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Last Saturday, I completed my Arabic final, said goodbyes to those friends who still remained, and dragged my luggage to the bus station. I took one final picture of Al Akhawayn University and played one final game of chess with Adam. I liked my new friends and liked traveling in Morocco, but I never could stand the university itself, so the feeling of sadness the came upon leaving it took me quite off guard.

A few weeks earlier I had purchased a plane ticket to Salt Lake City from Madrid on Saturday, Dec. 22, so I had a week to get to Madrid  from Ifrane. I decided to go to Fez by bus. The taxis in Morocco had always been extremely dangerous and the thought to taking "one last taxi ride" to Fez seemed a bit too fatalistic.  The bus cost a few dirhams more and took twice as long to get to the destination, but it was safer. I've never quite understood why, but some of my clearest philosophical thinking takes place on the public transportation systems of developing countries. So I reflected over where my life is headed and the universe and whether or not the use of nuclear weapons could ever be fully justified. Go figure.

I realized when I got to Fez that it would be too late to catch a train to Tangiers unless I wanted to arrive at midnight with all my heavy bags and no idea how to get to a cheap hotel. This prospect did not appeal to me, so I found a cheap hotel near the Bab Bajeloud gate and wandered the nearby medina and square for several hours. The square there has the cheapest tea I have found in Morocco--only two dirhams for a glass. Then fully cafinated, I went to my favorite restaurant inside the medina. It had several floors and on the ones above ground level it was possible to peer down into the narrow bustling allies where tourists come and go, restaurant owners thrust menus into the faces of prospective customers and occasional donkies carry huge loads of Coca Cola into the inner recesses of the Medina. This is the Morocco I loved.

Of course, Morocco has a dark side, too, and my last trip to the Fez medina would not let me forget it. As I followed the winding paths deeper and deeper, I saw one of the most heartrenching sites I have ever seen. A man, without arms and legs was begging outside of a shop. It was only when I bent down to give him a dirham that I realized he did have arms--short deformed things that looked more like a raptor's arms than a human's. All he could do with them was make his breast pocket bulge out a bit so it would be easier for passers-by to deposit coins there. On the way back, after buying a CD of the Essouara Gnaoua music festival for ten dirhams, I saw the same man and gave him another ten or eleven dirhams. He thanked me warmly for this. Another man saw me and, wanting a piece of my generousity, grabbed me by the arm and demanded that I pay him too. I pulled my arm away. He followed me for about thirty seconds, laughing and grabbing my arm forcefully, until I pushed him away and yelled "Piss off!"

Some people say that money corrupts, and in excess, they are right. But it is clear to me that a deficiency of money can also turn people into animals. Where poverty abounds, so does cruelty. I have seen this cruelty, this utter lack of manners, throughout Morocco. I've seen it in the way the older chidren kick the younger children in the stomach when they are annoyed by them, the way the men grope, leer, and catcall at unveiled women, the way the people get so in your face about getting you to go to their shops. At first I thought only the religion and culture was to blame for this--and I still think that is part of it--but now I think it's clear that, in large part, it's the poverty that does it to them.

I realize nothing I've said relates to these pictures. Patience. I'll get to it.      

I admit my entries have been rather sparse these days. The reason for that is I haven't been traveling as much or as far. Something about the week-long trip to the southern desert did it for me. One can only take so many unhygenic toilets, aggressive shop keepers, and nauseating bus rides in one semester. So the last few weeks I've been taking it easy, going to Fez and Azrou, but no further.  If it's any compensation for the lack of articles, I will be loading some pictures of the Fez, Azrou, and Ifrane when I get the chance. 

I do have a few things to report however. The weather has been downright freaky-warm. At Thanksgiving it was freezing. Not that it was as cold as Idaho, but the insulation in the buildings here is practically noexistant and ever Moroccan leaves the doors open, so there is no escape from it. In the last week or so, the temperatures have been hovering in the high sixties. It's hard to believe that I will come home to Christmas (hopefully with snow) in a couple of weeks.

After I take my last final in Islamic Civilization on Friday, I will depart AUI for home. But not directly--there is one adventure yet to be had. Two friends of mine will go with me across the Straight to explore Spain for a week before we go our separate ways. It will be fun, but it will surely kill my wallet, which has gotten used to being on a developing-country budget. 

