8 day excursion: Morocco

The night of our arrival: 5 March

I ate traditional Tagine and slept in a 4 person suite, beds dawned in furry zebra print sheets (one bed stealing the spotlight of the room, sitting on a raised floor and big enough to comfortably fit all 4 of us grown women (no spooning necessary). I’m not a big fan of zebra print, but we were all laughing over the big bed’s blatant baby-making vibe.

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Morning of the next day: March 6, 2017

Tried at least 6 different cookies and cakes, all of which tasted of relatively the same coconut flake tinged batter, and were all relatively delicious! Visited the largest Mosque in Africa, located in Casablanca, Morocco. This beautiful building is called the Hassan II Mosque.

Had lunch and lectures in Rabat, then off for an evening of some awkward silences and good intentions with my new Moroccan host family.

2 full days into Morocco: March 7th, 2017

Current status: Hair is still wet, 6 hours post-hammam. I bathed in a traditional bath house (like a Turkish bath), scrubbing away rolls of dead skin and washing myself with mud and henna paste in a 3 chamber steam room. We spent an hour there, cleaning ourselves with buckets of water (no pictures of this one, ha!). It was an enriching cultural experience as my friends’ host sister took us and showed us how to do it all. Women were gathered here, some singing, some beating their plastic buckets like drums, some greeting and chatting and other silently washing away. We spent the entirety of our bath in the 3rd room. The farthest room away from the entrance, and therefore, the hottest. I was doing well, having previously drank a liter and a half of water, but right at the end the heat became too much and my head started to spin. I started to recognize the signs and made moves toward the exit. Rapidly the spinning accelerated so I stabilized myself with the wall to get out as fast as I could, very wary of the onlooking washers as I passed by. My friends’ homestay sister was so kind as to follow and help me as I nearly collapsed at the door, guiding me to a bench out in the colder changing room air. She rushed and brought me a towel and a cup of cold water. It took everything in me to resist that water, just conscious enough to know that that tempting liquid, although pure in appearance, has the potential to give me a week of miserable stomach sickness. I opted to suck the cold air deep into my lungs and revive myself with nothing more than a little time and oxygen. Just 3 minutes more I was fine, fully conscious and a teensy bit shaken, but doing alright. I made it through pretty much all essential shower rituals and I didn’t pass out, so I survived all right (and left with completely new skin!).

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This next paragraph is a bit of a rant:

Now, at about 11:30 pm: I just finished dinner, accompanied by host-mom’s unsolicited “convert to Islam speech” conducted entirely in french. I understood about half of it, missing intermittent words and interpreting direct questions as statement phrases (which made for some realllly awkward pauses in conversation); it took half the dialogue for me to finally comprehend the tension and pointedness behind the words, and the change in her tone when she realized neither my roommate and I were religious (spirituality ain’t enough these days). As uncomfortable as it was I recognize that the conversation, or what began as a conversation then later morphed into a speech, sprouted out of curiosity and an innocent discussion of religion. I deem myself an open, exploratory individual, and I welcome these types of exchanges. I appreciate the attempt at real conversation initiated by my Moroccan host-mom, but I do believe she could’ve been softer and more tactful in presenting her opinion as to not be offensive to my and my roommate’s milder beliefs. Asking me, the student that is dependent on her shelter for the next few days, if I know how I can inhale and exhale, claiming we are empty without religion, reducing other religions for the infrequency of their prayer, and linking it all back to a single creator, lends itself to a lack of responsiveness. All in all, my homestay roommate and I have a little extra to digest along with our spinach soup and fruit salad tonight!

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One of my more adventurous moments in Morocco: March 7, 2017

Writing from the morning after: Last night I got my hair cut. Waking through the Rabat medina, I swerved into this booth of a shop, only notable as a hair salon due to the hair dye boxes in the tiny window. I peaked my head into the half-sized door and asked “combien coûte pour une petite coupe des cheveux?” (How much for a little hair cut?)  40 dirham ($4 USD) was the price (initially I thought she’d said 4 dirham, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be 40 cents). I sat down and she threw a little towel over my shoulders. Hair still dry and tangled, after a brief communication over how much to snip, she half-hacked at the knots with her little comb and then her scissors went flying through not-so-carefully sectioned handfuls of hair. She finished it off by pinning my hair in ringlets so I’d get a little curl (this really only hid how my hair was cut so I had no idea what’d been done as I walked out her salon door).  It was exactly the quality you’d expect from a $4 trim. I lost a little more hair than I’d intended; but I saved my wallet, got some layers (that really aren’t half bad!), and the dead ends are gone gone gone so I am happy happy happy!

Writing on the actual day: March 8, 2017 (cont.)

