9/5/11 Morocco

We've been in Morocco for 3 days now and it's been great!.  The first day here we spent exploring Casablanca.  We saw the 3rd largest mosque in the world. Something like 25,000 people can pray inside at the same time, and over 100,000 if you include the huge areas outside the mosque built for that purpose. This government is a parlimentary monarchy and the mosque was built by the last king, Hassan II, who died in 1999, thereby relinquishing power to his son, Mohammed VI.  Mohammed VI's picture is everywhere including on the paper money and most buildings. People generally seem happy with the current king, who recently made some fairly substantial reforms to the government, taking some power away from himself and moving the government closer to the type of setup seen in England. 

The most interesting part of Morocco for me was the street market experience.  We went to the medinas (old town centers) of both Casablanca and Marrakesh.  In both cases there were huge areas of narrow corridors with little shops lining both sides.  The corridors weave all over the place, making you feel hopelessly lost when you're in the middle of them without a clue as to where you are.  Amazingly, about the time you feel totally lost, some man will show up insisting on taking you to where ever you would like to go. As soon as you buy anything, he will demand money from you for his services (that you never requested) and refuse to leave you alone until he feels sufficiently compensated, giving you stink-eye and following you around until you finally cave in and hand over the cash.

And then there are the monkeys.  If you get anywhere in the vicinity of the monkey men, they will immediately place a monkey on your shoulder, encourage the person with you to take a photo, and then demand money. I got the extra bonus of getting peed on by the monkey.  One would think this may translate to a free photo, but NO, greenbacks are still expected.  After that experience we steered clear of the snake charmers, henna tattoo artists and fortune-tellers. The kids were a little freaked out by all this unwanted attention, although they were equally fascinated by this crush of vendors, all interested in making some money off the unsuspecting tourists.

The Moroccan food is right up my alley; lots of veggies, couscous, fruit, fish, chicken and breads. My belly has been happy since I got here. Islam is by far the most prevalent religion in Morocco and so alcohol is much harder to come by than it is in the states.  We saw groups of men hanging out at bars all the time, but they were coffee bars, not booze bars.  The interesting thing was that the nightlife seemed every bit as active and social as it is in the USA, if not more so. There were literally thousands of people, including little children, in the center "medina" of Marrakesh at 11:00 pm when we left our dinner restaurant Sunday night. We are told (by our guide, Mohammed) that Sunday night is a "slow" night, compared to Friday and Saturday.

Today we travelled to the Ourika valley in the high Atlas Mountains and visited 2 of the homes of the indiginous "Berber" people.  In one home, there was a room especially for the family cow.  23 people also lived in that home, including toothless great-grandma, grandparents, parents and children down to the age of 2. The 2 year old boy, Mohammed (are you noticing any name-theme here?), immediately began leading Reade and Tate around the house by the hand and introduced them to the baby kittens, which delighted them.  The homes have multi-use rooms with big covered benches that are used for eating, entertaining and sleeping.  The floors are dirt and many of the rooms are open to the elements.  Those that aren't are small and dark. The wonderful thing is that the people also have trees drooping with oranges, walnuts, avacados and pomegranates.  We were served mint tea and homemade bread with butter, olive oil and honey at one of the homes. The tea is traditionally served by the person in the home that is the most respected, in this case, toothless great-grandma who can poor tea into small cups from about 18 inches above without spilling a drop. Speaking of teeth, it seems that many adults have lost many of their teeth by the time they are in their 30's or 40's. I tried to use this observation to scare my children into wanting to take care of their teeth and gums all on their own, without the constant nagging of their parents.

We have one more day in Morocco, but I need to be back on the ship before 4 pm for our post-post medical clinic.  So, we'll stay local tomorrow. Bye for now!