Morocco Part 4 - Kif in the Rif

Between Fez and Tangier, where we had to go to catch our ferry back to Spain, are the Rif Mountains, the second-biggest range in Morocco after the Atlas, and the prettiest town in the Rif is called Chefchaouen. We were told that the town's two most abundant resources are rock-climbing cliffs and kif, the Moroccan name for hashish, which is grown in the mountains. This makes it a veritable heaven for backpacking hippie college kids in search of cheap dope. We were on a tight budget, and drugs are wrong, so we didn't smoke any, but the town was amazing, as we discovered on an early morning walk/hike we took...

First off, the entire town is painted sky blue. Here's an old woman blue-washing her patio, right as we happened to be walking by...



And blue doors...



blue art...



blue stairs...


Kat said that it looked as if a massive wave of blue paint had rushed through the streets of the village, painting everything in a random, slipshod manner, and only reaching up to a certain height. I thought that was a nice way to put it...



Someone in the street told me, when I asked, that the town is blue because of a tradition that the Jews who lived their ages ago started... they paint everything blue, and it keeps the mosquitoes away. This should be a lesson to the outdoors-inclined in my blog audience. Screw bug spray, paint yourself sky blue.

This kid told me that I shouldn't worry about it, and that rather I should take his picture and then give him money. In this shot, I'm negotiating a price...



We eventually left the village and hiked out into the mountains a little bit, past a waterfall that ran a mill where all the women washed their clothes in the early morning...

We were headed along a little path, covered with cactuses, of all things, towards a ruined mosque at the top of one of the foothills at the bottom of the mountains that flank the city...



At the top it was beautiful...



and we could see the whole city, with its streaks of blue in the streets...



and when we came back down, it was still a beautiful morning, so we sat at a café in front of the main mosque...



and had a glass of 'Moroccan scotch whiskey'... the ubiquitous green-and-mint tea that's so sweet, so warm, and so good after an early morning hike...



That's all for now, as I'm back in Salamanca, doin' my normal thang. Everyone please leave comments, because I love to hear from you.

Love,
Robbie

Morocco Part 3 - Fez

Fez is, besides the city that invented those ridiculous round red hats, one of the oldest medieval towns in North Africa. Its inner walled city, or the Medina, has more than 9,000 streets, so you basically have to hire a guide to get you through them. Our crappy hotel offered a tourguide service for 150 dirham (about €13) all day, so we got Mohammed, our surly one-armed guide...



and spent a whole day following him through the narrow streets like this...



The Obi-Wan Kenobi robe that he wears is the traditional Moroccan robe, called a jelafa...



There were some lovely things in the market, like goat heads, for example...



And old tiled water fountains...



And DONKIES! Kat likes this picture because she says it looks like both she and the donkey have great weights on their shoulders that need to be lifted. It's a bona-fide art shot...



And this next shot features a camel head, which you will see if you look closely. It was taken around 6 pm during what I liked to call the 'Ramadan Rush Hour' where every single person in the city rushes to buy food as the sun goes down, because they can't eat until it does. Every food service business does all their business during the half hour that is the Ramadan Rush...



Then there as the Medersa Sahrij, a theological school built in 1323. The students lived in quarters surrounding this main pool on the second floor, and sat on mats at the head of the pool, learning how to be imams. It was at one point the most important center of Muslim education in the world...



The art shot with Mohammed pacing...






And here, Mohammed is pointing out the word 'Allah' in arabic...



And some beautiful calligraphy done in stonework...



Part of the deal of having Mohammed as our guide was that he took us to all these 'collectives' where we were supposed to buy something. This one had some beautiful, and completely unaffordable rugs, and the merchant (right) told me and Kat that we should buy one because when we have children and our babies are crawling on the rug, we will forever remember this day in Fez when he treated us so well and gave us the cups of mint tea that we were drinking and was so hospitable that we couldn't resist shelling out $7,000 for a large piece of woven wool...



Later Mohammed stopped and chatted with some fellow who was torturing some turkeys, which reminded me of Thanksgiving and made me hungry...



And we saw a bronze workshop...



And this old dude popped his head up just as I was taking a picture of one of the bigger of the 1,000 or so mosques in the Medina...



Then we saw a rooftop view of the whole city before being hassled for like 30 minutes about why we should by Berber blankets and leather goods...



But we saw a sweet old dude knitting a Berber blanket...



As well as a tannery...


Which smelled so awful that they handed out mint for you to smell while looking at it (note the skins hanging out to dry in the background)...



Towards the end of our Medina tour I decided to get a shave because I hadn't trimmed my burly, virile beard in about 3 days. I stopped in at Absalaam's barber shop and Absalaam gave be the twice-over with a free razor, which was probably the closest shave I´ve ever had...



Shortly after, we were quite hungry, so we went to McDonalds, which was literally the only restaurant open for Ramadan...



