It's a wet Sunday morning in Fez, and luckily I've got that Sunday morning feeling. In all the travelling I've always seemed to know when it's Sunday morning. I remember when I was in Tanzania, if I was going to get a bit homesick it was always on Sunday morning. When we were in Orkesumet Alphayo used to rescue me by insisting that I put my best African outfit on and went to church with him. Certainly after a couple of hours of singing, dancing and clapping the world was a very good place. Then there would be the invitation to go back to someone's house for lunch, and often people would drop by mine in the afternoon and we would sit on the 'stoep' and see how many jokes or stories worked if they were translated from English to Swahili to Masai and back again.
So here we are now in Fez on a wet Sunday morning and luckily we have this lovely house to hang out in, and I have an opportunity to make a few jottings. We had a very full and enjoyable day yesterday. It had rained a bit more on Friday night but we woke to sunshine. After making our first round of coffee John popped out to the little 'duka' close by and came back with a fresh stick of French bread. For breakfast we had eggs, local goat cheese, yoghurt and oranges. It is so nice to have the freedom here to do our own thing, I have found the hard dry crepes and the sweet jams we have had in some B & Bs for breakfast a bit inedible. First we went to an Internet Cafe to print out our return trip boarding passes for Ryan Air, thus avoiding the €60 a person penalty if you turn up at the airport without one. You can do it 2 weeks in advance, which is OK if you are on a 2 week trip, but no good for us.
Then we took a 'petite' taxi to the New Town of Fez, excellent advice given to us by Michael, to a large, large supermarket with an off-license department. We took haversacks and bags with us to disguise our purchases as we needed to return by taxi. The advice about large supermarkets in New Town areas is useful for the future, we have tended to avoid the new areas and stay in or around Medina's, and do any shopping we needed there. I think it will only be if we need to restock alcohol though.
We spent the rest of the day wandering freely and randomly in and around the Medina, we had had a chance to read some of the literature at the house, much more comprehensive guides to Fez than we had, and we searched out some of the places mentioned there. I am so pleased we were here for a Saturday, Alami had told us that Saturday afternoon would be a good time for the Medina. It was an entirely different atmosphere to that of the previous day, a Friday. As well as the tourists there were lots of families, browsing, shopping, meeting, talking. Once again we were impressed with how friendly people were. Of course there are a few hustlers, but even if we didn't look at their shops and goods we often stopped and exchanged a few words, especially if they spoke English. The Moroccans seem to be a very humorous people, ready to laugh, to tease, to enjoy a joke.
It was dusk as we returned briefly to the house to pick up some warmer clothes, and then to go to Clock Cafe to eat, on the recommendation of both Michael and Kate. We were not disappointed. I had a camel burger. OK, I know, but if I go to China I'll probably eat dog. Anyway it wasn't camel, it had to be dromedary as I learnt from Ashfran at Du Sud that there aren't any camels in Morocco, they are further south in countries like Sudan. The animals here have only got one hump which makes them dromedaries. Maybe that's why all the people I have seen having 'camel' rides have looked so uncomfortable. I thought you would be wedged between the two humps, perched on top of one most be a totally different feel.
Clock Cafe had a cosmopolitan feel to it, I can see that if you spent some time in Fez it is somewhere that you would hang out. It sort of reminded me of The Blue Angel in Quetzeltanango, where I spent many an evening trying/pretending to do my homework when I was at school there for a month. We had intended to go to the last night concert of the Sufi Festival but it was late when we left the Clock and already rain was in the air so we decided to go back to the house and share a bottle of wine and a few hands of Crib. We were only just inside when the rain started in earnest, hammering down on the perspex roof cover over the courtyard. It continued off and on for most of the night and by this morning we had collected three quarters of a bowl full of water and several puddles from the drips.
I was wakened very early by the 'adhan', call to prayer. It fact, very, very early. Usually the early morning calls here have been less dramatic than they were in Egypt, not quite so much amplification and much shorter in duration. However I first heard this one about 03.40, which is quite a long time before sunrise. I must have gone back to sleep again because I thought he carried on for about 20 mins but when we talked about it this morning John said he was awake for over half an hour. It was a very un-melodic one too, it sounded more like a monotonous drone. We must be unlucky here because the previous night we were kept awake by what we assume was a wedding, based on our experiences from Greece. The music starts about 22.00 and gets steadily louder until sunrise, if you are actually at the wedding you may experience tinnitus for several hours afterwards.
So we are moving on tomorrow, onward and upward to Chefchaouen. The weather situation is due to improve, which is good as we are going further north, I'm not sure how the altitude compares. It's a shame that we have not had good weather for our stay in Fez, sunshine always improves perception, but it says a lot for the place that we have enjoyed it anyway. Friends will know that I am definitely not a 'city' girl, and in fact in our travels we usually try to avoid larger places. I have always said that the only city I would consider making a return visit to is Istanbul; and now......... maybe.......Fez!
Later in the day:
The sun came out, we thought the rain had stopped, so we got dressed, (me at least, John somehow manages to get dressed when he gets up, on my own I often don't put day clothes on all day). We were going to the Museum, but the sun was shining, it was warm, and that hasn't happened much for us in Fez, so we didn't want to go inside and decided to stroll a bit more. We found we were back in places we had been to before, but that was fine. Then the clouds closed in, the sky darkened, and the rain came. So here we are again, the rain is hammering down, the bowl is filling. Sometime we'll make a dash for something to eat.
Time for some more thoughts on Morocco:
Driving: this is John's area, until we reached Fez he thought that all the reports of bad driving in Morocco were exaggerated. We have stored the car here, but on the trip in he found drivers to be inconsiderate and aggressive. Tomorrow we have to collect the car and drive out so we hope it is not too bad.
Housing: I wrote earlier, I think around Tafraoute that all the housing looked to be in good condition and of good construction. Particularly as we drove from Erg Chebbi to Midelt and on to Azrou the housing we saw from the road was much more basic, in some cases little more than single breeze block construction, unfaced. The traditional mud brick buildings offer much better insulation but are often replaced by breeze block. The winters must be bitterly cold in these houses, and permanently damp.
Health Care: I need to do a bit more research on this one as I have had few opportunities due to language problems to talk to people.
The nomadic/semi nomadic Berber people for example. I was told in Erg Chebbi that they can go to a health care facility in Rissani or Erfoud.
Is there a child vaccination programme? What is the incidence of measles? Polio? HIV?
The infrastructure in Morocco seems good. We have found electricity everywhere and even if not reliable there is good internet access. The Berber people who are nomadic obviously do not have access to good sanitation, presumably they are using long drops and as these do not contaminate their water supply they don't cause a problem.
Education: Free schooling is available and, I think, accessible. By that I mean that it is in Arabic and even the Berber nomadic children can speak Arabic, unlike some parts of Central America and East Africa where education was in Spanish or Kiswahili and if the children only spoke their tribal language there was no provision to integrate them into the school system.
There is so much more to discover. Travel is so humbling, you realise how much you don't know, how much more to learn. Too many places, not enough time.
No comments:
Post a Comment