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With the semester winding to a close I've been a bit travel weary. Some of my friends took of the the desert and invited me to come, but the thought of twenty hours in a bus didn't appeal to me.

With Fez just an hour away, it seemed like the best alternative. I have been to Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech and--though Marrakech gives Fez a run for its money--Fez remains my favorite big city in Morocco. I went with two friends, Katie and Karla. I had a class project with Katie and we hoped to get some useful pictures of some of the historical water clocks in Fez for our powerpoint presentation. It took us a couple of hours of wandering the medina to find that it was not possible to go inside the building that housed the clock.

Oh well--it's not like wandering the Fez medina is an unpleasant experience. Becoming immersed in the ancient maze never fails to invigorate me.

Unfortunately I saw the sexual harassment side of Morocco that I had heard American women complain about. Until this point, I had always traveled with a group of mostly men. But with Katie and Karla I heard no end of catcalls. The harassment was shameless and non-stop. The worst of it came when we were touring an ancient medrassa. Our tour guide, an old man in a turbin, kept touching Katie and Karla. I heard the girls giggling around him but it wasn't until we left and they told me that I realized how bad the harasmment had been.

Later in one of the cafe's, a Moroccan guy at a different table was sneaking pictures of the girls with his cell phone. I decided to fight fire with fire. I pulled out my Nikon D-70s and snapped a couple of him with the flash on.

We came to the big open square outside Bab al Jeloud gate and found it as full of life as the Djemaa al Fna in Marrakech had been. I bought a crunchy, layered cookie from a sweet vendor.

 After we had had our fill of the old city, we grabbed a taxi to the Marjane, which is like a Moroccan version of Wal Mart. Our mission was to find food for the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner, but we came up shy on the yams. There was no word for it in either the Arabic or the French dictionary. Katie used her French to ask for "a sweet potato that is orange inside" but that didn't get us anywhere. At least there will be stuffing.

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I had known for a long time that this last weekend--the last extended weekend of the semester--had to be something special. This nifty break originated November 6, 1976 when King Hassan II ordered 350,000 Moroccans to march into the disputed Western Sahara territory with Moroccan flags. This manuever supposedly harolded the "return of the Moroccan Sahara" though I am more inclined to call it a blatant land grab. It is now commemorated each year with the Green March celebration. As long as I get my weekend, I couldn't care less about the unscrupulous politics behind it.

I decided to leave by myself and enjoy the solitude of travel in the Sahara. I skipped two days of school to do it but, as Mark Twain observed, one ought not let school get in the way of education. I broadly define education so as to include all travel I want to do.

Wednesday I took a bus to Marrakech, spent the night in a cheap hotel and then caught a private bus to a small town to the east, Ouzazate (pronouced "where za-zat") The road from Marrakech to Ouzazate has a reputation of being one of the picturesque and one of the most terrifying in all of Morocco. On both accounts, the road lived up the reputation. The bus wound through pinkish mountains, passing beautiful Berber villages and narrowly avoiding collisions with cars that zipped around the corners and swerved only at the last possible second. Unfortunately one of my camera batteries died and so I did not get any photos to document this epic journey. At first  I thought the fifteen hundred dollar camera itself was broken; when I finally got my bag from under the bus and switched out the batteries the relief I felt was palpable.

Ouzazate is not a particularly interesting town, though it is famous for its film industry. In the morning I checked out Atlas Film Studios, where I saw sets from movies such as "The Mummy," "Gladiator" and "Jewel of the Nile." My favorite thing to see was the Jerusalem used in "Kingdom of Heaven." According to my tour guide, it took a year to construct. The guide also mentioned that so it will soon be used in an upcoming Ridley Scott movie with Leonardo Decaprio. I guess sets like this are to expensive to use in just one movie, even for Hollywood.

If you happen to be in the area, Ouzazate also has a kasbah that is worth checking out. A kasbah is like a middle eastern castle. The one in Ourzazate is open to the public for just ten Dirhams a person, so I spent a good part of the morning exploring the rooms and taking pictures. I finally found a small ampitheatre and decided it was a good reading place. (This is a good place to mention that I had stacked up on reading material. From the Al Akhawayn library I brought along "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman, "Just Wars from Cicero to Iraq" by Alex Ballemy and Homer's "The Illiad." Also, I borrowed a compilation of Paul Bowles' novels from my friend Sarah.)

