Hardcore Hammam

Day 38
July 12^th

Summer is already halfway over! Stephanie and I have been taking very good care of ourselves. Pampering, you might say. Weekly manicures and pedicures—why not when they only cost $4 each! Every Moroccan woman who can afford it takes very good care of herself. Always a French manicure, eyebrows perfectly groomed, hair blown out—it's all a sign of wealth. We've found a good little salon, courtesy of Houda. I just had my eyebrows threaded. It's a very common practice in India and the Middle East. Instead of waxing facial hair, a beautician takes a piece of thread, wraps it around two fingers on each hand and twists it. Then she can press the thread to your face and twist it even more to pull out every single hair--no matter how fine. It almost feels like someone is snapping a tiny rubber hand against your face, and then when it's over, your face is all tingly for a short time. It hurts a lot less than waxing, is cheaper, and doesn't make your face red.

Another common beauty practice is weekly trips to the local hammam or sauna. The authentic hammam is not for the fainthearted. I had been to a hammam before in Casablanca so I thought that I knew what I was in for. Indeed, I was mistaken.

Stephanie and I found a solidly middle-class hammam not too far from our hotel. It was bring our own towels and soap style. We paid the entrance fee of 12 dh (less than $2) and found a woman to give us massages. We started stripping, trying to figure out exactly what we were supposed to do with our things by looking around at the other women. It's important to note that staring (especially at foreigners) in Morocco is more acceptable, especially in public spaces. We're white and foreign and totally new, therefore very interesting. Still, the old Berber woman with the face tattoos didn't need to stare at me for fifteen minutes, chewing her cud, while I got undressed. I just told myself that she had never seen anyone with such stylish plastic glasses before.

Once we were wearing only underwear, Nearly Naked Fatima, our hefty masseuse, led us to the sauna part. It was like stepping into ancient Roman times, with the exception being all of the plastic buckets. There were three, large, barrel-vaulted rooms, each parallel to one another. Suddenly, all the Roman ruins that I've seen made more sense. It was all white tile, with very interesting alternating bands of blue conveniently located at eye-level. The blue tiles were square and each one was about oh two by two inches, a pretty, deep cobalt blue color…I stared at the tiling a lot.

Everyone sat on the marble floor next surrounded by a half circle of buckets full of water. Nearly Naked Fatima helped us rub on savon noir, goopy brown soap that is used for exfoliation. Then came the "massage." I was first. She directed me on what to do by pointing and grunting words in French. Once I was laying down, Naked Fatima proceeded to brutally slough off layers of my skin. Using only a glove made out of a rough material and her brute strength, she made my dry skin peel off in rolls like soggy paper. It kind of burned. Then I started to get used to it. When she had done every single centimeter of my body (emphasis on every), I felt so smooth.

It was literally a scene from an Ingres painting. There were women of every shade, of all ages, and most were pretty plump. Even the lighting and the colors evoked The Turkish Bath. We were the only Westerners but not the only ones getting the same scrub down. Nearly Naked Fatima also gave me a real massage, washing my hair and dumping buckets of water over my head as though I were a child. She also made me wash my own underwear, just to make sure that they were squeaky clean as well.

It was very different from the first hammam that I went to in Casablanca, which was more upscale and more expensive. There, everything was provided and we chose a package that included towels and a massage. The whole experience brought up interesting differences between my own culture and that of Morocco. None of the women there were the least bit ashamed of their bodies. I tried to act the same, but the truth is that North Americans are much, much more concerned about how our bodies appear to others. The hammam is an interesting intersection of public and private space. At once, it is closed off from the street, and segregated by gender. But once inside, the space belongs to everyone. Whole families come to wash and gossip and relax. The other women stared at us, but they were also very helpful, motioning to us what to do. The central area is public, but you must always rinse the floor before you sit down, even as clean as it is. The water cisterns are also public, and you never dump your water back into them. But once you sit, the space becomes private, and you can get down to washing yourself as you please.

And sorry, no pictures for this post…

Some Interesting Pictures

Some interesting sights that I see daily when I walk through the medina....look closely

Easter in July in Morocco















I'm joking...Easter is not celebrated by Muslims. But those are live, baby chickens that have been dyed very festive colors. They cost 2 dh each (mere cents). No really, they move and chirp and poop. I asked a Moroccan friend about them and apparently you buy one as a pet and when it grows up...you eat it.


