Moroccan Summer: French Families Rediscover Roots and Adventure in Annual Pilgrimage

Manel is impatient to go on vacation to Morocco. The 10-year-old Rennaise will spend the entire month of August in the south of the kingdom with her parents and her three siblings. "I can’t wait! I bought candies and little crafts to do with my cousins," she confides to Ouest France. On the program, spending time with her grandparents feeding the animals on a neighboring farm, going on mountain hikes with her father, tasting fruits in nature, etc. In Morocco, "the houses, the smells are different."

"We don’t go every year, because of the budget, and because we also want to have time to discover France, there are so many beautiful regions!" declares her mother, for whom the organization of the trip is no small feat. "We send the belongings and gifts in advance by carrier. Then we leave by plane with just a backpack." The family has chosen to discover a Moroccan city on each vacation. "Each time, we visit a different city: Agadir, Marrakech, Tangier... We discover Morocco," Manel rejoices.

Unlike Manel, Kawtar, another 11-year-old Rennaise, regularly travels to Morocco for her vacations. "I like it because it’s long, and there’s all my father’s family," she says. During the day, she refreshes herself at the pool in the residence or at the beach, plays games, then in the evening, she "goes for a walk," or "sees the horses." "In Morocco, we are much freer."

But the trip to Morocco requires a significant budget. "I work more to pay for the vacation because Morocco has become very expensive. But there, we are in a housing estate with a caretaker, it’s safer. Here, I don’t want my teenagers to hang around in the street in the summer. It’s complicated to keep them busy if we don’t leave," explains her mother, Ibtissam. This year, the family is taking advantage of the car trip. "It’s more practical, less expensive. And then we take advantage of it: we stop for a week in Spain to discover."

These returns to the homeland are often an opportunity for these Moroccans living abroad to speak their dialect. "My father takes us to Morocco so that we can speak better Arabic. In the evening, we go to my room with my cousins, we watch movies. We put them in Arabic and I put the French subtitles. I can see that I’m making progress," Manel confides. "In the residence, I mostly speak French with the other children, because there are a lot of French people. But with my grandparents, even if they speak French, we use Arabic," Kawtar confirms.