Marruecos

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December 12, 2007

Why hello all my faithful readers,

My, my, how close to the end we are.

So as I mentioned at the very end of my last installment I went to Morocco. Morocco is the first truly different place I’ve traveled to. It’s considered a developing country. It’s not westernized. Religion and the state are not separate. The King has the power to dissolve Parliament. 99.9% of the population is Muslim. Geographically it’s the closest I’ve been to the States, culturally, it’s the furthest.

As you know, from the lack of picture completion, I was in a bit of a rush. A rush would be an understatement. I finally got my act together and everything set to go around 6pm on Wednesday night. In order to make it I had to be at the port of Algeciras at 8am the next day. Algeciras is about a 4ish hour drive from Granada and all the morning buses and trains would arrive too late. I ran home, showered, threw whatever I could find in a backpack, (for those of you who have traveled with me you may be surprised, but I can now live about a week out of a small backpack) and ran for the bus station. I literally ran. I didn’t stop to find a taxi. I got to the bus station, grabbed the second to last ticket on the last bus of the night and I was off. I drove all the way down the coast we drove last week to Gibraltar. At night Gibraltar is lit all around by lights from beneath and it has a single, blinking red aviation light at the top. The rock looks like a revenge-seeking pirate rising from the deep.

I arrived to Algeciras around 12:30am and went off in search of a place to sleep. The trick is to find a one or two star hotel. They’re really cheap because they’re not listed online but you still have your own room as opposed to a hostel. The guy who signed me in and gave me my room was quite nice. I got upstairs, crawled into bed, watched the last thirty minutes of The Truman Show, and I was out.

The next morning I woke up around 6:30 in order to shower and figure out where the hell the port was. When I went downstairs to checkout the same guy who let me in was still on duty. You know you barely slept when the same person is still working. It turns out the port was directly across the street. With nothing better to do and more than an hour to kill I headed to the port to find breakfast and watch the sunrise. At nine o’clock I was sitting on the ferry and headed towards Africa.

We landed in Tangier about an hour later. Tangier is the definition of border town. There are people everywhere and bustling markets. Immigration traffic in Tangier has died down in recent years because the Spanish government has begun to heavily patrol the straight of Gibraltar. However, there are still many people caught in a transit state. They’re unable to continue onward to their goal, Europe, but they cannot return home.

Our first stop in Tangier was, of course, the market. We bought food. I’ll give you one guess to what I got. Dried plantains! After a quick walkabout we sat down for lunch in a dining room that is run by a Woman’s Centre. The Centre gives job skills training and literacy training to women as well as taking in a number of women at a time who have fallen on hard time, be it drug abuse, unemployment, or whatever situation. Lunch was difficult although we had to either order in French or Arabic. That was interesting, as was the couscous covered in steamed vegetables. It tasted amazing but it was unlike anything I’d ever had.

At the women’s centre we met an engaged couple. They were both from Morocco, although not from Tangier, and spoke perfect English. That’s one thing you notice about this country. Everyone speak French and the Moroccan dialect of Arabic. Most also speak Classical Arabic and another language such as English or Spanish. Anyway, we got to talking with this couple. We asked about her veil. She said it was her personal choice to wear it. No one was forcing her. She said the Koran explicitly says that a woman is to cover herself but allow her hands and face to be seen. She also said she had many Muslim friends who decided not to wear the veil. She made it very clear that there was a different between her decision to wear the veil and some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, where certain colors, mainly black, and full body veils were opposed. She said that this is not Islam. She also said that previous to the US invasion, Saddam Hussein was seen as a religious hero. Then she asked us, “Why do Americans see all Arabs and Muslims as terrorists?” I’ve never felt like more of an idiot. The best answer that we could come up with was that it’s not all Americans. For those that do feel that way it stems from fear after September 11th. She also pointed out that most of the west seems to think that Arab and Muslim are synonyms. When we asked what the stereotypes of Americans and Westerners were, the clearest answer we received from either of them was that their younger generations are learning to separate the US government from its people. As the trip went on it became common for people to skirt around their opinion of Americans.

