Ifrane, Morocco: Keep Off the Grass

Al-Akhawayn University, where we’ll be finishing out the remaining three months of our year of  Arabic study, is located in the bizarre little town of Ifrane, Morocco.  Here are a few fun facts that I’ve picked up after a week of living here.

1.  Al-Akhawayn means “two brothers” in Arabic, and is named for previous Kings Hassan of Morocco and Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who are not actually brothers.  The money to start the university came from a kingly gift from Saudi Arabia meant to help clean up a huge oil spill off the coast of Morocco.  The oil from the spill ended up getting swept away by ocean currents, but I guess you can’t exactly return a kingly gift, so they money ended up being spent to establish a public English-speaking university in Morocco.  The university brings in some of the best students from around the country, and unlike the rest of the university system, costs a whole lot of money…our guidebook says, “only the rich and beautiful need apply.”

2.  The town and university are both designed with a very European architectural style, and houses, academic buildings, and dorms look more like they could be Swiss chalets than smack in the middle of the Moroccan Atlas Mountains.  This is offset by a huge and beautiful mosque in the traditional Moroccan style, right in the center of campus.  I’m pretty sure it’s in the same style as al-Kutubia mosque, which as you may remember, is perhaps “the most perfect minaret in North Africa.”

3.  Did I mention it snows here?  Yesterday morning I woke my roommates up with my shocked yelp as I pulled open the curtains and the world was covered with a couple inches of snow.  There’s apparently some good skiing nearby, and the town’s population at least doubles whenever there’s a decent snow.

4.  As I’m walking around campus, the words “idyllic,” “pristine,” and “utopian” come to mind.  This lovely atmosphere of course has a price; you can get a 100dh (about $12) fine for walking on the grass.

5.  Most students speak French, Arabic, and English, and many know some Spanish too.  Conversations that you hear walking around are usually in Darija, the Moroccan colloquial Arabic, with some French thrown in.  We’ve discovered that our level of Standard Arabic is not that much different from many of the students here, and in my direct enrollment class (Arabic for use in Mass Media) I was actually helping out with Arabic words and translations!

6.  It’s been really tough coming from Egypt to here.  We all miss our cheap ful and falafel and koshary, our host mamas, the bahr, the warm weather, and our life and friends in Alexandria.  We’re making the best of the situation though, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Morocco has to offer.  All this week we had an intensive 4-hours per day of Darija…it was frustrating starting from the beginning again, but fun feeling like we learned so much in one week.   On Monday, we start our schedule for the rest of the semester, with classes in MSA, Egyptian, Translation, Islamic Studies, Arabic for Mass Media, and Darija.  In the meantime, I’m off to take a swim in the indoor Olympic sized swimming pool on campus….I guess studying here does have a few benefits 😉