Morocco ramblings

It snowed my first day in Ifrane and again my last week here.  Worse than that, Kasey wasn't feeling well, so she stayed home with Ruby and I ventured out to do laundry and go grocery shopping.  I like the babysitting part better.  Petit taxis are the main means of local transportation, as opposed to grande taxis which run intercity routes.  To go grocery shopping, I walked ten minutes to the gate of the university to get a petit taxi to the marche (market).  After shopping at the various stalls, I took a petit taxi back and hiked back up the hill to our apartment building.  I realize that this is not a big deal for people on the East Coast, but I have not been in snow in twenty years.

Returning from the Marche

Walking to the laundry on campus

On Thursday I left Ifrane for Fez where I had my second annual dinner with the Ullmans' in a random part of the world (last year was Thailand).  This is a selfie Michael took in front of the Blue Gate to the Fez medina, and one of me shopping for rugs.  I bought a rug but did not want to carry it, so I paid for shipping.  All cash.  Receipt?  We don't need no stinkin' receipt.  I don't even know the carpet seller's name.  Maybe it will show up sometime next month.





John sent me some pictures he took in Chefchaouen, so blue town redux.  I don't have a picture of all of us together, but I do have all of us.









This morning I took the train from Fez to Tangier for a quick overnight before flying to London tomorrow.  Tangier is underwhelming after Fez and Marrakech.  On the plus side, the second language here is Spanish, not French, so I can communicate again.  I understood French better than I thought I would, but could barely speak.

Morocco is like many of the countries I have visited:  poor, lacking in infrastructure, and corrupt.  But I did not find it as charming as other countries and have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why.  Is it a subtle prejudice because it is an Arab/Moslem country?  Kasey has another theory that a tourist would not see.  She is clearly affected by the frustration of living in a very inefficient, autocratic country.

Actually, Morocco is all Moslem but only forty percent Arab.  The Berber natives are still the majority.  There never was a Berberia, however; Berber is a corruption of "barbarian" which is what the Romans called the natives.  Although almost all women and a lot of girls wear head coverings, many do not, and few wear face coverings.  Moroccans are quite tolerant of the practice of Islam by others.

Unlike many African countries, Morocco is extremely fertile.  I believe it may be self-sufficient in agriculture and it exports quite a lot to Europe.  The Sahara is in the south, but as I rode by the northern half of the country, I saw endless orchards and green fields.  But ... I almost never saw anyone working in the fields.  Also, the "farmhouses" were shanties, like the housing in much of the country.  I was told that most of the farms are small and family owned, but I also read that large agribusiness has made farming uneconomical for small farmers sending young people to the cities.  I never could figure out how the fields were so green with no one working.

Similarly, I saw signs of construction everywhere - houses, whole developments, roads, and bridges - but almost no one working.  Kasey said they would run out of money and stop working.  So lots of partially constructed houses just sitting.  They have been "working" on widening the road from Fez to Ifrane for the entire time that Kasey and John have been here, but the construction has barely progressed.  During my hour long ride to Fez today, I saw three individual construction vehicles with crews of two or three men for a construction project of about 50 kilometers.

One other thing I saw along the roads all the time:  flocks of sheep grazing on the narrow strip between the fields and the road.  Most of the flocks were fewer than twenty sheep with a single shepherd.  Larger flocks had two shepherds.  Occasionally a cowherd tended one to three cows.  I have decided that the most boring job in the world is to be a shepherd in Morocco.  You stand there all day long making sure the sheep do not go onto the road.  I did see one smart shepherd with earbuds in.

When I was in Antigua, Guatemala a few years ago, I was impressed by the colonial architecture:  very narrow, uneven sidewalks with stucco buildings right up to the sidewalks.  But when you walked inside, beautiful courtyards and interiors.  Then I went to Seville last month and realized that "colonial" style was Spanish.  Duh.  The same narrow sidewalks with forbidding building facades.  Then I came to Morocco and realized that Spanish style is "Moorish."  Duh.  The streets here are narrow and winding, often with no sidewalks at all.  The buildings are continuous, with closed doors and shuttered windows.  The outside gives no clue as to the interiors.  Traditional houses have courtyards planted with trees and gardens.  All of the rooms open on to the courtyard so there is no need for exterior windows.

In Southeast Asia, I noticed that life was lived outside.  Houses were very small with no living rooms or big screen tv's.  There were always people outside - eating, shopping, or just hanging out - giving every city and village a lively feel.  The houses in Morocco keep people inside.  The living rooms are lined with huge sofas, and I saw satellite dishes on most roofs.  There is no tradition of eating out here.  Men still sit in cafes for hours talking and drinking coffee, but the restaurants are almost exclusively for the tourists.

