From Meknés, we will head to the mountain village of Chefchaouen as we return to the north and another ferry crossing, back to Spain – if we can figure out how to get there! We probably should have thought of that first, before Carolyn went online and booked us into a nice-looking little place for three nights. As we go through our travel options, it looks like getting there will be complicated.
We wanted to visit a much smaller city than Meknés or Tangier to see if that changes our perspective on the challenges of Arab culture we've experienced so far. These include the hard 'medina stares' from men sitting in their shops as we go by – avoiding their hungry eyes, without buying anything. We ignore them to avoid their constant entreaties to buy something. Still, the stares take their toll and have often sent us back to our riad, where we're 'prisoners in the palace.'
We've wandered many foreign streets and alleyways without discomfort, but something's different here. Those hard stares convey, what? 'You have money and we don't?' Probably. 'You're the other, the Christian infidel, our enemy for the past several centuries?' Possibly. And who knows what else. I feel it, but Carolyn feels it much more. I grew up visiting Mexican border towns when I was young and got used to the come-ons, but there's something different, something tougher, here.
It's such a different culture. There are even two dates on every coin; one represents the 'western calendar year,' and the other dates from the Hejira, when Mohammed fled the city of Medina for Mecca. (i.e., a coin from 2002 also carries the Islamic date 1423.)
People toss used paper table napkins on the ground to be swept up by the waiters. Is this thoughtless behavior, or do they consider it 'dirty' to have filthy napkins lying next to their food? Do they consider us 'unclean' for leaving them on the table? I don't know.
Morocco poses challenges we've never faced before. At this point, we could retreat to a more 'sanitized' and Europeanized version of Arab culture by avoiding medinas and simply checking into hotels in the ville nouvelle. But for our own odd reasons, we decide to deal with the challenge by going deeper into the unknown. We'll continue to stay in medinas.
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The train does not go to Chefchaouen, or even close, although we could take the train back to Tangier and hop a bus from there. That sounds like way too much backtracking. We try to find a way to take the train to a town along the way, and then catch a local bus onward through the countryside.
But we're in the part of Morocco where the only viable languages are Arabic and French, and we effectively speak neither. Away from the Mediterranean coast the Spanish language recedes, leaving us without any good options. At the ticket counter for the train, we realize how pitiful the remnants of our college French have become after years of disuse. And I wasn't even good at it back in college. But we understand enough to figure out the train idea isn't likely to work.
The high-quality CTM buses also have no route to Chefchaouen without going back to Tangier. Our only choice will be one of the cheap local bus lines, with all that may entail. We catch a 'petit taxi' to the cavernous bus station. It's a cacophonous place, with touts yelling out destinations for various bus lines. Much of Moroccan commercial life seems to be conducted at high volume.
To our great relief, there is a bus going all the way to Chefchaouen. It looks like the whole thing might be less complicated than we thought. We buy two tickets, wait until our noon departure time, and hope the bus isn't too awful.
Soon we hear the yelling of "Chefchaouen!" and a man waves us to the gate, along with a crowd of others. We follow him past numerous busses awaiting passengers, and then out across the bus lot to a shady spot against the far wall. He speaks some English and he tells us the bus will pull up over here soon. We wait.
We pass our time studying the people around us, and we watch two men loading furniture onto the roof of a bus. The guy on top leans perilously over to pull a chest of drawers onto the roof. One of the drawers falls out onto the ground. Clothing scatters on the pavement. We cringe.
Standing with us are women dressed in flowing robes, and a few old men in small round caps. The younger men wear 'western' clothing. Most of the women wear the colorful head scarves we've seen throughout the medinas. A few steps away, a soldier cuddles his infant baby.
After a while it is well past noon: we figure that's just the way things go. It's only costing us about US$5 each for the trip. It's really a bargain, so we expect a few delays. Finally the guy returns and says something in Arabic to the others waiting with us. They start yelling and looking very concerned. We interpret this as a bad sign. The other passengers begin gathering their things as he explains to us, "Monsieur, your bus, eet ees broken. But your money, eet weel be returned at thee weendow."
