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Mara came for her visit, and it was a whirlwind of so many colors and places! She arrived on Saturday, and we quickly hopped on a train and went to Casablanca for the celebration of Hanane and Mohammed’s wedding. We both wore our Moroccan finery, danced, ate some wonderful food, and were generally honored to be part of the celebration. I will post a separate blog on the wedding itself, which is quite a bit different from American weddings, after Hanane and I sit down together and go choose which pictures to post. Suffice to say now that it was something that neither Mara nor I will ever forget! Sunday we slept in just a bit after a late arrival back in Rabat, and then met my friend Rani for a croissant and coffee, and a walk to the waterfront in L’Océan, my neighborhood. At 3 pm, we boarded a long-distance bus for the city of Chefchaouen, which is in the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco. We arrived just after sunset, and our wonderful guide Abdesalam picked us up and deposited us to our hotel, and guided us to a wonderful restaurant for dinner. Chaouen is a small city, famous for the blue paint that is used on the walls of the old medina. It is very easy to navigate, and there is something beautiful around every curve, down every alley. There were a good number of Chinese tourists there taking artsy photographs, too, and Mara surprised a few by speaking to them in Mandarin. We spent all day Monday wandering the city, drinking tea--lots of tea!-- and chatting with merchants, and taking photographs. The light is really something amazing there! We also climbed to the top of the hill on which Chaouen is perched to an old Spanish chapel for the impressive view. In fact, we went part way back up to see the sunset from that vantage point. Tuesday, Abdesalam picked us (and our many new home-decorating handcrafted purchases) up and we drove through the Rif Mountains to the town of Tétouan. This is a city that has a significant Spanish influence architecturally and culturally because it was controlled by Spain instead of France during the Protectorate years of the 20th century. Also, it is quite close to the town of Ceuta, which is a Spanish town on the African side of the Mediterranean. Did you know there was a little chunk of Spain sitting on the coast of Africa? No? Me neither! Moroccans need a visa to cross the border to visit it. There was an persistent and not very attractive fog all day that gave a gray cast to the white walls of the medina. Our favorite part of the tour was to a school that is for kids who decide to apprentice in traditional handicrafts— so their last two years of high school are spent learning leather crafting, metal work, fabric weaving and embroidery, carving and painting wood, or doing zellij, the intricate tile work seen in so many buildings. These crafts are passed from generation to generation, so it was inspiring to see that there are some kids who want to continue in the tradition, and a little sad to realize that these crafts could be lost if there is not a new generation to master them. After a good lunch in an old riad, we nixed the coast road (too much fog) and drove over the mountains to Tangier. Here we said goodbye to Abdesalam and checked into the Grand Hotel Villa de France, a beautifully restored hotel from the turn of the 20th century, famous because Henri Matisse spent many months there one year and painted a lot, including a view out his window, which is in a Russian collection these days. The room he lived in is kept as a bit of a museum, and when we went to see it, there was a BBC/PBS film crew there doing a piece for a series that will air in 2018 apparently called “Civilizations.” Mara and I explored the medina ourselves, not getting lost even once, and had a dinner at the restaurant I mentioned in an earlier blog— where there is no menu, just a set price, and the chef creates whatever he can from the fish of the day. I think I will have to go back in the fall sometime, because the meal in April was quite like the meal in February— but it was very tasty! The owner gifted Mara with a set of wooden forks (that you eat your meal with) and a colorful basket to keep them in. Wednesday, we went to Spain for lunch. An American visitor to Morocco can stay 90 days with out a visa, and my 90 days were just about running out. You must exit the country, and when you re-enter, you get another 90 days. It’s a wonderful system! You don’t have to be gone very long, either. I could have popped in to Ceuta, or we could take the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tarifa or Algeciras, Spain. This sounded like a more fun option to Mara and me, so we took the first ferry of the day, along with several busloads of Korean tourists. We landed in Tarifa and took a bus across the peninsula to the larger town of Algeciras. The first thing we did there was to grab a coffee in a cafe, and at the table next to us, I saw something I hadn’t seen in about 90 days— three women having a cerveza! Our waitress answered our inquiry by telling us that there was NO where in that town to get a good paella, so we decided on shopping and tapas instead. We wandered the town, looking at painted ceramic tiles (instead of zellij) and churches (instead of mosques) and a lovely well-kept public garden. And then we got down to drinking sangria and eating tapas! We visited two Tapas restaurants and noticed that the wind was picking up— so we decided to hop on the next bus back to the ferry at Tarifa to take our last round of tapas and sangria there — here is what Gibraltar looked like from the port at Algeciras. And by the time we got back to Tarifa, the ferry company was suggesting that the next