Leaving for the Country!

Tomorrow, I am leaving for the countryside for the week!  Not the Romantic countryside, but the actual countryside.  I will not have electricity for the entire week and will not shower for the entire week.  I have held out pretty well so far with being able to take a shower only 2 or 3 times a week in Rabat, but we'll see how I fare for the entire week.  In our briefing/orientation session for the village homestay, our director told us to expect that we will be sleeping with the entire family pretty close to any animals, like cows and sheep, that the family may have, and that the people have a very odd relationship with dogs.  The dogs protect the house and the family, but if they come too close to humans, they get a rock thrown at them.  This expected dramatic change in lifestyle will be very interesting to observe, so no doubt I'll have plenty to say afterward!  This could get ugly, but I have a feeling I'll have some fun.

All the Colors of Henna

After a long week of classes and presentations, there was no way I was traveling this weekend, and so I decided to settle in for a nice quiet weekend at home.  Friday seemed to last forever as my class and the presentations in that class seemed to drag on forever, but once I was finally done, I realized I really didn't have anywhere to be.  In the end, I decided to stay in the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning where we have our classes and talk with some of my fellow SIT-ers about home, boyfriends, and what movies and TV shows we missed the most.  One of the girls brought up this American movie she had found along the Souk Street where we both live.  I had never heard of the title before, Toy Boy according to the package, but it seemed interesting so we decided to watch it.  Most of the movie went as expected, but the ending did not fit the "feel good" formula I was looking for at the moment.  Boy was a Casanova, met a girl who changed him, however, the girl refused him so she could marry a rich New Yorker.  The last scene is, and I kid you not, a toad swallowing a mouse.  Not exactly the uplifting movie I needed to help me get through being just a tad homesick during the week.

Despite that horrific start to the weekend, things turned out fairly fantastic.  After days and weeks of rain, the sky finally cleared over Rabat, and I spent most of the day Saturday lying around on the terrace and talking to my oldest sister, Amal, about just about everything from clothes to the beach.    Not to give anyone the wrong idea about study abroad, but this apparent laziness did give me ample opportunity to practice my French and learn some more Arabic.  In the summer, she doesn't keep on her jeans and long-sleeves, but dons an entire new wardrobe that's kind of like mine in the summer.  I was initially surprised that she also wears miniskirts, shorter shorts, and tank tops in the summer because I had thought all Moroccan women were more conservative.  However, my family has definitely proven me wrong, and that there is definitely more than one side to Morocco and Moroccan women.  In the suggested packing list for the program, SIT had told me to pack conservative clothing and play it safe, so to speak, so as not to draw attention.  I can definitely understand their concern, and I do know a fair number of women who dress far more conservatively than my sisters.  Not to say that they are constantly wearing low-cut shirts etc., but instead they wearing skinny jeans, tight sweaters (since it's relatively cold here for them), and miniskirts (with tights of course)!  Not exactly what I had expected.  I was even more shocked to find that my sister not only wears bikinis, but also has 4 or 5.  I guess that's why we do the homestays.
   
During these conversations of various sorts, we did not only talk about clothes, but also the subject of dying hair came up.  I had been considering making the switch to red prior to leaving for Morocco, but decided not to do so before departing for an Islamic country where I didn't know what to expect.  I have never dyed my hair before, but my sister apparently dyes her hair every summer and sometimes in the winter.  So I figured I could trust her judgment on all things hair and dye related.  I told her that I wanted to dye my hair, and the next thing I know my entire Sunday was planned out for me.  We woke up around 9 am and followed a very strict, albeit relaxed, schedule for the day:  First, we made sure the coiffeur could perform the change that day and at a good price, and then proceeded on to search the many street stalls selling hair and beauty supplies.  I had some trouble deciding which red to choose, but in the end there were only about 3 choices so it wasn't too difficult.  Then it was off to the coiffeur to have the goop, that is the hair dye, put into my hair, and then to the hamam to rinse all of said goop out of my hair.  When I emerged from the hamam to finally see what the dye had accomplished, I found a full head of bright red.

