Culture Shock

Culture Shock

So, on my last day in Africa I got a nice reality check. Here I had been staying in a 4 star hotel in Morocco and had private buses with my tour group. I had forgotten that my world was very different than that of the people who actually live there. I decided (even though they told us "don't go out at night, and women don't go out alone ever.") to venture out on my own to get a picture of the McDonald's sign in Arabic. I was walking down the road when I see a car pull over. An angry man gets out of the car and forcefully opens the passenger door. He rips his wife out of the car and throws her to the ground. I looked around to see that the people working in the restaurant right next to where they were ignored it as if it was a couple just walking down the street holding hands and laughing. He yells at her to get up (I am only assuming this since he yells at her in a language I can't understand). Once she gets off the ground he hits her in the face and once again she hits the sidewalk hard. This is when the man turns to me (I have frozen in place. I am just staring unable to move) and yells something that again I can not understand. He then gets in his car and drives away. The woman pulls herself up off the ground, crying, and walks the way that the car went speeding off. I am still frozen as I watch her walk passed me. This is when I decided to take my camera and go back to the comfort of the illusion of equality in the hotel. As I sat in the hotel lobby waiting for the rest of the tour group to come to the lobby I thought about what would happen to me in this country if he had escalated to more than just yelling at me. I have no rights here: I am young, foreign, and a woman. Then I thought about the young wife. She has no rights here and she is a citizen. She is a prisoner in her own home. In that moment I was so happy to be an American. And in that moment I was never so ready to go home back across the small strip of ocean that separates 2 countries, 2 continents, and 2 worlds. But, my time in Africa was not over. My tour and I were headed to Assilah. A little town on the ocean that was known for bartering. 

Their jetties were made out of huge cement jacks.