I also was impressed with the Giralda, the huge square minaret in Seville.  Then I saw the original- the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech which was built in the twelfth century.  All mosques in Morocco and southern Spain have the distinctive and beautiful square minarets.

The Koutoubia Mosque

The guidebook says that if you get lost in the medina, you can pay a kid a few dirham to help you find your way.  I tried that in Marrakech a few times, but whatever I paid the kid, he threw back at me and said it wasn't enough.  After a while, I realized that kids (all boys) hang out looking for tourists to "help."  They always started by telling me I was going the wrong way without asking where I was going.  I hired a private guide one day and asked him how much I should pay the kids.  First he said I should not pay, that they should just be helpful.  Right.  I told him my experience of the kids demanding more than I paid.  Of course, he said, that's natural.  If you offered $500 they would want more; if you offered $1,000 they would want more; if you offered everything you had, they would want more.  It's natural.  An interesting concept of natural for me.

Today, I was walking around the medina in Tangier when a boy insisted on showing me the way.  I told him I didn't want his help, that I was just wandering.  I told him right away that I would not pay him.  Bah, money, he said.  I don't care about money.  I couldn't get him to leave me and he led me back to where I had already been.  So I turned and went the other way.  Then he very aggressively demanded money.  I am tired of being hustled by fifteen year old boys.  I understand that Moroccans are traditionally very helpful and friendly.  Unfortunately, the "natural" inclination to separate tourists from their money has made it impossible to take any offer at face value.

Moving on.  As Sweeney Todd said:  there's no place like London.

One last picture of Kasey and Ruby before moving on.

The Ziz Valley

Marrakech was  nice if a bit touristy for me.  The large medina does sell food and supplies to locals, but most of the booths sell rugs, blankets, leather goods, and wood products to the tourists.  There are direct flights to Marrakech, so there are a lot of tourists here, primarily from Europe.  On Wednesday I walked to the Jardin Majorelle, the most peaceful spot in Marrakech after my lovely riad.  French artist Jacques Majorelle designed the garden in the 1920's and 1930's, importing cactus and other plants, primarily from the Americas, but also from China, Japan, and South Africa.  The garden was neglected after Majorelle's death until it was acquired by Yves Saint-Laurent and continues to be maintained by his foundation.  So among the odder things I visited in Marrakech was a memorial to Yves Saint-Laurent where his ashes were scattered.  Who knew?





On Friday I took a ten hour bus ride to Errachidia to meet Kasey and John to spend a weekend in the Ziz Valley at a lovely guesthouse that they had stayed at once.  Needless to say, I was not looking forward to the bus ride, but I ended up liking it a lot.  I drove across the width of Morocco in the front seat of a luxury bus.



We crossed the High Atlas Mountains, climbing from the desert on a narrow road with switchbacks to the snow covered peak of 7,000 feet .  It was pretty amazing.  I noticed that the style of the buildings was square with turrets on the four corners.  Even small houses looked like castles.

It was dark when John picked me up in Errachidia and we drove to the Maison D'Hote Sahara.  This is the view I woke up to.







The desert is endless with red rock formations like southern Utah.  But where the Ziz river flows, there is a huge oasis.  Our hotel was in the middle of the oasis.  It was a square building with four turret shaped rooms on the roof, which was where we stayed.





A fashion note:  for the first time on this entire trip, I am wearing sandals and crops, no winter jacket, and a short sleeve shirt under my pullover.  And the pullover came off for a while.

On Saturday morning, Kasey and John hiked up one of the mesas while Ruby and I stayed behind.  Ah, modern technology.  When they got to the top, they called me on their cel phone and I walked out on the roof.  We could see each other, but just as tiny, black specks in the distance.

On Sunday we drove back to Ifrane where I will stay for my last few days in Morocco.

Ruby is still cute.

Marrakech

Kasey and John left me in Fez to take a train to Marrakech on Monday, and they went back up to Ifrane.  Morocco is sorely lacking in infrastructure, and transportation is particularly bad.  The French left them a train system and that's it.  No intercity flights although the distances are quite long.  Some buses.  The primary way to travel between cities is by grand taxis - mid-size old Mercedes sedans.  The driver will not leave until he has two passengers in the front and four in the back.  If you want more room, you have to pay for another seat.

