic for six weeks with a non English speaking Moroccan. Because I was more socially involved my Arabic advanced fairly rapidly and I really enjoyed speaking it.

We had settled into a second story apartment with two bedrooms and because of the arduous work necessary to maintain the household I found I really did need help, so found and hired Malika, an native Arabic speaker. It was after talking to Malika
that I realized the indigenous language was the one used by Dada, called Shilha. This was a second loss for me, because I had wanted to connect first with the indigenous people. As my youngest son was cared for most by those speaking Arabic and I was practicing my Arabic, this became his first language, where as the other children spent more time using French. Thus we became a multilingual family, mastering none really well to date.

One day I decided to go shopping in a city adjacent to the Rabat capital, where we lived, called Safi. It was only a short bus ride and I took along with me the youngest children, Michael and David, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The oldest two were visiting the only other American Peace Corp family, the Sugiyamas. We walked to the bus stop and were waiting for the bus with Michael standing very close, on my right and David holding my left hand. One bus came along which was not ours. After looking for our bus once more, I turned to look down at Michael and he was not there. I looked behind me, not there either. Some ladies signaled something and said something which I could not understand and since I was still learning, I only caught a glimpse of one or two words. Until finally I realized they were trying to tell me my Michael had gotten on the wrong bus. I was devastated. What was I to do? I felt totally lost, and wanted to ask the help of the women watching me with empathetic expressions on their faces. But that was prevented by the language barrier.

All kind of thoughts went through my head. ‘Michael could be mistaken for a Moroccan kid. Now that he is lost maybe I would never find him’. ‘If he went into the medina (the old city) he might end up living there, never remembering me again’. I was feeling desperate. With little David in hand, we walked rapidly home where Malika was working and I conveyed the scenario, seeking her help. She replied, “don’t worry, they will announce on the radio that a child is lost and when you hear it you can go get him”. Well this did not help at all, after all I couldn’t understand the language well enough to know what was announced. By now at least thirty minutes or more had passed. Malika suggested we walk to the police station and seek their help. As we were walking, I repeated the scenario over and over, trying to make myself feel better and less at fault, while feeling very, very at fault. By this time at least an hour had passed.

When we arrived at the police station where there were a number of people milling around and then we saw Michael. He was sitting on a bench starring straight ahead at a blank wall, not blinking, obviously in shock. He was glad to see me, but didn’t say anything, just hung onto me. I tried to talk to him about his experience later but he didn‘t want to talk about the incident.

The police reported what the bus driver said happened. Michael had gotten on the bus and went to the back to find a seat, which the bus driver found unremarkable as the Moroccan children are independent quite young. But then he never got off the bus, even when getting to the last stop. He just kept riding the bus back and forth until finally the bus driver finding the child would not answer his questions took him to the police station.

Michael was 12 years old before he could talk about this incident, it was so painful. He cried during the entire time of the telling.
Today, he is a Pediatrician.

‘Energy flows in stages and cycles, say the knowledge holders. Each phase unattended jeopardizes another phase, say the knowledge holders.’…………E. Peters, Scribe, African Openings to the Tree of Life

Community Curation

H Linda Bridges