We have reservations that evening in Chefchaouen, which is about four or five hours away, and now there are no other buses going directly to Chefchaouen. It looks like getting there at all is going to take some serious flexibility on our part.
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It's important to be flexible. In Meknés, Carolyn finally admitted that the aloe toothpaste she bought way back at that aloe vera farm on the island of Lanzarote really wasn't much good as toothpaste. But she found that small amounts worked great as a hair mousse (!); it gave her fine hair lots of body. Flexibility is a good thing.
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We study the very basic Morocco map in the Lonely Planet guidebook and try to figure out our next move. After much discussion in 'Franglish' with the ticket attendant, we buy two tickets to a dusty crossroads called Souk al Arba, and hope we don't get stuck there for the night. We board the bus and sit for a while in the gathering heat – waiting for more passengers, we think. After nearly an hour we feel the bus move, but realize they're just lowering it off a jack! We're glad they're repairing it before departure.
Soon we're on our way. The bus stops at small towns to let off passengers and pick up others. At each stop an assortment of hawkers jumps aboard to sell candy and drinks. A few offer 'miracle cures' in small bottles. Most of the passengers grimace and ignore them. I sure wish I knew some Arabic.
There's lots of yelling as they vie for attention. I raise my camera to capture the melee; I'm spotted by one of the touts who yells, "Photo!" just in time for all of them to duck behind seats. They emerge, smile, and say, "No photo." I laugh and put the camera away. They're probably not supposed to be on the bus at all, but the driver gets a kickback. Who knows? It's all a mystery to us.
We arrive at Souk al Arba (we think), and the driver motions us off the bus. We start to leave, but several people seem to be telling us not to get off here. This is not our destination. We sit back down and try to sort it all out. In French. Or Arabic. There's an ongoing discussion among the passengers as to whether the foreigners should debark here. The entire bus seems to be involved in the debate. We have absolutely no idea where we are, or what's being said. After this goes on for awhile, the driver returns and waves us to follow him. Yes, apparently, this is our stop.
In the station we look at the Arrival/Departure schedule hanging above the doorway, and it's all in Arabic –they don't even bother with French here. Oddly, I'm thinking of Blanche Dubois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," who always relied "on the kindness of strangers." We'll rely on the ticket agent and various touts who work the Souk al Arba bus depot – who only speak Arabic or (maybe) French. It's all wonderfully colorful and adventurous, and it's completely unintelligible to us. There's much discussion while they figure out that if we buy tickets to Ouezzane (Where is Ouezzane?!? We look at our tiny map.), we'll be able to get a 'grand taxi' (one of the ubiquitous Mercedes 240D cabs) to take us to Chefchaouen. That much we understand. This sounds like a plan. We buy two tickets.
The bus to Ouezzane climbs into the hills, with more stops at small villages. The peaks of the Rif Mountains rise in the distance. The villages and farms are timeless and pastoral.
Our bus arrives in Ouezzane, and a gentleman in a seat behind us speaks to us in English. He's going home to Chefchaouen for a family gathering and will be taking a grand taxi. It will cost us each 30 dirhams (~US$4); he'll show us the way. Now that we're out of the medina, our perspective is changing. Many people help us, and few are trying to sell us something.
We toss our backpacks into the trunk and climb in the back seat. A Moroccan couple is in the front seat, having a quiet conversation. Soon, we hear a door slam and some other guy is sitting in the back seat with us. We wonder what happened to the guy who's visiting his family in Chefchaouen. Then he opens the door and argues with the guy sitting there. The new guy gets out, our friend gets in, then the new guy gets back in! There will be four of us in the back and three (including the driver) in the front. It will be a very cosy hour's ride to Chefchaouen.