After lunch we got on a bus and headed down the Atlantic coast toward the capital, Rabat. That is, we tried to head to Rabat. Just after the traffic circle one kilometer outside Tangier the bus broke down. We had a gas leak. We spent more than an hour and a half waiting for a new bus to come get us. Moroccan time is worse than Spanish time. But it’s okay. Ben found a praying mantis and amused us by making it speak. That, and we had cookies.

After we finally got a new bus we headed south once again. We made one stop in a small coastal town to enjoy the last light of the day before getting all the way to Rabat. In Rabat we stayed with a local family. The house is very cool. All the rooms open up into a large balcony that goes around the centre. They live on the second floor. There is no roof over the middle part so in order to leave a room and go to another you have to basically go outside. While one of the daughters was giving us a tour she told us that she was going to introduce us to her sister who was the good English-speaker in the family. We scoffed a little because her English was so good. We go into their bedroom and her sister looks up and says, “Hey! What’s up?” We jumped back a little. If I hadn’t know better I would have said she was from the States. It turns out she studied for a year at American University in DC.

We were so late in arriving that it was soon time for dinner. A giant plate of chicken, vegetables, and potatoes. They serve all the food in a communal plate and you eat the part that is in front of you. That was the first night we didn’t have utensils. We ripped pieces of bread and used it to grab the food. They say that you should never touch food with your left hand. Your right hand is for eating and your left hand is for the bathroom. Dinner was with the three daughters and the mother. The daughters all spoke perfect English but the mom only spoke French and Arabic.

We were told that taboo topics to talk about with Moroccans included the royal family, Israel and Palestine, the Western Sahara, and sexual etiquette. The topic of the Western Sahara came up in a conversation about immigration because many immigrants would try and reach the Canary Islands from the Western Sahara until the police cracked down and now the route has moved south through Mauritania to Senegal. In the United States we recognize the Western Sahara as its own country. In Morocco there is no such thing as the Western Sahara. They consider that piece of land as belonging to Morocco. It’s interesting, whenever I saw a map of Morocco, be it on a postcard or the weather report, it included the entire area of Morocco and Western Sahara. It’s a slightly strange concept for me. I guess I had always thought that once a country was recognized it was a country by itself. An interesting tidbit to go with this story, Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as its own country in 1777.

After dinner it was time for bed. We slept on these giant couches that wrapped all the way around the edge of the room. I still had my residual cold from being sick earlier in the week so I didn’t sleep too well. We were up at eight and eating breakfast. I believe it was Ben who said Morocco would turn him into a diabetic. We had Moroccan mint tea, croissant type pastries, and crepes with jam.

After breakfast we left and headed into town. In the University we met a professor named Abdellatif Zaki. He does many studies on Muslim and Moroccan identity. Talking to him was fascinating. He’s completely unabashed and honest. He was very adamant to the fact that any Muslim woman who was wearing a veil was oppressed, despite what Fatima had told us about her choice to wear one the day before. He made it very clear that women’s rights are decided more by the politics of the country rather than the religion, even if religion and state are not separate. His example for this fact was that, as non-Muslims, we would never be aloud to enter a mosque in Morocco. That was not decided for religious reasons. The French made that law nearly a century ago out of fear when a French officer was killed near or in a mosque.

He also talked about how dangerous it is to have such a high illiteracy rate. He talked about how that is the base for fundamentalist Islam: when people cannot read the Koran for themselves but instead are told specific passages out of context. He kept going to the example of Saudi Arabia. Moroccans talk a lot about Saudi Arabia in order to show that they are very different. One of Zaki’s main points was to show how nearly impossible it is to receive direct information. Even if you can read, the news you watch and the textbooks you learn from are through someone else’s filter. I think an incredibly interesting class would be a world history class taught entirely from textbooks not published in the US or Britain.

Zaki said that with the new education reforms children at a very young age are being taught to read the Koran instead of recite it. Morocco is trying to protect its population. The professor said that many suicide bombers are recruited at a young age to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, trained and then sent back. He asked how many of us had been warned by either our American families or Spanish host families not to go to Morocco because it was dangerous. There wasn’t a single one of us who hadn’t received at least one warning. He said, yes forty-two people died in the bombings in Casablanca last spring. But many more died in the bombings in Madrid and London and the attacks in New York. According to the numbers, Morocco would be the safest. He said that people allow their stereotypes to influence their idea of safety.

