This Man's A Berber, He's Praying!!!

I can remember my tour guide Serge (from the Galapagos) telling me that tourism is responsible for bringing the world together and teaching people about different cultures, languages, etc. However, being in Marrakech (as well as Fes, Essaouira, and Meknes) has seriously forced me to wonder to what degree tourism can harm the potential for a full-blown considerate relationship between a visiting culture and the at-home culture--more so on an individual level. I wonder how long it takes (in terms of time) for something to become almost-intrinsically commercialized as a result of tourism (probably long enough for somebody to make a profit), at least to the very point that it begins to close off everyone else in the world from the living culture, or in other words, that it puts up some static facade or front to the rest of the world. What has happened in the last week that has caused me to wonder all of these things, you ask? Well, allow me to explain a little bit more about my time in Morocco...

After my initial state of absolute disbelief, enchantment, and wonder, I woke up and arose for the next couple of days in Marrakech. I jaunted out into the medina--the Jma el Fanaa--and into the souqs (small shops) to explore Morocco’s market culture. The Medina is full of twisting curving thin alley ways full of donkeys, people--walking, riding motorcycles, carrying fruit, cement, bread, cloth, laundry, etc., cats, dogs, goats, and tons of other things that I can’t even begin to explain. There is also the main square, which is where the food stalls are set up at night, where the story tellers play, snake charmers charm, and shrouded henna artists try to hustle unknowing tourists out of an absurd amount of Dirhams (the Moroccan currency). I passed a day pretty easily doing the aforementioned, people watching and exploring a couple of the palaces that can be found in the city. I was pretty stoked (and hungry) by the time that dusk rolled around, because it would be the first time I could really partake in the food market.


You will not be finding any of these featured on your cous cous, unless you ask of course...

If you happen to walk past, there are about two young guys per food stall who try to get tourists to eat at their stand. They do anything that they possibly can to try to lure bodies to sit down and eat some cous cous. To their credit, they are probably having the most fun doing what they do, and they’re also (sometimes) incredibly witty. Anyway, I went to number 117 because the kid had a wittier rhyme than the other guy, and feasted on just about everything I could--cous cous, brochettes, calamari, shrimp, aubergine, etc. Afterwards, I ended up talking with a few different guys separately, and I came away incredibly impressed. They know that the food at all of the stalls is pretty much the same, but it’s their job and they do what they can to make it fun. They also know up to four different languages, know what’s going on in all of the major US sitcoms, and aren’t out to get you to give them money... just to eat (so their employers will give them money).

The next morning, I stood in the square watching people get hustled. It’s something of interest to me, because I always like to think of how my Dad would try to scheister somebody in return for trying to mess with him. One of the better stories: A young woman gets yanked over underneath a parasol to a stool where a shrouded woman begins to apply henna to her hand. Only it looks like frosting, and is done in about 5 seconds. The girl is appalled, tells the woman that she didn’t want it and wants to wipe it off. The “henna-artist” plays distraught and says she won’t make any money, and that she’ll give the girl a special price to leave it on. What was the special price that the woman wanted? I am pretty sure she said 300 Dirhams, or approximately 45 US Dollars. It was hard to not laugh when the girl wiped the henna off on the ground...

In this picture, you can see a guy pulling out a 100 Dirham note and giving it to the guy for a picture of the snakes...

Afterwards, I wanted to check out the snake charmers, so I went to the square on my final day. There are typically about 8 different guys sitting around a bunch of snakes that are either defanged or impostors of poisonous snakes (cobras, etc.), and I figured I would have to pay something. Anyway, I snapped a couple of pictures, and tried to have a conversation with one of the guys in my broken taught-myself-in-5-minutes French and his broken English. He ended up demanding 300 Dirhams because I took a couple of pictures. I said no, and handed him something like 20 Dirhams (a couple of bucks). He told me to give him 300, because they needed to feed all of the guys sitting around the snakes. I said no, and he said that I should do it for Allah and then pointed to the sky. I then just walked away.

[So, does one person on any given day give somebody the 300 that they ask for, and then the story gets around about the idiot tourist that gave somebody 300 Dirham, thereby forcing every “salesperson” to request the same from every given tourist? I despise that guy. It is completely irresponsible to not try to find out what is or is not appropriate within a given culture.]

I walked through the souqs one last time and noticed that there wasn’t a single person in their shop making anything. I also noticed that the shop owners had collaborated to set the prices--as could be seen by the actually signs with prices on them (which I actually think is really smart from a business standpoint, and would probably do myself if I was a stall owner). Most of the prices were incredibly high for what they were trying to sell, which is an obvious result of what seems like an extraordinary amount of tourism in Marrakech. People can still barter for things in order to get the price down, but most Westerners don’t because they see a price on a sign. Anyway, the point of this is that I came away sort of disappointed with the souqs in Marrakech, because it didn’t fit my prior conceptions of what I thought markets should be like, or have been like (fair, to some degree). It’s still unique, fun, and you can still learn a lot. It’s just that you get the feeling that (almost) every single person inside wants to make sure you leave without a single penny. I, however, did leave with all of mine... I also left pondering a lot.


"Castles made of sand melt into the sea, eventually..."

I took a bus to Essaouira, a coastal city known for its seaside medina, a certain color of blue that adorns the window trim of almost every building (and the taxis), and the site of the Gnaoua Music Festival. It’s your stereotypical beach town, where everything seems to take on a slower pace of life. After two days of walking up and down the beach, watching the sun set, writing postcards, eating shwarma, visiting Jimi Hendrix’s castle in the sand, and learning how to say “Sorry, I don’t want to ride your camel today” in Arabic AND French. It was a pretty good time and something needed after Marrakech.


