Salaam alaikum min al Maghreb! [Peace be upon you from Morocco]
In a conversation before I left New Orleans to start the semester, I jokingly told my beloved sister-friend Zariane that I was basically going to become “The Black Ms. Frizzle,” and instead of a magic school bus, I would be flying around the world with my students by airplane. Turns out the analogy was pretty accurate! Since my students arrived in San Francisco on Monday, February 3, 2025, I’ve spent a lot more time riding on the bus with them than I anticipated as we journeyed to the site visits part of our experiential learning program.
Until the moment I formally introduced myself to the group as Dr. Jones after their arrival, most everyone thought I was also an International Honors Program student—as the saying goes, “Black don’t crack.” We spent our first few days of orientation getting to know each other and the structure of the program at Manny's, a community focused meeting and learning place in the heart of San Francisco. Thanks to the incredible launch staff Daniela, Darien, and Deeqa, and my rock of a program director Sonya, I had a lot of support as I prepped for my first Anthropology class session (“Researchers” and “Subjects”) on Wednesday, February 5, 2025. The night before class, students posted their first discussion questions in response to the readings, and I almost cried at their thoughtful and insightful wonderings. I could feel in my spirit that it would be a good semester, and let me assure you, dear reader, one month in and my students have not disappointed me with the depth of their engagement! After a conversation about an excerpt from Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999) and Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (1956), I closed my first class with a well known Audre Lorde quotation from her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1983):
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference; those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older, know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”
Keeping in mind centrality of experiential learning in the IHP study abroad program, I invited my students to leave behind the “master’s house” for the semester (to the best of our ability). I invited them to believe another world is possible and to join me “outside” to envision and build something new together.
Maris among the Meyer lemons of Star Route Farms, the oldest continuously certified organic row crop farm in California. Photo credit goes to my student Timothy. | February 10, 2025
February has proven to me that, even as the world as we once knew it crumbles, there are always more and other possibilities ready to pop up like seeds germinating beneath the surface of soil. As Black Futures//History Month comes to a close, I feel so in awe of how many new experiences, new connections, and new to me histories I have encountered in the shortest month of the Gregorian calendar year. Honestly, it’s hard to believe how much we have packed into this month and I doubt I’ll capture everything in my recounting, so you’ll just have to take my word for it, dear reader, and see the thousands of words imbedded in each of the images I have curated for you from the moments I captured with the quick click of a shutter release.
A Bay view of San Francisco as seen from the ferry on the way to Angel Island. | February 7, 2025
This month, I was reminded daily that in each present moment I embody both Black histories and Black futures—I am a living library always adding new volumes to my collection. In his book Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988), Cuban-Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote:
“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatorial of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.”
We are libraries of our own lives, as well as the lives of the ancestors, known and unknown, who came before us. During the two weeks I spent in the Bay Area for the SIT IHP Climate Change program launch, I felt a deep connection to the spirit of Morris Jones, Sr., my paternal grandfather. Papa, as his grandchildren referred to him, moved to Richmond, California in the 1970s and never returned to Louisiana, as far as I know. As a child, Papa existed for me as a disembodied and loving voice of a man who I only ever knew through weekly phone calls on the OG black landline in the dining room of our home in New Orleans. I never met him in person, or even saw a photograph of him until after his death in 2004 (despite my daddy, Morris Jones, Jr., being a photographer).
As I traveled around the Bay with my students, and met up with friends and relatives for hikes and meals (special shout out to Artlyn, Allie, Jessica, Elaine, and Brisa for showing me an amazing time and loving up on me!), I started to get why Papa stayed. Yet the more I learned about the environmental impacts of the oil refineries and shipyards on the historically Black community of Richmond, I also wondered how he survived. But then again, I know I am a descendant of survivors, people who make something out of nothing—magic.
“Confined in the Wooden House,” Cantonese poetry carved into the wall of the Angel Island Immigration Station by Chinese immigrants detained between 1910 and 1940. Each clandestine poem of resistance carved into the wall was the collective work of at least three people: a poet, a carver, and a lookout. | February 7, 2025
Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days,
It is all because of the Mexican exclusion law that implicates me.
It's a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess.
I can only await the word so that I can snap Zu's whip.
From now on, I am departing far from this building.
All of my fellow villagers are rejoicing with me.
Don't say that everything within is Western style.
Even if it is built of jade, it has turned into a cage.