His definition of education is challenging the warnings that say, “don’t go there.”

Next he asked us what dictionary or thesaurus we would recommend to a friend. Although a bit confused, we all more or less responded that we’d use Webster’s. With this he smiled and leaned back in his chair. He then asked us to define the word, ‘Arab.’ We said it was someone who was from Northern Africa or the Middle East and spoke Arabic. He then read us the synonyms Webster’s lists for Arab: vagabond, tramp, monger, vendor, and peddler. A few years back he called Webster’s to request a change. The answer he got was that they don’t decide the definitions; they only record what English speakers know as the definition. He had a similar story about Oxford-English dictionary. He said a little while back Oxford had a new English dictionary that they wanted to sell and promote in Morocco. Oxford held a sort of meeting with various Moroccan scholars and authors in order to try and promote it. During the meeting one professor raised his hand and said, “there is a country that I am very fond of that is not listed in your dictionary.” When the Oxford representative asked what it was the professor responded, “Morocco.” The professor went on to point out that the dictionary did in fact list Western Sahara.

When we asked Professor Zaki the general opinion of westerners and Americans in his country he referenced David Stanrad.

“As to Andrew Jackson, whose picture is on the 20 dollar bill, he is often presented as a maniac who was fond of cutting Indians into pieces and maiming their remains. His order that the number of Indian victims be established by counting their noses and their ears is quoted as often as William Harrison’s behavior. The ceremony of skinning and cutting 800 Indians into pieces on March 27th, 1814 he had presided over is presented as a classical behavior of top US political leadership. The skins were used to make reins for the horses.”

He went on to point out that while Reagan might have been elected by 51% he was actually only elected by 27% of the total eligible population. The 54% that elected George Bush Sr. translated into 27% of the eligible population. He asked us if we really think that’s a democracy.

Using those two examples, he said that much of the world sees Americans as a bunch of lazy people who sit within their borders and let their government do whatever it wants with their tax money.

After our meeting with Professor Zaki we went on a little walking tour of Rabat. The first thing you notice when walking in this country is the sheer number of stray cats. Apparently the prophet Mohammed thought cats were lucky so nowadays people feed and take care of strays.

Our first stop was some Roman ruins. The ruins are of the original Roman city that was situated on the site that is now Rabat. When the Romans left a mosque was built in the small town. The mosque is now destroyed as well with only the minaret and parts of the walls still standing. This was the only mosque in all of Morocco we were aloud to enter. After the mosque we wandered through the gardens eating pomegranates. (Side note: the Spanish word for pomegranate is granada.) At the back of the gardens is an eel pool. No one knows when the eels arrived but legend says that if you throw a hard boiled egg into the water and the eel eats it you will become pregnant. Ben offered to buy an egg for anyone who was brave enough to try. Jessie volunteered. The eel ate the egg. Jessie’s response later that night when someone asked how our day was, “Ben funded the conception of my first child!”

After the ruins we headed for the Mausoleum where the current king’s father, grandfather, and uncle are buried. Just as we were arriving we got to see the changing of the guards at the front gate. It was originally going to be the largest mosque in the world but there was an earthquake during construction and they stopped building. The minaret now stands at 1/3 of the height it was intended to be. We went on Friday, which is the main prayer day in Islam so we had to wait a few minutes to go in while everyone came out of prayer. Even though it’s not a mosque many people go there to pray out of respect for the people buried there.

The Mausoleum offers a good view of the Atlantic coast as well as Rabat’s sister city of Solé. The city of Solé is so close it might as well be part of Rabat. However, it’s much, much poorer. The majority of it is a shantytown. Solé is actually where they filmed Black Hawk Down.

After the tour it was back to the family for lunch. Couscous! On Friday it is traditional to eat couscous. I love this meal, couscous and mint tea. What could be better? After lunch one of the sisters brought us into another room and put us in Moroccan wedding dresses and took photos. We had a little flashback to the sleepover/fantasy scene from The Little Princess.

