Morocco

After 3 very long days of traveling I made it to, through, and home from Morocco. Best way to describe it would be to say that it was definitely an experience.

I took the trip through a travel company here called Discover Sevilla that caters towards American college students with three other girls from my program (Natalie, Emilee, and Jenna). I left my apartment around 4:30 am on Friday morning because our bus was leaving at 5:15 am and I had a bit of a walk. We took the bus to Tarifa, a port town on the southern coast of Spain about 2.5 hours from Sevilla and then caught a 9 am ferry from Tarifa to Tangiers. The ferry ride was a lot of fun, but very bumpy. The boat traveled through the area of water near the Straight of Gibraltar where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, so the water was very rough. The views were great, I was able to get some good pictures. We docked in Tangiers around 9 am (Morocco is an hour behind Spain), deboarded, and got back on the bus. Automatically cultural differences were everywhere - for example, we were not permitted to take pictures at the port (I never found out why); also, the dress was very conservative and the majority of the women wore the traditional head scarves.

We got back on the bus around 10:00 am and then set off for Rabat, the administrative capital of Morocco, situated right on the Atlantic coast. The trip took about 2.5 hours and we got into Rabat just in time for lunch. The trip was all-inclusive, so they had already arranged our meal for us at a restaurant right on the beach. It seemed pretty nice to me, and we got the impression that it was easily one of the nicer places in the city because they had a table of photographs of famous people who had eaten there and one of the photos was of Obama. The food was different but really good - they served us some giant pastry filled with chicken and cous cous and topped with powdered and brown sugars. After lunch we walked around the beach for a little while, which was beautiful. The coast was jagged with large rock walls that stretched hundreds of yards out into the ocean. After the beach, we headed toward the center square of the city, which included the mosque, the mausoleum of Mohammad V, and the tower from which the daily prayer is called. Muslims are supposed to pray at five specific times throughout the day and when we got to the square it was at the time of one of the calls, which was a really cool thing to witness. We weren't allowed in the mosque, but we toured the mausoleum, which was very elaborate and very beautiful.

After our tour of the square we went to an old Castle/Fort in the city that overlooked the ocean. It was all outdoors and walking through the castle led straight to the Medina (old islamic city). The Medina in Rabat was awesome to walk through - it consisted entirely of alleyways of whitewashed buildings with light blue paint splashes and accents. When we got through the Medina we got to the edge of the fort that had some great views of the Atlantic. Again my pictures turned out great. The castle/medina concluded the tour of Rabat. We got back on the bus and drove to Fez, the "cultural capital" of Morocco. The trip took about 3 hours. We checked into our hotel in Fez, which was really nice, and then went straight upstairs to the hotel restaurant for dinner. We ate some kind of green soup that sort of tasted like broccoli cheddar and then a plate of rice, vegetables, and chicken in some kind of weird sauce. Again, different but really good. After dinner everyone was so exhausted that we more or less fell straight into bed.

The next morning Natalie and I met Jenna and Emilee for breakfast in the hotel restaurant at 8 am. The restaurant was at the top floor of our hotel and had glass windows all around, so there was a great view of the city and the surrounding Reef Mountains. At 9:00 we all got on the bus and started our tour of Fez. We started out at the Royal Palace, where the King Mohammad VI was currently residing. The palace was cool, an ideal example of Islamic architecture. After that we walked a little through the old Jewish quarter, which really wasn't anything special. Then we got back on the bus and drove to the Medina, which was the main stop of our tour of Fez.

The Medina of Fez was easily the craziest place I have ever been in my life, if only for the incredible culture shock that it caused. It consists of over 9,600 alleyways, the widest of which were just a foot or two longer than my wingspan, that twist into a dark labyrinth that is absolutely impossible to navigate. Luckily we had a guide, though I still don't know how anyone could ever learn their way around. Imagine the opening scene of Aladdin when he is trying to escape after stealing the bread - I'm convinced now that Disney modeled that scene after the Medina. Stores, workshops, and street vendors were spilling out everywhere and at least once every 1-2 minutes a man pulling a donkey carrying a load as wide as the alley itself would come marching through. It was absolute madness.

