My Time in Morocco

Paying for an Unpaid Internship

I often think about the privilege I have and how it allows me to do an unpaid internship. How many people can work for free in order to gain “experience”? I have done an unpaid internship before and during my first two years of university, I did not work during the school term. I have friends who work three jobs while taking 5 courses in order to finish debt free. I am aware of it here especially. Time and money are precious things and in university, I often feel like I have neither! But here everything is so cheap and I all of a sudden seem to have all the time in the world. Oumaima and I have made some friends here, both expats and locals, and all of them work and we are planning to take a weekend trip together to see the northern parts of the country. As I am planning, I am especially aware of my privilege. Oumaima and I do very little at our host organization because the two organizers are very busy and don’t have time to explain things or time to even be in the office while we are there. So, I have been keeping myself busy by replying to emails, doing school work and planning this trip. I am able to spend my day looking through all the options and searching for the best deals. I know that many don’t have time to organize and plan.  Many of the locals live day to day or week to week and do not have time to plan weekend trips. They also would not have been able to waste their time volunteering at an organization that has no work for them to do.

When I went to the national library, there were many students there, studying like at Morisset (except they were actually quiet, and the place was clean). These students I know are as motivated, as smart and as hardworking as me, but my privilege allows me to focus on my studies rather than how I am going to pay for them.  

Now back to planning for the trip… I have been presenting all the options for housing and transportation from hostels to Airbnb to hotels and from buses to taxis to trains. I am able to afford all these options and I am not super picky, though I would prefer the beautiful completely furnished house on Airbnb to a youth hostel. But some of the girls see these options as pricy and out of there range and are looking for the cheapest way possible to do it all in a weekend. The train there is the best way to go costing 200md which is $18CAN and when I presented this option one of them replied that the trip was already looking pretty expensive, but I had seen it as an incredible deal.

I am a pretty frugal person and I am not wealthy by any means but here I have the privilege of choice and freedom because I have more time and money than most people here. I can choose to eat out when I don’t want to cook, I can choose to take a private taxi rather than a bus or tram. I am privileged to have so many choices and options and do things that many would see as a “waste” of time and money.