Blue

In November, it gets cold in Morocco. Well, I guess cold is relative since the daily high is 65 degrees and I don’t have to wear a jacket as long as the sun’s up, but let’s not allow the truth to get in the way. In November, I entered the final full month I’ll spend in the country. There are still around five weeks left in the program, but the last two will see our cohort traveling to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey before heading home. I have never been so excited to eat pork in my entire life. In November, I traveled to some cities in the north of Morocco and visited the Spanish enclave Sebta (Ceuta). This recent trip will be the focus of today’s blog, and it really was such a fun time that I hope I can do it justice. Also, if you’re paying close attention to the schedule, you’ll notice that I missed the entry that I promised I would write in the last post. In my infinite wisdom, I neglected to bring my computer with me on the trip, so I was unable to crank out any writing. I considered trying to make it up, but I think we’re just going to take the loss on this one. Truthfully, I was sick for half that week regardless, so there’s really not a lot that happened. Anyway, now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks. 

Typically, BYU’s intensive Arabic program takes place in Jordan, which is roughly the size of New Jersey. Morocco, in contrast, is a lot larger—more akin to Texas. This means that we don’t have the luxury of investigating every nook and cranny on our excursions outside the capital. If you remember, our previous trip took us south, while this one saw us pick and choose a few places to visit in the northern reaches of the country. This first vacation was fun, but some of what we did left a little to be desired; however, I can confidently say that this latest excursion was an unequivocal home run. The trip began on Tuesday with us boarding a bus to travel to Meknes. I am, personally, a big fan of road trips, and so I whiled away the hours with music and log-sawing (if my future fiancé reads this, it’s a joke—I don’t snore), while people around me watched recorded football games or discussed intelligent topics of conversation with one another (losers). In my usual fashion, I hadn’t showered for several days (another joke, darling), so no one sat by me, which was nice because it allowed me to stretch out a little bit. However, because I grew up on the stupid farm, I also parked myself on the sunny side of the bus, so it did get warm. A couple hours later, we had made it to Meknes and stopped to have some lunch. The lunch was tasty, if not a little scant, and only one person had to be shanked with an EpiPen, so things were right as rain. Okay, so actually that was the first incident involving any sort of anaphylaxis, which is kind of a miracle since roughly half of the cohort is allergic to gluten, or nuts, or peppers. Well, after that excitement we got back aboard the bus and journeyed a little farther to Volubilis, an ancient Roman ruin on the outskirts of Meknes. I have never visited any sort of Roman ruin on this scale, so I was ecstatic for this portion of the trip. Volubilis is incredibly well preserved, with pillars, arches, mosaics, and other portions of various structures all in good condition—at least for something that’s a couple thousand years old. Our guided tour took a couple of hours, and I probably could have spent at least one more, but we had other places to be. The final leg of our journey that day took us to Fes, where we’d be spending the next couple of nights. Arriving at our riad (a traditional Morocan house converted to a hotel), we checked in and got situated. Our riad was located several miles out of town in a residential area, and our group were the only ones staying there (apart from one poor guy who probably really hates Americans now). Furthermore, my good luck with hotels continued from the last trip. I wasn’t blessed with my own room this time, but I did get put in a palatial accommodation that slept eleven, even though there were only four of us (check out the photo album for a picture of that and other highlights). After giving an MTV Cribs-style tour to what seemed like everyone in our group, I ran over with some other people to the closest hanoot to buy water. When I returned, it was about time for dinner, which was served on-site in the riad. The meal consisted of Moroccan food, which everyone is getting pretty tired of at this point, but at least it was well-made Moroccan food. Afterwards, we walked to the nearest American embassy (McDonald’s) where I flexed my elitist muscles by refusing to buy any soft serve ice cream from Ronald (in reality, I was in the midst of a no-sugar kick—read on to see how long that lasted). Post-McDonald’s, a couple friends and I navigated creepy older men in the parking lot of a grocery store to buy more supplies before hustling back to the riad to get out of the path of a pro-Palestinian protest, which was bearing down on us. To me, it seems like there are better places to be politically active than on a frontage road in Fes’ equivalent of Cottonwood Heights, but then again, I’m not really a grassroots guy, so what do I know? When I returned, I discovered our absurd room had been converted into a movie theater showing a screening of Ever After for a few members of our group, but I have the gift of being able to sleep pretty much anywhere, so I just stretched out on the other side of the room and went to sleep. 

