Maruecos

Wow....how on earth can I transmit 4 days worth of adventure in these few minutes and with the limits of words? I will have to start this blog with the precursor that much will be left out, only for the reason that it is impossible to say everything.





Wednesday evening a friend and I bought a 55cent box of wine (than you, Europe) to take down to the river and relax before our voyage, and for over 3 hours we sat on the cigarette stub dotted grass by the river where a sleeping old man who appeared to be dead by the flies that droned around his unmoving head and a group of pot-smoking drum-circlers to the other side. I have never been a drinker, and to this day I boast never having been drunk. But I have seen the loosening effects of alcohol that mysteriously allow me to speak spanish more freely and to stop thinking about the constant judgement that I sometimes feel crushed by in this group of strangers. We sipped our cheap wine and talked about life until the sun was setting and we each had to dash away to dinner, me on my rented bicycle that earned me the indiscernable shouts and obsenities of a man on the sidewalk. In my anticipation I could not sleep that night, so I woke up at 2:30am from a sleep that never really started, then braved the narrow streets at that questionable hour.


I was not prepared for the amount of traveling that was going to occur on Thursday. For 14 hours we sat on the bus, ferry, or momentarily in the gas stations that we swarmed along the way for the use of their toilets and junk food. Sleep transformed itself from a comfortable retreat to a spiteful taunt, taking my heavy head in its hands and tossing it from side to side, occasionally ramming it into the window beyond which beautiful scenery dashed by unseen in the darkness of morning. The only sound that penetrated the calming music of my ipod was that of the snoring guy seated beside me. We arrived on African soil after the short ferry ride, and the change was amazing. At the border (where we were strictly prohibited from taking pictures) people were dashing across the hills with plastic sacs of their most precious items, while relentless stares guarded the area like laser rays. Donkeys carried hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, which is apparently one of several precious items that are cheaper on Spanish soil than on Moroccan. Shacks lined the road and in many of the windows hung the corpses of some unidentified animal that was part of the scenery yesterday, part of dinner tomorrow. Women and men had to wait in separate lines, although I don´t think the same rule applied to the donkeys.





The rest of the ride was a blurr -- I was awed by the scenery and I feel like I learned something about life and its meaning, but I can´t remember it now, at least not in words. At any rate, we arrived in Fes and checked into our hotel, which was, to use Molly´s word, shwanky. Two friends and I went for a short walk before dinner, which was started off by a hopeful moroccan man who tried to guide us to some of the shops in exchange for a tip. With a series of awkward excuses we removed ourselvse from his guidance and found a new route which met us with stares. Although all the women did not cover their heads, our bare, flowing hair felt like a lighthouse sending the beacon of foreigners to everyone withing a square mile. We ate dinner, and then they took us to the Medina for a show of dancers and musical performers. It was a different world -- never in my travels have i felt so completely our of the world I know. The building looked plain on the outside but was very similar to a palace on the inside. I cannot find words to describe it, there are none sufficient. There were belly dancers, drummers, a man who balanced a tray of a teaset on his head, some more belly dancers, and mint tea. It was amazing and now that I am back here in this place that I sometimes refer to as "home" it seems more like a dream than a not-so-distant reality.





Friday we toured the old part of the city, called the Medina, where unfamiliar smells and sights were relentless in reminding us that we weren´t in Kansas anymore. Also unexpected was the sales pitches that we were scheduled to attend, the first of which was at a carpet store. The man told us the stories behind the rugs, and then he gave us some life lessons about how rugs are good for "jiggy jiggy" because "beds squeak, rugs don´t" and also that they are a good life investment because they are worth more the older the get. When he was through talking Arabic men came our from the corners to target those of us who looked the most interested in exchanging some of our endless supply of American money for one of their carpets. Several kids bought some after about an hour of bargaining and see-sawing. They were beautiful rugs. Then we went to a traditional herbologist, who gave us a demonstration of the medicinal effects of his seeds, powders, and roots. There was a kind of seed that is good for sinuses and allergies, oils that heal back pain, roots that you put in your tea to serve as all natural viagra, and magic lipstick made from henna. He too, at the end of his presentation, made a sales pitch and before we knew it most of our group had bought at least one of his magical items. Then we went to a tannery where the stench of animal skin was almost as repulsive as the sight of the area where the skins, still bloody and fresh, were streched, washed, and eventually turned into pretty purses or jackets. It made me want to be a vegetarian. Afterwards we went back to the same building where we saw the dancers the night before to eat lunch, which was delicious. They eat cous cous with everything, and their version of salad is a huge plate of shredded carrots, beets, cabbage, cucumber, and potatoes drizzled with a mysterious white sauce. I think there was chicken somewhere in there. We soon returned to the bus and made our way to Meknes, the city where we would spend the next two nights. We had a short amount of free time, during which I walked around the city to people watch, and I was moved most by the sharp separation of men and women. Although there were always exceptions, many of the people we passed were grouped by gender. Men sat at cafés and we quickly noticed that unlike Spain, where people at cafés sit around the tables with the intention of socializing, in Morocco the men sat at the tables with all the chairs facing the road or sidewalk in order to watch people passing by, and their stares penetrated my uncovered head in a way that made me feel judged like i have never experienced before. I don´t know what they were thinking -- I cannot read the eyes of these people...it´s as though it´s not just our mouths that speak different languages but our eyes as well. I was refreshed to find a small park near our hotel where small clumps of people of every kind were relaxing under the shade of the small trees, and a mob of young boys played soccer in the hollow of what used to be a long, rectangular fountain. A few old women sat on a bench and allowed their wisdom of age to ooze into the air that was shared also by young couples sharing in the conversation of silent observation. I felt no judgment here, and I saw that even in a world that is so different that even their God has a different name, people are people. Several times I have recalled the Regina Spektor song that reminds me that people are just people and there´s no reason to be afraid. In my foreign environment I have begun to notice that I am afraid of people. I mask it with the excuse of shyness or the false martyrdom of chosen solitude, but two exist to whom I cannot lie: myself and God. (and sometimes I momentarily succede in lying to myself). But enough about that, back to Morocco.



