A few observations about Morocco

Fighting

There's a lot of arguing going on on the streets here. I can't even keep track of how many would-be-fights I've seen. There's never any actual physical violence beyong wild gesituclations, loud shouting and the odd shirt grabbing. After the initial outbreak one of the two people involved will turn and pretend to walk away only to turn around after a few steps to come back with more flailing arm gestures and shouting. Sometimes there's the odd long kick that looks as though the person who is extending his foot didn't calculate the distance very well and therefore has to extend his entire leg rather than deliver a short, hard hit from the knee. More than kicking though head budding seems to be a favorite mode of attack. It looks totally ineffective and painful. The bud can't be too aggresive since injuring yourself would sort of defeat the purpose but then again, maybe there's so much anger welling up in your veins that it won't matter at all. The head bud is accompanied almost always by the shirt grabbing which makes sense since that is what gives the attacker some control over the force and direction of the bud and the victim a lack of choice in movement.

At times a third party, the peacekeeper, will get involved. He will seemingly risk his own neck by positioning himself right in the middle of the two (often mustached) fighters and extend his arms while speaking calmly. I imagine this person to be saying things like "Easy. Let's all calm down and talk the matter over" or "What are all these shenanigans about? You're grown men. Control yourselves." One of two things happen at this juncture: the fight ends with some indignant looks and with one party really walking away (and not just pretending to) or the peacekeeper is ensnared in the brawl with insults (I think) for sometimes even the PK seems to pick a side and get all indignant at one of the fighters. Sometimes the peacekeeper is a woman, usually a relative of one person involved and she usually tries to pull him away while yelling insults over her shoulder at the other person or else she just joins in and gesticulates. It should be noted that she is never grabbed or head budded. If that were to happen the entire street would end up in one massive fistfight with Mr Shirt-grabber or Head-budder.


What actually incites people to such fury is sometimes a complete mystery and other times I've seen these quarrels break out over parking tickets, with taxi drivers, after a small car accident that didn't hurt or damage anything, over bread among street kids and other times it looks like a serious fight but then one person will walk away with a huge smile turning to wave goodbye at his friend whom he just pretended to kick and yell at.

Haggling

Haggling is an art. I believe that. There are places in the world where one can haggle with a smile and then there are the experiences that make you never want to buy another shisha again. In Southeast Asia people would sometimes get offended when they quoted you a ridiculously high price for their product and you quoted a ridiculously low price back. Most times you had to leave their stall or shop.


In Morocco there's the invite to tea and a short little chat about the weather and the American presidential race and then the discussion about how the kilims and carpets are knotted in the High Atlas versus the Middle Atlas. Those sessions are easy enough to leave. Sometimes though you get the full on infuriated face gestures and pressuring. This has happened when trying to negotiate a price for a bus ride. For some reason one of the touts at the taxi/bus station got involved by quoting a price for a taxi and a price for the bus and then being impatient for us to make a decision. He pressured, he asked repeatedly for us to make a decision as though all the buses and taxis were going to dissapear all at once. A few minutes later when the price came down to a respectable number we paid. He turned and said in French with a smile "You're a nice lady". Then a public bus turned into the station and the price for a seat on that bus with the same destination was lower. I think I learned something from this experience.


The best is when a taxi driver pulls out a little piece of paper that was laminated (badly) and now serves as the official pricelist. It's official because it was printed and laminated. Negotiations center around the official lamination and prices don't drop that far thanks to the invention of the inkjet printer.

Rabat

Rabat is the capital not only of this country but also of protesters. This is my second time through and again there was protesting across the street from the hotel and in the streets. I saw some chasing going on through the trees below the internet cafe. Police in green overalls armed with black battons and headscarved women and men with signs running zigzag around the cafes and the park to avoid being caught. The police don't seem to overzealous despite the battons and the chasing. Either they are just scaring the crowd into scattering or they are incompetent and out of shape despite their youth. I'll never figure that one out.

Visa

We have a visa to Mauritania. Two months before it expires. Just 500 km of hot, hot sand between Dakhla and Nouakchot... I hope their national dishes do not consist of tajines and couscous.

Imlil: The High Atlas & the Sand Dunes near M'hamid

After some searching for a departure point that wasn't going to completely rip us off we found a little bus station near the medina where we haggled for a fair price 50km away. An hour later we were in Imlil and checked into the Hotel Aksoual across the street from the French Alpine refuge. This move alone turned out to be a very good one because it turns out that the French woman running that hostel is actually crazy. She yells at her guests when they stay out beyond ten o'clock because she can't lock the door and go to bed and she charged me for wood. That's right. Wood. It was already burning and drying the clothes of her guests by the time I arrived and had a tea near the fire place. My French isn't good enough to argue so I just paid the extra dollar and left. Again, it should be pointed out, that it's not the amount of money that infuriates me but the sheer nerve that this twat had.

