(Tunis – Casablanca – Fes – Volubulis - Ait Ben Aidou – Essouira – Marrakech)
The scene: Tunis Airport Check in (where my prebooked transfer people are now trying to impress me to earn a tip after consistent “No-Show” stuffups):
In front of the check in queue is a tall, mightily confused and important looking bloke in a jellaba, bags overflowing, weighing much more than 20kgs and being chaotically and loudly “assisted” by three others. He has several unsuccessful attempts at checking in without leaving the front of the queue, and as more “help” is offered, the more confused it all becomes.Eventually my dodgy “transfer” person drags me out of something like a line, pushes me into something like another sort of line, demands that the Royal Air Maroc staff allocate me my seat. Bullied into it, they do so, then firmly (and rightly) refuse to check my pack until ALL other passengers in lines are checked in.
Score: Royal Air Maroc: 2, Untrustworthy Transfer Company: 1; Self: 0.
To the boarding lounge after a comedy capers routine involving compulsory currency exchange but most banks shut down for the night. Important Looking Bloke in Jellaba deigns to arrive after several of his obsequious crew have packed his stuff in their own bags. He is greeted by rapturous applause by by a large group of women in Moslem dress: much clapping and singing ensues… continuing onto the plane, and during the meal (where the Important Looking Bloke occasionally turns and calls encouragement to the scarfed groupettes down the back of the plane). More fervent clapping and singing follow for much of the next 90 minutes over Algeria: a kind of Moslem-happy-clapping-charismatic-Hillsong-Hell-in-a-Plane, until Casablanca where all goes quiet. We then land to thunderous applause, and Morocco awaits.
Compared to Morocco, Tunis was a kind of ‘North Africa Lite’ for new travelers. Casablanca is a lot rougher round the edges and has a more Arab Big City feel to it. More women are covered in very conservative dress, more rubbish is dumped in the streets, more touts offer wondrous things, more beggars are on corners, and security is less ouvert.
I spent an excellent first morning wandering the crumbling but elegant white(ish) washed Nouvelle Villearea of French-designed and built 20’s and 30’s boulevards of many, many art deco buildings with families enjoying Sunday strolls through the squares. As in Tunis, every open space – no matter how small or crowded – is the site of a local kids’ (boys only) soccer game. The Medina in the afternoon was more relaxed, less congested and less intimidating to visitors than the Tunis Medina had been (where every pocket and zip in my – empty - day pack had been emptied in the crush). The evening was spent meeting the small and friendly Intrepid group, and dinner at “Rick’s Bar”: a reconstruction of the movie of “Casablanca”. Passable piano was played, Bogie and Bacall were projected in glorious black and white onto the walls, and tour groups paid inflated prices for passable food and the “experience”.
I’m not about to give you a full travelogue (you’ll be relieved to hear: Just GO!) but just some interesting bits and pieces. Over the next 12 days we travelled east by train to Fes: a UNESCO World Heritage medieval city, north to Roman ruins at Volubilis (crawling with French school kids) and south to Meknes (another medina and those sour-buttery camel burgers…). Instead of the planned train back to Casablanca and then to Marrakech, we travelled the lower Atlas Mountains in a Stuffy Little Van to Ouzoud Cascades, then to the edge of the Sahara at Ait Ben Aidou (the site of a 400 year old series of casbahs you may have seen in “Gladiator”, “Jewel of the Nile”, “Lawrence of Arabia” and so on).
The final few days were spent, after recrossing the High Atlas Mountains below the snow line, in the fortress sea port of Essouira, then in the very fast, furious and quite crazy dusty-red painted city of Marrakech. When the organized part of the tripwas over, and our vibrant Quebecois tour leader had left us (to return to her “Berrrrberrrr lerrrvvve in Essouirrrrrra”), I took myself by train up to the port town of Safi (centre of the export trade in phosphates, Other Arab economies might be oil-driven, but Morocco relies on tourism and bird shit) before flying to Edinburgh to meet up with Ms Lizzie and some Western Sydney Principal colleagues on a study tour to the UK.
SOME (possibly) USEFUL THINGS I LEARNED IN NORTH AFRICA:
You really can survive on Franglais
One of the most memorable experiences you can have is to spend a day being guided (so you don’t get horribly lost) around the swarming maze of the Fes Medina with its medieval businesses and shops, followed by sunset overlooking the Medina spread out across a wide valley as more than 30 mosques call the faithful to prayer.
Donkeys in the Fes Medina ride on Michelin: their hooves are shod in recycled rubber, and they are the only transport – apart from human feet and men pushing trolleys.
Leather is tanned in Fes by men trudging up to their waists in concrete vats of a chemical stench of cattle urine, and chicken droppings. Overlooking visitors are encouraged to shove sprigs of mint up nostrils while bargaining for slippers and handbags.
Potteries have been moved to the edge of the Medina due to pollution by thick black smoke. Up close: it’s not so bad as pots are fired using aromatic olive waste.
A Fes herbalist offered to allow us all to inhale a cold cure based upon aromatic seeds. Everyone who did so caught a particularly vile cold by the end of the trip.
