2. The Bazaar. After lunch, we entered the labyrinthine bazaar made up of crooked streets, fallen buildings, and eager albeit toothless faces. The bazaar really was incredible and other worldly. Morocco, or maybe I should say Tangier, as a place was not particularly beautiful. It was a run down city which had had better days. The culture which is so different from that of the West was truly amazing. It's hard to believe that a culture so different can literally be so close to Europe. I believe Spain and Morocco are only 9 miles apart at the Straight of Gibraltar. Bazaar was fully of people, women wearing the burkah, women with covered faces, leering eyes, men wearing suits, wearing the traditional dress-like robe. In places, you could not walk through the hidden ally ways without having to squeezing your way through a mass of people. I saw Berber women, wearing their traditional clothing selling recently picked thyme, rosemary, parsley, mint. Berber women peeling potatoes, washing carrots, hoping to have a good day at the market before going back to the village. In the Bazaar, we went to two 'established' stores, the first a rug store and the second a spice/homeopathic remedy/voodoo store. The rug store was quite a sight. The walls were lined with rugs of all sizes and varieties. The men working in the store gave us a quick demo of all of the types of rugs offered, which ranged from traditional berber rugs to more modern rugs, from runners to vast carpets that could fill ballroom. No one bought a rug. So our guide quickly shuffled us off to the next establishment. Getting to the second establishment was a little more tricky than the first. Most of the group had already left when we exited the rug store, which left us a little confused as to how we would get to our next destination. One of the women from our group told us that we were supposed to continue to the left. Going in that direction, we didn't see anyone familiar and that's when I began to suspect foul play. A tall, young Moroccan appeared in front of us and beckoned us to follow. 'Oh shit. This is Al Queda.' Well, we followed him. What else was there to do? Taking us down curvy streets and windy roads, I really did suspect that we would end up in the back of a truck, held hostage or executed for the sake of radical Islam. It's a shame to report this helper did in fact work for our guide. So no great dilemma emerged from the experience, leaving me without a scintillating story of death, agony, bloodshed. Talk about a money making memoir. "My life as a Moroccan Prisoner." Or how about... "The Good Years: Finding Hope, Faith, Love through Trapped in Morocco." We can only hope that that will be the next adventure. The second store looked more like Willy Wonka's candy land on crack than it did a naturalist store. Huge glass canisters lined the walls, filled with mysterious pink powders, brownish green lumps - hash, perhaps, and orangy yellow saffron. Like the previous store, the Moroccan owner/drug lord gave a 10-15 minute demo of his products. Never had I seen a demo so interactive and so potentially life-threatening as this one. I've seen people eat fire. I've seen people walk on nails, but never have I seen such a disregard for the spread of disease, germs, death. The aforementioned owner/drug lord would show us an item. Let's say it was rose petal lotion. Upon applying the lotion on his own hands, his helpers, probably drug lord hopefuls, scurried about the room applying the lotion on all of our hands. He showed a number of tame items like saffron before he arrived at the most shocking of all, lip balm. After giving the demo, he and his aides went around the room forcing the lip balm on all of us. Fortunately, I was avoided the lip balm. Really though. A tester tube of balm is not on my list of things to experience nor share with people while I am in a 3rd world country. The worst, however, was the snoring remedy. Our drug lord and recent friend, put some ground up root, twig, herb combination in a linen cloth, twisting and making into a ball. He then sniffed the powder ball with vigor. And voila no more snoring. I have no idea how all of the helpers were able to make this anti-snoring balls so quickly, but before I knew it, they were wandering around the group literally forcing us to sniff it.
All in all, however it was an incredibly positive experience. Morocco was the 3rd French speaking country that I've been to this semester and the first Arabic speaking country that I've been to and the visit has only given me more resolve to learn French next followed by Arabic, of course.
I was fairly mesmerized by Northern Africa and look forward to going back whenever that may be. (I almost bought a ticket to Tunisia this week.)
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