We left (the 12 Migration students, Said our academic director and Badrdeen our assistant academic director) on Friday afternoon and took a four-hour train to Marakesh. This time we travelled first class, though, and not only had seats, but two entire compartments to ourselves. I, for one, felt almost decadent. As soon as I stepped down from the train I could tell we were not in Rabat. Marakesh is tourist central in Morocco. In fact, it boasts the longest city section in the Rough Guide, far longer than most of the other even non-city sections, such as Moroccan history. Our hotel, Hotel do Focauld, apparently has a long-term relationship with SIT because Said and Badr greeted the staff by name and with giant handshakes and Badr spoke at length and with great compassion about the hotel's generous buffet and flan desert. He did not oversell the place at all, though, and we gorged ourselves on tanjine, fish, pastiche, vegetables and the ever-present bread. I didn't think it was possible for me to eat more bread and simple carbs than I do in the states, but I was very wrong. To clarify, and this is for you Mom, I missed uncooked vegetables so much that that's all I had for dinner that first night in Marakesh. Only raw vegetables - you aren't going to hear that again anytime soon so appreciate it now.
Anyway, after dinner, Said and Badr sent us off to explore the Jama' Al Fna, the major square of the old medina. It's touristy, but fun all the same. Stuffed with people, musicians dot the square, each gathering a band of onlookers that encircle and completely obscure all but the faintest traces of sound. Actually, it looks kind of like those simplified diagrams of atoms in biology texts, with the outer rings of electrons moving sporadically from one nucleus to another because staying too long in one place means you're gonna have to fess up some change. Only the dedicated listeners move into the inner, more stable rings. Between these groups are traditional storytellers, guys with monkeys, guys dressed up in Spanish regalia offering to take a picture with you for just 5 dirhams and some men even dressed as women and belly-dancing atrociously. There are entire rows of fresh orange juice stands, mint tea bars and kebob joints and the owners, if they recognize that you're American (not a difficult thing to do) and can't physically grab you, shout out the name of their preferred presidential candidate to win your allegiance. "Obama! Obama!" shouts the first guy and we pass by smiling. then, from across the aisle-way we hear, "McCain!?" On the outer edges of the square are henna ladies and beggars, sitting among and across from the carpet, leather, shoe, scarf and woodwork shops. there are so many beggars here in Morocco, men and women and women with children. a lot of people pay them, but I think perhaps this may function as more of a Ramadan phenomenon because almsgiving plays such a great role at this time and during orientation Abdelhay, the other academic director, described begging, as if it were the predominant viewpoint, as an addiction.
On Saturday morning we all decided to go visit the Marjorelle Gardens further up in the newer part of town. Half of us walked and half took a petit taxi. (The petit taxis, of which each city has their own color, take up to three people at a time only within town limits. Then there are grand taxis that can hold up to, well, theoretically five people, but I've definitely seen more than that stuffed in before and they'll travel between towns. The grand taxis tend to be old model Mercedes.) In the early twentieth century, the gardens were a Frenchman's private artistic endeavor. They are now open to the public and the only people visiting were foreigners. It's beautiful, though, with bamboo stands and dozens of cactus varieties and a series of fountains and pools with brightly colored trim and flowerpots. I guess the guy was quite the plant collector. (I think I should also probably know him because his name sounded familiar in the way that the names of presidents of other nations whose news I don't read sound familiar.) But, I liked his gardens regardless of my intellectual rudeness.
After lunch several people retired for the early afternoon in order to digest the once again massive meal, cool down from the some three-mile walk around the gardens and back and to deal with a gastrointestinal bug we have now effectively passed on to all but one of our team. Mine was only 24-hours, hmd'allah. The remainder of us went to see Qasr Al Badi, ruins of a once very grand palace if size is any indication. In fact, the ruler Mulay Ismail (remember that really brutal guy I wrote about last time?) spent years sacking and looting the place and there are still remnants of tiles and fancy carvings. And there are nearby Saadian tombs, which were closed when we tried to visit I'm afraid to say, that he was too afraid to touch at all. The only negative of the ruins was an incredibly, far worse than average, "hunter" or hmoq ("crazy person"), who kept following Sarah, touching her shoulders and saying, "I like Jewish. You want to marry me Jewish?" Sarah held her own great, though, and he disappeared after a while.
