video of a Moroccan wedding

a Moroccan wedding

Blog post soon to follow, but until then here are some pictures to enjoy!

In my traditional Kaftan my family lent me.

My home stay mother and her nephew before the wedding

The bride makes a very fantastic entrance

This continued for about ten minutes...

The bride and the groom sit while a woman applies henna to the brides hand.

A little sample of the food selection.

The brides outfit change (and my favorite Kaftan of the night!)

The Bride changes again, and this time her and the groom reunite.

The final dress of the night while the bride and groom cut the cake (this is around 3:30 in the morning)

Finally some cake!

a view from Rabat

The land of olives

Local 'souk' or market here in Morocco

Mausoleum next to my house

Hassan Tower, also right by my house

Inside the mausoleum, beautiful architecture

Tomb of former King of Morocco

Sweet Moroccan guard outside the mauseleum

Bathing: Moroccan Style

The hammam in Morocco, where do I begin.  The hammam is a public bath or bathing area that is still very populat around Moroccans today.  Since I constantly see women with their buckets coming back from the hammam, I figured it was an experience I had to have.  After asking around, I found out about a nice clean one close to my house.  I asked a couple of other Americans if they wanted to come, for moral support, and off we went.

Now when you enter a hammam, there are separated doors and places for both men and woman.  The first room resembles a ladies locker room and there are women who you can leave your stuff with while you’re inside.  In this locker room you strip down to just your underwear grab your bucket and whatever other soaps or shampoos you may want and enter the hammam.  Once in the hammam there are three areas of varying degrees of heat.  We headed to the hottest first and grabbed a spot.  Luckily, Moroccans are always so generous and some women noticed we had no idea what we were doing.  They showed us how to fill our buckets with warm water and then how to scrub ourselves.  The key (and the best part) is to have the correct soap and scrubber.  The soap feels a little bit like clay and has a brownish.  It is made from henna and you smear it all over your bed.  After you’re nice and lathered you  take something that resembles a coarse glove and scrub.  Slowly but surely dead skin falls off.  You can actually pay woman to scrub you, and they do so not as a massage in mind, but to make sure you are really clean.  I elected to just try and see how well I could do my self while one of my friends opted to pay.  The amount of skin that came off of her was for lack of a better word, disgusting.  After the long scrubbing session, I washed my hair with the water from the bucket and rinsed off.  We spent some time in the warmer rooms, but after about 40 minutes we were all ready to leave. 

As we returned to the locker I couldn’t believe how clean and relaxed I felt.  It was like I had just taken the best bath of my life.  I wrapped my hair in my towel, put on my sweats and headed home.  It is not uncommon to see Moroccan woman with a towel on their head and in their sweats walking in the street.  I got home, made some tea and crawled into bed.  I had never felt so relaxed in all my life.

I am planning my next trip to the hammam ASAP, but I have been so busy with all my festivities. 

This weekend I will be attending a Moroccan wedding and a birthday party.  In preparation for the amount of food, sweets and tea I am about to consume I ran an extra 40 minutes today.  I am bringing my camera, and I will be borrowing a traditional Moroccan outfit for the affair.  Pictures to come.

A day in Europe

Ceuta.

Here is a map (courtesy of BBC) of Ceuta and its relation to Morocco and Spain.

Taking advantage of my time of from school during Eid (three weeks ago) I decided to travel up to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.  In Morocco there are two Spanish enclaves that are on Moroccan soil but are considered part of Spain.  It took a train ride, bus ride and one scrunched Grand Taxi ride to get up to the border in the North.  Once at the border, the Grand Taxi dropped my roommate and myself off (along with the other four people crammed in the car) at the customs/immigration area.  As we entered this sort of no-mans-land, we were a little bit at a loss for what to do.  There were about five different window booths with long lines (and mainly Moroccans).  We grabbed two forms and filled them out than just picked a random line.  After I got the OK my roommate was told he had to go to next window.  We waited for around 15 minutes until someone finally came up and told us we had to go back to the first window.  By this point, the line was about ten people long and we were both craving some European soil.  Luckily the man at the window let him cut the line and stamped his passport and we were off down the long corridor.  One Spanish police officer took a quick glance at my passport and like that, I was in Spain.

