Here’s my entry about my week-long excursion all over Morocco:

2-14-09: On Saturday we met at the CCCL at 7:30 and saw our tour bus for the first time. The SIT students (students participating in another program with the CCCL) were also headed on an excursion and they had normal size tour buses. But the center must really like us because we had a teeny bus, basically an oversized minivan. It was a bit of a squeeze and you couldn’t stand up all the way inside it, but it made us get really comfortable with everyone very quickly.

We started our trip by going to Marrakesh. When we got there we were greeted with warm weather, which made me like the city immediately. Marrakesh is a very touristy city and our hotel was in the downtown section of city, which felt like it had more tourists than Moroccans. It was kind of overwhelming to see so many foreigners and hear so many languages that weren’t Arabic or French. After lunch, which included delicious pasta that everyone ate way too much of, we had a few hours to explore the city on our own. So we went to the Marrakesh Museum, which was pretty interesting. It did not have too many exhibits, but it did have a sword exhibit, which was cool. The architecture in the building was also beautiful and made up for the lack of stuff to see. Next we went to see Ben Youssef Madrassa, which was an old Quranic boarding school. The dorms dated from the 15^th century and were beautiful. There was a huge courtyard in the middle and the rooms on the second floor had windows into the courtyard. Some of those rooms were nicer than the rooms in Warren Towers at BU.

            Then we spent some time walking around the souq (market). It reminded us a lot of the souq in Rabat, except for the huge amount of tour groups. We had to keep walking quickly, because every time we stopped or hesitated about which street to go down, people kept coming up to us and asking us if we spoke English and needed help. They would have made us pay of course, so we ignored them. After wandering around in a giant circle for a while, we finally made it out of the souq. Then we walked around Djeema El Fna, which is a huge square and market place near the souq. There we saw different groups of people forming. Musicians were in the middle of these groups, which were made up of mostly men, and when we joined they immediately came over to us and asked for money. Then we would wander away and watch something else for a while. There were people selling things everywhere and women walking around asking if we wanted henna painted on our hands. There were also a bunch of restaurants around the square, so there were people yelling at us to eat at their restaurants. There were also spice and fruit sellers everywhere and a few booths selling snails, which you eat right out the shell. That seems to be a delicacy in Morocco; next to the hotel that we stayed in during our first week in Rabat, there is a booth that sells snails and orange juice…Seems like an odd combination, but people seem to like it because there are always people there…We wandered around the square for a while, and then went back to the hotel to eat dinner.

2-15-09, Sunday: The next morning we had to wake up at 6:45 and leave early because we were driving to Zagora. We all fell asleep on the bus, but woke up a few hours later in the middle of the Atlas Mountains. Our bus (oversized minivan) was zigzagging around curves and getting dangerously close to the edge of cliffs, so it was kind of a rude awakening. We ended up having to stop a few times because people felt sick, but then we had opportunities to take some beautiful pictures of the countryside.

At one point, one of the tires on our bus literally exploded, so we spent some time climbing a mountain while our bus drive changed the tire. That tire actually ended up being cursed because it went flat again a few days later. That time we were near a small town and the students were just getting out of school, so there were a ton of kids crowding around our bus. Probably almost 50 kids stopped to watch us while we waited and we met a man who plays football (soccer) professionally for the Sale team (Sale is a city across the river from Rabat) but he was injured so he was back home.

After our tire was fixed, we continued to Zagora, a small town near the Sahara. We spent a night in a beautiful hotel there and the next day we walked around a part of Zagora made of kasbahs. Our tour guide told us that the kasbahs used to be inhabited by Jews, but they all moved to Israel in the 1950’s. That is pretty typical of Morocco. There used to a really large Jewish population here, but after Israel was established, they all left. We got to see a synagogue in the kasbah though, and that was really amazing. We visited a jewelry maker and watched him melt silver and make pendants. It was really interesting to watch him work.

After that we went to the home of a nomad for lunch. His name was Saleh and he and his family are real-life nomads who raise camels and ride around the desert finding places where it has recently rained, so that their camels can eat and stay alive so they can be sold. When he is not out in the desert, Saleh lives in a house with 42 other people. And I thought having 10 people in my house was a lot! Besides welcoming us into his house and feeding us lunch, Saleh also told us about his life, which was really amazing. He is the head of the tribe that he and his family belong to and the heads of the other tribes in his area meet every few months in his house. Eating at Saleh’s house might have been my favorite part of the trip: it was so interesting to meet a modern day nomad and learn about how his life works.

