Saturday, June 4, 2011

Mike In Morocco

For this entry, I will take a break from my usual tale of my life in Togo to tell you loyal readers back home about another African country that I was recently so fortunate as to visit using the remainder of my PC vacation days. Last May, Emily and I took a three week trip to tour the only North African country not currently experiencing (severe) political turmoil, Morocco.
While there we remarked that due to its close proximity to Europe, Morocco seems to be a fairly common destination for European travelers; the Spanish are even able to hope a ferry down on weekends. Yet, perhaps due to its distance across the Atlantic, or the fact that its located in the exotic, remote continent of Africa, or perhaps simply because for those willing to travel so far, France or England seems to have more appeal, it seems that Morocco is not a country heavily frequented by Americans. This is unfortunate. Morocco is an absolutely beautiful country, full of welcoming generous people, it has a history every bit as ancient, rich and complex as any old European power, and the food we had was some of the best we’ve ever tasted. If anyone reading this is even remotely considering a trip to Morocco, I would highly recommend it. Sitting now, back in my ghost town of a village (this is the start of the rainy season, and so this time of year, everyone spends the majority of their time away in their fields), listening to the rain gently fall on my tin roof, and wondering, since everyone is away, how I will pass this morning (updating my too seldom acknowledge blog is a good start), I admit I’m still mildly suffering from (for lack of a better phrase) the “just returned from a sweet vacation and now have to resume life as normal” blues. But I digress.
Towards the end of April, I was literally counting down the days till Morocco. I was in desperate need of a break from Togo. For all the nice things about this place, the hospitality, the fact that your at any time welcome to invite yourself over somewhere and have a meal, the free flowing tsuke, Togolese work habits can at times make this a very frustrating place to try to get anything done. There is, to paraphrase Paul Theroux, the odd sense of entitlement resulting from years of wantonly dumping foreign aid money upon the place. Meetings with potential work partners are likely to sound something like this: “We’ve got a great idea, I’m sure we can make it work, but we have no way to finance it. If someone would just give us the money, this would be a great idea.” The sad part is, most of the time, if a project does get off the ground it is because of foreign aid money. The project will go as long as there is an inflow of money from outside, and will fail as soon as the flow is cut off. I was always weary, growing up, of conservatives who claimed that state financed welfare programs will create a welfare state of people unwilling to work for themselves. Though I still certainly support social welfare programs, I’ve come to see first hand what they meant. In many ways I feel that aid here has left the people crippled. It seems people here feel incapable of accomplishing something without some external support. There is some validity to this feeling, since such a big part of the local economy is made of NGOs, there is not a very strong entrepreneurial economic structure. Since people aren’t investing in business (young students aspired to work for an NGO or the government, not a private business) they don’t know how to manage a profitable enterprise. Since they never learned how, they don’t pursue careers in business, and the cycle continues.
To illustrate my point that Togolese have come rely, and expect, foreign aid, I will give a counterexample. Emily, while at work with her NGO one day, was introduced to a man who had started and successfully managed his own business. In explaining what he had done, he boastfully emphasized that this business had been made profitable without any help from anyone else, no foreigners had given him money to get started, no organization somewhere off in Belgium was financing his projects, or paying his payroll. Instead he had taken out a loan, rented a location, and made money all by himself, paying back the loan, and not owing anything to anyone. Emily congratulated him (after all running a successful business, be it in the US, Togo, or anywhere, is no simple thing), but she couldn’t help but point out that, in fact, this was the normal way to go about setting up a business. The man had persevered, taken risks, and worked like a dog, but this is what all small business owners must do. He hadn’t broken new ground, or accomplished some remarkable, impossible feat, he had just run a business. If someone from the developed world had come in bragging because no organization somewhere far away had granted him a large sum to start his business, with no expectation of every recuperating that money, we would say, of course not, why would an organization do such a thing, why would a new business owner expect that to happen?
But here in Togo, it is often assumed that without outside assistance, projects are bound for failure. I wouldn’t dare say that Togolese are lazy (I’ve seem the way they work in the fields) but it sometimes seems like they have a sense of inevitable failure about certain projects. “How could I ever build a school, or install a pump, make an innovative business? That’s something that foreigners come here to do.” This sense of defeat, along with inconsistent Togolese work habits: being late for meetings, cancelling meetings altogether without ever telling me, and then wondering why things haven’t gotten done etc. all made me eager to take a small break.