Pimped Out Teleboutique

Why go to a competitor when you can have a private phone conversation in this sweet pay phone store? Complete with rotating disco ball and other mirrored decorations. Sets the atmosphere nicely.













Actually, you eat it
Oh, I have coveted this photo for quite a while and I finally had my camera (and enough batteries) to take it. There are several stalls on zenkat Sidi Fateh that sell roasting cow and goat heads. They set the whole heads on the flat grill and wrap them with saran wrap, then roast them until the meat falls off. Then for a tasty treat, they stuff the meat into a pita bread for you. Here, the cow's jaws make a convenient spot to hold the pita bread. Probably warms it up nicely for you, too. Tasty biz, indeed. And those are sausages to the right, not entrails.

Rules to Essaouira By

Day 24 & 25
June 30th & 31st

The rest of the weekend in Essaouira was wonderful. Our very first night, we ate in a hip Moroccan restaurant that was well decorated but completely empty. We were the only two customers there. It was a little disconcerting given the huge number of people in town for the festival. The Israeli owner was eating at another table with a friend, speaking really loudly in very bad French. She was very unusual looking, with a puffy white face like Pillsbury dough and short, blond braids. When I went to use the bathroom for the second time, I had to cross the inner courtyard in front of her and open the unmarked wooden door to use the toilet. As I walked away, I closed the door gently behind me. As Stephanie and I started to leave, the women asked me in English, in a heavy accent, "Why don't you close the door behind you?" I begged her pardon, and confused, I looked around. The door had indeed swung open again. I apologized, saying that I hadn't realized it was still open. "Go close it now." I looked at her for a second, then turned around and did exactly as I was asked. She didn't thank me. As we left, I wished that I had refused. What made her think that I left the door open on purpose? Why did she think that she could talk to me like that? And most importantly, why did it matter that the door was open? If anyone else had eaten dinner there that night, they would have known, thanks to the open door, exactly where the bathroom was. Was she rude because I was clearly American or because I was young? At least the food was good.

Playing dress-up in a jewelry shop

The actual festival didn't start until dark when several performances, traditional and non, were taking place at multiple venues around the medina. Gnaoua music originates in southern Morocco, created by descendants of black slaves brought to work in the leather-dying and tanning industries. It's clean and spiritual, as sparse and complex as the desert. Traditionally, the singer only uses his guitar, castanet-like instrument and his voice to create complex melodies that are at once mellow, joyful, energetic and even trance-like. You can dance to it several different ways, all in order to produce a spiritual trance. It's also associated with reggae music randomly…there are a lot of bands that do fusion between the two.

We just wandered through the crowds, stumbling upon a huge stage or a small courtyard full of music every once in a while. Friday night, the streets were packed. We stopped to watch a group perform traditional Moroccan music on a huge stage. All of the musicians were men dressed in long red djellabas. There was a line of men dancing, side by side, performing a shuffling step, shrugging their shoulders and letting their arms dangle. One man broke away from the line, grabbed an enormous brass pot, hefted it over his head and started swaying and swirling with it balanced on his head. (Video quality is nothing special--I recorded these on my digital camera)

At another stage, another group was playing traditional gnaoua music. This time, it was improvised percussive music. Most of the musicians were black and wore little hats, similar to fez, but with several long strands of black cord, decorated with cowrie shells. To the left stood a drummer, beating a huge tbel strapped to his chest. The rest were furiously clapping krakeb or giant metal castanets. Triplets, sixteenth notes, their hands were a blur. One by one, they stepped out of line and spun around like tops, crouching and standing, the cords on their hats flying. As a finale, the drummer went last and beat out a frenzied rhythm as he spun and spun.

On Saturday, Stephanie and I hit the shops hard. I got a leather belt and Stephanie got a beautiful plain leather bag. I've gotten pretty good at bargaining. I've found that it's a lot easier to bargain for someone else, when I'm not invested in the article that I'm bargaining for. Knowing numbers in Arabic really helps too! We stepped into a Berber jewelry shop were the owner insisted on ordering tea and sweets for us. He also pulled out two giant swatch of blue fabric and wrapped each of us in traditional Touareg headdresses. Then he piled on hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry. I love playing dress up! We also found a cool little café marketed towards tourists, certainly, full of abstract posters by one artist for sale for only 20 euros.