The drive from Ouzazate to M'hamid turned out to be just as interesting as the drive from Marrakech to Ouzazate. After a pass through some rugged rock mountains-- which to me had a certain beauty of their own-- the bus took a straight shot through the gorgous Draa Valley. The valley was wide filled with villages made of earthen buildings and lush with palm trees, like one elongated oasis.  I only wished I could spend more time there.

I arrived in the small town of M'hamid well after dark. By that time I had befriended a group of Germans, the closest thing I had had to American company in days. I hung out with one couple, Sandra and Jan, and together we found the cheapest hotel I have yet come across in four months of traveling a country of very cheap hotels. The hotel keeper offered thirty Dirhams and Jan insisted on paying only twenty five. The hotel leader consented without complaint. That price is just over three dollars.

Our next tast was to seek out a reliable tour guide. Just about everyone in the village was clamoring to be our guide to the Sahara. A tourist could hardly step outside without attracting half a dozen would-be guides within five minutes. This made M'hamid a particularly unpleasant place to be and we resolved to get out of it as quickly as possible.

We finally happened upon a guide from Marrakech whose price was slightly higher than the competitors, but he seemed more easy going. This I interpreted as a sign he was confident in his services. After about fifteen minutes of discussion, the three of us agreed to accept the two-day plan.

That afternoon, we got started on the first leg of the adventure. Two nomadic guides brought us three camels and we set off across the stony desert to a small set of dunes popularly known as "The Jews' Dunes." I have never liked riding animals and camels proved to be no exception. Have you ever considered what weird animals camels are? With their humps, their lips, their long necks, they seem like something out of a sci-fi movie. Sometimes they make noises like walruses, which I also suspect came from another planet. After less than two hours of riding my sore bottom couldn't take anymore and I optend to walk alongside the guides.

From the vantage point of the tallest dune, the three of us watched the sun set. A few hours later our guides served up some of the best tagine I have had in Morocco. The lemons made it particularly good. Jan and Sandra slept in the tent but I prefered to sleep under the stars. Surprisingly, the temperature was just about right and I didn't have a problem with freezing.

The next day we left back to M'hamid to start the next leg of the journey. Jan and Sandra rode camels. I walked. In M'hamid we got into a jeep and drove forty kilmeters across the bumpy rocky desert to our next destination, Erg Chiggaga. The forty-kilometer stretch of dunes at Erg Chiggaga are some of the largest in Morocco--sometimes as tall as three hundred meters. 

Our jeep jolted uncomfortably as we progressed across the desert. At first the desert was stony. Then it became flat and dusty and reminded me of Iraq. Gradually, the desert became sandier and the dunes grew bigger and bigger. Just as we were coming to the really big dunes, I saw something strange out my side of the window. A man was running toward our vehicle waving a brightly colored scarf. I pointed it out to the guide and we pulled over to see what the matter was. It turns out an older French couple along with their guide had got their vehicle stuck in the sand. They had been stranded for three hours.

 Everytime we attempted to get the vehicle loose, it ended up lodging deeper in the sand. It took us more than an hour to get them out. I would like to say that I provided some contribution to this, but this would be untrue. In every situation like this there is always one guy who is just a little behind the others and only has room to get one hand on the car with no real leverage to push. I always seem to be this guy.

We arrived at the Erg Chiggaga camp after dusk, but there was still time for me to get a few eerie pictures of the dunes in the twilight. For the first time, I got the feel of really being on something as big and vast as the African continent. 

That evening the guides sang and played music on guitar. The tagine wasn't quite as good as the previous night, but still pretty darn good.

I decided that, having missed the sun set, I would have to make the most of the sun rise. I got up at five the next morning, scaled the highest dune in the dark, barefooted. It was colder than I expected, and so I curled up in the sand on the side of the dune opposite of the wind. I'm still finding sand in my hair.

The first sign of day was the dark blue on the eastern side of the sky. The dark blue faded into a pale blue. Finally, at quarter to seven, the golden sun peaked over the distant mountains. I got my pictures and hurried down for breakfast. 

