What We’ve Learned Our First Year

Mar 1

Open door set in intricate, Arab-style wall looking out on a Moroccan town

One year ago today, Michael, Karen, and I finished registering Crossroads Cultural Exchange in Morocco. We have previously shared why we started a cultural exchange in Morocco, and now, as we look back on these twelve months, we are filled with so much gratitude. Over the past year, we created our brand and launched a website and social media, started offering English language services, created and designed our cultural services including The Navigator Program, and networked and built relationships to strengthen our business. In addition, on April 1, we will begin offering language classes in Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, French, and Tamazight. As we have developed and grown CCE, we have learned so much about Moroccan culture and business.

We are still learning.

On a recent tour of Volubilis, the tour guide mentioned that the moment you should stop learning is the moment you die. Learning is a core value for us in both life and business. Even though we run a cultural exchange center, we are still not experts who know everything there is to know about culture! We are still learning—every day we seek to understand our neighbors in Morocco better as well as understand our world better. And every time we interact with people from cultures that are new to us, we have more to learn! This is a good thing because learning means that we are still living.

We really love culture.

We love culture, especially learning about it, which is a little unfair because we mentioned learning in the previous paragraph. But it seems that every day we discover something new about culture in Morocco and culture in general. As we have conversations with the language teachers at our center, we realize that they have so much more to teach us about their rich Moroccan culture. This excites us because the more we continue to develop cultural and language curricula the more we have to share our passion for culture with others. We are constantly reading and discovering more and more about culture, and there are no signs of this love for culture waning.

We are excited about the future.

As we shared at the beginning of this post, big changes are coming to CCE in April as we start a cultural exchange center in Fes that will not only serve as our home base for cultural programs but will also serve as the center for language study of Modern Standard Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, French, and Tamazight. For the past three years, Michael and I have studied Moroccan Arabic at Arabophon, a language center in Fes. As of April 1, Arabophon will be part of Crossroads Cultural Exchange. We will be located at the same address in Fes where Arabophon has served the community for five years, and the four teachers will continue to teach language for students with a desire to learn. We truly believe that these are the best language teachers in Morocco and the curriculum they use to teach Moroccan Arabic is unique and effective. The opportunity to work with these teachers and the material they teach is thrilling to us and truly a perfect fit, because they already teach both language and Moroccan culture, believing they go hand-in-hand. As we make this transition and brainstorm for the future, we are excited about where we will go together, and cannot wait to share it with you.

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Morocco is a very unique country for several reasons. The first is its strategic location in the northwest of the continent of Africa, just 14 kilometers south of Europe. This beautiful country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the North, the Atlantic Ocean in the West, Algeria to the East, and Mauritania to the South. For this reason, Morocco is a crossroads where cultures, civilizations, and ethnicities meet.

Once upon a time there was a man who had three daughters and, wishing to depart on pilgrimage, asked each of them what he should bring back for her.

“Gold and silver bracelets crusted with gems,” said the eldest. “Gilded slippers,” said the second. But the youngest asked time to reflect before she answered. As soon as she found herself alone in her own chamber, a Rouhaniya (a fairy) appeared before her, saying: “Ask your father to bring you The Kaftan (traditional piece of Moroccan clothing worn by women) of Love Spotted with Passion.”

Cultural Stories: The Language of the Birds

Once upon a time, there was a rich merchant in Fez who was in despair because he had no child. Also, his advanced age seemed to forbid him any hope in this respect. But his desire was so great that he asked one of his friends, who lived at a great distance, to come to visit him and to give him advice. This friend was a magician. When he had consulted his art, he said: “ You will have a son.”

Cultural Stories: The Carpenter’s Daughter

Once upon a time, there was a poor carpenter whose wife died in childbirth, leaving a daughter on his hands; in truth, a beautiful baby, but one whose upkeep was a grave burden upon her father, and who therefore seemed to have been born under very sad auspices. How could the unfortunate man take care of his child when he had no money, no relations, no slave, and was worn out by his work?

Reading and reflecting on the fairy tales, myths, folktales, proverbs, and sayings from another culture help us gain insight into that culture in ways we otherwise may not glean. Let’s look together at on such tale, called The Fatal House, taken from Tales of Fes.

When visiting a foreign country, many people come as tourists, excited to visit the world-renowned places, eat the local food, and move around as easily and efficiently as possible. However, it takes additional effort to visit a place as a guest, striving to know local people, understanding the culture and norms, and experiencing authentic life.

Cultural Stories: Lalla Khallal El Khadra

William Gudykunst said, “One of the major factors influencing our effectiveness in communicating with people from other cultures is our ability to understand their culture.” Communication is about more than just the words we say; it is about both language and culture, what we communicate through words and actions. Here at Crossroads Cultural Exchange, we believe that we can't separate learning language from learning culture. As one of out teachers says, "Culture is the spirit of a language."

What We Learned During Our First Cultural Tour

Right after Êid al-Fitr in early May, we received our first group for a cultural tour of Morocco. Twelve people participated in The Navigator Program, which we designed in order to give people the opportunity to not only learn about culture in general, but also to gain experience with the cultural concepts we discussed. We call this program an “immersive educational experience” because it’s more than a tour; the group explores Morocco while also learning how to navigate cultures.

People from cold-climate cultures tend to value structure, efficiency, and getting things done in advance, whereas people from hot-climate cultures tend instead toward responding to life as it comes and value relationships over punctuality.

As I was researching the topic of hospitality, I was struck by how many proverbs and sayings there are about hospitality that sound very negative. It seems like while hospitality is a beautiful idea, in practice the reality doesn’t always live up to the expectations. While we have been living in Morocco, we have learned so much about hospitality in hot-climate cultures.

Culture 201: Hot and Cold-Climate Cultures

Hot-climate cultures tend to be relationship based, utilize indirect communication, have a strong group identity, seek inclusion, have a long history, and are described as high-context. In warm cultures, relationship is the basis of everything, even in professional settings. Relationships as the most important value impacts many other aspects of the culture. Time on the clock is not as important as the face sitting in front of me.

What do we mean when we use the word culture? And what is the point in even talking about different cultures? Merriam Webster has a few different definitions of culture. First, culture can be "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.”

Cailyn Wheatley

What We’ve Learned Our First Year

We are still learning.

We really love culture.

We are excited about the future.

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