Sweet abstract art

Saturday night, we met up with the two guys from Boston for dinner and ran into our British friends from the taxi ride. We all had a lovely dinner at tapas restaurant overlooking one of the main venues. The big performance for the weekend was Ky-Mani Marley who performed several songs of his own angry rap creation and all of hi father's hits. We also paid $20 to sit in on the last few songs of a private concert. The band, 3Ma was composed of three musicians: one from Mali, one from Madgascar and one from Morocco (Maroc in French, hence the 3Ma). The best song was one describing African politics, full of dissonance and pantomiming bribing, arguing, and shooting a giant bazooka.

Ky-Mani Marley concert

Then it was back to the hotel for three hours of sleep before a looooooong (and uneventful—hamdililah) bus ride home.

A Guide for the Moroccan Taxi Driver

The 1991 Mercedes C220 is an excellent model for desert crossings. No A/C, fake vinyl upholstery, cassette drive and finicky windows all make it very well-suited to driving in hot climates, especially when passenger discomfort is priority. You may have to reach behind you frequently to open and slam the passenger doors to ensure that they stay closed. Do this often while traveling at high speeds in order to keep your passengers on edge.

In order to maximize profits, every slight decline should be coasted down, with as little acceleration as possible. The minimum speed limit however on flat stretches is 190 km/hr (93mph). Also, there is no real speed limit. The red and white signs with numbers are mainly for decoration.

A two lane-highway actually does not mean one lane in each direction. No, to the contrary, the two lanes actually alternate directions. The key is to be able to see the oncoming traffic, which can be difficult to do when multiple cars in front of you decide to pass other slower-moving vehicules as well. When you are driving in rural areas, there will be an abundance of large, produce-and-illegal-immigrants/hitchhiker-laden trucks. These are particularly slow-moving and must be passed constantly. Timing is key. Only pass when you have less than ten seconds to change back into your own lane. Even better, to save time, wait until multiple tucks pile up to pass them all at once. Large tour buses should also be passed every time you encounter one. Please note that they are often just as fast as your Mercedes and more likely to tip over.

As for gas mileage, you can drive at least 12 km (7 miles) on empty. Gas fumes will last a long distance, especially when coasting downhill. Changing elevation can affect the needle in the gas tank and you might find that you have even less/more than you previously thought. Accuracy is not very important. However, note that all the tour buses and trucks that you passed earlier will now want to pass you at very high speeds.

On long trips, take frequent and unexplained breaks at rest stops. The vague excuse of coffee does indeed signal to your passengers that you will be eating an entire three-course meal with tea and will spend an undetermined amount of time doing so.

Be prepared to be stopped by the Moroccan police at least several times. Do argue with them thoroughly before you grudgingly agree to show your registration and papers. Don't explain what is happening to your foreign passengers—they might become even more confused.

And one last suggestion: make sure that you don't have any change for large bills at the end of the trip. Your passengers will be very satisfied customers indeed.

ESSAOUIRA OR BUST

Day 23rd
June 29^th

Train ride from Rabat to Marrakech: 117 dh ($16.71)
Breakfast for four: treat from a fellow passenger
Taxi ride for six from Marrakech to Essaouira: 600 dh ($85.71)
Last minute hotel room for two: 300 dh per night ($42.85)
Fake ID made at an internet café: 9 dh ($1.28)
Last three songs of an exclusive concert: 150 dh ($21.43)
Making it through the weekend ALIVE and enjoying yourself: priceless.

Every year, hippies of the world and Moroccans young and old congregate at the Gnaoua and International Music Festival to listen to four days of free, live music performances. The festival takes place in Essaouira(pronounced ess-a-WEER-a), a blue and white, windswept resort town on the Atlantic coast. An excellent location for wind surfing, the city is notably cooler than the Mediterranean coast or the interior of Morocco. It's approximately 7 hours away from Rabat by road. Approximately.

Because this is Morocco, and because nothing ever goes according to plan, those seven hours turned into twelve hours of constant traveling. The trip could not have sounded more ill-fated from the beginning but somewhere between the lung cramping, mental breakdown, heat, sweat, packed taxi ride, dehydration*, and near-starvation*, I felt the true exhilaration of traveling that comes only from knowing that it literally can't get any worse and that there is an end in sight. ***Request to hear "vomiting during 6 hr car ride in India" story.

