Marrakech Madness

A few weeks ago I went to Marrakesh for a training. I was able to see Hilary Clinton, as well as stop a would-be pickpocket. Those you already know about. Now it is time to just tell you about the experience that is the tourist mecca of Morocco, the city called Marrakesh.

The way that I will break this down is based on the five senses. That seems a good way to do it, as the city is a sensual overload (well, the touristy Medina portion).

SIGHT:
Why chose sight to discuss first? I see it fitting as you see, well before you are able to do anything else (unless you have super other senses, or happen to be visually impaired).

I will first start with the bus station. A crazy mess of people running around, trying to get you to come over and talk, buses coming and going all over the country. Seeing traffic and all the different people. Different in the way they dress, more liberally dressed women, more cosmopolitan both male and female. Somewhat European dress I suppose is the best way to describe it. Groups of individuals congregated talking or playing a game of chess. Old men and women beggars standing and sitting waiting for people to drop a Dirham or two.

The Medina is up next. Old Marrakesh... Pulling up on the city bus at the Jemaa El Fna (mosque marking the area and entrance to the Medina), you see buses of tourists, and off in the distance a mass quantity of lights. This is the entrance to the Medina, the square of all squares. Chances are you have seen this in pictures before. From a distance, you can see the stalls, and see the people, so many of them just crawling around. As you get closer still you make out the different kinds of people. Snake charmers, Henna artists, fortune tellers, balloon sellers, and of course, the food stalls.

You want snails, they are here for you. Juices... step right up. Orange or Grapefruit??? Maybe you are looking to buy fresh spices for your meal making endeavor later. Paprika, curry, red pepper, cumin, salt, saffron (fake and real), rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, ginger, etc. etc. You want some dried fruits, step right up and see the dates, apricots, raisins, prunes. If none of that suits your fancy you can see all the other fine fresh foods.

Salads, Soups, Potatoes, Chicken, Beef, Lamb, Goat. Heads, legs, breasts, brain, eyes, stomach, liver, hearts, testicles?. Organs, organs, organs. You want it, you got it. Just take a seat on one of the many benches that fill the square and have your pick.

Stall owners wave to you and try to get you to come over. Sometimes you even see them reach out to grab you.

As that was just the outside of the medina, I still must discuss the inside. You enter and immediately see covered tight streets, with all of the shops. Carpets, wood, shoes, djellabas, metals, fruits, incense, leather. So many and so many more. It is a maze, and if you like to follow a map, good luck. My favorite thing to do was to just wander around aimlessly, seeing whatever was around. I saw a fight as well, but not a fist-fight. People here seem to be too cowardly for that, and just yell at each other, over seemingly little things.

Smell:
You get off the bus into the city, and you smell the fumes of cars and buses. I am not used to this, and I have come to enjoy my fairly pure mountain air. Lots of cars unregulated means lots of nasty fumes.

You get to the medina after being on a tightly packed bus, with the normal smell of the people around, which may or may not be okay. You instantly smell the food from far away. As you creep closer it becomes more intense. Until finally, you are in the mix. You want to everything, as smell and taste go hand in hand. But there is never enough time for it, and you have to be choosy as to not fill up your stomach. Smells in the square are intense, all sorts of the above mentioned foods being grilled and cooked. Smelling so appetizing.

Inside the Medina, not so many smells, but some new smells every once in a while. Smells of butcher shops and grilling foods. Smells of urine and musty old things. Carpet shops sometimes smell of old, as they hold onto carpets for what seems to be forever. After a while you kind of get used to the smells, unless something crazy strikes your senses. Like incense or something of that nature.

Taste:
So intimately related to smell, I must discuss it now. I suppose I have to discuss the things I ate, the things I did. I ate soup. It was a traditional Harira, a fantastic tomato based soup with small pasta, chick peas, lentils, and some beef? maybe it was goat or sheep. I am awful at distinguishing between those three. I enjoyed the snails. They were cooked in this broth, and it was so fantastic and not overpoweringly seafood-like. I recommend them, and they are cheap too. I drank a glass of OJ, for only 3DH it was worth it, and even though there was a lot of sugar in it, it was tasty. I also drank tea, which has a special assortment of spices in it. It was not at all good, and I had trouble drinking it all. I also got offered a date... the fruit... and gladly accepted, telling the man I would taste it, but I wasn't buying any. Also the taste of cigarettes, as people were smoking, and I would have one as well, just because. It was nasty, as it usually is for me. By the way, the brand, called Marquise, is awful, and tastes and feels like you are burning your mouth and throat. Mmm.

