Geeky Yet Waterproof

Yesterday, we landed in Casablanca, Morocco. And almost as soon as we stepped off the ship, we were ambushed by a horde of omni-lingual taxi drivers! So after some haggling, a driver was touring us around Casablanca in a taxi. Some of the things we saw were the US Embassy, and the house where Bush stays when he’s in Casablanca.
Then we made our first stop, at the Mosque. I had never seen a stone building this big before. But that wasn’t all… The Mosque was in an enormous plaza. I mean the kind of enormous where you’re walking and nothing around you seems to move any closer or farther. It has to be big, in order to support three million people worshiping Allah.

We made a few more stops, including a “beach” and carpet/souvenir shop.

After our taxi tour, we went to the huge bazaar to experience the real Morocco. And wow, did we ever. It was just like you see in the movies… people selling everything from fish, to camel-leather poofs, to $1 pirated movies. You don’t make eye contact with any of the sellers unless you plan to buy something from them, or they’ll be following you around until you flee the country.
One such seller was a boy of maybe 17 or 18 (who later turned out to be 24), who confronted us with, “You must come to the shop of my father! We have everything Americans will like.” We brushed him off, saying we’d come later, then escaped down a side-alley. But before three minutes had gone by, there he was again, right in front of us! “Why you no come to the shop of my daddy?? You follow me! I take you there!”
So we had no choice but to follow him to “the shop of his father”. And sure enough, it did have everything… slippers, spices, camels, and everything in between.
As soon as we stepped in the shop, they were all — the boy (whose name was Yessin), his father, and his uncle — fitting us with Moroccan slippers and shirts. And before we had time to consent to anything, they had put it all in a bag and were going to the checkout! We took out some of the things we didn’t need, but I ended up buying a pair Moroccan slippers made of camel-leather (which seem like they’ll last for about ever), and Isa and my mom bought some other things of the sort.

After all this, we were hungry so we set out to find lunch. As we were looking for a place to eat, we stopped to look at an interesting (raw) meat display outside a restaurant. There was a suspicious platter of pink slimy objects. These elicited the quote of the day: “Are those brains, or just intestines?”

They were brains.

When we had all stuffed ourselves with delicious fish, sausage, fish, french fries, and fish, we went back to the bazaar to look around some more. And almost as soon as we had stepped through the stone archway, there was Yessin again! He quickly learned that we were there to see more of the bazaar, so he joyfully asked us if we wanted a tour. We agreed, and he called over his friend, Hamid. It turned out that Hamid (whom we guessed was about 21, but later revealed that he was in fact 28), specializes in touring foreigners around Old Medina, which is the old part of the Casablanca.
I don’t know what exactly our shipmates did on the official tour, but I’m pretty sure our tour was better. Hamid and Yessin showed us around the bazaar and Old Medina for about an hour, and during that hour we saw many things worthy of National Geographic. We went into a bakery and saw people making bread — in a real fire oven in the wall. We saw people selling camel meat still on the bone. Live chickens in a cage. Crates of fish sitting out in the open. Old women on the side of the street making embroidery with their old fashioned sewing machines. Piles of garbage on every corner… it seemed there were no garbage cans, so people just put all their garbage in a pile.
While we were walking, we started talking with the two Arabs about languages. Hamid was telling us about how he learns new languages from tourists, and I asked if he speaks Portuguese. He responded, “Eh, just a little bit…”, and then started talking in Portuguese as fast as, well, a Portuguese. I only understood the first half, which was “I can’t speak Portuguese very well”, and the rest was too fast for me to catch. When they say Moroccans speak every language, it’s true.

After we had pretty much seen everything of Old Medina, the tour came to an end and it was time to head back to the ship. Our guides asked for a tip of 20 euros each, which was kind of expensive, but it was worth it for what we got. If we had tried to find our way around alone… well, let me just say that the streets were purposely made to be confusing, to help protect against enemies!

Tomorrow we arrive in Barcelona for another day in Spain. I don’t know what I’m doing still writing at 1:30am, since we have to get up at 7 tomorrow! But if I’m still alive, expect to hear from me again soon.