Morocco: People & Patterns

A hip shot from the Casablanca Medina to the Mosque

I love watching people. So do the men in Morocco. All of the cafes & tea shops have their chairs on one side of the table facing the sidewalk. The men sit here and watch. If women come or couples they are usually escorted to an upstairs seating where no eyes will pry on them. In the west if a strange man has been staring at a woman and she catches his eye he will immediately drop his gaze. Not so in Morocco. As a result the men stare greedily at all the women and the women look at no one. It gave us the sense that women are judged responsible for men not being able to control themselves rather then men for for not having that control. We sat among the men on the sidewalk. In other places that we have both been this would have been reacted to negatively and we would have been shooed away but here, although they clearly found it odd, they tolerated us and we were able to watch the streets too although we were careful to never meet the eyes of the men sitting near us.

A cat & an Arabic sign. We found that the relative health of the cats were a pretty good indicator of whether or not we wanted to stick around in any one place. That and our golden rule of travel: If there are no women & children around it's likely not safe for you to be there particularly by yourself. We only visited one place like that and the cats were sad to see. It was on the coast and it was clear that at another time of year it might be a wonderful place but we did not linger.

A yellow door! Look at those colors! The house, the door, and the sari.

Women walking to the mosque in Casablanca.

Woodwork. This work is gorgeous and has been used liberally int the newest and bestest and biggest mosque in Morocco. We quietly but cynically commented to each other "Oh, that's what happened to all the large cedar trees in the Atlas Mountains" as we had only seen one dead specimen of the sizes they had once reached.

I love this contrast with the Mosque on the left and the apartments on the right. The Mosque is a grand piece of architecture and amazing artistry. Of course, the story of the Mosque that is presented to the public mostly leaves out the fact that it was built over the city's largest slum and that thousands of people were displaced without compensation to make way for it.

More mosaics.

Look at all those satellite dishes!

A most scrumptious and traditional meal.

Thursday Morning Antics of a Drowned Rat

I bring this brief pause from the travelogue... I still want to share more about Morocco & then there's still the Netherlands but my morning has taken my thoughts elsewhere. Besides, I have a scrumptious picture of a Moroccan meal which, of course, I left on my memory stick at home today and it has disrupted my plans for the next post. So after this message we will be back to our scheduled programing.

And now - a brief moment of crankiness (not over anything life shattering or even life altering but a little mundane morning thing). It's pouring down snow out today. That means although its mostly frozen it lands as wetness on humans and slush on the streets, big fat flakes the size of mice and just at the freezing point. It's cold and gray and makes you wish for nothing other then to curl up in front of a warm fire with a hot beverage and dream of that hot weather in Morocco. On my way to work this morning, as usual, I was bicycling, I blew a tire. Blew it all over the place in the middle of the road.

I heard a funny noise and then felt a lurch. Naturally I stopped to see what the trouble was but I encountered difficulty as a) wasn't exactly light enough out to see b) my glasses were so covered with rain that I couldn't see through them and c) when I took my glasses off I couldn't really see either. What I could see was a smear of green goop which usually coats the inside of the tire tube, and I could see that my actual tire was no longer on the wheel rim. So, I attempted to take said wheel off the bike so I could at least get the tire & the donut tube off as they were currently caught up in the braking system making even pushing the bicycle a no go. So here I am kneeling in a puddle of slush with water streaming down my face in rivulets trying to get the lever to move but it won't because it's frozen solid. I'm off to plan B which is to use the bungee cords I have on my bike to attempt to secure the said tire & tube out of the way of the brakes and the rim so that I might be able to push it the rest of the way to work. I am successful in this and begin to push. Let me say that pushing a bicycle in half a foot of slush is a lot harder then pedaling through it.

It feels like a loooonnng way to work and I keep hoping that some co-worker will drive by and take pity on me but of course, I take the scenic route which my co-workers, in their rush to work, probably avoid. Finally I get to the location of the covered bike rack at work. I take off my dripping wool hat and my glasses and wipe the water from my face. Then I get back to work on the lever. I grunt, I make loud noises, you know, the kinds of noises you do to put a little extra umph behind your arms. I notice a few co-workers scurrying past, I'm sure they're all terrified to come too close and after all, they just want to hop from their nice dry cars to their nice dry offices and avoid any lunatics in the parking lot. I do succeed in getting the lever to move finally and remove the rear wheel. I park the bike in the rack and next to it the tire and the rear wheel frame and lock it all together, the tube I take with me and then, with my glasses still clenched between my teeth I make my way to the door. My colleagues comment, as I walk determinedly to my cubicle that I look a little wet, a little like a drowned rat.