During World War II, the Moroccan king was exiled by the Vichy French because he refused to hand over the Jewish population (whose ancestors had survived the Spanish Inquisition by moving to Morocco when the Moors were thrown out of Spain) to the Nazis. This not onlyprotected the Jews, but angered and offended Moroccan nationalists to the point where they unified to throw the French out after the war. It also led the Moroccans to give the United States access to Casablanca during the war: thus the successful North African campaigns against the Nazis, and the film: “Casablanca”.
Morocco was one of the first countries to recognize the USA as a nation, and has maintained warm relations. Tunisia, on the other hand, had its economy destroyed by the US in the early 19th century when the US navy attacked Tunisian ports to stop the lucrative local industry of piracy. Tunisians still bear the grudge, it seems.
Education is free in Morocco but books and equipment are not. Even in some of the remotest areas of highway there would be a two room school every 30 kms or so, with well trodden paths leading off to distant mountain settlements, ll of which were marked by their village centre mosques.
In the 1960’s the Moroccan king nearly sent the country broke with huge hydro electric schemesbut it has made Morocco self-sufficient in power and many areas of agriculture. This will be fine if the drought breaks and land degradation, salination, population growth and desertification can all be “managed” into the future. Familiar themes???
You CAN become weary of tagines and cous cous.
You can never have too many toy stuffed camels, large metal light fittings and Fes pottery, let alone bloody carpets…
The change received from traders in Marrakech is never correct.
One of the few places to buy an alcoholic drink in Marrakech is an alleged bar frequented by prostitutes. We went: warm beer and tourists only it seems…
Moroccan sav. blanc is VERY drinkable.
Russel Crowe is held in high esteem in the Berber village of Ait Ben Aidou as he has been the only movie actor (and there have been many) to actually stay in the village and mix with the locals. Our dinner host was an extra in “Gladiator”. Do look out for him. He is the cross-eyed stall holder in a market scene, just to the left of the snake charmer.
You CAN access the internet, s-l-o-w-l-y, on the edge of the Sahara. You may be the only person over the age of 12 (all male) in the cyber café.
There are regular police checks along Moroccan highways. Defects are pointed out but, in return for a small bribe, a blind eye is turned. Our driver of the Stuffy Little Van consistently refused to pay, reasoning (rightly) that the paperwork for formally notifying a defect was so cumbersome that no official would want to do it.
Tip everyone in Morocco who provides any service: small change is a constant problem because you’re always giving it away.
When something goes wrong in Morocco it is nobody’s fault. School Deputy Principals will find Moroccan travel not unlike investigating playground incidents.
They really do “charm” snakes in the amazing main square in Marrakech, and play great music and perform acrobatics and juice mountains of fresh oranges and story-tell and tell fortunes and serve huge amounts of great and more-or-less recognizable foods. They pick pockets and sniff glue too.
Only male animal carcasses are displayed and sold by Moroccan butchers. The dingly bits are left on for consumer reassurance.
Atop each mosque, under the crescent, there are three spheres which represent the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The respect and shared histories and values of all three religions are regularly reinforced in morocco. Most of the Jewish population left for Israel after the Six day War. The Jewish graveyards and remaining synagogues appeared well cared for and respected. Anti Semitism in Islam seems a reasonably recent issue. Reading “Tomorrow’s Islam” by Geraldine Doogue and others from “Compass” immensely enriched the travels.
Prickly pear, sometimes up to 5 metres high, makes a great boundary fence for fields and properties.
It can rain heavily in Marrakech. It can also be 40-50 degrees Celsius within a day or so.
Because Essouira is a fishing port, not only is it a “laid back” town with a pleasant walled Medina designed by a Frenchman in the 18th century, but it’s grossly infested with cats. They are living, birthing, dying and cadging food on streets, in parks, and over and around you in cafes and restaurants. And while you are dealing with the odd marauding or scrapping cat in a restaurant, you mey fail to notice the local kids stealing the food from your table.
Sniffer dogs at Sydney Airport are suffering work-related injuries because of concrete floors, so their handlers have been trained to give them shoulder massages. (I know this because one of our group was an animal welfare worker who spent some of the trip engaged in negotiating the sale of an elephant by email. It was an interesting group).
Fashion tip (especially for Di H who tried to educate us about this during her recent European travels) The further south you travel, the more traditional dress becomes. For men: Moroccan jellabas are long, light cloaks, embroidered along the front, and with a pointy hooded top: very practical in all climates. For the ladies: head to foot coverung which may be a jellaba with pointed top or headwear of (husbands?) choice. Scarves NEVER match other clothing. Hijabs are more common among Sydney Airport workers than they seem in Tunisia or Morocco.
And, finally:
Anyone who believes that the lyrics of “Marrakech Express” are in any way related to a real Moroccan train must be ingesting as much “kif” as Crosby, Stlls and Nash must have done when writing the song…
And:
On my last night in Marrakech I saw the souvenir which I now wished I had bought. It is a plastic circuit of model railway track, upon which a plastic army tank, containing George W Bush, is attached to and pursuing Osama Bin Laden in another Railway wagon.
They are permanently coupled, and going round and round and round… one never quite catching the other…