As the days wound down, and May approached, I could hardly think of anything else. Then, three days before we were set to leave, the radio delivered reports of a bomb exploding right in the central square in Marrakech. Terrified that PC would forbid travel to Morocco right after such an aggressive act of terrorism, targeted specifically at tourists, Emily and I held our breath, and tried our best not raise alarm at our departure. The weekend passed without any news, which we took to be a good sign, we just needed to make it till Tuesday when our flight left. Then Monday, out of no where, news came that US forces had killed Osama bin Laden. After ten years of searching the US picked the eve of our vacation to execute its longtime military objective. The state department alerted travelers to the increased risk of retaliation against American citizens, especially in Islamic countries, and once again we held our breath. But finally no sign came that PC would inhibit our travel plans and we made it out on of 5 am flight Tuesday morning, but not before an airport janitor lamely cornered me while coming out of the bathroom to ask for a “cadeau” (gift) in return for having done absolutely nothing, even in an official place like the airport the strange sense of entitlement permeates the air.
We landed in Casablanca, and, having been informed that Casa was nothing more than a rather dull industrial city, high tailed it to the ancient city of Fez. Our first night in Fez we had not made hotel reservation, and so on the train from Casa, tried in vain to call some of the budget hotels in the guidebook (for about the first half of the trip we failed to read the advisory at the front of the book explaining that Morocco had changed its phone system and giving readers the new way to dial). Fortunately, a nice man sitting next to us offered his help. He said his brother, from Canada, had recently come home to visit him, and while there they had stayed in several hotels in Fez. We explained that we were looking for something cheap, and he gave us a number to call. We made the plans and the hotel even offered to pick us up from the train station. Unfortunately, there had been some miscommunication between us and the man on the train. We had been pretty sure he had said “budget hotel” but when we arrived at our abode for the night, we found ourselves being led by a charismatic but strangely mysterious man named Max into to apartment living room of a Fassie family of seven. On our first night in the country we had inadvertently (and admittedly pretty sketchily) landed ourselves a Moroccan homestay.
Upon our arrival the family was in the middle of an intense meeting, that we later found out was something of a parent-teacher conference regarding the academics of their youngest daughter, and so paid us surprisingly little mind. In fairness, our call half an hour before from the train probably hadn’t given them ample time to prepare for our arrival. The father finally explained the meeting and invited us to join him at the café across the street. Here, the whole neighborhood had gathered for a football match, and our homestay father set us at a table and quickly wandered off (a quirky bit of Moroccan hospitality, we later got used to this frequent occurrence in Morocco. It seems there is absolutely nothing impolite in simply walking off, sometimes practically in mid-sentence, only to return later and pick up the conversation where you had left off). Max our mysterious homestay coordinator returned to the table.
Max spoke perfect English, a mile a minute. He explained to us his various business endeavors. He not only organized homestays, but had also recently invested in and was restoring a riad (riads are old courtyard houses once owned by rich city dwelling Moroccans, but that have recently been taken up by wise investors and transformed into upscale guest houses for tourists), furthermore, informed us, he imported carpets to the US to sell at auctions, a highly lucrative business. We listened highly amused, to what Max said, but took it all with a grain of salt, we were still quite used to Togo, where a little lie or embellishment here and there, if it makes things more convenient, interesting, or enjoyable, is no great sin.
Max invited us to go have dinner at his place, followed by a night out on the town, but the prospect of putting all our trust into this total stranger, in addition to our fatigue from having travelled since 3 am that morning persuaded us to decline. Instead we spent the night. Instead we spend the evening with the women of our homestay family, who by the time we arrived at the apartment, had finished their meeting with the teachers. We passed an inevitably awkward couple of hours trying to get to know the two daughters (who looked to be in middle to high school). The mother spoke no French, but was smiley and welcoming, and even made us some late night soup, and by the end of the evening the children had begun to open up too.
The next day, we took off for the riad we had booked months in advance. Our homestay father took us to the café for breakfast, where Max made us promise to come see his riad before leaving Fez. Next our father graciously offered to take us downtown to the “medina” or old city. The old city was like a step back into the past. The lanes are windy and narrow (only big enough for a donkey cart to pass through), and only a seasoned veteran could avoid getting lost. That scene from Aladdin where he steals the loaf of bread and the guards chase him throughout the marketplace kept passing through my mind as we walked passed spice vendors and fruit carts (we couldn’t believe how many fresh fruits and veggies are available everyone in Morocco, back in Togo, if you want anything other than greens and okra, you need to go to a big city, and even then your choices are limited and expensive. Morocco, with its homemade yogurt and honey soaked pasteries at every corner, is literally the land of milk and honey).