I ate gelato, wow was that good. I miss ice cream being readily available for me.


Sound:
This was another sense that was overloaded quickly. I am used to my quiet mountain town. In the city, you get honking, and traffic, and yelling, and talking, and new languages. People come up to you and hassle you. OH THE HASSLING. I kind of liked it though. Guys that would come up to you and offer you drugs, or offer you a place to stay. This is just the bus station (it really is not that bad though I promise). Then you add trying to get around where your language is not really spoken, you feel a bit off. But, luckily somebody understood me, and helped me out (thank you bus attendant guy).

You get to the Medina, and the low-sound of a mass quantity of people talking just fills and pollutes the air. Maybe pollute is too strong of a word. I find it somewhat appealing, but it pollutes the silence. Either way, people abound. I hear all sorts of things, French, Spanish, German, English, Arabic. People wanting me to come to eat their food, me to stay at their place, me to buy their goods, or go to their shops, buy the drugs (I have said this a lot, and it probably has to do with my appearance (Dad, I know, I should really get a hair cut), but yes, I get offered drugs a fair bit.) Potentially these are all people who are out to get a penny, make money and take advantage of me with their words.

Street food vendors telling me to come eat at their place, and then calling me names or other nasty things when I refuse. I got called a "bed-wetter." I found that humorous that he chose to use those words. Women have it hard, I felt somewhat lucky. Women get harassed in all sorts of ways with the words people speak. It is a sad fact of life in the Medina, and can be quite annoying or frustrating.

I luck out in Morocco, and I always meet people that speak the sounds I know, the languages I speak. I was called over by the snake-charmers. Rather than refusing (more on this later) I accepted, and came and spoke instantly in my Berber Language. Luckily, they were from near where I live, and we spoke, and they wanted me to sit down. I was listening to the snake-charming music with a two rattlesnakes and a cobra not more than five feet away, having a conversation with these folks about life here in Morocco, and what I am doing here. While I am going into sights again, I could see the tourists walking by and just looking at me as if to say "what the heck is that white-dude with long hair doing over there." I enjoyed that.

I had a similar conversation with some carpet shop and trinket owners. One group was super-welcoming. Another carpet shop owner, after telling him I was just looking, and not planning to buy, got upset and asked me to leave. Oh well, he was a jerk.

Touch
I did not touch a lot of things. I got grabbed by some folks and tried to get to buy a few things in stores and eat some food. Generally I dislike this, and it crosses any line. I touched some of the wool carpets, and the food I was eating, and the hot bowls of soup and cold glasses of juice. That really is about all that is worth discussing with touch.

Overall:
The Medina was crazy, and certainly is not for everyone. But I absolutely loved it. The Medina was super-intense, probably one of the most sensually overloading things I have experienced. OH yeah, and by the way, I act super-different, or probably "react" is the way to put it. I walk around like I know where I am going, what I am doing, and I speak the language, almost never speaking in English. I wear sunglasses a lot in the day, and walk around with a cigarette in my ear, and have no backpack on (not safe to do really). When people try to talk to me, I welcome it, give them my quick attention, and then they stop. They know that I am not worried or am uncomfortable with this. I go into a number of shops, and instantly tell owners I live here and will not be buying anything and will just look. They say "okay." and just leave me be to look around without trying to get me to buy buy buy. If I want to know a price, I ask, and often times I always say "too much, I am not a tourist, I live here." This helps a bunch in the bargaining process. Often times knowing the language gets me better initial prices.

I enjoy Marrakech, and even though I had a sad pick-pocketing experience, and there is abundant hassling and craziness in the Medina, it is so intense and if you want intensity, at least for a day, do it up. But my advice to you is go with the flow and not get too irritated at the people there (yes sometimes they go too far.) They are just doing what they do. If you want a laid-back medina experience, go to Fez, it is also intense, but no where near Marrakech.

Much Love!

Caught Red-Handed

So it has been a good month since I posted anything, and a few things have happened since then. I have been swamped with work, and had a training this past week in Marrakesh. While I certainly will write about other topics, I wanted to address this topic first. Mainly because it is super-fresh in my mind.

I like to think that people are generally good people. But, sometimes, I know that there are crappy people that look to harass you or try to swindle you out of your money or things.

The past week I spent in Marrakesh for a training and was fortunate to meet up and hang out and catch up with other volunteers from around Morocco. It was also a chance for me to experience a new place, probably the most touristy in all of Morocco.

I had heard from others who had gone previously that I would not like Marrakesh, due to the harassment of guides, vendors, and random street folks. Kind of sad, but I would expect that in a place so touristy.

