I have been remiss and tardy but here we go with my 3-day jaunt to Morocco with a program called Morocco Exchange:
- Gibraltar!
- non-touristy
- (except for the camels)
- 2 nights of homestay
- very odd homestay
- dont talk about the king--you'll go to jail
- Women--where did they go?
- Turkish bath (damn do I feel soft after exfoliating)
- bargaining
- odds and ends
Pictures complete:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=159045&id=563922118&l=a5e9a7717dand
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=159047&id=563922118&l=e74723f244 What with this being another country and all, I expect this post will go on a little longer than normal.
First off, a highlight of the trip for me came before we even crossed to Africa: Gibraltar. As a history buff and a bit of an anglophile it's honestly one of the coolest places, and I didn't even get to go to the museums or anything. It's an easy bus ride out of town (Algeciras) and then you actually pass through an international border, passports and everything, into a place with far too many souls to fit into its tiny spit of rocky land. The rock rears out like a giant geographical anomaly, just plain too big for everything else around, with a proud but tiny Union Jack crowning its peak. Around its base is a super-compact town which has many purposes: tax haven, tourist trap, business center, airport, and god knows what else. Signs everywhere begging you to come eat fish and chips, and people actaully speaking a language I can understand on the fly (sort of). After wandering the town I was too late to go up onto the rock itself, so I contented myself with a fantastic roast beef and potato dinner!
Right, Morocco.
The group consisted of 15 juniors in college generally from the States (with a smattering of a Guatemalteco, Slovenian, Mexican, and 2 Wisconsinites). The goal was not to see the big sights, but rather to understand the country. To that end we grabbed a ferry from the south of Spain to Tarifa and promptely went to a women's shelter/job training place. An odd but very enlightening way to understand a country. Other than the couscous, the most memorable parts were how open and non-burca'd the women were and my rather massive faux-pas, I almost sent one to jail. I was innocently asking about their political system when they told me they had a pretty much all-powerful king. I then continued on my innocent streak and asked them what they thought of him, to which only the sound of African crickets chirping awkwardly away into silence replied. Eventually the truth came out: if you say anything bad about the king (including just verbally in private) you can go to jail.
So I said this wasn't touristy, well you gotta have a little, right? On one of our marathon drives (in a bus not designed for tall Americans) we pulled over on a beautiful sunset beach to find...camels. The kind where the program pays for you to be as touristy as it gets and mount up for a short ride. Remarkably fun and comfy compared to a horse, except for the getting up and down thing: I think camels have an extra knee.
Homestay: this should conjure up images of mothers who may not speak your language but still inexplicably care for you, feed you indefinitely and cry when it comes time to part. And for most of my group it did, but not me and 2 other boys. We stayed with Yassim--the best I can describe him is as the Arab equivilant of a 'Bro' (popped collar and love of beerpong etc). More on that later, but keep it in the back of your mind.
I'm a big fan of Moroccan food, because I'm a big fan of bread and meat. I also don't like utensils, which practically makes me Moroccan already. Our first meal with homestays was a sort of ground beef/meatballs dish which we ate with the go-to moroccan utensil: the breadclaw. Take a flat round piece of bread about the size of a red fire alarm bell in a school, rip off a piece about the size of a matchbox, and split that in half. Then pinch the food from the main-dish and shovel it into your mouth before gravity remembers that you should be using a fork. And all dishes are communal.
Above is the cous-cous which is not breadclawed becuase even the Moroccans realize how impractical that is.
Back to Yassim. We were warned that alcohol is really really really really taboo. If you ask to go out you will be kicked off the program. To which Yassim replies on night one "Want to go to a pub after dinner?" (which he means dance clubs) and on night two "want to just drink in my room?" (after on night one the bouncers didn't let a group of 5 bedraggled and dirty Americans into their classy clubs, the buggers). So taboo, like in the game, is just looking for a way to be skirted.
Women: where did they go? They just don't go out on the street. This was one of the odder things for me, men are just lazing around on the streets all day while I have no idea where the women went. Those you do see in the cities at least usually wear a headscarf.
Rubber Ducky you're the one, you (my rough loofah) make bathtime (sauna plus tap) so much fun! Imam is the turkish bath where you get really really clean without getting submerged. Stage 1: take off clothes save for boxers and give to man to put in cubby
Stage 2: don't forget to bring your loofah and special soap as well as water-scooping rubber maid
Stage 3: using bucket given you by nice man get a whole lot of cold water
Stage 4: go into rather hot sauna room and sit down
Stage 5: quickly stand up and splash place where you want to sit with cold water
Stage 6: check you didn't actually burn your butt
Stage 7: pour water over self and begin scrubbing
Stage 8: keep scrubbing, and I mean scrub. Using a black loofah with the consistency of a greeny sponge.
Stage 9: depending on flexibility/comfort ask friend to scrub back
Stage 10: rinse off
Stage 11: cool down room
Its pretty sweet, and I'm still super soft all over a week later. Maybe guys should exfoliate more or something.
I promise this is almost over, just a jaunt to the countryside left.
After driving through countryside that reminded me a fair bit of a drier coast range, we arrived at a tiny village where our program has befriended a super-nice family. They made us cous-cous (see above picture) and then chatted with us what it's like for them. Noteable highlights of talk included that they would vastly prefer to live in the city because it's so damn hard to live in the country, grandma really wants a new olive press, donkey #2 has gone missing, want children to grow up to be doctors, little child showed up with soccer ball and proceeded to get rocked by my British friend and me.
Nice family
After a brief night in a tourist mecca where I bargained for some Christmas presents in Spanish (a goal of mine since Guatemala when I had to have dad bargain for me) we went home. Check out the pictures up on facebook for a more complete story.
(most interesting man in the world)