Note from the accompanying plaque: “In the first of these two poems, which are meant to be read as a pair, the author refers to a 1921 Mexican law barring the immigration of Chinese laborers as the cause of his current fate. Yet, he vows to fight his detention. His defiance of the authorities is suggested by his reference to General Zu Di, who defended China around 300 A.D. The second poem describes the successful conclusion of the author’s case. The elegant writing and the references indicate that he was an educated man.”
Looking up during a hike in Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park in Oakland, California | February 8, 2025
Papa wasn’t the only survivor’s story I reflected on and encountered while in the Bay Area. The U.S. Empire has been recycling its abhorrent systems of violence for centuries, and there has always been resistance. My cousin Artlyn shared stories with me about the Native American occupation and reclamation of Alcatraz Island decades before the Land Back movement. As part of the IHP program, we took a ferry to Angel Island Immigration Station for a site visit to learn about sea level rise, fire mitigation, and the ever horrific history of treatment of immigrants in the United States, especially those unable to assimilate into whiteness. The stories and conditions described by our guides, as well as the rooms crowded with bunk beds, curated objects, and the painted-over poetry carved into the wall was heartbreaking. Detainees of European descent were held for a few days, while those from the global majority were imprisoned for much longer—the longest being a Chinese teenager held for approximately two years. It was a reminder that today’s ICE raids and immigration detention centers are part of a long violent legacy of policing, imprisonment, labor exploitation, and white racial hierarchy.
From the California redwoods to the Maghrebi olives, through it all, the trees have helped keep me grounded—holding my grief, offering me peace, and teaching me steadfastness. Deeply rooted in their relationship with the elements, these trees are able to survive fires and drought respectively. Trees are teachers and life givers in a world of life takers.
I felt affirmed in this knowledge as I held my first Economics class session (Forecasting Climate Futures) at Star Route Farms on Monday, February 10, 2025. I had my students read the first few chapters of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) alongside Adriana Petryna’s essay “Wildfires at the Edges of Science: Horizoning Work amid Runaway Change” (2018). It was incredibly powerful to discuss the parallel states of the world in the book and in the present (technically the same timeline), as well as Earthseed, after seeing the California live oak trees among the permaculture and agricultural fields on the farm during our tour. I had us write letters to our future selves (a practice we will repeat throughout the semester) and I invite you to try out the exercise as well, dear reader!
San Francisco sprawl and the Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the hilltop of Bernal Heights Park. | February 8, 2025
And speaking of life givers, friends, food, and music always bring me joy; from Salvadoran and Ethiopian to Mexican and Japanese cuisines, I ate so good in the Bay! In case you were wondering, the soundtrack to my time in California was a combination of Kehlani’s Crash (2024) and While We Wait 2 (2024), as well as Kendrick Lamar’s GNX (2024) and Black Panther: The Album (2018). The West Coast vibe was real, though Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican masterpiece DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (2025) lowkey has had a permanent spot in my rotation since it’s release at the start of the year.
On Wednesday, February 12, 2025, my students and I took flight from San Francisco to Paris beneath the full moon in Leo, arriving in Casablanca, Morocco on Thursday, February 13, 2025. I enjoyed some one-on-one conversations with a few of my students as we traveled into the unknown of our collective experience together. Landing in Africa for the fifth time in my life brought tears to my eyes; I am so grateful to live out the dream of my father again and again. I could feel the excitement of my daddy’s spirit (and so many other ancestors) around me, joyful at my return to the continent. The local staff in Morocco (Jawad, Zineb, Jihane, and Asma) made me feel incredibly warmly welcomed; they were all excited that I could speak some Masri [Egyptian dialect of Arabic] and kept gassing me up, which definitely has helped me be brave as I learn Darija [Moroccan dialect of Arabic].
Cookies from the award-winning Pâtisserie Bennis Habous and traditional Moroccan breakfast (scrambled eggs with lamb jerky, olives fresh squeezed orange juice, and tea with mint) at Cafe Imperial, one of the oldest coffee shops in Casablanca located in Al Hobous. | February 15, 2025
On my first free day after our Moroccan orientation, my newest work bestie Zineb took me on a leisurely mini tour of Casablanca. We had a late breakfast and I have since developed a mild addiction to drinking Moroccan mint tea at least twice a day (truly unsurprising to anyone who knows anything about my usual, near constant, daily tea consumption). That breakfast, and the lunch and dinner I had at La Teranga Sénégalaise, a Senegalese restaurant around the corner from our hotel that Zineb also recommended, were definitely my favorite meals in Casablanca. God bless whichever ancestor(s) helped me order in broken French (and sent a Cameroonian man fluent in English in the hotel elevator right before I went in search of the restaurant to tell me I need to learn French lol) because the yassa fish, chicken sandwich, and bissap [hibiscus drink] slapped so hard I had to send all my students to support their business too!
