It was a short visit, only 11 days, but it was full of adventures, laughter, highs and lows, and feels like it was three times as long.
I want to begin by saying that I travel with a free mind. I arrive to a place unpolluted by the recommended itineraries of guidebooks, the biases of other travelers or the prepackaged reactions of the media. I like to experience the place for myself and come away with my own interpretations. As such, I arrived in Marrakech with little more than a fold out tourist map I happened to find in one of the FOUR bookshops I searched in the Madrid airport.
Actually, you know what, that isn't totally true. As I was planning this trip, Morocco was the one destination that people had things to say about. I couldn't escape what became a litany of surprisingly negative reactions. At first I wrote of the complaints as the whinings of high--maintenance travelers-the people who want clean bottled water, nice linen, and everything exactly as it is at home--but as I heard from more and more people, I began to get worried.
Every woman I had spoken with complained of her treatment in Morocco. They felt harrassed, uncomfortable, scared and angry. They said men would call them, follow them, say inappropriate things to them, and children would try to help them when they are lost only to insist on getting money when they arrive safely. Even women who walked hand-in-hand with their husband felt targeted. The worst stories came from a girl that I met the night before I left for Morocco; she said that she was hissed at by old ladies for showing her hair and felt that a man was going to follow her to her hotel... the list of horror stories goes on and on. Needless to say, despite my efforts to arrive unfettered, after 10 separate people told me they hated Morocco, I entered the country a little guarded and wary of what was to come.
Day one:
My first experiences in Marrakech proved to be very reassuring. No drama. No hastle. The only thing that left an impression on me was the sheer chaos of the city. It is the sort of place that you always need to be alert, or you will be flattened by a truck, a bus, a taxi, or one of the horse and carraiges, donkey carts, or motorbikes loaded down with huge bags of items to stock the local shops. There are no real traffic laws in effect there, so it is truly every man for themself, and you must never expect people to make way for you. (Sidenote example: Once we were even nearly flattened by an aggressive group of modern Moroccan woman who apparently needed the taxi we had called more than we did as they rushed to the window, shoving us to the side.) Despite all of the goings-on, thanks to my handy fold out map, and a quick call to my would-be host, I made it to my resting place with relative ease, setting my bags down with a sigh of relief.
The rest of the afternoon I used to explore my new neighborhood. It turned out that I was living in the Medina, which is the old, original part of every Moroccan city which is generaly still enclosed on the original city walls. It is characterised by close houses, modest doorways, and narrow streets. At its earlier times, the narrow streets served to dissuade and confuse any insurgence as well as to limit the amount of sunlight that came in so that the streets were cooler in the heat of summer.
The modest doorways thing is really interesting because all of these narrow, dark and dirty alleys had the most unassuming of doorways. If you are lucky enough to enter through one, generally you find yourself in the middle of a gorgeous courtyard that opens up to the sky! In this way intruders could never tell the wealth of the family at whose door he stands. The muslims certainly spared no luxury with their architecture; the classic structure includes 5 main characteristics: marble floors, ceramic tiling with intricate patterns and symbolic colors, wood carving, intricate plaster designs and a fountain.
Additionally, every front door is heavy and made of wood, but sports two knockers-one that signaled family, and another, further up for those on donkeyback, signaled comany.
It is the medina (the old town) that most tourist come to see, so this is where the large portion of touristy merchandise can be found--localized to a specific area called the sook. It is in this maze of narrow streets and covered alleyways that I found myself that first afternoon. I found an interesting man with a nice little shop. He invited me in for tea, which he prepared in the traditional metal teapot, pouring high into the traditional painted glass tea cups to create a light froth on the top of each cup.
This was to be the first of many cups of tea. In fact, tea seems to be the tradition before and after every meal and several times throughout the day just to relax. The tea is always made the same: boiled water is poured over either fresh mint leaves, or dried ones and some dried tea leaves called gun powder, and sweetened with a ridiculous amount of sugar. By the end of my time, I got really, really sick of tea. Perhaps I would have had better luck if I were British.
And it was in this way that I passed a greater part of my afternoon--sipping tea, cross-legged in the back of a small shop, chatting about tourism, the merits of Morocco and the production of all of his merchandise. His walls were laden with traditional leatherwork from West Africa, silverwork ad beading from the Sahara, as well as the popular steel lanterns. I enjoyed looking through his baskets of beads, too, as there were so many different ones from all over the Sahara. We even had a visit from his pet squirrel who came out to make sure that the beads were beads, and not nuts.
Upon leaving his shop, to my surprise it had gotten dark, and I had NO IDEA where I was, or where my home was. Nonetheless, I tried to forge my way ahead, continuously searching for something familiar to mark my return. Alas, none to be found. In this way, I received the unsolicited help of three different people. Each led me in a different direction, and onlky one of whom did try to insist I pay him for his help, even though he clearly had brought me the wrong way. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but fortuntely it ended well as a nice young guy, who also works at a riad--guest house--who spoke English very well, ended up giving me a ride on his motorbike. Ordinarly this is a simple thing, right? People ride motorbikes all the time, no? Well, imagine riding this bike through streets that can't be more than 8' wide, and are then lined on each side with small stands, and filled with pedestrians walking in every possible direction, as well as men pulling huge carts heaped with goods, donkey carts coming through and cats and dogs running around at your ankles. Not your average driving. The one advantage, atleast, was that it is pedestia only, so no cars are allowed to pass through. Thusly, I arrived to a familiar point, and continued the walk back to my temporary home.
To finish off the night, I met the three girls with whom I had planned to travel. We chatted away into the night, getting very excited about the possibilities of our time in Morocco. I went to bed looking forward to what was to come, amazed that we were able to pull it off, but relieved to be somewhere safe and quiet.
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