On dropping my sopping wet outer gear and wishing I had a towel for my hair which is wetter then if I had taken 10 showers this morning I inspect the tube. It has been a spectacular blow out and will not be repairable (and of course, the nearest open bike shop is in Los Anchorage). My male colleagues all gather round to look at the tire and make comments, they laugh at my story, they make useful suggestions as to who might have an extra tire lying around of that size, they suggest that I am utterly crazy for biking in this weather (except for one co-worker who actually passed me on his bike who comments "You didn't look like you were in trouble or I would have stopped"). It is the female colleagues who, after the male colleagues are done laughing and review the events, quietly offer me & my beleaguered bike a ride home in the evening.

Morocco: The Atlas Mountains

You didn't think I was done showing you pictures of Morocco, did you? I fully intended on posting more last night when my jet lag finally caught up to me and I fell fast asleep at 5pm on my couch and it was all I could do to drag myself to bed at 9 when I was awoken by a distinct lack of circulation. Here I present to you the Atlas Mountains.

The village of Baihlil

Olives for sale! Oh, delicious, scrumptious olives! And the only thing that didn't leave your teeth feeling furred with sugar after eating them.

Our gracious host in Baihlil showing off the pride of his hearth, the pounded silver dishware. Interestingly enough the man only spoke Arabic and German and so, after stuttering through my French (in which my ears are better then my tongue), I suddenly found myself in full communication in a language I did not expect to find in such a tiny little village.

A donkey in the protected Azrou Forest. So strange to see donkeys and apes side by side (unfortunately the pictures documenting the event are not all that good).

Man traveling along side the road.

The formal entrance to a house that is dug into the cliff sides in the village of Baihlil.

Barbary Ape mum and two kids.

Village mosque.

The entrance gate to the village of Baihlil with men chatting at its entrance.

The Azrou Forest which looks for all the world like a Ponderosa Pine forest for those of you who know them. But these trees are cedar and larch. Unfortunately the giant trees of ore have most been harvested for fancy woodwork in the Mosques.

An Atlas Mountain view.

There is one particularly funny story about our Atlas Mountain trip. We wanted to go to Bab Merba (or lake Merba) to see the famous bird life there (after all we are -ologists). On arriving at the lake we started to laugh. Our taxi driver smiled nervously at us. There was no water in the lake. Not a drop. Sheep and cattle grazed across it although it was mostly devoid of plant life as well. Nobody had bothered to tell us that the lake is only full of water in the rainy season - if we wanted to go to the lake well, they would take us. We walked across the lake enjoying the sounds of the Berber tongue which flitted to our ears through the autumn colored trees (another surprise) from the sheep herders.

Morocco: the city of Fes

We took the opportunity to stay in a Riat, an old home of formerly wealthy occupants, within the Medina walls in Fes.

This pool in a Madrassa uses the laws of physics to make you think which ever end you are standing at is shallower then the far end although the pool is of exactly the same depth through out.

A "hip shot" of women walking in the street. In places where I didn't want to call attention to my camera I simply placed it by my hip and took random shots. I was suprised by how many actually turned out and weren't simply of odd pieces of ground.


Slippers in a leather shop above the fabled tanneries



The old walls of the city, crumbling now

Overlooking the leather dying pits and tanneries

An apothecary, Moroccan style

The blindingly white Jewish graveyard outside Fes city walls

Looking at the Medina from outside the walls

The inside of a carpet shop - beautiful carpets but no thank you, I don't want to buy three so I can sell two when I return home no matter how good a price I get for them. Here I patiently looked through the ledgers of the men selling carpets as he tried to find the names of other Alaskans he had sold to. Contacts are everything here.

A patient donkey on a street in the Medina

A window to weaving

Morocco: in words

Here are some snippets of my impressions of Morocco - pictures are coming, I promise. (Speaking of which, does anyone know how to make a mosaic of different images using Photoshop? I'd love to create one for you, but I haven't figured out how yet.)

First off let me say that Morocco, as I find is typical with many non-western nation, immediately penetrates all of your senses the minute you leave the plane. These places are vibrant with smells and sounds and colors, there is a sort of immediacy in everything that lacks in the more subtle, more contained and manner-focused western societies. I will try and share with you my impressions but I am sure that it will only begin to capture the feeling of the place.