The Atlantic Ocean and Hassan II Mosque | February 15, 2025
Zineb taught me how to catch almost all of the forms of transportation in Casa during our Saturday adventure. We ended up at the imposing and stately Hassan II Mosque just in time to hear the adhan [the Islamic call to prayer] by the sea, which was an incredibly ethereal and spiritual experience. Construction of the mosque began July 11, 1986 and it was completed August 30, 1993 under the supervision of the late King Hassan II of Morocco; the building of the Hassan II Mosque on the Atlantic Ocean was inspired by the Qur'anic verse "the throne of God was upon the water" and the megastructure invites believers who go to this mosque to remember the greatness of God who created the sea and the sky. I think His Majesty accomplished his goal because the smallness I felt in relation to the mosque and the ocean is only comparable to that which I felt in relation to the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara the following week.
Apartment complex murals in Casablanca depicting the stars of the Morocco national football team, which became the first African and first Arab team to reach a World Cup semi-final in 2022 | February 15, 2025
On Tuesday, February 18, 2025, our group loaded up the bus with all our belongings and hit the road for the next leg of our journey toward Marrakesh and the Ourika Valley. Once we left behind the bustle of the city, the views from the window became breathtaking. Morocco contains more ecoregions than I realized and the landscapes shift dramatically as one traverses the country. As someone born and raised below sea level, surrounded by the greenery of cypress swamps and marshlands, I am always in awe of the majestic presence of mountains and the expansiveness of the ochre arid plains. It rained most of the day as we drove to Jnane Riad Ourika (a hotel I would recommend to anyone who wants to experience the quiet beauty of the countryside outside of Marrakesh, delicious food, stargazing second only to the Sahara, and of course Moroccan hospitality). The electricity was out when we arrived because of the intense rain event, so we spent the evening talking by candle and star light until the power came back on.
A view of the Atlas Mountains from Marrakesh Organics, an organic olive farm and ecological training center focused on permaculture in the Ourika Valley, near Marrakesh. | February 19, 2025
The next morning, I opened my curtains and was surprised to see I had an arresting view of the snow capped High Atlas Mountains from my window, which had previously been obscured by the rain clouds. After breakfast, we got back on the bus for a short ride to Marrakesh Organics to learn about permaculture (focused primarily on olive and citrus trees), sustainable building techniques using local materials, the water challenges that people face in Morocco, as well as the protection of the environment in Islam.
I taught my second Anthropology class session (Positionality, Cultural Relativism, and Reflexivity) first thing in the morning on Thursday, February 20, 2025. After a week in Morocco, and reading Lila Abu-Lughod’s essay “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?: Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others” (2002), I was impressed by the amount of self-interrogation and self-reflection that my students had begun to exhibit as they encountered and navigated the unfamiliar, especially as we delved into confronting internalized biases rooted in Orientalism.
Marrakesh juice stand in Jemaa el-Fnaa, a square and market place in Marrakesh's medina [old city] | February 20, 2025
That afternoon we took the bus to Marrakesh to visit the Water Museum and explore the winding streets of medina. Of the many interesting facts and histories I learned about water in Morocco at the museum, I was most moved by the story of Taghonja, [“rain’s bride,” also Anzar’s bride], a water entity prayed to by the Amazigh people (“the noble, free people,” a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Maghreb; also referred to as Berbers, though the use of this term is a subject of debate, due to its historical background as an exonym and present equivalence with the Arabic word for “barbarian”). The “spoon” ceremony with Taghonja [literally “spoon” or “laddle”] is one of the oldest rituals for calling for rain and an appeal to the heavens to send rain to lands threatened by drought, water scarcity and crop damage. It takes place when rain is needed to begin sowing. The inhabitants of the village make a life size mannequin, sort of like a scarecrow, from reeds, olive branches, and two long spoons to symbolize arms, and dress it with their best clothes reserved for the procession and festivities.
Chicken pastilla and tea with saffron on the rooftop of Patisserie Lalla Moulati. | February 20, 2025
The medina [old walled city] of Marrakesh was crowded with tourists, snake charmers, monkeys performing tricks, and folks hustling to make sales to the point of becoming overwhelming. We split up into smaller groups, and I was so grateful Sonya and I were with Zineb and Jihane! They took us to their favorite juice seller and after exploring the shops for a little while, we decided to camp out on the rooftop of a women-owned and operated bakery, Patisserie Lalla Moulati, for delicious afternoon snacks and a gorgeous sunset.
