This past weekend the institute organized an outrageously packed trip into the desert south of Fez, part of the western Sahara but not the Western Sahara. We left Friday at a bit past noon, drove for around 8ish hours straight south. We stopped twice along the way, one planned one not, none troublesome.
The drive basically got more and more beautiful with every kilometer. First we hit Ifrane, which is where the American University Alakhwan is located. We only drove through, but it looked tiny, very college town almost, and totally out of place with the rest of Morocco, which I believe it was built to be. Most surprisingly was that there was snow on the ground. I know I’ve been complaining about the cold here, but its basically been around a steady 50ºF the whole time indoors, with the midday significantly warmer, except for the rain which plagued Fez last week. So in short, not cold enough for snow, but Ifrane is in the mountains and it indeed snowed last week. It definitely added to a town meant to look like its out of central Europe. The drive continued and we just came into miles upon miles of fields, not desert but not super wet either, with mountains in all directions. The mountains had snow on most of them, and streams came through the fields often. It was gorgeous. The rock was at times a light brown, at times looked like good soil (like I know what that is) and at times was a deep red. The cliffs and valleys didn’t seem to stop coming, and we all felt bad nodding off for what we would miss.
We drove through the mountains, and it was exactly what one would think, narrow, winding roads with cars flying by you, passing you, occasionally coming on a tractor, or a truck carrying what seemed like hundreds of sheep, or even better was the trucks filled with big heavy things (heavy enough to do damage to the car behind it, but too light to stay on the truck with any certainty). But the views overall made it impossible to really worry, and our driver was really fantastic. His name was Mohammad and I made friends with him as I sat upfront most of the time. He would turn up our ridiculous American music and change the radio station if a Moroccan song came up he didn’t like. The sing alongs were fun, as its always great to learn who knows the words to what.
We arrived to the hotel around… 9 I guess. It was the most absurd hotel I’ve ever stayed at, bar none. Basically image someone throwing as much money as possible into making a clueless tourist (me in this case) think he/she was Lawrence of Arabia. That was very much the goal of the whole weekend actually, but I definitely enjoyed it for what it was, and for the company. We were welcomed with tea, dancing, music, and baby camels hanging out in the main hotel complex courtyard. Everyone was in spotless “traditional” Berber costume and it was ridiculous. The hotel had … 2 pools, a jacuzzi, tennis courts, a gym, restaurant, cafe, etc. Like I said, ridiculous, but its a good thing this is one of the things U Minnesota pays for as part of the program. (as they should since we’re paying ~5x the price of ALIF for the same ALIF program everyone else at the institute is getting) So we enjoyed a buffet dinner, then the jacuzzi/pool/shenanigans in the rooms basically all night. It was funny how incredibly inappropriate it felt to be in a pool with girls at first, we all found ourselves looking around asking if this was cool here. A European couple who later occupied the jacuzzi showed exactly how fine it was.
We were out of the hotel at around 12 the next day, for more driving (I would estimate a total of 18 hours in the van over the weekend) Again, more beautiful as we went. We drove into the straight desert, with one road cutting through it. I was very, very impressed with the state of Moroccan roads, and with the combination of French/Arabic and international road signs, the fairly decent state of drivers, and the overall straightforwardness of everything, a road trip is definitely not out of the question. That would of course involve someone who can drive, and drive a stick. We got to the hotel. It was indeed run by Berbers, Amazeeri (?) who all seemed to speak at least 4-5 languages, rattling off French, Spanish, English, Italian, Berber, and Arabic (some spoke the last the least, at least it seemed as such). We got a pretty damn decent meal, and we were off for the camels. This hotel was almost as ridiculous as the first, but I’ll spare the details. Now, for the camels.
We packed our stuff and moved out to the back of the hotel, which faced the open desert, and found a couple of guys in costume and a shit ton of camels. They weren’t the biggest I had seen, most seemed young, and they were all well fed-looking and overall pretty well cared for. The pictures do more justice here, but the start of the trek was great, and we just kept moving further and further in, and away from anything we could see. After just a half hour we couldn’t see anything but desert in all directions, and I had no idea how these guys were guiding us. We were definitely not heading in a perfectly straight line, it was more of a tour/getting to our camp, but I was really impressed how they could possibly know this way, and what would happen if one were to get lost. I just kept thinking about how much time I’ve spent in New York and that more than half the time when in Manhattan I have no idea which way Broadway is, so these guys being able to find the way through shifting dunes was impressive.
After two hours we reached a massive, utterly huge dune. If we looked out we saw the edge of the desert and the mountain range, and we were told that beyond those mountains was Algeria, and that it wasn’t a good idea to go near there. It was almost sunset when we reached the dune and we were told to get off, which after over two hours we were glad to. I had also lost flipflops that were attached to my bag, not that I cared (on the way back the next morning we found them lying in the sand, really ridiculous). At this point my group’s guide decided to mess with us a little. We were all told to climb the dune for the view of the sunset, which was fine, except my group was told to bring all our bags and belongings, while the other group was told to leave them on the camels and they would be brought to camp. So that was annoying lugging our bags and multiple liters of water up the dune, which was the finest sand and pretty intensely hard to climb at first. Serious props to those who climbed with their bags and boots on, I sure didn’t I ditched the bags and water about half way up, and climbed up barefoot, it was easier and it wasn’t too hot this time of year. The top was both a sweet achievement and an amazingly breathtaking view. One direction we had the setting sun over the dunes and in the other the rising moon. My pictures of both aren’t great, my camera(/me) doesn’t do natural phenomenon well. The videos actually worked a lot better.
