From Ruins to Riads in Rabat (9.29.07)

After I sat in on a repeat of the arabic lesson with the newcomers (I am serious about trying to learn some arabic!), we all piled into the bus with our cameras and comfortable shoes to start the city tour of Rabat by bus. First stop was the Royal Palace.

Morocco's independence from France was gained in 1956 with the return of King Mohammed V from exile and since then it has been a monarchy with supreme power being wielded by the king but largely governed by its parliament. Mohammed V was beloved. His son Hassan II, who reigned from 1961-1999, was apparently not particularly popular (though I bet every city has a Hassan II Blvd) though the current king, Mohammed VI, is fast becoming a country favorite. He is more of a "prince of the people" who prefers to live in his childhood home rather than moving into expansive digs at the Royal Palace, and who married a computer engineer that he met in an on-line chat room and developed a relationship with without revealing to her that he was the king. We were told that he is extremely progressive in his policies helping to expand the family code for laws relating to women's rights, and his wife is the first wife of a king ever seen in public. Previously all king's wives (and they had several), were kept sequestered in the castle away from public view.

We saw the Royal Mosque where the king and his family worship for Friday prayers, and took pictures of the Royal Guard and other sundry armed guards on duty outside the palace gates.
Next stop was the ancient Roman city of Sala Colonia and the Merinid necropolis of Chellah. UPon first glance it appears to be an abandoned outcropping of crumbling orange rock. As we walked through we learned that it was inhabited by Romans in AD40 and then was resettled in the 14th century by Abou al-Hassan. We saw his grave site as well as remains of a 14th cent. islamic school. I think my favorite part of the place (in addition to the breathtaking remains themselves) were the cats. Early on in Aziz's lecture I was distracted by a friendly little patchwork cat which I ended up picking up and carrying around with me for a while. Shortly thereafter we stopped by a tomb of an Islamic "saint" and Aziz squatted down and called "mish mish". Suddenly at least 30-40 cats appeared from behind one of the ruins and from then on we had at least 1 skinny mangy cat for the duration of our visit.

Following this tour was a trip to the Mausoleum of Mohammed V (reign 1956-1961) and Hassan II (1961-1999) and the unfinished minaret and abandoned pillars of a grand mosque planned by an Almohad sultan in 1195. A quick jaunt through the white and blue streets of the Kasbah des Oudaies, the site of the original Ribat in the 10th century, and we were ready for lunch by the seaside. We made another quick trip through Rabat's small Archeology Museum that houses artifacts from the Roman ruins in Volubilis among other sites. I ended up walking through the museum with Ria and John, a Dutch couple living in the US, and the curator of the museum who explained the various cups, bowls, and Roman statues in a mixture of broken Arabic and French that I strangely understood.

Afternoon was hot, though I attempted a run (in shorts!) but made it back just in time for our lecture/discussion with a young Rabati woman on women's issues in Morocco. We learned about the Moroccan family code which gave men the right to have 4 wives and to divorce their wives verbally and denied women the right to ask for a divorce until as recently as 2004. There are currently more women than men in Moroccan universities (all paid for by the government) and after 2004 women have the right to inherit, ask for divorce, and pursue any profession, among other things. One of the most appalling aspects of the code is that a man's word is taken at face value, but a woman must have witnesses or documented proof of physical abuse or an affair as grounds for a divorce. Most marriages are not arranged in the traditional sense of the word, but family approval is still paramount.

On this our second day together we had our welcome dinner at a wonderful restuarant tucked into one of the tiny alleys running through center city. One minute you are walking along grimy narrow lanes with yellow mud-brick walls on either side, and then next minute you turn into a wooden doorway and are in an amazing tiled courtyard with Moorish art and architecture surrounding you. Sitting rooms expand off the central atrium which is open to the stars. In this restaurant we were served in "Old Arab" style - most of the serving staff were dark-skinnedand dressed in traditional robes and headcoverings. We started the meal by having our hand washed in rose water and ended it by being sprinkled with fragrant rose and rosemary. I took several photos of the place and have decided that it is going to be the inspiration for the interior of my next home, should I ever be able to afford it.

