ROOMMATES

This is the short story of six girls, three bedrooms, and one apartment. How we all came to live together is a mystery, but one that has consisted of the good, the bad, and countless cultural differences. Even after six years of living with different roommates, it is this year that has proven the most challenging, rewarding and educational.

When I arrived in Morocco, I hailed a taxi at the Rabat airport and recited the carefully address that my future roommate had emailed to me. On the drive into town, we shared the road with donkey carts, buses, bicycles, sports cars, trucks and rusty scooters over flowing with entire families. Like a broken record, the phrase, “we’re not in Kansas anymore,” kept looping through my head.

From our first day as roommates, we decided to become a family, complete with Dad, Mom, Crazy Uncle, Aunt Cythia and the kids. We made family dinners together during nights in, shared clothes for nights out, and became known to the ex-pat community simply as “les filles.” But as the year flew by, a certain tension started separating our family.

How could my Norwegian roommate be so passive and modest about everything?

Why was my Finnish roommate so opinionated and direct?

Did my American roommate realize that her sarcasm doesn’t translate into other languages?

Had my Moroccan roommate ever had to wash dishes before or clean up after herself?

Why was having a sit down meal so important to my French roommate?

How much was I willing to put up with to avoid direct confrontation?

Each of us came into this year with previous co-habitation experiences, but never had our living situations been so multi-cultural. We were six independent, savvy and successful women; could cultural differences really complicate things that much? Oh yes.

When living with five other roommates, with each one hailing from a different country, the things one might take for granted become moments for conflict or reflection. Reading meaning into indirect conversations, or how to take blunt comments with a grain of salt, became daily exercises in communication. I learned to keep more space between my Scandinavian roommates than those from the Mediterranean, to enjoy a late afternoon cup of espresso with the girls after work, accept my clothes being “borrowed” without asking, and to make vegetable tagines or good ole mac n’ cheese.

Despite the language barriers, disappearing food, endlessly dirty dishes, and differing lifestyle choices, we’ve somehow managed to keep our family together.

And this, I have come to attribute to one altruistic idea. Modifying our behavior for others is not always easy, or even a conscious act for that matter, but living well together starts with learning to think beyond one’s self. Having built-in friends with whom to cook dinner, watch movies and travel can be enjoyable, if an independent individual can learn to think collectively.

Thus, it’s not our differences that I will remember after this year, but rather, making ginger bread Christmas cookies, dancing in our living room until 6am, girl’s night out in Casa, birthday parties and weekend trips traveling. These memories are what make living with one apartment, with three bedrooms and six girls so unforgettable.