After five months in Latin America, this is what culture shock looks like. I exaggerate – I think I received more of a jolt transitioning from chaotic Managua to the gleaming-towered Panama City than I did crossing the Atlantic from Colombia to North Africa. So far I’ve observed that certain tangible things are strikingly the same – the dedication to excellent coffee and fresh orange juice, for example. Others are extremely different – white flat-roofed houses (true casas blancas), the call to prayer at 5:00 am, men in lamp-shade-like hats wandering the old city’s square to serve up water in small glasses.

As the sun begins to set, I pinpoint a familiar sound: the chorus of Michel Telo’s Ai se eu te pego. Only last weekend I witnessed fans jumping exuberantly to its strains in Bogota’s popular nightclub Andres Carne de Res. I knew the song was “big”, but didn’t expect to hear it in a Morocco market. And yet, why not? The world is often made small by seemingly random items: music, food, sports. While globalization in the corporate sense can harm, unity through popular culture can’t be bad – in my opinion. For it shows that really, at heart, we all share a desire to live happy, and free of conflict.