Chefchaoen, Some Bargaining, Sufis and Ancestors

Our last day started lazily, since we had until noon to visit the town, and could therefore wake up when we wished. I woke up at 8:30, ate breakfast, and headed to the museum. It was a really simple museum inside an old Kasbah, but the view from the top was amazing and the garden inside was gorgeous. The actual museum only had some traditional clothing and instruments, but it made a nice addition to the beautiful Kasbah. Outside we went to the shops, which unlike other Moroccan cities sold woolen goods and straw goods (I bargained for a straw bowl for my family). After wondering around a bit we were off again to Ouazzane. In Ouazzane we went to the house of Farah, the organizer of the CCCL (the place I'm studying). There, after a wonderful meal, we got to see an olive press in action. It was especially awesome since we had seen part of the olive press in the ruins of Volubilis the day before. Farah told us a bit about Sufism. Ouazzane has 8 shrines to local saints, and a Sufi brotherhood. In the olden days, within the walls of the Sufi brotherhood one could seek asylum and work for one's keep. Ouazzane had been marginalized by the monarchy, because the monarchy saw the descendants of the saints as a possible opposing power. Farah herself had links to the Ouazzane saints, her great great grandfather was one of them who had moved to Tangier and married an English woman in the 19th century. The stories she told of her grandmother (who had still considered herself "blessed") were very interesting. After a visit to the saint's shrine and the place of the brotherhood, we boarded the bus for the last time and went back to Rabat. The excursion was over, I was tired, but I had fallen in love with Morocco.

A Very Busy Morning and a Quiet Afternoon

We left Fez and headed for Meknes the next morning. Meknes, according to our guide, only has 20 guides, compared to 60 in Fez and 2,000 in Marrakech. Therefore it was a very toned down city. In fact, I would call it the country club of Morocco, because, other than seeing an old Jewish graveyard (where there were tombs in the actual walls!) all we saw were country club things: a stud farm and a golf course (INSIDE the walls of the old castle!). Then we headed for Volubilis, or Oualili (Walili) as the Arabs call it. It was the last outpost of the Romans in Africa, and there are most of the ruins of the city. There are mosaics that are still visible after almost two millennia. We then went to the sister city of Moulay Idriss right beside it. It reminded me of a Greek town, being on a hill and having all the streets on an incline. We ended up at a family house that also served as a restaurant and hostel that served amazing food. Then we had lunch on the roof and had an amazing view of the town, mountains, and even a waterfall. We drove another 4 hours to Chefchaoen, which we weren't to see the stunning light blue of until the next day.

A Bus Ride and Fez

The next day was a very long bus ride, broken up by a stop at a hotel in Erfoud where we eat a nice lunch and sunbathe. We don't arrive at Fez until almost nine and fall asleep after not so good Spanish food since we're tired of Moroccan food (all hotels have very similar Moroccan tagines for their specialties). The next day we go on a guided tour of Fez. We start out at the palace which is pretty, but similar to many of the other gates we have seen (and will see). We go to the Mellah (or Jewish Quarter) nearby, which has a different architecture than that of the Muslim quarter because it actually has decoration on the outside. A strong feature of all the Muslim architecture in Morocco is relatively plain outsides (you have no idea which houses are the rich ones from the outside) and gorgeous decorated insides, with the most beautiful ceilings. We then head to a synagogue which still has a torah and a hole in the ground leading to the place where the holy water is kept. We load up into the bus and go up to a hill where we can see the entirety of Fez. The city is around the same size as Rabat, but is much older, and was the seat of the Almovid Dynasty. We head to the Medina (which we have a guide for, it's the biggest Medina in the country, and quite windy) and head through the food section (there were lamb's heads!) through the dyer's section (they only use natural dyes: saffron for yellow, henna for red, indigo for blue, mint for green) and end up at the tannery. It is amazing to look down at them tanning hides the old fashioned way, using pigeon's droppings to treat it at first and dying them with natural dyes. Again bargaining ensued and my friends left with leather sandals costing $20. We go to lunch and then head to a place where they weave cloth, which is awesome to watch. We returned to the hotel and just hung around. I really love Fez's Medina. It is a little touristy, but it has so much to watch and is so much more authentic then Marrakech.