Left Rabat at 7:30 this morning to visit a rural maternity house and were met by the most extravagant fanfare I think any study abroad program may have ever experienced. Security guards, photographers, and a crowd of smiling Moroccan female staff awaited our arrival. Potty breaks were taken then trays and trays of cookies and tea and coffee were served. We listened to a casual and brief presentation about the maternity house and asked our questions, navigating the language barrier by switching between simplified English, French, and Arabic. And then lunch arrived. In a decorative room with a burgundy color scheme, we shared a massive platter of regional specialty: pumpkin couscous. It was served at each of our tables in a large tagine (a whole chicken baked in the middle of each ceramic dish). We lounged and chatted and after a 3 hour visit made our way to leave. Pulling away in our huge white bus we could hear the laughter of our Moroccan program organizer. Looking ahead through the front windshield we could see a police officer on a motorbike leading our way through the city, waving all the other cars to the side of the road. We were all cracking up at the ridiculousness as cars, trucks, and donkey-pulled carts stopped in their tracks. Our bus zipped through town with our personal police escort until we were out into the green fields of the countryside. Turns out the governor who was informed of our arrival really wanted to make sure we were shown a good time. We were; today we were the real VIPs.

Pulling up our sleeves, so excited to dive in!

The afternoon/evening was spent at Oulidia, a beach town.Pictures tell the tale:

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The next day, (March 9, 2017) Before we left for Marrakech the next afternoon we stopped by the beach house of a famous Moroccan singer, Karima Skalli, who sang for us! A little further on the way we stopped in Youssoufia to help an organization conduct eye tests on school children. Along with the tests we helped paint the school, give the kids henna, and sang with them. I spent the time painting.

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March 10th we toured Marrakech and visited a RAMED (insurance for the poorest in Morocco) resting center for cancer patients called the Home of Life. The place was amazing. Truly a beautiful, clean, well-equipped facility. And for those that are lucky enough to qualify (or unlucky enough, depending on how you look at it) it costs something like 12 dirham ($1.20 USD) a day to sleep there, a fee that only exists so the patrons don’t feel they are given too much without an exchange.

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About my free day in Marrakech: Saturday March 11th, 2017

Woke up this morning at 6am and couldn’t fall back asleep so I decided to start my day. Threw on my shorts and shoes and took off on the hotel stationary bike for a quick 15 minute spin. Poolside and in the comfortable shade of the fitness-gazebo, I jump-started the day at 7 in the morning with Kanye in my ears while sweating away the previous nights desserts. The next hour and a half was spent on my morning routine, including sewing up 3 holes in the pants I needed for the day. In that time I decided I wanted to meet some camels this morning, so I scheduled a camel ride with a group of friends who were headed to do so at 9:15am. Riding a camel was very comparable to riding a horse, but the act left me extremely unsettled. Sitting up on my girl Sophia’s back and questioning the day to day treatment that these creatures receive, I have no idea of the ethics behind this business. My moral compass was spinning from pole to pole with the lack of confidence I had in the care the captive camels are provided, and how this morning my touristic desires fed into the perpetuation of the potential cruelty. With all those thoughts bouncing around, it was still very cool to ride a camels and give them some love up close. The camel following mine kept nibbling on my calf (I was a little nervous she was going to bite!), maybe partially due to me petting her head and making eye contact.

Phase 2 for the day, we went straight to the medina. Ill-prepared, I fashioned my longsleeve sun-shirt into a shoulder sac to hold/hide my wallet and phone and was off for an afternoon of bartering and wandering the souk maze.

Phase 3: I met up with a friend of a friend who had been living in Marrakech and spent my afternoon/evening with him and several of his Moroccan buddies. They took me to where they hang out in the back office of the tourist excursion company they work for and we cooked tagine and drank tea and chatted for hours. We returned to the medina and drank the most amazing fluffy smoothie drinks my lips have ever touched (served in glass cups out of a street corner shop). Next stop was to wander until I found the perfect pair of leather sandals, which my new friends helped me barter down to an affordable price. At this point night had fallen so the boys walked me all the way back to my hotel, ensuring my safe return. Such kind souls and diverse conversation.  We conversation was in-stop, covering topics like human connection, social order, psychology, goals, approaches to life and so much more that these general words can’t enrapture. Ultimately, I left the day with shakey legs, a heart full of positivity, and the designated Moroccan name Shorouk (meaning sunrise). Happy dappy sappy ✨

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All in all, I learned 2 words in Moroccan Arabic that really stuck, salam alekum (hello) and shukran (thank you), but I could never retain the words for goodbye…I supposed that means I’ll be seeing you again in my future, Morocco.