Ten Feet Tall

I am an American.  I love my country.  Tuesday, in the legendary navy sports coat with the fancy lapel pin, my traveling companions and I had the opportunity to visit the new patch of ground which is on loan to the U.S. at the Embassy of the United States in Rabat.  We arrived on a perfect day with only a few clouds dotting an bleu sky.

Guests to the embassy are not allowed to bring ANY electronics inside the grounds.  No cameras.  No phones, smart or otherwise, no smart watches, no nothing!  It also took a while to get 17+ people through the security process at the gate.  Once inside, we were able to see numerous gardens and common areas with green sub-tropical and tropical species of plants, making the grounds a wonderful place to take photos, if that was allowed.  No photos.

We learned about an initiative by the U.S. State Department to lower illiteracy rates in Morocco's 1st and 2nd grades which is partially implemented.  There are many parents and students who can not read Arabic so the new program, gained in a methods exchange with Egypt, is going online in phases over this spring semester and all of the 2016-17 school year.  Moroccan Arabic is the main language for grades 1-12, while French is the primary language spoken at most Moroccan universities.  It will be very interesting to hear how the program goes.

We also heard from a faculty member from a local university about students learning English.  There is an ongoing effort in Morocco to move English up the scale from the 3rd language in the nation behind Arabic and French, to 2nd.  French, according to Meriem is dying out in Morocco.  We've all learned a few phrases from Meriem in Moroccan Arabic, which is a dialectic offshoot of standard Arabic.  It's fun listening to native speakers of Arabic or French switch languages in mid-sentence, depending on the emotion and the subject matter.  Sometimes we even hear a smattering of Spanish, then English, then back to Arabic.  Then the circle begins anew.  Meriem called this code switching.

Everyone in the group has been told the only language to compare with Arabic, as far as learning difficulty for those who are non-Arabic speaking, is Mandarin.  Mandarin ain't gonna help anybody in Morocco.  Xie xie.

So time was short and I am sure I nearly nodded off once during the two speaker visits but the information was very interesting and we were all glad we visited that day.  The State Department rep scooted everyone along and we were checking in our visitor badges then on the bus.  There were some curious birds nesting just outside the embassy fence.  When the G4S security officers told some of our group not to take pictures they said, "From the end of the driveway".

Walking back out across the scenic embassy grounds, I asked an embassy attendant if there were U.S. Marines present at the embassy.  He pointed over to the opposite side of the campus and said "There are Marines over there".  "In the buildings?" I asked.  No.  At the outside gate.  Turns out we had entered a diplomat gate.  Nothing like special treatment when visiting U.S. territory in a foreign country.

I had my navy sport coat.  I had my lapel pin, shining in the sun.  I had other Americans around me.  I was walking on American soil.  I was John Wayne, Bruce Willis, Toby Keith, Jim Thorpe and Will Rogers rolled into one.  I was ten feet tall!