The morning of the next day got off to a rough start for me. For one, I woke up with my head feeling like I had slept on a pillow trained by Cus D’Amato, and, for another, the water in my shower was so cold it would have made Jack Frost look around for his mittens. Still, after slamming a couple ibuprofen and doing a few bumps of cocaine, I was feeling good as new. After breakfast, we loaded up into the ever-present tour bus and headed to downtown Fes. Our first stop was some gate that I can’t remember the name of and don’t care to Google—I was more interested in the guy touching up the Arabic engravings with white paint. Next, we headed over to a local pottery factory to inspect how local artisans craft handmade wares and zellige tile furniture. Each piece was stunning but also ludicrously priced. After this, we headed into the old Medina for a tour, which was equal parts fascinating and predictable. On the one hand, Fes’ Medina looks pretty much like every other Medina I’ve been in, but there are some neat details that set it apart. For instance, the Medina is called the Silent City because from vantage points outside the city, the streets and populace are completely hidden—all that’s visible is an overwhelming mass of ancient buildings. However, step into the Medina, and you discover a maze of over 9000 streets and alleys, some of which are so narrow that a bodybuilder would have a difficult time walking down them. Fes’ Medina is also the oldest continuously inhabited medieval city in the world and is sometimes called “the Mecca of the West.” Anyway, our tour took us through a number of these alleys, and we stopped periodically to look around the Medina’s madrasa and a textile business that specialized in beautiful scarves and traditional Moroccan clothing. At some point we broke for lunch (Moroccan food again) and to get off our feet for a while. Our Medina tour concluded with a visit to Fes’ tannery, which is what the city is probably best known for. At the entrance to the tannery, we were given sprigs of mint to hold up to our noses if the stench from the tanning process became unbearable. I was apprehensive, but it turned out that the tannery didn’t smell much worse than a farm, so I didn’t really need the natural air freshener. Still, the smells of the tannery proved to be difficult for those with a Keener sense of smell than mine (this is, unironically, the most clever joke I have written in any of these posts so far. I’m not going to explain it here, but ask me about it sometime). I enjoyed the tannery, but I didn’t buy anything from the shop because I’m a person who likes to realize his missed opportunities after it’s too late to do anything about them. After the tannery, our tour concluded, and we were given the chance to do some shopping in the Medina before going back to the riad for the evening. I walked around with a couple of friends and bought some souvenirs, but nothing too crazy. Finally, around 6:00, the bus pulled up, and we rode it back to our hotel. The rest of the evening passed uneventfully for me, and I slept much better that night. 

Day three dawned, and with it the opportunity to learn from yesterday’s mistakes. The first one I rectified was waiting a little later to shower so the hot water heater could warm up. Truthfully, I have no idea if this was the problem, but the people who showered later the day prior had had warm water. My shower still wasn’t hot, but at least I didn’t have to keep turning the water off to stop myself from hyperventilating. After a shower, shave, and breakfast, I packed up my bag because it was time to leave Fes. Our journey for this day was taking us to Chefchaouen, which was ranked as the 8th most beautiful city in the world at one point, though my favorite piece of trivia is that China constructed an entire fake version of the city during COVID so that its citizens wouldn’t leave to visit the real thing. However, before we made it to Chefchaouen, we had to navigate a four-hour bus ride. Luckily, the trip was broken up with a stop in the middle of nowhere to eat lunch. The fried seafood platter I was served was loaded with sardines, sole, and questionable pieces of calamari, but the shrimp fritter tasted like manna from Heaven. The rest of our trip that day took us through winding roads in the Rif mountains and finally spit us out in the charming city of Chefchaouen. Our first stop was a hotel where 95% of our group would be staying, and which was located about a twenty-minute walk from the Medina. The rest of the group, six guys, were being taxied to a different hotel on the other side of town because the main hotel had run out of rooms. I was part of this second group and was truthfully a little disappointed that I wasn’t with my friends in the bigger hotel, but my tune quickly changed when our professor informed the six of us that our hotel was much nicer. He was right, and we knew it the moment we were served tea and pastries in the lobby while waiting to check in. It was a wonderful treat, and so far my hotel luck had remained intact. Still, we didn’t have much time to enjoy our luxurious room because we had to hustle over to rendezvous with the rest of the group at a prearranged meeting point. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it in time to gather with the main group, but I was lucky enough to run into a couple of my favorite people and proceeded to wander the Medina with them. Despite the lower temperature and the rain, walking through the blue streets of Chefchaouen was one of my favorite parts of the study abroad so far. There were so many charming alleys and shops to peek in, and I had some good talks with the people I was with. We ate dinner in a restaurant in the Medina, and afterwards I walked back with the five guys I was staying with to get an early night and enjoy our hotel. My two roommates both took showers, while I turned on the 1999 version of The Mummy, courtesy of a generous woman named Lynne who had forgotten to sign out of her Prime Video account. The movie was bad, but it was raining outside, and my bed was so comfortable that I felt cozy nonetheless. 