Making up for Lost Time

The next day some people woke up for the sunrise; I was not one of them, I love sleep a little too much. After breakfast we loaded back on the jeeps and returned to where our bus was. We took the bus to the kasbah we were supposed to visit earlier. It was cool going through the old kasbah and seeing an old Jewish quarter complete with a tiny mosque (although no Jews are around any more) and then some Berbers carrying on the Jewish silver making tradition that they had learned from the Jews who had left for Israel. It was amusing watching my friends bargain, we're all trying to get better at it and could usually get it down to at least half the price. I ended up getting a hand of Fatima, which is actually known as a symbol of the strong relationship between Muslims and Jews in Morocco because the Jews would make them and the Muslims would buy them. The hand is to ward off the evil eye. I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been feeling sick all morning, and to tell the truth I was happy to get back to the bus and sit down. We then stopped at another village where we saw a library that housed many medieval Arabic works and then a pottery village. It is amazing that they still use pottery wheels moved by feet. It was also cool to see the kilns they use after talking about it in Archaeology. This is how they've been making pottery for hundreds of years. After some more shopping we head to lunch at a beautiful hotel (where some of my friends again decide to jump into the pool to get the grime of sand off) and after another flat tire, we don't arrive at N'Kob until sunset. It is a beautiful town of kasbahs (fortified buildings) and it was probably the nicest hotel we stayed at although the shower and bathroom were outside. After some tea by the fireplace we head to bed since it's early rising in the morning.

Camels, a Fire, and The Saharan TV

After lunch, we finally load up into the jeeps to go to the desert (after a stop and a spontaneous dance party). Our jeeps leave the regular road and start off into the desert. We fly over dunes and race the other jeeps... Suddenly we come upon our camp. It is a circle of tents, with a big one at its head. In the center there is a camp fire and over to the side there is a bath room that actually has a ceramic toilet in it (although the running water doesn't work). Our tent has four mattresses and is gorgeously decorated with cloths and carpets. We rush off to our camels since the sun is about to set. Riding a camel is very different than riding a horse or a donkey. First of all, you get on while the camel is sitting down, so the most exciting part is when the camel gets up. Second of all, it's gait is highly uncomfortable. It was fun though, going towards the sunset, playing in the sand, finally getting to see desert that did not have any vegetation (I felt so strange, I should be happy to see vegetation; vegetation is life, yet I wanted to see the desert I had only seen in movies, the kind that really was only sand. We come back and already there are the musicians. I have never heard anything quite like it. The only instruments were drums, yet there was a lot of yelling, dog noises, the really loud sound that women make in Arabic countries... I don't know if that makes any sense, but it was cool. After that we have dinner and meet a Swiss man who has decided to explore the desert for 10 days by himself (he has a guide and three camels, but he didn't come with anyone). What struck me when talking to him was his surprise that Americans would come to Morocco to study Arabic. I didn't realize that even Europeans think of us as ignorant and unwilling to learn. After dinner there was more music, and then our guides took out their drums and the two boys in our group took out their guitars and we played music around the fire. I was slightly distracted by what I was later told was called the Saharan TV... the stars in the night sky. I finally understand why the milky way is called the milky way. It makes you realize just how few stars one normally sees in the night sky, especially in places like Atlanta or Boston.

A Few Snags

We headed to the Erg Lihoudi Desert the next day, piled into our little bus. Suddenly, we get off the road. We get out, wondering what has happened when we see one of the back tires, it has totally blown out. We happen to be beside a hill, so we decide to start climbing it while the tire is being changed. A bunch of us make it up to the top. But then the feat was coming back down... it was sand and small rocks that slipped, so you had to get down very slowly. The tire got changed and then the jeeps that were supposed to take us into the desert met us to pick us up earlier. So we pile into the jeeps and speed off. Suddenly we turn around and go exactly the same way we came from. I'm wondering what's going on when we come upon one of the other jeeps. It has broken down. We try to figure out how to fit about 20 people into two jeeps when finally we get the third jeep working. By then we're running supper late, so although we had planned to see a pottery village and a kasbah (fortified town) we go straight to the Nomad's house for dinner. We listened to him speak, and it was interesting that they were still able to keep their way of life while mixing it with the demands of modern life. For example, the sons would go off to school and live in a settled village while the older boys still herded camels. The fact that these nomads still herded camels is surprising because the art is dying out, since not many people want camels anymore. It was interesting, one of the nephews of the head nomad began to speak with one of the boys in my group in Dareja, and my friend was having trouble understanding, so I helped translate, yet even though I was speaking better, the guy spoke to my friend more--I feel it was because I was a girl and the divide between men and women is even stronger in that society. We did not see one woman at the nomad's house.

