Goodbye Ifrane!

One final Morocco posting: we have made the journey from Ifrane back to lovely Portland, Oregon! The trip was pretty uneventful ... we took off from Casablanca at 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning (Moroccan time) had a four hour layover in Frankfurt where we partook of our first swine in quite a while, then it was a direct 10 1/2 hour flight to Portland. Rachel and Ryan met us at the airport and helped lug our plethora of bags (thanks SO much guys!): two large backpacks, two small carry-on backpacks, two medium roller bags, one large rolling garment bag, my guitar, a cloth bag with my laptop and a plastic bag with some miscellaneous stuff purchased in Morocco!! We had to pay to check an extra bag in Casablanca and carried a couple of extra things on the plane - no one stopped us, so I assume it wasn't a big deal. Once reunited with part of our Portland posse, the four of us immediately proceeded to La Bonita for some burritos (YUM!) and to a coffee shop next door for some Stumptown (double YUM!!) and conversation. We are now chilling at Rachel's new, incredibly cute house in North Portland and trying to figure what happens from here.

(The weather here is slightly cooler and slightly wetter) --------------->


To rewind just a bit: the last week in Ifrane was very nice - the weather was really warm, and we had a few dinners with people to sort of say goodbye. Thursday and Friday nights we had people over and got rid of a bunch of the stuff we had acquired over our stay. Unfortunately, the tagine wouldn't fit into our luggage, and I'm guessing if we HAD fit it, it would have been powder by the time we got home, so we gifted it to Katie. I couldn't part with the stove top espresso maker and managed to jam it into the top of my backpack. I had an excellent latte yesterday that would not have been possible if I had left this beautiful device behind.

The travel day prior to our flight was actually really cool. We have a tendency to be rushing around on big days like this, but amazingly that didn't happen this time around. Our packing was pretty much done Friday night. We hired a van from AUI to take the two of us, plus Katie, Misty and two other people (Carla and Katie II) to a hotel in Casablanca at noon on Saturday. This gave us plenty of time in the morning to shower, do some final packing and eat a good breakfast before setting out. The van ride was a little vomitous, as are most automobile rides in Morocco, but we made it in one piece to Casa and it was great to have some time to chat. We reached the Hotel Ibis in Casa (where Katie and Misty were staying for a night or two before their flights) at about 5:30 p.m. and essentially had 6 hours to hang out. There was a little bit of bullshit about putting our bags in their room ... I think the management was concerned about the morality of one man going to a room with four women. This was a really classy joint, you see. We managed to work around it, though the folks were none too friendly.

Our six hours in Casa were spent chilling with coffees on the Ibis patio, visiting the giant Hassan II Mosque (second largest in the world), and grabbing some delicious Italian food. I didn't bring the camera to the mosque since it was back in the room and management didn't want me to go, but Misty and Carla took some pictures, so hopefully I can get ahold of them soon and put them up for y'all. It really was an amazing thing to see and pictures probably won't do it much justice. We had all visited MANY mosques in Morocco and were surprised at how friggin cool this thing was. It's situated right on the ocean. There are only special hours when non-Muslims can enter, so we didn't get to go in, but apparently a portion of the prayer room has a glass floor where you can look over the rocks and waves below. The minaret is gigantic, with brilliant zellij mosaic at the top (and supposedly a laser pointed toward Mecca, though we couldn't see it). Leading up to the mosque is a wide open plaza with carved arches along the sides. As we walked up, the call to prayer was announced over the speaker - it was very loud and pretty surreal to hear it echo all around us. Once up to the mosque, the artistry was utterly amazing. Some 6000 local artisans worked on the wood, marble, steel and zellij found around the structure. The doors into the mosque were made of steel and had to have been around 60 feet tall! Hopefully some pictures will be available soon for you ... here's one I found on the net: Hassan II Mosque.