Finally we came to our riad. Though we were, by and large, trying to see Morocco on a budget, we decided that the first couple of nights we would spoil ourselves in the luxury of on of these restored mansion courtyard houses. We figured that the stark contrast between our living situation in Togo, and the first class luxury of our place in Fez would make us appreciate it all the more. The riad, named Dar Roumana for those of you already convinced and planning your next vacation, did not fail to impress. The floors were all tiled with blue white and green mosaic tiles, which lead to a central courtyard with a gentle babbling fountain. All the doors stood 20 feet high, and were dark wood, meticulously carved with Islamic motifs, while the ceilings were either intricately painted wood, or equally intricately molded plaster. In every corner were low sitting tables surrounded by plushly cushioned couches. Once again the palace in Aladdin came to mind.
Our room, which was the cheapest one available, had its own stairway leading up to the top floor, and was essentially an entire wing of the riad unto itself. Though many of the rooms were occupied at Dar Roumana the place was so big it felt like we more or less had the whole place to ourselves. We spent our first few hours in Fez just running around this place giddy at the excessive luxury we found around us. Fez itself is a beautiful city. In the north of Morocco, at the foothills of the middle atlas, the climate is somewhere in between rolling green hilly pastures, and the cool Mediterranean. We spent most of our time just wandering around the medina, getting lost and paying children to help us find our way back.
Though we had a great time, we were taken by surprise by high pressure salesmen, and street kids hoping to trick you into tossing them a couple dirhams (local currency). Coming from Togo, we thought we were well prepared for whatever hustling might come our way. Everyone in Togo, it seems, is constantly trying to get as much out of you as possible, be it the mama at the market who wants to charge you too much for onions, to the cab driver who gets lost and then tries to overcharge you to find his way back, or even the villager who wants you to connect him with some NGO in Europe that he has a hazy notion will help him pull himself out of poverty. In coming to Morocco we were looking forward to a break from all this. Especially, we were anxious to just blend in to a group of people. In Togo, often you are the only white person for miles in any direction. You draw attention to yourself simply by existing. When we first landed in Morocco, Em and I looked at each other, “look at all the white people, were surrounded by them” we said.
Unfortunately, we soon realized that unlike sub-Saharan Africa, were anyone with skin tone lighter than ebony is considered white, here in Morocco we were still white (I was often mistaken for Spanish or Italian, and so was thus correctly categorized for the first time in my life as anything other than standard white American), they were Moroccan. With my darker complexion I could actually fit in sometimes, but my complete lack of Arabic, along with my Russian/Polish partner Em always eventually gave me away.
Though we thought Togo had prepared us for any hustle Morocco could thrown our way. We soon learned that Moroccans, who unlike Togolese, are from a country heavily visited by tourist. They had much more sophisticated, subtle, and convincing hustles, that had you giving up your money before you even knew what hit you. In Togo, people charge you too much, they ask flat out for money, they point out how rich you are because your white. These tactics are not only ineffective they are rude and frustrating, and so in Togo, you have no problem telling such a person off, and walking away head held high. In Morocco, the approach is much kinder, much subtler. Perhaps a store owner will offer you a glass of mint tea, free of charge, if you turn down a more expensive item, he’ll suggest something cheaper, a trinket, after all you’ve been here for a half hour, drinking his tea. Or, a hotel owner will give you a cheap price on a room, and then invite you to his overpriced restaurant. One store owner in the Mellah or Jewish section of town even tried to lay on the Jewish guilt for Emily. “We Jews need to look out for one another, plus your mother will really appreciate something authentically Jewish from Morocco”.
Even Max, who despite our suspicions about his various business enterprises, showed us on the follow day his riad (which was incredibly, three times the size of the one we were staying at, though still in its early restoration stage), left us questioning if there was some game he was up to. After having a worker show us his riad in the works (the worker himself was sketchy, telling us to follow behind him at a distance through the medina since he wasn’t an official guide and could get in trouble) he had us meet him at a carpet co-op. He showed us various carpets, and explained that next week he would be taking a trip to the US. Rich folks who had never left their own country, he explained, would pay ten times the value of something because it looked authentic. In another example of the cunning of a Moroccan hustle, he offered to show us a little about carpets. As he taught us, the carpet salesmen who spoke no English stood buy exhibiting the various styles Max informed us of. Next he told us how to say we like it, or skip to the next in Arabic, and had us go through the sample carpets. Before we knew it we were carpet shopping. Though we expressed little interest, Max told us we should really consider buying some carpets to auction in America. His deal was tempting, three hundred dollars here could sell for six thousand in the states. With one purchase, we could pay for our entire trip, and the next one. I’m still not entirely sure what his angle was. It didn’t seem to me like he would be making any money himself off of us trying to turn a carpet at some fancy auction, but he seemed so interested that we do it, we eventually lost what little interest we had. This deal was just too good to be true, and why did he want us to do it so badly? Like all things involving our first few days in Fez, it just seemed sketchy. So by the time we lit out from Fez I was ready for a break from the big city.
