Today we had yet another busy day in Morocco with a full day in Fez. I can't actually say this trip feels completely like vacation, since we have had at least three days with wake-up calls before 7:00 am and each day we pack as much in as possible. Of course, it is usually not enough for me so I keep conning my mother into going out with me after dinner. Perhaps that is why she is currently at the Hotel Manzeh Zalegh with a cold and I conned Hassan, the assistant bus driver into bringing me up to the internet cafe at 10:00 pm. At first I had just asked him to walk up the hill with me to the 6 dirham/hr cyber cafe (rather than the using the hotels 90 dirham/hr connection) because it is only a few blocks away. After a bunch of rapid fire talking in Arabic between him, his boss, and two other drivers, I ended up getting loaded into a small minibus and driven up the hill. As it turns out, the police would not look well upon Hassan for walking outside with me at night. He is not an identified tour guide and the authorities do not approve of unmarried men and women, particularly a foreign women, walking around under cover of night. I feel a bit awkward now, but I am here.
We started at 9 by meeting a local tour guide, Mohammed, in our bus. We went to Fez's Royal Palace and saw the elaborate 7-gated entrance dating all the way back to 1968. After a bit of bartering for batteries and postcards we were all herded back into the van for a panoramic view of the old Medina from what appeared to be a hilltop garrison.
Since Fez is Morocco's handicraft capital (as well as one of its spiritual capitals) we next taken to a ceramics collective and shown the intensive, 100% non-automated system of making famous Fez ceramics. The gray clay is softened in water by hand with a skinny guy standing in a vat of chalky water, the potter's wheels are turned by foot, all designs are painted by hand, and the pieces of tiles are chipped down to size by a room full of guys with chisels. The tour itself was about half an hour and interesting just for the personality of our store "guide" if for nothing else. While the rest of the group shopped, had things wrapped up, and then left for the old medina, my mother and I spent over an hour with another Aziz who showed us every clay vase over 3 feet in stock. Mom has been looking for something for their house and we finally made both my mother and Aziz very happy people when the deal closed. By contrast, we are not sure what my father's reaction is going to be. The owner of the store took us and the trip leader to one of the entrances to the old Medina where we hustled to meet up with the group.
The rest of the day was spent in the medina and I have to admit that Aziz, our guide, was right. I have been cursing and grumbling to my mother that we should have more free time and that I wanted to shop in the medina alone. "NO!" said Aziz. "I will not let anyone go to the medina alone!" Even seeing it from a bird's eye view and being told that this small walled section of the city was home to half a million people, 380 mosques, and 9000 streets, I could not fathom what we were in for. It was wall to wall people, donkeys, chickens, and small kiosks. The only mode of transportation in and out is with donkeys and horses, so we were constantly listening for "Balak! Attencion!" as inconcievably laden donkeys were pushed through the streets with everything from cases of Coca Cola to untanned sheep skins piled on top. We visited a 9th century islamic school in the heart of the medina, a tannery where the men walk around with bare feet as they haul sheep skins in and out of cement vats of lyme and dye built into the floor. The pathetic springs of mint that they gave us to hold under our noses did nothing against the odor and I am proud that I am a vegetarian but perhaps not as staunch on wearing leather as I ought to be. Lunch was in a gorgeous restaurant tucked into a corner of the medina, and we were all so full and so exhausted from the energy spent walking around the medina that we were all completely uninterested in the rug/carpet coop that we were brought to next.
Uncharacteristically, Mom and I decided to pack it in and go back to the hotel after this rather than staying with our local guide in the medina, and it was a good choice as we got to rest, clean up, and finally find an internet cafe for a few hours. Ayla from the troupe called while I was at internet and it was great to hear her voice! The gang is getting geared up for a weekend of workshops with Astryd Farah deMichele in Winston-Salem and I can hardly believe I am not there to help pull it off!
Dinner was interesting...OAT arranges to have at least one in-home meal with a local Moroccan family. We were picked up at 7:30 by Abdullah, a 40ish man who works as an inspector of Arabic teachers in several regional school districts.
More to come....
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