Ingredients: mosques,
argan oil,
street merchants
Berber people,
mint tea,
tajine,
killims,
desert.
If you have all of this above, that means you're in Morocco. But, this is not enough. You have to take it one at the time, chew it for a while and swallow it. While digesting, you'll get the right taste. Do not think you're the only one enjoying, Morocco is tasting you too.
Why Morocco? And why this way? Because, it's the bridge that connects two continents- Europe and Africa influencing each other and offering not only psychical but spiritual transfer as well.
Mosque is first thing that can be seen in Morocco and a core of Moroccan culture. With the tall minarets facing Mecca, it's located usually in the historical part of the town. The Mosque of Hasan II in Casablanca is one of the biggest in the world. It was designed by French architect, a friend of king Hasan II. The construction is a combination of wood, granite and marble. The doors are made of titanium, material resistant to corrosion. It can fit 25 000 people at the time. The roof is retractable and during the summer the mosque is warmed by sunlight. At the ground floor, there are rooms for ritual washing that happens five times a day, before each prayer (hands, forearm, face and feet) and the rooms are separated for men and women. In my opinion, mosques are less intimidating than Christian churches, there are no symbols of suffering and human submissiveness on display. Religious classes are available at the mosque, but not for free as the elementary school is. After all, religions might be different but when it comes to money, they seem to be the same: just give the money and God will love you!
Street merchants have left the strongest impression on me. Actually, they give a sweeter taste to Morocco. I really don't know would it be enough if I say they are very inattentive and persuasive. They just don't take NO as an answer. They will follow you, talk to you, grab your hand, stand by you as long as it takes for you to make up your mind. Once you get into their blind side, there's no way back. If you just stop for a second, get ready to start bargaining. Do you feel silly if you by something that you don't need and overpay it? I do look stupid to myself. In order to sell you something they say: "just try" or "it's a present". I stopped by the lady who applies henna patterns on the skin. I just took a peak of what was she doing and at the next moment my hand was covered with henna. I tried to get my hand out of hers, finding some excuses to get away, but she didn't let me go. I am a tough nut to crack but she was tougher. At the end she told me the price that doesn't cross a reasonable mind and that I refused to pay so we started arguing in the middle of the square. I was so mad at her, at myself as well, ready to bring a police officer on duty to judge the situation and then she took the money I offered her. Of course, henna didn't last an hour on my hand. It was very crowded that day and people spoiled the draw touching me. My hand looked like someone had pooped on it. There's no better way but to learn from your own mistakes. You'll see, if you ever go to Morocco, try not to buy anything, I dare you!!! Would Morocco look the same without them? I don't think so.
I wanted to see more of Morocco than the city so I took off to the Atlas mountain where Berber people are settled. They are spread over North Africain in smaller groups and each group have different tradition and dialects. Some of them are Muslims, some don't have any religion. Berber people lives in kashbas, a type of fortress with big walls. Buildings are made of soil or mud to prevent the place from heating, some of them with no water or electricity. Every family has it's unit but there's one common area for public celebration. There are no typical keshbas in Ourika but the lifestyle is typical for all of them.
Berber people make a living from handcrafts: accessorize, kilims and argan oil. All of this is a women's job. Argan oil is derived from the fruit of the argan tree. The use of argan oil is widely spread from culinary to cosmetic purposes. If for cooking, the oil is used from roasted fruit and in cosmetics is row. Mixed with different scents has a different purpose: lavender is for relaxing, lemon is for dry skin, orange for a headache. Compered to olive oil, argan tastes a little bit sweeter.
Kilim is a kind of carpet or rug made of sheep or camel wool. It starts first with cleaning or brushing then with speaning and coloring. Only natural colors are used for dying the wool derived from the plants (for example, red color comes from poppy). For larger sizes it takes almost six months. Some kilims have summer (thiner) and winter (thicker) side. I tried to brush the wool and it was very hard, those women must be very strong.
Beside the traditional Bereber's crafts, Ourika has a beautiful landscape of mountain, rivers and waterfalls. I was hiking through the mountain to the waterfalls and it was quite a tour.
After the long hike, I had a lunch at the restaurant right next to the local river with the chairs and tables in the water. River banks are connected by the small timber bridge, the one that can be often seen in action movies when an actor is chased by someone and needs to cross it.