Within cities, petit taxis are quite cheap.  You have to use them because there are very few bus routes.  When I left my hotel in Fez for the train station, I asked how much the taxi should be.  They told me six or seven dirhams but the taxi would have a meter.  I didn't see a meter in the taxi so I asked the driver who did not understand me.  Right.  There's not a taxi driver in the world who does not know the word "meter."  We got to the train station, which was less than a mile away, and he turned and said to me, "twenty dirhams."  I laughed and said, no.  Without batting an eyelash, he said, "ok, five."  He wasn't the least bit embarrassed.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 So I took an eight hour train ride - the longest in my life as far as I can remember.  Kasey told me to go first class - a good move.  It was okay, not great.

Marrakesh is the red city.  Its exterior walls are a lovely terra cotta red.  The medina is huge and endlessly confusing.  I walk one block, retrace my steps, and can't find my way back.  The streets are narrow, winding, and crowded, with shops everywhere.  The merchandise is all similar, so even when I think I recognize something, I'm not sure.

The traditional inns are called riads.  They are small - no more than ten rooms -with personal attention. You walk down a narrow alley that you would not walk down in the US, knock on a nondescript door, and walk into a beautiful house built around a central courtyard.  I am staying at the Riad Idra which is exquisite.

The courtyard

Rooftop terrace where it has been warm enough to sit this week

I took a tour of the highlights of Marrakesh yesterday and have spent hours wandering around lost.  It is a pleasure to come home to my riad where I am sitting right now in the library in front of the fireplace.

Chefchaouen

I haven't had any Moroccan food this week as Kasey and John wanted food from home.  Beside the roast beef and yorkshire pudding, I made challah by hand for the first time in thirty years, press cookies without a press, challah french toast, and chocolate chip cookies.  I can't cook here without google.  Half of the packages have only French labels.  I type in the label to find out if it is really baking soda or baking powder or whatever.  Then I look up equivalents from cups to grams, not to mention converting the oven temperature from fahrenheit to celsius.  And then I bake without a microwave, mixer, or the right size pots and pans.  It is all an adventure.

On Friday we rented a car from a different man.  Kasey and John were still upset about the car being delivered an hour late when they had to pick me up at the airport.  We were supposed to get the car at 11 but the guy never showed up or called.  When we finally reached him, whoever had the car was not returning it until 4.  So we called the first guy and he had a car, but John had to get a friend to drive him half an hour to pick it up.  So we left over two hours late for our weekend excursion to Chefchaouen.  Morocco is not a very efficient country.

We had directions from Google with highway numbers, but none of the roads have signs on them.  We had also borrowed a GPS but it seemed to want to send us in the wrong direction.  The "major" roads are two lanes and there is always someone driving ridiculously slow, so you have to pass frequently.  People and donkeys walk along the side of the roads, and occasionally cross with little warning.  Sheep graze right next to the highways with shepherds watching them, and they occasionally run the whole flock across the road.

Ifrane is in the Atlas mountains at an altitude of about 5,200 feet.  It is snow covered now, but even under the snow, it is just scrub land with a lot of rock outcroppings.  I had only been on the road to and from Fez which is not very interesting or pretty.  Once we got north of Fez, however, the land was lush and green with fields of crops and olive orchards for as far as we could see.  It was quite beautiful.  Chefchaouen is in the Rif Mountains south of Tangier (which is on the Mediterranean).  Because of our late start, we couldn't see the countryside as we climbed up the switchbacks, but we drove back today in daylight and it was quite beautiful as well.

Chefchaouen is a very pretty old town with narrow, winding streets nestled in the hills.  What makes it unusual, however, is that most of the buildings are painted various shades of blue.  Supposedly Jewish refugees in the the 1930's introduced the blue paint which is unique in Morocco.  We just wandered randomly up and down streets; the blue paint is surprisingly peaceful.

We had a lovely day in Chefchaouen.  On Saturday night we went to the restaurant that the guidebook said was the best in town.  It was absolutely the best meal we have had since I have been in Morocco and we were the only ones in the restaurant.

From the sublime to the ridiculous ... we drove back to Fez today where I am staying overnight to get a train tomorrow to Marrakech.  We picked an Italian restaurant from the guidebook, but it was 3:30 by the time we got here, and the restaurant closed between lunch and dinner.  Kasey and John wanted to go to the big grocery store in the mall before they went back up the hill to Ifrane, so we ate at the food court in the mall.  John got a pepperoni pizza at Pizza Hut, but bear in mind that there is no pork in Morocco.  The pepperoni is beef, but he said it tasted real.  Kasey was in the mood for Asian, so at the food court in the mall in Fez we had something that approximated hot and sour soup, something called pad thai that wasn't very close, and sushi.  Of course.  The mall was absolutely packed.