There's a Dareja word used for a milder form of this kind of street harassment, seed, and it's the same word used for the act of hunting. In fact, the younger populations use it to describe going out at night and checking out the opposite sex. "I'm going out hunting tonight." During orientation, Abdelhay's wife and co-founder of the CCCL, Farah, gave us a fabulous presentation on street harassment. she explained that there were five levels, and only the most serious two correspond to American standards of harassment. By American legal terms, harassment is any unwanted attention. Given the historic limitation of co-ed spaces in Islamic Morocco, though, the street is one of the few recognized options for young men and women to meet. So the attention is not necessarily unwanted. It is, in most cases, how a guy (it's generally a guy to a girl or group of girls) expresses interest and tries to start up conversation. Often we're dealing with things like, "Hey there, Spice Girls!" or "Bella..." or "You have Berber eyes" or, two of my personal favorites, "You are a nice leg" and "White chicken!" (We collectively decided that white chicken must be intended as white chick, though the final jury's still out.) Sometimes a guy will follow you for a few blocks, testing every pick-up line he knows until he hits the right language. It's almost always harmless, if disconcerting. Farah went on to describe the changing social standards for how Moroccan women deal with this (it's not just foreigners, though we're seen as easier targets with less potential baggage), especially as public places become more and more open to them. She also drew in the connection to historic Islamic poetry, chivalrous and with grand expressions of beauty and love. (Actually , her presentation was very interesting, theoretical and practical and personal and all of the girls on the program wanted to be her when they grew up, she was so smart and challenging, collected and funny. and I mean that literally, four people openly said, "I want to be her.")
Back to the travels now: on Saturday night, after walking the souks and partaking of the hotel's third display of generosity, the group wanted to go out and drink. This is not as simple as it may sound. This is a Muslim country and only select places are licensed to sell alcohol, mostly bars attached to tourist hotels. There is no drinking age because no one's supposed to drink, though this is certainly not reality. But more importantly, it's Ramadan and drinking is expressly forbidden. a lot of cafes and restaurants close down for the month because everyone fasts. So, the social conditions surrounding twelve American college students drinking beer and whiskey, most of them female, took some negotiation. I wanted to join the group, but I didn't want to drink, and when I ordered water, the waiter gave me the only smile we received from him that night. He also, as the others soon realized, watered down their whiskey considerably. I could even see the difference in color.
We reunited with our massive tour bus on Sunday morning in order to ride to Essouira, on the Atlantic coast. On the way we stopped at an Argan oil cooperative. the Argan tree, which apparently grows only in Morocco and is now suffering from a long series of draughts, drops hard nuts, which are hand collected, peeled, shelled, roasted, smashed, squeezed (in that order) and combines with various other oils to create eating oil, body lotions, massage oils, soap and face masks. It's rich in all sorts of vitamins and smalls lovely, rich but light. This particular cooperative, too, opened in the 1990's in order to provide employment for single women. They only hire single women, both younger unmarried women and older, widowed or divorced women. Badr told us that there are many organizations like this, designed for women and I think a couple of the girls on the program may return to do their independent study project here.
Essouira is a relatively new port town, built by the Portuguese. It has become quite the resort spot, though not yet, as some would call it, spoilt. It's a small place, with a fantastic little harbor that looks out onto an island wildlife preserve. It's home to several international music festivals, mostly in the summer and, by popular legend, was a favorite haunt of Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens. I was mostly impressed by the municipal color coordination. Everything was trimmed with bright blue, all of the little fishing bots were bright blue, all of the shutters painted bright blue - I'm not sure if it's just tradition or commercial branding or town law, but it's sure fun to look at.
By far and away, though, the best part of the Essouira and the entire trip was our long-awaited and much-hyped soccer game on the beach. Said and Badrdeen face off every semester, dividing the migration program into two at times viciously competitive teams. I haven't had so much fun in years! Years, I'm telling you. I'd forgotten how awesome soccer is. and on the beach, too - can you get better than that? As the tide came in and half of the town turned out to start their own late afternoon matches, our playing field got smaller and smaller and started to overlap on all edges. There were several heated discussions concerning field boundaries and as the most obviously not local and least talented group, we received a fair amount of criticism. But it was great. One kid, Mustafa, hopped in on our game right from the get-go, vastly tipping the scales. We have a couple of good players and both Said and Badr are excellent. Group rumor has it that Said played on a semi-professional team in the past. I'm inclined to believe the rumor as he emerged from his room decked out in cleats, sport shorts, a workout jacket and an instantly competitive attitude. (This is a man who always wears a fully buttoned clean white shirt, carries a leather briefcase, speaks in a whisper and gets all in a panic when we stand closer than four feet to the edge of the train tracks.) Stuck with the least talented players, including me at first, he became very frustrated, debating every goal. Then, Andrew cut his foot and left the game, leaving us virtually maimed, at which point we called for a switch to level the playing field, swapping me for Mustafa. I surprised all by making a few moves in fact useful to my new team and Said marched over to me. "You switch teams and now you are suddenly playing good football!?" He was only vaguely joking.
