Marrakech: Dirty but colorful

Europe is like an old, big, beautiful house with a garden, old furniture, family portraits, books and precious objects. Each object, each corner, each square cm of dust is related to an old story of glory and family pride. Sometimes the past has been modified to look better, but there always is an interesting past. You need more than a whole life to explore the old house and you have been born there, you 've lived your whole life in this building (and the garden).

One day you decide to open the front door, just to have a look. You push your head out, in the (not so clean) air and you stare at the amazing sight: this is the outside wall, just a tiny part of what is outside your Europe. It feels so different and alive. It's not about the stories you 've heard, it's about what you are seeing right here and now. What are you going to do next?

We decided to push our head out of the European front door, just to have a glance. Europe has many front doors, e.g. We could go to Turkey through Greece, or we could travel to Rusia. We chose Morocco, a country that is really close to Spain and Portugal, at least geographically. Morocco and its neighboring countries share a lot of cultural and historical elements, and since most of us had seen parts of Spain and/or Portugal, we thought it wouldn't be a huge shock. We just needed somebody to push as out.

RayanAir is the pusher. I don't know who the fuck is Ryan, but get this: we managed to travel to Morocco through another country and the total cost of the flights was still less than the taxi I got to reach the airport of the town I live. That's how we landed in Tangiers, North Morocco, real close to the famous Gibraltar rock. We didn't pay attention to Tangiers at first. We would deal with this exciting and mysterious, yet western, town at the end of the trip. Instead, we bought tickets for the next train to Marrakech  South Morocco.

A Moroccan woman selling fresh vegetables in sun light.

My companions to this trip will be called “the dudes”, although there might be some persons who wouldn't like to be called that, because they might not actually be dudes. But since I'm allowed to use only one word for calling my friends, I will use the word “the dudes”, which is actually two words, therefore it's illegal, so you understand why I don't wont to mess up the situation with more illegal names like “Dudes and dudettes” or “Guys and Gals”. Besides, they are all different people, I mean different to each other, and none of them likes to be called “dude” even if they are dudes. So, if the dudes are not happy with the name, why should the gals be?

My point is lost. Oh, yeah, there it is.

Since we are 4 or 5 different persons on this trip, everybody was fascinated with something different. Some dude liked the colors of the building too much. Some other dude enjoyed discovering souvenir crap in low prices and bargaining for it. Another dude was overshooting photographs of everything (this dude actually has over 40 photos of each of us sleeping, which is kind of creepy). Last but not least, there is a dude who loves practical jokes, like shaving my chest hair while asleep, or being rude to an Arab. But this post is not about what they like to do. It's about my experience of Morocco.

Moroccans use both modern and obsolete means of transport. For instance, they use donkeys, camels and really old cars.

I was excited by many things, but mostly by oral stuff (hass smoking included). Our European civilization is based on literacy in a great extent. In Morocco this is not the case. For example, a commercial store in europe contains at least one impressive sign and a front display. A Moroccan store doesn't need a sign or a display. The people who work there will approach the passing by potential customers and will try to convince them that they need to buy some snails or some jasmine white pasta that is not cleansing neither edible and nobody really knows how it can be used, but it still smells good. In other words, they will use oral methods to approach their clientele.

Souvenirs sold at the streets of Marrakech as well as the touristic route to Quarzazat the climbs Atlas and crosses tiny parts of the Sahara desert.

Another example is navigation through the narrow roads of Marrakech Medina. A European would hope to find his/her way by looking at the road signs and using ones iPhones GPS. This might be a very wrong approach to the problem, since there are almost no road signs in Marrakech, and the iPhone maps (or, maybe, any GIS system) are not updated with every ancient detail of this exciting labyrinth. Instead, the visitor has to rely on the very kind Arab or Berber part time guides who appear out of nowhere and try to allure you with their friendly behavior. You have to chose carefully, but you have to take one of them and let him lead you to your hotel or Riad. Then, bargain his price and keep in mind that the first price they ask is always too much (for Moroccan or European standards).

Riad (or Ryad): a house with a garden in the center. In some cases, old Ryads are used as hotels.

We were staying in a Riad. A Riad is a traditional Moroccan family house with a garden in the middle and a balcony on the first floor. This Riad was converted to a cute hotel, although there are a few things that looked strange to our western eyes. Usually it was good strange, like the roses on the bed or the welcome glass of tea. On the other hand, the fact that there were no doors was peculiar. It wasn't very bad, though. There are arcs and curtains that can cover them, so that a couple can have some privacy, at least visually. But as I said before, Morocco is not a visual society. People listen and talk more than they read and write. Strangely enough, I din't feel anybody was listening to us, so I felt I had as much privacy as needed.