Goodbyes were a little sad, though at least we'd had quite a bit of time to hang out over the day. They were hurried a bit by the process of getting a grand taxi to take us the half hour to the airport outside of Casa. The minute we stepped out of the hotel with our baggage, a grand taxi driver approached and said his price and porters appeared from nowhere and bags were being grabbed and loaded and no, we would need two grand taxis since we had so much luggage and it would be dangerous (HAH, you gave yourself away grand taxi driver ... you learned the word "dangerous" from tourists) and Carla just kept saying no, we're only taking one taxi and kept cramming stuff in the car then Sam wedged herself in the back seat and we had to force the door closed and Carla and I sat nearly on top of each other in the front seat and oh yeah, bye Misty and Katie, and we were careening away from the hotel. But, we got to the airport early enough to deal with stuff and only had one worrisome moment at the gate when agitated passengers three gates down started pounding on the walls and yelling and pulled the fire alarm. We had our final kahwa nous-nous (half espresso, half milk) from the Casablanca airport cafe, and damnit, I forgot to take a picture.

Pictures: Goodbye Ifrane!

Stories from Ali

On our trip to Chefchaouen (and Rabat) with Ali and Denise, we heard several stories about Morocco that I thought were really interesting. Ali is a fantastic story teller; he's really good-natured and has an awesome sense of humor, so it's hard not to get totally wrapped up in the tales he's telling. Unfortunately, I only remember a few, but I guess it's a little bizarre re-telling someone else's stories anyway, so I'll just summarize a couple:

* Ali's brother-in-law (let's call him Fred, since I can't remember his name) is fairly wealthy; he makes his living as an artisan and does wood carving and marquetry. At some point his work was "discovered" by someone important, and since then he has done ceilings and such for other important someones. So, at some point many years ago Ali was visiting Fred's villa in Rabat and noticed that the front facade of the place was beat up and incomplete, whereas the interior was immaculate and richly decorated. Ali was thinking that this was to keep beggars from coming to the house, but he asked Fred anyway. Apparently back in the day when dignitaries were visiting from other nations, the king and his posse would politely "ask" the owners of nice villas to leave for some amount of time so that these dignitaries could stay there. Any servants had to stay on at the villa. No compensation was provided and the place would be in whatever condition the dignitary decided to leave it. Thus, Fred left the front of his house looking awful to avoid the attention of villa-grabbers. (We also heard about a tax loop hole where incomplete buildings were not taxed, hence the number of occupied buildings with sparse facades and exposed rebar throughout the country.)

* We stayed with Ali's nephew, Yousef (Fred's son) on the coast in Rabat. Ali does not seem too concerned with directions ... he simply heads somewhere and then stops and asks people as he drives by where he needs to go. This was the same situation when we arrived in Rabat Sunday evening. Though Ali has been to Yousef's house several times, he really doesn't know how to get there. He gets to the outskirts of town and then calls Yousef and tells him what he is seeing. Several calls to Yousef were made. At no point did Ali stop the car, we just continued driving and turning and getting more lost, then calling Yousef and saying "there's a restaurant, ok now Cafe Dijana, something like that, lots of people." And suddenly a car flies past us, pulls in ahead of us and flashes its brake lights: Yousef has gotten in his car and SOMEHOW found us through Ali's convoluted description of where we were. I was amazed, and told Yousef this before we were even formally introduced. I also hypothesized that perhaps this was an elaborate training scheme concocted by Ali to turn his nephew into a CIA operative.

* There were a myriad of stories involving Ali and Yousef's relationship, since Yousef lived with Ali in San Francisco for several years back in the day. One prominent aspect of Moroccan life (and life in any country, really) is that who you know is incredibly important. Favors are granted incessantly and friends call upon friends, relatives and acquaintances to help out all of the time. "My friend is the mayor of Meknes, so I'll see if he can help out with some funding." So, to bring this back to Yousef and Ali: Ali's wife Denise was traveling in Rwanda this fall and made this arduous journey with some contacts she knew there into the jungle to see some mountain gorillas. I don't remember the specifics, but she essentially found she had no money and couldn't get any money easily. Somehow she got ahold of Ali. Even though Ali lives in the States, he is still Moroccan, so apparently he is not allowed to send money via Western Union ... Moroccans are not allowed to take money out of the country (he also has to carry a marriage license with him to be able to stay with Denise in hotels in Morocco). Ali got ahold of Yousef to see if he could contact friends of his in Europe and have them wire some money to Denise. Yousef was drunk when he received the call and only understood something about Denise being in the jungle, something about gorillas/guerillas and something about her needing money. So, he started calling people trying to figure out how he could get a helicopter in to Rwanda to help Denise out. I'm sure this has happened to half of y'all reading, so I'm conveying this story only so that you can nod knowingly. Remember that time you tried to get Uncle Billy out of Cambodia by hiring ninjas from Japan ... ?