Mission accomplished! Most people commented that it looked like I had put henna in my hair, but I assured them otherwise.  After returning from the hamam about 4 hours later, I received a text message from an SIT friend saying that her sister was willing to give everyone henna for a small price.  I asked my sister if she wanted to come along, and she agreed, though after the hamam I think she would have rather slept.  Off I went yet again.  Henna is a very interesting form of art.  To be honest, I had no idea what exactly it was before coming to Morocco, but now I have officially met henna.  To start, it is a paste that is put on your hands, palm first, and it resembles clay but is slightly more liquid.  The henna artist squeezes this paste out of a syringe that has a small needle-like tip, and makes designs on your hands the same way a cake decorator would decorate a cake.  Mami and my sister said that real Moroccan henna is supposed to be made with very fine lines and follow a more geometric pattern.  The henna I got on Sunday was definitely nothing like what they described, but is still pretty nonetheless.  It has a more floral design reminiscent of Victorian wallpaper or fabric.

The henna itself doesn't seem to bother me so far, but what really got me was the fact that I had to leave the paste on my hands for about an hour.  For a person who can barely handle nail polish drying, an hour is a very long time.  Instead I decided to follow my sister's suggestion and put my hands over the stove to help it dry faster.  You know when it's time to take it off when the henna becomes clay-like and starts falling off your hands.  Then it's time to simply rub your hands to take all of it off.  Three pieces of advice from my family for anyone who is considering getting henna and wants it to last longer: 1) while it's drying spray perfume all over your hands, 2) after all the henna has come off, put oil of any kind on your hands, this will not only help it last longer but will help your hands endure the henna with flying colors on the softness scale, and 3) don't wash your hands with soap at all for the rest of the day.  My henna appears to be darker than my friend's who got hers at the same time, so I'll take this advice to be true until I see otherwise.  All that's left is to enjoy!

Part 2: The Sahara and Onward

To continue my description of the Sahara, I don't think I'll ever want to permanently live in the desert, but I definitely fell in love.  Perhaps this is due to my love of wide open spaces, and the Sahara is definitely just that, and taken to the extreme!  We were supposed to have gone on a camel ride the night we arrived in the desert, but sadly, a dust storm started as soon as we pulled into Rissani, the town/city that borders the desert.  So needless to say, we did not pursue our camel riding adventure that night.  However, we did have an excellent performance of Gnawa music.  Gnawa refers not only to a type of music but also a group of people who were brought from Sub-Saharan Africa to the north through the slave trade.  They say it resembles blues and jazz, but I didn't see too much of a resemblance in the music at least.  However, it is absolutely wonderful music and I started dancing with a few of my friends part way through the performance.

Our camel riding adventure was definitely not canceled though!  Our program director promised us that we would see the sunrise on the Sahara the next morning instead.  A fantastic idea as far as I was concerned, and partly reminded me of the time I saw the sunrise over Angkor Wat.  Unfortunately for me and my stomach, I was having terrible stomach pains when I woke up that morning.  This severely lessened my enjoyment of the whole scene, but I attempted to work through the pain and take in the absolute beauty of the full moon giving way to the brilliant sun.

Despite popular belief that the desert is always hot (at least that's what I thought), it was absolutely freezing that morning around 6 am, at least for the clothing I had packed.  But I mounted my camel regardless, and set out for one of the taller dunes near the hotel/auberge.  Riding a camel is kind of like riding an elephant, if you've ever had the pleasure of riding one, and is relatively similar to riding a more staccato version of a boat on the ocean.  So going up and down dunes can be quite scary and a little sickening, even if you don't happen to be already sick.

At the end of our short ride through the dunes, we started to see the sun slowly make its way up into the sky and it is one of those sights that your mind doesn't soon forget.  Before the sun came up, the sand was a darker color and very cold, but once the sun peeked out a little bit, it became a brilliant yellow-orange.  Like I said before, it's something that can only be partially conveyed through pictures.  After our brief stint in the dunes, we took our land rovers out into what our director called the "baked earth" desert.  Basically, it's just rocks; no vegetation, just rocks.  There is a road through this particular part of the desert, but our drivers simply bypass it and decide to start doing donuts in the middle of nowhere.  Not what you'd expect in the middle of the desert, but it sure was fun. 

