Transit Feet

"'First of all,' he said, 'If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.'" 

 - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird*

Arrive in Rabat | Welcome to CCCL | Tour and Tiles of Center for Cross-Cultural Learning (CCCL)

“Feet pictures” are frequently found snapshots among my photos. How or when this trend began, I’m not sure. As a student of tourism, “feet pictures” provide an effective and slightly more discreet method to keep a piece of Place with me. Each picture captures a moment, mostly to mark a meaning for myself. (Although I can’t say I have completely given up on the art of the tourist selfie, yet.)

Beyond convenience, I find a mixture of romanticism, nostalgia, and necessity in slowing down and noticing where my feet are planted in the present moment, especially when in transit. Amidst the state of transit,** “the act or fact of passing across or through, passage from one place to another,” the practice of taking “feet pictures” brings forward a connection to what is and what has been with and in the space. While in Morocco this winter, an added bonus and definite pleasure in taking “feet pictures” came from the plethora of tiles, rugs, stones, and sand in the places our group moved through together.

Riad Means Garden, Heart of Home | Medina Tour | CCCL | "Ethnic Food" Stop (aka McDonald's)

There was no shortage of moments where I found myself amazed by details and story of it all…

What might it have been like to craft and install tiles throughout buildings and medinas? I trace the changing and repeating shapes with my eyes. It begins to feel meditative. Each flooring complements equally beautiful walls, windows, and ceilings. I can almost hear the sounds of footsteps belonging to people gathering for atay as they find relief from travel in homes with similar patterned grounds. I wonder at the maintenance of such floors. Faces of artisans and maids linger still in the corners of my imagination.

Espresso Stop in Ziz Valley | Rissani Tour | Mausoleum of Moulay Li Cherif | Fossils at Itrane Auberge

As my feet move from urban to rural spaces, I begin to consider the tiles as signs of government and French influence more and more. When we reach the desert, my feet stand among fossils and climb up windblown sand grain mounds to take in the sunset among the dunes. Bare toes greet the sand in a new day and I sit with the sounds of morning while pondering the paths nomads, the Amazigh, have taken on this same land for centuries, trusting they would find what they needed along the way. At the Oasis, I find the water meets the sand in a union I have never appreciated quite in this way before. Water is life in all places my feet take me.

Sunset in Mergouza | Idir's  First Desert Hotel | Taouz, Mokhtar's House | Oasis, Community Water Source

I step through spaces once settled and now abandoned while catching a fleeting glimpse of a life that has shaped our teacher, our guide. I ponder the transitions to urbanization and miss the magic of being witness to the vastness of sky lit only by moon and stars each night. I am invited to step into homes and venture through winding alleyways of the souk. I follow paths deemed “tourist routes” as well as those less traveled. I stand in the shoes I came in and imagine walking in the shoes of those around me. After two weeks, I stand for five hours in Rabat’s airport awaiting a plan to transport my feet back across earth and sea to the United States. Standing still in a place of transit ironically seems to be more of a beginning to this journey than an ending.

 En Route to Ouarzazete | Arrival Town, Ouarzazete | Marrakech Tour | Hassan II Mosque

Wherever my feet go, I am. Both like and unlike many before, my steps are those of a tourist, traveler, student, woman, westerner, and more. My two feet ground for a moment of pause before I continue to step through shared places where others have been and will be. Each frame I snap captures a path I first know through my own lens. With each step, I settle into imagining the footsteps of others. The practice helps to root me in two questions: What is the story here? and How am I/we relating with it? The practice of transit feet continues.

---
*The selection of this quote from To Kill a Mockingbird is shared here because it is one of my favorites about empathy building and learning across difference. It reflects my attention to noticing more similarities during my travels in a place deeply "Othered" in the western mind, including the guidebooks and texts we studied during this course.

**Ammer, C. (n.d). Transit. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Retrieved February 14, 2017 from Dictionary.com website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transit.