MOROCCO!!!

I’m back from Africa!! The past four days in Morocco was such an incredible experience, one that I would not trade for anything. I’ll try to capture everything for you.

Thursday, 8:30pm (April 2): I had my final midterm of the week today (History, really difficult, don’t want to talk about it), and then I was free for Spring Break! We just left the Granada bus station to head to Algeciras and have officially begun our journey to Morocco. Holy crap, I am going to Africa! Right now I have a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and shear panic. I have to keep reminding myself that if it wasn’t safe and a great experience, it wouldn’t be included in the cost of the program. I have lots of tissue/toilet paper and found some hand sanitizer, so at least I am prepared in that important aspect!

Friday, 8:30pm (April 3): Oh my goodness, I don’t even know where to begin. After we arrived in Algeciras our Morocco guides, Rick and Ben, took us to our hostel for the night (we spent the night in Spain and would cross the border in the morning). This morning we walked to the ferry station and ate breakfast at the cafeteria there. Eventually we got our passports stamped (yay! That’s one thing I don’t like about not having to do customs within the European Union, no stamps to all those countries you visit) and got on the ferry to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. We went out on the deck for a little while during the crossing but it was crazy windy and we kept getting sprayed by ocean water. I am in Ben’s group, a group of 15 girls, and he gave us a little bit of info on the way over.
Once we landed in Tangier, Morocco we put our backpacks on a 15 passenger bus and went to exchange money (about 11 Durhams for 1 Euro). Then we took the bus into the city (Tangier) and went to an open food market. I don’t even think words can explain that. The fruits stands were gorgeous but the piles and piles of different colored olives were my favorite. The meat was another story. How many chickens were just killed and plucked today? But the worst were the skinned lamb heads just chilling in a pile on a counter. Ben got us fruit, olives, and water for snacks the rest of the day.
Then we walked to the DARNA women’s center (a place for abused/single/poor women to go during the day and take various classes on textile skills to help their chances in the work force) and talked with two Muslim girls and a guy for a while. It was really interesting and we learned a lot about the culture and religion, also touching a lot on women’s rights in Morocco and how they are changing for the better little by little. We ate lunch there after having a tour of the facility and had couscous with chicken and veggies, which I really enjoyed. Good initial experience of Moroccan food.
After we left we got back on the bus for a while. I fell asleep and when I woke up we were on the side of the road next to a beach and there were CAMELS! I got to ride a camel on the Atlantic coast in Africa! Be jealous. It was so much fun and a little scary when they are standing up and laying back down, but I did not fall.
Then we drove along the coast forever, stopping for a short paseo (walk) through Asilah, which had a gorgeous lookout point over the ocean, and ened up in the city of Rabat. We are staying with families here in Rabat for two days and I am with Tosha and Sara. Our host mother, Semmar, is really nice but keeps speaking to us in French, convinced we understand! Dinner was really good (soup called harira, bread, crepes, olives, apples, and strawberries), and I definitely decided that I like Moroccan food. We found out that another American girl from New York, Meghan, is stay with the family for a few months and volunteering as an English teacher. When she got here she was able to explain some things to us and help translate because she knows some French.