A Bumpy Ride

The next day we wake up bright and early after a late night to get on the bus. I've only slept 3 hours, but I expect that I would be able to sleep on the bus since we have a 4 hour bus ride until lunch and then another 5 hours until we get to Zagora, the gateway to the desert. I manage to doze off for a while when suddenly I am jarred awake. We are in the mountains. We are climbing and descending mountains--there is no way I am going to be able to sleep. So I stay up and I watch as my surroundings change. It is the first time I really feel like it's winter in Morocco, there are patches of snow and an icy bite to the air, but it still feels more like early spring than winter. If I were a poet, i would be able to describe those mountains, but I guess it suffices to say that they changed continuously. Sometimes they were big piles of black dirt, sometimes they were jagged peaks. After lunch I managed to go back to sleep and when I woke up, we were no longer in the mountains, we had arrived to the desert. It was the outer desert, so there were still plants and it wasn't all sand, so it reminded me of my disappointment with the Arizona desert. I saw too much green. I wanted the Sahara I had seen in Lawrence of Arabia. Eventually we arrived at our gorgeous hotel in Zagora that had a pool (that one of my friends was crazy enough to swim in). We all eagerly anticipated riding camels the next day.

Marrakech

We were going to Marrakech with the SIT group (the other students at the center we study at), and we all met at 7:30 to get on the bus. When we get out there we see two charter buses and then an 18 person van. We expect one of the other groups to get on the small bus because we were having the longer trip, but no, the 14 of us, plus our coordinator, plus our driver pile into the bus. We were to know it well during the next 8 days. Let me tell you, it was not the most comfortable ride I've had.
Our first stop was Marrakech, one of the so called imperial cities because it was founded as the seat of one of Morocco's monarchies. Marrakech has a reputation for being the place to go in Morocco and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of tourists. I think it's that reason that I didn't like it. There is a beautiful plaza outside the medina that has restaurants, storytellers, snake charmers, tamed monkeys, and henna artists. At night it becomes a huge crowd of people, and although it's easy to assume they're mostly tourists, the storytellers are speaking in Arabic, and entice mostly Arabic men. We also went to an old medresa, which were the dorms for those who studied at the Quranic school. It was a beautiful building, but the rooms were small and those that did not have light must have been quite dark and cramped for those students back in the day. The museum was ok, but nothing special, although there was an exhibition of paintings of Berbers that was quite nice. That night we went to a night club which was fun, but expensive. Overall, I felt like I was seen more as a dollar sign than as a person by most of the people in Marrakech, although I did meet some nice guys, including a guy who did amazing calligraphy.

Excursion

This is going to come in many parts, because we went to about 12 different cities in Morocco in less than 8 days, there were mountains and deserts, cities and villages, ruins and monuments. One moment you can be looking at cacti in snow topped mountains and an hour later you can be looking at trees in the desert. It was beautiful, if exhausting, and made me fall in love with Morocco all over again. Some overall impressions before I get into the specifics: there seems to be two different macro cultures in Morocco, that of the north and cities, and another of the south and deserts. Even in smaller places up north the hijab was the standard international one and the food and bread was relatively similar. Down south, women started wearing more traditional veils, they kept more away from strangers, and there seemed to be much more African as opposed to Middle Eastern influence.

Something I'll never get used to

I think the hardest thing to accept about here are the street people, but not just that there are beggars and that there are child beggars, but more that many of them have diseases that I never see in the US. There are blind people with strange things that have happened to their eyes, people with legs that never grew to full size, and elaphantitis (I think that's what it's called, when there are strange tumors). I suppose they exist in the US, but they're better hidden. This is a country with perfectly good medicine, but I suppose the poor here can't afford it.

