Women’s Day Weekend in Morocco (AND MY BIRTHDAY!!!)

by Diana Q Tran

Grey clouds rolling into the sky. Main focus is on the street with mainly white buildings, some with red walls. There is a Chinese restaurant to the left with black walls that are decorated with red lanterns. This is the restaurant we ate at!

Every year when March 8 comes around, I am usually alone, curled up somewhere with a nice book. Last year, I was finishing up a last minute essay in the COL library. This year, I was people-watching in my host family’s salon (an extremely large room for welcoming guests that almost every Moroccan household has) as rain pelted against the windows. Despite the heavy rain, the flower shops outside were still open – red roses, white roses, pink roses, and so many more – with men in lines waiting to buy bouquets for the beloved women in their lives. Like at Wesleyan, spring break had just started. My programmates (all women!) had left for Spain the day before in order to hike the Camino Frances for a week. I hadn’t gone with them because I needed to get a rabies shot (my 3rd one out of a series of 5!) the following Tuesday. That’s another story, actually – on a program-scheduled trip, I was playing with a cat in the Atlas Mountains and had gotten scratched by an adorable black soot sprite of a kitty! 

March 8 also fell during the Ramadan month (March 1, 2025 – March 30, 2025), so most places had already closed early to prepare for Iftar – the meal after sunset to break the fast of the day. My host mom, sister, and aunt were all in the kitchen folding briwats, cutting vegetables, and making sure the house cat didn’t get himself into any of the chicken. Rather than letting me help, every time I tried to offer, my host aunt shoved a plate of strawberries into my hands (my favorite fruit) and waved me away. 

During Iftar, they asked me what I had done for my birthday. I didn’t just stay in the house all day, right? 

Yes, I had answered in Arabic, I did. Tomorrow, I’m really going to celebrate! 

Multiple hands holding out li xi, also known as red envelopes, in a circle with a short stack of ‘Gia Bio’ boxes, which is a semi-popular Vietnamese candy, in the center. We exchanged li xi that I brought from America and they brought from Vietnam!

So a literal week before my birthday, I bumped into three Vietnamese girls at the tram station. It was 8pm – I was so, so late for dinner because the soccer game at the beach that I played with a few students from another study abroad program just kept stretching on and on, and then afterwards we took a walk by the rocks. Safe to say, I was exhausted by the time I reached the tram station, which was a twenty to thirty minute hike from the beach. 

I thought I was hallucinating at first when I heard Vietnamese being spoken. Maybe my playlist accidentally switched to a Vietnamese song. But no, there were three girls to my left. Cautiously, I approached them – “May ban nguoi Viet khong?” 

What followed was an hour long conversation at the tram and on the tram that continued after via a Whatsapp group chat where we made plans for my birthday. 

My actual birthday ended without much applause – I called my parents, got a few ‘Happy Birthday’ texts from friends, including from my programmates, and fell asleep pretty easily thanks to a food coma from Iftar. 

Three girls (left to right): Diana, Phuong, and Thien Anh, showing off our clay creations in small cardboard boxes. We are standing in the workshop area which was in the kitchen of a workspace.

So, the next day – March 9 – I made sure to wake up before noon. We were going to attend a clay modeling workshop and eat at a Chinese restaurant afterwards. While we walked to the workshop, we chatted about why we were in Morocco. Phuong was studying French while Thien Anh was studying Arabic. Phuong still had one year left while Thien Anh was going to return to Vietnam in July. I was going to leave in May. 

The clay workshop was so fun – I made cat keychains, Thien Anh made flag keychains and a small Jiji paperweight (from Kiki’s Delivery Service), and Phuong made a literal Aphrodite-like goddess!  

After over two hours of sculpting and molding, we were starving. We met up with a few other Vietnamese girls who were already waiting for us at the restaurant. We were seated on the upper floor of the restaurant as it was still before sunset when we arrived. 

A display of the Chinese food we ordered at the restaurant.

Everything on the menu reminded me of home. It wasn’t Vietnamese, but it was enough. I hadn’t had rice noodles in so long. What was interesting was how I had to explain some of the dishes to them, like the sweet and sour chicken, that they hadn’t ever tasted before. Sweet and sour chicken is a solidly Chinese-American dish, which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find it in Morocco. After speaking in Arabic for so long, it felt so exhilarating to speak Vietnamese, my first language. 

After our extremely filling meal, they pulled out one more surprise for me: a cake. It was small, decorated with two penguins holding hands surrounded by tiny hearts. There was a swirly, thin golden candle set between them, and Phuong asked the waiter for a lighter. While they sang Happy Birthday to me, I inhaled, eyes squeezed shut, and blew the candle out. 

A slice of my birthday cake with “Happy” and “Diana” are the words written in black icing on the surface as well as part of a penguin’s head surrounded by hearts.

It was nearing 9pm at this point. The pouring rain was back, and the owner of the restaurant asked if we really wanted to go– we could just wait it out. So we did for ten minutes. Then twenty, then thirty… and well, by then, it was clear the rain wasn’t ending any time soon. 

A taxi stopped nearby, and I nearly fell into a puddle trying to hail it down. I and one of the girls hopped in while the other three said they’d just run through the rain. Their dorm was close! We said our goodbyes through the window as the taxi sped off. 

I arrived home soaking wet, but so happy. I had to pack for my trip to Tarifa, Spain the next morning, but that was a problem for tomorrow!