One Last Time

Of all my expectations and challenges on this trip, I never expected for a tajine to take so much time and effort to send home. The tajine itself is a massive piece, as our van driver in Fes commented, “big enough to cook a lamb.” For the last few weeks it has been sitting in my closet waiting for a chance to be shipped, the Marrakesh trip and attempts at being a social butterfly made me all too willing to delay mailing. On some level I was avoiding mailing the tajine because it would really mean I was leaving AUI. Today I ran out of excuses, the tajine had to get shipped, no ifs ands or buts. Before I could wrap up my parents gift in protective layer after protective layer of packing materials I needed tape, thankfully Sarah helped explain to me the French word for tape( I have no idea why there is no Arabic word for tape), “scotch”, providing me the last piece of material I would need. I have lost track on how many people have commented to me about the fragility of tajines, imbuing me with a sense of paranoia on tajine transit. Layer upon layer of cardboard, tape, and random padding supplies were wrapped around, boxes were cut and molded to provide as best I could quality spacing, after forty five minutes of packing I had created, what I hope to be, a cocoon of safety that will keep this memento of an amazing Moroccan adventure.
At the AUI post office I was told two distressing tidbits, firstly that my package would be unable to ship until Monday, not that bad actually, the second one which concerned me far more, was the comment by the postal worker after he learned I was mailing a tajine stated simply that it wouldn’t make it to the States intact. In 3-5 weeks I should hopefully receive a call from my parents stating that the tajine magically survived its 7000 mile journey. With the tajine packed and ready I was left with the task of clearing my room for departure, which took far more time than anticipated as the housing officer I needed to get cleared with became rather stealthy around the time I was ready to take care of all of my paper work. One feature of Morocco that I will be ok with no longer having to deal with is the French system of utterly idiotic bureaucracy, where not only do you need signatures from members of various departments who have spread themselves around campus and will only stamp your paper after receiving a phone call from some other official. After spending all of the effort on getting my room properly cleared and ready to go, I was done as the International Office closed down for the day making it necessary to drop off my form tomorrow in Building 38, another thing I never really understood about AUI is why are all of the buildings simply numbered and left unnamed, while I appreciate the university is only fifteen years old I just feel someone who AUI likes or an Alum must have done something worth naming a building for.
With paper work complete, but alas un-submitted I decided that would be a good moment to sit down and start typing this entry. My stay in Morocco has been a phenomenal one, allowing me to experience a culture that I will spend quite a bit of time digesting and trying to understand. Of all things Moroccan, that are food based, that I will miss most is tajine cooked food with particular emphasis on lemon chicken tagine, cooked in such a way that you can tear away pieces of meat with chunks of bread. Of the cities I visited on this trip Rabat has at least one adventure I will have to come back to, grabbing a drink at the Alaska Bar and Restaurant, with the hopes that I can get some kind of discount or at least special drink, if I can prove to them that I am in fact Alaskan. Hardest for me has been adjusting to the chaotic hustle we experienced in every city we visited. While I thought I could deal with crowds and insanity of city life, the medina is another creature entirely, the order I find so important when trying to survive other cities, Tokyo, New York, or Boston, just isn’t there in Morocco. Alleyways are tight, people ebb and flow around eachother, and the hustle of conversations in Arabic and French as well as the cries of vendors asking you to buy something in English, made it very difficult to want to stay in the medina’s for more time than was necessary to achieve whatever limited shopping or touring that was planned for the day.
My friendships in Morocco have been intense, chaotic, and wonderful. Adapting to my Moroccan friend’s sense of timing and seeming lack of willingness to make coherent plans has been interesting to say the least. While we were warned by Mrs. Fishburne at the beginning of our time in Morocco that the local concept of when and how things should be done, it never really stuck. Even after god knows how many delayed meals waiting for Ahmed to get his deal together, we always seemed to hope that just this once someone would show up at the allotted time, or at least tell us that there plans had changed. As far as I can remember only two Moroccans I have spent time with would actually update me with any changes of plans, Fadel and Sarah, both of whom who I will miss tremendously when I get back to the states, this is not to say I won’t miss others, I just felt like singling them out for punctuality.