After a little siesta we were out on the town again. Emily and I headed for the markets (where else?) While we were there we met a local named Issam. We noticed him for his Red Sox hat. Emily goes to school in Rhode Island and lives part time in Norwood. It turns out he is studying English literature in Rabat and his brother lives in Boston. He took us around the markets and even waited while Emily and I stopped to eat all different types of pastries and chocolates. We found this amazing Turkish chocolate cookie that we weren’t able to find for the rest of the trip, despite saving the wrapper and showing it around every place we entered. After the market Issam took us to the Kasbah. It used to be the old jail but now it’s a sort of park right on the coast where the river goes inland. From there we watched the surfers. After the Kasbah we went off in search of mint tea. We stopped at a pharmacy so I could find something to clear my nose so I could sleep at night. I am glad he was with us because Issam explained what I needed in Arabic and miraculously I had a jar of Vick’s. Eventually we found tea. Any excuse to drink that tea and I’m golden. After tea Emily and I said our goodbyes, exchanged facebook information, and headed off to meet Ben and everyone else.

When we found Ben he was talking with a man named Brian, another American, who was in Morocco working for the Peace Corps. Brian had been there since September. He had just finished the first three months out of the twenty-seven. The first three are training months so he had just moved to his permanent site in the High Atlas Mountains. He was in Rabat for the weekend, accompanying another Peace Corps worker to a doctor’s appointment. He’s in the small business development part of the Peace Corps. His project is working with local potters and helping them convert their business from solely locals who need the pots for cooking and cleaning to tourists. He’s helping them create flyers they can given to hotels and hostels as well as helping them create plans for making their pottery more appealing, such as painting it.

Soon it was time to head home for dinner and a few hours of sleep before waking up the next morning. The next morning we were up at seven. We ate our incredibly sugar breakfast again, said our goodbyes and we were on the road again. This time we headed east towards the mountains and the desert. Leaving the city we drove through a lot of farmland. This is where the poverty because obvious. Many people we hauling their harvests on their backs to market. Those fortunate to have carts with working wheels made do with the animals they had. Most only had one animal. For those who had two it was normally a horse hitched up with a donkey.

We stopped for the bathroom at a small roadside town. We used the bathrooms in the local pool hall. Let me just say if you’ve never used a Turkish toilet it’s an experience. It’s incredibly difficult. I don’t have a picture because, I don’t know about you, but I don’t normally bring a camera to the bathroom. Google “Turkish toilet,” to see what I’m talking about.

A group of us was standing outside near the bus while everyone else finished and a man came up to us. He was speaking in Arabic and trying to sell us something. He kept shoving bottles of horrible-smelling liquid in our faces and yelling things. The bus driver finally got him to go away. One of the girls was convinced that she heard him say, “Osama Bin Ladden.” Some of us didn’t think we heard that but others said they did. The more we talked about it the more everyone became convinced that the man was talking about Bin Ladden. I wonder if we actually heard something or if our minds are making it up. After everyone was back we headed out again.

The next stop was the best stop of the entire trip. We rode camels! They’re actually not too hard to ride, as long as you remember to hold on. Apparently I have something for exotic animals. Monkeys last week and camels this week.

For lunch we ate with another local family. This time the family was a rural, farming family. Surprise, surprise, lunch was couscous in two very large communal dishes with not utensils. After a while the girls stopped with the couscous and turned to the homemade bread and homemade olive oil. (December is harvest month for olives and the family makes their own oil.) The grandmother of the family insisted that Ben and Kyle, the only guys, finish the couscous. Ben gave up and poor Kyle was left in the middle of our circle shoveling the couscous into his mouth with his hands.

Up in the mountains it is incredibly quiet. The houses are all separated by farming land. The man who owned the house we ate in was named Mohammed. As we were sitting there a few of us turned, looking for a steady beating noise we could hear. Mohammed pointed towards a hill that was maybe half a kilometer away. When we looked we saw a man turning the soil by hand. Mohammed said he was blind but that he does his entire harvest himself, that he did what he needed to do to survive.

After food, Mohammed took us for a tour of his land. He showed us his olive grinder make the oil. It’s basically a giant stone wheel that is pushed around a stone trough by a mule. He said that this is why his olive oil is so good. The stone grinder cannot crush the pits. If you use a machine the pits get crushed as well and that is where the bitter taste comes from in some oils.