* Ali wistfully told us about how young goats are the best pets ever. He said that his father would give him a baby goat to take care of when he was a kid (hee hee). The goat would follow him everywhere and would hang out with him just like a dog. As the goat got older, it wasn't quite as friendly. Eventually the time would come to slaughter the goat, and Ali would plead with his Dad, so they worked out a deal. They would take the goat to the market where his Dad would "sell" it, then they'd bring a new baby goat home for Ali.

More Morocco Miscellanea

(I re-posted with a picture of people hanging out in one of the main traffic circles in Ifrane.)

* An interesting tidbit that Sam and I noticed in the first month we were here is the habit Moroccans have of walking in the street. Sidewalks are only a suggested path. Traffic circles are particularly fun ... the trick is to simply walk into the circle toward the middle pretending you are a very slow moving car, follow the circle to the road you need and wander slowly across traffic. In the bigger cities, there are occasionally cross walks; however, the traffic lights are typically placed so that they are impossible to see (even if you're driving) and the little pedestrian lights never work. So, the approach taken here is similar to the traffic circle: walk confidently into traffic, utilizing the space between lanes for safety, do not falter. If you hesitate or look startled, that's when you'll get an irritated horn from a driver, but if you just walk directly in front of them without hesitating, that's business as usual.

I've heard people suggest that this has to do with the fatalist nature of Moroccan culture. The phrase "enshah allah" (God willing) is uttered after nearly any statement of future intent. Most of the time, this is to show deference to a force higher than oneself, but sometimes I think it can be translated as "if something better doesn't come up" as when someone says "I'll meet you at the cafe at 3:00 tomorrow, enshah allah". Soooo, if I step into fast moving traffic without even looking, everything will be just fine ... enshah allah. I prefer to apply the theory I have about the stop-sign-lacking neighborhoods in Portland. I think the purpose of these areas is to force drivers to be more aware of their surroundings. In neighborhoods WITH stop signs, drivers often learn their locations and then drive very fast, almost automatically, on the stop-less stretches. Removing the stop signs makes these drivers slow down at every intersection and check for traffic. By walking in the streets, Moroccan pedestrians are forcing drivers to pay close attention to their surroundings and vice versa, essentially raising awareness of day-to-day dangers. (However, you can wipe the tears that this beautiful tale of pedestrian/driver symbiosis surely induced ... I still would bet that more pedestrians get hit by cars per capita here than in the States.)

* When one buys eggs at the marche, he/she can be fairly certain that they were laid within the last few days. Eggs are cheap, are set out on the counter at several shops and disappear fairly quickly. In the States, Sam and I make an attempt to buy food in bulk to reduce the packaging, but this may be one instance where some packaging would be appreciated. The store owners simply place however many eggs you ask for in a plastic bag and tie it off (we bought eggs in bulk in Corvallis, but there was a big pile of egg cartons nearby). Only once or twice have I made it home from the marche without a cracked egg or two.

* Many of the past posts have referenced the joys and horrors of getting in a grand taxi or petit taxi here. The lack of seat belts is troubling, but the extreme tail gating is downright terrifying. What's the rule? One car length for every 10 mph? We've been in grand taxis going at least 60 mph and nearly touching the giant truck in front of us that is impossible to see around. A tap of the brakes would be problematic. There are "rules" of the road, but a lot of the time they are ignored if there aren't police around. And there are rarely police around.

Much like other aspects of Moroccan culture, those who assert themselves the most are the winners. For instance, if you're in a line at the store, it's a good idea to get right up against the counter or someone will slip in in front of you and yell their order. (I should be fair: this is not unique to Morocco. The US, Canada, England and Germany are experts at queuing, but this concept is not held in as high of regard in other countries, Italy being nearly as bad as Morocco.) The rules of the road mimic the lines in a store: if you want to get into traffic, you just go. Get your nose out there so people can't get around it, and if you stop traffic, so be it. As mentioned above, in the cities there are pedestrians blindly diving into the street, bikers and sheep are often present, so it is actually more like an obstacle course. Always interesting. A driving video game should be made with different roads in Morocco as the scenarios. Beginner: the route from the marche to Al Akhawayn in downtown Ifrane; Intermediate: the road from Ifrane to the outskirts of Meknes; Advanced: downtown Meknes/Fez/Rabat, all with a bag of eggs on the passenger seat.