Marrakesh at sunset. | February 20, 2025
We met up with Jawad and Asma for a staff dinner at a restaurant with an rooftop view called Soul Food, owned by a relative of one of the hotel staff in Ourika. While the name suggested to me that I was about to try some version of Moroccan-Southern U.S. fusion, it was actually mostly traditional Moroccan tajines alongside a few French and Italian dishes. By the time we found our way out of the medina maze and rode the bus back to the hotel that night, the stars were bright in the sky.
Poppy, a pollinating bee, and olive trees. | February 21, 2025
Morris Jones, Jr. and Evelyn Knowles-Cooper woke me up early the next morning with the call to prayer in the crisp moonlit darkness before dawn on Friday, February 21, 2025 to pick in my clothes off the line and take photographs at the golden hour before I had to pack up and get back on the bus. We spent the rest of the day riding south through the Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate for our next set of site visits.
Al Atlas Al Kibir, the High Atlas Mountains. | February 21, 2025
We had the weekend free, and I wanted to see the Sahara again, which I had visited briefly with the Giza pyramid complex in the Western Desert while studying Arabic in Egypt during the summer of 2010. So, I got back on the bus on Saturday morning with most of my students, and our reliable and kind driver Mohammed drove us another five and a half hours east to the village of Merzouga. We stopped to sightsee along the way and it was amazing to watch the landscape get flatter and drier as we got closer to the desert dunes. As someone from humidity central, I could literally feel the dryness of the air dehydrating my skin; I certainly wasn’t in Louisiana anymore. Yet, I also knew I was getting closer to experiencing something that many Moroccans never get the chance to; glamping in the Sahara absolutely was a privilege I will never forget.
Mountains and ruins en route to the Sahara. | February 22, 2025
When we arrived at Les Pyramides Merzouga Campground, our Amazigh guides helped us onto our camels and we entered the Sahara. I won’t even try to express the magnificence crossing the dunes and watching the sunset. I will let the images speak for themselves.
Seated camels in the Sahara with one of our Amazigh guides. | February 22, 2025
Sahara sunset. | February 22, 2025
Pink sky, pink sands. | February 22, 2025
While watching my students frolic in the dunes, all I could hear was my mother’s voice in the back of my head telling me I better not get any of that sand in my hair cause I would never get it out, lol! So instead of rolling around in the sand, I watched the sunset and talked with one of our guides Said. He had the same birthday as Morris Jones, Jr. and it felt like a sign I was in the right place at the right time. Since the start of the year, it has felt like I’ve been walking in divine alignment with my life path at a time where there is so much suffering and chaos in the world. I just keep trying to meet my blessings with gratitude and trust that I am doing what I am meant to: changing the world by learning with an open heart and shaping young minds with the knowledge and wisdom that others have entrusted me with in this lifetime. Being in the Sahara was a reminder that I’m just a grain of sand on this planet connected to the other grains surrounding me, but without each grain there would be no desert; together we are more than our individual existence.
Dr. Jones on a camel in the Sahara rocking a Giani Jones original New Negroes t-shirt with the Nikon D500 gifted by Morris Jones, Jr. in 2020. Photo credit to my student Timothy | February 23, 2025
We rode our camels the rest of the way to where we would be sleeping and were welcomed to the camp with atay b n3an3a [Moroccan mint tea]. When one of our Amazigh hosts, Atmane, found out I was the professor of all the students, he started addressing me as Teacher, said he had never been to school, and asked me which of my college students were the smartest; he then began to test their intelligence by their ability to solve riddles. My African-American student from the U.S. South was the first and fastest to solve the riddles; the rest of us were pretty stumped. In a world where many privilege education as a marker of intelligence, it was a reminder that critical thinking, knowledge acquisition, and wisdom are not confined to classrooms. I loved it!
Glamping in the Sahara, the morning after. | February 23, 2025
After a dinner of chicken and vegetable tajine, Atmane invited our group outside to sing, dance, and drum around the fire with the rest of the Amazigh camp staff. It felt good to move my body beneath the stars after spending so much time sitting on our journey. Little by little everyone started to go to their tents as it got later and the cold of the desert began to settle in. Not me though. I put on my puffy coat and stayed up half the night staring up at the awe-inspiring amount of stars in the sky, and chatting with Atmane in multiple languages about our life experiences, knowledges, and dreams. In the darkness, I was even able to see glow of an Algerian border town in the distance! No matter where I am, I always love stargazing and being with the night spirits. Doing so on the African continent made me feel incredibly close to all of my ancestors who used the stars to navigate the world. Lowkey, I felt like T’challa visiting The Ancestral Plane in Black Panther (2018). Looking up, I felt like a little star in a cosmic constellation.