Our next stop was Merzouga a middle of no where town where desert sand dunes at the frontier of the Sahara attract tourist. We spent one night in a dive hostel in a nearby town of Rissani, it being too late to travel the last couple miles to the desert. I mention this only because it was here that we noticed, that even in the cheap hotels, the high value Moroccans put on aesthetics shown through. Though it was no Dar Roumana, all the floors still had nice tile, the rooms were kept clean, and anywhere else the dining area would have seemed like a nice restaurant, not a cheap hotel with a street side café. Coming from Togo, land of dirty hotel rooms, and rusty tin roofs this still took us quite by surprise.
The desert was fascinating. We stayed in a small guesthouse run by a French expat and her Moroccan husband known as Kasbah Sable d’Or. The first night, we took a camel trek out into the sand dunes. I will let my pictures do the taking concerning the dunes, since words would not do their unendingly vast, rolling beauty justice. I will only say that they are like a torpid sea, stretching on forever, with mountainous dunes couples with steep valleys in which one could easily lose their way. As we left the town and entered the dunes, it started to rain. Just a drizzle, but still, some desert, we hadn’t been there twelve hours and already it was raining. The drizzle soon fizzled out, but a gusty sandstorm remained. After reaching our campsite, we climbed the nearest high dune to watch the sunset, but the sand blew in our faces, getting into our eyes, and beating us into submission. For once, I fully understood the head wrap and turban or Bedouin people. We made a valiant effort to hold out till the sun set, but eventually we proved no match for the relentless forces of the desert. As we descended, I learned yet another clever use for a turban. Our guide unraveled his from atop his head, exposing nearly twenty feet of transparently thing black cloth. He told us each to grab a hold, and using the turban to cover our faces, we (at this point it was Em, me and two friendly dutch girls also staying at the same guesthouse) marched down the hill single file, and returned to camp, which was a small set of Bedouin tents constructed mostly out of vertically hung rugs.
Back at Sable d’Or took it easy, climb a really big dune at the edge of the desert, and hung around from an increbile dinner fusion of tagine and French cuisine. A tagine is a clay vessel shaped like a deep plate on the bottom with a conical shaped cover. Food is cooked slowly over a fire in the tagine and the lids conical shape causes all the evaporating steam to condense and fall back into the stew. Since no moisture is lost, meat prepared in a tagine stew is incredible tender, and literally falls off the bone. The stew is then sopped up using a type of bread that falls somewhere in between a baguette and a pita. It is fluffly and risen, with a crunchy crust, like French bread, but fairly flat and round, and can be easily opened to make a sandwich pocket, like a pita. Moroccan cuisine has two staple dishes, couscous, which in Morocco is way better than your average instant couscous back home, and the tagine. Common ingredients for both these dishes include a wide range of vegetables, and fruits, and normally a meat such as goat or chicken.
Morocco has mastered the art of savory-sweet cuisine. Though all dishes are loaded with veggies, they normally have some dates, figs, raisins or even caramelized onions thrown in to compliment the meat. The salty meets the sweet and is almost always delicious.
From Merzouga we bused it to the Dades Gorge. This less visited site is a natural beauty. The gorges stretches up from the main road several miles, all of which are easily hiked. The natural beauty of the gorge, with its odd rock formation, and green oasis flown through the bottom along the river which created the gorge, is complimented by medieval Kasbahs, which have been left unattended throughout the gorges. These ancient fortresses are in remarkably good condition considered the mud brick and wood used to construct them. Even better, they are free standing and open to be explored. So in the middle of a hike through some of the most breathtaking landscape you can find in Morocco, you can stop and freely explore an ancient castle hidden amongst the rocks.
From here we stopped over in Marrakech just long enough to recharge and head out of the town of Imlil, resting at the base of Jebel Toubkal. Standing at 13147 (I think) ft above sea level, Jebel Toubkal is the highest point in North Africa (in fact outside of east Africa: volcanoes in Kenya like Kilamanjaro, the Rwenzori etc it is Africa’s other highest point). Our guide book said that even in May Toubkal was likely to still have snow. Having lived in Togo for a year and a half now, seeing snow, even just a light dusty, was high on my “to do” list in Morocco.