Saturday 11:15pm (April 4): So pretty much every guy’s dream of a girl’s locker room came true tonight when we did the public bathing, called a Hammam. Basically we all wore bathing suit bottoms, but no tops, and went into a tiled steam room with buckets of hot water. We sat on the floor and used the buckets to wash our hair first. Then we used soap that looked like soy sauce packets that the place had given us and let it soak into our skin for about ten minutes, but you could soap up your own back so we had a nice train of soaping up each other going on! After rinsing off we used exfoliating scrubbies to get rid of dead skin, again making a scrubbing train to make sure all the backs got done. We were in there for about an hour, it felt so refreshing and clean. It was also nice that it was just our group of 15 in there for the majority of the time (at the end of the hour two Moroccan ladies came in with their small child, all dressed quite similar to us). Apparently the Moroccan women do this process once or twice a week for their bathing. It also seems like it would be a great time to socialize for them.
This morning we went to a university and a female professor spoke with us about women’s rights (a popular topic for us) and education in Morocco. Not going to lie, I was feeling pretty crappy and found this pretty boring. But I did buy a book written by another professor there about views of Islam and culture, hopefully it will be interesting. He even autographed them all for us, too bad I can’t read Arabic.
Then we went to visit the Roman ruins of Chellah, which were pretty cool. I’m generally a big fan of ruins. There were ruins of a mosque, tombs of ancient sultans, and an eel pond. By the eel pond there was an old man selling hard boiled eggs. According to legend, women with fertility problems would buy eggs and throw pieces into the pond. If the eel ate your egg piece(s) it was suppose to bring you luck with bearing children.
We returned to our homes after stopping at an ancient mosque that was begun in the late 12th century and the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V. The sultan who started the construction of the mosque died four years after work was begun and out of respect for him it was never finished (this didn’t really make sense to me because I think you should finish something out of respect for someone, but whatever) and there had been an earthquake in the late 20th century that had caused a lot of damage. Basically it had a minaret (a tower in every mosque that is used for the call to prayer) of 40 meters high, although it was to be 60 meters high, and tons and tons of pieces of columns in a large open area. Ben told us people still come here to do their prayers and the whole area is packed on Fridays, the Muslim holy day. There was also a beautiful mausoleum nearby that we got to go in; I absolutely love Muslim art. In there are the tombs of the current king’s (Mohammed VI) father, uncle, and grandfather
At home we had couscous for lunch, very similar to the kind we ate in Tangier yesterday. There was also a large glass bottle of coke, with Arabic labels, and fruit. Then we got to spend some time in small groups with some Moroccan students that spoke English. We walked all over the old Medina (old city) through the markets and out into the city. Almost everyone ended up as this pool bar and we had tea and cokes together. It was really cool talking with students our age about different cultures, beliefs, daily life, etc. They were all so interested in the US and traveling since it is so difficult for Moroccans to leave their country, they have to have a visa to leave and it is impossible to obtain one without tons of money. While we were walking around I got a henna tattoo on my right hand/arm. The lady did it SO fast and it was so pretty; I had to be really careful for about ½ an hour though while it dried. It was a little weird at first because the paint comes out of a syringe, so I was a little freaked out when a lady came at me initially with a one of those.
Then we met with Jess, a Fulbright Scholar here working on a topic about abortion in Morocco, and Darren, a former Peace Corps officer in Chad and Morocco. After listen to all the interesting things they had to say we went to the Hammam. After bathing we ate dinner with Meghan and our host mother at home. We had soup (kinda like pea soup?), bread, laughing cow cheese (!), salad, and a strawberry/orange juice/smoothie drink.

Sunday 8:30am (April 5)
This morning we left our homestay family after having breakfast (1/2 coffee, ½ milk drink and baguettes with jam). Before we left the house Semmar gave us each a piece of paper with her name, email, and phone number for “if we return,” the verb she used in French sounded like the verb “to return” in Spanish so I understood that one (Meghan was sleeping so we were on our own).
Being in Morocco has made me a little frustrated with my host family in Spain who were very against us going on this trip. I’ve felt very safe here, the hosts are very kind, hospitable, and intelligent (fluent in at least 2 languages), and the houses were bigger and cleaner than our Spanish piso. And they did have a western toilet, not a hole in the dirt in the backyard my host mother and sister told me I would be using, ha! I do really want to take an introductory French class right now after this experience.
So some random things I’ve learned about Morocco:
-The only piece of law that makes it an Islamic country is the incorporation of the “Family Code” from the Coran.
-A man is now limited to 4 wives, whereas he use to be able to have as many as he could afford. Now he must ask permission from the 1st wife to take a 2nd wife and he is still obligated to care for her. They often take 2nd wives if there are fertility issues with the first, and apparently it will be the 1st wife that encourages her husband to find another wife to continue on the family with.
-About polygamy: the Coran says you must be just will all your wives and love and treat them equally, but that you will not be able to. Apparently a lot of people just ignore this last phrase.
-There are 3 things you are forbidden (punishable by law) to speak badly about: Allah, the country, and the king
-A Muslim man can marry any woman he wants but a muslim woman is forbidden from marrying anyone but a muslim man, because religion is passed down from the father and this ensure the children will be Muslim.
-Moroccans are technically not allowed to date but they do anyway
-Turkish toilets = porcelain hole in ground with food stands, squatting (praying to God you don’t pee on yourself or fall over), and pouring water down the hole to flush. They do have western toilets, but we did encounter some Turkish ones.