As usually, I made some friends on that tour, too. This time with two people from Poland, Wera and Andrzej, also passionate travelers. We enjoyed the olives as an appetizer and then main course different for each of us: tajine (the most famous Moroccan dish, mixed vegetable and meat cooked in an earthenware pot), chicken kebab, cuscus. Wera's main course was the most interesting -chicken tajine with figs. The lunch was very pleasant, as well as conversation with these two people. We cheered to our new friendship with few sips of Moroccan mint tea with cinnamon and other spices. On the way back, in the car, we all relaxed to the sound of Berber's music.
Sahara Desert is the biggest desert in the world. It covers most of the country. If you didn't spend a night in the desert you can't say you visited Morocco. I did spend a night there. It was the coldest night ever. I took a ride on a camel through the desert guided by Berber people. The ride was not quite comfortable neither for me nor for camel, I guess. After we had a dinner, Berber guides performed traditional music for us. The sky was covered by stars, I had never seen more in my life and we took a walk to the top of the dune. All the constellation were present and I saw few shooting stars. There's no better place to learn astronomy. It was hard to keep the track with the guide who held a flesh light in his hand but never actually turned it on. There were only our silhouettes hardly visible in the dark. With a lot of effort I managed to rich the top and I could see nearby desert villages settled by Berber people. They live either high in mountains or far in the desert. On the way down, the strong wind had started and I didn't feel amazed by the desert any more. We all set down leaning on camel to get some warm and our Berbrer giude, Etry started to talk about Berber cultur of accepting all kind of people no meter what color or religion they belong to. He gave us some time to think and solve some riddles about stars, moon and life. While everybody was trying to solve the riddles, I was thinking about basic existence and survival there. Etry said that sometimes he gets a little bit confused about directions, let alone tourists. There had been few lost cases. Before sleep, I went back to the tent where I found few blankets enough only for Berber people who got used to that low temperatures, but not for me. I would have rather taken a camel with me at the tent but I wasn't sure if it had fitted. It was so cold that I couldn't even think about going to the improvised toilet. I was waiting for the following day to do all the sanitary duties. I just made myself comfortable under the blankets when I heard waking call from the guide. Part of his job was to take a picture of us riding a camel at the dawn. At 5 am, the photos were the last thing I needed. I had to delete them after I saw the expression of my face.
My desert adventure was over and I got back to civilization. A lot of things happened to me in Morocco, but the best one was saved for the end, before I left it. It was Chefchouen or as I like to call it "blue city". It was recommended by my Canadian friend Nick whom I met in Bolivia. I saw on his pictures all the street are painted blue. I arrived there so excited to see that but got a little bit disappointed at first. There was not a lot of blue, only a few houses. I stopped by to get some lunch and to think a little bit which direction I would go. I couldn't leave Morocco without seeing so little of blue city. After I was fed, I started walking through narrow streets of the old town. And there it was, out of blue- one after another, all the walls, all the doors- blue. But I didn't feel blue at that moment, I felt great. I don't want to sound pathetic but it looked like a place from a ferry tale. Only people are not blue, maybe they will be, one day. Blue is the warmest color, I guess.
Not only Chafchouen, other cities have a specific color, too: Casablanca is white, Marrakech has a reddish color of the desert. Cities are crowded and drivers don't mind at all about pedestrians, crosswalks or traffic lights. Locals are very curious, they ask tourist where they come from and, at the and, they always say "welcome to Morocco". Before I got there, I had red on the internet that contemporary fashion is not accepted and women tourist should wear long skirts and cover the torso. It wasn't my impression. I saw and tourists and some local women dressed very fashionable. Moroccans say they accept everybody. Maybe, it was while ago and things have changed. In the local restaurants, there are mostly men sitting, smoking and drinking coffee or tea. They know all the hard job will be done by their wives. French language is spoken so there are a lot of people from France because they usually don't speak any other language. Tour guides speak few languages: Arabic, French, English, Spanish and I met one of them putting all of these languages into one sentence. It sounded very funny. That's Morocco, all mixed up just like the languages in his sentences.
This taste of Morocco has left me craving for more and more. I hope, you'll enjoy it too!!!
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