It's also a very fast ride, as our driver does his best Stirling Moss imitation on the curvy highway. The wide and fully-loaded Mercedes negotiates the mountain roads quite well, but I wonder how good the tires are. At this speed, one blowout and we're all history. I really don't mind dying in some exotic location. But not yet.
At one point in the trip, as we're racing along through the mountains of Morocco and sliding through the turns, I flash a wry grin at Carolyn and say, "You're crazy, you know that?" She grins back and says, "So are you!"
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As a distraction from the driving, I engage our English-speaking friend in conversation. He's a manager for Moroccan Social Security and does a regular route through the country. He's on his way back from Oujda, at the Algerian border. I ask him why the border with Algeria is closed and he tells me it's very complicated. I get the impression we don't have enough time to get into it. It's probably also a sensitive subject best talked about in private. So I mention all the public works and investment we've seen during our trip so far. In every town we've seen infrastructure work underway, and cranes fill the sky over Tangier as private investors move in to build the new Center City. He says the entire country is embarked on major redevelopments and improvements, and that Morocco will be greatly different in five years.
The country is clearly improving things on a broad scale, under the enlightened guidance of King Mohammed VI. If I were a rich developer, I'd be inclined to take a serious look at Morocco.
At last we arrive in Chefchaouen, still alive, greatly relieved, and in reasonably good shape. We don our backpacks and thank our friend for his help. Getting to Chefchaouen cost us a lot more than the original five bucks we paid for tickets on the broken bus, but it still wasn't all that much. We think. We kinda lost track of the cost in all the changes along the way.
Then it's off to the medina (again!) in search of the Dar el Baraka, a B&B owned by a family of refugees from the cold of Leicester, in England. Maybe they're some of the early foreign investors here. Baraka means 'blessing' in Arabic, and we were glad to see that it was a very nice place, tastefully done, and reasonably priced at 35 Euros per night. The halls ring with a charmingly heavy Leicester accent – quite a change from the French and Arabic we've heard so far.
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Chefchaouen is nestled into a valley surrounded by several peaks, with a view to several more lying to the west. It's the gateway to numerous climbable summits and a very large nature preserve.
It's also the gateway to Morocco's booming kif industry. The UN's World Drug Report 2006 states that Morocco is a major supplier of high-quality marijuana and hashish to the European market, and that 56% of Moroccan production is centered in Chefchaouen province.
(No, that's not why we decided to come here, and we did not inhale – we have no interest in visiting a Moroccan prison. But it made the trip more interesting.)
The cultivation of kif in the Rif Mountains (origin of the term 'reefer') goes back centuries; it's an important industry, as well as a backyard crop. The UN Report says that about 90,000 Moroccan households are involved in marijuana production. Morocco may be lucky not to have a land connection to Europe, with expensive and ugly security fences on a very long border. But smuggling is nothing new to the old "Barbary Coast" of North Africa, and the speedboats of modern Morocco seem able to meet European demand while the industry provides much-needed jobs in the agriculture sector.
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There seem to be many more young Europeans in 'Chef' (also called 'Chaouen') than we've seen in other parts of the country. One night, we're sitting next to a large table full of young Brits who are having a jolly time of it. Three other young people sit at the table beside us – a young couple from the New York/New Jersey area, and a young woman from China, studying finance in Paris. The young couple have been in Morocco for several weeks and enjoy the friendly, outgoing nature of the people. They may stay longer because Morocco costs about a third of what it costs to travel in Europe. They seem unbothered by the 'medina stare,' and actually, there seems to be less of it in Chefchaouen.
The young Chinese woman concurs about prices in Morocco. She tells us the delicious full meal we just enjoyed, for 50 dirhams each (about US$7.50), would cost around 20 Euros apiece (about US$30) at an average place in Paris. And prices are much higher in the fancy restaurants. We'll be heading back to Europe in less than a week, and we're expecting to suffer severe 'sticker shock' as the US dollar continues its slide.