The first pitfall of the trip was the fact that our original transportation fell through. We had originally planned on going with the SIT study abroad students who are taking classes at the Center. However, we found out the night before we left on Thursday that we were not allowed to take two days off from work. There had also been complaints when the interns last summer took the transportation with the students without paying for it. We scrapped the plan of spending one night in Marrakech and decided to go straight to Essaouira on Friday. The easiest way to get to Essaouira is to take a 4 and a half hour long train ride from Rabat to Marrakech and then continue by bus to Essaouira.

However, come Friday morning, I woke up at 4:30 with a pain in my left lung, as though it were being squeezed by an iron band. I had had a bad cough since arriving in Morocco that thus far had refused to go away. My mind racing, I was already thinking that it might be a lung infection or a partially collapsed lung or bronchitis or TB or polio or shingles and that I might just asphyxiate any minute if I didn't go back to bed and then see a doctor later that day. However I didn't want to give up the train ticket that I had already bought. After all, I was still breathing, talking, and walking. We got on the train at 5:45 am but as the hours and towns passed by, I found myself panicking. The pain wasn't lessening any and given my medical history of bizarre side symptoms occurring during major illness, I was getting more and more worried. So in the usual Kellye fashion, I preceded to cry on public transportation in front of two other Moroccan men. I kept jumping up at every stop, debating if I should get off and take a train back to Rabat. But soon we were half way to Marrakech and continuing on with Stephanie rather than turning around alone was much more comforting. The other passengers were very nice and sympathetic, even if a little disturbed by my crying. As Stephanie pointed out in French, "We're all family here in Morocco." One of them bought us all sandwiches and drinks for lunch. They chatted with us a bit, in order to calm me down. I explained that it had been three weeks in Morocco and I still couldn't get rid of my hacking cough and missed my family (whom I haven't seen since December.)

About an hour outside of Marrakech, the train ground to a halt. And stayed still. After a few minutes, we could feel the desert heat. In front of us was a low range of red mountains, and all around, a bleak, dusty-red landscape reminiscent of Arizona. After an hour of sitting in the compartment, slowly heating up, we moved to a better, more air-conditioned train car. We also took a quick excursion to a convenience store along the highway, about the only two things in sight. It was one of those highways familiar to those from the western US where, stretched out in a straight line across a virtually flat plain, it seems to extend from horizon to horizon. Welcome to the High Atlas. It was at least 95 F. The heat felt like it was bubbling up in convection waves from black asphalt—even when we were standing in the dirt. We spent a few more minutes in the train before a conductor came by to tell us that it would be a delay of another hour due to electrical problems with the tracks. An hour later, another train passed by us in the opposite direction, and finally the train started to move again.

You might ask about bathroom conditions, especially after I had consumed several bottles of water and reached the four hour mark. Don't. It's just better not to know. Suffice to say that the toilet on the train wins for Worst Toilet Ever in the History of Mankind and considering what I've used in the past, it's a very competitive title. You know, a dirt hole in the ground is a dirt hole in the ground but this one was a foul human invention coated in grime and the flaking excrement of every passenger since 1978. It used to be a bright orange like the rest of the train but now it was just the indistinct brown of neglect and overuse.

Finally, we pulled into Marrakech where I realized that my lung had stopped cramping. Hamdililah! Miraculously cured! My train family told me that it was because I had reached the high, dry, mountain air. I think so, too.

Once off the train, it was a mad rush to find transportation to Essaouira. The main bus company was running five buses a day for the festival but they were booked until 9 pm. A guy came in and started asking in English about a minibus to Essaouira for six people at 100 dh each. We quickly found four others going—a young British couple and two Moroccan girls and starting bargaining with the guy. It was a chaotic scene with other taxi drivers butting in and arguing and shouting and demanding questions and bargaining. We got down to 80 each (even though the real buses only cost 65 ea) and crawled into his nice, air-conditioned minibus. Just then, the swarm of taxi drivers around us called the police and it turned into a full-out argument in the street. The problem was that our driver—ahem, our friend—was not licensed for touristic excursions and could not give us a ride and receive money in exchange. The taxi drivers were angry because they paid taxes and fees and owned their decrepit Mercedes but could only charge a flat rate. In a grand taxi, Marrakech to Essaouira would be a flat fee of 600dh. We talked to the driver in English behind the policeman's back, agreeing to text him and meet him again in another spot. It didn't work, however, because no matter how much we tried to explain that we were going to get lunch, the policemen and the taxi drivers would not let all six of us head off in the same direction.