The trek was set to take two days in total. Our first days hike was a leisurely (at the time it seems challenging, but compared with the rest of the climb, I’ll stick with leisurely) ascent, to the high camp, a climbers refuge about 1000m below Toubkal’s summit. The first day we trekked out of village, over a rocky flood plain, and into the hills. We passed a Muslim holy site, but weren’t allowed to stop, since the site was reserved for Muslim’s only.
Since we’d been living in tropical Africa before coming to Morocco, we hadn’t packed any winter gear, and so, everything warm we brought with us had been from the expansive dead yovo (dead white person, term explained in previous entry) piles we had scoured before coming. My gear consisted of my speedo draw string beach bag for a pack, a flannel shirt, a cotton sweater, and a beige pin-stripped sports jacket that had fit me too well to turn down. Similarly Emily had a pair of gloves, a sweater and a wind break she had brought from home. Between the two of us, she joked, we’d make one halfway prepared climber. All day the first day, we passed other hikers donning gore tex rain slicks, hiking poles, and tiny compressed subzero sleeping bags. We were beginning to worry that our light-hearted approached to this climb may have been a mistake.
That evening, while curled under a pile of blankets at the refuge trying to keep warm (for whatever reason they didn’t build a fire until even later that night), we noticed a large group of young people coming in, who seemed as underdressed for the occasion as we were. Some wore sneakers, others had no coat, and still others had socks on their hands as gloves. We soon learn that they were Americans like us. There is something distinctively cocky, low-key, and affirmative about Americans which stands out best only when compared to people from other countries. As a people we pretty much think we can do anything, and we love to improvise. So we naturally wouldn’t let the fact that we don’t have waterproof shoes stop us from scaling a mountain still entirely covered in snow. In fact the refuge was conveniently situated right at the border between snow and no snow, any further up from the refuge required gear.
Em and I naturally took to this other group, who it turned out were a group of study abroad students living in the capital city of Rabat. They had come with an instructor for a weekend trip to climb the mountain. Em and I had our own misgivings about scaling the mountain the next day. True to our American attitude towards this adventure, we didn’t think to employ a guide, and so we decided to set out the next day with the study abroad group. Their instructor had taken many groups before up the hill, and so seemed to know the way.
The next day we set out bright and early, crampons on our feet. The going was slow. Unlike yesterday, the path today was entirely covered in a good three feet of icy snow. The trail was also considerably steeper than the day before as well, occasionally turning to look down I kept remarking what a difficult ski run the trail would make and at times walk up it was easier to use all four to scramble our way up. Despite all these difficulties the views were incredible. It was still early morning and the inevitable storm clouds of the afternoon had not yet settled upon the range. You could see for miles.
As we made our way up, we were passed by a German outfit who looked pretty much our opposite in every way. They were a climbing club, consisting of mostly over 50 members. In the lodge we saw they had huge packs, in which they brought their own supplies (cheese platters, snacks, and (true to their own national preference) even beer). Following a guide, they scaled the mountain in single file line, all in their matching snow suits with climbing poles, demonstrating a Germanic love for organization, order and efficiency. Passing our motley crew, one gravely warned us “ze mountain is not a playground.” With this they marched onward.
A few notes on this comment: first of all, it’s not really true. As John Kraukauer points out in his book Into Thin Air climbing mountains is an irrational endeavor. There is nothing for humans at the top of a high mountain waiting for its climbers, and no cash prize waiting at the bottom, people climb the mountain strictly for the enjoyment of it: the view, the challenge, the feeling of trespassing into forbidden and inhospitable territory. So, in this sense a mountain really is pretty much a big adult playground, some place people go for amusement. With that said, however, I certainly understand what that German guy was getting at. Mountains can be dangerous. As I said, they are unnatural habitats for humans, and we don’t do well for long periods of time up there. There is no food, it gets cold, the weather is unpredictable, and especially for those who have not taken the time to become acclimatized, at times even breathing can be difficult. With all this in mind, we still thought the German’s were taking this a little too far. After all this wasn’t even a “climb” in the mountaineering sense of the word, there were no technical climbs, no glacial crossings rife with hidden crevasses waiting to swallow up unsuspecting climbers, and for the moment, even the weather was holding out. Underprepared as we were, we were still climbing with someone who had many times before summated the mountain (most other groups we noticed were without any guide at all), and though our clothing wasn’t professional it was certainly enough to keep us warm. Though it was through three feet of snow, this climb was, all told nothing more than a high altitude hike, albeit a particularly challenging one.