I know this post is long, but these OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) days are long and jam-packed and I just HAVE to write about the rest of my evening. While everyone else went to bed, my mother and I camped out in the lobby of the hotel to do some internet. The previous night in the hotel I befriended the evening clerk, Mehdi, who helped us with the internet. This evening when he got off work he asked me if I was interested in seeing the hotel's Salon de The. The Hotel le Dawliz appears to be a low-slung, sprawling affair of mostly abandoned side-ventures, including a pool hall and a disco. I was really surprised when we went out of the hotel, turned a left, headed up some stairs, and were in a nightclub/cafe busting at the seams with at least 200 people crammed into small wicker and glass furniture and enjoying a live 6-person band jamming with popular Moroccan music. All week we have mostly seen modest Moroccan women with their children or parents in the streets wearing jelabas and hijabs and keeping their distance from the men. Thus I was a little taken aback when I saw the 20-something young women in tight jeans, off-the-shoulder cropped t-shirts standing next to their tables shaking their rear ends. It was really cool and I definitely felt out of place in my tourist zip-off pants and tevas.

Mom and I finished up internet at around 1:30 am, which only gave us 5 hours of sleep in preparation for the next day's 6:30 am wake up call. So far, this touring business is going to be hard work!!!

The OAT group expands (and moves to Rabat)

On Friday morning the additional travellers for the "Moroccan Odyssey" arrived shell-shocked and jet-lagged from the US at around 11:30 am. Though I had been hoping for another mother-daughter pair based on the names we had in our trip materials, what we had are two 40ish cousins by marriage, and a pair of 70ish sisters from Wisconsin. I am very sad to report that I am by far the youngest person on the trip and people have inquired as to whether I am still in college or not. Hah!

It took an hour to get out of Casablanca with the stop and start traffic and unique local traffic laws (lane lines mean absolutely nothing-if 4 cars can fit in 2 lanes, so be it. And if you can get a moped in there as well, all the better). It was another 1.5 hour drive north to Rabat which has been the capital of Morocco since 1956. After being landlocked among the smog and noise of Casablanca, Rabat was a breath of fresh air. Rabat (from "Ribat" meaning fortress-monastery) was settled as far back as the 8th century BC and has been an important settlement for Phonecians, Romans, and several Moroccan dynasties.

We drove straight into town through wide boulevards and avenues, turned onto a road just on the edge of the rocky Atlantic coast, and unpacked our bags at a hotel just across the Oued Bou Regreg Estuary in Rabat's sister city, Sale. After being conditioned to think that oceanfront property is prime real estate worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it was somewhat strange to see dilapidated houses and tenements lining the road overlooking the sea.

After lunch and settling into our gorgeous new hotel, we all piled into the bus again for a short walk through the city's medina in which we saw butchers with pigs heads, fresh turtles, garland after garland of dried figs, and hundreds of other items hanging from every nook and cranny. We walked through part of the city to see the Reserve Bank and took pictures from the Mohammed V Blvd of a landmark mosque, the Sunna Mesjid. Evening for me was spent mucking around trying to get photos posted, taking a short walk around the hotel, and making friends with the hotel staff. They are the only ones under 40!

On Saturday we have a big day around Rabat, so stay tuned.

Return to Casablanca

Just to give everyone a sense of our activities over the past two days, on Thursday we were up bright and early to board the small bus back to Casablanca. Though we were in the bus by 8:30, we didn't roll back into the Ramada Almohades until 4:30. The drive was mostly uneventful, driving through kilometer upon kilometer of brown and dusty fields that look like they were blanketed with a layer of canteloupe-sized rocks. One version of the story is that this is partly how Morocco got its name (Mo' Rocks), but I am not convinced. Throughout all the fields are groups of goats, sheep, and their attendant humans and the landscape is broken by hundreds of walls built from piles of the rocks. It is amazing that so many rocks can go into all the walls and yet the number of rocks left behind is still astronomical. I am not sure what the goats and sheep are eating, unless they are licking the salt off the rocks. There really is nothing out there.

Out of the blue we pulled up beside what looked like white-washed concrete shed. I saw the blind-folded camel first. It was in the shed tethered to grinding stones and was walking circles around the giant concrete pestle. Then I noticed the olives in a huge pile outside. This man and his family buy the olives (all colors) from local growers when the government determines that they are ready for sale. He and his camel grind them up, then the mash is placed in a series of bamboo baskets and pressed with a huge slab of metal. The resulting oil is filtered, residue is allowed to settle, and then sold to passersby, restaurants, and wholesalers alike.
Lunch was in a picturesque cafe overlooking El Jedida, then another 4 hours of driving through similar brown landscapes until Casablanca.