I haven't mentioned Ruby in this post.  She is still cute.

Welcome to Morocco

I arrived at the Fez airport on Saturday afternoon, walked through Arrivals and ... didn't see a familiar face.  It is a really small, crummy airport.  When I walked outside, there were several sketchy looking men standing by the door offering taxi rides.  I have no idea what their vehicles looked like, and couldn't have gone with any of them anyway since I had no idea where I was going.  John was supposed to be there to pick me up.  Amazingly, the airport had free wi-fi so I was able to check my e-mail, but had no way to make a phone call.  Amazingly also, there was an information booth.  I asked the woman there if she would make a call for me on her cel phone, and amazingly once more, she did.  I called Kasey and she said the rental car showed up an hour late but John should be there momentarily.  That was all I needed.  I can sit and read for hours as long as I know someone is on the way.  And John did show up ten minutes later, very apologetic about the rental car.  Welcome to Morocco.

Kasey and John live in Ifrane, about an hour from Fez.  Since he had the car, John asked if I minded if we stopped at Marjane, the Walmart of Morocco.  So that was my first shopping experience in Morocco, not the casbah or medina.  And it does look like Walmart with clothes, toiletries, and groceries.  It looked like anything you can get in Walmart plus a few things that I did not recognize.

Kasey and John are both teachers at Al Akhawayn University and live in staff housing on campus.  They were able to get me an apartment in their building which is just perfect.  I spend most of my days with them and their cute one month old, Ruby.  Then I go upstairs to my apartment.

On Sunday morning, John stayed with Ruby while Kasey and I went to the Marche with their friends Lauren and Greg.  The Marche is the local market, with lots of fresh fruits vegetables, as well as cow, goat, and lamb meat hanging on big hooks.  But no pork.  Like John and Kasey, Lauren and Greg are a young couple who each teach at the University.  They are former Peace Corps, and have lived in four to six different countries over the last eight to ten years.  There is a very interesting group of young ex-pats here, as well as people from other countries.  They took me to a little cafe with no menu that served eggs and smoothies.  Communication is in a mix of French and Moroccan Arabic, with a little English thrown in.  Oh, it had snowed during the night and I took these pictures when we went out in the morning.  A lot of the snow had melted by the afternoon.

On Monday, Kasey gave me a walking tour of the university.  It was built with money from a trust fund set up by Saudi Arabia to pay for an oil tanker spill off the coast of Morocco.  The winds blew the spill away from Morocco, so they used the money to establish an English language, liberal arts college, designed to look like Swiss chalets.  Thus the A-frame architecture.  The name Al Ahkawayn means "two brothers" and refers to the kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco.



The students need to demonstrate proficiency in French as well as English in order to go to the University.  So there is a language program for prospective students who cannot pass the tests.  Kasey and John both teach English in the pre-university program.  This is pretty much a (Moroccan) rich kid's college; the students' cars in the parking lots are newer and nicer than the teachers'.  It is a very walkable campus with dormitories, classroom and administrative buildings, a library, cafeteria, store, gym, and Olympic size pool.  Well, almost.  Someone screwed up and the Olympic size pool is a few centimeters off, so they cannot use it for official races.  Only one person was in the very large pool when we looked in.

At the Marche, one of the meat stalls had a rolled roast that looked like prime rib.  I was a bit dubious, but the butcher assured us that it could be roasted and was not so tough it needed braising.  So we had him cut off a few pounds and took it.  Before I left Sacramento, I made roast beef and yorkshire pudding for Scott and Carrie, and in Alexandria, I made it for Steve and Beth.  With some trepidation about the quality of the meat, I made it again for Kasey and John.  (Fortunately she has a copy of my cookbook.)  Surprisingly, the butcher was right and the roast beef was pretty good, but the yorkshire pudding did not puff up like it should have.  Then Kasey reminded me that we were at altitude.  Duh!  Tomorrow I am making challah so we can have challah French toast for breakfast the next day.  Have cookbook will travel.

Today, Kasey and I hired a driver to take us to Fez where we went to the medina, one of the largest in the world.  In a few hours we could hardly do justice to the thousands of stalls although we managed to make a few purchases.  We entered through the Blue Gate.  I will be going back here to spend more time.  It was really interesting.



Tomorrow I am back on babysitting duty so Kasey can get some things done.  Oh, darn.