Being a fast food connossieur, I decided to see how Moroccan McDirty's stacked up. Naturally, I got the McArabia. It tasted like mediocre kebab. Kat's double cheeseburger was pretty average. But my god, what a meal, overall...


After our double cheeseburgers, we felt primed to check out the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter, which in Fez is incredibly well preserved. Here's me outside the cemetery, which we weren't able to enter because all entrances were closed...



We did see the synagogue, however, which was taken care of by a lady who lived next door to it. It was recently renovated, but there aren't any more Jews in Fez to worship in it (there are only 4,000 in all of Morocco) even though they actually had a torah scroll...



a pulpit...



prayer benches...





and a mikveh...


On our way out of the Medina, we saw some sort of coming of age ritual for a little girl...



And that is all.

Morocco Part 2 - Tea in the Sahara

'There are three girls from the mountains, from a place near Marhnia's bled, and they are called Outka, Mimouna and Aïcha...They go to seek their fortune in the M'Zab. Most girls from the mountains go to Alger, Tunis, here to earn money, but these girls want one thing more than everything else. The want to drink tea in the Sahara...'

Before we went to Morocco I read Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, from which the above excerpt derives, on recommendation from Kat. I was told -- I'm not sure by whom, Kat denies that it was her -- that it was about Morocco, and even that it was the best novel ever written about Morocco.

It is a great novel, but it happens to be set in Algeria and Sudan, not Morocco, and the plot is roughly this: a woman goes to North Africa with her husband and his friend, her husband dies of typhoid, and she has a nervous breakdown, wanders into the desert, and become the sex slave of a travelling camel driver. In fact, the above excerpt is from a story told by a prostitute to the husband character, just before she tries to steal his wallet and her brothers try to chase him down and kill him. It wasn't quite the best reading in preparation for a trip to North Africa, but one thing it made us want was Tea in the Sahara.

The closest we were gonna get to the Sahara was Marakech, which is technically in the High Atlas but is pretty desert-like. We had tea, anyway.

We stayed in a riad, a converted old palatial arabic house with an atrium surrounded by loungelike chambers with luxurious couches where one could lounge and smoke hookah if one wanted to. Kat, who is an expert on Islamic architecture, told me that these first-floor rooms are 'summer rooms' and that the women were confined to second-floor rooms, like the one where we stayed, which is important because it is sexist. Against women. Here's our room...



We went exploring our first day (and got lost, of course) and ended up on a long road filled with mechanics' shops that served only to repair Soviet-era Peugeot motorbikes. They were filled with DONKIES hauling various loads of scrap metal...






We then made our way to the souks, which are the colorful, incredibly busy markets like the ones in the Disney movie Alladin ('Sugar dates! Sugar dates and pistachios! A pretty necklace for a prrrretty lady!...') The souks were incredibly colorful.

They had fruits and veggies...





Spices...



Bath salts, salves, and lotions...



Fish (which was curious because Marakesh is nowhere near any body of water)...



Dyes and musks...



Pretty ladies...



Rugs...



Copperware, bronzeware, and lamps...



Little turtles that you put in your garden to eat bugs, and a falcon (bottom cage)...



Iguanas...



And the souks opened up onto a big plaza called the Jemaa al-Fna, which had millions of carts selling fresh-squeezed orange juice and other assorted merchants...





We sat at one of the cafés infested with colonialist tourists just like ourselves called 'Café Paris' or 'Café Glacier' or something like that and had an arabic coke.



Then we saw the old mosque...



And the tombs of the Saadians, a dynasty of imams who ruled, um, 8 centuries ago? (somebody google that for me...). Here are the tombs themselves...



And the big mausoleum...





I struck a distinctly sufi-like pose under the mihrab...



Later that night we had dinner on a rooftop café overlooking the Jemaa al-fna...



We ate tajine, a delicious stew of brisket simmering with dried figs (are dried figs prunes? anyone?) and couscous with veggies...



While Kat and I were having our tea for dessert and playing chess, some huge arab guy with a bullneck came in and started a loud argument with our waiter in Arabic that may or may not have been about the girl he had with him. What ended up happening was basically a huge brawl where the huge guy beat the living crap out of our waiter and left hime bleeding and crumpled in a doorway. We tried to help as much as possible, then got the hell out of there.

Down below in the Jemaa al-fna, the plaza was alive with musicians and storytellers, and these guys, who sit around on mats drinking tea and smoking hash and thrusting these happy fellows at passers-by...



Yeah, that's right. Snake charmers.



Because of the vicious fight I had just witnessed, I was kind of rattled (get it?). No, seriously. So much so that I'm actually kind of terrified in this picture. Also, one of the snakes they had was a cobra. And I'm pretty sure they didn't have insurance...



That's all for Tea in the Sahara.

Stay tuned for Fez, city of silly hats, and the hippy backpacker junction of Chefchaouen, which may have been my favorite part of the trip.

Cheers,
Robbie