Since we didn’t have any Euros on us to take the bus, the only option was to grab a cab and have him take us to an ATM.  As I entered the cab I suddenly became aware that I was no longer in Morocco.  There was space to stretch out, and the driver wasn’t going to stop to pick up anymore clients.  In Morocco it is normal for a cab driver to pick up other people while you are in one, so you could have three people in a cab all going different places, that’s why it’s always important to watch what the meter is at when you get in.

The cab driver was nice and drove us to the center of town where we promptly found an ATM.  As my roommate and I started walking up the street to try and find a hotel for the night, I began to just cross the street (not at a crosswalk).  He grabbed me and told me to look around, and sure enough people were using crosswalks and waiting for the little green man to tell you to go.  If you tried to do this in Morocco, you would never cross the street, you are constantly playing chicken with taxi drivers, motos and bicylsts.  I like to call it aggressive pedestrianism. 

We found a nice hostel and immediately set out to find some non-Moroccan cuisine.  Although I do enjoy Moroccan cuisine, it is nice to get a break once in awhile.  We decided on Chinese.  I had sweat and sour chicken that was packed full of MSG, but my stomach and palette welcomed the change.  We then checked out an Irish bar in the area, and my Spanish slowly came back to me.  In the morning, I wanted to leave early since it was still holiday and I assumed the buses and trains were going to be crowded.  We packed up and headed out again to the border, where this time all we were the only ones crossing out and all we had to do was show our passports, get a nice stamp, and then it was welcome back to Morocco.

Immediately we were greeted with the sight of the white Grand Taxis and the drivers shouting different names of cities in Morocco.  We found out going to Tetouan and waited for it to fill up with six people.  Once in Tetouan, I decided it would be best to avoid the train and just try for the bus.  I caught the earliest bus and headed back to Rabat.  To my surprise, the bus was practically empty.  The problem was that the driver had a certain affinity for techno music and blasted it for the first two hours of the trip until finally someone said something to him.  I spent the whole time wishing I had paid attention in Darija class when we learned how to say “turn off” and “turn down”.

Lazy Days in Rabat

 Today has already been a lazy, perfect Sunday.  I woke up late (which is rare for me here) and enjoyed a nice breakfast of toast, jam and delicious coffee (delicious because it was ¾ whole milk, ¼ coffee) with my host family.  The weather has been sunny these last few days after the few days of torrential downpour that struck Morocco, so we ate outside in the courtyard.  Afterwards, I went for the first time to the Catholic Church here in Rabat.  Normally I try and attend the Protestant service, but today I felt the urge to check out a different type of service.  Here is a photo of the exterior of the church.

The interior is simple but very well maintained.  The entire church was packed, and as I arrived a little late, there was only room in the very back on some benches.  As most services here, it was in French so I did my best to try and understand what the service was about.  My favorite part of the service though was the music.  The choir was hands down the best I had ever heard.  Church is a nice way for me to maintain some normalcy in my life here.  Although the service is in French, the actions and motions are the same as in America.  As I am exposed to some many new and great experiences here, it is nice to feel that I have some sort of connection to the culture and religion I have left behind.

After the service ended, I decided to continue my leisure afternoon by visiting the Tour Hassan and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V.  These two sites are directly next to my new house.  Le Tour Hassan (Hassan Tower) overlooks the Oued Bou Regreg (a river that separates Rabat from Sale and leads to the ocean) and was started by the Almohads.  Their goal was to build the second largest mosque of its time (only second to Samarra in Iraq).  The Sultan of that time (al-Mansour) wanted to build a 60meter tall minaret, but unfortunately he died before it could be completed and the minaret reached only the height of 44 meters. The mosque that went along with the minaret was destroyed in 1755 when an earthquake struck.  As you can see in my photos, all that remains now are various pillars surrounding the tower.  An interesting architectural note for anyone who has visited either Seville or Marrakech, this tower was built with the Giralda (Seville) and the Koutoubia (Marrakech) in mind. 

Right next to the tower is the Mausoleum of Mohammed V.  Mohammed V was King of Morocco years ago (he is grandfather of the current King) and his body, along with his son and previous King Hassan II, are buried here.  

Although this is the area I run in every day, this was my first time visiting the sights.  My neighborhood is home to a lot of embassies so I feel safe running because there’s security everywhere.  Although I do miss running on the beach with the fresh ocean air, there was so much traffic that sometimes it became impossible to breathe.