Saturday was such a long day that by the end I felt like I had lived at least a few weeks in the 15 hours that I had been awake. In the morning we took a driving tour of some of the most impressive historical sites in Meknes, such as the stables that housed 4,000 horses in its day and the Medina. In the Medina of Meknes we took a quick walk through a market, which was the most repulsively marvelous part of the trip. Without knowing where i was going, I followed the group into the market where we first saw piles and rows of dried fruits, olives, and strange looking fruits and vegetables. Then we began to see more hanging corpses, which I had almost grown accustomed to, but not enough to keep me from having to limit the amount of time I let my eyes linger on them. Then it came -- the live chickens speckled with blood caged right beside the piles of freshly raw chicken meat, which was sold with the flies at no extra cost. And a giant cow head, its tongue hanging out and its lifeless eyes mostly closed, hung outside one of the booths where a young boy was peeling the skin off of some unidentifiable corpse no more than 2 feet from my queezy body. I wouldn´t let myself look at the booths with bunnies. The way out was lined again with vegetation and the occasional pet store, if you can call a crate filled with turtles or lizards a pet store. I really thought I would have to become vegetarian, until luch a few hours later was made of chicken and even the still-fresh images in my mind couldn´t convince me not to eat it.

After the market we drove about 15 minutes out of town to a site of Roman Ruins called Volubulis (spelling?) that was too impressive for words. I tried not to let myself be distracted by my fruitless attempts to linger in the sparce shade, and I managed to be thoroughly impressed by the vast expanse of piled stones that was once part of a grand empire of lavish living. Among the most memorable is the vomitorium, where the Romans would go after meals because they ate in such excess that they had to throw it up afterwards.

We returned to the city and had lunch in a really nice restaurant, after which the group split into those who wanted to attend the Arabic baths and those who didn´t. I was one of the brave few who did, and it was quite an experience. I didn´t know what to expect, except that i knew it would be shocking. We went first into the changing room, where the women who hid themselves beneath layers of cloth on the streets were amused by our hesitation to remove our clothes. We have such a messed up concept of nakedness and what is and isn´t appropriate. Anyhow, in the end about a third of our group was brave enough to strip down to nothing but underwear, as is customary, and we moved into the next room where we bathed ourselves first with buckets of water and soem kind of oil that was used as soap. This was fine, and then we went into the next room that filled our giggling chests with steam. Two old ladies came in wearing only their underwear and ordered us to sit on the floor so they could scrub us down. I haven´t been bathed for quite a long time, so I was very tense and awkward about this whole experience. The women had me lay on the heated floor with my head on her bare leg as she ruthlessly scrubbed me with what felt like a brillow pad, with no mercy on particular parts of my body. She would motion me to look at the pelets of dead skin that were curdling off the surface of my body, and then they chuckled in amusement at my disgust. Once I got over feeling terribly awkward about the whole experience of being bathed naked on the ground in the same room where 11 other topless strangers giggled nervously, it was actually a very enjoyable experiene. It was kind of like a massage, and the heat of the floor relaxed my muscles, and then when she was through i was amazed at the softness of my skin that had been reduced by a layer of dead skin and dirt. It was quite an experience, and I´m glad I did it. You have to just accept at some point that if you want to experience new cultures it is going to be awkward a lot of the times. And I´m ok with that.
After the bath my friend Chelsea and I caught a taxi to get rid of our 600 dirham in an hour-long speed shopping excursion in the Medina. Speed-shopping doesn´t work well in a system that requires bargaining, but we managed to spend the majority of our money on neat jewelry and other souveneirs that were more about the experience of the trip than the items themselves. We rushed back to the hotel to get there in time for dinner, and then relaxed until we were tired enough to rest for the long voyage of Sunday.

Sunday we got up and got on the bus for the long trip back, which somehow went by faster, probably due in large part to the disney sing-along that happened between me and my seat mate. I love when disney brings people together. At one of our stops I bought some strange meat dish with my remaining dirhams, and it tasted something like a hamburger. I didn´t allow myself the reality that not too long ago it was part of one of those smelly corpses hanging in the windows. I managed to survive the meal with only a few extra trips to the bathroom the following night.

It was strange to feel at home when we got back to Spain, and I realized that it doesn´t take very long to get used to anything. The 30 minute walk to my apartment was comforting in the warm evening breeze, and I ate my customary bread and pasta before unpacking and wandering off to sleep.


aah....i have been on the computer for 2 hours and writing for about an hour of that. and i have class in 30 minutes.

i hope you all enjoyed, and that you make it to the end! sorry it´s so long!!!!



Abrazos para todos,
Catita