The Riad has only one door, a big double front door and this door looks very safe. It has to be that way, because outside that door suspicious activities happen. I don't know if this is supposed to be a good or a bad neighborhood, but I'm sure I saw kids smoking pot in a way I had learned more than ten years ago by some spanish smoking-buddies. Usually, this would cheer me up, but... well, it did cheer me up, although I had to agree with some of the dudes that it is sad for a kid to smoke pot and it is kind of dangerous for a western tourist who looks like a western tourist from miles away.

Men at the streets of Marrakech.

I also had to agree with them that fresh food might be too dirty to consume. Marrakech shouks (or whatever they call their narrow roads with shops) are full of small shops selling fresh food, like vegetables, fruits, fish, chicken, cow, ship, camel, bread, anything but pork. The problem is that they don't store this fresh food to any kind of protective glass cases or fridges. They actually hope to sell everything in one day. I was ready to overcome my suspensions when one of the dudes pointed at some flies. “Be careful” was the dudes words “there are flies everywhere”. He or she was right: there were flies everywhere, on the air, on the bananas, on the chicken breasts, on the breads, spreading diseases our organism could not handle, since they are probably come from the deepest forests of central Africa (the diseases not our organisms). Or maybe things are not that bad, but would you risk it if you were me? I was me and I didn't, at least not at the begging of the journey.

Fresh food is sold everywhere, but it lays there unprotected and exposed to all kinds of filth, bacteria and viruses. People sell food at kiosks, tiny shops, rogues, boxed in the street, etc.

I know I've covered that already, but being in Marrakech makes you wonder were all the script had gone. As a westerner I expect everything to be visualized, like written or drawn in giant billboards. I never thought that there would be a place in the world without posters, flyers or labels of the name of the street you are walking. In Marrakech everything was oral (I don't know about sex). You had to listen and speak. For example, if you want to have something, you have to ask, you have to follow instructions, you have to bargain.

Moroccan tea is normal tea with fresh mint leaves. Moroccan coca cola and diet coke are normal sodas with arabic letters on the label. The arabic word for ''Coca Cola" is probably the only one we could recognize after just a couple of days.

When I hear the word “desert” I imagine weaves of sand traveling over other sand, and the shadows of the camels decorating the sunset. In fact, there was not a lot of real sand in the desert, it was more like dry clay and rocks. Also, there were a few camels, but people use mostly cars. What's more, they always try to lead you to some film studios rather than a more desert-like situation. “This is where Lorens of Arabia was filmed” said our guide “and also Prince of Persia and the other one with the American actor Rachel Crow”. “Australian” I corrected him. “What?”. He was right why did I say that? “Nothing. We don't care about Rachel Crow”. “Yes, Rachel Crow, the Gladiator was filmed here”. “We don't care” I repeated. “I don't know that movie, it was filmed here too?”. Moroccans are always ready to help you, but their english are much worst than mine. It's very hard to explain anything more complicated than the amount of money you are willing to spend on something. “Yes” I said. He nodded in appreciation.

The Southern parts of mount Atlas is a fruitful place with red ground. We had to climb it in order to reach the desert.

Besides the hollywood studios, the trip to the desert was worth it for the scenery. We had to cross all these Moroccan Berber clay villages with the flat roof, the red walls and the complete absence of roads between them. I was intrigued by the fact that there were no roads in most villages. There was a main road, of course, crossing the village, but apart from that they didn't even have small, narrow paths between the houses. In that moment I had an epiphany: a road is a multidimensional technology.

A Berber village on a mountain of South Atlas. Houses are built of clay and they are red.

A road is not just a paved area that ihelps wheeled cars to cross it. It's not only about a place that can be cleaned easily (compared to the ground). It's about creating a common space that belongs to that specific community. A road is a surface that anyone can use. People can meet there, they can connect their private lives in the common space thus creating a community. The road acts like the glue of the individual members of the village. So, why don't they have one?

On top: all the villages we saw are built with these bricks made from desert clay. At the bottom, a milk collection scene I stole with my iPhone. 

I happened to witness a milk collection. A truck with a milk tank was parked in the middle of a village and the villagers where fetching a churn of milk. They didn't have a square or something else to gather and collect their milk by themselves, so they had to rely on the milk merchant. Obviously the milk merchant is a very important factor in a community that has no central squares or roads between houses and they earn their living by selling milk. These people are different in that sense.

The desert. The buildings at the bottom picture constitute a Kasbha, something like a family village. There is a woman at the center. She is washing clothes in the river's waters.

I can't say that I understand the people of the desert by just visiting a few of them for one day. That's just too few information for me, or anybody else. They don't look that different, they are a bit darker, but not a big deal, many of my friends look like this after their 5^th day at the beach. The desert makes them different in a cultural sense, and that's something I din't have the time or the guts to explore.

We returned to Marrakech to pack. The next day included a long train trip to Fez or Fes, a famous islamic center and tourist attraction somewhere at the center of the country.