Morocco

October 14, 2009

Marrakesh
What is it with us and airports??? Talk about confusion in Casablanca…one guy, a little too self-important, running around from station to station; yelling into his walkie talkie, as if there was a terrorist attack! A lady makes us line up, she checks our ticket and then herds us off to one side; so when the line got half way done, she changed her mind and made us all line up again. This sent the Frenchmen off into a panic, ‘Mr.Terrorist’ guy attempting to calm everyone down; we are finally bussed out, what seemed to be about 10 minutes away, into the darkness (now an hour late), !! The plane lands, in what we think is Marrakesh; we deplane along with some others, stand in line as another frenzied guy checks our ticket and says, “yes, yes” after I ask, ‘is this Marrakesh?”, and shoves us toward the line for immigration. Immigration makes a couple of announcements in French and Arabic, as we crazy Canucks wait patiently in line. The official takes one look at our ticket, starts yelling at other officials…all hell breaks loose and we are hustled out to runway, sprinting for the plane that was about to leave!!! Not exactly the final scene from the movie, Casablanca! Feeling the glares from the other passengers, we start to laugh and hope that our assigned taxi driver is still waiting for us, 2 hours late at 2:30 in the morning! Keith F. …this would not have happened to you!

A little tired, but excited to see Marrakesh, we venture towards the Medina after breakfast from the Riad Mogado. With our vow not to get scammed, not 3 minutes into our walk, we are befriended by a “lovely man” who welcomes us to the country and directs us to the Medina! He continues to walk with us, me trying not to offend him and Tim wanting to lose him! I motion to Tim to “stay loose man” and we find ourselves in these narrow alleys, some looking deserted, dodging donkeys and motorcycles. “Nisse Riad…you leeck dis von?” “I teek you to good souks”, “You leeck Berber peeble”; what seemed like the longest walk and not a tourist to be found, we found ourselves climbing stairs to a place where they have the ‘best view of Marrakesh!!’. Well, the best view of the roof tops and sea of rusty satellite dishes!! Hey, we’re no push overs, and we soon catch on that we are there to buy something. We are treated to the best in Moroccan customer service …what’s called Moroccan whiskey, ” mint tea with loads of sugar”!! So, I play the game, start looking at some jewellery and all of a sudden, we are doing the “Moroccan Haggle”…”I give you a number, you give me a number; we go treetimes and dat de prize you pay!”. Not having had the time to understand the exchange or deal with our “CULTURE SHOCK”…we not only offended him a couple of times, low balling him in Euros …relenting to the pressure, we ended up getting ticked off and we finally agree to pay $110 dirhams… down from his 800 dm!! It took us a day to figure it out, but the necklace and crappy ring (which I’ve just put on eBay) cost us $15…quite reasonable for the experience!! Ce Live! What we really needed was Ralph L. to show up and take the pressure off us like he did when buying coffee in the Dominican!

The language was a challenge, but eating was the real problem for us. We weren’t sure of our choices and it seemed that most places didn’t serve food. They have these cafes (Muslin pubs) that are full of only men, who sit there drinking their Muslim whiskey! Women were virtually invisible, quietly going about their business. They would smile at us but we never were able to engage in a genuine conversion with any of them. A waiter, who had studied some English, told us all about Marrakech, Islam and culture and the education system – post-secondary education is government- paid …but there are no jobs, he explained.

The souks are a maze of narrow, winding, people, motorbike, donkey-filled confusion of Moroccan-style free enterprise! Touching or even a casual glance at something triggered the souk owner to pounce on their shopping prey. This made browsing and getting a sense of what was available pretty much impossible. And, photographs…there is a Islamic belief that a photo robs them of part of themselves, so, they would get extremely upset when ever the camera swung their way. There’s that and the fact that EVERYTHING is for sale…”you pay 25 dirhams…20 dh…give me 2″ demanding payment. One guy trailed us for several minutes wanting payment because he happened to be in the crowd while Ann was videoing…after we politely declined 20 or 30 times, he finally relented…it was so much easier to shop at Lori’s & Claude’s!!

We still continued to be harassed every 30 seconds, so we headed for an excursion company to plan our next 10 days other then battling the oppressive heat and sucking up diesel fumes. The streets are clogged with cars, buses, hundreds of taxis, scooters, bikes, donkeys, horses, people walking with sacks on their heads, people pissing in corners and trucks piled high with live goats…all competing for space amidst a cacophony of blowing horns! Not only would you see whole families on a scooter, we even saw a sheep between a bike driver and his passenger…Cliff Turner would be out of business here…Larry & Roy would get this…he was a livestock trucker from Orangeville.

