{"id":1234,"date":"2009-07-07T17:02:27","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T22:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/?p=1234"},"modified":"2009-07-17T09:25:44","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T14:25:44","slug":"nothing-has-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/07\/nothing-has-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing Has Changed"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
Fez, July 3, 2009. Click image to see a larger version.<\/small><\/p>\n

If I had to pick a single image to sum up what I’ve seen so far in Morocco, I guess it would have to be this one.<\/p>\n

A young man rests on his bicycle, overcome by fatigue or even despair in the middle of his route. People pass by, indifferent, no doubt consumed by their own problems. The nowhere quality of the place just underlines the theme.<\/p>\n

Fortunately no nation, culture, or people can be summed up in a single image. However, since I’ve returned to Morocco after being away for three years, I keep hearing the same message from most of my friends. Nothing has changed, and since things were dysfunctional to begin with, that means Morocco is slowly sliding into an abyss of futility and defeat.<\/p>\n

A friend in Essaouira who was active in reformist causes, labor activism and investigative journalism has given up writing after suffering personal difficulties and the intense opposition of local authorities.<\/p>\n

A friend in Fez who is in his third year of law school lost an entire year of studies after conflicts between students and the administration led to the cancellation of midterm exams.<\/p>\n

Other friends have been more fortunate on a personal level, but they still\u00a0see a society with no middle class, no effective system of public education, no electorate ready to defend its rights, no politicians willing to risk their privileges in the fight for reform, and a state committed to a bread and circuses<\/a> strategy of keeping the youth entertained with festivals rather than investing in the long-term economic development of\u00a0the people.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I was reluctant to return to Morocco because I thought I might be saddened in this way. Coming from a nation where everything works despite having just suffered a major economic crisis, it’s difficult to undertand a society that remains stuck despite the enormous inventiveness, curiosity, motivation, and native intelligence of the Moroccan people.<\/p>\n

When I was here in 2003\u20132006, there was a feeling that despite all the obstacles of an underdeveloped nation, change was in the air and the future would be brighter. It was easy then for me to explain what I loved about Morocco, a nation reaching for democracy and opportunity while holding to the best of its traditions. Today I have a harder time answering that question.<\/p>\n

I’ll have more to say on this later, but for now I pose the question to you, dear readers. Is Morocco stuck, and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since returning to Morocco after being away for three years, I keep hearing the same message from most of my friends. Nothing has changed, and that means Morocco is slowly sliding into an abyss of futility and defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,6,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1255,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatbees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}