Overview
OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) believes strongly in people-to-people interactions. For the most significant experiences, we visited a local home for dinner. Each group attends a dinner at a different family’s home. Each experience is different, as each family is unique. I asked the group if they had any images I could share, and they came through. My group attended dinner at the home of a family with one child in high school who was very camera-shy, as was the husband. The daughter is very modern and attends college. Her mother is more traditional, but has no issues with her daughter’s choices.
Please note, for the family’s privacy, the map shows the area their home is in, not the exact location.
I may sound like an infomercial for OAT, but I have been extremely happy with the trips I have been on. For more of this commercial, please view myย Affiliatesย page. Even before traveling with OAT, I have been interested in people-to-people interactions during my travels. Not just overseas, but also in some native cultures in the US.
The Dinner
For our dinner, our tour leader divided us into small groups of five or six. Then we were assigned to a family. At the scheduled time, someone from the family, in our case, a son and daughter, met us at our hotel and walked with us to the family home. There, the husband, wife, and an older daughter joined us for a welcome tea. The two high school-age children excused themselves to do homework for the next day. The father left us to bring the food to the table, as he cooked the meal we enjoyed.
Around a traditional Tagine, the table discussed the similarities and differences between our cultures. The daughter who joined us for dinner was a college student and wore modern clothes, but still called herself Muslim. Her mother was very supportive of her daughter’s choices, while she wore the traditional hijab. It was an interesting conversation that wandered over a wide variety of topics. We left the family with a deeper understanding of the future and how it is changing in Morocco.
Conclusion
Each tour group visited different families, so they had different experiences. At one family, our group’s women tried on traditional Moroccan clothes. At another, there were younger children who interacted with our group. No one had a bad experience, and I feel all of us learned something over dinner and conversations.