Don’t get us wrong…it was amazing to see all this…it is such a different environment & culture! Cities are always difficult to see the country’s true culture but the we did see lots of loving families, kids laughing and playing in the alleys…sure, with a goat’s head but still playing! We spent a lot of time in a few of their many lovely parks with flowers, trees and fountains. One was Cyber Park which we frequented often…birds chatting, lush gardens to relax in…a oasis from the insanity of the fortified city. This park offered virtually free internet in a spacious, air conditioned, high tech building.

Anyway, back to the excursions…we spent one day in the Atlas mountains, walked through a Berber village, casbahs (one where the Last Temptation of Christ was filmed), an official Berber tea ceremony (we poured ours into a potted plant (-:. Lots of eye-popping displays of Moroccan life with all kinds of humorous situations… But we haven’t told you about the salad and pizza, yet!!
Excuse us for craving a vegetable! The next few days were spent on the porcelain throne! Thinking we were beginning to feel a little better and optimistic about a 2-day excursion to the Sahara Desert and a camel ride (its name was Humfrey) …we met up with 2 other couples from Holland traveling in the same vehicle with room for only four. So, the stand-off began between the Dutchies and the Tour staff…the Dutchies were told there would be 4 to a vehicle, not 6 crammed in sideways. They weren’t budging; we tried to negotiate with tour company but after an hour we decided the only solution was for Tim and I to bow out. The tour staff appreciated our decision and offered us a trip to the beach in Essaouira for 1/2 price. This would have been a beautiful two days…if we could have time travelled back to the 1950’s… hotel in shambles, seagulls wing to wing in the pool, garbage everywhere, even the ocean seemed tired and run down! But, to be fair we were still suffering the last of our food poisoning.

And, the money…the refund for the camel (it really was Humphrey!) excursion was C$300 but we left with a stack of bills (2140 dirhams)…it was like winning monopoly!! We were looking forward to a pleasant last night before we left for Casablanca so we grabbed a taxi to a sushi bar that we had seen during the week but too sick to eat!!! Driver charged us 100 dh for cab ride…we being naive as hell, paid it and then found out it should have only been 30 dh…. we wonder if he knew Sean from Portugal?? Sushi bar was closed…Oh My Allah…so we ate at an empty restaurant while 4 teenaged staff giggled and played behind the bar, watching us eat… over-priced couscous and chicken. We walked back to our hotel but taxi drivers are constantly bombarding you with “taxi…want taxi??” But, the funniest was when we saw a taxi driver with his car door open, pushing his beat up taxi and was still able to free one hand and call out “taxi…you want taxi??”.

Off to airport the next morning by taxi…checked the cost this time (getting smarter!). Only two days in Casablanca where we had a tour of the city, saw Rick’s Cafe and the Grand Mosque…. but we haven’t told you about the hammam massage, yet!!

So, my brother, Larry, said “You have to get a “Hammam” while in Moroc! We weren’t exactly sure what it was but knew it had something to do with a massage…and figured we deserved a little pampering before our volunteer placement in Ghana. After the Moroccan charade show we got a towel and what we thought were thick, black rubber underwear…we headed off in separate directions. No one spoke English, so the pointing and gesturing continued. Soon we found ourselves stripped down in a steam room, handed a black gob of goo, a bucket of water thrown over us and were told to wash up. Little time passed before we were led out to a marble slab…the only thing missing was the toe tag! We were power-washed down from head to toe, and then OMG…the scrubbing started! What we thought were rubber pants turned out to be a 30-grit sand paper glove which our hammam-master enthusiastically commenced to tear off two layers of skin like they were sanding an oak floor!! Hosed down some more…the face, the crotch…the sound of a slap against table meaning “flip over!”. Just when you think that all your moles, nipples and other protuberances are scraped off (Tim, no longer has his birthmark) they slather some more black tar on you and start again! Grateful when this treatment finally comes to an end, we look forward to a relaxing massage. Wrong!!! While we and others are buck-naked, we are asked to “scale up” onto a high table and bury our face into a moldy, hard plastic mattress. Larry…do you have any remorse, yet?? The highlight for Ann in all this, when asked to flip over and while having her boobs massaged, the masseuse’s boobs and stinky armpits hung like rotten fruit over her, just to make this experience truly memorable!
After, we met in the lobby…looking defiled but shiny…we exploded with laughter, unable to wait to share! But, in all fairness, Larry…when said and done….and once the numbness subsided…we felt pretty good!!

Hope everyone is well…see you in Ghana!

ps. Patty S., thanks for giving us the sewing kit and tie-straps…we’ve used them already!
**check out our latest video of the medina in Marrakech – here or on the sidebar.