Hello, Morocco!
Hello, Morocco!
Updated 11:23pm (Mla time) Nov 29, 2004
By Jimenez-David Rina
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the November 30, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
MARRAKESH, Morocco -- The place names alone were enough to stir excitement: Casablanca, Ourzazate, Merzouga, Erfoud, Fez, Rabat and, of course, Marrakesh. When I found out that I had won a second time as "Best Columnist" of the Global Media Awards, the best part was discovering that the prize this time was a study tour of Morocco, a country I had never visited, in a part of the world, Northern Africa, that I had only set foot on once before.
Downloading the itinerary, as well as travel guides from sites like Lonely Planet, I felt my anticipation building up even more. Planned for our group, consisting of the winners of this year's awards, officers and board members of the Population Institute, which administers the awards, and others who signed up for the study tour, is a varied menu of Moroccan experiences. A night spent in a Bedouin tent, followed by a "typical Berber breakfast." Dinner in Marrakesh's Palm Grove, the setting, so the guidebook says, of the 1001 Nights. A drive through the twisting roadways of the Atlas mountains, which gleam white with their cap of snow over Marrakesh. Lunch in a seaside restaurant in Casablanca, by the Atlantic Ocean.
Truly, there is much to look forward to on this trip, to see, absorb and strive to capture with the puny power of words. And though I have been in Morocco for just over a day, already, I feel the magic beckoning.
* * *
JUST to give us our bearings, our guide Aziz brought us around Marrakesh, pointing out the sights and giving us a sweeping overview of Moroccan history.
One's immediate impression of the city, the third largest in Morocco, is how it seems to have risen out of the red earth of the desert. All the buildings, even the hotels and residences, are reddish ochre, by royal decree. When the Berbers, who founded Morocco and comprise the majority of its people, built this former royal capital, they constructed their homes out of the red clay, seeing no need to embellish the structures with any paint or decoration. Driving through the posh Avenue de France, lined with five-star hotels and modern shopping centers, and then through the poorer areas of the city, clustered around the ramparts of the ancient capital, the visitor's strongest impression is of an ochre landscape, as if the city sprung organically from the soil it settles on. The unremitting flatness of the scenery is accentuated by the fact that there are no high-rises. By law, no building in Marrakesh may be built taller than the Minaret of Koutoubia, the spiritual and cultural heart of the city, thus limiting all construction to about five stories.
The dreariness of the desert landscape is relieved by greenery, mostly date palms, of which, so said our guide, there are about five million around Morocco, with a million found in Marrakesh -- planted on traffic islands and sidewalks, brightening up household gardens, and growing in delightful profusion in the famed Palmeraie or Palm Groves. (Many of the date palms are now looking the worse for wear, blighted by a virus that has attacked some species.) We also drove through a section of the magnificent Agdal orchards that date back to the 12th century, planted to fruit trees like oranges, figs, pomegranates and olives. It's olive harvest time, and the olives harvested from the publicly-owned orchard will be auctioned off, the proceeds to go into funding public works projects.
* * *
BUT even a cursory "orientation" drive through Marrakesh still demands a stop at the justly world-famous Place Djemaa el-Fina, a huge square in the center of the walled old city. As Lonely Planet describes it: "Rows of open-air food stalls are set up here and mouth-watering aromas fill the air. Jugglers, storytellers, snake charmers, magicians, acrobats and assorted benign lunatics take over the rest of the space."
Just as the blazing sun plunged the city into darkness, we alighted from our bus and walked through a paved walkway, lined with tea shops where men clustered around outside tables, glasses of mint tea in front of them. There were also stalls peddling all sorts of merchandise and ubiquitous signs announcing establishments offering "Internet Cyber."
Then we came upon the square itself, filled now with food stalls over which presided men in clean white lab coats. A short walk through the stalls was itself an introductory course on Moroccan cuisine: boiled snails sold by the bowl (I remember an episode of "The Amazing Race" requiring contestants to sell this delicacy), sheep's heads and hoofs roasted over roaring fires, barbecued beef and mutton, a savory soup that seemed to be the most popular item, judging from the capacity crowd filling up the benches of one stall, and a whole array of cut up vegetables and fruits, from which customers could pick and choose to make up their own salads.
* * *
WE WERE too preoccupied following Aziz as he made his crooked way through the crowds to inquire after fortune tellers and snake charmers. But we did spot tribesmen arrayed in their finery of rough red robes and metal adornments. Aziz warned us that before we even took a picture of them, much less posed with them, we should be prepared to pay, though we ran the risk, he said, of having these poseurs chase us around the square, demanding for more payment, if they were unhappy with the amount given.
We also came upon a pair of "belly dancers," attended by musicians and dressed in soft flowing robes, their faces covered. They didn't seem to be swaying so gracefully, didn't have hips or bellies to speak of, and appeared to be taller than most of the women walking by. One of us said she locked eyes with one of the "dancers" and she could swear he was a man.
