Morocco - 1

Hi from the middle of the Atlantic ocean, by the coast of Africa! (How many times does one get to say that greeting!)

Quick update: Left morocco, arriving in Ghana soon and now dying with work. Not that I should care since I’m on a pass/fail and I WILL pass but somehow (annoyingly) I care! :( stupid singaporean system!

So Morocco was FANTASTIC. Its bustling with activities, with horrible traffic (that does not rival Mumbai though), extremely friendly and chatty merchants and AMAZING food. I thought Spanish food was amazing, but Moroccan food definitely ups that!

So, on the first day, after all the diplomatic briefing, preport and stuff some of us just walked around the old Medina in Casablanca. The medina was amazing. The sites, sounds of stuff were all so wonderful. Everywhere, the merchants would call you to come in and there was amazing hospitality - well partly cause they wanted you to shop with them! There was this one shop where we entered and the moment we entered, the shop keeper turned to Dan and asked him “5000 camels, I keep her” pointing at me and then he raised it saying “10000 camels”. And Dan actually thought about it, in a weird way. I knew the shopkeeper was joking but it was an insight into the culture, it was a place where women could be traded like commodities, their price in camels (though camels are very expensive, a baby costs about $600). We went upstairs and saw the rugs, vases, etc and the guy just wouldn’t leave. He kept coming back and asking for me. In the end when leaving the shop, he was like “stay and marry my son, he a good boy. No smoke, no drink, just do sports. I give you camels to stay!” and started yanking on my arm while Candice held on to my body and pulled me the other side. It was a funny incident, because I knew he was joking and in no way possible the trade would ever be made. So after that incident, we continued walking around the medina and random guys would just go “Indian, so pretty” or “Indian, Sri Lankan!” or cat whistle at me. People would come up and sing Hindi Bollywood songs to me. Its amazing to see the pervasiveness of Bollywood in Northern Africa. Who would have thought right? This is truly globalization of cultures! GLOCULTURALIZATION :D

The mosque at Casablanca is the 3rd largest mosque in the world. The largest being in Mecca, the next is Saudi and this the third. It was opened in 1993 and alot of it is made through recycled materials and stuff. Apparently, the mosque in Mecca is supposed to be the biggest mosque in the world, so when Kings wanted to create a huge mosque, they would go to Mecca to build a few more minarets so their mosque would be huge, but smaller than the one in Mecca. Interesting! The mosque at night was breath-taking. From the top of the mosque, were 2 VERY powerful green laser beams that could be seen from such a distance. The amount of power required to power the laser beams must be enormous! There’s this huge wall at the side leading up the mosque. We didn’t quite know what it was so our theory was that it was the walls to the city years ago and since then the city had expanded, but the walls never came down! The walk to the mosque was very interesting. The mosque is this 200 million dollar project and just outside the mosque are slums, with really poor people. Now, the slums aren’t the slums I’ve seen in India. These are more like shoddy housing, but could be considered slums nonetheless. It was amazing to see how such a spectacular monument could be surrounded by slums and poor people and that even though millions of people come to visit the mosque, no one seems to have bothered to do anything to the slums situated just outside the mosque. It may be my ignorance, but that was just so puzzling! The king of Morocco is known to be the poor man’s king and is supposed to do alot for the poor people in the city, so its definitely an intriguing thought. Also, on the way to the mosque, we saw alot of children play outside. They were playing all sorts of street games like soccer, etc. But interestingly, all the kids playing outside were boys! I never once saw girls playing on the streets!

An interesting encounter on our walk to the mosque was that a group of boys were playing and one of them threw a tomato at us which hit Megan’s leg. Some of the boys just ran in the other direction, one of the boys just pointed “them not me” and pointed at the group running away and a lady, probably related seemed to apologize for the reaction. Megan was pretty furious at the incident and Brian was saying how much kids are a pain while I was just laughing. They were kids, being kids! There were playing outside, being mischievous. How much of this do we see back home? I love the site of children playing out at night. Its so heartwarming to know that there are kids who have fun without the television and video games and other gadgets and technology. That they are kids out there who use “primitive” and bask in old-age games. I grew up playing normal games and my parents grew up playing these street games and I know the joys of them. It pains me to think my kids would never be able to enjoy these games in their time. So, even if a tomato hits me, I will smile thinking of how these kids are being kids and embrace their mischiefs.

After the mosque, some of us went to do hookah at this little bar. We ordered a hookah and orange juice. The custom here is to really sit down and enjoy every meal, to not have to rush through them all. So after you order, it takes a long time to come. Its not poor service, its just that there is no need to hurry! So we sat down and we were talking about life and other things in general. The manager of the bar sits down and chats with us. He talks about the priest in Florida wanting to burn the Quran and how insulting it is, about how the Muslims could immediately reciprocate such action and burn the bible but how Islam isn’t a violent religion and it is just some fundamentalists that tarnish the image of the religion as a whole. It is so interesting that in Islam, the few racialists and fundamentalists soil the name of the religion as a whole and we label it violent or something. But the same fundamentalists and racialists exist in every religion. There are groups with Christianity that are crazy, like the 7th day evangelists, Jehovah Witness or the Catholics for example. There are the people like the Florida priest who decide to burn the Quran, but we never label the religion as violent. Even Hinduism has its crazy people, but we still regard it to be one of the most peaceful religions in the world. Why then, do we make this exemption for Islam?

That is the first day Morocco, expect more soon! :D