Moroccan smells: donkey dung, jasmine oil, mint tea, baked earth, hyacinth flowers, tannery pits, new leather, fish, dust, smoke from the pottery kilns, the occasional smell of sewage less then expected, the smell of sheep that have been in the desert and often long without water

Moroccan sounds: the buzz of the muezzin early in the morning, the sound of the shuttle from a weaving loom, pounding on metal as artisans created the famous pounded silver, laughter, friends calling out to one another, tinny taxi horns, Arabic, French, and the clicking noises of the Berber like a bird in the brush, the hooves of donkey feet in narrow stone passages, loud shouting of men through the night (and how, I wonder, do they manage to get up for the 5am prayer?)

Moroccan visual: narrow, labyrinth streets, tall buildings, colorful mosaics & clothing, women dressed in gorgeous saris, leather works, pointy toes leather slippers, walls & gates to Medinas and around ancient cities, the dry Atlas mountains with onions piled under stone crates, Barbary apes hanging out with donkeys in a forest that seems too dry to be a home for apes, tiny steps and narrow passageways, homes dug out of the earth with put upon door fronts, symbolic colors: green for holiness, blue doors for Mohammad, red for Fatima, plastic bags strewn across the landscape as far as the eye can see, men holding hands or walking arm in arm down the street even a couple of policemen walking down the street hand in hand

Moroccan tastes: almost everything is sweet in Morocco with the exception of the olives which come with every meal. It is no wonder that so few Moroccans seem in possession of good teeth.

Highlights/lands of Scotland

Here are some of my impressions from a fall visit to Scotland in the company of dear friends.

Scotland visual: old stone buildings with brightly painted doorways and stovepipe rows, rolling hills of green with fat sheep, mossy crumbling old stone walls, instructional signs that take the most amount of words possible to convey the desired meaning, old graveyards, graceful outer buildings often transformed less gracefully inside, loch's and mist, swirling autumn leaves

Scotland smells: wet earth, slight fragrances of fire smoke and the occasional coal briquette, ale & meat dishes (such as haggis), the smell of damp wool, peat and loam, the smell of the first frost

Scotland sounds: the trill of the European robin (which is nothing like the American one), the dripping of rain or dew, genial laughter from the local bakery, warm woolen Scottish brogue.

And now, for a sampling of pictures.....

The village of Killn

View from Stirling Castle

View from the Munro Ben Lawrs

Old mill and falls in the village of Killn

Scottish street

Red doors

Blue doors

With S having bagged the Munro (I'm on the left)

This also happens to be the Munro on which I lost my spectacles

The streets of Aberdeen

Back in Alaska

I'm back! Admittedly, a little later then planned due to a 19 hour delay of my first flight resulting in subsequent delays there after. I had a fabulous trip and I promise to tell you about it in subsequent posts! Promise! I came home to a snowstorm - the kind that makes it hard to tell if you're even moving when you drive in it. The Diresputables are more then pleased to see me back and I them although we all have some schedule adjusting to do. My friend who watched them works a swing shift and so in some senses, they too have been in a different time zone. I always find that my stomach is the last to finally recover from jet lag. It wakes me up demanding to know why I missed an important meal and refuses to eat when it's actually meal time. I forced myself to stay up until 9pm last night, going cross-eyed from the effort and then managed to sleep most of the night although I still rose all together too early for a weekend after too little sleep.

While I was away the lovely Gill of Gill's Jottings awarded me my first ever blogger award! I was very touched by her comment about my blog "Wayfarer scientista who teaches me daily that you are never too old to learn, a fascinating blog!" THANK YOU GILL ! She awards me the community blogger award which celebrates people who reach out and make the blogging community a better one.


In my turn I award:

JEN of One Plus Two. While I suspect Jen has more then a few of these awards around she was the first to welcome me to blogger land and always leaves comments and has a wonderful blog. She is also the instigator of the "Just Posts" for a just world.

SKOOKUMCHICK of Feminist Engineer. She is the instigator of the Scientiae Carnival which has allowed me to meet many interesting researchers, expanding my community beyond that of the researchers I run into directly in my own field.

ATHENA DANOY of Sipping Hot Chocolate. Athena's blog was one of the first I regularly visited and I love seeing the world through her camera lens. When I first commented on her blog I was so delighted that she replied to me.

MAD HATTER of A Mad Tea Party . Mad has taken topics that I have discussed on other blogs and written new posts about them and has made for very lively dialogue that is much appreciated.