There was no ATM in the city of M'hamid, so the tour guide had to send a friend in our taxi to Zagora, the nearest town with a bank. We paid than took a taxi back to Marrakech. At first I planned to get off at Ourzazate and explore the surrounding area in greater detail, but at the last minute I bought a ticket to Marrakech instead.

I spent my last day in Marrakech. The morning was wonderfully lazy. I went cafe hopping, drinking coffee and tea and Moraccan orange juice and reading a day old issue of "The Guardian," which was the best I could find at the newspaper venders. I struck gold for a few hours when I found a cafe with an empty terrace overlooking the square. I had it all to myself for an hour before a horde of tourists discovered it and promptly invaded. In the afternoon, I rented a bicycle for forty dirhams and rode around the town for a bit.   

For dinner, I took a cab to Pizza Hut. I'm still an American, after all.

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Long before I left for Morocco, there has been one place I've been longing to visit more than any other. It's not Fez, Marrakech, Tangier or even Casablanca. No--it's a town of about 45,000 people in the Riff mountains called Chefcaouen.

Chefcoaouen's history is one of the most interesting of any city in Morocco, and probably all of Northern Africa. For four hundred years the city was xenophobic to the point of threatening any Christian who entered with death, though a large Jewish population was tolerated.

Spain took over Chefcaouen in the 1920s during the Riff wars, but the place had a Spanish feel to it long before. In fact the Spanish were surprised to discover that the Jewish population had been speaking an archaic  variant of Castillian long before they arrived.

Today Chefcaouen is known for three things: it's blue, narrow streets, its wool products, but most of all, for its hashish.  A tourist  walking down the street is likely to get dozens of offers to buy this important agricultural product. Adam counted eight hash offers in our first forty minutes walking around. Hey, it's a livin'!

Before I leave Morocco I hope to visit one of the hash farms near by and get a picture of me standing waste high in pot plants. I don't think they can arrest me for that.

Adam, Nick and I spent the day very lazily, first we walked the the ruined mosque overlooking the town and climbed into the minaret. We sat lazily there for a while. Later, we went down to the town and sat on a bridge and watched people wash their clothes in an area where the river had been diverted over slab of concrete. One kid kept pestering me for a dirham and I promised him I would pay him if he took ten dirhams from me and brought back a bottle of water.

Adam thought that the kid would just take my money but sure enough not five minutes later the kid returned with the water. Of course, then I had to pay him and his friends who claimed to be keeping an eye on him.

After that we got into a very interesting conversation with a traveling holy man from Pakistan. We couldn't understand most of what he was saying, but he seemed really emphatic about it.

I hope to come back to 'Caouen in the near future and maybe do the hike to nearby Tetouan. For now, another adventure calls me and I must be off to the south.

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Last weekend, the university made us make up classes on Saturday because we got days off for Eid. That ruled out any big travel plans for that week. Fortunately, the Roman ruins at Volubulis are not far from here, so we made it a day trip and got some cool pictures.

Volubulis is the largest Roman archeological site in Morocco, but other than that, I know nothing about its history.

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    This last weekend was the Eid Al-Fitr, the huge celebration that denotes the end of Ramadan. Though no cross-cultural comparison is quite accurate or satisfactory, it may be helpful to think of this of the Christmas of the Muslim world in terms of its size and importance.

    So important is the Eid that even Al Akhawayn University—which is stingy with days off—allowed us to escape classes for almost a week. Just about everyone had big plans; many went to Spain, Italy or other parts of Europe, taking advantage of cheap Ryan Air plane tickets from Casablanca. As for me, I knew weeks in advance that this weekend had Marrakech written all over it.

      Marrakech has long been one of Morocco’s biggest tourist attractions, and although it has become very touristy, it retains a totally unique atmosphere. I had always been meaning to get to Marrakech, but the long distance from Ifrane made it economical to wait for the big break.

    The journey had two legs: first it was necessary to cram in a taxi to Fez with five fellow student travelers, then a ten-hour red-eye train ride took us to our destination. One of the most exciting experiences of the weekend took place on this train ride. My friends drifted off after a couple hours but I, as always, I was unable to sleep while traveling, so I moved to a different cabin. That cabin, became crowded at the next stop, but I decided to try and talk with the other people in the cabin rather than move again.

