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Published: July 11th 2006
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But I am a blonde Scandinavian girl!
Before arriving in Tangier I had prepared myself for the large amount of hazling which I understood from other travellers was the norm in the sea port. I had put on my most fierce look, even practising it in the mirror. I was actually starting to look forward to the hazles with some kind of "you just try" attitude. But as I stepped food on Africa for the first time in my life, nothing happened. No hazling, no taxi drivers offering "good" deals or people trying to sell weird items, while constantly following you. This kind of upset me. Being a blonde Scandinavian and single female traveller I would have expected just some hazling. Offcourse my first thought was quite irrational as I started wondering whether I was smelling badly or was just in general really ugly. After that I started pondering over the fact that my stern attitude, which I had practiced so much, might scare the hazlers away. Finally, I discovered that it had nothing to do with me, but was because of a stronger control from the side of the government making Morocco more tourist friendly. - So in the end
the blue Chaouen
blue painted houses in chefchaouen I stopped degrading myself to the most disgusting person alive and found my way off the port area.
Morocco
I was quite stunned by Morocco. I am not sure what I expected, but I know that I had never imagined the filthy smell of the Medina or the dirty streets and dusty air. Looking at pictures from somewhere is definately not the same as being there. All my senses got bombarded in my week in Morocco, especially my smelling sense and it wasn't by exotic spices.
But though the smells of the Medina surprised me and made me wringle my nose, I also discovered the wild beauty of the Rif Mountains, the buzzle of Fes Medina and the long sandy beaches at Cap Spartel.
Chefchaouen
Look at the goat horns The holy colour of Islam is green, Morroco is muslim, ergo if there is a city with one dominating colour that colour would most likely have to be green. Wrong! Chefchaouen is known by its blue and white coloured medina. The blue colour comes from the Jewish belief that blue is holy. And Chefhaouen is a city that has had a large Jewish population as they moved
there escaping the reconquest of Spain and Portugal by Christians up through the middle ages. Until the 1920´s the city was closed to foreigners, meaning to Christians and only few got in and only in disquise.
I fell in love with Chefchaouen and its blue coloured houses. The medina seems clean and fresh and the green RIF Mountains which surround the city makes a fantastic background. I was my first real meeting with a Morrocan city and it became my ultimate favorite. One day I will have to go back.
As I visited Chefchaouen I also came within range of the magnificent Rif Mountains. This is Berber territory and here lives a large part of Morroco's Berber population. I went on a tour from Chefchaouen into the depts of the Mountains and ended up in a small Berber community. Here, we ate dates and drank tea while enjoying the simple village life passing us by. We had been told at the beginning of the trip that the local people didn't like having their photo taken and that one should ask and offer a bit of money. Apparently they didn't want to end up as postcards, our guide told us.
The kids, however, seemed not the least irritated of the spotlight. The elder people ask for money for the photo as our guide had told us, but we quickly learned that they should not receive the money before hand, as they then would take the money and claim they didn't want their picture taken anyhow. I would probably do the same.
At the end of my trip into the Rif Mountains, we finally came upon what I had started to suspect to be yet another story about Morroco which would not add up. On the way down we entered large fields of beautiful cannabis plants. They are one of the only things that can really grow in the not so fertile region of Chefchaouen and therefore the region has become notorious for its production of hashish.
Fes
As I entered Fes El-Bali, the old medina of Fes, I couldn't but think that this might be one of the worlds largest labyrinths and how lucky I was that I was in a tour group with a guide. Fes El-Bali is population-wise considered to be the largest urban area in the world without any cars. So much was happening in the
leather painting
leather painting in Fes medina labyrinth streets of Fes El-Bali. Chickens were sold, dead and alive, people were discussing prices and craftsmen were working with leather or carpets or any other thing. Once in a while you would hear a yell and be dragged to the side of the very small streets as a donkey or two packed with all kind of goods was racing towards you with no breaks and hooves that would kill. Though carfree, the medina didn't seem less dangorous.
As a part of the tour, I came to see the large Fes pottery, where workers would sit for hours on the ground cutting out small pieces of mosaic or handpainting pots as on an asembly line. I also visited a carpetshop, which was situated in an old house in the Medina. Though the streets are narrow and everything seems to be so unstabile and dirty outside, the inside of the old medina houses is truely beautiful. You feel like you have entered into another world. Large rooms and a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. Wooden encarvings and tons of mosaic which I had now learned how was produced. In this particular house there were carpets everywhere. Stacked in
tradition of the Rif
hash-fields in the Rif-mountains every corner and corridor and meters high almost reaching the ceiling.
I also came upon a pharmacy where they only made natural products, which to Western tourists is pretty fascinating. They made the best natural lotion from roses I have ever come across. It simply smelled like heaven. I have fastly become adicted to it and cry myself to sleep because I didn't buy any more. Finally the tour guide brought the group to a leather producer. At the entrance all participants were given a few leaves of mentha each. No one really understood why we received these, but the guide grinned and withdrew to the back as we entered a balcony overlooking a courtyard filled with claypots of colour. It was a beautiful sight, but the smell was horrific. I couldn't breath for the terrible stench hanging in the air. We were explained that it was pigeon droppings, which smelled so bad when used in the process of softening leather. Thereafter, our guide showed us how to role the mentha leaves and stuff them in our nose, which made everything a bit better.
Meknes
Though I had been fascinated by Fes and the labyrinth of an old medina,
boys to remember
boys in a berbervillage I came to like Meknes a little better. Without a guide I had the chance of discovering this place on my own. And first and foremost of shopping, as I felt it my duty to support the Morrocan economy. As a wandered around the streets of the medina in Meknes, I came to a small shop where an old man was selling a few items. It was out of the way and not many tourists walked this way past. Here there were no plastic items or plates ingraced with Morroco or Meknes. The shop owner was happy to invite me inside and for an entire hour did I sit in his little shop drinking tea and being told about Morroco and Morrocan culture. I ended up leaving the place with much more than I could carry and looked very much like one of the over packed donkeys as I ventured on.
Outside Meknes there are an old Roman settlement named Volubilis. Though it has experienced destruction through the ages by for example the Lisabon Earthquake in 1755 and has had much of its marble taken away in order to build Meknes, it is still very interesting to visit. I particularly liked the large sculptures of a penis which directed the Romans towards the town bordellos and the still intact mosaic that could be found on the floor of old ruins. All the pillars that were still standing had a storks nest on the top and dusins of storks looked down on the silly tourists who wandered the Roman pavement.
Asilah
In Asilah I went to a hamman, a Moroccan public bath. We were six girls, all up for an evening of massage and pielling, though none of us really knowing what that meant. After we had been in the bathing halls for a while, splashing with water, two large women came grabbing us like meat and with a special spunch started scrubbing us one by one. I let off so much dead skin that one might think I've lost five kilos. It was a strange feeling to be so close to so many women in this hot sauna and to be scrubbed and massaged so closely by a big woman whose breasts were swinging around like Elvis. I know that the Hamman is a cultural thing and that there is nothing strange for women to be undressed in the same room, but it seemed so intimate. All the women rubbing shoulders as they sit on the floor pouring water over themselves and washing everywhere. It was an interesting experience and I can honestly say that I have never been this clean before in my life.
I liked Morocco and it was a wonderfull trip all in all. I took several hundreds of pictures on each streetcorner. Pictures which my family will have to spend hours looking through the day I return. Donkeys in all places and from all sites, camels on sandy beaches, landscape pictures from the Rif and the ocean blue pictures of Chefchaouen medina. I can't wait to show them pictures from my first step off my beloved Europe.
Anna
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