Morocco In Perpetual Technicolor

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This entry is a potpourri of the remainder of my trip to Morocco. I’m throwing a bunch of photos in here, but I am sure you can understand that I simply had too many colors  to pick from…

I don’t feel as though I’m terribly qualified to tell you about Morocco, especially since I know that my friends living in said country take time to read this blog- and they know a heck of a lot more than I do about its culture. So with that in mind, my goal is throw out an easy listening sort of entry that will hopefully contrast the sand and thirst described back in Casablanca.
I spent the bulk of my trip in Rabat (the capital city), hanging out and staying with fellow Olmsted scholars. I don’t know about you, but with the amount of traveling and house crashing that I do, I strive to be the consummate (and hopefully invisible) house guest. As humans we all keep a secret list in our heads- one composed of people who have lost the privilege of a repeat invitation to your happy abode. Whether their crimes involve sitting on your front lawn topless and drinking cans of beer, or hanging around and eating all of your food whilst expecting maid service….well, I just hope that I’m not on that kind of a list.
Anyway, on with life around Rabat.

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It’s kind of hard to walk around this country and not take photos of the commonplace things that elsewhere would be described as anything but common. 
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We had a leisurely stroll in and around the Kasbah des Oudaias, the oldest part of the city.

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This was taken inside the Kasbah. It’s still a residential area, and you can see how technology- or at least electricity improvement- has woven its way into this centuries-old neighborhood.
I know this doesn’t fit with my sunset flow of photography, but this photo cracks me up. I was in the megalomart with Christina (not located in the Kasbah), and we passed a display of scales. I want to know how many of you have ever had this kind of reaction when stepping on a scale?  Especially after spending a week in Rabat- the food is just too good to pass up. Speaking of which…
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All of our wandering around earned us a tea and biscuit break. We were just tiding ourselves over till dinner.
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A walk to the top of the hill, you’ve got the ocean, a lighthouse and a massive cemetery.


As the sun was going down, we headed back down the hill away from the Kasbah. Rabat has its own little corniche, complete with restaurants and families out enjoying the evening. In this quick clip, if you listen to the second half, you can hear the call to prayer. On another note, I didn’t realize that my video panning was in step with the family and the moped approaching me. I don’t like to blatantly photograph people- it’s kinda rude.

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Did you know that Rabat is a twinned city with Honolulu? Me neither, but Wikipedia say so- so it must be true. I think it’s because they both have a Chinatown…

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Rabat’s got a great public transportation system- complete with cheap buses and a tramway. We hopped the tram to get back to Christina’s house for some traditional dinner type foods.

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This is a tagine, and Christina is making us fish kefta. Ground up meatballs with fantastic spices and stuff.

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The lid of the tagine goes on, and magic cooking takes place.

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I totally just skipped the middle steps, but here’s the finished product. You scoop up this goodness with Moroccan bread, and you’ve got an amazing meal. I highly recommend you call Christina up and ask to stay at her house.

The following day we set out again for the ocean, this time in order to participate in a vaguely-described charity walk with a local women’s group. It was labeled as a 6K morning stroll along the beach with some yoga interspersed throughout the walk. We didn’t know much else about what we’d do, but it sounded promising. The great and sometimes greatly tragic thing about participating in events in other countries is that you never quite get what you expect. We got a bit of this on our pleasant walk.

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Here we are, strolling along the beach. It’s a gorgeous day, but as you can see we are falling quickly behind the group. Moroccan women can walk fast.

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Of course it didn’t help that I was stopping to snap photos of things that I found interesting.

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Again, interesting.

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See this wire guy on top of the roof? He’s holidng a tagine, which I thought was pretty cool. It also made me hungry…

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You will need to ask one of the Morocco scholars for a translation on this one.

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We finally catch up to the group and get ready for some beach yoga. That’s our teacher in the front, and we have ladies on the beach who are clad in everything from blue jeans to bikinis.

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Uttanasana. Yes the photo is upside-right. Yes, I’m the dumb girl photographing yoga again.

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After our beach yoga (can you believe she had us doing tree pose in the sand?!) we went for a dip in the water. Initially a bit chilly, I had flashbacks of Chappy and that outstanding North Atlantic water. Ah home, a mere 3,446 miles away…

[Quick aside: As we were in the water, the woman in the bikini suddenly starts to hoot and hollering. We look over at her (all of us are pretty much up to our necks in the ocean) and she’s got her bikini bottoms off and she’s spinning them around on her finger. She tried to get us to join in, but being the puritanical Americans that we are, we politely demur. Still, this hilarious liberation gets filed into the “not quite what you’d expect in a Muslim country” chapter of life. Really, it just continues to prove to me that fundamentally we are all the same. Us women, we just want to act a little crazy from time to time. Or a lot of the time.]

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Sorry for the break in continuity again. Much like the photo of the scale, I wanted to show you something else unexpected.There’s a hockey rink in Rabat! It’s a beautiful facility, and truth be told I should probably just call this an ice rink (I didn’t see any hockey players). All the same, I think Rabat scored many cool points by having this.

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Well actually, that’s kind of it for my photos. I think it’s best to end with something quintessentially Moroccan, at least in my tourist-focus mind. Soon after I got to Morocco, I informed Christina that I wanted to bring some mint tea back with me to Dakar. She tried to explain that it’s not something you can exactly bring back- and at first I didn’t really understand. Take a look down into your cup here, and you can finally see what she means. 
There are a certain many things that you can only truly appreciate when they exists in their natural environments. Such is the case with this tea, and such is the case with Morocco. I can (and probably will) go to World Market to buy some neat Moroccan furnishings once I get back to the United States. But it won’t be the same, and the colors and textures are not something that can appropriately capture this amazing country and its people. I think that’s how life works everywhere- and I just count myself as incredibly fortunate to make my way around to see so much of it first-hand.
P.S. Oh yeah: if I have stayed with you before, and I have made the grade as that house guest, then I totally want to know about it.