A Beautiful Day

After almost two weeks of rain, we finally got a beautiful day. We met to go to chellah, the old Roman ruins in Rabat at noon, but we had to wait for friends. I decided to go with a friend to a cafe to help her find a lonely Dutch girl she had met and invite her to come with us. Unfortunately, we were too late. We decided to walk because my friend said she knew where it was. We asked for directions and finally we came to a marketplace we had never seen before. We thought we were lost, but then we saw a sign that said "Bab Chellah" and we thought we were there. We ask for directions towards the ruins and come upon the Qasbah (the fort) rather than Roman ruins. A nice guy who spoke English said that we were in the wrong area and had to take a taxi. My friend decided to go home, but I still wanted to meet my other friends at Chellah. I stood there for a while, trying to hail a taxi but there were none going by. Eventually I started walking the beautiful way down beside the river. Suddenly I saw ruins... I was so excited. It was a beautiful garden and had the unfinished miniaret that a 10th century Sultan had commissioned to be built but had never been finished. I called up my friends... was I at the right place? It seemed that I wasn't, so I kept walking. I'm a little annoyed that I'm lost and can't find a taxi around a tourist place where they should be, but it's beautiful and the weather is beautiful and I'm happy all the same. Finally I find a taxi and make it to Chellah. The ruins are beautiful, we could sit on the old stones and just sunbathe. There was an old mosque to explore, and beautiful gardens. To be comfortably relaxing in the sun (with a light sweater) in the beginning of February is amazing.

Adventures in Cooking

I had decided to make my family something special to thank them, and I thought that Saffron bread would be perfect, since saffron is cheaper here and it's so very Swedish. So I went out to get the ingredients. It's so fun going to a little shop and asking for a half kilo of sugar and flour and the thing that makes bread get bigger (I had no idea how to say yeast). Then I went and watched someone measure out a gram of saffron for me. It was so much fun... I got very confused when milk seemed to be 85 dirhams, and then I realized that it was 8.50 and I felt very silly. The most expensive was the 500 grams of butter, which ended up being a little over 3 dollars. For the sugar, flour and salt, I payed all of 85 cents. It was amazing.
So I go home to cook, and my mom watches and I teach her to make some cool designs. I'm a little worried, since the dough hadn't risen all that much, but I hope that it had risen enough. It didn't. It seems that I accidently killed the yeast because I was working with fresh yeast and used way to warm milk. It was really sad because when I cooked them, they ended up not cooking on the inside and it was awful and didn't taste good and overall no good. Now I know how important yeast is...

Buying a djellaba

So I've been wanting a djellaba for the entire time I've been here...
Let met tell you what a djellaba is: it is the traditional Moroccan dress. It is a robe that has a pointed hood and wide sleeves and a decoration down the front. I promise that I will eventually have pictures...
So I had been seeing them in the medina, occasionally asking for prices. I got answers that varied anywhere from 300 to 800 dirhams (i.e. 35 dollars to 100 dollars). I decided I wanted a nice one, but I wasn't going to wear it enough to warrant buying an expensive one. So I started trying them on... some were beautiful but of the wrong material, others were just too expensive. So eventually I found it... of course I'm me, and I wanted something that goes with everything and therefore I got black with white decoration. It was obviously not hand made but it was beautiful and I got it for just 300 dirhams. Moreover, the ladies I bought it from were a lot nicer than the ones that I had talked to before; plus, I think I accidently bargained down from 350 by not understanding that they were saying 350 and thinking they said 300.

The Hamam

Yesterday I went to the hamam or public bath. It was quite an experience. So we went in and first we rent a stool and buy an exfoliating scrubbing glove thingy and some special soap. The hamam itself costs a bit over a dollar and the soap maybe 8 cents). Then we go in the outer room and get naked... everything except our bottom underwear. We get a bucket, take in the stuff we need to clean with, and leave our stuff with some people for safekeeping (for a fee of course... but only a dirham... i.e 15 cents). We go in and everyone is naked except for bottoms. I've never seen so many naked women... and I realize the ones I have seen have been in really good shape (i.e. on tv). It was kind of refreshing to see women of all shapes and sizes. So we end up deciding on the hottest room... and begin the scrubbing. So much dead skin... I don't think I was ever this clean in my life. We keep scrubbing and pouring the hot water that we've gotten in our buckets from taps over ourselves. It's wonderful, for about an hour. Then I start overheating. Around this time, though, we've all finished scrubbing so we decide to leave. That was a quick hamam experience. Sometimes you're there for 3 hours. I want to stay longer, however, I'm not going to be in the hottest room again. I feel like such a dirty person for putting on dirty pjs (I haven't done my laundry yet...) after getting so clean. Still, I fell like I'll be clean for days and days. Coming out of the hamam is almost like being reborn...