After the tour and saying goodbye and thank you we were off again and heading north towards the Rif Mountains. I might not have liked the bus in Gibraltar bus compared to that one, this bus was a death bus. Apparently in Morocco it’s customary to drive down the centre of the road, in both lanes, until you see a car coming in the opposite direction. Only one problem, we were driving on windy, mountain roads and you can’t always see the other car until you’re ten feet away.

Our final destination for the night was Chefchaouen, a town at the base of the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco. After checking into the hotel we went off to explore the markets before meeting up for dinner. This was the first time we’d had a good amount of time to shop around. Part of shopping in these markets is haggling. My first purpose was to find a sweater of sorts. In my rush to pack I hadn’t really thought that even mountains in Africa are freezing at night. After another fruitless attempt to find our Turkish cookies, Emily and I found a vendor with handmade wool items. He definitely had sweaters. I found one I liked and then began the haggling. He asked for 180 dirham. I was able to get it down to 110 dirham. There are about 11 dirham to a euro and 7.5 dirham to a dollar. The general rule for haggling is that you aren’t being ripped off if you feel comfortable with the price and that the vendor is never going to sell for less than he or she deems right. After the sweater we both bought rings, I got some postcards, did a little Christmas shopping, Emily found some bracelets, and we had more tea. During our rounds through the markets we managed to get lost only three times, receive a combination of five marriage proposals, and meet a group of Spanish hippies who were making leather goods, drinking tea, and listening to Bob Marley sounding Spanish music.

We bought desert roses, these rocks that are formed in the Sahara. The man wrapped them up using paper he had in the shop. When we looked at the paper a little later we both reacted the same. The immediate thought was that the papers were wanted posters. They have what seem to be mug shots of four men and a bunch of Arabic writing. It turns out they were election posters. We had to ask ourselves where our originally reaction came from. Speaking of elections, since most of the country is illiterate they cannot do paper ballots for elections. Instead all over cities and towns there are these numbered boxes spray-painted on walls of buildings. Apparently for elections, each box is a candidate and the people go stand in front of the candidate they want to vote for.

When we were coming out of a spice shop we got trapped against the wall because a wedding procession was going by. It wasn’t the actual wedding, I don’t think, but it seemed more like a bachelor party of some sort. It was all men running in a giant group through all the alleyways, with a single man hoisted on their shoulders all the meanwhile beating drums and singing. Later on Ben asked Emily and I if we had seen him in the wedding. Apparently he had been swept up in the group and just went with it. He said they continued all through the center of the city in the group while singing.

After shopping we all met up for dinner and then went back to the hotel. We all met up on the roof and lit some candles while watching the stars. We talked about everything we had seen and how easy it would be go home and get back to our busy lives and forget it all.

The next morning we were up at six a.m. On our last day we decided to go for a hike up to the top of the city. Some would call it an urban walk but given that this city is build on the slope of a mountain, walking anywhere in the city is hiking. We got to the top just in time to see the sun coming up over the mountains. It was absolutely gorgeous. After the nature moment we got back in a bus and headed north toward the Spanish border. Instead of taking the ferry from Tangier, this time we were going to cross the Spanish border while still in Africa. Spain has two colonies in Moroccan territory, on the northern Mediterranean coast: Ceuta and Melilla. We crossed the border into Ceuta and took the ferry across the Straight of Gibraltar to Algeciras. It took a bit of time to get across the border but we finally all got across. We stopped in the port to have some coffee before heading off.

In Algeciras I walked to the train station, bought a ticket, and five hours later, I was home. I was exhausted but I was home.

That’s my last missive of 2007. I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed writing. Sorry if this one is a little muddled, I had a lot to get down. Hopefully I’ll see most of you while I’m home next week, if not happy holidays and happy New Year. I’ll talk to you next year!

Until next time,

Kate

Ps. The conditions under which this was written were hard. We had two space heaters plugged in and they did something to the electricity. It wasn’t a fuse, so don’t suggest I go check the box, I already did. Now only the outlets in the kitchen work and we have no heat, not even space heaters or a fireplace. Did I mention it was 34º when I walked to class this morning? On the bright side, we got hot water back last night for the first time since before I left for Morocco.

Pps. Short Arabic lesson:

Salam uaalikum (hello)

Waalikum Salam (hello, as a response)

Smiti… (my name is)

Skukuran (thank you)