So once again in true American form, we took this comment as a personal challenge to get to the top before the German’s. Tired though we were, we pressed on. The climb up only took about three hours, but for all we knew it could have been the whole day. Several false peaks had demoralized us, and by the end we were digging deep to make it the last couple hundred feet. Though we took a different route, we made it to the top at about the same time as the German group, who greeted us with jovial astonishment, “zhurty years in ze mountains and I have never seen as group such as yours”. Despite the grave tone they had taken back near the refugee, at the summit, everyone was friendly, after all hadn’t we all just climbed the same hill. They took our picture, in our ridiculous gear, and we laughed and joked together. The German’s turned out to be alright, later that day, back at the high camp refugee, they even shared some of their privately packed (and delicious) food with us. Up at the summit, however, the clouds began to role in, and though through the clouds every now and then you could catch a glimpse of the epic view in any direct, for the most part, it just looked like a storm might be moving in. So it was time to head back down the mountain. The hike back down was much easier. We took advantage of the steep, snow covered hills, to glissade (a fancy French climbing word which translates roughly, slide on butt) down the better part of the hill. Three hours up and a half hour back down, and we were at the refuge, warming our soaked clothing, and preparing for the hike back down to Imlil.
Though the hardest part of the climb was over, we still faced a four hour hike back down the rest of the hill. Our other America friends had a to catch a ride all the way back to Rabat that night, and so they took off before us, while Em and I stayed behind to finish drying our socks. Already exhausted, the hike back down was a true test of endurance, and though our luck had held out the entire way up and down thus far, about an our outside of town we were caught in an flash hail storm that left us freezing and once again soaked. By the time we got to the bottom both of us were limping along, anxious to climb into a warm bed and rest.
The next day, muscles still aching, we caught a cab back to Marrakech, were we took up lodging a yet another (though significantly less expensive) riad right in the medina (the name of this riad escapes me right now but I would certainly recommend it, if your planning on taking a trip to Marrakech any time soon I’d be happy to search it out for you). Marrakech, though more touristy than Fez, is a sight to behold. The central square is full of snake charmers, belly dancers, and food vendors (Tall glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice sell here for 4 dirham a piece or about 50 cents). At night, even more acts come out, including story tellers, acrobats, dancers, and more. The medina itself is a maze of long and winding narrow streets, so much like Fez, we pretty much just spent our time wandering around and getting lost. Still exhausted from our adventure on Toubkal, we also took advantage of our riad’s private hammam. Hamman’s are ancient bathhouses, most of which are still in use in Morocco. In places where there is still no running water, the hammam (which is the only place in town, aside from the mosque, with running water) is simply where everyone goes to bath. But even in more modern cities, the hammam is analogous to a roman bath house, it is a place of social gathering and gossip. Everyone goes to the hammam to get clean and socialize with their fellow neighbors. Normally hammams are divided by sex, separating into a men’s hammam and a woman’s hammam. Patrons then strip down naked and submit themselves to the rigorous cleaning job of the emloyees who work there.
Though we did seek out this authentic experience, without much success, our hammam in the riad was something altogether different. Since they only had one room, Emily and I went together, striped down to our bathing suits, instead of nothing. The employee assigned to clean us was a big Moroccan mama, with arms thicker than mine, and looked more or less exactly like what you would expect a big Moroccan hammam worker to look like (images of some of the city dwellers in Aladdin once again come to mind). She splashed us with hot water, scrubbed us down with a hand glove that felt a bit like a cats tongue, and literally peeled away layers of dead skin, splattered us with clay mud for some undisclosed reason, let us bake for about a half hour before washing us off again and sent us on our now freshly scrubbed way.
From Marrakech we made one last detour in the Oceanside town of Essaouira. Here we climbed atop old city fortress walls, constructed by the French colonialists stationed there in the 19th century, and at all our favorite Moroccan dishes which had been given a new flair from all the freshly caught seafood. From here, we took a bus back to Marrakech, a train back to Casablanca, and a plane back to Togo, were we struggle to resume life as normal, and there you have it, our Moroccan vacation: the extended version. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You are certainly a more devoted blog reader than most. Perhaps I’ve even convinced a few of you devotees to book your next vacation to Morocco. For those of you who missed Togo this blog, have no fear. With all my vacation days used up, next time I’ll be sure to continue with the exciting saga of life back here in sub-Saharan Africa.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Finally, new post!