We met a group of three travelers and a contingent of the English army that was on a training trip up here. We played cards and learned about army drinking games, most of which are completely gross. The one I remember is called Freckles and involves someone taking a turd on the middle of a table and all the guys putting their chin on the edge of the table. Down comes a shoe and then...freckles. The crazy lady went on a special shopping trip for the Englishmen and brought back some real beer. The twinkle in their eyes and the mood around the hostel made you think it was Christmas Eve.

On that first day in town I saw a rather strange sight: a guy in a djelaba on a mule. He had a row of really beautiful white teeth and dreadlocks. The following day we walked and encountered him and his friend, Manuelle. They had bought the mule, Jebal Yusuf, two months ago and were traveling on foot through Morocco with him for the summer. We walked together for most of the way to the next village of Tachdirt.

Then it was our turn to try and climb the highest peak in North Africa, Toubkal. Despite the hiking shoes we didn't make it beyond the refuge at 3200 metres. That's about as high as I thought I'd get but Chris was really dissapointed. We had a communal dinner and slept the one night up in the refuge in a room with many old men. It's cold up at that height and one night at the symphony of farts and snors was enough for me.

The grey turned into rain on the way back down. Being drenched without central heating left no choice but to go to the local hammam where I encountered a naked crew of young ladies on an organized tour. We were all lathered and shampooed by a rather gentle Moroccan lady. This was nothing like I had heard it would be. I was sort of dissapointed to not have a matronly, big bossomed lady try to scrub with all her might the very skin off my body in the foggy heat on the concrete floor of the bath house.

After the cool mountain air it was back to Marrakech for a night before heading to the south and one of my favorite places in Morocco, Ouarzarzate. The town comes to life in the evenings when the square fills up with tag playing children, prancing teenagers, men, women, and vendors. We made it to the Atlas Film Studios with it's Tibetan monastery (a set for the film Kundun), Egyptian temples, slave market (for Gladiator) and the walls of Jerusalem. Ait Benhadou which is 25km away was largely rebuild by Scorsese and is now a UNESCO site. The pictures can be found here.

Further south in Mahamid we found ourselves on the Chicaga dunes. The town itself is very conservative and neither men nor women are aloud to show any part of their legs (I learned this a little late). The people running the Hotel Sahara were somewhat fishy. There were a few dirt bikers from Spain in the lobby and a strange English couple. He spoke Arabic and was doing translation work. She was really old and when she whispered sounded like a man. They sat in the lobby during the hottest parts of the day and incessantly photographed the front door for some reason.

I was told by some local right on the hotel steps that I was inappropriately dressed in my t-shirt and long skirt. The hotel owner, Habib, told me he was crazy. The crazy man was there again later when we left for the Sahara trek and this time told me not to let the guys touch me. Habib put a hand on my back and then our driver put his hand on my back to stir me into the back of the truck. Each time he had a chance the driver put his hand on my back or wanted to pose for a picture with his hand around my waist. It got a bit annoying and creepy but none of it was threatening.

Pushing the truck out of the sand banks and back on it's track gave me a break from being thrown around the backseat for a while. It took an hour to arrive at the base of the large golden sand mountains. Algeria is just across the sand.

The dunes were beautiful and I don't think I've ever been anywhere so quiet. It was so still I could hear the steady buzz of the blood rushing through my body in my ears. The night was filled with a million stars which dissapeared one by one when the moon rose. The heat in the huts was unbearable that night and I still wonder why they don't build windows in them to allow for a breeze in the night.

The next day back at the Hotel Sahara it was time for a shower and then, a change of scenery. We left despite the warnings of the tout that there would be no buses and that there were too many tourists in Zagora. We had dinner that night in Ouarzarzate near the square.

Helpless like a rich man's son

Marrakech is huge. The nouvelle ville goes on forever and, unlike in Fez, the taxi drivers are crooks here... 95 percent of them anyway. Marrakech is the tourist centre. Cheap flights from all over Europe land here and most people don't go but within 2 hours of the city after getting to this country. Hence, getting to the closest sights to the city is a battle if you want to pay a fair price. The price to get to Imlil, in the high Atlas mountains, went from 600 dirhams for the two of us to 35 each. Imlil is 70 km away. Getting that price took a whole day and a visit to the Majorelle Gardens (to split up the haggling).

