In one of my first posts on my blog, I wrote about a video we watched during orientation about an extra program we would be doing called Morocco Exchange. Initially I was not a fan; the video made it seem like the purpose of the trip was to see how much Morocco has developed and how much like the West it’s becoming. The video, I am pleased to say, was quite misleading, and I had a great trip.
The day after the aforementioned general strike in Spain, I woke up in the wee hours to get to our flight to Tangier. We were immediately greeted by our wonderful program leader, Jess, an artist from the UK who had been living in Morocco for a while. The airport was very, very small. It only had three gates and it was about the size of an average warehouse. I wish I had gotten a picture of the runway we landed on; it was actually built out into the Atlantic so when I looked out the window of the plane as we landed, it looked like we were about to miss and land in the ocean. What was really weird was that the Tangier airport is only 7 kilometers away from the coast of Spain. Even on a foggy day you can still see Spain in the distance. In my mind Spain and Morocco are very, very far apart, on separate continents, and have totally separate cultures. Standing in Morocco and being able to see Spain closed that gap a little bit.
Anyway, Jess took us into the center of Tangier and on the way, she gave us the program guidebooks that had a lot of useful information about Moroccan customs, culture, and politics. It also gave us a list of dos and don’ts.
Do:
- Remove your shoes in a home, or in order to walk on any carpet.
- Bring a gift when you dine at someone’s house.
- Keep your voice low.
- Ask for the restroom or trash can discreetly.
- Show respect for elders.
- Wear your shoes in the bathroom.
- Shake everyone’s hand when you enter a room.
- Walk behind someone when they are praying.
- Offer to share you food with others (especially children).
- Be quiet when people are praying.
- Be modest – cover your shoulders and no plunging shirts.
- Sit in the same sex designated area when asked.
- Have a second cup of tea.
- Try to six next to people of the same sex.
Don’t:
- Touch someone from the opposite sex.
- Use your left hand when eating or giving alms or gifts.
- Use English swear words – Moroccans know these.
- Wait for your turn in line. (There is no line.)
- Wear shorts or tank tops (even around the house).
- Bargain to a low price and then not buy the merchandise.
- Display your wealth.
- Speak negatively about Islam, the king of Morocco, or the Western Sahara.
- Refuse someone water.
- Dance in public.
- Interrupt someone when they are praying.
- Enter in mosques, religious monuments, or cemeteries.
- Over compliment someone – they may think you are giving them the evil eye.
We initially took these very, very seriously, but we were promptly informed by the Moroccan students we met later that these are more of a set of guidelines and that some are taken much more seriously than others. For example, it is definitely rude to wear shoes inside of a house, but girls and guys, especially younger ones, can hang out together and make physical contact, no problem. Part of the craziness of the weekend was trying to figure out how to act in a given situation, knowing that these guidelines might work in some situations and be weird in others.
The first place we went in Tangier was a women’s center, where we were given a tour by two Moroccan students. Basically, women who have no prospects for a traditional education or job go to the center where they’re trained to work, usually sewing, and then with that skill they stand a much better chance of getting a job in a factory.
They also have classes in English, French, classical Arabic, and math. The center also runs a restaurant, where we ate lunch, and a little shop where they sell the things that the women make in their classes. We also got a few good rooftop pictures of downtown Tangier:
After lunch, we got in the van and drove towards Rabat, where we would be staying for the rest of the weekend. On the way, however, we had two stops. The first:
Mind you, this was not any organized camel exhibition. This was three guys and a few camels sitting on the beach, and we pulled our van off the highway and asked if we could ride them.
Crossed that off the bucket list! After that stop on the trek to Rabat, we stopped in Asilah, a beautiful vacation town on the Atlantic coast. The entire town is painted white:
So that they can have an festival every year where they invite artists to paint on the walls:
The town, as I said, is a vacation town, and it’s in such good shape because so many French and Spanish visitors kept fixing it up and maintaining the traditional Moroccan buildings. In this way it’s benefited the city immensely, except for the fact that now, since it’s so traditionally “Moroccan”, the Moroccans don’t really consider it their city anymore. It doesn’t look anything else like other Moroccan towns and many of the buildings aren’t owned by Moroccan citizens. Either way, it’s beautiful:
From Asilah we drove straight to Rabat, where we met our host families and had dinner at their house. I have to say that my homestay was my favorite part of my visit to Morocco. There were four beautiful daughters and everyone was extremely friendly and welcoming. The first night, we stayed up watching TV (some American shows with Arabic subtitles, some French, and some Moroccan Arabic), teaching each other words in the different languages we know, drinking tea, and dancing.
The next morning we woke up and drove to Rabat’s shantytown.
It is as bad as it looks. Interesting tidbit: most of the shacks have satellite. Since it’s a one-time cost to install, usually people in the shantytowns can afford it. Running water, on the other hand, is not affordable because of the monthly bill. It’s a weird contrast.
After we drove through, we went to a center that provides classes at a very low cost to people in the shantytown. The center was started a few years ago by a group of high school students. It worked so well that the king donated the building (which was a very nice building) to the organization so that they could work on a larger scale.