After our brief sojourn in the desert, we stopped again at Rissani and got to wander around the town for a little bit before continuing onward.  I was able to quickly grab a Gnawa CD and a fairly authentic and huge Berber scarf to protect myself from the sun.  We left Rissani shortly after, and made our way to a Berber town known for its cultural heritage, N'kob.  It was truly a spectacular little town, and it had a hotel-turned-cultural center, called Kasbah Baha Baha, that was only slightly short of being a spa retreat.  They had orange trees in bloom, a pool, and outdoor living accommodations for those who enjoy sleeping under the stars.  We had lunch at Kasbah Baha Baha and got to enjoy the magnificent sunshine (compared to rain-soaked Rabat) before continuing on towards Ouarzazate.

Unfortunately for the other SIT members, I became increasingly sick as the day wore on.  However, I was able to get to a doctor in Ouarzazate and get some medicine, so all ended well and I felt better by bedtime.  We spent the night at a dormitory for girls, and it wasn't just a building full of women but a way for girls to get a better education.  Most girls who live out in the countryside don't have access to schooling beyond primary school, and so they have to go to the neighboring cities to continue their education.  This poses a considerable obstacle for most girls because they cannot go to a strange city where their family knows no one simply to go to school, and so many non-profit organizations have developed girls' dormitories so that these girls can continue their education and have more employment opportunities.  In my opinion, it's a great way to pass on the gift of education, so I was all for it.  There was a dinner arranged so that the SITers could meet the girls living in the dormitory, but unfortunately, I couldn't attend because of my stomach.  From the girls I met and talked to in passing, they all seem like bright and ambitious young women, who undoubtedly will go far.

Next stop on our journey: Marrakech.  I had heard so much about Marrakech from my family and from the other SITers who had been reading up on their Rough Guides and Lonely Planets, that I was truly excited to arrive.  However, my first experience in Marrakech wasn't the best.  We arrived in Marrakech near lunch time (Moroccan lunch time = 1-2 pm) and were allowed to explore the city on our own for a change.  A group of friends and I immediately went from our hotel to the Medina to the famous Djema El-Fna, the fabled marketplace where storytellers, snake charmers, henna women, and juice stands pack themselves in and attempt to attract as many people as possible.  This picturesque scene just wasn't there on a Tuesday afternoon, and consequently I wasn't all that impressed.  I was even less impressed upon seeing the supposed snake charmers.  These snakes were definitely not being charmed, and looked more like they were drugged or hadn't eaten in a long time.  Needless to say, that gave me a bad impression, and it didn't help that everywhere we turned there were people ready to attack us with henna, menus, or oranges.

So instead of braving the open arena of the square, my friends and I dodged into the Souks and were surprised at how relaxed all the shopkeepers were compared to most other places we had been.  I would have expected to have been harassed just as much or more than in the square, but that just wasn't the case.  Everyone was actually quite friendly, albeit a little more when you entered their shop and asked about or tried on things, but all in all a generally enjoyable experience.

What really made my brief stay in Marrakech much less enjoyable was the torrential downpour that started once we left the Souk.  We attempted to run through most of it the long way back to our hotel, but that just didn't work so well.  I had on my recently purchased purple Berber scarf, which I quickly discovered doesn't hold color very well when wet.  Combine that with a yellow shirt and you have a ruined wardrobe.  What made things more hilarious, was that in addition to my multicolor shirt, my recently purchased blue Moroccan leather sandals began to share their color with my feet.  So not only was I purple and yellow, but also unnaturally blue!  A rainbow of sorts all caused by the rain in Marrakech.

