The Two Sides of Development

After a few months in Morocco one gets used to the stark contrasts. But every once in a while, the gap between the parts of the same city that we might called "developed" and those that are not stands out.

Daniel and I went to the medina to eat bisara, a delicious chickpea soup topped with olive oil. Near Bab Jdid we sat down at a dirty plastic table to eat a bowl of the soup which costs 5 Dh (less than a dollar). We also received bread, served in a shabby pink plastic basket not well-shaped to hold bread. The basket fell over immediately, so I tried several times to stand it right-side up without success.

In front of us, trash littered the dirt street. To the left, a man with no feet sat begging. Another man had laid out a piece of cloth with 10 or 12 items on it, including dirty plastic parts, a tape, and a Holy Bible in English. He had no potential customers. None of them seemed to have seen a razor in the past few days, and their clothing didn't seem to have seen a washing machine in the recent past.

A few hours later I found myself in a posh office with colored tiles and glass doors. I was discussing the printing of my business cards with a woman sporting a gigantic diamond ring and dressed in a fancy pink version of the traditional Moroccan jelaba. When she left the well-lit office complete with the newest hi-tech HP printers to go downstairs to check on pricing, I tried to use my Darija with her office mate, a well-groomed man in his 30's: "Lots of colors." I pointed to the clean tiles in red, blue, yellow, and green.

He replied, "It's great, isn't it? Excellent for working."