The Majorelle Gardens are kept by Yves Saint Laurent. Aside from the Djemma l-fna the garden is the other tourist hub of the city. 30 dirhams gives you access to viewing a lot of inappropriately dressed tourists, some beautiful cacti patches, a couple of ponds, a bamboo forest and an overpriced yet understocked gift shop.

Marrakech's medina is beautiful and seems straight out of 1001 Nights with its covered markets of carpets and lanters and magical shafts of light. Djemma l-fna is a huge square in the medina that was once the site for public executions but has since become the focal point for Morocco's tourism industry. In the evenings food stalls are set up in the centre of the square tempting passersby with the sight and smell of barbecued meats and vegetables.

The smoke wafts across the entire square giving the snake charmers, henna ladies, musicians and acrobats a mysterious hue. Standing too close or too long around any entertainment leads to being asked for money. Constantly. Most of the musicians don't play much but spend most of their time collecting donations. Our favourite musician carries an oude, picks two out of tune chords and then you pay him to stop playing, not to keep going. The instrument looks really new and completely unused. We didn't really know that he couldn't play until we passed a stall in the labyrinthian medina and spent some time sitting with the owner who should have probably been a musician rather than a shopkeeper. He took us on a little trip across North Africa with his oude and explaining and playing various songs from pop to classical.

Sitting at one of the stalls has been a great way of meeting some of the other travellers. The first night we met a couple that after being in the country for three days and without asking us anything proceeded to tell us all they knew about how to travel the right way in Morocco. They covered haggling, the prices of carpets, the pay phones, as well as the beggars and their outlook on life.

The second night we met a hiphop hipster from Chicago who had been living in Paris for the last year but still needed help odering his coke in French. He seemed out of his environment but turned out to be on a very interesting trip. His father had booked all his travels in Africa in advance and made up his itinerary. Hassani was completely shocked that the hotel didn't have internet in his room. Instead he had to trek all the way up to the roof terrace to get wifi reception. He was also generally frightened of Morocco and its people. All the day trips were organized through his hotel and he "ain't taking no trains" anywhere. All travel was either private car or by plane. We were completely surprised to hear his itinerary. Within the week he was going to be touching down in Chad. I asked him what he was going to do and why he was going. He simply replied that he had no idea and that "Chad is at war". Apparently his dad is going to explain the significance of his entire itinerary to him when they meet in Tanzania in a month, by which time he will have been in Morocco, Chad, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Namibia and Ethiopia. I would pay good money to be a fly on the wall when that conversation takes place.

The third night we met a man we first saw in Chefchaouen but back then he was a shopkeeper. By now he had closed up shop and was on a last holiday in Marrakech with a friend from France before moving to Mexico for the next three years. His wife, an American diplomat, and he had already spent two years in Turkmenistan. Somehow the prospect of living in a Mexican border town and meeting his in-laws for the first time ever in Ohio didn't appeal to him.

By day number four Chris was tired of people trying to sell him hash every five minutes. The proposals sounded almost erotic with the dealer breathing it in his ear when he passed. A day of haggling and then finally finding the proper bus station at Bab er Rabb got us on a bus to Imlil in the high Atlas mountains for some fresh air.

Teenage Weddings in Fez

Fez is one of four imperial cities in Morocco. Marrakech, Meknes and Rabbat being the other three. It is a city of parts: the mellah, the medina and the nouvelle ville.

The medina is where you'll find the world's oldest intact medieval city and the world's largest car free urban centre.

The word ghetto accurately describes the mellah, formerly the Jewish quarter of the city. Most of the Jews have left this area with its cemetery of 25,000. Mellah translates into salt as Jews were often employed to salt the heads of those condemned to be executed. Here a faux guide attached himself to us and tried to show us around which led to some rather unpleasant haggling thirty minutes later.

All that aside it smells in the medina of all sorts of things, most of them unpleasant like mule poo and I guess it doesn't help that the tanneries use pigeon shit to soften the leather when they dye it. There are bees all over the sweet stalls and cats all over the streets.
We were kicked out of the hostel after our first night there because a group of 43 Dutch people had prebooked it for the next week or so. A little searching around found us on the couch at Erin, Cameron and Fraser's house. These three were students of Arabic from the States and the UK. The wall in their living room kept track of the number of deaths and fights they had witnessed in the last five months in Morocco. Erin was an awesome host. Fraser was the youngest of the three and also by far the most amusing. 18 years old and five months in an Arabic country without a word beyond asalamaleikum. His plans are to get to Damascus and really learn proper Arabic. Fraser also was totally surprised that by signing up to live in this country he had signed up to celebacy and an alcohol free existance. It seems that finding a place to buy booze is easier than finding a teenage girl in this part of the world. Half a vodka bottle, a bottle of wine and a pint of beer in he exclaimed that he would be so so attentive if he had a girlfriend in Fez. Then Fraser proclaimed that he loved tennage weddings. He was really looking forward to being the best man at his friend's wedding in June. The affaire wasn't going to be the same at all as the quails eggs and champagne wedding at Versaille he attended. This was going to be much better with the groomsmen throwing up in the background while the grandmother sniffled how beautiful the event was.