We might have picked a better time to visit Europe, but the thieves on Wall Street continue looting the country while the public is distracted by pointless 'Drug Wars' and other follies. Lily Tomlin has said, "The only problem with cynicism is, you can't keep up!" While we're all asleep, the robber-barons stay up late figuring out new ways to rob you. So we figure it's hopeless and we might as well go now, while we still have some money left.
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Walls in the crowded Chef medina are painted a luminous light blue, giving the place a freshness that's very easy on the eyes. It's a small city in a semi-arid mountainous setting that reminds us of the Santa Fe/Taos area. The hills above town are covered with small pines between large granite boulders – a familiar scene to someone who grew up in the Southwestern US.
From our riad, it's a short walk through "the blue city" to just about anyplace in town. We're staying near the end of an "impasse," a dead-end alley, and each day the voices of local kids playing just below drift in through our window. Sometimes it's a group of boys playing street soccer, yelling about scores and rules. Sometimes it's girls playing an Arabic version of "patty cake, patty cake," complete with hand clapping. I don't understand the Arabic, but the games are the same as anywhere else in the world. Every day, a man drives his donkey into the alley singing out in melodic Arabic. Our host tells us he collects plastics and other things for resale.
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We had laundry done at the Dar el Baraka; we'd reached the point where we needed a few clean shirts and undies. In Spain we decided to leave most of our gear at the hostal in Tarifa and travel light, with only two small backpacks. We'd each have three shirts, three pairs of underwear, and two pairs of socks. I carried my old iBook computer and Carolyn took her new lightweight iPad. We'd make do with one pair of shoes each, and I took one pair of pants, while Carolyn took pants and a skirt. We'd wear each shirt and undies for two days at a stretch, but my pants were in it for the long haul.
This would be a test of minimalist travel – where 'the rubber hits the road.' Could we really do it? We did laundry along the way, but by the time we got to Chefchaouen I think we'd both describe my pants as 'veree fonkee.' We'll get larger backpacks before we do this again.
That suggests the consideration of body odor. We really detected none among the Moroccans we encountered daily in very crowded streets. That may be due to a healthy diet with lots of grain, fruit, and vegetables, or to the cleansing that is required before entering a mosque several times each day. We were probably the most fragrant people in Morocco at the time! Does that mean we're 'in fragrante dilecto?' I'll leave that to the legal scholars.
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The Chef medina is smaller than others we've explored, and we set off into the heart of it without much concern about getting lost. Small stores are open, people are selling vegetables, construction projects are underway; many appear to be new high-quality hotels. Boys are playing soccer in a small elevated square. As we pass by, the ball drops off the edge and down about five feet to where we're walking. My foot catches it in midair after the first bounce, and I kick it back high onto the square. They give the grey-haired stranger a brief glance and go on playing. I'm not sure what they thought, but I sure impressed myself. Somewhere along the way we pass the Ferreteria Barça. This is truly a soccer-obsessed nation, and the Barcelona team is a perennial favorite.
We find our way to the main square in front of the old Alcazaba. The square is filled with vendors and colorful merchandise, and we have no way to carry any of it with us. But the picturesque old Alcazaba is well worth the 20 dirhams (US$1.60) admission for its displays of historically traditional regional costumes, and a display case filled with elegant old muskets. And there's a surprising exhibition of political cartoons critiquing the frustrations of internal Arab politics, as well as the never-ending conflict with Israel. We can't read the Arabic writing, but the artists are clearly as tough on their own culture as they are on the Israelis. One cartoon showing a terribly overstuffed grand taxi resonates with us.
After strolling the verdant gardens of the Alcazaba and imagining the sweet life of a pasha, there's nothing more quintessentially Moroccan than a rooftop teahouse with a sweeping view over the square below and the countryside beyond. We forget to ask that sugar be brought separately, and end up with the usual ultra-sweet mint tea. But it's still delicious, and a great way to savor the afternoon. A couple of young women at a nearby table say "Hello," and smile as they practice a bit of their broken English. The frustration of minimal communication lingers.
