From Mass to Markets

By Jose Fernandez

We began our final leg of the trip as we pulled into Rabat in the afternoon. After we had some downtime, me and two others made our way to St. Peter’s Cathedral. The mass started as we were walking in. You may wonder, how active is a community of Christians in a predominantly Muslim country? The answer is: very active! Most of the Catholic communities in Morocco are made up of students coming to Morocco from Sub-Saharan African countries to study and evidently move on to Europe. What surprised me is that these people come from countries where you can be persecuted for your faith, but despite this Africa has reportedly had the biggest increase in Catholics. This is most prevalent when seeing the communities here in Morocco. The priests in most of the churches here come from Europe, particularly France. The mass was beautiful as the liturgy was said in French with all of the faithful singing beautifully.

The next morning we made the short drive from the hotel to see the Kasbah. The Kasbah in Rabat is the old part of the city. The walls were built by the Almohad dynasty as they wanted a strategic location to look over the water. It was a fortified city to protect its inhabitants. The view that we had from the Kasbah was breathtaking as we could see the water but also see people playing soccer on the beach.

Next we walked towards the market area of the Kasbah. On the way we saw a beautiful garden called the Andalusian gardens. The Andalusian gardens were laid out by the French during the colonial period. The French laid out the garden to create shade in the Kasbah during the hot days and also to imitate the Andalusian gardens of Spain. This was a perfect spot as it had so many different flowers which made for vibrant pictures.

We then finally reached the market section where we were given free time. We explored the Kasbah, walking in and out of small streets looking for little souvenirs to buy. The architecture of the market section is unique as it is more spacious than other market areas but still provides a lot of shade allowing us to stay cool during the hot days. Going into the market area I had a mission to buy the last remaining souvenirs but I failed that mission as I got too busy exploring the different streets.

Later we made our way back to the hotel to hear a lecture from Ayman Cherragui, who works for the Bensallah Foundation, a foundation that works with nonprofits and their social impact. The goal of the foundation is to legitimize small business and to improve the quality of life of small business owners in rural areas. He also came to talk about Moroccan culture, specifically the political system. He broke down for us the way in which the monarchy works and the parliament of Morocco. The government in Morocco is very interesting due to the fact that they still have a king who has a lot of influence in legislative decisions. This is something I am not used to since I grew up in the United States. We also learned about the different social programs that exist in Morocco to help low income families. After a break we had Qadery another guest speaker. Professor Mustapha from Mohammed V University of Rabat. The professor spoke about Amazigh culture and its influence on Moroccan identity and its influence on languages around the world. Overall this was a bitter sweet day as it was one of our last days together.