Buses, Horses and Taxis

Hello, all.

Sorry for the short absence. Our access to the Internet goes out here at Home Base every once in a while, so I fell behind.

Two Sundays ago, fellow volunteer Judy and I headed off on a mini-adventure to the seacoast to ride horses. The adventurous part was not so much the horses, but rather taking a city bus to the next town (Tamara), then negotiating a taxi to the stable on the shore, and then getting back!

The bus ride took us out of Rabat and into the poorer suburbs, where the real people (such as our cooks at the house and the nurses at the orphanage) live. It was the first time we'd really ventured where tourists or outsiders never go. As always, people on the bus were delightful and patient with what I call our "Frenchabic," and helped us to get to Tamara without any problem.

Here in Morocco, there are three kinds of licensed taxis. First is the "petite" taxi, a small blue deathtrap designed to swerve and squeal and honk within cities. (Typical fare for us to go from our affluent suburb of Hay Riad to the Rabat Medina is about $3.00).

Second is the large white standard-transmission Mercedes Benz, usually quite long in the tooth, which is used go between cities (rather than within), and which usually won't depart a location until SIX passengers have booked a ride, and are all securely wedged together in the front and back.

Third, and strangely, is the horse-drawn jitney, here shown in Meknes, but used by locals in smaller cities like Tamara.

Anyway, Judy is great at negotiating, so got us a cheap intercity taxi ride to the seashore from Tamara (about five dollars).

The stable itself was combined with a restaurant overlooking the shore (you can imagine the flies!), but we had both a delightful ride along the waves, and a nice beer afterwards. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, it is such a great but rare experience to have a beer in Morocco!

Coming home, we waited and waited on the seashore road for a different city bus, but as the sun set, we crammed in with four other people in a taxi back to Tamara.

I wish that I could bottle the experience, and ship it to everyone! Moroccans are so friendly and calm. We're all strangers, literally squashed together in this car, with some ladies in headscarves chatting and laughing with the ancient, wizened driver, who was wearing the classic Moroccan djellaba, complete with a pointed hood.

I've put a picture of a man wearing one here, so you can get some idea.

In the back of the cab with Judy and I were a teenaged couple (in acid-washed skinny-leg jeans, of course) who had been strolling the beach (probably making out), and who were on a cell phone throughout the drive. There was a little body odor mixed in, and some nice argon oil or something, that one of the women used. Nobody made any big deal about us, it was all just normal to be squeezed together in this tiny space for twenty minutes. Imagine a similar scene in New York!

It was dark and dusty and crowded in Tamara by the time we got there, so we were having a little trouble figuring out which mob of people was at which bus stop. Luckily, we managed to cram into another taxi back to our neighborhood. (The drivers get one fare, and then search at the street corners for other fares. We heard "Hay Riad, Hay Riad," so we knew we had found our man.)

Admittedly, this may not sound like a big adventure, but Morocco is so topsy turvy, and so hard to decipher without language, that we could have ended up in a strange location, with no way home. For a control freak like me, this was a pleasantly edgy experience!

Okay, that's all for tonight. I took my first solo trip this past weekend, to Asilah. It's a Portuguese city on the northern Atlantic coast, known for its small size, charm, and great beach. More on that later this week.

I've also been asked by my friend Juli to describe my ongoing work in the orphanage. This is actually my last week there; I've asked to be transferred to the East West Foundation, where I will teach English to adults. In any case, I will write more on the topic, and I will continue to volunteer at the orphanage during the afternoons a few days a week. I can't leave some of those babies behind!

Until my next blog, b'salaamah.

Casablanca in a Day

Hi, followers!

Last weekend we went to the reknowned Casablanca for a quick trip. It's a commercial city (one of the largest in Africa), with about 3.5 million residents. It has lots of architecture, parks and boulevards left over from the city's heyday in the '20s and '30s, and miles of poverty-stricken shantytowns.

The most important building in the city is the Hassan II Mosque, a fantastical structure built above the sea by the late king (father of the current king), using his own money and "donations" from every single Moroccan.

It's the third largest mosque in the world, and the only mosque open to non-Muslims in the country (see previous blog). It's hard to describe how incredibly huge this place is! I hope you can grasp the scale of it from these pictures.

The interior can house 25,000 worshippers (yes, I said 25,000), and the roof retracts to let in natural light. Female worshippers have a separate, raised area, called the women's gallery, which accomodates 5,000. If there are more than that at a service, such as during Ramadan, the women pray in the back of the great hall, where no one can see all their rear ends!

Almost all the material used in the mosque is from Morocco, including cedar, marble, ceramic tiles, granite and wool. Craftspeople from all over the country contributed, and decorated sections with signature designs from their home regions. (Someone who lives in Morocco can tell in an instant the embroidery, rugs, tilework, etc. from various places such as Fes and Marrakesh.) Even the elaborate woodwork used to build the women's gallery is divided into sections made by woodcrafters from different areas.

Below the main hall are the ablution rooms, where worshippers cleanse themselves in a ritual fashion at one of dozens of marble fountains, before praying.

The mosque is at the edge of the ocean (and is in fact built on pillars above the sea), so the location is a favorite relaxing spot for Casablancans. (At some other point, I'll describe the courtship scene in Morocco, but young couples do spend a lot of time together, and do NOT have sex before marriage.)

No visit to Casablanca would be complete without a trip to Rick's Cafe, of film fame. It never was a real place, of course, but in 2004 an American created a very fine restaurant that mimicked the style of the movie cafe.

The food was fantastic there! It was quiet during the day, but looked like it would be quite exciting and beautiful at night.

In general, the people with whom we interacted in Casablanca were relaxed and friendly (we think because it is not a tourist city and they were not focused on trying to sell us anything).

At a small park outside Rick's we chatted with a 10-year old girl who spoke English, French and Arabic, and she helped me pronounce a number of phrases in my phrasebook. My fellow traveler Judy took a video; I'll let you know if she posts it anywhere on the Web. Of course, I look stupid in the video, but I'll overcome my vanity!

After the mosque and Rick's, we strolled the city streets in a leisurely way, looking at buildings and parks and going into the occasional shop, and then returned to Rabat via a one-hour train ride.

Although Casablanca is big and littered, the sun shone, the air was sweet with the moisture of the ocean, and the people were lovely. You can see why it is a romantic place where people want to escape!

The following day we went horseback riding at a seaside town near Rabat. More to come!

B'salaamah.