Monday 11:30am (April 6)
We just crossed the border back into the Spanish city of Ceuta and I, as well as a lot of other people in my group, feel pretty ashamed to be Americans. At the border there was a horrendously long line of Moroccans pushing, shoving, and crowding at one window hoping to get their passports stamped. When the window we were suppose to go to was closed to police just held them up and allowed us to cut ahead of everyone to get stamped. When I got up to the window a Moroccan man, who had definitely been waiting hours longer than I had been, put his passport through the window. The police man nearby yanked it out of the window and told me to go ahead. Then we had to cross the street to get into a very pushy line to show our stamp and actually be allowed to cross the border. The police were very slow scrutinizing everyone’s passport and even rejected some people and made them turn around and leave. But when any of us got up there they barely looked at the “USA” and let us through. It was so sad; the police even said “Americans first” to a few Spanish women trying to enter into a Spanish city!?!? This is not how things should be; it is just so unfair and people are definitely not treated equally. I feel like people hate us, and rightly so; I would hate us too if I had to be on the other side of this.
6pm: Yesterday after leaving Rabat we drove a few hours to the Rif Mountains. I really enjoyed the long drives to our destinations. Besides one shanty town we passed, it was always really beautiful to just sit and look out at the countryside. On the way up a mountain we stopped and picked up our translator and went to a village to visit one of the sisters of the other group’s translator and her husband, Hammid. The house was not a hut as “villages” tend to be portrayed; it was actually quite nice, cool, and comfortable (all 17 of us were able to fit comfortably), minus the Turkish toilet, which I’ve actually gotten pretty ok at. We sat down and had snacks of bread, cheese, and veggies and then ate the couscous the sister prepared. While eating we talked with the family about their life. He had bought a van with his brother and they have a “shuttle service” business of taking people, goats, whatever, from the city to the village. Also, he and his father built the house in only a month. It was such a pretty day and we went for a walk up into the surrounding mountains. We walked up to a high peak and looked down over a valley, it was incredible. Thankfully I managed to abstain from falling although heights are definitely not my thing. We took a group photo up on the mountain, the Central College students are going for getting the cover of the program’s brochure, so we’ll see about that. After we left the village we drove some more north to Chefchaouen. When we first got to Morocco we drove south along the Atlantic Coast and now driving back north we’re going through the mountains.
In Chefchaouen we took all our stuff from the van and walked through the medina and checked into our hostel for the night. We had free time from about 6:30pm until we met for dinner at 9pm to wander through the medina and all the shops/markets. I discovered that I am crazy good at haggling, just don’t be afraid to say no and walk away and they usually give stuff to you for the price you want. I got some earrings, a skirt, a ring made of camel bone, and a plate. The last shop that Bridgette, Sara, and I went to was owned by two brothers, Abdellah and Bruce, that are friends of Ben. They were so nice and chatty and had a stay a while for tea. Abdellah speaks 7 languages (Arabic, French, English, German, Italian, Russian, and Japanese) and travels all the time (clearly he has money). He got very excited to hear that I live in Texas because he is going to his home in Juarez, Mexico this summer and invited me to come hang out. Although he also asked me to be one of his women, I respectfully declined that offer.
We ate dinner as a group in a restaurant in the Medina. I had harira soup, vegetable pastel, and goat’s yogurt with honey for dessert. After dinner we went back to the hostel and went up on the roof for some “reflection time.” It was nice to be able to share about everyone’s thoughts and experiences about the trip since we haven’t been able to do that yet. Ben gave us all presents, musk to make things (like your sock drawer) smell nice and desert rose stones created by extreme temperatures in the Sahara.
This morning we left the hostel at 6:50am for a walk to an ancient and abandoned mosque on a mountain across from the town. Again, gorgeous view. The town is painted white and blue and looks really similar to the Albyzin in Granada. We sat up there and ate breakfast that we had brought along and then all climbed up into the minaret. Then we returned to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, headed to the van, and drove to Ceuta (which is a Spanish city on the African continent, so we entered into Spain while still in Africa).
At Ceuta we had to get out and walk to the border because our driver wasn’t allowed across. Then we dealt with the awfulness of the border that I already explained. Once in Ceuta we took taxis to the ferry station and got on the ferry right before it took off at 3pm (Spain time, Morocco is 2 hours behind). This crossing seemed much shorter than the first, but I had to take some Dramamine because I was getting pretty dizzy. We said our goodbyes to Rick and Ben because they would have to run off the boat to try to make their 3:50pm train to Granada (Rick lives in Granada and Ben was coming to visit for Semana Santa). We were not in such a rush because our bus to Granada wasn’t until 5:45pm, so we got off the ferry and walked to the bus station. When we got there at 4:15pm Rick and Ben were sitting inside; they’d missed their train and were taking our bus, so we all just hung out in the bus station for a while.
Some things that I have learned from my Morocco trip:
-Bring tissues and hand sanitizer everywhere
-Go to the bathroom and fill up your water bottle wherever you can because you never know when the next opportunity will be.
-How to be flexible and get (way) out of my comfort zone
-For the most part, negative stereotypes of Moroccans are ridiculously unwarranted.
-It is very difficult for Moroccans to leave their country. Visas are impossible to obtain unless they are rich. They are so intelligent but so restricted.
-Life is so unjust. Americans are spoiled. The first page in our passports even say in a nutshell “let me through without any questions/problems.”