After lunch we got into Jeeps that took us into the desert! Our driver was speeding around and jumping over dunes, it was so much fun! After a while we came to our campsite, which consisted of a bunch of four person tents and one really large tent that we ate meals in. Surprisingly enough there was a bathroom in the desert! With western toilets! And although there was a button to flush them, there was no water in the tank and we had to pour water in them using a bucket instead, so it was basically like being back at my house in Rabat…

After we got to our campsite, it was time for the thing that everyone had been looking forward to for weeks: camel rides! We all got on camels, which were tied to each other so that they wouldn’t run away, and were lead out into the desert. It was so beautiful. I was incredibly excited for the desert and it didn’t let me down. It had awesome dunes and everything. We rode around for a while (I named my camel Cocoa) and took some amazing pictures and then it was time for dinner.

After dinner there were musicians who performed traditional Moroccan music for us and we all danced all around the dining tent. Then a fire had been made outside, so we went outside and danced around that for a while as well. The boys from my trip, Matt and Keith, had brought guitars with them and there were some drums at the campsite, so we stayed up singing and playing music. We also stargazed and in my opinion, the stars in the desert are the most beautiful thing ever. Because I’m used to living in a city, going to a place with absolutely no light pollution was a breathtaking experience.

2-17-09, Tuesday: The next morning we woke up at 6:30 so we could see the sunrise over the desert. It was early, but absolutely worth it. It took a while for the sun to start rising, but once it did, it seemed to shoot straight up into the sky. It only took a little over 5 minutes for the sun to rise and it was gorgeous.

            After breakfast, it was time to leave the desert, even though none of us wanted to. We got in the Jeeps and drove back to our oversized minivan, which took us to N’koob. N’koob is another really tiny town in the south that also has a ton of kasbahs. We took a tour of a kasbah house that had been turned into a museum. We saw traditional cooking materials, like a clay bread oven, and traditional clothing of southern Moroccans. The women usually wear a black cloak-like garment, which they embroider with bright thread themselves. The results are these beautiful bright designs and each one is unique because they are all handmade. I saw tons of women wearing them during our trip. Our tour guide took us to the roof the museum-house (which he and his family still live in) and said that in the summer, they put rugs down and sleep up there. In the hot weather, it must be so nice.

            Next we went to a pottery village, which was really interesting. We got to watch pottery being made step by step, from the clay being collected from the ground and it made into pottery by a man at the pottery wheel, to it being painted and fired in the kiln. The village we went to was really tiny and every single person there was involved in pottery making.

            After we left the pottery village, we drove to our hotel in N’koob, which was a hotel in a really old kasbah. The hotel was really cosy and nice: it had fireplace with cushions all around that we ended up curling up and reading around. Because the hotel was made out of a kasbah that is several centuries old, the bathrooms were in a separate building. So, it felt just luck being back at home in Rabat! Except that the bathrooms were way nicer than the one at my house.

2-18-09, Wednesday: This day was a long one because it was the day of our 12 hour drive from the south of Morocco north to Fes. We enjoyed the desert so much that we didn’t want to leave it and rejoin civilization, but once we got to Fes, we really enjoyed it.

We spent two nights in Fes because the first day all we did was drive there and basically go right to sleep. But the next day we went on a tour of the medina. The medina in Fes is the biggest in Morocco, so you basically have to have a tour guide. Our program director, Fadoua, says that she has been to Fes many times and yet she still gets lost in the medina when she goes on her own, so lame Americans like us had no chance. The medina in Fes has 9,600 streets, which is basically a lifetime opportunity to get lost. So for once I was actually glad to be on a tour.

            Our tour guide took us all over the medina, including to the tannery of Fes, which was huge. Surprisingly, it didn’t smell at all, but our tour guide said that that was because we came in the winter. In the summer, he said the smell is unbearable. After the tannery we went to a place where they sold scarves as well as traditional clothing like chellabahs and caftans. Chellabahs are worn over clothing when one goes outside and caftans are worn for special occasions like weddings.

Interesting side note: If anyone has seen Star Wars and remembers the sand planet Tatooine, the scenes from that planet were filmed in Morocco. Also the costumes of the sand people, the cloaks with pointy hoods, were modeled after the Moroccan chellabahs.

In the clothing place, there were weavers there weaving on large traditional looms and one of them saw me watching him and he motioned for me to come over and he taught me how to weave! I wasn’t very good at it at first, but I gradually got the hang of it. He talked to me completely in Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and I actually understood him, so that made me really happy.