While all of those things were present, I absolutely enjoyed the city, and all of the various people watching that came along with it. Sure, I got harassed, was asked to leave a store because I was just "looking" and not "buying", and was called a "bed-wetter" (I am still wondering how he knew!!! hehe) when I would not let a guy help us find somewhere. In a future post I will tell you of my adventures in this touristy place, but in fact, I do thoroughly enjoy 'Kech, just as much as I enjoy Fes (for different reasons of course). But I have a story that trumps it all, and needs to be shared.

One night, I was making my way to the train station, to see what times trains were leaving the next day. I was carrying a backpack, and had a plastic bag and a plant in one hand (right hand), and the other hand (left hand) was free. I happened to be at a place called Jemaa El Fna. If you have never heard of such a place, you have certainly seen pictures. This is the place where all the food vendors set up shop, selling everything from OJ, to dates, to snails, to brains, to soup. It is a hustle and bustle of a place, probably the most touristy in Morocco, and the place happened to be full of people. It was a holiday, the Green March, celebrating Morocco's march into the Western Sahara region.

Having finished indulging on the food and people watching, I was waiting at the nearby bus hub for bus number 8, that would take me to the train station. The bus area was full of people. So when my bus pulled up, everyone crowded around the one door. Moroccans have difficulties in waiting their turn and lining up, and this situation was no different. While I hate doing it, I had no choice but to join them, and to kind of push my way towards the door. The only problem was that my hand was full, and I did not want to drop anything.

As I started to push to the door, I thought to myself "this is the perfect time to be pickpocketed, your hands are full and you are in a crowd with almost no space between people." So being kind of vigilant, I recalled a little boy unzipping my bag a few months back. It just so happened that during this time, a little boy (maybe 5) was fidgeting with my backpack. I kept giving him looks and tried to separate distance. But then I saw he was messing with a book, and I thought, "little boy, you can take my book if you wish."

At the same time I was paying attention to this boy, the group of us were still pushing for the door. The next set of events still are kind of blurry (at least the first few), but it got crazy.

I turned my head around, and swore that I felt something rubbing against my pocket. I looked down, and did not really see anything. I looked back up, and instantly realized that in fact I DID see something going on underneath my shirt that was hanging over my left pocket. I looked down again, and this time saw fidgeting in my pocket, and felt it. I instantly (kind of instinctively) looked up to see the guy next to me peering down towards my pocket, and his arm extended the same direction. I knew instantly this guy was in my pocket. (Remember, this is all within a few seconds)

I, like many of you, dislike when someone reaches into my pocket without invitation. So I then pulled his arm out. I did not let go, and was able to get an arm bar so he could not quickly bolt. I held on, and once again, instinctively, began yelling as loud as I could "Thief", in Moroccan Arabic. About as instantly as I yelled this two things happened.

The first thing was that the guy gave me my money back. He had in his hand my change purse. If you know my change purse, it is a cute Winnie the Pooh purse. In it, I had about 7 DH in change. Not much, the equivalent of about .90 Cents. His reaction in my opinion was priceless and ludicrous. He just handed it back, as if to say "You caught me, you win, here is your money back." I continued to hold onto his arm and then feel my pocket to make sure I had my camera and cell phone, both of which were in that same pocket.

The second thing that happened almost instantly after I started yelling, was that everyone stepped back, and basically created a circle around me and the thief. This allowed the thief no where to bolt through, and after I finally realized I had all of my belongings, I let go of his arm. The circle aloud me to face the guy, where I got in his face and shamed him in front of all the people. He then kind of walked off, and I think took his jacket off so he looked different.

I was glad my hand was full, because I really think I would have punched and or tackled him and held him to the ground until the police came. But I realized that would not have been smart, as he may have been working with other people, or he may have had a knife. But yes, I really wanted to hit him, and decided just to get on the bus instead.

I got on the bus, and talked to a guy who told me my knowledge of Moroccan Arabic saved me. After telling him I spoke no Darija, I spoke a berber language, he asked if I was a PCV. He told me I did the right thing (which I knew I did). The adrenaline rush continued for a few minutes, and eventually it wore off.

Afterward, I have replayed the situation over and over. I know I did everything right, and for that I am proud of myself for reacting so fast the way that I did. It is never comfortable to have that happen, but I know that hopefully in these situations I am prepared.

Lastly, if you do ever travel into places that are swarming with tourists, be on guard. I have had too many friends be pick-pocketed or held-up at knife-point in places like Rome or Paris.