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.

48 Hours with the Pharoahs

Hey, everyone.

I'm back already with a new post about last weekend's trip to Cairo, which was, in short, a somewhat madcap experience.

One of our party, Lynne, was leaving for the states at the end of the Cairo weekend and brought (literally) about 150 pounds of luggage, including Berber rugs and Moroccan trinkets galore. So last Thursday night, we began our trip by dragging our stuff down the main street we live on, traffic swerving around us, to the local supermarket/cab stand; we then crammed into a cab together to the train station (complete with bungee cord on the trunk), lugged our stuff up and down the station steps, on and off two separate trains, and finally into the airport at Casablanca. We then proceeded to engage in a comedy of errors, during which: posted signs told us to go to Terminal 3; various uniformed officials led us from one end of the airport to the other; we had to force ourselves and luggage through hundreds of people waiting for arrivals outside Terminal 1; we caught some kind of airport or hotel van that took us on a 10 minute drive to a dark and desolate Terminal 3; we were told by an angry uniformed (and armed) man that there were NO flights from Terminal 3; we returned with the van to Terminal 2 (where we originally entered the airport) in time to just barely catch our 11:00 pm flight. Now, we've traveled quite a bit together as a group, and this is the first time people were getting a little white around the gills!

We had a nice flight on Royal Air Maroc of about five hours duration (and were actually served a meal and free alcohol). We arrived at 6:30 am (Egypt's two hours later than Morocco), groggy, but excited. We again had a strange experience finding and negotiating a cab ride into downtown Cairo, but managed to do it without too much confusion. (Lynne's bags were roped to the top this time.)

Here's an aerial shot of Cairo that isn't great, but gives you some idea of the pervasive greyish brown soot that covers the city and pollutes the air of Cairo. It has the second worst air in the world, and they're not kidding. The city is really dirty; coated in gray dust and littered almost everywhere.

We stayed at the Lotus Hotel, ranked 35 out of 125 hotels in Cairo by TripAdvisor. Well, it was quite a dump, and I'd say about 50 years past its prime. My bed was like a wooden door with a towel over it; the floors were interesting original parquet, but hideously dirty; the towels were miniscule, stiff and grayish white; the showers sprayed water across the entire bathroom; and, the lobby was smoke-filled and had not been dusted EVER. Of course, to be fair, this place cost us each $15 per night!!

On Friday afternoon we ventured to the nearby and famous Egyptian Museum. (Okay, another side note. We thought traffic was nuts here in Rabat, but in Egypt it's insane. As a pedestrian, you just have to wade into the oncoming cars to cross the street. We sidled up to the locals, and did what they did; I admit, I always made sure one of them would get hit first.) By the way, here's an Egyptian license plate, using the Arabic numbers. Cool, huh?

The museum was fantastic. We saw the tomb of Tutankamun and all the objects recovered therein, including his famous solid gold mask. We saw royal mummies, including Ramses II and Cheops, their hair and nails and teeth still intact. There were lots of fabulous statues, stiles and sarcophagi. I don't have any interior pictures, because none were allowed.

On Friday night, we took the (required, really) dinner cruise on the Nile. Regrettably, we discovered that the person who sold us the cruise lied about alcohol being served; we all needed a drink after our crazy trip and were strangely crushed to learn it was a dry boat. (Egypt is much more conservative than Morocco.)

It was a beautiful evening though, and I was able to spend a lot of time on deck, watching the bridges and mosques and hotels go by.

The entertainment was a belly dancer that had a face like Cher, an un-ladylike outfit, and I think, a rather poor technique. After that, the midget fake Sufi dancer did his thing, followed by the full sized fake Sufi dancer pictured here.

What a night!! We finally got our drink at the nearby Four Seasons hotel, where we relaxed in blissful Western style for an hour.

We arranged for a guided tour of the Pyramids for Saturday. Our guide was named Sherin, and thankfully, she was great. The van ride from Cairo was through suburbs and small towns; again, these were strewn with litter, clearly very poor and featured the now-familiar mix of trucks, donkeys, mules and camels. (In fact, at one point, in slow motion, we watched a man's mule break lose from his wooden cart and run directly in front of our van. We screeched to a halt, just missing the poor beast. All I could think of was how much that farmer relied on this animal for his livelihood, and how devastating the loss would be. It all ended okay, though.)

We went first to Dahshur, to see the second-oldest pyramids of our trip, both built by Sneferu, the father of Cheops. One of the pyramids there was nearly as high as the Great Pyramid, but one was a failed practice version, called the Bent Pyramid.

The area was closed until 1993 for military use, and appararently, the Egyptians are still using it for military training. We saw several thousand soldiers on some kind of maneuvers.

We then went to Saqqara, which featured the oldest, stepped pyramids.





















Then it was on to Memphis (the original) for a tour of various fallen statues and stiles from the reign of Ramses II and others. Here you see a massive limestone statue of Ramses II; in his right hand the stick he's carrying shows his "cartouche," or the symbol of his particular reign. Cartouches are ovals with hieroglyphics in them, used only for royalty.