            After our tour of the medina, we went to a women’s center in Fes. The center is a place where women in abusive relationships and their children can go. The center houses them and provides them with skills training if they need it, so that they can get a job and support themselves. All of us in the program are taking the Gender Studies in North Africa class, and our professor had recommended the center as a place for us to visit. It was very interesting. The center is only a few years old and it was really nice; nicer even than some shelters in the US. It was interesting that in a country that until very recently did not really practice women’s rights there was a center that was so modern. It’s good to know that these kinds of resources are finally being available to Moroccan women.

           2-20-09: On Friday morning, we drove to Meknes. There we visited a Jewish cemetery where people were buried in the walls. It was super old and really interesting to visit. Meknes has one of the two mosques in the entire country that non- Muslims are allowed to enter (the other is in Casablanca). We were going to visit the mosque, but it ended up being closed for some reason, so that was kind of a disappointment.

After driving around Meknes for awhile, we went to Volubilis, which is a huge site of Roman ruins. There were a ton of mosaics that were really well preserved despite being 2000 years old. Also a lot of foundations and columns of houses had been found, so it was cool to get an idea of what their houses were like.

We went to the small town of Moulay Idriss for lunch. We ate at a hotel, which was actually this woman’s house. It was really cute and the food was delicious. After lunch, the owner took us up on the roof where we had an amazing view of entire town, and she served us tea and cookies. Moroccan hospitality is really great, it actually reminds me a lot of Turkish hospitality.

That evening, we drove to Chefchaouen, which is a small town in northern Morocco. Chefchaouen is known for all the buildings being painted blue. It makes the town absolutely gorgeous. We really liked our hotel in Chefchaouen because the beds were all canopy beds (or, as we like to call them, princess beds)! The two boys in our group didn’t quite share in our excitement, but the rest of us really enjoyed them.

 2-21-09: We spent the next morning (Saturday) walking around Chefchaouen. It is a small town, but a really cute one. I really liked Chefchaouen, and I would like to go back there for a weekend, if I get the chance.

That day was the last one in our excursion, but on the way back to Rabat, we stopped in Ouazzane for lunch. Farah and Abdelhay, the founders of the Center for Cross Cultural Learning, have a house up there, and they invited us for lunch. Brahim, the cook at the CCCL, was there and he made us lunch. Brahim is an incredible cook (he rivals my Turkish host mom, Semra, and that is no easy feat), and we weren’t expecting a meal from him, so it was a wonderful surprise. The SIT students eat lunch at the CCCL each day, and we are so jealous of them. We are supposed to go home for lunch everyday, but occasionally some of us linger around the cafeteria after our classes, and then Brahim offers us food. No one ever turns him down. He can make the simplest dishes taste amazing. During our last week of the program, we will be living in the hotel and eating at the CCCL, and although I am going to miss living with my family, I am so excited to be eating Brahim’s cooking again.

Anyway, we went to Farah’s house in Ouazzane and it was beautiful. It is a traditional Moroccan house with a courtyard and rooms all along it. While we were there, Farah told us a little bit about her family’s history and their connection to Ouazzane. She is from Tangier, but her family is originally from Ouazzane. In fact, her family members were sheriffs, which means that they were considered to be saints, and her family was really important in Ouazzane. She also told us about her great-great grandmother, who was British and whose name was Emily. Emily was a really special lady because she was the first person to introduce the small pox vaccine to Morocco at the beginning of the 20^th century. Emily also wrote an auto-biography, of which only 10 copies were published and they are scattered in different libraries (one of the copies is in Harvard), but Farah had a copy and let us look at it. It was published in 1911, and it was amazing to hold a book that was almost 100 years old.

Farah’s house is also cool because it has an oil press in it. Before we got there, they had bought tons of olives so that they could do an oil making demonstration for us. They scooped all of the olives into this large trench thing that had a big stone in the middle. A donkey was connected to the stone, and as the donkey walked around, he moved the stone so that it would crush all of the olives. The crushed olives were then put into these baskets that were stacked one on top of the other, under a big press. When about 20 baskets had been stacked up, the press was cranked down and the oil was squeezed out of the olives. It was squeezed into another trench, where it was mixed with water and washed. Then the water was drained out and the oil was drained into another trench. The oil had to be washed a few more times before it could be bottled, but we didn’t get to see that part because it would take a while. It was really cool to watch fresh oil be pressed. A few weeks later, the oil was brought to the center and we got to eat it with bread. It was delicious.

In the evening, it was time for us to drive back to Rabat. None of us really wanted to go, because we had been having such a great time seeing other parts of the country, but it was nice to see my host family again. Our trip was an amazing experience, hope you enjoyed reading about it!