After de-sanding showers, most of the program piled into the lobby to watch CNN (primarily Olmert and Mbeki's resignations). It was wonderful to watch them, a small but definite slice of young America completely glued to international news, mostly pre-informed about the main events and capable of critiquing the news agency during its own advertising interruptions. These kids are all well-educated, financially able to spend a semester or year abroad and passionate about pursuing international careers. Dorky though it will sound, they will be my state senators and news interpreters. They will found the next human rights and international public health NGOs and they will teach my children, if I ever have any. I was glad to watch them watch CNN in a hotel lobby in Morocco.
Essouira did not end on such a high note, though. At dinner that night, we learned that C.B.'s (a girl on the other SIT program) younger brother died in a boating accident and she was returning home immediately. Several students on the trip are close to her and even for those who aren't, it was a shocking reminder of our distance from home. A third of our group left dinner upset or in tears while the rest of us tried to decide who to leave alone and who to check up on. It was Claire's birthday on Monday, though, so we eventually decided to prop up the night by celebrating early. Caitryn and I went out and found a cake, decorated it with M&Ms and borrowed a candle from the hotel waitstaff while Tom and Angelica ushered everyone up onto the terrace. We sang happy birthday in English (the best rendition), Arabic and French (both very shaky). We went to bed happy and sad, not sure if we should be grateful for our good fortune to be here or wary of it.
The trip back was a seven hour bus ride through dusty hills held together by the occasional olive tree stand, a trip that before was miles of mud punctuated by some very sad looking goats. I can't say that I find the landscape any more beautiful than before, but it's certainly striking. Apparently a fairly new governmental initiative has brought electricity to 80 percent of the rural population, as evidenced by telephone poles and cables where I haven't seen a home in half an hour. However, I guess that running water is posing more of a challenge and wells are drying up at a terrifying rate.
One last interesting tidbit, and I'm sorry this post is so long, just to give you a sense of some of our classroom material. Moroccans use the Dareja word harag, to burn, to refer to illegal migration, mostly to Spain. It has two etymologies. Firstly, it refers to the clandestine practice of burning all of your identification papers upon arrival in Europe, so that if you're discovered the host government will have a harder time sending you back home. Secondly, according to one very popular history, a Berber (Amizigh is more P.C.) king named Tarik Ibn Zayad sailed over the Mediterranean in 711 b.c. with his army to conquer southern Spain. When they landed, he set the boats alight, telling his soldiers, "The enemy is in front of you, the sea is behind you, where is there to run?" Also, because of the stereotypical practice of marrying a western woman in order to immigrate north, the term for papers is used to refer to a foreign spouse. Both "burner" and "papers" form the basis of a collection of popular jokes on the street. Such as: A man and his European wife were visiting home in the summer and decided to take a walk on the beach. The man walked ahead to look at the waves and the woman fell down while bending over to pick up a seashell. A young boy came running over to the man and told him, "Your papers dropped, sir."
1 comment:
Hey pussy cat.. This is your old, gray and fat uncle Michael.. I am here with Nato Nedly and the harvard intellectuals..I think that includes nato nedly. Anyway, this blog was way, way, way too long so I asked Nato Nedly to interpret it for me and in short, he told me that your have become a morrocan.. Wowzers.. Well, from a famous greek cowboy proverbial wizard, let thes ewords quide you through your days, eves and Morocann toga parties.., " if morocco was meant to be so cool and exciting then why stay a sckenectian, for there is never a sound that could be heard that your dear old uncle would ever belive would be anything but your success as a gloabl gloabl traveling warrior", in short.. do it! dam proud of ya my baby cakers.. xoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo Unc's, the profit..
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