Monday, September 30, 2013

The Sahara

Asleamu Aleikum Everyone,

This week I had planned on writing about a few aspects of Moroccan culture that I find peculiar but after this amazing weekend, I will withhold that post for later in the week and talk about the amazing trip that I returned from late last night.


First I want to talk about at least a few things that happened this past week.


One was a dispute I witnessed as I walked home from school at night through the Medina. Apparently two men in a car nearly hit a man in a wheelchair. This is where the dispute started and I joined the growing crowd around the men. The men in the car were screaming at the man in the wheelchair, and the man in the wheelchair was screaming back as an unarmed police officer tried to break the two up. After the men in the car spit at the wheelchair man (common insult here) they got back into their vehicle and began to drive off...this seemingly ended the dispute and the crowd began to disperse, which is where the next bit of action came in. The car, blocked by the crowd of people became stuck as everyone cleared out, this time the man in the wheel chair launched himself towards the car, taking the metal arm of the wheel chair with him, and smashing the car windshield. This escalated things quickly, with the men getting out of the car screaming as a police officer stood between them and the man, now laying on the ground screaming.

A few members of the crowd helped the man back into his wheelchair, and a friend quickly wheeled him away. It was at least ten minutes before the police officer began to seek the man, and when the owners of the car realized he had been wheeled off, began yelling, prompting the police officer to handcuff him.

Later in the week on the way to KFC via the tram, which is located in Agdal, a very very modern section of Rabat, I walked into a protest outside the parliament building. They love to protest here.

 The Tram
Not the same
Protest
Now on to the Sahara.

We left a little after 7:30am for our 10 hour ride, (not going to say who caused the tardy departure), we stopped every two hours or so at gas stations and rest stops, our first significant stop was at Al Akhawayn University, located in Ifrane, in the Middle Atlas Mountains. This University opened only in 1993 as a joint project by the kings of Morocco and Saudi Arabia. It is a western style university, and the students live on campus, unlike other universities here in Morocco. English is the language of instruction along with Modern Standard Arabic.

 The University 
 I was happy to see the Moroccan Special Olympics team, which was competing at the university and it was such a sight to see these athletes competing with their parents and fans cheering them on. In a country that I feel sometimes does not provide services like this often, I was enthralled to see the looks of happiness on the competitors faces.
The Pool

How the journey works is that after leaving Rabat, you are driving through desert like conditions, this lasts for a few hours before driving up into the Middle Atlas mountains, which is an intense green, with tons of sheep, herders  and grazing donkeys. You drive along narrow roads snaking through the mountain, fear gripping you every time the driver begins passing someone in the opposite traffic lane. After going through the mountains you descend into what is similar to what you encountered on the other side of the mountains, before driving into straight desert. 
 The Green of the Mountains

After departing the university we ate lunch at a nearby restaurant, before re-boarding our two large passenger vans and continued onward.  We stopped again at the Ziz Valley for an amazing view just as the sun was setting, the first of many amazing sights to be saw on this excursion.

 The Valley



After getting back on the vans we continued until we reached our first hotel, by far the nicest one I have seen since arriving in this country. It had a pool, air conditioning, and a buffet dinner and breakfast. We spent the night hanging out with each other and another group of international students until going to sleep to continue on the next morning.




The next morning we left and continued on, stopping at a fossil factory where they collect fossils from the desert and then polish them and fix them up to sell to tourists, we then continued to a small shop in the town of Risanni, the main market for the surrounding Saharawian villages, where I purchase my first jalaba(robe) in Morocco.

Culture

We then switched from our vans to 4x4 off road "jeeps", these took us for our first venture into the desert, to the village of Bamberra, a small Gnawa village on the edge of the sand dunes. The Gnawa are descendants of slaves brought to Morocco from Sub Saharan Africa, and are black and speak their own language along with Arabic. We went and listened to their music, where they move their entire bodies except for their heads, and then visited the village school. 
 Foxes for Hire
 Gnawa


The Village

We then went to another hotel, literally right on the edge of the sand dunes (as in the back door), where we were to wait for our sunset camel ride into the desert where we were to spend the night. This plan unfortunately never materialized, as a sandstorm set in, keeping us from going out that night. A sandstorm is hard to imagine if you have never been in one, but sand was everywhere, I went for a walk into the dunes with my friend, and when I came back, sand was in my hair, my mouth (caking my teeth), in my pockets and everywhere else imaginable.
After eating dinner at the hotel, everyone went to bed early as we were waking up at 4:30am for a sunrise camel ride into the dunes. This was made worse by the confusion of Moroccan daylight savings time which was supposed to set in that night, however upon waking up the next morning, we found out the King decided to postpone DST until next month....maybe.
Camels during the Storm
Getting on our camels in the dark, and heading out into the desert was an experience. But the real magic happened after climbing the tallest dune and watching the sunrise over one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. The sand dunes went on forever, and our guides pointed to the distance where Algeria was within view (15km away). Watching the sun come up was a testimony to the beauty of our world, and as a human I was in awe. 







