Moroccan Public Radio

---

Sabah Al Khar
I'm still not sure how it came about exactly, but somehow I ended up giving an interview, in French, on a Moroccan national radio station last night during the election. Apparently the radio station got the name of one of the students at the center, and called looking for francophone Americans to speak live on the air. I ended up speaking for about 5 minutes to the radio station through my friend's cell phone to the whole country. The questions were prety simple but I'm pretty sure I lost in translation most of the nuances of what he asked me. He asked me who I voted for and why, what I thought about Bush's economic policy, how a larger turnout of young voters would effect the election, and who the black and hispanic population would favor.
Considering the obstacles (the cell phone, background noise, the foreign language) and the fact that he was talking really fast, I did quite well. I definately stumbled over my words quite a bit, and I had to ask him to repeat one of the questions, but I got my point across. I did make one big mistake but I don't think anyone caught it. He asked me about Bush's economic policies: what I meant to say was:
C'est bon que il veut baisser les impots (It's good that he wants to lower the taxes)
What I said instead was:
C'est bon que il veut baiser les impots
Which means:
"It's good that he wants to screw the taxes"
I doubt that anyone picked it up however, even the DJ seemed to have missed it.
We had a big slumber party at the villa last night for all the students who wanted to watch. It was kind of a downer since the students are overwhelmingly pro-Kerry.
As far as the Moroccans are concerned, the result is no surprise. People in the Middle East and in countries ruled by dictators and kings in general seem to develop a sort of fatalism: whoever is in power got there by crooked methods, and its not up to us to choose whether or not he stays or not. According to most Moroccans (and many of the Americans here as well), the fact that we call ourselves a democracy is just a kind of veil for a less obvious monarchy, and in the end it doesn't matter who wins. The result is that since most Moroccans assume (correctly for the most part) that the Americans who travel and live in the region are pro-Kerry, is that they have a kind of sympathy for us, as if to say "We know how you feel, we live with this too. But don't worry, God will protect those with good hearts."
As for me, I got my ballot yesterday morning: one day too late to overnight it back to Missouri in time for it to count. Apparently the postal service here slows to a crawl during Ramadaan, or maybe it was part of a conspiracy to keep the largely democratic ex-pats from voting, or maybe I just mailed the request too late. On ne sais jamais. :-)
B'Salaama
Brad

---

Comments

[anonymous]

US Elections from and Overseas Perspective
Brad The Moroccan/ French perspective on the world in general and elections in particular is most interesting. It's probably difficult for them to understand these things aren't an exercise in US showmanship with predetermined outcomes. And forget trying to explain the Electoral College! Interesting stuff indeed. Chuck Stout