Thanks to my five-star hotel bed, I slept the sleep of the dead and woke up feeling more rested than I had in a while. Our meeting time with the main group was a little later than usual, so we all had time to shower and enjoy the nice hotel breakfast; however, there was one little wrinkle in our morning, which was that we each had to find a way to fit most of our stuff into one bag. We were headed to the border of Morocco to cross into the Spanish enclave of Sebta, and we were only allowed to have a solitary backpack with us to streamline the border crossing process. So, I had to pack my backpack with all my essentials from my bigger duffel, as well as some other items that I had offered to mule for some people who didn’t have spacious luggage. After we’d taken care of that, we made our way to the rest of the group and loaded up the bus. Our two-hour journey to the border was interrupted only by a stop at a Carrefour supermarket, which miraculously sold Reese’s peanut butter cups (remember the no-sugar kick?), and we made it to the crossing ahead of schedule. Anticipating long lines, we were pleasantly surprised by the lack of other travelers and also unpleasantly horrified by the lackadaisical attitude of the customs officials at the border. Seriously, if you want to smuggle things into Europe, take them through Sebta. Coming out on the other side of the processing facility, it was slightly weird to think we were technically in Europe because we were still on the continent of Africa, but it soon became obvious that Sebta was nothing like Morocco. Everything in the enclave was just so much cleaner and more organized. The paving stones on the sidewalks didn’t fit together like they were cut by a stonemason without any thumbs, and the streets were not full of trash. Moreover, we had grown so used to a cash economy that suddenly having tap-to-pay was alien, and the feeling of Sebta was just…friendly…in a way that Morocco is not. It was also surprising to me how little Arabic was being spoken. Everything seemed to be in Spanish, and so I was once again looking down the barrel of being in a country where I had absolutely no idea what was happening. My afternoon in Sebta was so lovely, but I’m not going to go into much detail. I had the chance to visit the beach, eat a real hamburger, look at some European architecture, and down two pints of Haagen-Daz ice cream (the no-sugar diet had become a sugar-only diet). It was also fun to see Christmas decorations strung up along the streets and being advertised in shop windows. Sebta was awesome, and I would love to go back and explore it a little more. We spent just one night there, and the next morning we packed, ate breakfast, and cleared out. We crossed the border again without incident, getting our visas renewed for the remainder of our time here in Morocco. The last leg of the trip was a four-hour bus ride south to Rabat, which I again enjoyed immensely. Finally, at about 5:30pm on Saturday, we made it back home. 

Certainly, my trip to the north of Morocco was one to remember. I had a rewarding time doing so many unique and fulfilling activities with my friends, and I wouldn’t trade many of the memories I made for anything. But this blog post is long, I’m exhausted, and it’s late, so I’m going to call it here. Thank you so much for reading and showing an interest in me and this crazy journey I’m on—I appreciate it! I hope you all have satisfying week, and I’ll see you next Sunday for what will be the first of my final three entries for the Morocco portion of this blog. Until then, take care!