After remounting our camels we headed back to the hotel, where we ate, showered, and headed back to the jeeps, but not after filling a glass Arabic Coke bottle with Sahara sand.


We headed back to Risanni where we explored a mausoleum of a former king, and then went to the Souk al Ahd (The Sunday Market), before departing for Rabat, stopping again in the mountains to see the wild monkeys that live there.





Monkeys

We finally got back to Rabat near 11pm.




 Playing with the gas station strays makes the trip more enjoyable

I will try to post again this week with a culture blog, next weekends plans, climbing Jibal Toubkal, the tallest mountain in North Africa

Allah Ma3ck

Kevin


Arabic Word of the Day

جلابة- Jelaba
traditional Arab robe

Monday, September 23, 2013

First week of classes and thoughts

Aselamu Aleikum Everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile so lets recap last week

Not the most exciting, but it was very busy.
We had our first week of classes, with my day beginning at 6:55am (Has not been that early since high school), I leave the house by 7:30am and am sitting in Arabic class by 8am, after a 30 minute walk through the city, which is not bad in the morning, but by midday, the heat make walking uncomfortable. Every morning is a battle with my host father about whether I am running late enough to skip sitting down for breakfast, I always lose this argument as he finishes pouring the coffee with Halib (Milk). (I had never even tasted coffee until I arrived in Morocco, or soda, but it is rude to decline food and drink here).

On Mondays and Wednesdays I have very long days, not returning home until 8:30pm, I have four classes on those days, with each class being two hours long, and a two hour break between each one except my last two, these breaks are nice, but I wish things were more condensed.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have been able to return home after my daily Arabic class, and go back to sleep for a bit before waking up and eating lunch here at the house with my family, and then returning to school for one more class.

The Muslim cemetery on my way to school, notice the sheep

On Friday the only class I have is Arabic, and it is over by 10am, which leaves us time to travel and effectively have three day weekends

My classes:

Intermediate Modern Standard Arabic
Magrebian Francophone Literature in Translation (Which I very much like so far)
North African Politics
Islam in Morocco and North Africa
and Cultural Identities in Morocco and North Africa

All the professors seem very smart and have interesting quirks about them, one thing I find interesting is and Anti-French sentiment that has remained from decolonization in 1956

I also had one lecture a few weeks ago on media in Morocco, where the Moroccan professor spent time bashing Fox News as a biased news network that tells lies, I was amazed that the liberal streak of college professors has made it to Africa.
Everyone in this country are huge fans of President Obama, and have very negative feelings about President Bush.

I want to take a moment to talk about some aspects of Moroccan culture that have stood out to me as very different from back home

One thing  that I find slightly disturbing is the level of begging in the streets. Living in DC, I am used to seeing homeless people in the city, but here it is rampant. The thing that is the most upsetting is that it seems that those in Morocco with disabilities are relegated this position. There seems to be many "blind" people here, blind is in quotations because I see some of these same people walking around perfectly find the next day, but there are also handicaps that I have never seen before in the United States, which makes me think they would have once been very treatable. 

The other poverty demographic seems to be those from Sub-Saharan Africa, who sell all kinds of goods along the road outside of the Medina, mostly cell phones and other electronics, and also begging.

Another difference here culturally speaking is how women are treated. While you will see a fully veiled and covered woman standing next to a girl in a tank top, Morocco overall is much more conservative then the US. However, there seems to be a level of acceptance of sexually harassing foreign girls. I have not seen anything drastic, but know some girls in our group have been groped and grabbed at, and gotten called to. While walking with them I often catch men looking back and staring at the girls and I find the best thing to do is give them a death stare which usually ends their curiosity. Girls cannot walk alone after dark.
While there are some big Moroccans, I would say overall they are smaller then most of the guys in our group. 

Another thing I find interesting is the daily schedule these people adhere to. The streets are relatively quiet until around 9am, and then remain crowded well into the night. Even now as I approach midnight, I can still here a soccer game being played in my ally, along with motorbikes zooming by from time to time, leaning on their horns (this is incredibly annoying).

Now back to this weekend

On Friday we attended a going away party at the Marine House, the house where the Marines who protect the American Embassy here live.
They periodically hold small parties for Americans in Rabat, and you have a mix of embassy employees, and expats. This was very nice as it reminded me of home, hearing English, and basking in the air conditioning (rare in Morocco). For those over 21, there was even American beer.

