Vacationland: a closer look into Morocco's sex tourism industry 

MARRAKECH, Morocco- three women in tight, colorful dresses stand in front of mirrors touching up their makeup. The air is thick with the smell of hairspray and cigarette smoke. Hair extensions, hair dryers and curlers are strewn across countertops and on the back of salon chairs. Street lights dance off of a lone yellow taxi outside. By 11 p.m. most of the residents of this working class neighborhood in Marrakech are sleeping. Music blares through the poster-covered entrance of a salon where sex workers prepare to go out and meet their clients.

 

“My parents think I work in a hotel, as a secretary” Sara, 25, says, grinning a bit at the irony, as she does meet clients in hotels. She sits in a salon chair on her phone, waiting for texts from prospective clients, while her hair extensions get clipped in by a hairdresser. “I send the money back to my parents. They need it, they don’t have jobs.” She turns to one of the other women and tries to change the subject.

 

In a country where both sex work and sex outside of marriage are illegal, sex tourism is an informal response to unemployment which is at a 12-year high of 9.98% according to the most recent World Bank statistics. Unemployment for youth is far higher, according to a 2012 World Bank study stating that 49% of young Moroccans aged 15-29 are neither in school, nor in the workforce. This combined with a 2015 report released by the Moroccan Ministry of health documenting 50,000 sex workers in Morocco shows that youth are forced to come up with their own ways to support their families and themselves.

 

The cliché image of sex workers standing on a dark curb, waiting for clients in cars to stop by is not applicable in Morocco. Sex workers have to turn to social media to connect with clients in order to avoid the authorities.

 

Social networking apps with geo-locating capabilities like ‘Whoshere’ and ‘Sayhi’ are alternative ways to get in contact with potential clients.

 

Whoshere shows who has the app in your vicinity, how far away they are, when they last logged on and their age and gender.

 

Sara, who asked for her name to be changed, is part of a group of women whose clients are primarily people from Arabian Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. She has six regular clients that come to see her every two months. Four of them are from Saudi Arabia, and two are from Kuwait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“The ones from Saudi Arabia are guards for the King, and one from Kuwait is a policeman. I don’t know what the other one is.” She thinks Gulf men come to Morocco because they are not as able to have sex as freely in their own countries.

 

“Moroccan girls are nice,” she said. “We always smile, we are very good.” She starts shimmying her upper body and laughs and the other women join in. “European men don’t like bigger girls like me, like us, but the Saudis do.”

 

Sara connects with her clients by going to specific clubs and bars that she and other groups of Moroccan sex workers have deals with. After she gets phone numbers and arranges which club or bar to go to, she is driven there by a private driver that works exclusively with the salon and these sex workers. The driver then takes them to a predetermined bar, club or hotel where the women have special VIP access and deals with the owners of the establishments. This is necessary due to the fact that some places exclusively cater to people from Saudi Arabia or other Gulf countries. If you are not from or associated with these countries, you would not be able to get in.

 

More women start to trickle in around 11:30 wearing pajamas and blankets, holding bags with their clothes for the night, and purses. They greet each other with kisses on the cheeks.

 

Dr. Abdessamed Dialmy, a sociologist and former professor at the University of Fes, explains that about 14 years ago the government had a goal to attract 10 million tourists per year. Although the government doesn’t explicitly say that they will be sex tourists, he believes that sex was used as a tool to attract people.

 

“Through not punishing sex work,” Dr. Dialmy explains “[the government] is encouraging it. I think that this is evidence that the state is aware, authorities are aware, they know but they refuse to punish [them] because sex tourism is an income for the country.”

 

According to a 2013 article from the Carnegie Middle East Center, the informal economy employs 30 percent of Morocco’s workforce. However, determining exactly how much sex tourism contributes to that number, or how much money it generates is difficult, according to Dr. Dialmy. Dr. Dialmy explains that despite the prevalence of sex tourism in Morocco, there are very little data or statistics. “We have nothing.”

 

“We can only tell that it helps the hotels to work, busses to work and the taxies to work... but we have no exact idea of the income of sex tourism.” shares Dr. Dialmy.

 

Samir, 23, a former sex worker sits on a stone bench finishing up his lunch. He is thin and petite wearing a bright blue tank top and tight jeans. He is confident and boisterous. He recalls one of his regulars, Francisco, a businessman from Milan, Italy. “He said he came here for tourism. He approached me in a cafe and said that I was beautiful and he would like to get to know me more. He offered me 30,000Dh per night.” About 3,000 US dollars.

