NOT MANY UNI students can say that they were detained by Moroccan soldiers and police this summer — in fact, there's only one.

Senior Loic Hostetter and his roommate were taken into custody after one of them took a snapshot of a stop sign near a military base. They were heavily interrogated (with words only).

"I wasn't too worried about being detained because the guard who was assigned to watch us seemed pretty relaxed," admits Loic, who maintained stoic until "the police truck with 'National Security' (Securité Nationale) on the side pulled up. Luckily, we were able to get in touch with the director of our program and he came and helped us sort everything out."

When asked for identification, Loic presented his reliable Uni prox card to the authorities and gave over his UIN ("the number I use for the interlibrary loan") in place of his Social Security number.

"They didn't know what it was at first, so they assumed it was important," Loic jokes now.

Fortunately, both boys were released four hours later.

Why Morocco?

A Moroccan interior. Photo courtesy Loic Hostetter (click to enlarge)

Loic spent about five weeks of his summer in Morocco with a group of 20 students, whom he described as "always positive and open." The trip also included a stay with a host family, with two students per family.

He visited Morocco through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth, a program funded by the State Department. This group provides scholarships to students, based on merit, to go learn a language that isn’t regularly taught in high schools in the United States.

He experienced Moroccan culture and its artifacts. He also visited a number of cities, including the famous city of Marrakech. Most importantly, he got to speak a great deal of Arabic and finally put his classroom-learned skills to the test.

Language was much less of a barrier for the senior, who was initially interested in Arab politics and calligraphy. This inspired him to take Intro Arabic 201 at the University of Illinois through concurrent enrollment when he was a junior. This year he is continuing his studies in Arabic 403.

“My Arabic teachers […] have [mostly] been Moroccan, so I really wanted to go see where they come from,” reports Hostetter. “I’d visited Tunisia, actually, a few years prior so I was really interested in North Africa.” Loic’s father and older sister Maite also visited Marrakech a few years ago.

To market, to market

A Moroccan market. Photo courtesy Loic Hostetter (click to enlarge)

As with any international travel, food was a major highlight. “The cuisine in Morocco was very good, actually,” he says.

Loic ate traditional Moroccan foods that were made with fresh organic vegetables and livestock. This food was locally grown, so the host family Loic lived with knew the people who grew and prepared their produce and meats.

Loic’s favorite type of dish was the tagine, which “[is] cooked in that special kind of dish; there tends to be a lot of meat and sauce. My favorite was called a bastilla, which is in a kind of pastry crust, but inside there is cinnamon, chicken, and [...] thin pasta.”

He also enjoyed black tea, which he drank “four times a day. [Sitting] down for tea [was] really nice.”

Loic rested for three hours in the middle of the day, which in Morocco is called Istirah. This practice creates a more relaxing social environment.

Still, Moroccan cuisine wasn’t exactly what he anticipated, since there was “much less kuskus than I expected.” Kuskus, or couscous, is a small spherical pasta eaten, like rice, in large quantities. It's commonly believed to be a very Moroccan dish.

There were also bigger community markets in addition to organic farmers, though even there the atmosphere was more similar to our local farmer markets than to supermarkets.

“We went to Gemefna, a century-old mosque that has a twin in Seville, Spain, a lot which also includes the markets around it. That was just amazing - unlike any other place I have ever been. The sights, the sounds, the smells…big stands full of really vibrantly colored spices and different goods.”

The markets were a combination of farmers selling organic produce, tailors peddling clothing, and other vendors” selling a whole variety of stuff including, surprisingly, “a big pile of snails.”

The mosque in Gemefna was old, but very large, and beautifully, ornately constructed. Loic’s first day at Gemefna was his favorite day of the trip.

Making Uni seem easy

Still, Morocco's not for everyone. Loic recommends that people that are “very amiable, who can get along with people, very social, and very adventurous” will have an easy time visiting Morocco...of course, it helps to speak Arabic to a certain extent, but what is most important is having an open mind.

Although one should be tolerant of differing cultures, sometimes that tolerance isn't returned... “I’ve […] had a couple of bad experiences […] with taxi drivers who want to charge you a lot of money for where you’re going. They think that just because you’re a tourist, they can charge you forty dirhams on your trip.”

Perhaps the taxi drivers would have been more fair if Loic’s group wasn’t as conspicuous.

“Personally, I didn’t wear a lot of Moroccan shirts and I didn’t wear a full gilaba [a dress-like robe], whereas another kid from my trip was so full into element that he wore gilabas every day. He was obviously tagged as a tourist.”

As students, Loic’s group visited the poor town of Tamgrout. Loic observed, “I know why we should be grateful. We have running water and electricity.” Even though they were not rich, they weren't seemingly unhappy with their situation.

A lot of Loic’s gained knowledge wasn’t just ethical, but also linguistic.

“Of course, I learned a lot of Arabic," he explains. "I had about five hours of class every day and about three hours of homework every night. It sometimes made Uni seem easy.”