    I was wearing my favorite shirt from Ecuador, and an older woman, taking me for a Spaniard, kept trying to talk to me in Spanish. I explained that I was an American exchange student and I was trying to learn to speak Arabic. I asked about her name, her place of residence, and her family. When she told me that she had three children but they had all died, I said “Allah Yerhamhum” (very poorly transliterated here) which is like saying, “May God rest their souls.” She seemed impressed that I knew that much and several times complimented me on my Arabic. 

     Several others joined in the conversation and for the first time of my life I was able to more or less maintain a conversation in Arabic for an hour. All this studying is paying off after all!

   When I finally stepped off the train, I was surprised at how hot it was. In Ifrane, the weather had definitely begun to cool down, so much so that it didn’t even occur to me to bring shorts. In Marrakech it was a balmy 90 degrees. At this point, the group of students splintered off into several smaller groups. Adam’s group went off to climb Toubkal, the largest peak in North Africa. I debated going with them, but decided it would be best to stay back and absorb the city at a more leisurely pace.

    We found an ultra cheap hotel room just outside the main square, called Djemaa el-Fna, and stayed there with Chris, a criminal justice student from Maryland. A day later, Hagan, a German exchange student, joined us.

    The Djemaa el-Fna really deserves an entry all by itself. The center of life in Marrakech is as big as a mall parking lot and full of life. The place is full of dancers, snake charmers, and street performers of all sorts. For three or five Dirham—less than a dollar, mind you—the juice vendors will give you a tall glass of the absolute best orange juice on the planet. There is also more adventurous cuisine. For instance, I tried a bowl of snails. These were not disguised from their original form in any way—the guy served us up a hot ladle and we got to work picking the meat out of the shells with a toothpick.

    At night the place really explodes. Several thousand people congregate to listen to Arabic storytellers, place bets on street fighters, watch magicians perform tricks, and feast on a variety of goodies. Among the entertainers was what must have been the worst Jackie Chan impersonator of all time. The guy walked around with his shirt off, flexing his muscles and screaming, with a strong Arabic accent: “Jackie Chan!” He kept backing up asking for room as if he was just about to do some karate stunt, but Chris and I watched him for half an hour and there was never any stunt. I guess the guy has to make a livin'.

    That's when I started to see the drawbacks of Marrakech. Spotting our two white faces in the crowd, the guy approached us and demand change. I had nothing but a two hundred Dirham bill, and I had no intentions of giving it to him. He told me he would give me change but I saw the paltry pile of coins he had by his lantern and I suspected he wasn’t going to give me 195 back. It took me about three minutes of yelling to extricate myself from the situation.

    Over the next several days, Chris, Hagan and I got to know the city of Marrakech. We explored its winding medinas, its gardens, its restaurants, and a few old ruined palaces. The Al-Badi Palace, with its dark dungeon and huge crumbling walls, was particularly impressive.

More than anything, Marrakech is a city of motorcycles. On the streets they outnumber cars two or three to one. In the square they zigzag at every conceivable angle, miraculously not crashing into one another. You can often see four people on two motorcycles driving while having a conversation and gesticulating emphatically to make some point or another. Once I saw a person in the back carrying a twelve-foot latter over his shoulder as the motorcycle screamed down the street.

    Sunday night I ate dinner with my room mate and his family. His father owns the largest rug shop I have seen in Morocco (and I have seen plenty) and he offered me some excellent rates on Berber wool blankets. I purchased a twin bed sized blanket for the equivalent of 120 dollars. He offered to sell me another one at only half the price and I plan to swing by and pick it up later in the semester.

     I remember hearing at the orientation that Moroccans take it as a compliment when houseguests eat a lot of food, so I tried to eat everything they could throw at me. We started with shish kabobs, followed by at least half of a chicken, followed by a huge bowl of fruit. I kept up to the best of my ability. 

     Meanwhile, my room mate and his father were captivated by the soccer game between Morocco and Cameroon. At halftime things looked pretty bleak for Morocco, as Camaroon led 2-0. Then Morocco scored a goal! One last goal ended the game on a tie. Morocco’s team will live to see another game this year. Even if they had lost, Morocco’s team would have the consolation of knowing that they live in the better country. 