Trip to the South, Part 1

One of the biggest problems that I see in Morocco is trash. You can literally see it everywhere. From the Medina to the countryside, the entire country seems to be plagued with trash. This may sound like a frustrated college student’s rant about how a developing country is dirty, but it deeply disturbs me on an ecological level that people are OK with throwing their trash in the street, out the window, or in the forest. Everywhere you go, no matter how “close to nature” you try to come if people have been there before you, you’ll find evidence of their existence. While my homestay family in Rabat has a trashcan under the sink in the kitchen, they still persist in throwing some of their trash out the window. And in the streets, I constantly see people just flicking the wrappers and bottles for their candy or juice wherever they happen to be standing. I know that I am not the only one who feels that things could be better with the trash situation in Morocco. Mami is always watching this TV show about the people who live on trash dumps and who clean the streets in big cities, like Casablanca and Fez, and it’s heart wrenching to hear some of their stories. She also tells me that she doesn’t like that there is basically a garbage dump on one side of our house. For the most part, I don’t think the general population knows or understands the impact that their waste has on the environment and on their health, and that worries me. Education is always a good thing in my opinion, and in this case it is necessary.

Apart from the trash everywhere, I have seen some quite spectacular sites that Morocco has been more known for: the Sahara and the Middle or High Atlas Mountains. All are absolutely spectacular and have their own specialty. The Middle Atlas is known for its cedar forests, which sadly are being depleted at an alarming rate of 30,000 hectares per year due to the constant demand for cedar products. However, there have been government initiatives to help work with the people living on the National Park land to help preserve the fragile ecosystems which they are a part of. As part of our tour through the Middle Atlas we stopped at two cedar forest locations: one was to have a picnic in a more secluded part of the forest, and the other was to see the famous Barbary Macaques. The second was definitely a place where Moroccans and tourists alike frequented to have picnics and enjoy the forest, but you could definitely see the strain being placed on the trees.

Another more somber theme we covered during our short tour of the Middle Atlas was the usage and mismanagement of water resources and the impact of different forms of agriculture. Agriculture makes up about 16% of Morocco’s GDP, a very impressive number, and about 40% of people farm either in larger industrial farms or as subsistence farmers, meaning they grow what they need using more traditional methods and sometimes have a extra to sell for additional income. As we were driving near Meknes for the second time in our program, the expansive vineyards I saw lining the highway began to take on another meaning. Those large vineyards are part of a new trend in agriculture in Morocco that puts more emphasis on industrial farms like the ones I saw, and pushing subsistence farmers away from growing cereals to a type of farming based on harvesting from trees. Why trees you may ask? Because Morocco is being increasingly affected by drought, and trees like olives have a better resistance to those droughts and don’t need as much water as growing grains like barley. This seems like a logical initiative for the government to take, especially in areas where rainfall is becoming increasingly scarce, but what will happen when the country that eats bread like it’s going out of style doesn’t produce as much grain? I’m sure the government has already considered this issue (at least I hope they have), but I still just have to ask.

To add to the increasingly somber mood about deforestation, water mismanagement, and climate change, we next ventured into the Sahara. On all counts a spectacular place to visit, however, we happened to arrive in Rissani, a major town that is on the border of the desert, just as the wind was picking up, and dust storms were a significant issue. Yet, we still managed to visit a private co-operative initiative, which worked mostly with women and children to help create a more sustainable and diversified economy to the areas and villages it works with. They provide literacy, weaving, and math classes as well as daycare so that women can not only contribute to the family economy but also take on an informed role about their rights. This was very inspiring for me because I am so interested in education in all forms, and I couldn’t resist buying a couple handkerchiefs when I knew that the women who made them would be getting a fair price for their work. Next, we ventured out into the desert area where the co-operative had developed an oasis project that allowed people of the area to have water provided by the wells dug by a government initiative by irrigating a small plot of land on which they could grow grains. After that, the not-so-educational fun started. As we checked into our hotel, it was hard not to notice the Saharan sand dunes looming behind it. This was quite possibly the thing that I have anticipated the most throughout this entire trip, and I was not disappointed! The Sahara is a stunning place that can only be partially captured in pictures, so I won't try to explain it in words except for these: vast, sandy and mountainous.