We ended up getting in a grand taxi, hardly of own volition; it was more like a mob decision that we were getting in this taxi and leaving now. Once all six of us and the driver were packed into the car, the driver took off down the highway. I leaned forward asked how long it was going to take…three hours. For some reason, I had been thinking that it was only an hour to Essaouira. Within minutes, we were all soaked in sweat, plastered to each other, and unable to move much But we were on our way to Essaouira! Really, it could have been a lot worse. Three hours wasn't that long. I felt more or less exhilarated to have gotten through the morning alive! The taxi ride went surprisingly quickly as we passed through scrubland and then flat desert. Halfway, we stopped at a sort of rest stop with a few restaurants and ran into two guys from Boston, of all places. They were also headed to Essaouira for the festival, but lucky for them, only two to a taxi. We all exchanged numbers to see if we would run into each other again during the festival. The second half of the taxi ride was much more uncomfortable, seemingly more crowded. But as we got closer to the coast, we could feel the weather change—the breeze suddenly got much cooler.

Approaching Essaouira actually took forever because the taxi driver insisted on coasting down the hills on an empty gas tank. We made it to the taxi stand in town going about 20 km an hour. All of the buildings were white, covered in a fine layer of dust, punctuated by bright blue shutters here and there. Seagulls squawked and wheeled around above us. Stephanie and I decided right away that we would try to look for a hotel room instead of waiting to get in touch with the friends that we were supposed to stay with. The first hotel that we walked into was clean and pretty on the inside and had a room for two! The only problem was that Stephanie hadn't brought any kind of ID. I had my driver's license but in Morocco, every guest at a hotel has to have a passport or picture ID. We went next door to an internet café, determined to get into this hotel. After Googling a picture of a Columbia University ID, Stephanie made a very convincing "photocopy" of a school ID on Adobe. It was truly beautiful—and worked like a charm.

Such sweet relief. We had made to Essaouira and had lodging.

----TO BE CONTINUNED----

*Adults who may be concerned about my health: these are just exaggerations.

A la plage

Day 16
June 22nd

The beach again! We went on one of our first weekends with our friend Houda, a Yemeni/French/Djbouti woman living in Rabat. When I started packing for Morocco, I hardly thought that I would be able to wear a bikini on the beach. Turns out that that is not the case at all. There are plenty of women and girls wearing string bikinis on the beaches. There are even still a few women in headscarves. Moroccan beaches are always crowded, no matter what time of day, especially on the weekends. Coming from a landlocked state, anything regarding the ocean or beaches has always fascinated me.

This time we drove to Skhirhat beach with some Moroccan boys. We had to drive through a dry, dusty field to get to the dirt parking lot for the beach. First we passed by a ramshackle house made of corrugated steel. The owner, a weather-beaten and leathery farmer charged us 5 dh ($0.71) for crossing his land to get to the beach. Looking at the two hundred cars parked on the other side, I'm guessing that he made much more money charging a toll than he did for farming.

The beach is just like a beach in any other country. The sand is deep, the Atlantic cool and refreshing. But you do have to watch out for strong currents. Someone is always playing ping-pong or volleyball—you can easily join the game because everyone is very friendly.

Houda at Bouznika beach

Scouting out the goods

Day 15
June 21st

I found the true souq of Rabat! After all my comparisons to the medina of Casablanca, Rabat has finally revealed its treasures to me. Our internship director from Wellesley, Tere, came to visit and check up on the interns. After traveling throughout the world, she has a solid background in bargaining for antique jewelry in developing countries. She led us to Rue des Consuls, which is lined with shops selling gold jewelry, silver jewelry, leather shoes, leather coats, leather poufs, brass lamps, wood furniture, artwork, pottery, cheap shoes, knock-off purses, goods imported from sub-Saharan Africa, and anything else that you can imagine. It was like the whole other half of the medina opened up to me. Although I didn't buy anything, I now have a long shopping list.

One of the stores that we stopped in had a beautiful pair of silver earrings in the shape of vines with several dangling coral beads. I decided not to buy them right then, but to wait instead. Tere spent twenty minutes bargaining with the shop owner for a Berber-style antique silver brooch. To seal the deal, she threw me in as an extra bonus for the shop keeper. I had thought that he was simply impressed by my French but apparently he gave her a better deal with the promise that I would return to his shop. Maybe I'll get a good deal on those earrings…

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Brown