Final Day in Morocco

So I leave for the airport in a little over an hour.
And I absolutely cannot believe it.

There have been plenty of wonderful and exciting things that have happened in the past couple weeks which haven't made it onto the blog, but the outline of what Ill backlog later is:

Assilah
Tangier
Ferry to Algiceras
Madrid
Barcelona
Back to Morocco

This experience has been amazing and I am so grateful for all the people who encouraged and inspired me to come here. I am not particularly sorry to leave Morocco (the intolerance toward Westerners has become unbearable for me to handle recently, especially the nastiness with which many people - mostly men - treat Western women), but I am thankful for all it has taught me.

As you may or may not know I was very ill when I arrived here - not physically so, but spiritually and mentally. Having struggled with eating disorders for some time and the stress of having to start my 'real life' after graduating from college left me very unhappy and lost. Some of you may be surprised to hear these things, and I urge you to please trust that I am ok now, or at least headed in that direction thanks to a lot of great people and some tremendous gaining of persepctive. Im not sure why I feel the need to broadcast that information on here...maybe because I want to make it clear that as much as my purpose here was to help others, I've helped myself in ways I could not have discovered otherwise.

I will be back in Texas tomorrow afternoon, enjoying Mexican food by tomorrow night. Thank God it will be Christmas time. I can't think of a better time of year to reintroduce myself to all things Western.

past week

Hello everyone! Here is a brief synopsis of the past weeks´events!

Assilah is known for being an artistic hub in Morocco. The medina is filled with murals, as pictured below.

We then went on to Tangier where we visited the American Legation Museum, the only US National Historic Landmark on foreign soil.



The American Flag in the form of a Berber Rug.
Also there is a letter in which a senator is refusing a lion which the Moroccan Sultan gave to him, despite his attempts to explain he was unable to bring any livestock back into America. At the time of writing the letter he had the lion locked in a room in his suite there in Tangier. Pretty hilarious!

From Tangier we took the ferry over to Algiceras, Spain

ByeBye Africa!


And we knew we were no longer in a Muslim country (Museo del Jamon=Museum of Ham)


In the Madrid version of Central Park



Yesterday morning there was this amazing and huge demonstration going on in front of down hall. From what we could understand it had to do with agriculture and unions. What was wonderful was how happy everyone looked. Though they were protesting, they were joyous, and plenty of people were just hanging out on the sidewalk drinking cervezas...it was noon.

I love the cow float in front of city hall. She was proceeded by a bunch of drummers.

next moves

Ok, so sorry the pictures of the desert are out of order, but I'm out of time!

Adam is here now, and we are leaving tomorrow to travel for two weeks. We will go North to Larache, Assilah, and Tangier with Max. Max will then meet the other volunteers in Chefchaouen this weekend then continue on his own way. Adam and I will travel up to Spain for about a week where we plan to visit Madrid and Barcelona. We will meet Henry in Barcelona for Thanksgiving. After that, we will make our way back down to Rabat and we both leave for American on Dec 4 (different times).

I don't know if I'll be able to upload any pictures while I'm away, and I probably won't blog very much either, but rest assured I'll take lots of pictures and have plenty of cool stories to tell!

Love to you all,
April

More about the desert

11/8/09-11/9/09

So the next morning we were woken by the clapping of our hosts and the occasional drumbeat. We ate our breakfast of bread, confiture, and hard boiled eggs (which our guides fought over carrying from where we first mounted our camels the day before), played with the baby of the Bedouin mother of the host family (who after making us fall in love with her baby showed us all the handmade camels and scarves she had for sale...the gag worked because I bought some), and mounted our camels once again for a long day of camel trekking.

I rode Eunace again (I think), and we went through some more nice soft dunes into the more rocky part of the desert, which I believe was referred to as "Black Sand Desert." We trekked toward the Algerian border and ate lunch under a small tent near the home of another Berber family. Our poor vegitarian friends (who had been sustaining themselves on bread and fruit) were brought this salad with fish on it and it went something like this.

Vegetarian: Is there a vegetarian option coming?

Bedouin Guide: This is it.

Vegetarian: There's meat on this.

Bedouin Guide: No, its fish.

Vegetarian: Fish are animals.

Bedouin Guide: We'll see what we can do.

And to their credit, they did. But in case you are vegetarian and thinking of coming to Morocco, be warned that "vegetarian" really isn't part of the vocabulary here.

We rested for a long time there (which the boys were very happy to do, especially since there weren't any frozen peas to be found). Then began our trek back. This time I rode Mongo, who Chloe had the day before. He was very sweet, and had this crazy nose tumor which he kept nuzzling against Norma's behind (Jess's camel). The coolest thing about the trip back to our campsite is that Julia got to ride her camel sans guide! She asked for a little lesson on how to lead them (it seemed to be very similar to riding horses in terms of commands) and wandered along next to us, who were all tied together.

Mongo was great, and Max's camel was very friendly as well. I named her Penelope, but Max didn't really like that as he found it girly. I found that whichever camel you are riding doesn't matter so much as the one that is behind you. Whenever we went downhill the traffic kind of backed up, and you had the next camel's head next to you. If they are a nice camel, they will let you pet their nif and scratch under their jaw right by their ear.

The second night at the campsite was not nearly as cold as the first, for which we were all very grateful. We spent a lot of time playing with the child of the family there. He must've been about 5 and he loved Connor's Snowboarding magazine. We taught him the words "ski" and "jump." We tried "man" also, but I'm not sure if that one stuck or not. There is a beautiful simplicity to family life here. At least it seems simple to me, I'm sure it's not actually. Family is a huge part of things here, and one of the main criticisms of Western culture I've heard are that our families are not close. It's all relative I suppose.