So that was amazing. After that a friend and I got lost in the camp, which is shared by a few groups for tourist purposes, then eventually found our camp. Together we were basically just in intense feeling of accomplishment at having climbed that dune/immense satisfaction of where we were. We hung out, danced a bit, the hosts, like I said spoke every language imaginable and a few spoke English way better than Arabic, but seemed to appreciate that we spoke some Arabic for the hell of it. We asked about a few Berber words and there seemed to be definite similarities to words in daraja that I had no idea about. We had a great dinner out there, basic and tasty and then hopped around the camps singing whatever songs we could think of, listening to them play the drums/flutes. I’m going to arbitrarily stick some photos here. I took exactly 1.3 gigs worth, so bear with me.
Took the camel picture, I hope everyone is happy.
Thats a big moon.
I chose the most awkward picture of Eric and I for the blog
Our camels at the hotel
Her name is Aisha
Kadie rode in front of me both there and back, so thats the girl in the red
I took a ton, ton of these kind of pictures, I chose some to represent
The top of the huge dune
View of sunset
The moon
I definitely had a lot of time to think about how I felt about the whole situation and weekend. It was touristy. For sure. I found it hard to believe that a song that consisted of a few drum beats repeated and singing Assalamu alekum, waalekum assalam was an actual traditional Berber song. These guys had been brought up, learned these languages and knew their trade specifically in tourism. That was their living and they were good at it. They liked talking to foreigners, partying with them for a living, and knew how to deal with our bullshit/mess with us enough not be miserable with it. It for sure was not an authentic experience, but there really isn’t an authentic experience, only shades of one. I’m not the first one to know and say that you’re very presence as a foreigner changes the behavior of the people your with, and it makes everything you witness not “real”. This weekend was an extension of that. They were real Berbers, they spoke the language, grew up in the area and for all I know had plenty of customs that they would follow with their families. Instead of whatever it is most people in the region I visited do (I’m trying to pretend to know as little as possible) these guys worked in the hotel and made their money with foreigners. The whole thing seemed all at once more legitimate than I feel like I would have given this experience before. It’s perfectly legitimate for foreigners to come into a place, explore, pay higher prices, and have people deal with you. (in healthy manners, of course) My host family experience, which is now mostly over, was similar. My presence definitely changed how my host family’s day/life went. The meals were for sure different, if only slightly better (maybe) and the attention that was given to me instead of the children (or maybe the opposite, more attention and better treatment to the kids when I’m watching?) what was on TV, everything was a little different. I felt like I was in the way for sure, the parents were busy raising kids and I was just around doing my totally independent thing, coming and going basically as I pleased with their blessing. In exchange they were given what I know now to be a pretty significant income for even a middle class old-city family. I was paying for the experience, the money mattered to them (in addition to sharing culture and learning about my culture I guess) and my experience mattered to me and we were trading. The learning about my culture didn’t seem to matter to much, as they thought I was French multiple times, then once it was established I was American no one really cared/had time to really hear anything I had to say in my ridiculous sounding Arabic. Maybe this is too much Paul Bowles going on in my head but it really seemed to be a natural exchange, and one that I’m more ok with now than I think I would have been before. This weekend we saw and hung out with Berbers. I don’t speak any Berber, I didn’t really learn any, I took away a scarf, pictures and beautiful sights. It wasn’t the most “authentic” experience, but considering the time I have here to have any experiences 8 hours away from Fez (a weekend tops) it might be genuinely irresponsible/insulting to just show up in some village, trying to speak Arabic with people, get cheap prices, and hang out and watch them. I was a complete foreigner this weekend and maybe I spent it where I belong to some extent. Now, I would never stay in places like we stayed, nor travel how we traveled, but the more time I spend here the more I find myself thinking, maybe its not a great idea to take huge bits and steps and throw myself in with people I actually know nothing about and just leave people alone. That isn’t meant to sound as dramatic as maybe it does, but I overall think I’m just gaining more respect for routines and lifestyles that while I find very interesting, don’t involve me, never will, and shouldn’t.
In other news, there were some protests this weekend, all totally peaceful with no real police response reported. We drove by a few dozen-hundred people marching peacefully and organized on one side of a road with police monitoring them but not interfering. Hearing about Libya just today was pretty shocking. I don’t really know what to believe and I’m not sure many do. Amr Moussa doesn’t seem to be able to make up his mind and I wonder if there was just a ploy to gain support of the Arab League and then do something totally different, or if Moussa is playing both sides to gain more popularity. What’s definitely true and striking to hear my Arabic professors talk every day in class about is what a significant time this is for the extended region. People are demanding rights, basic rights to determine their own future, and their taking them back from thuggish governments hell bent on keeping themselves and cronies rich and in power/forward their own narrow ideology. This is basically true all over now, and as my professors say, you can’t open a newspaper in the Arab world without reading thura (revolution). I’ve also yet to hear any semi-moderate sounding educated individual describe the region’s events as anything but the “people” (loosely defined as the majority demanding things and interests from governments who in the very least don’t represent them, and for how complicated each different case is, they seem fine with boiling it down to this and that the people are to be supported if only for basic humanitarian reasons and empathy. I just wish everyone on our side of the world would agree. I feel like I had the guy who represents me best, and now to see his White House side with the clearly corrupt, abusive governments of Bahrain, Yemen, after wavering on Egypt to be sure to pick the winner, is incredibly disheartening and disillusioning. If not now then when and if not Obama then who? The scene of the world is pretty depressing from that standpoint, and for lack of a better place, I’ll leave off here.
Salaam,
