Casablanca Meknès Fes

 

This was a day our eyes got used to seeing the desert, the thick buff colored walls.  Few plants, scraggly and struggling. And beauty measured in space, tile, and faces.

I am going to start this with our lunch stop as it touched me in ways that I didn’t understand until much later.

AFER Association Community Lunch Enjoy a G Adventures-supported traditional lunch that benefits rural Moroccan women and children with disabilities. The association provides vital services including literacy and vocational training, health services, disability assistance, and the operation of a local ambulance. AFER’s training center hosts culinary programs recognized by the state, and each year it graduates 30 students, many of whom go on to work in the project. Through this work, AFER creates sustainable employment, fosters community cohesion, and showcases Moroccan culture to travelers. During your visit, enjoy a traditional home cooked Moroccan meal, featuring classic dishes such as vegetable tagine or roasted chicken with onion sauce, and meet some of the women that are part of this important community program. This experience not only supports livelihoods but also celebrates Moroccan heritage and rural resilience.  Itinerary Notes

AFER is an association that supports rural Moroccan women, and children with disabilities.

GAdventures and National Geographic tours arrange for our lunch stop to be provided by this cooperative. We get a closer look at this community, and they get a boost in their income. It is a win win for all.

But these are deep and murky waters. This is just a tour company and they want to present to their guests a jolly time. That is their contract with us. And there are legal and social standards that lurk in the background. And no matter how good hearted our presenters were on this trip, they are all men. All Islamic. And most of the women do not speak English. So our view is biased.

With that in mind, here is what I took away: Divorce is legal since 2004, but it is complicated.  There is both civic and Islamic law involved. But these women, especially in rural areas, have little experience outside of their sequestered upbringing. If their birth family cannot or will not take them in there are very few options. Getting employment or training is difficult n a country where less than 20% of the workforce is female, even lower in management level jobs. These women and their children are in desperate circumstances.

I will relate our morning adventures later on, we pull into the town of M’Haya. This is a place of desperate poverty. The roadside is covered in trash, knee deep in places. Any attempt to clean up the trash is met with the people that comb thru the rubbish for anything useful.

Our luxury van pulls into an area between buildings with pot holes big enough to fit a VW in. We go in a non descript door, in an unremarkable whitewashed building. The room is typical of what we find all over Morocco: a stark, plain room, decorated with bits of amazing art. We are fed an amazing meal, followed by our fearless leader, Rachid, showing us how to make Moroccan tea.

And we learn a bit about AFER. This is a peer to peer organization. We learn a bit about their program. And a tiny spark of an idea about how my skills could be useful.

This is where it gets difficult. All of these programs, and tour adventures are just the surface. And don’t get me wrong, I am so glad they are doing this. But in trying to find out more, I am aware that there is not much more than this surface treatment being presented. I want to know more. I want to have involvement on a real level.

Rant over, back to your regular program.

This is the roadway as we left
in the predawn hours.

We left Casablanca in the rain. Not just you get out the umbrella rain, but torrential rain, flooding rain. Leave it to me to go to one of the absolute driest places in the world to confront massive flooding. For the next few days we would face detours, bypasses, and places I would not have wanted to put my Sprinter van.

Our first stop the medieval city of Meknès. 

We are just getting used to being in this country where history is just part of every day life. You have to find parking but the UNESCO gates to the old city are in the way. And seeing an old cannon is just part of life.

We get the first of our local guides. One of the brilliant aspects of the GAdventures tour is that they curate and maintain relationships with some of the best local guides available. This gives them a regular income, as well as a reason to polish their presentations. The group is asked early on to contribute to a fund where our CEO Rachid pays these guides. From the look on their faces, the pay is pretty good.

      

It is not just this gate but many many gates In this place walls. Gates and doorways are an investment not only in security, but as a symbol of what a strong leader you are. 

I am entranced with the small details of this kind of beauty.

In a world that is so very dry, paper is not a lasting
way to make your mark.  But plaster is.
Everywhere we find beauty.

   

Massive iron work

I didn't realize what I was seeing here
But our next stop explained a lot.

   

Rocks!
These paving stones in the plaza are the
red and grey granite of Morocco

Islam, like many religions, requires good deeds.
This gentleman is dressed in the garb of a 
Garrab. These men sold, or gave as charity
water. A wealthy man could donate to him.
In modern times, he is available for photos, for
a slight fee of course.

      

Dar Jamai Museum of textiles and music. A small, nondescript feature at the far end of Al-Hadeem Square. If you are not with a group.  This is worth going out of your way for. The interior is lush with plants, fountains and tile work. It was also the first place I became aware that our guides would occasionally say "explore this place on your own". This after being rushed thru some places I would have loved to spent time observing and photographing. 

Pay attention to those round metal
objects.  Those are castanets. 
They will show up later in this trip.

We then entered the Medina. A place that felt both familiar and foreign to me.  A place of small commerce. As someone that did small, crafted vending in tight places, this felt like home in some odd ways.

   

A tuktuk loaded with carpets, ironwork, doors and a mural

This little sign speaks volumes.  In Arabic  and French.
Arabic countries were the first in the world to establish hospitals. 
And this one was only for women. 
The concept of separate but equal, the idea that women needed a special hospital.
But at the same time European women that would not behave by "societal standards"
were locked away in mental hospitals.
Just because they would not obey their husbands or fathers.

Volubilis, an ancient Roman outpost. 

I cannot begin to tell you how it feels when your feet are walking in a place where Romans walked, ate, spat, pooped. Before the Romans, the Amazigh (aka Berbers, but they don't like that name) stayed here.  Before them various groups going back to the Neolithic.  This was a place that had water.  And fertile fields.

It dates from roughly 300BCE to 700 AD when the local folks made it inconvenient for the Romans to rule.

This area being rich and fertile has been inhabited with various cities and rulers in charge.  Several major earthquakes made this particular town uninhabitable. 

When Europeans invented archeology, this place became interesting to the French. And now it is protected from even those marauders. 

Our guide here has one of the most beautiful faces, makes me want to be able to draw. He also loves to learn camera tricks to share with us.

This is where they pressed olives.  The oil would collect in those channels and flow into the containers below.

This was the fountain.  One would lift the jar over into the trough.  The grooves were worn into the stone by the jars rasping on them.

Standing here, the water trough is by my right elbow.
This was the latrine. Men hung out here, literally, 
and chatted, and had discussions.
But nobody ever talks about where the 
women went.

What was this notch for?

      Remember I said I would point something out about columns, well here it is.  The lovely carved stone was "harvested" by local folk, and bits and pieces appear all over the place.

Rocks!
This one is worth enlarging to see the shells that are
forever trapped in the stone.

This is the Hercules tile floor.  There are several tile floors to be seen here 

  

This bit of road was purely for showmanship.
The entry gates open onto this road that runs down to an Arch that overlooks the valley.  Not to commemorate a victory or a battle.  Just for the splendor of it.

OK they did have to drag me off, kicking and screaming, so that we could get to the hotel at a reasonable time.