We didn't stay up very late that night at all and went to bed almost immediately after dinner, because our plan was to wake up at 4 the next morning to catch the sunrise on our way back to Fes.

And we did just that. After a little bit of scrambling around in the dark to make sure we hadn't left anything behind, we mounted our camels once more and left our Bedouin Tent site for good.

Riding a camel under the Saharan night sky is something everyone should attempt to do in their lifetime. Humbling and beautiful, this was my favorite trek of the weekend. We stopped briefly to take some pictures of the sunrise, mounted our camels for the last time, and continued on to a hotel where we met our guide and headed back to Fes, to Rassani, and then to Rabat.

Desert Pictures

Getting ready to Sand Toboggan!

See, they look really funny when they sit! Even "Daddy" is laughing at it!

Chloe riding Mongo into the Sahara!

Eunace

Sunset as we left our Sandboarding site

Chloe, Jess, Jana, Max, and Claire

Taken by Chloe as Connor and I run down the edge of the dune while Lyall tries not to fall off his sandboard.

Goodbye Sahara

I rode Nils the last day

Goodnight!

Ewok Nif. Named so because of his Ewok ears and his very soft Nif which he let me pet a lot.

That's us!

Just cool.

Mongo

Tent near Algerian border where we had lunch

The house of our lunch hosts right next to the Algerian border

Our Berber tent where we stayed the two nights.

LES CHAMEAUX!

11/7/09

Camels are extremely hilarious looking creatures, and if you have not ever encountered one, I encourage you to go to your local zoo, rodeo, or circus, and meet one immediately. Ok, to be accurate we rode dromadaries, which only have one hump whereas camels have two, but for all intents and purposes, they're the same.

Some of my favorite things about camels:

1. Smoosh pads - The bottoms of their feet have this really cute smoosh pads, named such (by me) for what happens to them when they touch the sand. The smoosh pads were easiest to see in action on the white camels.

2. Nifs - Nif is Arabic for nose. And camels have really soft noses, a nice fuzzy contrast to the coarse hair on the rest of their bodies. They also have two sets of nostrils - they breathe in through one and out through the other. It's pretty cool to watch.

3. Disappearing Legs - When they sit down (which involves way to many motions for it to be practical from a Darwinian perspective) they fold their legs up all funny underneath them and it looks like they don't have any!

4. You can ride them through the desert.

So after all our detours and toils, we finally began what we initially set out to do - RIDE CAMELS IN THE SAHARA! Since we were such a big group we had two guides who each led half of us. I think these guys are pretty amazing because they do the whole journey on foot, and let me tell you what, walking in that sand really isn't easy.

It was about as amazing as you expect, and made even more amazing for me being surrounded by such great people. Of course we all named our camels straight away. Mine was Eunace, and while she didn't really allow herself to be pet, she did her job well and didn't give me any grief during the trek...I've really no clue whether or not the camel was female, but it looked like a Eunace in any case. It was one of those experiences you can't believe you are actually having. We all handled this by calling people from the camels. My conversation with my mother went something like this:

Mom: Hello?

Me: Hi Mom!

Mom: Hi baby! What are you doing?

Me: Riding a camel in the Sahara.

Mom: Oh my gosh! That is so cool!

Me: Yeah, so I can't really talk, but I wanted to call you!

Mom: Ok bye!

After about an hour of trekking we stopped to Sandboard, one of the attractions which led us to choose the tour group we did. Sandboarding is just what you think it is - snowboarding, but on the dunes. It was pretty hilarious to watch everyone try, mainly because the snowboards didn't work so well on the sand. Everyone would jump up with such force and then not really go anywhere. Lyall was the only one who managed to get any kind of speed, which he was very very happy about. A couple of us had a sand-toboggan race down the dune!

After playing around for a while we got back on our camels and continued on to our campsite, which was with a Bedouin family with a collection of tents, each able to house a different number of people. Behind the "hotel tents" were the tents where the family lives, including a few women and children. They also have some tents for preparing food and tea. Behind this, several meters away were the "bathrooms." They were pretty hilarious, and comprised of simply two toilets sitting next to each other on the sand. They were surrounded by three walls and a ceiling, and completely visible from the camp as there were no doors. Rustic.

As the sun set we could feel the temperature drop dramatically, and it became increasingly chilly as the night went on. That sun is pretty powerful! The night sky in the Sahara is something I will not soon forget. I don't think I've ever seen the Milky Way before, or so many shooting stars (though we were fooled by the many satellites circling around us). We met a nice British couple who were also staying in the camp. They are amateur photographers and just finished a small photography tour some other places in Morocco.

After some dinner and lots of huddling together under blankets, our hosts invited us to a campfire with them, where everybody took turns playing drums. About as cool as bellydancing with the Berber ladies earlier that day. They then put us to shame by telling us riddles in our own language which we couldn't figure out. As we were sitting around the campfire we watched the moon rise, which I didn't know it did. We saw a light coming from behind a dune and wondered aloud to one another what it was - a car? not likely. another campsite? we didn't see it on our way here. the moon? no way, couldn't be! But yes, it was the moon, and it was so incredibly bright. As it continued to rise, its radiance caused more and more stars to disappear.

We had a hard time keeping the fire going as all the wood around is extremely dry, so we turned in for the night. After two days of being awake and very busy we had no trouble sleeping.

Rissani to Fes

Sunrise from the terrace of the place where we had breakfast in Rissani

Combinations of delirious and cranky

All the small family compounds in the small town Fes were surrounded by walls like this (all made of mud and straw, resembling cardboard)

Close up of the mud/straw walls...3 Little Pigs?

Love this sign

Our "Salad People" tour guide and his cute kid.

Frog Race in the water hole!

Close up of this cool colorful frog

The fields where we passed several women working

Bellydancing with the Berber ladies

Here come our camels!