* In the first couple of weeks we were here, Misty, Sam and I met a guy named Hicham at a restaurant downtown. He was waiting tables there and spoke Spanish pretty well, so he was one of the first Moroccans outside of the university that we could have a reasonable conversation with. At some point, he expressed interest in working on his English, so he and I started meeting twice a week for a few hours at a cafe downtown. The idea was to drink several coffees and conversate in English, and I could give him pointers on conjugation and usage. I've never taught English so I may have done more harm than good. And three quarters of the time we just spoke Spanish since it was much easier. But it still was entertaining.

Since these classes started, Hicham has been asking us to come to his family's house for dinner. So, Monday night we finally took him up on the offer. Samantha, Misty and I met Hicham on the main road and walked with him to his home. We got to meet his mother, father and brother and trade as much Arabic as we could muster. They were all really friendly, and though there were a few silent moments, we actually had some pretty fun conversations, with Hicham staying very busy translating between Spanish and Arabic. The US geography lesson drawn on a napkin was particularly compelling. Hicham's mom also showed us some djellabas and rugs she'd made years ago ... the djellaba that Hicham's dad wears when it's cold was made of wool, took two months to make and he has worn it for fourteen years!

The dinner started off with mint tea, served in the Moroccan style by Hicham's father. After that came Moroccan salad (tomatoes, onions, peppers, vinegar), beef tagine with prunes and a huge plate of couscous with chicken and vegetables. Everything was communal ... there is a formal washing of hands prior to eating, then everyone digs into his/her section of the large serving dish. Bread can be used to pick up food or to clean one's fingers of sauce. The food was EXCELLENT: the tagine was definitely one of the best I've had in Morocco and the couscous was far better than the world famous couscous served at Al Akhawayn every Friday.

* I got a hair cut at the marche a few days ago. It's quite the experience having someone approach you holding wildly snapping shears, with only a thin wall of French vocab to protect you. Sam says I look like 1950's George Harrison. I told the guy I wanted to look like a cross between Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but with Johnny Depp's eyes ... guess something was lost in translation.

* Oranges and tangerines are in season ... I paid 7 dirham (90 cents) for 2 pounds yesterday!!! Also starting to show up at the market are quince and huge gourds.

Chefchaouen

We hung out in Ifrane this past weekend ... our last weekend here!! The weather was gorgeous and sunny. There have been maybe ten to twenty days of clouds and (hard-core) rain since we've been here, but other than that, the sky has been amazingly clear. It gets a bit chilly at night and we've had one morning with a hint of snow on the ground, but Sam and I never need to turn on our heat. We've hypothesized that we get all of the heat from the three floors below us, but it just isn't all that cold. We actually crack our window at night because it's too warm.

But I'm off track: not a lot to report about the weekend past. Took a really nice walk in the hills by Ifrane, had a coffee downtown, and watched some laptop movies on Saturday (Oceans 13, Stardust). Sunday, we headed to Azrou in the morning to hunt down some souvenirs, then came back to Al Akhawayn for a Christmas concert ... not necessarily our bag, but there were choirs from sub-Saharan Africa there to spice things up a bit. It was a pretty cool experience, though it started late and ended very late. We ended up having dinner with our friend Julia downtown around 9:00. Very late dinners, also not our bag.

I need to rewind a little more. TWO weekends ago, we took a pretty awesome trip to a town called Chefchaouen about five hours north of here in the Rif Mountains and about 30 minutes from the Mediterranean. Sam and I were planning on going by public transit (1 hour grand taxi to Fez, four hour CTM bus ride through the mountains to Chefchaouen). However, our friend Ali and his wife Denise (visiting) were over for dinner on Thursday, and said they were heading to Chefchaouen the next day as well. So, Sam canceled her class and ducked out of work early, and we jetted in Ali's car. Ali is Moroccan-American; he's around 55, was born in Morocco and moved to San Francisco when he was 30. He speaks Darija, French and English perfectly. That said, this trip was quite different than the other trips we've taken here since Ali could always communicate with anyone we bumped into, and he understands all of the little cultural nuances as well.

