Ramadan au Maroc

I'd originally been planning on going back to Morocco in September, once it was cooler and NOT in the middle of Ramadan, but because of a random string of events, I ended up having to go to last week, only a few days after returning from the US.

I was a bit panicky before I left, thinking about the hot weather and worried where I would find food & water during the day. You see, my earlier days of traveling in France for work have left me quite paranoid about finding food/drinks at lunch.  Many of my customers are located in the middle of nowhere, and in the early days of visiting them, I had no clue where the closest restaurant/supermarket/boulangerie was located.  So I would spend my lunch break driving from village to village in a radius of 20km around my customer, only to find ghost towns.  Or grocery stores that were closed from 12-3pm.  Or bakeries that only sold baguettes & croissants and nothing else. And then I'd be left starving until my hotel restaurant opened up at 7:30pm.  Now of course after years of traveling, I have my repères, but the old habit of always keeping a bottle of water and some snacks in the car has stuck with me.

But I don't have that for Morocco, and even more so because I have a driver, so it's not like I can go toodling around on my own looking for food.  And my customer is about 20min from the nearest village (and 1.5hrs from the nearest big city), so I decided to pack some dried fruit & protein bars & water just in case.  It's a good thing I did too, because when I got there, they were like "Umm...we got you some water, but we can't really get you anything for lunch this week..."   So it's safe to say that this trip did not have the culinary experiences of trips past.

Although my driver did offer to buy me some figues de barbarie (cactus fruit), after I asked what all of those men were selling at the side of the road.

It ended up being a bit awkward actually because they bought me about eight of them, and then the seller cut them up with his nasty knife that he kept wiping on his pants.

 

So I sat there, watching him carve up fruit after fruit and then dump the into a plastic bag that came from who knows where. 

 

And then they offered it to me, and they were like "Eat, eat".  I was like "No, I don't want to eat in front of you, it wouldn't be fair - I'll eat them later at the hotel".  But they insisted, so I gingerly grabbed one and it was actually not too bad, minus the super crunchy seeds in the middle.  And then they insisted I eat a second one, so I did, all the while saying a silent prayer that I wouldn't end up with la tourista that evening.

It was hot though. I'm talking 115°F hot. I can't even imagine not being able to drink anything in that kind of weather for 15h+.  My driver and I had about 3hrs of driving to do together per day, so we spent a lot of time chatting.  He explained that this Ramadan was one of the most difficult ones because it fell in July/August when the temps were hottest and the days were longest. Most people only experience a Ramadan like this year's twice in their life, because the dates move by ten days every year and it takes 30 years for it to cycle through one 12 month calendar year.

I asked him how he got through without drinking anything from 4am to 7:30pm, and he said the body just gets used to it after a week or so.  (To be honest though, there were a few times I was worried he was going to pass out while driving...but luckily they had given him a car with AC this time, so at least that helped). 

That night, I went down for dinner at the hotel, only to see that the breakfast table was set up. Croissants, baguettes, jam, yogurt, juice - the whole works.  I was a little confused - I mean, I know they break the fast with sweet stuff, but I was thinking it was more so honey-filled pastries, etc.  But they had a full-on breakfast.  I guess it makes sense since for the body, it technically is breakfast time, but after a day of eating protein bars, I was looking forward to some real food.  I asked the waiter if it was possible to order some fish, and he replied "Non madame, the kitchen doesn't open until 10pm".  So bread & butter it was for me.

I asked my driver about it the next day, and he said that many people will have breakfast once the sun goes down and then "lunch" a few hours later.  He personally had a tajine every night at midnight.  And I was like "Wait a minute...if you are eating tajine at midnight and then leaving your house every morning at 3am to come get me, when do you sleep??"

I would say that would explain why he is always weaving around on the road and why he spends half the time in the lane of oncoming traffic, but I think that's just how he drives.  But I'm telling ya, watching an exhausted, dehydrated man text on his phone while passing in a no-passing zone and going around a curve....Well let's just say you either stare like a deer in headlights at the oncoming traffic or you close your eyes and pray you make it to your destination safely.  And then you try to smile when he pokes you in the arm and says "Je t' fait peur hein Samantha ?? Hahaha."

It's times like that where I think 1) I am happy my family cannot see me now cuz they would freak out and 2) I sure am a loonnng way from life in small-town Minnesota.

Nice is a four-letter word

During the flight back to Paris yesterday, I was thinking about my trip to Morocco and the common theme of it - so many people told me how "nice" I was.  Over and over again, I kept hearing "Tu es trop gentille, Samantha".  It was also something I heard repeatedly in Bulgaria and in Turkey, over and over about how nice and smiley I was.

Now I don't know about you guys, but  "nice" and "smiley" are not two adjectives I would use to describe myself.  Maybe the American me used to be, but French Ksam is pretty closed-off and often slightly suspicious.  What? You just wanted directions?  Too late, I thought you were going to ask me for money so I am now hurrying away from you. 

Nowadays, I would use a lot harder words to describe myself - things like ambitious, self-sufficient, assertive. All qualities I needed to succeed in a man's domain.  But nice?  That doesn't really get you very far in my world.   So it got me thinking about how I could come across that way to these people, and I think it comes down to the situation. I  have so much compassion for the folks I meet in these sorts of places, who often have to make do with so little.  It literally hurts me to see how some of them live, and I think the niceness is just my way of trying to make things a bit easier for them.

I tweeted yesterday that my driver for the week was chiding me about not having any children, and saying I needed to stop traveling and start birthing.  It's a common topic of conversation in these sorts of countries, and I never have a satisfactory answer to give them.  In their minds, women should be at home and not at work. And certainly not traveling to foreign countries without their husbands.

I asked him in return if he had any children, and he said yes - a 9 year old and a 5 year old. As he showed me pictures of them (while weaving through a road full of multiple lanes with cars, people and sheep all crossing at random points), he explained that his wife had had five miscarriages, all at seven months, before the arrival of these two.  And I swear, my heart just about broke.  I just can't even imagine the pain of carrying five different babies so far along, only to have the pregnancies terminate when you think you are in the home stretch.

When he dropped me off at the airport yesterday, I did the cheek kisses with him, and I think he was a bit taken aback. Maybe I broke protocol, but the courage of this man and his wife touched me.  And I mean really touched me - I don't even know how one has the strength to keep trying again and again, after so much heart ache?  None of this really has anything to do with where he lives however, so maybe it's more their willingness to share pieces of their lives with me, a complete stranger. And if that doesn't merit a little extra niceness, I don't know what does.

Morocco

I just got back from 4 days in Morocco. It was an okay trip, but I think I'm starting to be "over" North Africa. We were in Casablanca, which is not a touristy city at all. And I don't know if it's specific to that city, but at least compared to Tunisia, there seemed to be a somewhat higher standard of living and a bit more personal freedom. The buildings were a bit newer and well-maintained, there were a lot of high-priced SUVs everywhere and we saw a lot of women wearing Western-style clothes and no headscarf. And also contrary to Tunisia, we weren't harassed a single time during the whole trip - we were able to pretty much walk about freely, even at night.
The two touristy things there were Rick's café from the Casablanca film:

and the Hassan II Mosque:

It was a pretty incredible mosque - it has room for 25,000 worshipers and a retractable roof. It's also the only mosque in Morocco that women are allowed to visit.

After the visit, we walked over to watch the sunet at the beach:The warm weather and sunshine were a nice change from the snow in Paris, but I have to say it is nice to be home again....Even if it's for less than 24 hours!