2929 Back from the trip

Sunday, April 11, 2010

"If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that
one of them is doing the thinking."
-- Lyndon B. Johnson --

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I'm back. The Royal Air Maroc plane landed at JFK at about 4:30 pm yesterday, I managed to get out of the airport at 6:30, and got home about 9 pm.

It was an interesting trip. Morocco is such a mix of old and new. Beautiful modern cities with lots of cars, scooters, motor bikes, ... and donkeys! People riding donkeys and driving donkey carts right there in the middle of the traffic.

Most of the Moroccan women we saw were covered, wearing jelabas and head coverings. There were a lot of outdoor cafes, and only once did we see a woman at a table. The linked article says the younger women don't always wear the jelaba and scarf, but about the only women we saw uncovered were tourists. Oh, another thing, North American tourists are rare. Most were Dutch, German, French, or Spanish.

Things are relatively cheap. I ended up buying a lot more stuff than I had planned. The unit of currency is the dirham, about eight dirham per dollar. When shopping, the other women kept asking me "How much is xxx dirham in dollars?" I'd answer, "Divide by 8", and then I'd do the division for them. I finally taught most of them how to do it easily: "Divide by 2, three times, so 1000 dirham is equal to (half once = $500, half twice = $250, half the third time = $125) $125." We got breakfast and dinner with the tour, but had to pay for our own lunch, which usually ran from as low as 25 for a veggie salad (which always included tuna and egg) to 100 dirham for a tagine, which is like a pot roast. Ok, quick now, how much is that in dollars?

Our guide was Edr3s Imam1, a Moroccan of Arab extraction, with fluent english and much patience. (I have replaced an "e" with "3", and an "i" with "1" in his name to make it a little more difficult for others on the trip to find this blog.) Edr3s and me, at the brass doors of a walled royal residence:

Edr3s said that the unemployment rate in Morocco averages about 29%, higher in the rural areas. The king takes care of his subjects, so no one starves. Even though education is free through university, and technically compulsory through 15, the illiteracy rate is 41%. Children often don't go to school because they are needed to help on the farm or in the family business, especially the girls. The language is arabic, but french is a required class in the schools, so most people also are fluent in french, and where there was no english, we used french.

As expected, the woman who organized the trip and I butted heads. She didn't wear a watch (in her words, nobody has ever died because she was late...), and every time! that Edr3s said to be back at the bus by such-and-such a time, she and one or two of her buddies were fifteen minutes to a half hour late. It bugged the hell out of the rest of us and Edr3s ("...the same ones again...") because we didn't have the extra photo or shopping time she blithely took, and over the course of the day, time we could have spent sight-seeing was spent sitting on the bus waiting for her.

It didn't bother her at all, and others hesitated to say anything because many of them work with her or are in other Meetup groups she runs that they want to stay in. I've never in my life met anyone as self-centered as her. Everything was always about her. (BTW, I and several of the others on the trip suspect that we paid for her trip, and shopping. Another woman is going to contact the tour company and find out what the actual cost of the trip was.)

By the end of the week, we were frankly sniping at each other. She cut me out entirely. She and her buddies didn't listen when I spoke, looked away, started talking to each other in the middle of my sentence. Also, I am shy and quiet, soft-voiced, often went off on my own (because my interests are often different and I didn't want to hold other people up, and also because I often didn't feel welcome), and sometimes people see that as standoffishness (is that a word?) and arrogance. One of the other women told me that the others were talking about me and had actually made racial comments about me. Wow. I'm not sure what she meant by that, I asked if they thought I was racist, and she said no. I didn't pursue it, because, as my mother always said, sometimes certain people's opinions of you are worthless. So it doesn't bother me. By the end of the trip, the group of 12 had split into two camps. There were usually 6 at each table at meals, and it became obvious who was "in" with who, and who was kissing whose tail.

Everyone else thought the food was good, but the hotel breakfasts and dinners were buffets, and they always had exactly the same things every time, no matter where we were. I didn't much care for the spices used in everything. However, if you ever have the chance, get the beef with dates, the carrots, the olives, and the yogurt (any flavor). They were all excellent.

The best part of the trip was the souks (shopping areas, a.k.a. souqs) in the medinas (the oldest, often walled, parts of the city). The streets are narrow, lined with shops where you are expected to bargain.

Food sellers-

A street of metal workers -


A residential street in the medina -

The hotel and restaurant bathrooms are modern, but at a roadside stop you might be faced with a squat toilet - a hole in the floor with raised "footprints" on either side to stand on, and a faucet to fill a bucket to flush with. I hate them. You find them in the rural areas of southern France, too. The first time I was faced with one, the hem of my skirt slipped to the sopping floor and stank to high heaven for the next few hours, until I could change. The second time, I managed to keep everything gathered up, but was in such a stressed position I couldn't aim. When I came out, I told Edr3s I hated those things. He said "When in Maroc, do as the Marocans do." I asked if Marocans also piddle on their shoes. (I often cracked him up.) From then on, whenever there was a rest stop, I asked him, "Sit or squat?" If he said squat, I held it.

Leaving from JFK, we had the usual TSA hurdles. Leaving from Casablanca we had Moroccan security. Our carry-on baggage was hand searched something like three or four times, once at each stage - at entering the airport, at passport check, at entering the gate area, and before getting on the plane, they actually took things out and examined them - and we had to go into a curtained booth where we got a pretty thorough pat-down, including a crotch grab (same-sex agent). And yet, it was still faster than at JFK. Many more agents doing it.

Itinerary and some photos tomorrow.

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We all had decided to share photos with each other in them, by trading email addresses. The organizer kept putting it off, and then decided that we didn't have to, because we already had the email addresses on notes she had sent us before the trip. I said, "Only if we saved the emails." Her response? "*I* always save all *my* emails."

That's an example of the self-centeredness. *She* always saves all emails, therefore *everyone* does. (In her mind, that's everyone who matters, anyway.) She would not acknowledge that others may have valid reasons for not saving everything that floats by.

(Another woman went around on her own and gathered them. I copied her list, because depending on who distributes it, I might not otherwise get it.)
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