Madrassa (High School) Shenanigans and Maturity

I’ve been asked a lot by people at home how different Moroccan high school is, and truthfully, it’s an extremely different experience from my high school at home but also from other high schools in Rabat. For instance, 2 of the other kids in my program are in a strict religious school where most of the girls wear hijabs, the English teacher preaches homophobia and encourages having as many babies as soon as possible (after marriage, of course), and one of my American friends was shamed constantly when she wore a knee-length dress one day, even though she was only showing her calves. From what I’ve heard, the kids there are also very academically intense. They also have to wear tabliers (white lab-coat-ish jackets that cover their butts), and there is an extremely strict no-phone rule,

At the other high school that a couple of my American friends are at, they have to wear tabliers (white lab-coat-ish jackets that cover their butts), and there is an extremely strict no-phone rule. Again, not a ton of boys.

I knew from the start that my school was extremely different because on the first day, multiple kids asked me why I chose THEIR school when theirs is, and I quote, “the worst.” I told them that I wasn’t given a choice and that their school couldn’t be THAT bad, and they told me to wait and see. Well it’s been well over a month in my high school, and while the academics and teachers are good, the student body is unlike any that I’ve ever encountered. And I love it.

At first, I was worried that I would be bored in class, but there is so much chaos all the time. I started sitting closer to the back of the classroom so I can study Darija without the teacher noticing, and that’s also where some of my peers put White-Out on their desks, take out a lighter, and make fires in the middle of class. They literally light the desk on fire. And the best part? The teacher never notices. Not once have they been caught, and they have had multiple fires.

What else? Well, we aren’t allowed to eat in class, so sometimes my friend Saad takes out a massive sandwich and passes it around so everybody has a mouthful of food. Then the teacher asks them a question and they can’t answer, so they put their heads on the desk and the teacher yells at them to wake up, and it’s a whole thing every time, but again, never been caught. Sometimes one kid won’t share his food with the rest, so everybody says “bsaha” (“to your health,” said to somebody eating, showering, buying food, etc.) loudly hoping that the kid gets caught.

Then there are the phones. I don’t know if the teachers are blind or what, but every single class, kids are playing games on their phones, watching TV, perusing instagram, and yesterday, one kid was watching porn. Kids facetime with each other in the middle of class because they’re bored.

During our morning break and lunch, kids will also run around punching each other, hitting each other in the face, slapping necks, etc. The teachers let it happen, I think because that’s a huge part of the culture and even the nicest kids punch each other, but it was very surprising at first, and apparently doesn’t happen at the other kids’ schools.

I love my school in that sense. It’s entertaining, I’ve made many different types of friends (chaotic vs. kind, etc.), and I don’t get in trouble much (unless I’m laughing too loudly in class, which happens a lot), but the language barrier makes it extremely difficult sometimes.

For instance, I can say most of what I want to say in Darija, and what I don’t know, I fill in with French words. But, there are three kids in my class who think it’s funny to say something to me in really fast Darija, not repeat it slower when I ask them to, laugh at me for not understanding/because they said something that made fun of me and I didn’t even notice, and then laugh to each other. I have a sense of humor about it because I’ve accepted myself as the dumb American and that’s okay, but it’s so constant, and there are only a couple kids who make fun of me to my face so I avoid them when possible. Every now and then, one of my friends translate what they’re saying to me, and it’s either mean (mocking something about me) or just not funny (like asking me to repeat multiple times that Jeremy ate a camel’s head, which is entirely normal here), so they're not really worth my time anyways.

Also, there is one girl in my class (we’ll call her Saida) that one guy really wants to date/impress (they are ⅔ of the mean ones that I just mentioned), so he will turn to me and tell me that I’m ugly and that this other girl is beautiful and I should look more like her, right in front of her. Then she laughs and looks at me in the most judgmental way. When I respond in perfect Darija that I’m not stupid and that I know why he’s saying that (to show off to her), he just laughs. I'm not angry or offended when stuff like this happens, just really unimpressed.

Saida also says my eyelashes are definitely not black (duh, gingers don’t have black eyelashes, I wear mascara) and acts like I’m a whore because I wear a tiny bit of mascara when 1) everybody does, but most importantly, 2) she wears fake eyelashes AND mascara AND lipstick AND foundation and is being a freaking hypocrite.

She also demands that I do all of her English work for her, and I helped her at first because I wanted friends and she genuinely doesn’t know any English, but that’s because she doesn’t try in school. She never said thank you and continued to be mean to me, so I stopped, and then she got mad at me when I refused to write her English essay for her. Mad at me.

I’ve never had kids be mean to me like this before because I’m the type of kid that doesn’t take any nonsense, but it's hard to defend myself in another language and another culture that I don’t fully understand (and shouldn’t expect to) so they continue to be annoying and I just ignore it, instead. New culture, new solution.

Overall, the maturity levels are much lower in high school here than they are in the US. I was warned about this before I came, but didn’t expect high school seniors to be acting like middle school mean girls.

It's not just to me, either. There is one kid in my class who is super quiet and the other kids are mean to him, but Jeremy is super nice (don’t tell him I said that) so he sits next to him every day and is the only one who talks to him. They will be sitting together, and Saida will go up and demand that this kid move because it’s her seat. Sometimes he will move so she will be sitting next to Jeremy, and she’ll turn and ask me why Jeremy’s sitting there, as if he doesn’t have the right. Yesterday I put my foot down when she told the quiet kid to move and was like, “you were 30 minutes late to class, that’s his seat” and she was mad at me but she didn’t have a choice so she took another seat. Imagine being that immature that you fight over a seat. Imagine being 18 years old and acting like you’re 12.

Anyways, because I like to think that I’m pretty mature (I can hear my friends laughing at that comment), I just ignore most of this bad stuff. Overall, I love my school, I love my friends, and I’m having a good experience in Moroccan high school. Well, calculus is not my friend in any language, but I’m passing so HAMDULLAH.