It’s really been a long time since I wrote a blog entry. I’m inclined to blame my lack of new entries on a technological breakdown. Shortly after my last entry, I went to plug my computer into the wall socket, and sparks flew. Power is not well regulated here and surges and fluctuations are common. Fortunately, the other end of my power cord was not plugged into the computer at the time and so I only fried the wire. My parents sent me out a new power cord, but after only charging it once, this new plug appeared not to work either. Frustrated, I resigned myself to the possibility that the second half of my service might be devoid of regular computer access. Fortunately, I gave the plug another try about a month later, and magic, it worked! (In addition to transmitting surges, plugs in Togo often simply don’t work).
Truthfully, however, this excuse for not writing really only brings me up to early January, and we are now approaching March. I confess, after my technological breakdown, the real reason for my delay in writing has been television. After a year of entertaining myself through purely pre-electronic era means, I finally cracked and took some videos from the impressive pool of digital media circulating the hard drives of us volunteers (unlike myself some volunteers actually have power (at least some times) in their homes, and thus such impressive collections make sense). So, whenever I could get a little bit of battery life, I have squandered it catching up on missed season of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or watching BBC’s Life (which is awesome btw). But now, I’ve finally pulled myself away from the warm alluring glow of TV to fill you readers back home on what’s been happening in my life these past six months.
Where to begin…? Perhaps with the biggest news, when I last left off, I believe I was preparing to meet Emily at the airport in Accra, after which she would begin her Fulbright work here in Togo. She has now been in country nearly five months, seems to have integrated very rapidly (compared to the new NRM/GEE volunteers, who came around the same time she seems incredibly well integrated, I think knowing French beforehand, and having studied in Africa before, have helped).
Originally, she lived in Lomé, worked for an environmental NGO there, and lived with a homestay family. Visiting her homestay family was a always an interesting experience. They were something like the (almost) non-existent Togolese middle class. The father worked on computers, and only took one wife. They only had two children (as opposed to the usual, as many as the woman can pop out before she goes sterile), the kids (two boys age 7 and 3) both spoke French (in my village, children can’t conversationally speak French until well into CEG, which is the rough equivalent of middle school, and even then some kids have difficulty), and every night the whole family would gather round that alluring, glowing television to watch dubbed over soap operas (either Spanish or Indian, and both of which have certain charms).
What struck me as most strange about Emily’s Lomé life was how western capitalist it all seemed, in a weird uncynical 1950s way. Advertisements on television were simple, and straightforward, (the typical commercial hit upon two main points: this product is good, buy this product) to the point were they would come across as naïvely ineffective in America (really it was like watching an old dishwashing soap commercial from the early days of television), not that our ads really say anything more than there’s, ours just dance around the issue more and make the pitch seem less direct. Family life seemed like the typical American nuclear family, with of course strange African twists, like the distant relatives who would show up and stay for weeks with absolutely no explanation offered to Emily, or the family down the street who temporarily moved in (likewise without any explanation).
Even outside the family the life of the “Togolese middleclass” struck me as interesting, while Em was in Lomé she attended a “International Fair”, which seemed like much scaled down and more consumer oriented version of the World’s Fair. Basically it was a chance to show off new products that seemed, in general, completely inapplicable to an African context. Em’s personal favorite was the automatic fufu pounder. As I believe I’ve described in earlier entries, fufu is a favorite Togolese dish make from pounded yams. Normally the pounded is done with a good old fashion mortar and pestle, but this contraption (tantamount to an industrial strength blender) pounded the fufu automatically. People gather round, staring, faces pressed upon the glass of the display window. “There’s no way it taste like real fufu”, they said, generally voices their distrust of the new product. While watching to Togolese disbelief was certainly a highlight, the fufu masher 5000 ran around 300,000 F CFA, which is around the same price as a brand new moto, or a ticket to France… needless to say, your average Togolese doesn’t have that kind of money to be investing in specialized blenders, and I think we are still a long way off from seeing the fall of the mortar and pestle as a mainstay in any Togolese kitchen.
Emily being in Lomé was great, since Lomé is where I go to do any business that requires even the smallest degree of technology. I’m generally down there at least once a month, and with Farm to Market (a PC publication of which I am co-editor), I occasionally come down for extended periods of time. Furthermore, from Lomé it is fairly easy to get to my village, just a 2-4 hour taxi ride up the route national (depending of your luck that day) followed by a short moto ride on the dirt road/riverbed (depending on the season) that leads to chez moi.
