My journey to the north (aka what to do when you’re bored during Ramadan)

Ramadan has made me a little stir crazy down here in Agadir. With nearly everything closed during the daytime, my options are pretty much 1) Go to the beach 2) Catch up on reading/language learning or 3) Try out new cooking recipes. After exhausting my supply of books, sand, and culinary exploits over the past few days, I decided to go be bored somewhere else.

To that end, I took an overnight train from Marrakesh to Tangier a few days ago to go see some friends in the north. I have a strange fondness for train travel, particularly overnight trains, which probably stems from reading too much Harry Potter as a child. Still, the overnight journey was more pleasant than I had anticipated. Due to a ticket mixup, I ended up getting an entire sleeper compartment to myself on the train. Each compartment is equipped with 4 simple but fairly comfortable bunks, so even though I didn’t need the extra space, it was nice to be able to lounge around and turn the lights on and off whenever I wanted. The train departed from Marrakesh just before sunset, so I spent the evening pleasantly relaxing in my compartment, reading and watching the landscape go by as the sun dipped below the mountains. The attendants even passed out a small snack of dates and water for people to break their fasts for iftar.

View from the train

I got to Tangier early in the morning, and because of Ramadan, there were very few people around. I walked almost the entire length of the coast near the beach, admiring the white sand and clear water. Once the coast ended, it led up to the medina and the kasbah, the old fortified city made up of twisted alleys and traditional white-walled architecture. Usually there is a bustling market there on Sundays and Thursdays, but due to Ramadan it was quiet. It was actually pretty nice not having to constantly dodge the taxis, motorcycles, and street vendors that are usually in a medina.

I spent a few hours wandering the hilly medina and kasbah streets, and then ate lunch at McDonalds, one of the only restaurants that was open. After that, I saw a movie in the shopping mall theater. It was in Darija with French subtitles, but by hearing one language and reading another, I was able to piece together most of what was going on.

Having exhausted most of the possibilities for entertainment in Tangier, I headed up to Tetouan, where some friends and I met for iftar at a riad restaurant. It was probably the most typical iftar I’d had yet– made up of dates, harira, sellou (a mix of flour, nuts, honey, anise, and fennel), mnsemen, and chebakia.

The next day, I hung out with a friend in Tetouan, and explored Wilaya, the fancier part of the city. Then I headed back on a very long bus ride back to Agadir.

The mesrahiyya

Tangier and Asilah: a picture montage

Happy New Year! If you’re reading this from Morocco, you know that September 22 was Muharram, or the official start of the Islamic New Year. The Islamic calendar is based on the lunar cycle, so it’s now a new lunar year. In practice, most Moroccans don’t really seem to care about the new Islamic year– some people did shoot off fireworks at the end of our street, my phone texted me “سنة سعيدة” (happy new year), and some people briefly wished each other bonne année, but really, the most significant thing is that it’s a national holiday, which means they get a day off of work.

Unfortunately for me, this just complicated things, since it was the weekend our group had chosen to go to Tangier and Asilah. Only a small portion of the taxis are required to work, which meant the streets were nearly deserted as I went to meet our group in the center of Rabat.

Tangier and Asilah are in the northwest of Morocco. Tangier is right across from the Strait of Gibraltar (when it’s a clear day, you can look out from the coast and see Spain), mostly known for its reputation as a haven for writers, musicians, and international espionage. We went to the American Legation, which has a museum with a bunch of artifacts about U.S.-Morocco relations, including presidential meeting photos, a collection of Paul Bowles’ works, and an extensive research library.

After that, we headed north to the whitewashed city of Asilah, where we spent a day at the beach and wandered the medina. Every year there’s a mural painting contest, where artists decorate the white walls with their artwork. Describing it doesn’t really do it justice, so here are some photos:

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In other news, I leave Rabat tomorrow on an 8-hour bus ride to Agadir. I’ll be sure to update as I settle into my new home!

 

 

Tangier, Asilah, and My Second to Last Day in Morocco

I can’t believe it, but today was my next-to-last day in Morocco. A month went by so fast– it seems like just yesterday I stepped into the Casablanca airport, but at the same time, it feels like I’ve been here for longer. I’m happy to say that my penultimate day here was probably the busiest day I’ve ever had here.

It started off bright and early at 8 a.m., when we headed to Tangier (طنجة) and Asilah (اصيلة) for the day. Since it was Ramadan, the streets were nearly empty, and the usually 20 minute drive to school took us 10 minutes instead (although that could also have been a consequence of my host brother’s crazy driving). It took us about 4 hours to get to Tangier, and that afternoon we explored the city. Our path was blocked slightly because a James Bond movie was being filmed in part of the medina, but other than that, we saw both the old and new parts of the city. Tangier definitely had a different feel than most of the other cities we’d visited — it has a pretty long history of money laundering, corruption, and human trafficking, but on the plus side, a lot of famous writers and actors also came there, so we got to see where Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles had lived, and a cafe the Rolling Stones visited. There was also a lookout point where you could see across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain, which at the closest point is only about 10 miles from Tangier.

Tangier

The cafe the Rolling Stones visited

After eating lunch in Tangier, we headed over to Asilah, which was about an hour away. Asilah reminded me very much of Chefchaouen (the houses were painted blue and white) but with a beach. When we first got off the bus, we noticed a group of camels on the beach (including a mom and baby), and headed straight for them. Riding a camel, like a lot of people have said, was kind of uncomfortable. To get on, the camel knelt, and then you had to swing your leg over the saddle. There were two hooks to hold onto on either side of the saddle, which was good, because when my camel stood up, it raised its back end before the front, which made me feel like I was going to fall off.

Camels!

After that, we used the rest of our free time wandering around Asilah, then began the long drive back to Rabat. Because it was Ramadan, we stopped at a gas station before iftar so our driver and everyone else could break the fast, so we didn’t get back to Rabat until later, about 10:30 p.m. Usually I can call my host dad and he’ll pick us up at the end of the tram line, but because of Ramadan, he was praying at the mosque, and we didn’t want to stand on a dark street corner in the middle of Rabat, so another friend who lives nearby took a taxi with me to Temara. It was a little complicated because petit taxis only go within city limits, so we had to take a petit taxi to the grand taxi stand and then transfer from there to Temara. The other problem was that the driver didn’t know exactly where we were going– the streets we live on don’t really have names, and the closest large building to us was a veterinary clinic, but he couldn’t find the street at first. My friend only spoke French, and I only spoke Arabic, but between the two of us we somehow managed to kind of make him understand where we wanted to go. Of course, because it was night and during Ramadan, he tried to rip us off for about 300 dirhams (about $30 U.S.), which is expensive for Morocco, but at that point, we didn’t really care.

Once we’d arrived back home after our little taxi adventure, we went to the beach to celebrate one of the other students on the program’s host sister’s birthday. Everyone had waited for us to light the candles on the cake, and then we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in 4 different languages — Arabic, French, English, and Tamazight. Everybody was so completely welcoming to us, it was amazing. Even if the most I could muster was a “salaam” and “3id milad saieed,” they kept inviting us to eat more cake and sit down on the sand. We hung out on the beach for a little bit, then went back to the house to eat watermelon and drink tea. So my second-to-last day in Morocco ended with me squished in the backseat of a tiny car with four other girls, speaking a language I only kind of understood while dodging Ramadan traffic. It’s little moments like those that make me realize that I’m really going to miss Morocco.

One of the street murals in Asilah– they have a competition every year where they paint the walls white and invite people to paint new murals on them

View of the coast of Asilah