Maybe we had found our benign lunatics.
Updated 11:23pm (Mla time) Nov 29, 2004
By Jimenez-David Rina
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the November 30, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
MARRAKESH, Morocco -- The place names alone were enough to stir excitement: Casablanca, Ourzazate, Merzouga, Erfoud, Fez, Rabat and, of course, Marrakesh. When I found out that I had won a second time as "Best Columnist" of the Global Media Awards, the best part was discovering that the prize this time was a study tour of Morocco, a country I had never visited, in a part of the world, Northern Africa, that I had only set foot on once before.
Downloading the itinerary, as well as travel guides from sites like Lonely Planet, I felt my anticipation building up even more. Planned for our group, consisting of the winners of this year's awards, officers and board members of the Population Institute, which administers the awards, and others who signed up for the study tour, is a varied menu of Moroccan experiences. A night spent in a Bedouin tent, followed by a "typical Berber breakfast." Dinner in Marrakesh's Palm Grove, the setting, so the guidebook says, of the 1001 Nights. A drive through the twisting roadways of the Atlas mountains, which gleam white with their cap of snow over Marrakesh. Lunch in a seaside restaurant in Casablanca, by the Atlantic Ocean.
Truly, there is much to look forward to on this trip, to see, absorb and strive to capture with the puny power of words. And though I have been in Morocco for just over a day, already, I feel the magic beckoning.
* * *
JUST to give us our bearings, our guide Aziz brought us around Marrakesh, pointing out the sights and giving us a sweeping overview of Moroccan history.
One's immediate impression of the city, the third largest in Morocco, is how it seems to have risen out of the red earth of the desert. All the buildings, even the hotels and residences, are reddish ochre, by royal decree. When the Berbers, who founded Morocco and comprise the majority of its people, built this former royal capital, they constructed their homes out of the red clay, seeing no need to embellish the structures with any paint or decoration. Driving through the posh Avenue de France, lined with five-star hotels and modern shopping centers, and then through the poorer areas of the city, clustered around the ramparts of the ancient capital, the visitor's strongest impression is of an ochre landscape, as if the city sprung organically from the soil it settles on. The unremitting flatness of the scenery is accentuated by the fact that there are no high-rises. By law, no building in Marrakesh may be built taller than the Minaret of Koutoubia, the spiritual and cultural heart of the city, thus limiting all construction to about five stories.
The dreariness of the desert landscape is relieved by greenery, mostly date palms, of which, so said our guide, there are about five million around Morocco, with a million found in Marrakesh -- planted on traffic islands and sidewalks, brightening up household gardens, and growing in delightful profusion in the famed Palmeraie or Palm Groves. (Many of the date palms are now looking the worse for wear, blighted by a virus that has attacked some species.) We also drove through a section of the magnificent Agdal orchards that date back to the 12th century, planted to fruit trees like oranges, figs, pomegranates and olives. It's olive harvest time, and the olives harvested from the publicly-owned orchard will be auctioned off, the proceeds to go into funding public works projects.
* * *
BUT even a cursory "orientation" drive through Marrakesh still demands a stop at the justly world-famous Place Djemaa el-Fina, a huge square in the center of the walled old city. As Lonely Planet describes it: "Rows of open-air food stalls are set up here and mouth-watering aromas fill the air. Jugglers, storytellers, snake charmers, magicians, acrobats and assorted benign lunatics take over the rest of the space."
Just as the blazing sun plunged the city into darkness, we alighted from our bus and walked through a paved walkway, lined with tea shops where men clustered around outside tables, glasses of mint tea in front of them. There were also stalls peddling all sorts of merchandise and ubiquitous signs announcing establishments offering "Internet Cyber."
Then we came upon the square itself, filled now with food stalls over which presided men in clean white lab coats. A short walk through the stalls was itself an introductory course on Moroccan cuisine: boiled snails sold by the bowl (I remember an episode of "The Amazing Race" requiring contestants to sell this delicacy), sheep's heads and hoofs roasted over roaring fires, barbecued beef and mutton, a savory soup that seemed to be the most popular item, judging from the capacity crowd filling up the benches of one stall, and a whole array of cut up vegetables and fruits, from which customers could pick and choose to make up their own salads.
* * *
WE WERE too preoccupied following Aziz as he made his crooked way through the crowds to inquire after fortune tellers and snake charmers. But we did spot tribesmen arrayed in their finery of rough red robes and metal adornments. Aziz warned us that before we even took a picture of them, much less posed with them, we should be prepared to pay, though we ran the risk, he said, of having these poseurs chase us around the square, demanding for more payment, if they were unhappy with the amount given.
We also came upon a pair of "belly dancers," attended by musicians and dressed in soft flowing robes, their faces covered. They didn't seem to be swaying so gracefully, didn't have hips or bellies to speak of, and appeared to be taller than most of the women walking by. One of us said she locked eyes with one of the "dancers" and she could swear he was a man.
Maybe we had found our benign lunatics.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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