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The breakfast area at the Dar el Baraka has a large flat-screen TV. Most mornings it's tuned to the English version of Al Jazeera news, and we watch reports of the convulsions still sweeping the Middle East. I've never watched Al Jazeera before and I'm impressed with the depth of reporting on issues from an Arab perspective. Instead of the usual American-style quickie on-site report, they spend the time they need to tell the story. And there's lots to tell during this extraordinary 'Arab Spring.'
These reports are being followed closely by Arab viewers from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. It's also being followed by the ruling classes, as TV makes the average person more aware of the world, and they demand a better life. Throughout history new technologies have brought wrenching change to fixed ideas – castle walls were doomed by gunpowder; aircraft brought the end of battleships; TV killed off Frozen Radio Dinners (a notoriously bad investment). The new open world wide information network will likely change the last lingering feudalistic systems of much of the developing world.
Every few days I buy a Moroccan newspaper like Le Matin or L'Opinion, and sort through the French as best I can. There's a front page report on the impact of the recent European E coli outbreak on Moroccan food crop exports. The other half of the front page shows "Sa Majeste le Roi (His Majesty the King) Mohammed VI" opening a new center for human and social research in Oujda, and visiting scientific research facilities at the University there. On another day, the King announces significant funding for a rural water project or road, sidewalk, and related landscaping projects in central Morocco. And inside, there's coverage of Joe Cocker wowing the crowds at a recent concert at the Mawazine festival in Rabat. Joe's not looking all that bad in the photos, considering it's been 40 years since he wowed the crowds at Woodstock.
I scan an article on "Son Altesse Royale la Princesse (Her Royal Highness the Princess) Lalla Hasnaa" presiding over a benefit dinner in Rabat for women's health and education. A Wikipedia article reports the literacy rate for Morocco as only 52% (65% for men and just under 40% for women). The greatest concentration is in rural areas, where schools and teachers are few and education is less highly valued.
One morning at breakfast, I ask one of our British hosts about all the investment we've seen. He says that in Morocco the King has real power. "He's not just a figurehead like our Royal Family," he continues." Here, when the King says 'do something,' it gets done."
The Moroccan Royal Family is known for being politically astute and is listening to the drumbeats of the 'Arab Spring.' Although Morocco is considered less oppressive than other Arab countries, there were pro-democracy protests in Fez and other places in February. The Royal Family remains under pressure to better people's lives.
The World Bank report on "Doing Business in the Arab World 2011" lists Morocco as #12 among 20 Arab nations for "Ease of Doing Business." But on a worldwide scale, the country stands at only #114 out of 183 countries. (Singapore is #1; the US is #5; Chad is dead last.) Morocco is one of six Arab nations to institute a one-stop-shop for business registrations to encourage new businesses. But for ease of buying, registering, and selling property Morocco ranks at only #120 in the world.
Morocco had 9.6% unemployment in 2008. Europe's current economic problems have likely had an negative effect on Morocco. New infrastructure programs should help reduce unemployment and make the country more attractive for the important tourism market, their third-largest industry after agriculture and phosphates.
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It's been a pleasure to spend time in the small city (pop: 75,000) of Chefchaouen, and we enjoyed being largely ignored by local people, and even capturing an occasional smile. One day I glance into a courtyard, and a man at the gate tries to explain it is a "college" for girls, but that doesn't seem like the right word. He searches for the word he actually wants, and another man says, "school." He nods and repeats the word, "school."
I ask, "A medersa?" That's the Moroccan word for a madrassa, or traditional school.
They both crack up laughing that I would know the right term while they're fishing around in broken English.
"Yes, it is medersa." they say.
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But time is running short as we head back toward the Med. We'll make one more stop along the way – in the old Spanish Protectorate capital of Tetouan. Then we'll exit through the odd outpost of Ceuta, one of Spain's last colonial leftovers.
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