Finally, we were headed to the Great Pyramid and Sphinx at Giza. But first, a trip to Pizza Hut for a late lunch. Look closely at this picture and you'll see how close the town of Giza is to the actual site, and certainly how tourism and history mix!


Below is a group shot of all of us; some of us had just climbed up and then down into the Great Pyramid, a trip to Hades if there ever was one! Very steep in both directions and you have to stay hunched over almost the entire time. At the end, you simply see a plain chamber, with one remaining stone sarcophagus. (Apparently, some people were meditating in this hot smelly room, behind the coffin, but I missed seeing them myself.) Anyway, it cost $20 and our legs were killing us the following day, but for some reason, it was still worth it!
















And then it was on to the Great Sphinx, where we were greeted by a dog that was actually vogue-ing! He stood stock still on a stone wall, right in front of the whole scene. It was weird. I kept expecting someone to rush in and ask us for money for taking the dog's picture, but he seemed to be running the show himself.

















Finally, a few short minutes of climbing through various temples with thousands of other milling tourists, and bam, a scene I have dreamed of seeing for a lifetime. It was truly awesome, and one could tell that everyone there, from all over the world, was experiencing a similar thrill.
















That night, we treated ourselves to a Western dinner in the super-clean Ramses Hilton. (Of course, even that was not without mishap. Lynne and I feared for our lives in the traffic, so got a cab for the short ride. Unfortunately, we don't speak Arabic very well, and when the cab went over the Nile I knew we hadn't made our destination clear! We ended up going about 20 minutes out of our way, as the driver was unable to make a U-turn for miles.)

At 4:00 AM on Sunday, we said our farewells to Lynne, headed back to the airport and had an uneventful, sleep-filled flight back to Casablanca.

It was a crazy, challenging and fabulous journey. I have been in the presence of one of the seven wonders of the world, stayed in the cheapest hotel of my life, witnessed the shriveled dried skin, toenails and hair of the Pharoah Ramses and seen the golden mask of Tutankamun. Not bad for a long weekend.

This coming weekend, we're planning a day trip to Casablanca, and perhaps some horseback riding. After that, it's on to Dublin for my visit with childhood friend Susan McIntyre.

More soon, and best wishes to all.

Marrakech: A Strange, Strange Place

Hello, all.

Sorry for the big gap in the blog updates. As some of you know, we had a family emergency (my beloved niece Justice experiencing toxic shock syndrome), and I was also in Egypt last weekend. Luckily, after some very scary moments, Justice is now on the path to recovery, and will be able to leave the hospital in a week or so.

So, back to my report on our Moroccan adventures. Two weekends ago, we journeyed five hours southwest, to the city of Marrakech. Most of you have heard of Marrakech, if not from history, then from the Simon and Garfunkel song! It is where the name "Morocco" came from, is a Berber (rather than Arab) city, and was the seat of various Moroccan empires for several hundred years. It's an oasis, large and flat, with lots of palm trees and big red ramparts, with the backdrop of the high Atlas mountains.

It's also a city that's even a bigger tourist attraction than Fes, and desperately seeking status as an international destination. Yves St. Laurent made his home in Marrakesh, as have lots of other celebrities and runaway hippie types. They have international film festivals, and Hillary Clinton was there when we were there, to meet with King Mohammed VI about the situation in Israel/Palestine. So, the crafts are high quality, prices are exorbitant, and the salesmanship is aggressive beyond belief.

Here's your first clue. These strange dudes, dressed in traditional Berber costumes, hang out in the city's giant main square, Place Jemaa el Fna, selling water. If you so much as point your camera at them, they lunge at you, demanding money. This photograph shows the exact moment that I was "busted" after trying to surreptiously photograph them.

It's just the start. There are "snake charmers" who run at you, draping small cobras around your neck, grabbing your camera to take pictures and then refusing to take the snake off you until you pay lots of money.

There are also henna ladies from the countryside, who will begin to draw a henna tatoo on you if you hesitate anywhere near them, whether you want it or not. I had to run away from several, yelling "la!" ("no!").
Finally, there are the hooded men who handle the Barbary Apes (or more properly, macaques; see previous blog), who will also drape them on you and then demand money.

Place Jemaa el Fna is quite famous, and supposed to be a thrill, but I found it rather awful!

There WERE some wonderful places in Marrakech. The first standout was the Jardin Marjorelle, which was an artist's home and garden purchased by Yves St. Laurent and his partner, and then donated to the city when Yves died. The picture doesn't do it justice, but it's a fabulous deep blue home surrounded by acres of bamboo, cactus and flowers. It provided a much-needed break for me to go there and to wander alone taking photos.

Another place that was fabulous was the Palais Bahia, an elaborate palace created to house an obese vizier and his many concubines, in the 1800's. The marble and tile courtyard pictured here was where the ladies hung out to share advice and gossip. Around the courtyard are reception rooms with elaborately painted ceilings, giant tiled fireplaces and beautiful archways and columns.

Typical of Morocco, to get to this sumptuous palace, we walked down a number of dumpy, dirty little streets with pathetic shops and parked donkeys, that would make any but intrepid travelers turn back. It's hard to describe how strange it is to see a country with so many assets not know how to maximize them, even when it intends to have a vibrant tourist industry!