 

Samir’s line of work was particularly taboo. Not only was he having sex outside of marriage, but he was having sex with other men. Under Moroccan penal code article 489, same sex acts are punishable by up to 3 years of penalties and fines of up to 1,000 Dh or around $100.

 

Since the study by the Moroccan Health Ministry only counted female sex workers, there is no way to estimate the number of male sex workers in Morocco

 

Samir, who also asked for his name to be changed, was 19 years old at the time, and involved in sex work to pay his way through school. “I worked for him for a week, but then I loved him. He was my love...” he trials.

 

Abdullah, a 25-year-old student, works at the salon as a hairdresser. He is tall and slim with long black hair styled in a bun on top of his head. Most of his clients are the sex workers who come in at night to get ready. He prepares for his clients by carefully straightening and curling different hair extensions on the backs of salon chairs. He bobs his head from side to side to the beat of the various pop and hip hop songs playing on the stereo, occasionally tapping his cigarette on the rim of an ash tray on the countertop in front of him.

 

Abdullah instructs one of the women to stand up so he can help her with her makeup. He gently outlines her eyebrows while other women enter the salon wait their turn.

 

According to the 2015 study by the Moroccan Health Ministry, 54% of sex workers said that they did not use a condom in the 30 days prior to the interview. Sara, like many sex workers, has succumbed to the perils of her job. She has had STIs before that needed to be treated with oral and topical medication.

 

Sara also became pregnant at one point by one of her clients, but she decided to have an abortion. Abortion is only permitted in Morocco under specific circumstance like incest, rape, birth defects, and if the mother’s health is in danger. Since her abortion did not fall under these categories, it would have been illegal.

 

“I killed him” Sara explains, “... it is better than when he grows up and asks me ‘where is my father’. This is better.” All she recalls of the man that impregnated her was that he was around 24 years old, and was in the army in Kuwait.

 

Abdullah explains how if people get caught, both the sex worker and client are arrested, but they are rarely, if ever, prosecuted. “they just pay a fine and leave. Sometimes the police ask for a bribe, or sexual favors from the sex worker.”

 

This was echoed by Sara, who recalled that when she bribed a police officer. “I just gave them 100 Dirham, and they went away.” She mentioned that although she hasn’t been in the position where a police officer asked her for sexual favors, she knows people who have.

 

There have been discussions to legalize sex outside of marriage by both Morocco’s Tourism Minister, Lahcen Haddad during an interview with CNN Arabic in November of 2015, and by the Economic, Social and Environmental council in a report released in April of 2016. However, such calls have not yielded any results and sex workers continue to live in fear of arrest.

 

Hadad made an appearance on the television show ‘90 minutes pour convaincre’ or ‘90 minutes to convince’ a political talk show on the Medi1 TV network, in May of 2016.

 

“Personally, I don’t see sex tourism. If there are some people who came here for sex tourism or for human trafficking or child trafficking, then there are laws that will punish them. Morocco doesn’t have a sex tourism industry. Morocco has cultural tourism and tourists come to Morocco for it’s culture. If there is someone who breaks the law and comes here and do abnormal practices he will be punished by the law.”

 

Dr. Boutaina Drissi Alami Machichi, the National Coordinator for OPALS, l’organisation panafricaine de lute contre le sida, in Morocco explains that any solution to combat sex tourism would not just have to come from the government, but from society as well.

 

“It’s impossible for the government to find a solution,” she said. “We can’t find a solution to the world’s oldest profession.”

 

Back in the salon a woman can be overheard speaking on the phone in a Saudi dialect, using words and phrases specific to Saudi Arabia. “No, it’s 2,000Dh for the night for two men, I’m not going any lower.” Another woman is video chatting with a prospective client on on her phone. Smiling, laughing, and posing. Sara sits off to the side, eating some food before she leaves for a club. The top of her jet-black hair is held together with a bright blue clip, her makeup not quite finished.

 

Sara leans into the mirror, dabs her cheeks with makeup and examines her face. She says she doesn’t know if or when she will stop sex work or even if she has a goal for the immediate future. “I don’t know ... I don’t know,” she whispered, pausing for a moment, looking at the ground, before slowly returning to her makeup.