Apologies to the feng shui of the blogosphere for these severely non-chronological past few entries. March 2013 has easily been the busiest month of my Peace Corps experience, with our interfaith dialogue entering its final planning stages and actually happening within the first week, my parents visiting, a trip to Uganda with my dad, and my dear friend Catherine book-ending the month with a visit. I’m also turning 25 in about two weeks and our family in Tameslouht is looking to grow by two feet– we’re getting a new volunteer on the 28th! That, of course, is followed by two, maybe one, week(s?) of spring camp. The proverbial ball is rolling straight into summer…
….but I dare say, I’m getting ahead of myself! Back to the Quinns! Here’s a handsome picture of the whole group, minus Shannon who actually had work to do or something.
My dad is now a veteran of Morocco, with three notches on his red and green belt, and my mother is probably intermediate-high with two (almost advanced, if not for her unrelenting fear of the Turkish toilet). Colleen, however, got her very first taste of Morocco this time around– and it was scrumptious indeed! No…really….we ate a ton.
Mother and Collifer came into Casablanca on a rainy, cold Tuesday. Just to make sure they were ready for an adventure, all of their baggage decided to stay in a very snowy Paris. It was a minor setback for my mother (who, because of my list of liquid demands, checked all of her luggage) and potentially for my father (who had to pack for three vastly different climates in one suitcase….my mother’s.) However, they remained strong, and figured out the train system to the point where they made it in one piece to Rabat, where I was awaitin’ faithfully with Mustapha. (They did, however, take enough time to where Mustapha and I stumbled upon the king’s palace! Which apparently you can enter with a very shabby photocopy of your passport. Laid-back, I like it!)
After finding my mom and sister easily in the train station due to extreme differences in skin pigmentation (Colleen, you are a lighthouse!), we went to our hotel and crashed. Colleen hadn’t slept at all and kinda just crumpled on the bed; my mother was a little more oriented and, like the trooper she is, agreed to be dragged around to historical monuments. We also gave her a taste of the streets– kermuss!
After a good bit of sitting in La Comedie, a gloriously nice, comfy, warm, and dry cafe that has a museum of pastries, we woke up Colleen and dinner-ed. It was a great excuse to go to a nice restaurant and eat delicious Moroccan food I haven’t tasted in a long time– harira and chbekiya! These are traditionally Ramadan-ian foods in Morocco, so they have not graced my stomach with their presence for almost a year now. My mom and my sister enjoyed those two delicious items in addition to some tajines. We left very full and very content.
Day 2 in Rabat involved breakfast, a trip to Peace Corps headquarters (gotta show off), and meandering through the old medina. We bought some Moroccan helweh, gagged down one cup of sugar cane juice (when in Rome?), and eventually returned to the aforementioned swanky cafe– a much drier situation than the day before. We sipped very sweet tea and enjoyed the view!
After wandering into an art gallery (that apparently has a prison on the top, yours for a special price of a bazillion dirham!), we went on the quests of quests: where to eat lunch. Mustapha and I ended up selecting a very small food stall we had wandered into by pure coincidence on our first trip together to Rabat. We call them Moroccan hamburgers– they’re a delicious blend of ground beef, spices, and egg, all fried together and slapped on a burger bun with or without cheese. Mom and Col gave it the seal of approval.
After finishing up, we gathered our stuff and headed into Casablanca to meet Dad. Fresh off of the plane from London, we shoved a Pepsi Max into his hands– and there was much rejoicing.
Our time in Casablanca had a very specific purpose: to see Rick’s cafe. Sure, my dad had seen it on his previous visit, but come on– it’s Rick’s cafe! Also, is there really anything else to see/ do in Casablanca? (That’s not a rhetorical question– apart from the stuff I’ve listed on this blog, I literally have no idea what else there is. Any suggestions would be appreciated so I don’t sound so anti-Casa to future visitors!) I guess it goes without saying that we also saw the Hassan II mosque. It’s hard not too, that thing is massive.
From there, we CTM-ed our way back to Marrakech. It was a pleasant ride, full of lots of snoring. We made it back in one piece and promptly set up the Quinn camp in Mustapha’s sister’s house. Moroccan hospitality was abound: we were served many, many meals and my parents felt very uncomfortable when I told them repeatedly to sit down and not try to clean up the table or any of that. Everyone was tucked into bed relatively early because of the first item on the Friday itinerary: leave for Ouzoud, 8am sharp.
Ouzoud is a little town I keep hearing about. It’s about 2 hours outside of Marrakech and is famous for its waterfalls and monkeys. Marrakech is a pretty dry, red city, so I wanted to give my family a little glimpse into the greener side of the country. We rented out a taxi from a local driver, who ended up being nuts. Absolutely bonkers. He didn’t seem so bad at first– your typical twitch and crazy eye, but nothing too dangerous. THEN we found ourselves confronted by some road construction, and our driver just morphed into whatever the opposite of a good taxi driver is. He sped up towards the man waving the flag telling us to wait, and, just like in movies, made the guy dive out of the way because he sure as heck wasn’t stopping. We sped down the shoulder of the road for a good 2 whole minutes of terror while the guy…laughed. He laughed. At us, at the road, who knows. Somehow, though, we arrived in one (emotionally damaged) pieace at this itty bitty dead-end. It was obviously a tourist destination, built-up with hotels, artisan stalls, and hand-painted signs pointing to the “cascades.” We walked down one path and were confronted with a dead drop– and, as my mom pointed out in a very mom-like fashion, without guardrails.
But the best part about this Utopian, albeit slightly-dangerous haven of nature? MONKEYS!!!!!!!!!!
The best part of our vacation was when my sister tried to get close to a monkey. She stood, waiting for him to approach her, when suddenly, not only did he grab her hand– which would have been awesome on its own– he used her hand as leverage to jump on her back and into the tree overhead. Mustapha caught it all on camera– and we all know how many words a picture is worth, so savor these:
After walking down a lot of stairs (such easy exercise!), we landed at the bottom of the valley. Moroccan ingenuity showed itself at its finest, with small rafts constructed from empty oil drums and old vegetable carts nailed together and covered in fake flowers offering ride into the waterfall. My dad kept referring to them as “funeral rafts”, but I thought they added that extra bit of “pizzazz” that nature just can’t.
We ended our run in Ouzoud with a delicious picnic lunch prepared by Mustapha’s sister. We dined and fed a very pregnant cat.
Afterwards, we drove the two hours back to Marrakech and hopped out for some old medina shoppin’ and cafe sittin’. We took the fam to a picturesque cafe overlooking Jemaa El Fnaa– totally worth the 15 DH sodas. We ended our day with couscous and smiles and rainbows and unicorns and completely satisfied stomachs.
Next day…..off to Uganda!
