C'est Maroc

As predicted, it did not take me long to get lost in the medina.  Armed with google maps on my phone, Sherrie and I set off from the port entrance.  She wanted to exchange rupees for dirhams, so we went in search of a bank.  We were so late setting out that we saw friends coming back and they steered us to a bank a block or so along the way.  No luck with the rupee exchange, but we were able to use the ATM to get some cash.

While I was waiting, I tried to orient myself on google maps.  For some reason, the GPS still thinks I'm in Burma.  While I was in Burma, it was sure I was still in Hong Kong.  It has not been a useful locating device. This makes it difficult to use a map.  You have to have some kind of landmark starting out, like a street sign or a unique intersection, or knowing where the ship is berthed.

Or, you can ask someone to look at the phone and tell you where you are.  I asked the bank guard, who looked perplexed and sent me to the teller.  The teller tapped his finger on the phone, moving the map, and pointed to the area behind him, saying that was where the medina was.  The answer to all tourist questions is apparently the shopping center.  It's a reasonable answer for someone who's just gotten money, I suppose, but it was not the answer to my question.

So we wandered into the medina, which looks like a tangle of brain tissue on the map.  The streets laid out by the French are orthogonal and diagonal, and the medina streets curve around and fold in on themselves.  We picked randomly at the intersections, figuring we would untangle ourselves eventually.    Sherrie bought a lovely tunic and pants and some bras.  She tried on the former, but the latter was pretty much on spec.

The threat level in the port is 2, which we understand has to do with our being a big group of Americans rather than any particular political situation in the country.  At our diplomatic briefing, the consular officer told us that we were targets for theft not because we were American tourists, but because of our financial status.  What that really means is, take the same kinds of precautions you would in any big city.  Poor people rob rich people.

The harassment level seems to be a 3.  Everyone invites you into their shop, but they don't seem desperate.  The lady in the dress shop seemed quite intent on selling Sherrie more than one outfit--and quite intent on ignoring both our English and our French (how do you say polyester in French?), but most of the merchants let us walk on by.

One man struck up a conversation with me.  He wanted to tell me all the places he's been in the US, and it was a lot.  He's lived in Texas, New York, and Florida, and he's visited several other states, including Virginia.  He told me his sister in Boston frequents a Dunkin Donuts right at the site of the bombing every day, but was not at work that day.  (Not surprising.  The Boston Marathon is held on Patriot's Day, which is a state holiday in Massachusetts.  I can't speak for the Dunkin Donuts location, but I do know that.)

Meandering through my life, curving in on itself like the streets of the medina, I mention here that my Runner Boss had crossed the finish line in Boston shortly before the bombs exploded.  Sailing into Casablanca last night, sitting at my desk on board, I watched him on the local news, in an interview filmed only a few feet from my desk on land.  Because the internet connection spit out the film in fits and starts, I got to see every detail.  I've seen those photos, that clutter on his desk.  I know what's hiding just out of sight.

I was hungry for those details.  I am ready to be home.

But in the meantime, I am not, and I'm enjoying my last few days.  While Sherrie shopped for underwear, I talked to the Moroccan vendor, who told me his name, Said, means happy.  He told me this because he loves to go gambling and always wins.  He also told me pashmina is cotton and silk, very fine quality.  (Pashmina is goat hair, actually, and only from rather specific goats and rather specific areas of their bodies.  The best pashmina wool was traditionally collected from bushes the goats rubbed up against.  But perhaps the Moroccan goats rub up against cotton plants and silk cocoons?)

He had some very pretty scarves, and I was very tempted to add them to the family of scarves I have been amassing.  Although traveling in a westward direction has had clear advantages in terms of having so many 25-hour days, traveling in the opposite direction would have made for better scarves.

But we wandered on.  We wandered into a residential area, and I took this snapshot.  Beautiful tile fountain, it evidently serves as the community's water source and laundromat.

Eventually, we found our way out to a main road and oriented ourselves.  We ate in a French seafood restaurant (good, not great).  Sherrie learned her French from the concierge at a French whorehouse in the 70s, but apparently they are gastronomes.  She was able to translate the items not covered in Mme. Colignon's French class.  Which is proving quite useful here.

Code Blue in Casablanca

We are in Casablanca.  Except for the container cars, it looks as black and white as the movie.  The fog clouds everything, like Vaseline on a lens. 

If I’ve learned one thing from my travels, it’s get out of the port city.  In every port, we dock at a big, industrial port, just like the freighters full of refrigerators.  There’s no grass, no trees, just a mile of warehouses and security and gates.

Casablanca is Morocco’s biggest city, and its most Westernized.  I just finished reading The Caliph’s House, an ex-pat memoir by an Afghan-Scot immigrant to Casablanca.  Same as many other stories, the burned out refugee from the 20^th century decamps to some exotic vacation land and then tries to remake it to the standards he enjoyed in his home country, all the while complaining about how expensive it is to do a renovation with the horrid people who do the work for him.  Our Academic Dean recommended it to me as a good introduction to the culture.  I generally find this sort of memoir discourages me from going to visit, but here I am.

Thanks to my reading, I am prepared for a country where the population cannot be trusted, is superstitious, and has to be tricked into working.  Thanks to the diplomatic briefing, I now have a more objective vantage point.   Now I know that the drivers are crazy, the taxis are insane.  No one follows the traffic laws.  Also, there are demonstrations, terrorist plots, thefts at ATMS, and harassment of women waiting for me.

As Captain Louis Renault asks, “What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?

Despite all of this, I am looking forward to visiting Morocco.  I have only one day in Casablanca and once we get through immigration, Sherrie and I are off.  It looks like we can walk to the medina and some of the main streets, to get a feel for the French Colonial architecture and the local crafts. 

Tomorrow I’m off to Fes, leading an SAS home-stay trip.  I had originally decided to travel with SAS because I thought Morocco played to the weakest of my travel skills, navigation.  My instincts are almost always wrong, and I’ve gotten turned around in every market I’ve been to on this trip.  My work buddy Chris had given me a hilarious but cautionary tale about getting lost in a souk, and I didn’t want to repeat it, especially not as a single woman.  So here I am, leading the group—I just hope I can stay out of trouble long enough to get the group back to home base.

Home base for one more week.  In just a week, we go through our last shipboard immigration, our last long lines to pick up our passport and get it stamped by bored people who would rather be enjoying the pastries our ship provides for them. 

Today’s wait was long enough that my computer finished downloading all the files I wanted from the public drive.  The lines stretched down a couple of flights of stairs, made longer by people who were sneaking in at the landings.  They listened in preport to the cultural information.  Moroccans don't wait in line, they push their way through.

Midway up the last flight, we saw our medical team in action.  "Code blue, code blue, code blue.  Deck 7"  The medical team came racing up the steps, along with several crew members.  Two for the stretcher, two with life preservers to use as pillows.  The passenger is okay, and left the scene in a wheelchair.  This is the team putting away the gear.  You can see two cooks (checked pants and hats), along with a maintenance guy (blue jumpsuit), several officers and members of the ship's medical crew.  Our SAS doc is already in the elevator with the patient.  (I have some decency.)

Faculty/staff are the first group to get off the ship after the Caribbean Sea, who won that honor as champs of the Sea Olympics.  With any luck, I should clear before lunch.  And that will give me a vantage point from which to take pictures of people struggling down the gangway with their carry-on luggage.