Easily one of the most beautiful moments I've had during my travels...

For some reason, I decided it was logical to go from Essaouira, on the coast, all the way to Fes, which is more inland and ultimately closer to Spain. I’m pretty sure that it was the only way I could get (almost) directly to Barcelona from Morocco (I say almost, because you can’t EVER get directly somewhere with Ryanair... Or so it seems). I woke up at sunrise, and groggily waited in the parking lot for my 12 hour bus-train combo.

A three hour bus ride from Essaouira back to Marrakech? Sleep. Nine hour train from Marrakech to Fes? It was a religious holiday, and apparently everyone was going to Fes. Actually, it was pretty cool to sit on a jam-packed train in a car with only some older Moroccan women. The countryside of Morocco is an absolute wonder too, because you get to see so many changes in landscape. One moment it’s absolute desert, the next it’s lush and green. All in all, it was a pretty sweet train ride once again... Until we got to Casablanca.

So I’m sitting there, minding my own business, looking the least bit caucasian that I could when I noticed a couple of guys pacing back and forth looking in some of the different compartments. Finally one guy stopped by my compartment, and I was pretty sure that he was waiting until the woman next to me got up so that he could take her place. Obvious, right? Well the dude wanted her place so that he could give me a business proposal and tell me about the stops. After a few days of dealing with touts, I think you just start assuming that anybody who is going to talk to you wants money. Fortunately, he didn’t and ended up being a pretty nice guy. However, when it looked like he was ready to get up, there was another man in the wings ready to replace him. Homeboy got off of the train, and here came DanDan. The guy introduced himself as, you guessed it, DanDan, and started to tell me he was in the tourist industry. He rattled off all of these overly obvious facts (i.e. that the Muslim religion was the main religion of Morocco) at an incredibly obnoxious volume [you know those moments where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, but you make eye contact with somebody and you know exactly what they were saying? I think that every single man, woman, and child in that train looked at me and said something like, “Please, don’t judge our country by this man.”]. I wanted to jump off of the train, only because I was sure it was the only way to get rid of him since there wasn’t going to be another stop until I reached Fes. He continued to talk for an hour, and I finally caved in and obliged... Then, about 5 minutes before we arrived in Fes, an elderly Berber man began to pray on the train. DanDan proceeded to yell at the top of his lungs, “THIS MAN’S A BERBER. HE IS VERY RELIGIOUS. HE IS PRAYING! RIGHT NOW WOULD BE THE CALL TO PRAYER.” I was shocked. To me, it seemed like one of the most disrespectful things he could have possibly done. The entire compartment just scowled at the guy... He kept talking, but we were there. Of course, I couldn’t get away without him offering his services to me while I was in Fes--for a very special price. Despite the barrage that occurred in the last thirty minutes of this particular train ride, I would strongly encourage anybody who visits Morocco to travel across the entire country in a day. It’s pretty relaxing, it’s absolutely spectacular in terms of scenery, and it does offer opportunities for you to interact with others--hustlers or not.



So, some quick things about Fes... It was, what I thought to be, the most beautiful city out of the four that I visited. The medina is huge, and actually the largest living medieval city in the world. It has something like over 9,000 streets, and following any given one will get you lost. I did, in fact, get lost about five times, but found my way out quick enough. I would have loved to continue to go back for days on end in Fes, because people are actually making the products that they sell in their shops, and there just appears to be more variance after every turn. On the way out of the Medina, I had these two kids come up and ask me what my name was. I told them Cullen, they introduced themselves and I explained that I couldn’t speak French. After that, they asked me for 10 Dirhams... Maybe its needless to say, but I was pretty disheartened.

All in all, I was pretty easy on the touts, hustlers, and tour guides throughout my story telling. There are a lot of them though, and they constantly and consistently try to pursue and persuade you at just about any cost. And there were a lot of times where you just come away feeling like crap because of the way, and the extent to which, they try to screw you over. My short experience in Morocco was frustrating on multiple levels. Mostly, because of how I have always allowed people to affect me. Thought, I’m also pretty sure that it was further heightened as a result of the fact that I couldn’t speak either language--French or Arabic. It meant that I couldn’t really get past the preconceived notion of what a tourist is, which meant I couldn’t really learn as much as I wanted. On the other hand, my experience wasn’t necessarily a result of me not being able to communicate that well. People--particularly Europeans and Americans--have been coming to Morocco for a long time and treating Moroccans and their culture as an attraction. As a result, at least in my opinion, a static periphery (a penetrable front if you will) has been put up, which makes it harder for people who are honestly interested in the history, culture, way of life, etc. to break through. Seriously though, as I kind of hinted at initially, does the at-home culture become static (that is, does the culture eventually stop evolving and changing) as a result of tourism, or is it that the at-home cultures’ opinion or conception of any visitors becomes static, thus forcing them to treat any given visitor the same way and probably assuming that nobody really gives a crap about the honest-to-God (whichever yours may be) cultural values, technical skills, foods, spices, trades, thoughts, opinions, politics, etc.--you know, the everyday life--of the at home culture?

Maybe if I would have just stayed longer in the country, in one city, I would have been able to develop a better understanding of it all. On the flip side, maybe people are really just intrinsically greedy and tourism provides the perfect atmosphere for that part of people to come out. Lots of thoughts, and not too many answers. At least for now.