A Moroccan Art Exhibit

Today I went to a Moroccan Art Exhibit that had been organized with the help of the Italian Consulate to show the art of North Africans who had gone to Italy. What struck me the most was that all of the information was in Italian and French, but that there was no Arabic. The paintings themselves either had no signature, a Latin signature, or both an Arabic and Latin signature, never one by itself. It seems that somehow, art has been taken over by the West even though the whole point of the exhibition was to give expression to the feelings of intolerance, etc. felt by North Africans in Italy. Most of the art was very much like any modern art that you would find... the only one that struck me as really Arab was an artist that plays with the idea of Arabic calligraphy. Of course the themes throughout the paintings were that of what is the Arab city vs. the Mediterranean city etc. You could see art that resembled Picasso and others that were more minimalist or even a impressionist looking still life.
It got me thinking... do more Moroccans know how to read Fus'ha or French? Is the exhibit elitist to only have the descriptions in French or does any one who is literate able to read French? This question of language still bothers me. I wish I knew enough to know which dialects were being used on TV at all times...

More about languages

I sort of feel sorry for dareeja... although Moroccans are adamant about learning their mother tongue, it is hardly used in formal life. On TV, you'll hear fusha (the Standard Arabic) or Egyptian colloquial because they make all the movies or even French on the Moroccan channels (especially when they're talking about art). The only time dareeja is on TV is for silly Moroccan soap operas or sitcoms. Otherwise, even the other colloquials win over. The sad part is that the Berber language is already dying out, so I wonder how strong dareeja will remain. Moreover, the rest of the Arab world looks down on dareeja because it's supposedly the most different from "Qur'anic Arabic" but Egyptian Arabic is pretty different too but has taken over Arab cinema. Even I've said that Moroccan Arabic is relatively useless... however a big part of the Arab world (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunis) speaks it...

Casablanca

I suppose I should say a little about the good parts of the trip after I got out all my ranting.
On Friday, after class we took the train to Casablanca. Of course, just as we arrive there is crazy rain. I know that the hotel we're going to is close enough to walk to, but we can't decide whether or not to take a taxi or not. It stops raining and we end up walking to the hotel. It's the cheapest recommended hotel in my guide book, but its not too bad other than that the toliets are in the hallway and there isn't always toliet paper, but for 7 dollars a person, I really can't complain.
After that we wandered the city some, it is a lot like NYC in that there are people everywhere and lots of shops and more tourism. The medina has a totally different feel than the one in Rabat, and the whole place seems to cater to a richer crowd. After we had stopped at a cafe, we go home to the hotel to change to go out to dinner and a club. We go to Ain Daib, a suburb of Casablanca by the beach although at this time of year its not that beachy and it was raining and... needless to say we stayed inside as much as possible, going to a restaraunt with an awesome atmosphere but pricey and not the greatest food and then to a club that we just ended up happening upon (after not going to one that was really expensive... here the girls got in free and got a free drink). It had "house" music, which is a bit like techno and not that great, but it was fun anyway. Since we were a big group of 10 ( although only 2 of them are boys) it was just fun to dance with the group. Its strange, for how "forward" guys are in the street, they really aren't at all in clubs, in fact, if any girl in our group wanted to dance with a boy she usually had to approach him. I even had a guy ask me to dance with his brother (I pretended I didn't know French and they went away). Strange.
The next day we woke up and went to a cafe for a 2.50 dollar breakfast that included bread, eggs, fresh orange juice, and tea/coffee. After that we walked through the medina (which as I said before was not as nice as Rabat's) and went to the Hassan the II Mosque, which is gorgeous. Its the second biggest Mosque in the world and although we didn't get to go inside (we missed the tour) it was amazing from the outside.
Then we took the train home and I had my issues with the conductor.