Morocco Day I: The Land of the Setting Sun

Thursday night we went to a flamenco show. It was interesting and fun, but the most important thing you have to know about it was that it ended at like 11:30 p.m. and that we made it home around midnight.

And that's relevant because my alarm was set for 4:15 a.m. Jared, Geoff, Brett, and I left the casa at around 4:30 to meet the other guys at the churro stand so we could all walk to Torre del Oro together. Now, what I forgot to mention is that while I was in class, a bunch of the guys were shopping at H&M (yeah, weird, I know), and they saw these matching white, sleeveless button-up shirts on the sale rack for 3 euros each. I did not participate because I didn't have a shirt (because I was in class)...so I just took photos of the whole thing. Jared was more hardcore than me and cut off the sleeves of one of his dress shirts to fit in and was dubbed the leader.


Anyway, we made it to bus and were almost ready to leave when we realized that 3 girls from our program (there were 8 people from API..I have class with most of them--they cracked up when they saw the guys behind us). So Geoff called them. They missed their alarms. So they quickly packed and took a cab to the bus, barely making it on time.

Then we hopped on the ferry for a 35 minute ride to the port of Tangier, where our Moroccan tour guide and our bus were waiting. Our drive was named Unes (in English: Jonah, Jonas...we called him many variations of those). He brought his 6-year-old son Omar with him for the entire weekend. Unes started by saying (in Spanish) that he would mostly talk in Spanish because of his "pobre inglés." He kept it up for 20 minutes before letting on that he was fluent in English (most of us would have been fine if he had only talked Spanish, but there enough who wouldn't have been ok).

But anyway, he started talking about Morocco. The Kingdom of Morocco in Arabic is al-Mahgrib, which translates to "Land of the Setting Sun." He talked about the population of Morocco, which is predominantly of Berber descent (indigenous people to the area), with Arabs being the second largest group. We also learned a little bit of Arabic, "Salaam alaykum/alaykum salaam" (peace be with you/hello) and "shrukran" (thank you).

After we asked him how he learned all his languages, Unes gave us a little information on the Moroccan education system. School begins with kindergarten at age 6, but parents are expected to teach their children about the Koran and (obviously) Arabic and at least French. When students reach the equivalent of high school age, they choose another language to specialize in: English, German, or Spanish. Then they take an exam that grants them eligibility to study at a university, where if they wish, they can pick up another language from: Russian, Hebrew, or Japanese. Unes himself spoke (in order of fluency): Arabic and French, German, Spanish, English, and Russian (said he had been out of practice with Russian though). However, he also said that a lot of children and adolescents are forced to leave school to work or take care of their family. Also, if student need to repeat a course, they are given one shot, and if they don't pass, they are kicked out (he said that population is very young and there aren't enough seats in traditional schools).

Students who are forced to leave school usually find work elsewhere that doesn't require more education, or enroll in a handicraft school. These schools serve two purposes: to provide students with a skill that will allow them to earn a living in the future, and to preserve the traditional Moroccan handicraft skills for generations to come. Unes acknowledged that it's sad that these children wouldn't have a normal childhood like their peers at government school or private schools, but said that it's important that they have a chance in the future. I tend to agree, but it's still sad.

The first destination of the weekend was Chefchaouen. We took a long drive through the mountains, stopping in Tétouan for a bathroom break. Every time we stopped at a place, he made sure to tell us that at least some of us had to buy a drink so they would allow the buses to stop at their stores. The bus ride was at times awesome, at times nerve-racking, and at time a little nauseating. It was great when we could see the views of the mountains and countryside, nerve racking when we would pass cars on a two lane road on the side of a mountain, and nauseating when the bus would sway because the roads weren't perfectly level. Ugh.

Around 2:00 Morocco time (4:00 in Spain), we made it to Chaouen to begin our walking tour of the medina (which translates to "old town"). The city was predominantly blue and white. When the buildings were built, the walls were dyed with indigo to protect the inhabitants from mosquitos (because apparently it's a repellant).

As we were walking, Unes pointed out the 5 components that can be found in every Medina. The first two were obvious, a mosque and a school for young children. Also on the list was a public fountain for getting drinking water, a community bakery for baking the day's bread for your family, and a public sauna/hot bath. We stopped in the center of the medina to see AlKasaba, an old fort built before the city was under European rule. It was made of adobe, and you could still see the holes from the scaffolding (that were left there to let the building expand and contract with the seasons.

Afterwards, we walked to the outside of the city by one of the mountains. Here we saw how they get the water from the top of the mountain to the city by way of ducts that direct water from a natural spring. It all goes into the city to a common area where they can wash their clothes, and some also goes through a filtration system for drinking water (we still didn't drink the tap water). It was really interesting to see. Then Unes and co. bought us bread for lunch (difficult to find because it was Friday, the Muslim holy day and also just a few days after Ramadan) which we ate on the side of a road by the forest. The forest was also a great spot to take a shot of the entire city and to use to "bathroom" (he said he really was thinking about that).

Then another bus ride, this time about a four hour ride to Fez. Nothing special except we got to see the sunset from the bus. Then we had dinner in the hotel (which was really nice), hung out in the lounge, and then went to sleep around 10:00 local time (roughly 17 hours since we had woken up in the morning).