        & nbsp; On our final day away from Ifrane, the three of us decided to skip town and see the countryside. We had considered taking a tour bus but instead opted to pay for a taxi and go on our own, thus avoiding the horde of flannel shirt wearing retired European couples who plagued the city. 

        & nbsp; It was a hazy around Marrakech, so the mountains sprang up rather suddenly. Within an hour of driving it was hard to believe we were in the same country. All around us was scenic beauty and quaint Berber villages. We found a good starting base in one of the villages and hiked to a small waterfall. The sheer vastness of the surrounding mountains is difficult to describe or capture in a picture. The last time I remember that feeling of awe was in the Ecuadorian Andes. As much as I loved bumming around Marrakech, the change of pace was welcome. 

    Today I just returned from the second worst bus trip of my life. The ride from Marrakech to Ifran was seven hours long. The last hour and a half of the trip covered some of the most winding mountain road I've ever been on. Hardly did 100 meters on the road pass without the bus taking some huge arc to the left or the right. I was starting to feel the effects of motion sickness. The Moroccan teenager next to Hagan lost his lunch, filling the bus with the lovely aroma of gastric juices for the last hour. 

       Over all, a very good trip. Already I have made plans for two more weekend adventures: one involving the Riff mountains and the ancient city Chefchaouen in the north and the other involving the Todra Gorge and the Sahara desert in the south. For now, though, midterms loom menancingly, so I guess it's time to hit the books.

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If there is one city in Morocco that conjures images of romance and foreign excitement, it’s Casablanca, or as the locals call it, Dar Baida. Perhaps my verdict is tainted by the brevity of my visit, but I think the city is just a tad overrated.

The Lonely Planet book on Morocco described Casablanca as more modern and progressive than cities like Fez and Marrakech. Unfortunately “modern” and “progressive” don’t translate into “clean” and friendly. The streets are littered with trash, the kids are prone to beating the hell out of each other, and the taxi drivers are shameless cheats. Then again, I’ve never been to New York.

I arrived to Casablanca last Friday evening, after taking a train that offered wonderful views of the hilly Moroccan countryside. We arrived after dark and found a reasonably priced hotel after fending off a particularly nasty taxi driver who followed us, insisting we had underpaid him. As the hotel clerk was distributing keys and signing us all in I realized I had left my passport on my bed. This posed a problem because, according to the law, foreigners may not hotel rooms without proving they are in Morocco legally. The easy way to do this is by showing the passport stamp.

The difficult way is going to the police station to get a note of permission, and this is what I, and my friend Zack, had to do. Seeing the inside of a Moroccan police headquarters building made the experience worth it. Zack, who speaks functional, if not eloquent, Darija Arabic, explained our situation to one of the guards. After only a twenty minute wait, an officer came to escort us through the door, up an elevator and to his desk.

The building looked oddly abandoned. The officer took us to a room that was the size of a small cafeteria but empty except for a desk with a computer and a huge pile of passport papers, in neat tied bales on the floor. I joked that I had just stumbled into the Ministry of Love headquarters. Despite being a partier, Zack is a learned dude, and he laughed at my Orwell reference.   

We handed the officer our International Student ID cards. For thirty minutes he plugged away at the most archaic computer system I have ever seen, the screen all black and the words appearing in florescent green characters. Finally he produced the note and we were on our way.

The next day Bryan and I got up earlier than the others and walked several miles to the Hassan II Mosque to catch the morning tour. People here claim that it is the third largest mosque in the world, lagging behind the ones in Mecca and Medina. I, however, know that is false because I saw what surely must have been the largest mosque in the world from a Black Hawk while flying over Baghdad. Whatever its exactly numerical placement of the Hassan II Mosque, we can all agree that it’s freaking huge.

 Named after the late former king of Morocco, Hassan II Mosque can accommodate 20,000 worshipers inside and, during Ramadan, another 20,000 outside. At night, the minaret projects a powerful laser in the direction of Mecca. One of the other students put it perfectly when she said, “That’s a whole lot of holy.”