ferry would be the last ferry because of the waves and rough water in the Strait. So, we blew our way onto the ship, and bobbed back across. It was still quite windy in Tangier, but sunnier, and when we got back, we had time to explore Tangier a little more. Mara bought some olives in the souk, and we took them up to the terrace of the Grand Hotel Villa de France and enjoyed them with a spectacular view of the city, port, and beach. We had dinner at the Morocco Club, which was quite fancy, and expensive by Moroccan standards, but about the cost of a regular old no-frills dinner out in Frederick. Thursday, we took one more swing around the souk because all the Berber women had come in from the country for market day, wearing their distinctive hats and clothes and selling their delicious goat cheese and other produce. Then we grabbed the train and headed down about six hours south to the beach (and university) town of El Jadida, which is a good bit south of Rabat and Casa. Hmmm, you ask. Doesn’t that seem like a detour? Well, yes. After we had made the travel plans, the option came up for me to make a presentation at a symposium at the Chaiba Dakkahu University. In fact, due to my status as a recipient of the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching, it turned out that I was the keynote speaker for Friday’s session! This was a room full of doctoral students and professors, and I wasn’t certain that my observations would merit their attention, but they were extremely welcoming and made me feel (honestly) like a rock star! I talked about some general observations that I can make having talked to and observed a fair number of Moroccan classes at middle school, high school, and university level these last 90 days, and I talked about the differences I note between how Americans and Moroccans approach the teaching and learning of languages. (Relax, gentle readers, that will be a separate paper and blog post in the future.) But the audience asked great questions after my talk, and I made several important connections for both my academic work and for additional classroom visits in a different part of the country from where I have been, and a bunch of young women wanted to take selfies with me. Haha!! Like I said, they treated me like a rock star! I also was intrigued with the talks that I heard on their topics of doctoral research. So this might be a good place to say that I have been accepted to a doctoral program myself, and if all of the logistics can be worked out, I’ll be starting in the fall on an Ed Doc degree in Literacy, working on second/foreign language issues or perhaps global literacy questions. The program really fits my interests well, and is offered through Salisbury University in Maryland. Back to El Jadida— Mara came and supported me through my talk, as did Dr James Miller and Khalid Baalou, the executive and assistant directors at MACECE, as well as Mustafa from the office. Dr Miller and Khalid were the ones who suggested that I might be the person to do the presentation on behalf of the Fulbrighters currently in Morocco. Mara then explored the town and the beach area and had lunch with a Fulbright English language teacher who is at the university in El Jadida. Taylor was super helpful in making El Jadida a part of the vacation for Mara, and not just a place I dragged her along to for my work. El Jadida is on the Atlantic coast, and its medina is still different from the others I’ve seen— it is from the Portugese time, and is more like a fort than a market at this point in time. After our tour of the old town, Mara and I hopped on another train and headed back to Rabat to sleep. And on Saturday, we were back at the train station grabbing the early train to Fez! Mara wanted to see an old Imperial City (there are four in Morocco: Rabat, Fez, Meknes, and Marrakesh— all with their own characters today). So I contacted Muhecine, who was a great guide when Alex and I visited Fez, and luckily he was available. He is really quite a deep thinker and is really, really excited by his city’s history, so he is just so interesting to listen to! We were able to visit the old medrassa or Koranic school from the 13th century and he really explained the philosophy and belief behind the zellij tilework, the Koranic verses in the cedar wood upper walls , and the Arabic classical poetry in the lower walls. We saw the oldest university and library in the world, created by a woman!. We couldn’t enter though— just peeked in— and then visited the craft factories to see how enormous amounts of leather are dyed and how wool and the “silk” from agave cactus plants is turned in to beautiful fabrics. Then, we had dinner and caught the last train back to Rabat. Day Nine, and finally Mara’s chance arrived to explore Rabat and see all the places that are home to me this spring. She got to meet my wonderful Arabic teacher Adil and his family (his wife and 4- and 6-year-old children) who came in from Kenitra to meet her, and another Fulbrighter Rachel, who lives in my neighborhood and took me to an amazing Maundy Thursday Seder meal at her church in Rabat. (another entry!) So she got to see the most important parts of the city, meet people who are important to my life, and enjoy the restaurants and neighborhood gelato joints that make this city great for me. We also both got a "shampooing et brushing" at the salon just under my apartment so our hair looks great for these last photos! I was grateful for her visit and sad to drop her off at the airport early this morning— but I’m off to Marrakesh to visit some schools! |
Marcie StutzmanTeacher, Researcher, Adventurer, Explorer; Maybe crazy; Possibly too old for this Archives
October 2018
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