The next day we left our 15 dirham chicken and rice dinners behind. It was off to Rabat, Morocco's capital city, where that same day we encountered something that made Chris' tummy expel all its contents along with one of the quietest protests of police brutality I've ever witnessed.
I picked up an "underground" novel, The Lemon, by Mohammed Mbrat. I suppose the thing that made it "underground literature" was the sodomy/pedophilia storyline. Nothing much happened in the 130 pages other than the continuous insinuation that something terrible would happen to the runaway kid that shacked up with a man who liked to booze with questionable lady friends. All these lady friends talked about something terrible he had tried to do to them.

Alhambra

There's not much you can say about the Alhambra that hasn't been said or written before. The name derives from the Arabic for red and translates into the red one. It sits high atop overlooking the windy streets of Granada.

Tickets are sold online and have been booked up until May 10. The only other choice we had was to get up at 6am and walk up the hill to stand in line for the 600 tickets sold at the box office daily. A total of 7000 tickets per day are sold. We stood in line for a chilly 1.5 hours and by 9am walked into the fort. The woman in front of us had a motormouth and couldn't stop talking about all the great places she'd been and the toilet at her hotel. Apparently it's like a car wash, you don't have to do anything. It wipes and blows air and licks you clean. Chris decided to ignore her completely. According to him she was definitely addicted to perscription painkillers.

he view from the top is dazzling as all views from this angle seem to be. The Nazrin Palace was the residence of the sultans and is the best preserved site on the grounds with is multitude of engraved arches, fountains, flowers and watery reflections. It is in this palace that King Leopold gave Columbus the means to travel to 'discover' the New World.

The following day we climbed into the Sacromonte hills where we encountered the dwellings of the gypsies. The modern day 'gypsies' are the equivalent of the hobos back home. Dreadlocked, tanned and pierced they carved their homes out of the soft hills with fences build of wine bottles.

Granada has an interesting hilly arabic neighbourhood filled with graffiti and stores stocked with shishas. The dive bar of our dreams was two doors from our hotel at the base of the winding streets leading to the ever popular St Nicolas square where we ate our picnic dinners while the Alhambra stood lit up on the hill of trees across the rooftops. More pictures here.

The Blue Chaouen

It's nice to be in a place where the rooms cost 10 bucks and lunch and dinner costs half that. It won't be like this for long though. Chefchaouen, a town that until 1920 was closed off to outsiders, is in the north of Morocco. Of the three westeners that were able to enter the town, one was disguised as a rabbi and another was poisoned by the townspeople three days into his visit. Christians were not welcome here. The people have mellowed out considerably since then. These days Chaouen's blue streets are overrun by Spanish tourists haggling over kilims and alladin style lamps.

For some reason the hotels here are hangouts for the local guys. Checking into our hotel the first night everything seemed to run smoothly until the clerk noticed the name on my passport and where I was born. He smiled widely. I was immediately overcome by guilt... or rather shame. Strange how these feelings are encoded in you and surface given the right situation. We went upstairs and as we came down again the entire group of dudes stopped their boisterous game and fell completely silent. So, we checked out the next day and found more comfortabe surroundings around the corner. Everything in Chaouen is around the corner by the way since there are no straight streets.
Time is kept by the call to prayer which comes five times a day. Men start streaming toward the mosques in the various neighbourhoods within minutes of the asan. There isn't much to do other than watch people go about their daily business in their long robes, explore the souks and the hills around town and decide on your next meal. The food is standard local fare but the local goat cheese is a notch above the couscous.

The two horn like hills behind the city give Chefchaouen it's name: the horns. People are extremely friendly here and other than being asked to buy carpets or kif (weed) there isn't much hassle. The Rif mountains in this region are home to Morocco's marijuana plantations. The word reefer probably comes from the word Rif.... Buying though is not a good idea since most of the dealers double as police informants.

Tomorrow it's off to Fez, the world's oldest intact Islamic medieval city.