We made 4 stops in the Medina. The first was at a carpet store where they served everyone mint tea and showed us all of the differences between different Moroccan carpets. It sounds dull but it was actually really cool. Natalie and I went back into the room where the women were weaving the rugs and they were so nice - they immediately scooted over, had us sit down, and taught us how to weave a carpet. Unfortunately they only spoke French and Arabic (most people that we came in contact with in Morocco spoke at least 4 languages), so we couldn't really communicate with them much. Our second stop was at a fabric store where they made clothing, linens, and scarves. Everything was beautiful, but the salesmen were obnoxiously pushy so I didn't buy anything. After the fabric store we went to lunch at a restaurant in the Medina; the food was awesome here. They gave us so much of it that I won't even try to describe it because that would be a blog entry in itself, and this one is going to be way too long anyway.

After lunch our third stop was at the leather tannery, one of the most famous places in the Medina. We went into the store and straight up 5 flights of stairs that looked over the tannery from above. It was open-air and consisted of hundreds of deep clay tubs built out of the ground and filled with different dyes. After the leather was taken from the animal, cleaned, and tanned it is brought into the store and made into every kind of leather good you can imagine to be sold. After the tannery we made our last stop at a spice store, which was probably my favorite place. The owner demonstrated how they made everything from cooking spices to perfumes to medicinal remedies; it was almost like watching an old witch doctor.

We were in the Medina more or less all day and I left with mixed emotions. When I first got there it was so unlike anything I had ever seen before, which was thrilling in a lot of ways. It turned out to be a very guilded first impression, however, because as the day wore on a lot of the negative aspects started to cloud my initial excitement. For one, the poverty factor was a lot to take in. All of the buildings (if you can even call them that) were completely decrepit. Easiest way to describe it would be to tell you to go see Slumdog Millionaire and pay close attention to the opening scene when the boys are running through the slum; the Medina was the same. There were beggars at every corner and it became much worse in the afternoon when school let out and all of sudden children were asking for money. In many ways I felt I was thrown into a time warp; it was a civilization completely foreign to me. Secondly, the men were so rude and disgusting, the harassment didn't stop all day. It was only verbal and by no means did I ever feel unsafe, it just got so annoying to listen to. By the time I left I felt completely drained mentally.
We went back to the hotel and had about an hour and a half before dinner, during which Natalie and I just relaxed in the room. After dinner we hung out with Emilee and Jenna for a little while before going to bed.

The next day was a very long one travelwise. We left Fez around 8:30 for Assilah, a small fishing village on the Atlantic coast. The bus ride took forever, we didn't get to Assilah until 1:00. Before we got off our tour directors told us something that again painted the reality of life in Morocco- they told us that if we talked to anyone we should not tell them that we were going to Spain because of the probability that they would use us to get on the bus so that they could get out of the country. That said, once we got to Assilah we just kept to ourselves. They provided us with picnic lunches, so we headed straight for the beach. Assilah's coastline was very similar to Rabat's, only more beautiful and more dramatic. We ate our lunches on the rocks that sat high above the water and spent the afternoon exploring the coast and the village. The town itself was very pretty, much like the Medina in Rabat with the whitewashed and blue buildings. I saw two things I've never seen before - a herd of camels and a man with a monkey on a leash.

We left Assilah at 3:30 and headed to Tangiers to catch the ferry back to Spain. On the way there the tour directors warned us again in regards to the possibility that some Moroccans would be trying to sneak out of the country and into Spain and that it could get slightly hectic as we got closer to Tarifa. They weren't kidding - when we were about 30 minutes from Tangiers a group of younger teenage boys started running down the bus, jumped onto the back bumper, and hung onto the outside while the bus was moving full speed down the highway. Every now and then they would have to jump off because of a passing police officer, but the trend continued more or less the whole way there. At one point there were five boys hanging on the back of the bus. It was both absolutely insane and heartbreaking to witness to think of how tough life must be that they would be so desperate to get to Spain. From what we learned on the trip the immigration problems with Morocco and Spain are similar to those of Mexico and the United States.

The trip back had multiple delays that added up and by the time we got back to Sevilla it was after 1:00 in the morning. All in all, the trip was incredible in every sense of the word and I am so glad that I went. It was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life and though it sounds so cliche, it really demonstrated how many blessings I have in my life. I'm not sure if I would go back to Morocco or not but being there made me want to travel to Subsaharra Africa more than ever before. I was completley exhausted by the end of it all - let's just say I didn't make it to my 9:30 class on Monday morning.

Now I'm back in Sevilla and the weather is cold and rainy again, so everyone is pretty much spending their time being lazy, myself included. I'm going to Granada, another city in Southern Spain, this week through a trip that the UNC program arranges for everyone. My roommate, who is in a different track of the program, went a few weeks ago and had an incredible time so I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be back to update after that. Miss and love you all - adios!