Back to Marrakesh

Saturday Nov. 13th- After a long morning of making it back to Saad in Erfoud we still hadn't gotten a whole lot closer to Marrakesh and the thought of the drive was rather nauseating. Actually, the camel smell on my backpack was a little more nauseating than that. Anyway, by 11:00 or so we were on the road. But this time instead of 2 days to drive over 400 kilometers, we only had one day. So needless to say we didn't make many stops. A quick tagine at a gas station, an ice cream stop and that's about it. The gas station stop had a very interesting non-modern toilet system that we did not enjoy, but we survived. A 4 year old can not wait 4 hours, so we braved the hole in the ground and laughed about it down the road. It was on this car ride that Saad agreed to stay with us for the next four days. We had started to get worried about making it back to the airport from Essouira on a big holiday when everybody is eating their sacrificial sheep and we had asked him if he knew anyone, to which he responded, "How about me? I need money for my sheep" This was Saad's first year of being married and because of this he was obligated by the Koran to sacrifice a sheep for him and his wife... and sheep cost about $500 for a small sheep. About 9 hours after leaving Erfoud by van, 2 hours by camel, and 45 minutes by 4 x 4 we made it to Marrakesh in the dark and slept a peaceful sleep (except for my terrifying dream of being given an 8 week exploratory to teach at the Kodiak Middle School- on bathing. May have had something to do with the camel smell permeating the room).

Sunday, November 14th- A leisurely morning of cleaning and checking email was just what the doctor ordered and after a roof-top breakfast we met Saad for a trip to the Majorelle gardens, designed by Yves Saint Laurent. As one might imagine it was filled with mostly French tourists. The garden was quite nice and we all enjoyed the cactus and turtles. Saad was about ready to take us to another garden when we convinced him that we really needed to do some shopping and he recommended the state shops with fixed prices (no haggling!) set up by the king so that tourists don't get ripped off. We happily (well mostly- by the end we were seriously overwhelmed) spent a couple hours in this huge store and were affirmed that we hadn't spent too much on the carpet in Tingher... A few hundred dollars later we stumbled out the door into Saad's van and he took us to his favorite restaurant in Marrakesh which had amazing tangines (beef with prunes and almonds, lemon chicken and some sort of tagine that is made only in Marrakesh and is cooked for 8 hours in a terra cotta pot). The first course of Moroccan salad consisted of a round Moroccan bread called Khobz served with chopped tomatoes and cucumbers with Moroccan seasoning, along with a plate of lentils and stewed eggplant and various little bowls of salsa. The most interesting part of the restaurant was the downstairs which had an ablution room for ritual washing as well as a prayer room. We witnessed most of the restaurant's guests visiting the downstairs after ordering their food, then coming up refreshed and cleansed and ready to eat.

Gardens.

Shopping....

Saad organized a local guide to take us around the Medina after lunch. At first I was dubious, as I like to wander on my own when traveling, but in the end it was wonderful, as Yussef was a funny, kind, gentle man (who was a little bit of a superstar we gathered from the amount of people he kissed on our walk). Yussef spent the afternoon with us, taking us to the gorgeous 800 year old Koutoubia mosque. Yussef explained to us that the four gold balls at the top of the minaret represents the three religions that had been important to Morocco's history: Christianity, Judaism and Islam (and a fourth ball for the aristocratic wife who had eaten a grape during the fast of Ramadan and as penance had melted down all her jewelry to make the one on top). Many times Yussef praised the relationship that Jews and Muslims have in Morocco as both 'tribes' favor a literal reading of their holy books (which are similar in many ways) and both had been expelled from Spain in the late 1400s by Queen Isabella and the Catholic inquisition. It was during that time that both tribes moved mostly to Morocco and live together peacefully still, although Morocco is mostly Islamic now.

Yussef took us to the gorgeous 700 year-old Ben Youssef Madrassa which is the largest Medrasa in all of Morocco and acts as a boarding school for those seeking religious teaching. Its 130 student dormitory cells cluster around a courtyard richly carved in cedar, marble and stucco (made with marble powder and plaster). The carvings contain no representation of humans or animals as required by Islam, and consist entirely of inscriptions and geometric patterns.

He also took an aristocratic house which had been converted into an art gallery and contained the most amazing tile work we'd seen yet (the artisans work backwards, putting together their designs upside down, then applying morter from the back. And everything is hand- cut. Yikes!) A walk through the souk (market) took hours, as it had over 1,000 stalls and all the stalls were organized into sections (leather shoes, metal work, scarves, spices, etc). Yussef took us to his favorite wood craft shop where we bought a wonderful box, his favorite Berber pharmacy where we bought loads of spices and where we marveled at the white magic section of the pharmacy that contained bullet casings, preserved bats, various furs and such. There we enjoyed sweet mint tea (Yussef put 20 cubes of sugar into 5 cups of tea and said that he put in less sugar for us- after looking at the look of shock on our kids' faces after the 20th sugar cube.)

Sven drooling in the iron workers district.

Cats everywhere in Morocco!

Ben Youssef Madrassa

The Berber pharmacy

Exhausted and overwhelmed, we finally reached one of the busiest squares in Africa and the world, Djemaa el Fna square (which is like a festival night and day every day of the year, containing snake charmers and monkey trainers next to juice stalls, dried fruit stalls and about 100 food stalls). After the obligatory picture with the snakes (which we payed $5 for) we were pursued by the snake charmer demanding more money, which we didn't pay. We were a little mortified by it, but we were re-assured that it was all just 'part of the game' and what one does for a living here when he chased us down to give us the dried apricots that Bella had forgotten next to a snake. A wonderful kabob and couscous dinner at stall 55 later we were ready for the long painful walk home to our riad (painful because we were carrying all our wooden objects, spices and the kids' journals and snacks). After talking with the Simplers in Kodiak via skype we finally crashed out, planning to pack in the morning for our next stop- Essouira.

Our guide (in the back) buying shoes in the middle of our tour.

dried fruit stand in the square.

Dinner :-)

The dying section of the souk.

All in all, we have been extremely pleased with our time in Morocco. People have been so friendly and open, and we have felt safer here than in Spain! The manner of buying and selling is more aggressive and in-your-face than we are used to, but we are starting to laugh about it, and you can see the kindness in the faces of those eagerly selling goods to us. It was entertaining watching salesman whose jobs depend on greeting people try to peg our family. When they just saw us girls we were usually greeted with a"hello" or "bonjour" and usually a kind, gentle head pat for the girls. Sven, however, was usually greeted with a look of confusion and, "Konnichiwa?" The food, sights and energy of this country is something that I know we will not even be able to remember when we are home in Kodiak in the quiet month of January.