Visitors are required to take off their shoes before entering. The guide informed us that with as many as twenty thousand people taking off their shoes to pray, lost footwear is a major problem. There were a few other facts interesting enough to be mentioned: that the mosque has the only white marble pillars in the world; that the ceiling can be opened on clear nights; that all the materials in the mosque, except for the chandeliers, came from Morocco.

By the time the mosque tour was over, Bryan and I found ourselves quite hungry. I thought in a city of 3.8 million people it would be easy to find someplace open for breakfast during Ramadan. Yet we found street after street closed. We met up with the rest of our group at noon and got some grub at the overpriced but atmospheric Rick’s American Café, where we ran into another group of Americans. One of them, whose name was either Kelsi or Kelsey, said she used to live in Pocatello and was related to the Cotant family. It is indeed a small world after all! (I hate that cliche, but here it is hard to get around it.)

Later we hit the beach. The weather was nice and I paid twenty five Dirhams to chill in a chair under an umbrella and read Dostoyevsky. Eventually my friends convinced me to get in the water.  I was surprised to find that the waves in Casa were even larger than Montanito, Ecuador, where movie stars go to serf.

Unfortunately, the water was not very clean and bits of plastic kept bumping into me. A little more environmental care would do that town some good.

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 Shoes accumulate in piles outside of the mosque while worshippers go in to pray.

Locals sit around at cafes as usual, but tea, coffee and snacks are notably absent from the tables.

The windows on the minaret in the middle of Al Akhawayn University stay lit well into the night.

         The telltale signs of Ramadan are everywhere. On Friday, the first day of fasting, a fellow student and I sat in front of the cafeteria and joked about how many people found the deprivation of cigarettes harder to bear than the deprivation of food and water. Moroccan men have been known sit with an unlit cigarettes between their lips and a lighter in their hands in preparation for the magic moment when they would finally be allowed to set their cancer sticks ablaze. I imagine many a cigarette is smoked to the filter before the sound of “Allahu Akbar” has finished resonating.

 As I mentioned earlier, many foreign students have opted to fast. A few are still going strong on the fourth day. I tried it one day for the sake of solidarity. I was hungry, thirsty and tired—what else can I report? Having experienced this once, I see no reason to continue. Other students have given good reasons: it makes you sympathetic with the poor; it’s a good way to test your self discipline; it makes the Ftour at the end of the day more worthwhile.

All true. However, for myself, I know I have the discipline to fast the entire month if I wanted to. What I lack is the desire. Already, I’ve caught some of the foreign students boasting of how many days they’ve gone. This seems egotistical and contrary to the purpose of the fast. Having been in the military I feel no need to put my self discipline to the test and I see no reason to torture myself. Therefore, I have chosen not to fast from here on out.      

The night before Ramadan started, hundreds of students gathered in the auditorium for a free concert. What we didn’t know then (and what I still didn’t know during the concert) was that the performance was by none other than the famous Moroccan singer Jdwan. The music was, like all Moroccan music I have heard, upbeat and rich with layers of percussion. Soon students rose from their seats to dance in front of the stage.  

Two culturally informative events took place at the concert. The first was seeing Moroccan girls dance. You’d think girls who have their hair covered  traditionally would be conservative in their dancing, but I assure you this is not necessarily the case.

 The second culturally informative event happened when a male student took my hands and, without warning, started dancing with me. I remember being told that in Morocco it is normal for men to hold hands and dance together, but that didn’t make the situation any less awkward for me. Soon the poor guy saw I was not enjoying myself and found someone else to dance with.

Sorry, my Moroccan friends, this is one cultural barrier I’m not going to overcome for some time. The truth is the possibility of being close to cute girls has always been the only thing in the universe that could induce me to make a fool of myself on the dance floor. I’m sure it’s my loss.

After overdoing last week with my trip to Tangier and Gibraltar, I decided to set my aims a little lower this week. On Saturday, after making up the classes we missed because of the election day, I went with a few other students to the nearby town of Azrou, which looks about the size of Pocatello. One of the shop owners invited us to his apartment for cookies and tea, even though he was still fasting. We had a great time and I got some nice pictures, which I have already posted. It just goes to show that a red eye train ticket isn’t a pre-requisite for travel fun.