Pre Dawn in the Pre Sahara

Waking up this morning at the chipper hour of 4 AM took a significant amount of mental effort to convince myself that this was a "good idea". After making sure that Mike and Adam were also among the living we headed downstairs, cameras in hand unsure as to what this morning's camel ride would bring. Getting into the jeeps that had been hired to drive us out to the desert I had to deal with the conflicting urge to get my few extra minutes of shut eye, or watch the stars over the moonscape in front of me. To watch the first signs of dusk creep over the Eastern mountains was a serene transition, to contrast the bumpy ride we took to get to the camels. After about half an hour of driving we found ourselves pulling into a group of camels awaiting our arrival. One slightly disconcerting aspect of getting on the camel was the way it went from a seated position to standing, rocking back and forth, providing a rather disconcerting moment where I wasn't sure how to move my body weight to remain stable.

After mounting our rides for the short trip across the sand dunes, the experience became, as I am betting was intended, that of being on a small caravan wandering the Saharan sands. At the base of a large dune, our guides stopped the herd, helped us dismount and led us to the top of the dune. Walking, or in my brief attempt, running, up the dune took considerable effort. One trick my guide showed my was to walk up the edge of the dune, which did seem to reduce the effort required.

Waiting for the dawn to rise over the mountains and dunes was an impressive sight that I won't soon forget.


With the day broken, my guide showed me how it was possible to slide down the dunes. By rapping my saddle blanket around myself, he was able to pull me down the hill side in what felt like a tenth the time it took to walk up the dune. As the sun truly broke into dawn, we got back into our jeeps to go back to our hotel and sleep, but not before capturing this one last view of the desert morning.

The New Flavor of Camel Burgers

For our lunch break in Fes yesterday we went to the Clock Cafe, named after the water clock that used to occupy the street outside its terrace. Found down a twisting alley in the old Medina of Fes, the Clock Cafe is an ex-Pat restaurant serving a fusion approach to many international dishes, which included chickpea vegi-burgers, milkshakes with almond and dates as flavor options, and my flavor for the afternoon Camel Burgers.
The flavor of the ground camel was enhanced by a collection of spices that I really should have gotten the name of.
The challenge of eating the camel burger was the comparatively small size of the bun that was used to support patti that fell apart rather quickly during the eating process. If you ever do visit the Clock Cafe I would definitely recommend trying the camel with a Chocolate Almond milkshake to wash it down. Be warned that the milkshakes served are not as thick as many Americans are used to.

Meowlians of Cats

Bad puns aside one feature of my visit to Morocco has been the unimaginably high number of feral and semi domestic cats that we have seen in various cities throughout our many adventures, and as cute cats score very highly on internet searches, here it is, a collection of cute cats seen in Morocco.

While cats are allowed to walk the streets freely, eating any garbage or food that they might be able to scavenge or recieve from people, dogs are considered unclean and are rarely seen during the day time.

This kitten, Blue, and its mother, Jackie, spend most of their time living around the Mosque on AUI's campus.

Meknes or Getting Lost in the Medina

One hour of driving North West of Ifrane, the city of Meknes hosts the first royal palace of the current dynasty. This massive complex when it was built during the rein of Mawlay Isma'il is according to popular, and inaccurate local legend, built by 30,000 captured Christian prisoners, whose bodies are rumored to be buried throughout the complex. While the facility was massive, and did hold varying numbers of prisoners from Europe the primary purpose of this massive palace was to impress and intimidate any leader who might try to overthrow Mawlay Isma'il. To emphasize the message of intimidation the entryway that was to be used by foreign ambassadors was placed in such a way that dignitaries would have to walk along multiple kilometers of massive defensive walls, driving home that no power would conquer this castle.
Throughout the castle you could see remains from other cities and castles that were cannibalized by the Sultan when he came to power, as was the tradition of new Islamic Sultans.

Inside the castle's walls we spent a good deal of time trying to determine which massive storage room had been used in "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark" as the cinematic last resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.
After the main storage areas of the Palace we were led to an underground storage area that according to local guides was another place where not only were Christian slaves stored there, there was also a secret passage connecting Meknes to Mecca, sadly neither myth was true.

At least the storage rooms gave us a nice place to play a massive game of Peek a Boo.

After visiting the old storage cellar we visited a tomb made in honor of Sultan Mawlay Isma'il, a beautiful resting place for Moroccans held in high esteem.

Our final organized visit was to an old Madrasah that was in the midst of being retrofitted into an internet cafe, but still open to visitors who were interested in what old schools in Morocco looked like. The carvings in the primary education space were beautifully done. My favorite feature was over the entry way to the prayer space a name that looked initially looked like a name.