Eid

I apologize for the lack of my posting, it has been a rather crazy and busy two weeks and I plan to blog about all of my new experiences and events.  To give you a little teaser, I will be blogging about the following:

Celebrating Eid Al-Kabir with Moroccans

Crossing the Moroccan/Spanish border at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, and my night spent in Europe

Thanksgiving in Morocco, consisting of all the American favorites (Mashed potatoes, pumpkin and apple pie, chicken with dried apricots – a little bit of Moroccan touch, and of course Mac and Cheese with turkey sausage) and spending the holiday celebrating with Americans, Moroccans, Congolese and even an Italian.

My first visit to the Hamam here (Public baths)

And of course, my big move from the apartment into a home stay with a Moroccan family!

That is a little bit of what’s to come, but for this blog I am going to talk about my experience with Eid.

Now I talked a little bit last time about what happens on the holiday (each family slaughters a ram in honor of the story of Abraham, in which at the last minute God exchanged his son with a ram to sacrifice).  I woke up on the day of Eid, happy to have a full three days off from class, but with no idea of what I was about to experience.  My roommate and I left our apartment around 11 (purposely missing all of the slaughtering that usually occurs in the morning) and headed up on the twenty-minute walk to the bus station.  Within a minute of turning the corner from our apartment I began to see smoke coming from every street corner.  As I got closer I noticed that roasting on open flames was the skull and the legs of the rams.  Supposedly the meat is very delicious in their skull and you first have to burn off the hair to enjoy it.  That was shock number one.  Shock number two came as my roommate and I were waiting for the bus.  Now, not every family knows how to slaughter their ram so there are butchers who spend the day going from house to house slaughtering the ram.  As my roommate and I were sitting, waiting for the one bus that would take us to the small town outside of Rabat and munching on the cookies we had bought as a gift (we were starving…) all of a sudden two men, covered in dry blood from head to rain boot and carrying about four or five large butcher knifes each walked by.  In that moment I completely forgot that it was Eid and was immediately terrified, but after looking around, no one else seemed to take notice of them.  Life as usual on Eid.

After what seemed like an eternity the bus arrived and Moroccan-style, we pushed our way onto the crowded bus.  Once we arrived in the small town outside of Rabat we were greeted by roommates friend and went back to his house. Once at his house, after introductions were completed, the first thing to be done was check out the ram.  Lucky for me, it had already been killed and skinned; however the carcass was still intact and lying right on the kitchen floor.  The most impressive part about all of this is that his mother knew exactly what to do with the ram.  I starred at it for a while and realized that I had absolutely no idea how I would cut, clean or cook any part of this animal.  Luckily for me and thanks to Arab hospitality I did not have to help with the slicing, cooking or preparation.  In true Moroccan hospitality we were given tea so sweet it makes your teeth ache and of course, sweets.  After having my fill of all the different cookies, it was dinnertime.  Somehow, in the time I was greedily binging on sweets, my friends mother had prepared a delicious tagine with the lamb meat.  Normally in tagines, there are a lot more vegetables and not that much meat.  On Eid, it seemed that the tagine was ALL meat, and delicious meat it was.

After dinner, we walked around the town and visited a few of his friends.  One family had an entire cow hung up that they had sacrificed during the Eid.  I really never realized how much meat is on a cow until I saw one slaughtered, stripped and strung up from the ceiling.  It was taller than me. 

Around nine o’clock with full bellies we returned to his house and played some Moroccan card games (which I was horrible at) and slept extremely well. All in all, the holiday felt a lot like our Thanksgiving, at least in the amount of food that was consumed.

The next day we woke up early to travel back to Rabat, taking a Grand Taxi instead of a bus since there was absolutely no room on the bus.  A Grand Taxi in Morocco is a big taxi that holds six people (2 in the front, four in the back) and goes between cities.  They are not the most comfortable way to travel (constantly squashed) but it is efficient between cities and not very expensive. We got back to Rabat in the early afternoon and re-packed because the next day we headed off on our long journey to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta….

For those of you who don’t know, there are two Spanish enclaves in Morocco.  They are not next to each other, but they both are coastal cities in Morocco that belong to Spain.  To get to them you can grab a Grand Taxi that will drive you to the border, and from there you walk over to Spain.  My next blog post will be about my adventure in Spain and all the different methods of transportation I needed to get there.