Saturday was a bit slower, until the evening when we all gathered at a wine bar to celebrate one of our classmates 21rst birthday.
Holly's Birthday Celebration 

Sunday began with mass at 8am, at The Church of Saint Francis
The first time I went to this church was for daily mass on Tuesday in French, where it was just me and several French nuns, one who took me under her wing after I told her I only speak English.

This Sunday mass was very interesting to me, as it is the only English language liturgy in Rabat on Sunday, I thought I would see Americans and possibly other Europeans, this was not the case. The Church was filled with Filipinos, a demographic I was not even aware was present in Morocco. 

On Sunday we celebrated another birthday, and a few of us went to a nearby beach to celebrate. This was also an interesting experience as the moment we got there the lifeguard came to rent us an umbrella for 50MAD (6USD), I was able to rent a kayak for 20MAD for 45mins and we all had a good time with that. We later went out to hotel bar and had some Moroccan sweets to finish off his celebration. 
 The Beach
Artistic Beach Yoga
A Fire Burning in a field, and no one doing anything about it.....really no one

For the first time in the almost month I have been here did someone mention the cross that I have tattooed on my leg. On the way home from the beach I stopped to kick a soccer ball around with some younger boys outside my house, I assume he thought I was Muslim because I was speaking to him in Arabic and seeing my tattoo he started asking questions about my whether I was a Muslim or not, tattoos are not very common in this country, and tattoos of a cross and a bible verse are non existent. 

 The ugliest dog I have ever seen, dreadlocks and massive overbite 
The largest Cat I have ever seen, cell phone placed to show scale
The Cranes all over the Country
We have started planning some of the trips we want to take this semester, which include a trip to a few European countries, as well as trips to numerous cities here in Morocco, and hopefully we will climb the summit of Mount Toubkal, the tallest mountain here in North Africa.

This coming weekend we will be driving ten hours south to the Sahara desert, where we will be camel riding through the dunes for a few days, and I will update after that.

Allah M3ck

Kevin

Arabic Word of the day
عيد ميلاد- Ieed MelAd- Birthday

Ford

Sunday, September 15, 2013

"How about Tangier?"

Aselamu aleikum everyone,

I have returned from an amazing weekend in Tangier, the most northwestern city in Morocco. We left Rabat at 8:30am via train and arrived in Tangier a little before 1pm. The cost of a one way first class ticket is 150MAD, or around $18USD.
Tangier is an amazing city, formerly a designated International zone during the colonial period, it is an eclectic mixture of Sub-Saharan, Moroccan, Spanish, and French influences. This is accentuated by the large number of expats living within Tangier, and a high number of African migrants, seeking to continue on to Europe.

We rented an apartment for the three nights we were there, for about $20USD per night per person, and for the 7 of us, we had plenty of room and were able to have a little more freedom than we would in a hotel.
Immediately after checking into our apartment we headed right for the beach, which was about ten minutes down hill from where we were staying, a little more trash than American beaches but the ocean was nice, but much colder than I thought it would be. We also saw camels on the beach that tourists pay to take pictures on.
We tried to go out that night, but similar to what I have experienced in other parts of Morocco, there isn't much of a nightlife around here.

The next day we went horseback riding , for less than twenty American dollars, we were able to ride for an hour, first in a corral, and then I made the decision that I would make my own decisions, and continued touring the area on my own, and as always, there was no one here to tell me that I couldn't.


After horseback riding we went to the Medina in Tangier, smaller then the one in Fez, and then explored the Kasbah, a fort facing the sea, from which you can see Spain across the Mediterranean.
From the Kasbah
The Kasbah

On Saturday we left the main city and went to the "Grotto de Hercules" which according to legend is the cave that Hercules slept in after parting the continents of Africa and Europe, it is an awesome sight that opens out into the sea, it is said to be the end of the world.
We climbed down the rocks from the viewing platform, and towards the entrance of the cave (We saw no one else doing this, but again ,no one to stop us). I am so glad we decided to climb down, after emerging from the cave we were on rocks overlooking clear water and were able to jump right in and swim for awhile.
 From The Platform
 From Outside, Notice how the opening is shaped like Africa, including Madagascar 

The Berber people carved millstones from this cave

We also went to Cap Spartel, the actual Northwestern most point in Africa, where there is the lighthouse that is the first thing ships see when crossing from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, you were also able to see across the water, Portugal, Spain, and Gibraltar.
 Where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean 


I thought Tangier was incredibly clean, and the people to be very friendly and not too pushy, I was offered Hashish here more then any other city I have been to, but I think that is because of the large tourist population, as always I declined.




After arriving back in Rabat, two friends and I attempted to located a Catholic Church, with a 7pm service, we thought we had located one, but our taxi driver had no idea who Saint Francis was and instead took us to the a few other churches, none being the one we wanted....will try again next Sunday and maybe try to catch a weekday mass.

Allah Ma'ack

Kevin

Arabic Word of the Day
حليب- Halib- Milk