Soon it became time to go to lunch, Adam, Mike and I spent the two hours left to us to seek out a pair of "Genie Shoes" for Adam. It took only a few minutes for Adam to find a pair of yellow shoes in his size, with that task complete we allowed ourselves to get lost in the Medina hoping to find something to find. What was truly surprising was how we never got lost so long as we made our own path, as soon as we tried to reverse the path we took to find the Madrasah earlier that morning we managed to get ourselves borderline disastrously lost. After a light back track we found a new path that as expected, got us back to the square we had been asked to find. All in all it was a good day, and to end this recollection a picture of a kitten I saw on the sidewalk while buying a Fanta.

The Hospitality of the Sufi

Sept 11 20010
Always step across the threshold on your right foot, never put food to your mouth with your left hand, and never show the bottom of your feet to another person in your presence. Dinner with the Sufi's had a complex list of rules and traditions that needed to be respected. Coming from a tradition of Islam that believes that all aspects of life should embody the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an this house of learning has chosen hospitality to all comers as a way of living the message of the Prophet. After countless cups of Sahara style tea, peanuts, some kind of bread baked with egg and nuts, and a chicken tagine, I will say that their acts of hospitality truly honored Islam's greatest traditions and values.
To get to dinner we walked through a complex series of old corridors and entryways that have come under varying stages of disrepair over the last century, felt like the opening sequence of some kind of thriller or film of international intrigue and adventure.


Once inside the main part of the zawiya, Islamic religious school, making sure to step in on my right foot, we were welcomed by the men of the house, as women customarily remain upstairs. Sitting down along the edges of the room I made the fortuitous decision to sit where one of Morocco's King Hassan the Second sat some thirty years ago. After sitting down, brief introductions were made, using the limited Arabic that most of the students knew, Far Rah and Noor both acted as translators for those of us who knew only how to introduce ourselves. For the next several hours we were welcomed with food, poetry, music, and a passionate description of the beauty of Islam and the hope of this zawiya for understanding in faith.

Rockin' in Roman Ruins

At the edge of the Roman Empire's West African advance, was the city of Volubilis, a city that proved the wealth of the empire. Built on the site of an old Berber capitol city this Imperial Province was an agriculture and trade center. The ruins that were uncovered by the French are still an impressive sight, even after centuries of reconstruction and destruction. It should be noted that the majority of the ruins were rebuilt by the French during their occupation of Morocco.


During our visit to the ruins, the weather was oppressively hot, with some estimates on temperature hovering in the high 30's, this value is in Celsius for our American audience it was between 95 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit. At its peak Volubilis had a population estimated to have 15,000 residents within the walls of the city. Like any decently sized Roman city Volubilis hosted a vast array of commercial entities, including olive presses, a decently sized bath house, and of course a brothel. The few pieces of art work from the Roman era were in various stages of disrepair but still cool to look at.

A piece of tile work from what was once a dining room.

My First Glimpse into the Oasis

Nothing prepared me for my first glimpse of the Oases of the pre-Sahara. After hours of watching the terrain get progressively drier it seemed almost impossible that the earth would open up into the vibrant greens that were before me. The photo below will I hope give a small indicator of how truly massive this ecosystem is.

It was explained over the next several days of our trip that an oasis is not a natural ecosystem. While a small number of plants will hug the edge of most any desert river, an oasis will spread out as far as the local community can sustainably grow it. Starting with an unmodified river mud is dredged and mixed with organic material to start the process of manufacturing soil. This soil is used to plant the first palm trees, which will act as the upper layer of the canopy and provide the necessary protection for other plants to follow in suit. After the palms, in the case of the oases we visited Date Palms, fruit trees of varying types will also be planted, providing the middle layer of the oasis. At the very bottom is a network of small irrigation plots to allow for different seasonal vegetables and fruits to be grown. A truly critical element in oasis development is the private ownership of every tree and plot of land, nothing is communal. This style of ownership has persisted for centuries and developed into strict caste systems that dictate who may own what and where. This value system is preserved into the 21st century by a decades old decree from Morocco's Monarchy stating that in the oases’ old tribal laws are allowed to remain, while in almost every other part of the country more modern laws have been put into place.
While ownership of the plants of the oasis is very fragmented, with some families only owning a fraction of a tree it is still possible for those families to live off of the revenue produced by that single plant.

