Shifting Cultural Norms

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I've been in Rabat this week. One morning, I was in the lobby of the hotel where I'm staying, waiting for my friend, a fellow PCV, to wrap up some business he had with the front desk. As he was standing at the front desk, he turned to his right and saw a Moroccan woman also standing at the front desk. He smiled at her. She smiled back at him.

It struck me how infrequently I've observed an interaction like that between a man and a Moroccan woman here in Morocco. Keep in mind that on most of the days I've been here in Morocco, I've been in my site, the town in which I live down in the Sahara. There, the vast majority of the time, women walk down the street and generally aren't interacting with men. Thus, they aren't smiling at men in response to men looking at them; indeed, they aren't even returning the gazes of men. After witnessing the exchange between my friend and the Moroccan woman in the hotel lobby here in Rabat, I was enjoying pondering how women here in large cities like Rabat can respond as she did. She's more likely to be seen as responding in an appropriate manner than Moroccan women in more conservative regions of the country would be viewed for such behavior.

Before I came to Morocco, I wouldn't have given much thought to such an interaction between a man and a woman. Of course, during my time here in Morocco, I've operated in a context with cultural norms different than those to which I was accustomed in the US. As I approach my COS (completion of service) date, I've begun to wonder how my experiences during my Peace Corps service are going to affect how I perceive and process interactions between men and women once I've returned to the US.