Alas, this arrangement did not last. Understandably, Emily quickly grew tired of the expenses, the crowded roads, the dirt, the weird emerging capitalist society, the non-stop hassling from moto drivers and general passersby who look upon the only white person they’ve seen that day as their surefire ticket to America, Europe or at least a new car, and won’t desist until you have absolutely disillusion them of this notion and crushed their indomitable spirit by informing them that you have no interest whatsoever in their sacred offering of friendship. So, she found a way to work with her NGO out in the field, in a small village north of Kpalime, in plateau region. She has only lived their about a month, and so I have yet to go visit her, but I’m told that her region is probably the most beautiful of all of Togo. She seems very happy their, and though her village is certainly more developed than my own (it seems that many notable men of business and politics come from her village, which inevitably leads to investment and development), I think she is getting a taste of a more typical Togolese lifestyle, with long afternoon repos, cancelled meetings, poor communication skills, and lazy afternoons spend at the tsuke stand or sodabe still (which I recently learned is referred to here as the “cabaret”, an appellation I find misleading, considering it is normally a group of all men, either lazily hanging around a homemade still, sipping sodabe, and napping, or hard at work chopping wood, collecting palm wine from felled trees, and tending the fire… but in no way resembling a cabaret). Fortunately for here, there also seems to be a concentration of PCVs in the area surrounding her village, and so she has no shortage of America friends. In general other volunteers have taken to Emily, and have more or less adopted her as one of our own.
Though geographically, I believe her new village is closer to mine than Lomé, it is much harder to get between the two. Since there is no paved road, travel is done on dirt roads, taxis generally only run on market days, so unless travelling on certain days, one must take a moto on long uncomfortable rides (that run much more expensive than a bush taxi). I think, for the most part we’ve decided that it actually makes more sense to just go down to Lomé, and then back up the national road to get to my place, but such is life in Togo.
As for myself, I am doing very well. Life in village continues to be interesting and full of surprises. Work is good but moves slowly. My village is much to small to host any aid organizations, and so any work that is to be done tends to come from the people themselves, and since they are poor, and busy with their own farms and cares, both the financing of projects and organization comes very slowly. Still, I have managed to help a local farming coop start a mushroom cultivation project that promises to be a lasting source of supplemental income (which really requires very little work once established), I’ve continued work with other coops doing bio-intensive vegetable gardening during the dry season, to supplement both diet and income. At the request of local students I’ve started an “English club” in which I try to teach them “American” English. I enjoy the club, but find that the hardest part is keeping my English at their level. Since I speak either French or very limited Ewe when working here, I have next to no experience working with Togolese in language I in which I am naturally fluent. I find my tendency is to try to speak their version of English, which leads me to use a bunch of awkward phrases that hardly even make sense to me. Conversely, when I try to simply speak natural English, I often find the temptation to better explain myself, even though I know my speak will no be understood by my audience, too hard to resist. Still, I enjoy trying to teach English.
Since my two week trip to America, and my few days over in Ghana, I have hardly used any of my 48 out of country vacation days allotted me by the Peace Corps. The coming summer will be filled with PC summer camps, and after that, the end of my service rapidly approaches, and so this spring (in American terms, here of course the weather is nothing at all like spring. The first half our spring season here is the end of the dry season, which means intolerably hot weather, followed by the start of the rainy season, which means a slight break from the heat followed by a return of the heat but this time with all the humidity of the last rain) seems to be my season of travel. Next week, Emily and I head up to Burkina Faso, where, strangely enough, her best friend from high school is currently serving as a PCV. We will spend a few days in the capital Ouagadougou, followed by a few days in her village, which as luck would having is holding their big annual festival right as we arrive. Upon our return we will probably spend a few days in the Savannes region of Togo. I have many PC friends up there, but since it is so far away (about a 12 hour drive over some really crappy roads), and I’ve never really had any excuse for heading up, this is my first time seeing the place.
Next, we leave on our big trip in May to Morocco. Just today I saw that there were demonstrations in Casablanca, and so we are holding our breath that Morocco holds out and doesn’t go the way of nearly ever other country in North Africa. But assuming that all goes well, we will be spending 18 days exploring the Moroccan cities and countryside, eating some bomb couscous, riding on camelback through the Sahara, and haggling over imitation rugs in the market (as though we’ve not had enough practice at that here).
I certainly plan on keeping up more regular communication now that my computer problems have been solved and my initially overpowering urge to get caught up on American television culture has subsided. But just in case, now you all know what I have coming up in the next couple months. I wish I could write more about the last five months, there is certainly a lot more that has happened, but unfortunately, my battery life dwindles, and so it will all just have to wait until next time. Thanks as always for your continued readership and your patience in awaiting my sporadic updates. Au revoir!