I was feeling claustrophobic, so I conned Mom into taking a taxi back to the Corniche with me once we got back to Casablanca. 5:00 pm is clearly the time for PT for health-conscious Moroccans as the pavement overlooking the Atlantic was full with people of all ages out for a run. How they do it without eating all day is beyond me. I was amazed when we turned a corner off the Corniche to an area of the coast that actually had a beach. Goal and boundary lines had been drawn in the sand and literally hundreds of young men were out playing a final match. We grabbed our taxi home before the streets cleared out at 6:30 when people went to break the fast and had our own dinner in the hotel at 7:30.

After dinner, I asked Aziz to take my mother and I to the Hassan II mosque to see the nightly prayers. I have a very limited understanding of Islam, but Aziz explained that the Quran is 62 chapters and every night during Ramadan the imams read two chapters so that they finish by the end of Ramadan. The plaza outside the mosque was teeming with people of all ages. While the adults were either milling about in conversation or standing/kneeling in prayer, the children were running around and generally enjoying the very festive and communal feeling of Ramadan. We will be sharing a meal at an imam's home later on in the trip, so I sure I will learn more about the faith then.

Our last activity of the night (while everyone else was surely asleep), was to join Aziz up in the Moroccan-styled restaurant of the Almohades hotel where there was a four-piece band. Musicians playing oud, violin, keyboard, and doumbek performed both traditional Berber songs as well as Om Koulthum songs including 'Lissa Fakher' and another Egyptian traditional song 'Khalouny shufek'. Aziz hopped up at some point to take both the oud for a few songs and the doumbek for another few before passing the drum on to me (a disaster). Clearly I need a few more lessons with Omid or Karim. We packed it up around 10:30 in order to rest before meeting the rest of the OAT group tomorrow morning.

Video of wandering minstrals in Essaouira

Mom and I were eating lunch at a street cafe when these men showed up and started to play. As soon as they left, the music store around the corner started blasted out Natacha Atlas' "Mon Amie La Rose." It was a bit of a surreal experience. ;-)

Two more days in Essaouira

Ach! I have so much to write and so little time to write it, particularly since I have to download, edit, then upload photos again into the blog. Suffice it to say that things are looking up...I haven't spent all my money yet (though I did splurge and actually buy a piece of Moroccan furniture.) I am saddle sore, but that is good news since it happened on a two-hour horse back ride in which I found myself standing in a saddle as the horse and I flew down deserted beaches outside of Essaouira at full gallop. And the last little bit of good news is that I haven't been hospitalized yet for a stomach bug. Woo hoo.

Tuesday started out with a city tour by our guide Aziz, who took us through the port to see the fishermen and the wholesalers coming to buy fish. We wandered through both the touristy streets and the "local" streets and ended up at a buttress overlooking the ocean. The Portugese left the biggest mark upon Essaouira several hundred years ago and the main part of the medina is/was heavily fortified. The city is crawling with stray cats, beggars, hippie French nationals, and old whizened fishermen. After the morning tour we branched out on our own so that I could finally get some vegetable couscous for lunch and then we starting looking through the souks, though it wasn't until Wednesday that we actually opened up our wallets. The non-tourist streets were absolutely packed with people from 5:15-6:00 pm as husbands and wives were out buying the food for the meal to break the fast. We inched along the edge of the street hanging on to each other and trying to avoid the carts full of vegetables pushing through the throng with cries of "Labak!" (warning). The streets cleared out by 6:30 as people rush home to break the fast. At that point I enjoyed the night air by going for a nightly run, which was soon offset by a lovely Italian meal in which the Moroccan waiter used the words "autodidact" and "physionomy" in casual conversation with me. This whole country has a real talent for languages. The entire country speaks both Moroccan Arabic and French along with their native tongue which is usually a form of Berber. Then on top of that they learn English and Standard Arabic and probably a smattering of other things. Amazing!

On Wednesday the bus took us to the countryside to see a real authentic weekly market in which men travel hours by donkey to come purchase vegetables, pots, and livestock from traveling salesmen. From there we went to a woman's collective in which they harvest the oil of the argan nut (see photo of goat looking for food in the argan tree) for food oils and cosmetic creams. I actually bought some cream for use in my hair thinking that it would calm the frizz. Now it just looks like I haven't washed my hair for a week since it is so greasy. ;-0!

After lunch Mom and I were picked up for our horseback ride at Ranch de Diabat and after the galloping on the beach I attempted to converse with the guide in Arabic, since he knew no English and I know zero French. Where is my sister when I need her!? In the evening we went back to stores that we had seen yesterday and unfortunately now have to figure out how we are going to get everything home. Its all good.
Tomorrow we are back to Casablanca to pick up the rest of the tour group who didn't do the "pre-trip" and then on to Rabat. I will write more then!