Chefchaouen is a beautiful town; I would definitely recommend it to anyone planning to visit Morocco. The word "chaouen" means "peaks" and "cheef" means "look", thus the name references the two enormous Rif peaks looming above the town. The Andalusian Moors fleeing Spain settled in Chefchaouen (and other areas in northern Morocco), so the medina has the Andalusian-style blue and white paint, much like the kasbah in Rabat. Also, Spanish is more common in the north than French, which, as with Barcelona, was a refreshing change. Another fun fact about Chefchaouen and the surrounding area: marijuana and hash (kif) are the main cash crops here. I read somewhere recently that the term "reefer" is actually a reference to the Rif Mountains. Interestingly, I was offered hash no less than ten times, whereas Sam, Ali and Denise received only one or two offers. Perhaps it was the mullet?

We spent quite a bit of time wandering the Chefchaouen medina ... really a nice place, and little to no hassle. Had some pretty damn tasty food as well (lamb tagine with prunes, pastilla). Perhaps one of the coolest aspects of the trip, however, was the easy access to some good hikes. We took a short hike on Saturday to a ruined mosque high above the city (great views), and on Sunday we made our way to a village called Akchour and hiked about an hour or so to a rock formation called God's Bridge. On the drive, Ali would stop every so often and ask people where the hell Akchour was ... eventually he ended up picking up this man on the side of the road who had come from Tetuan (40 miles away) and was going to visit his friend. This dude decided to not visit his friend and to be our guide for the hike instead. He was wearing a djellaba (a long robe), some worn out sneakers and a stocking cap, he looked like he was aroun 60 or so, had very few teeth ... and he flew up this steep trail like a mountain goat. At one point I took off running, he laughed and chased right behind me. God's Bridge was pretty spectacular, and it was made even more spectacular by the guy who had set up a pseudo-food stand to one side (everything cooked on a wood fire), made us some tea and even cooked me an omelet. We didn't end up eating for several hours afterward, so I was very glad for this omelet.

The trip home was pretty entertaining as well. As with our earlier trip to Marrakech, Ali's persuasive abilities were put into play. He needed to get Denise to the airport in Casablanca for a flight early Monday morning. His plan: drive to Rabat, stay with his nephew there, get up VERY early and drive to Ifrane. Sam and I were PLANNING to take the bus/grand taxi combo back to Ifrane from Chefchaouen, but just never got out of the car. Ali kept suggesting we come along to Rabat, and we were driving through some nice countryside, AND we drove through one town where we could catch the train, and it was seeeedy. So, after five or six hours, we were in Rabat hanging out at this swass restaurant on the ocean. Lots of wine and excellent food consumed. We slept on the couch at Ali's nephew's place, a fairly swass place as well right on the beach, and were up at 4:30 a.m. (yuck!) to drive to Ifrane. No matter how much this early morning sucked, Sam and I agreed this took the place of Marrakech as the coolest trip we took in Morocco. Here be some pictures: Chefchaouen.

Return to Rabat + El Jadida

Falling behind ...

(Some good news: After condensing my thesis from 75 to 30 pages, redoing many of the figures and going through several editing cycles with my adviser, I finally submitted the manuscript to Landscape and Urban Planning on Friday. Now I just have to wait for reviewer comments and pray I can respond to them!)

Two weekends ago I decided to take a long weekend and head to a town called El Jadida south of Casablanca on the coast. Misty was going to Rabat for the weekend with some friends of hers, and Julia was talking about driving to Rabat on Saturday to listen to a band play at a bar there, so the plan was that Sam and I would head to Rabat either on the train or in Julia's car, hang out on Saturday in Rabat, then I would take off Sunday morning on my own down the coast. However, Saturday morning we still hadn't managed to get ahold of Julia (we were getting a message in French on our phone that we were sure was a problem with her phone, but it turned out we were out of credit), Sam decided she didn't really want to deal with public transit to Rabat, so I jumped on the 9:00 bus to Rabat by myself Saturday morning.

