Mekness is a sizeable city about an hour away from Fes. We decided to visit as we had a long weekend for the holiday of Mohammed’s birthday and there was a special festival for this holiday in Mekness. We had planned to take a train there, but that didn’t work out as the station was crazy for the holiday, instead we bargained for a taxi to take us. John, Mark and I stayed in Mekness once we got there, and Phil and Alex went on to Moulay Idriss as they wanted to go for a hike. We spent the day at the festival, there was a tent city set up in an open area of town, all of these tents were selling food and tea and the city was swarming with people. It got to the point where we could hardly move to try to get around. People were everywhere selling things on the street, we saw a beggar with no feet and only one arm and a man with a cactus shoved into in his back, and safety pins through his skin everywhere, a woman was laid out on the street who had her leg and a half fused together near the knee and whose torso was completely twisted to be backwards, there were bands playing, drumming, dancing, and smoking hashish on every corner, and in an adjacent field was a carnival with a ferris wheel and all of the main attractions of a traveling carnival, at least one that was fun the 1970’s in the United States then sold to a Moroccan company, as it was no longer legally safe in the United States. The rides were filled with English writing and references to American pop culture. I didn’t go on any.
We eventually made our way to Moulay Idriss, which is about a half hour further along the road past Mekness. Moulay Idriss was just as beautiful as the first time, except that it rained most of the weekend, which was fine for the other four as they had lots of studying to do before their final for the first session, but, I was a little bored, I read a lot though, which was nice, and got to explore the town a little more. It is beautiful and purely Moroccan. I sat in the main square one night and just watched the people, no tourists, but people conversing and enjoying each others company, it seems to be a wholly self sufficient utopia, employing all of the rules of community building and being successful as a result.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
the desert - moroccoworld
This weekend I took a trip to the desert. It was a group expedition taken by 15 other ALIF students and one guys who works there. We chartered a bus and left from ALIF after class on Friday afternoon. The trip south to the desert was about 6 hours and went from the plains of Fez, up into the cedar forests of Ifrane, through the high snow covered peaks of the middle Atlas, down into oasis valleys hidden below the flattest arid shurblands and into hotel Xaluca. Hotel Xaluca likes to refer to itself as a Kasbah, a walled community built in the desert to protect the people, but it feels more like a theme park. We entered to a group of people belly dancing and singing traditional Berber music. We checked in and then headed to our rooms, to pass by the hotel’s own hamam, that said hamam in roman script as well as massage and Jacuzzi. The hotel was a series of about 15 buildings, some with rooms, others with restaurants, one bar, one mosque, one hamam, one store, all solely for the use of its guests. The pathways were landscaped with flowering trees, that I assume are not native to the area, yet, pretty nonetheless, and below each tree would be a broken ceramic pot, or an old basket, that was used to hide the lightbulb that lit the path, and make the experience seem more authentic, it didn’t work. Our rooms were filled with similarly kitschy artifacts, fossils and rocks and baskets. The hotel was immaculate and the services were the best I have seen at any Moroccan hotel, but I couldn’t enjoy them, I was too off put by the hollowness of it all.
The next morning we went swimming in the pool in the desert, got an American style breakfast and them headed out. We went to a little town and stopped and bought scarves so we could feel authentic on the journey, and keep the sun of our necks and potentially the sand out of our eyes. Our next stop after about an hour long bus ride was the Xaluca’s sister hotel in the desert. We went for a quick swim and had some tea here as well. At about 3 we made our way over to the camels and jumped on and headed on a camel trek in the desert. We formed a train of 17 camels and each one had a guide walking across the sand. The camel ride took 2 hours into the desert to a little oasis area that must have had a spring under it, there was no visible water, but there were trees and bushes growing. The area stood in the shadow of the largest sand dune in morocco, so it was already shaded from the sun. In order to catch the sunset, we jumped off of the camels, my hip flexors aching from the awkward saddle and my legs chaffed from where they had been bouncing all day against my camels stomach, and scrambled up the dune, that was probably 1000 feet above the camping area. Climbing a giant sand dune is not easy, and only four of us made it to the top and I was the only one who made it in time to see the sun set across the desert. From that vantage point I could see this whole piece of desert, it was about 15 miles wide, and I could see the edge of it on both sides of the mountain, one side in morocco and the other side reaching the to Algerian border. My camera died at this point, from sand inhalation, it still does not work. On my way back down I met Farrin on the ridge of the dune and watched the stars come out, reciting the nursery rhyme I remembered from my childhood, “star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.” We sat and talked for a while about our lives, as everybody else had already descended the mountain, and the sun had set we couldn’t really see the camp and I, as cliché as it sounds, really think that I felt the solitude of the desert. It was if she and I were there alone.