Tuesday (April 7)
When we got home from the bus station last night Whitney and I were quarantined by the Isabels. We walked into the piso and they told us to leave everything in the bathroom and immediately shower. I sat in the living room with the family (because I wasn’t allowed in our bedroom) while Whitney showered. During this time little Isabel (age 43) began berating me with all her negative opinions and stereotypes about Morocco. This actually surprised me because I would have thought big Isabel (age 71) would have been the one to be more prejudice but she really wasn’t. So little Isabel and I have pretty much the best debate of my life (in Spanish), pretty sure it’s safe to say that I won. I just tried to explain to her that we spoke to a lot of Moroccan women who believe they do have some rights, not as much as Americans or Spaniards, but little by little they are gaining them. How the Moroccan king should not be considered the dictator she believes he is, how the people are very intelligent, and how poverty exists in EVERY country, even the “wonderful” United States. Mom you would have been so proud of me, I was SO angry at all the unnecessary prejudice, stereotypes, and refusal to listen, but I did not yell or scream at anyone, ha ha ha! I really think she just didn’t expect me to disagree with her because usually when they rant and rave about some global issue Whitney and I just listen and say “ok.” But this I really felt strongly about, having had some first hand experience, and refused to just sit by. Today little Isabel has not mentioned anything about the Morocco trip.
After the cleansing/quarantine process was complete Whitney and I met up with Cassandra and her parents, who arrived a couple days ago, at our favorite kebab place for dinner. We visited with them for a while and found out that there luggage has still not arrived from when they got here over the weekend, so they have been in the same stuff they traveled to Spain in since Saturday. Hopefully there luggage shows up soon because they were only going to be here a week anyway. Plus, her mom brought Pop-Tarts, Lucky Charms, chocolate, and Tylenol PM in her suitcase for us girls, find that luggage!
This morning Whitney and I went to the Granada airport to pick up her cousin Tandy who is coming to visit. Isabel had invited her over for lunch so we all went back to the piso and had paella, yum! We’ll probably take her shopping today and then watch some of the processionals later this afternoon. We saw our first processional last night on our way home. It was really a cool experience to see the brotherhood dressed up and the ancient floats of Jesus and the Virgin (some of these floats are from the early 15th, 16th, 17th centuries).