Quick side note about the king: we were told that the list of Don’ts is right when it says not to speak badly of the king. In Morocco it is illegal, and most Moroccans will not do it regardless of what they think. Despite this, I did get the feeling that he’s pretty well-liked anyway. He’s been passing reforms, and is very generous in giving to the poor. On top of this, apparently he goes out regularly without a bodyguard, sometimes hoping not to be recognized, just to observe normal life. The students who were giving us the tour of the center told us that they had seen him out on the street the day before.
We also had a great conversation (and tea) with the students at the center about Moroccan culture, Islam, and relations with the West. After that, we visited the ruins of a Roman market. Built next to these was also a church and a mosque, both of which are now ruins as well. The Moroccan government turned it into a garden. What I liked is that you can actually go sit and hang out on the ruins.
After this, we went back and had lunch with our families, and then went on a tour of Rabat with some local students.
The next thing we did I do not have any pictures for, because it was the hammam, or the public bathhouse. It’s a very traditionally Moroccan thing, but unlike a lot of other “traditional” stuff, it’s something that is still very much part of an average Moroccan’s life; they go about once a week.
I had mixed feelings beforehand. Bathing with a bunch of women you don’t know seemed pretty weird, but I was also very curious and wanted to give it a try. And I am very glad I did. When we got there, we met our guide, changed into our bathing suit bottoms, and went into the sauna. And honestly, within the first 15 seconds it stopped being weird and started being enjoyable. There were about 20 other women there; many of them were mothers who had brought their children. The kids were the funniest part; they were completely sprawled out on the floor, eyes half closed, just enjoying getting scrubbed by their mothers. It’s also kind of social event. A lot of women are sitting around gossiping, women-at-the-hairdryers style. I found out quickly that the hammam bathing process is kind of a team effort; people scrub you and you scrub other people, usually without any sort of asking. The attendant came up to us and just kept dumping water on us to help us out. At one point she started a water fight. She was awesome.
Basically what you do is you bring a bucket with you to get water from the faucet and then just scrub yourself in the sauna-like room. They give you this really cool vegetable oil soap (which just has the look and consistency of mud, so it’s a little offputting) and an abrasive mitt, you cover over yourself with the soap, and then you scrub. It is extremely exfoliating and I have literally never felt that clean or relaxed before. Here’s a little more specific information about what a hammam is like if you’re interested: http://goafrica.about.com/od/morocco/a/hammam.htm.
After the hammam, we back to our host family’s house, where they had many surprises awaiting us. The first was that we got to meet the entire extended family! The second:
We spent the rest of the night dancing, eating, and watching The Notebook with Arabic subtitles. It was a fantastic night.
The next morning we visited the tomb of the current king’s father. It’s built in the traditional style, right next to the ruins of a mosque from the 11th century that was never completed.
After the stop at the mausoleum, we drove to the mountainous region of Morocco to meet and have lunch with a family living in a very rural area of Morocco. We brought the veggies, they had the bread, and we made a meal out of it. On the way, we picked up a translator so that we could communicate with the family. We enjoyed the food, and had a great time asking them about their daily lives, their religious beliefs, and their hopes for the future, and telling them about ours.
Then, the family wanted to take us on a tour of their farm and the surrounding area. The scenery was beautiful, and there were livestock just roaming about everywhere.
After a great visit, we got back in the van and drove north.
We drove to Chefchaouen (yes, that’s four vowels in a row), a walled city a bit more east than the rest of the places we visited. When the Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain, many of them settled in Chefchaouen and continued speaking Old Spanish. When the Spaniards eventually got to Chefchaouen a few centuries later, they found that the people were still speaking the Spanish perfectly preserved from the time of their expulsion. Today, they speak more or less modern Spanish, which made it leaps and bounds easier to communicate than in other areas of Morocco with the five or so words that I know in Moroccan Arabic. Chefchaouen was beautiful too, almost too pretty to be real.
We got to do all of our Moroccan shopping in Chefchaouen. Since both parties spoke Spanish, we were able to do some bargaining too, which was actually really enjoyable. I got a leather purse with coins from different countries and eras on the front. I would take a picture but I can’t find my camera at the moment. After dinner and some hanging out, we went to bed at our hotel:
The next morning, we drove three hours from Chefchaouen back to the Tangier airport. From there I got a plane to Munich, pictures of which I will post pretty soon (I hope, it’s finals week).
I have to be honest in saying that I had no idea what to expect when I went to Morocco. My biggest expectation that was shattered quite rapidly was that Morocco is one gigantic desert. As you can see from my pictures, that is not true. (There is desert, but it’s only in one part of the country.) I wasn’t sure how people would treat us as foreigners or, more specifically, as Americans. We were shown nothing but hospitality, from our host family to people in the hammam to random people on the street. But it wasn’t a suffocating type of attention that I’ve heard that foreigners can attract in other countries. We got stares a few times, but when it came down to it we were treated with the utmost respect and in some cases, friendship and an eagerness to share and learn.
Thank you for making it to the end of this very long blog post!
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