We made our way down the dune and found everybody hanging out around one small lantern, talking and enjoying ourselves. Eventually, we were served a nice kefta tajine, and men who worked at the campsite played some music for us and we danced and they taught us to play along a little, we pretty much just banged some drums along with the beat. Some of the group made their way to bed, and finally there were only 5 of us left and about 5 of the men who worked there, we talked for a long time, about camels, how much they cost, where they get them (the illegal camel trade from Algeria is the best way to get one) their gestation period, and so on in crude French as nobody in the group spoke French really well, we each only had a little experience with the language. So it was a conversation that I understood well. Eventually the men found some rugs for us and laid them out and we sat under the stars, with no light pollution, watching the stars and learning their names in Amazigh, the Berber language, and finally they gave us some blankets and instead of going back to our tents we slept, or tried to under the stars, I just laid watching them for hours seeing more shooting stars than I could count. I slept a little, and just before sunrise we were woken up and we trekked out and watched the sun rise over Algeria, each with a dune to ourselves. A while later we took our camels back to the hotel another two hour trek, one in which the novelty had worn off and the chaffing was more acute. We took breakfast at the hotel and then headed back north to Fes, in the bus, with everyone a little sad to leave and a little cranky after little sleep. The ride back was just as dramatic, the oasis was like a scene from star wars, we dropped off the shrub land into a perfectly green canyon, where flowers were blossoming and life seemed perfect in contrast to its surroundings. We drove through huge gorges, and back across the high shrublands, back to the cedar forests, were we saw a troupe of Barbary apes, and continued back to fes. Coming back into fes is always a beautiful thing, as the city can be seen from about an hour away in 3 of four directions. We watched the sun set over the mountains we were driving out of and slipped back into town, and back into the regular pace of life, having visited Moroccoworld and left with a smile.
The next morning we went swimming in the pool in the desert, got an American style breakfast and them headed out. We went to a little town and stopped and bought scarves so we could feel authentic on the journey, and keep the sun of our necks and potentially the sand out of our eyes. Our next stop after about an hour long bus ride was the Xaluca’s sister hotel in the desert. We went for a quick swim and had some tea here as well. At about 3 we made our way over to the camels and jumped on and headed on a camel trek in the desert. We formed a train of 17 camels and each one had a guide walking across the sand. The camel ride took 2 hours into the desert to a little oasis area that must have had a spring under it, there was no visible water, but there were trees and bushes growing. The area stood in the shadow of the largest sand dune in morocco, so it was already shaded from the sun. In order to catch the sunset, we jumped off of the camels, my hip flexors aching from the awkward saddle and my legs chaffed from where they had been bouncing all day against my camels stomach, and scrambled up the dune, that was probably 1000 feet above the camping area. Climbing a giant sand dune is not easy, and only four of us made it to the top and I was the only one who made it in time to see the sun set across the desert. From that vantage point I could see this whole piece of desert, it was about 15 miles wide, and I could see the edge of it on both sides of the mountain, one side in morocco and the other side reaching the to Algerian border. My camera died at this point, from sand inhalation, it still does not work. On my way back down I met Farrin on the ridge of the dune and watched the stars come out, reciting the nursery rhyme I remembered from my childhood, “star light star bright first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.” We sat and talked for a while about our lives, as everybody else had already descended the mountain, and the sun had set we couldn’t really see the camp and I, as cliché as it sounds, really think that I felt the solitude of the desert. It was if she and I were there alone.
We made our way down the dune and found everybody hanging out around one small lantern, talking and enjoying ourselves. Eventually, we were served a nice kefta tajine, and men who worked at the campsite played some music for us and we danced and they taught us to play along a little, we pretty much just banged some drums along with the beat. Some of the group made their way to bed, and finally there were only 5 of us left and about 5 of the men who worked there, we talked for a long time, about camels, how much they cost, where they get them (the illegal camel trade from Algeria is the best way to get one) their gestation period, and so on in crude French as nobody in the group spoke French really well, we each only had a little experience with the language. So it was a conversation that I understood well. Eventually the men found some rugs for us and laid them out and we sat under the stars, with no light pollution, watching the stars and learning their names in Amazigh, the Berber language, and finally they gave us some blankets and instead of going back to our tents we slept, or tried to under the stars, I just laid watching them for hours seeing more shooting stars than I could count. I slept a little, and just before sunrise we were woken up and we trekked out and watched the sun rise over Algeria, each with a dune to ourselves. A while later we took our camels back to the hotel another two hour trek, one in which the novelty had worn off and the chaffing was more acute. We took breakfast at the hotel and then headed back north to Fes, in the bus, with everyone a little sad to leave and a little cranky after little sleep. The ride back was just as dramatic, the oasis was like a scene from star wars, we dropped off the shrub land into a perfectly green canyon, where flowers were blossoming and life seemed perfect in contrast to its surroundings. We drove through huge gorges, and back across the high shrublands, back to the cedar forests, were we saw a troupe of Barbary apes, and continued back to fes. Coming back into fes is always a beautiful thing, as the city can be seen from about an hour away in 3 of four directions. We watched the sun set over the mountains we were driving out of and slipped back into town, and back into the regular pace of life, having visited Moroccoworld and left with a smile.
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