Before I went to sleep, Atmane gave me one last riddle to solve, which I did. See if you can figure it out too!: “There are three brothers: One sleeps but never wakes, the second eats and never finishes, the last leaves and never comes back.”
A view of Kalaat M’Gouna a city known for the Roses Festival in Tinghir province. | February 23, 2025
Todra Panoramic Point | February 23, 2025
Looking up from the riverbed at the bottom of Todgha Gorges, a series of limestone river canyons, or wadi, in the eastern part of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, near the town of Tinerhir | February 23, 2025
We made a few more sightseeing stops on our way back to Ouarzazate since we took a different route. Morocco definitely knows how to serve dramatically gorgeous views!
Once we made it back to the city, it was back to class preparation and the program schedule. On Monday, February 24, 2025, we had a powerful testimonial session with villagers that had been displaced by the construction and operation of the Noor Solar Power complex, the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant. Later that afternoon, we visited Noor as our final site visit in Ouarzazate. We had a question and answer session with the director followed by a tour of the facility, which covers a geographical area the size of Rabat, the capital city of Morocco. From the observation tower the only thing you can see for miles is solar panels, which was impressive. However, the pairing of the testimony of the villagers and Noor visit, in which we learned that the electricity produced more likely ends up in the homes of Europeans than the homes of Moroccans in the area surrounding the plant, raised questions in our group about ways to ensure that the energy transition away from fossil fuels is as just as possible, not simply sustainable. What is truly “sustainable” about maintaining long-standing, unequal, global power structures that continue to marginalize and privilege the same groups of people?
Noor Ouarzazate Solar power station | February 24, 2025
I taught my second Economics class session (Racial Capitalism and Colonialism) the following morning on Tuesday, February 25, 2025. I had my students watch Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and read excerpts from Sidney W. Mintz’s Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in the Modern History (1985) and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore. The connections that my students were making between the course material, the site visits, guest lectures, and their individual research projects left me feeling both proud and hopeful for the future.
When I’m not teaching, one of my favorite parts of the program has been my co-worker Jihane’s Darija classes. She is so encouraging and patient with all of us, and every time we have a lesson with her, I learn more words and phrases that help me communicate with folks as we move through Morocco. People seem to think my mix of Masri, Fusha [formal Arabic], and Darija is cute and a little funny, but every day I am sounding a little less Egyptian when I talk thanks to my little sister Jihane!
On Wednesday morning we packed up the bus, once again, to head back to Ourika for two nights before continuing our trek to Rabat for our final two weeks in Morocco. I taught my third Anthropology session (An Introduction to Fieldwork) on Thursday, February 27, 2025. It was fun to talk about some of the methods I had learned and used for ethnographic research as an undergraduate and graduate student. That night, because it was our final night at Jnane Riad Ourika (the group’s favorite hotel to date) the staff organized a delicious dinner and a live music performance for us to dance and celebrate together. Our farewell the next morning was bittersweet, and felt extra special as it fell on the new moon in Pisces.
A sweet dairy cow attention seeking at Siham’s Farm in the Doukkala region near El Jadida. | February 28, 2025
We spent the last day of February on the road, hence why this end of the month blog post is a little late. I thank y’all for the patience (and the eager text messages wanting to know “Where in the world is Dr. Jones?” lol!). Our final site visit was to Siham’s Farm in the Doukkala region, near El Jadida, to hear the story of Siham Rahmoune, an incredible woman who left behind being a lawyer to take over her family’s farm and start a rural women’s only dairy cooperative, despite the many social stigmas and seemingly insurmountable financial odds that stood in her way. I invite you, dear reader, to follow and support her work on Facebook, Instagram, and/or YouTube. I was incredibly inspired by Siham’s dedication, tenacity, and belief in the power and possibility of miracles, and I know you will be too!
Our two week long bus road trip came to an end last night in Rabat, when we were introduced to our Moroccan host families. Mama Latifa came to pick me up and I have been really enjoying getting to know her and my three host brothers (and their two birds Pikachu and Paco!). Just as when I lived with my host family with three sisters in Cairo, I have the privilege of experiencing the holy month of Ramadan with a loving and welcoming Muslim family.
Inshallah, y’all will hear from me again at the end of March (feel free to subscribe for future email reminders), but until then, Ramadan Mubarak w b’salama!
Dr. Jones