To summarize, Marrakech was filled with freaky sights, obnoxious shopkeepers, underdressed and sunburned tourists, and lots of very devout Muslims, rushing in to the street corner mosques to pray. I'm glad I saw it, but it was my least favorite place so far in Morocco.

Well, it's late here, and I have to get some rest. Later this week I will update everyone on our whirlwind trip to Cairo and the Pyramids.

Until then, b'salaamah.

Meknes: Some Things are the Same Everywhere

Meknes is the twin city of Fes (both having been royal capitals for different dynasties in different centuries). We found Meknes to be quieter (read: less touristy) than Fes, and enjoyed a jitney ride around the city ramparts, past the Mellah (Jewish neighborhood), over to the enormous imperial stables where thousands of horses were once kept, and back to the gigantic main square of the city.

We also found a delightful shop, where four of the five of us purchased Berber rugs without feeling pressured into it. (Unfortunately, mine was the most expensive, but I love it.)

The most notable thing we experienced in Meknes, however, was a vicious catfight. We were shopping in one of the narrow streets of the medina when we began to hear women yelling and a rush of leather sandals on the stone street. A group of middle aged women, all with hijabs covering their heads and wearing lovely djellabas (full length hooded robes of silk or linen) came around a curve, screaming and chasing a younger, similarly-dressed woman. They were raining vicious blows on her head and shoulders, yelling "shuma, shuma!" or "shame, shame" and lots of other mean words that I couldn't quite make out. She looked terribly sad, bore the blows and did not fight back. Eventually, they tore off her headcovering and began to rip her djellaba, exposing her bra (quite shocking in this culture). Finally, when they banged her head into a wall (which we could hear from our distance of about 15 feet, where we cowered, stunned), other people began to intercede to stop the fight. As most people know, no matter how many times you see violence in media, the real thing is quite disturbing. (Bizarrely, after snapping photos so constantly as a tourist, my brain immediately contemplated taking a picture, but luckily just as immediately rejected this horrible instinct.)

Anyway, things settled down, and when we asked someone in our broken Arabic/English what had happened, he said "husband have one woman in house, one woman out of house." Same old story, just a different country! We slinked away, hoping that the aggrieved parties would not notice that their intimate and painful scene was witnessed by foreigners.

Off to bed now. More next week after Marrakesh, insha'allah.

Fes, Part Three: The Merdersa

Dear readers,

Here's a glimpse into the other Morocco, that of stunning architecture and craftsman ship. These pictures are from the Bou Inania Merdersa in Fes (a merdasa is a "madrasa" in standard Arabic, or "school"). This was a residential college, where students would study religion, law, science and art, and was built in the 14th century by one Abou Inan, a sultan.

The three pictures show the carved wooden screen and doors at the main entrance (cedar, I believe); the bands of tilework (called "jellij") and calligraphy that encompass the main courtyard; and the projection of light through stained glass onto a door in the prayer hall. (The stained glass was surprising to see in North Africa!)

The square courtyard was paved in onyx and marble, with a large marble fountain in the center, where students would cleanse themselves prior to prayer. We were able to see the small stone cells on the second floor, in which the students slept, each with a little wooden screened window. Not bad at all - kind of like a monastery.

Fes was and is considered the most learned of Morocco's cities, so this merdasa was an important institution, and home to great scholars over the centuries. It's also one of the few Islamic buildings in Morocco that is open to non-Muslims. (As a side note, non-Muslims can enter mosques in most places, for example, the Taj Mahal is a mosque, but here in Morocco, it's forbidden. Why? Well, the French actually made the law when Morocco became a protectorate in 1912. They wanted to reassure the locals that they would not interfere with religious life. When Morocco gained independence in 1956, the new country decided to keep the law in place.)

So, that completes my Fes trilogy. One more post tonight, about Fes' sister city Meknes, and then I'm all caught up on my blog.

This weekend we will travel to the fabulous city of Marrekesh (for which Morocco is named), and the following weekend, we're heading to Cairo and the Pyramids.

Fes, Part Two, or How Moroccans Use All Parts of their Animals

In Fes, we visited a leather shop which overlooked the ancient tanneries. The white vats you see are several centuries old. They are filled with a solution made from guano, which is used to strip the hair from the hides of camels, goats and sheep, and to soften them. As you can imagine, the odor, even from a distance of 20 or 40 yards, was quite overpowering. The tanners are knee deep in the stuff all day! Nearby are other vats filled with natural dyes made from vegetable materials, such as henna and saffron.

Now, the picture below of the camel head in the butcher shop is a little rough to take, and I debated whether to include it; but, it's life in Morocco. You can also see chickens and ducks and pigeons running free in the souk, unwittingly enjoying their last moments of life dodging the feet of passersby.

The other night, here in the Rabat medina (where I went to purchase a better smock for myself for the orphanage), I saw COOKED camel heads, being ground into street food. Combined with the smell, this was the first sight in Morocco (of many possible contenders) that actually made me queasy.



Okay, I'm going to post this, and will do two more posts tonight, insha'allah.