(Nothing is heated here, including busses. If you go for a coffee, the people serving you are wearing scarves and hats. The bus was shivering cold until we got down to the valley.) The bus took an exceptionally long time to get to Rabat, for some reason passing through Azrou, which is not normally on the route. Hmmm. I got to Rabat, caught a petit taxi to the city center, got a hotel room, then received a call from Sam saying she and Julia were on the outskirts of Rabat and wanted to meet for lunch!! (I guess I wouldn't be able to relay that little tidbit about heating on busses if I had ridden comfortably with Julia and Sam rather than on the bus, right?) Lebanese food, crepes and several coffees were consumed with zeal. We even had some mediocre Thai food for dinner ... none of the food at this restaurant was great, but the place was really nice and the wine went down well. Sam and Julia headed back to Ifrane around 10:30 p.m.

Sunday morning I hit one of the major sights in Rabat, Le Tour Hassan (The Hassan Tower) before catching the train to El Jadida. The tower is a minaret that was intended to be the largest in the world back in 1200 AD or so, but then the sultan having it built died and the tower was never completed. The thing is still bloody huge. It stands right next to the ruins of a huge mosque that was destroyed in an earthquake back in the day and is now just a great plaza of columns. Opposite Le Tour Hassan across the ruins is the mausoleum of King Mohammad V, the grandfather of the current king. Non-Muslims were actually allowed to enter the mausoleum, which is rare in Morocco ... there was a brilliant coffin in the middle of a room ornately decorated in zellij and wood, and in the corner was a man singing from the Koran.

I got to El Jadida within a few hours of catching my train, caught a petit taxi downtown and grabbed a hotel room one block off the beach. Sort of a bizarre place ... there was a "restaurant" downstairs with a huge door that was closed all day long. When I first arrived, I poked my head in because I thought it was the entrance to the hotel, and everyone stopped and stared at me, old-west-saloon style. My hair is getting sort of unruly, so maybe they'd never seen the starts of a mullet before. The hallway upstairs was pretty dark, and there was a button you could push to turn on a light. However, the button was a little hard to find in the dark, and when one pushed said button, it made a huge cracking sound when the lights came on. Not sure what was going on there. Probably the most worrisome thing about the place was when I went downstairs around 7:00 a.m. Monday morning and found myself locked in with no one around to open the door. I went upstairs and pushed the light button a couple of times hoping the "crack" would locate the owner for me. I think he was showering, and he showed up fairly quickly, but still a little weird.

The strangeness of my hotel aside, El-Jadida was a really good time. I made my way to the Cite Portugaise (Portuguese city) and wandered around the ramparts for a while. The city was the main Moroccan trading center for the Portuguese, and the gate to the ocean is still there, though it was now a backdrop for a vicious game of football. In the center of the city were stairs leading down into the surreal Portuguese cistern underneath the city. Really cool, and apparently used by Orson Welles in his version of Othello. Grabbed some seafood at a roof top terrace (the first fish I've had in months ... not a lot of fish in Ifrane), had some really good ice cream (the first good ice cream I've had in months as well), then hung out on the beach until late. The moon was full and the tide was way out so the beach was huge, and I'm pretty sure I could see the lights of Casablanca up the coast. The beach seemed to be populated primarily by necking Moroccans. Perhaps the anonymity of darkness made these youts feel a little less apprehensive about showing affection in public? It felt a little like hanging out under the boardwalk alone. If Sam had been there, we definitely would have necked.

My plot was to take off on the 8:30 a.m. train, but sitting at a beach side cafe watching the sun rise and drinking some excellent coffees made me dally. I ended up walking the beach, exploring the tide pools and BARELY catching the 10:30 train to Meknes. I decided to jump off the train in Rabat for a couple of hours to grab some more Lebanese food (lunch AND take out for dinner) and visit the ancient necropolis of Chellah, a burial ground built on top of Roman ruins. Pretty nice setting for a falafel sandwich. Got to Meknes in the early evening, enjoyed one of the most terrifying petit taxi rides I've had here, then waited for a good half hour for a grand taxi to Ifrane to fill up, even though I bought two seats to speed the process. My love and I were reunited and there was much rejoicing.

Pictures here: Rabat II and El Jadida.