Winning a Lion

Never, ever, mess with SAO; I’m pretty sure they will kill you if you mess with their scheduled events. The big activity for evening was the all important Ice Breaker Games, a byzantine collection challenges intended to promote “breaking the ice”.
While the challenges themselves were quite doable finding willing participants to stay on your team proved nigh impossible. Starting the race you were asked to roll a dice to determine what terrible concoction you would be ingesting before being spun around in an office chair before you sprinted to the next stage. Unfortunately no matter how fast you were personally it was still required to have the entire team past the line before phase two. Phase two involved filling a jug with water from a leaking bucket. Part three was a devilish two man sack race where two players had to hop in concert. Next was the sand crawl, players were asked to move a basketball from one side of a sand pit to another, not too difficult until you consider the net that kept you close to the ground. After each player got through they had to toss the ball back to a waiting team member. Personally I considered the bobbing for ping pong balls the most degrading, we were asked to pick ping pong balls out of what I think was flour and water, place the ball in a spoon, and then carry the spoon in your mouth across the line. All of this just to run down a slip n’ slide.

My first team spent a healthy part of the evening’s activities trying to find someone willing to actually run the gamut, while I started on a team made up of myself and five Moroccan girls; by the time we were running the list of players on the team had changed too many times to properly keep track. It must be said that a team founded in fire and tribulation has the potential to be the diamond in the rough that you always hope for. With a strong start team six was able to keep the lead for the entirety of the challenge. Even after getting a face full of sand during the belly crawl it felt good to win the match. After my first race I was asked to help a group of Moroccan students flush out a team, but like the my first team player retention before the event was rather difficult, but “God Bless America” we were able to find two more Americans to flush out our team, to say that we played well would be an understatement, we were miles ahead of the team we raced against, providing us with the 2nd fast time of the night. With that wonderful time we had earned a glorious title and a stuffed Lion, the mascot of AUI and the city of Ifrane.

Holding my prize Lion

Don’t tell the parents about PDA

Getting integrated into AUI’s student life has been a tedious affair of many lectures that simply seem to reinforce the fact that we are, gasp, being introduced to a different culture and should expect things to be different. While I understood why they wanted to verbally prepare us for the differences between Western Culture and that of Morocco, I have never felt power points presentations were really the best way to approach introducing people to something outside of their realm of experience.
The moment that drove home that I wasn’t in the Great North anymore, was looking at the questionnaire that was issued to incoming Freshman, I will try to find a photo, that provided very two very different choices when it came to what kind of employment your parents might have.
During the same lecture that I was given the freshman survey it was simply fantastic to have a member of AUI’s faculty start talking about PDA (Public Displays of Affection) and how he didn’t explain what the acronym stood for during the parents visit because he wanted to avoid the controversy of more conservative parents learning their child might hold hands, or more, while going to college.
When I went to the SAO (Student Activities Organization) sponsored Karaoke night it was quite the experience watching girls wearing head scarves singing along to songs with pretty explicit lyrics. For me there was some light embarrassments earlier in the evening when I tried to sing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, while my partner (her name escapes me right now) and I had a relatively weak start we managed to finish with quite a bit of overly dramatic flourish. After coming down from in front of the audience I learned that Eddie Izzard was completely correct when he said its 70% how you look, 20% how you sound, and only 10% of what you say.

Fasting on My Birthday

After being asked by way too many freshman why I was not fasting during Ramadan I decided that the best time to try it out would be on my birthday. Yes kids, Obie will give into pear pressure. When Karaoke went on past midnight, I was left with some pretty limited options for getting back to the Annex, I could either wait until 1:45 for the last shuttle or walk the 6 kilometers, being the motivated kind of dude that I am I decided to head out at roughly 1 AM, expecting to beat the shuttle. This plan might have worked perfectly had I not attempted to get all clever and try out a “short cut” that I had never walked before. Thirty minutes of walking down roads that I had no geographic reference for I decided that it was high time that I back track and try to find out where the hell I was. At 1:30 in the morning trying to back track is quite the experience, especially when you aren’t 100% sure where you are to begin with and you keep running into feral dogs, either alone or in packs. Fortunately after following some random hunches, as backtracking completely failed me, I was able to find myself back on the highway headed towards the Annex.

A critical oversight that occurred when I was getting for bed that night, was that I did not bother to set my alarm for an early enough time for me to have some kind of meal before sunrise.

To expose the exchange students to the idea of taking a Grand Taxi, an intercity taxi service, we were told to sign up for a time we would like to head to the town of Azrou and wonder around for a while. As I was supposed to fast that day I tried my best to resist the urge to drink water, but I will admit when I lack the will power to uphold arbitrary personal decrees at 36 C, or 96 F, it was way too hot to avoid drinking water while walking around.

After getting back to AUI it took all the energy I had to simply sit in front of my computer and be useless, as soon as Adam asked to borrow my laptop I was out like a light. For the rest of the evening I was exhausted with the major highlight of the night being a short call home to say hi to the family.