Real World Rabat

Friday night, Olga and I met up with Lucas outside the medina. He took out his stuff to make huge bubbles and hundreds of people gathered around to watch. Determined little kids tried to pop every bubble and if they couldn't reach it they threw coins, shoes, clothes, whatever. Olga and I went around with a hat collecting money because Lucas is trying to collect enough to get a visa for Senegal or Mauritania. After the bubbles, he did a fire show, and even more people came and gave money. After the show was over, people followed us around for a little while hoping that he would do another show. After about 20 minutes, I looked around and realized all the kids and women were gone, and it was just men, who all seemed to just be staring at Olga and me. One of them was a 40 year old man who recognized me from the bus... creepy. We decided to take the opportunity to promote our project so we gave them all flyers about our activities. Afterwards, we counted the money and Lucas had collected 113.50 dirhams! Almost 20 dollars, all from locals, who generally don't have that much money to spare.

There is a big music festival going on right now all around Rabat for the next 2 weeks, so after the bubble/fire festivities, we walked to where a concert was going on, but it was just ending, so we walked towards one that was right by the Oudaya (George Benson) and watched from the street for a little bit.

Saturday, we had our film screening of Crash. Despite our efforts to get as many random people from the streets to come, it was basically all AIESECers. Despite not having a big audience, the discussion went pretty well. Afterwards, we had a meeting at the megamall, and then came home because Lucas had cooked another big meal for us. Then I went to the Ziggy Marley concert with Olga, Souhail, Lucas, and two of Lucas's Moroccan friends. I never realized what a huge rasta scene there is in Morocco, but it's apparently pretty big-- half the people there had dreadlocks and were holding up peace flags. We kept running into people who recognized Lucas from his fire shows in Casablanca, Marrakesh, and Rabat-- he's basically a celebrity in Morocco now.

After the concert, some people came over, but I ended up having an allergic reaction to some cherries-- my right eye got really swollen and my throat closed up a little bit, so I decided it was time to go to sleep. People stayed up hanging out for a hours longer and I guess Monica and Nadia got pretty mad. they yelled at them a few times to be quiet, so Olga offered that they sleep downstairs in Kamil's room so they wouldn't be disturbed, but they refused. I woke up briefly and overheard Monica and Nadia complaining about how disrespectful they were being. I guess they had to get up early this morning for belly dancing classes, but when you live with 6 people in their 20's, it's basically impossible to accomodate everyone. Good thing I don't get angry easily, because I imagine this might be only the beginning of personality clashes. I'm starting to feel like we're the cast of Real World Rabat, like my parents first suggested when I told them how many people I was living with.