One of the highlights of the week was a staged Moroccan wedding for us. They hired a band and provided us all with traditional outfits and conducted a "real" wedding. It was tons of fun and a great experience. At the ceremony, there is always milk, sugar, and dates, which the bride and groom share. Just like in the Sahara, they sang the Bob Marley song, which they all seem to love. 
We took another trip to the hammum....and god only knows how I survived. I was in so much pain when the lady scrubbed me down, I thought for sure blood would be flowing. She must have had some pent up anger. Loubna came over to check up on me, and I asked her to tell the lady to be a bit gentler on me. The lady responded with, "but look at how dirty she is!" (which for the record, was totally untrue...I am very clean;) Loubna started laughing and apologizing and I told her not to worry and I would be fine. Loubna came back a few minutes later and saw me rolling around on the ground in agony (well, not quite). We both started laughing as I was biting back the tears and she was apologizing profusely to me. Much to our amusement, the lady told her to shut up and let her do her job and clean me. To which we started laughing even harder. It must have been a pretty hilarious sight to see me sprawled across the ground crying and laughing=)
Noor, me, LoubnaThe night before I left, Noor and I took one last trip to the medina and got some of the wonderful yogurt/fruit dish. Even though it was a Friday night, the shops all started closing up early and the streets were quickly clearing....the Moroccan national soccer team had a match against France and everyone was hurrying to watch the game. We met up with some of the other kids and went to a hookah bar, which was packed with men watching the game. We managed to get a spot in a back room. Right before I left, I finished a book called "The Places In Between," which was Rory Stewart's tale of his walk across Afghanistan, from Herat to Kabul, right after the fall of the Taliban. It was an interesting story, not the most well written, but one interesting tidbit is that there is a game in Afghanistan similar to polo, but played with a dead goat's body rather than a ball. Anyone up for a game on the mall...we can borrow some goats from chaska;)
I will really miss Morocco and all the cool people and experiences I've had. I definitely want to come back one day...it's a great country that despite not being in the greatest economical position, has a lot of bright spots. Morocco, in Arabic, is al maghreb, which means sunset, or west. Morocco is roughly the size of California and has a population of 33 million. Most people are trilingual, speaking a dialect of Berber, Arabic, and French. In the north, Spanish is more commonly spoken than French and in large cities English is fairly common. It gained its independence from France in 1956 and has a life expectancy of 71 years, with 54% illiteracy (which is mostly from the rural areas). The Moroccan motto is God, King, and Country, and it is illegal to criticize any of these. The late Moroccan king related Moroccan culture to a tree with its roots in Africa and branches pointing towards Europe and the Middle East. It definitely is a mixture of all three. Berber is spoken by roughly 40% of the population, but they prefer to call themselves Amazigh (noble/free people), since Berber connotates barbarian and was giving to them by the Greeks, who could not understand the language and said they produced an unintelligible sound. Nonetheless, everyone I came in contact with referred to themselves as Berber, and it seems that the negative connotation is fairly extinct.
It seems that the war over the Sahara, which many countries refer to as the "western sahara" but morocco claims as theirs placed morocco into huge debt. The unemployment rate, which is officially 12%, is in actuality much worse since this includes people who stand on the street selling cigarettes. One of the major problems is that many people with higher education are unemployed and many are overqualified for their jobs. Around 4 million moroccans live abroad and send money back, but do not return since they would be unable to find a job in their field. Similar to Tanzania (and quite frankly, probably the rest of the world), corruption is a huge problem. 20% live below the poverty line with less than $1/day, and 30% survive on $1/day. Minimum wage, which isn't really enforced is 1600 DH/month, but people consider themselves lucky to even have a job and so in actuality will work for much less than this. Not surprisingly, the president of parliament makes 80,000 DH/month, not including free housing/electricity/cars/cleaning people.
I will be sad to leave the orphanage and all the cute kids. One bright spot though is that while I was there, I heard of about 5 kids getting adopted out of 200...which isn't so bad when you consider I was only there for 3 weeks. One of my favorite little boys, Merwan, is getting adopted by a fairly well to do moroccan couple who had lost their son.
MerwanI wish I was a bit older, because I would have adopted a little boy named Shakib in a heartbeat. He won my heart right away. He was about 8 years old, and was so smart. He would communicate with a mixture of whistling, moving his eyebrows, and snapping/pointing. He loved to give/get hugs and kisses and was a little shaytoon (every once in awhile when I was holding him, he would pull my shirt out and try to look down it;) He was very playful and observant of his surroundings. One day he asked me what my name was, and when he found out it was an arabic name, he was at first surprised and then got a big smile on his face. I hope he gets adopted someday, cuz he would make for an amazing kid. One of his friend's, Ali, was also an awesome kid. Ali was about 13 and is in a wheelchair. We would give him some entertainment by running behind his wheelchair and making him fly over bumps and around turns. He loved it and would get the biggest smile on his face. When we were occupied with other kids, he would entertain himself by rolling himself down an incline to knock some little kid over. All of a sudden you would see some 3 year old kid knocked out on the ground crying, and Ali laughing and rolling himself away. Crazy kid.
AliOne last interesting tidbit, which I hesitate to tell because it's a bit odd...SOME moroccan men relieved themselves on the side of the busy road, often times not even bothering to attempt to hide in the shade of a small tree or shrub. (sorry, I didn't manage to snag any pics of this;) They didn't even always turn their back on the road, and were barely 15 feet from the curb! (not that I was looking or anything;) I saw this numerous times, but perhaps the funniest time was on the way back from the orphanage when I saw a guy in a suit peeing on the grass on the side of the road. Shocked, I laughed and pointed it out to Jon, who turned and saw. Not 30 seconds later, we passed another guy extremely close to the road. We both looked at each other in disbelief and burst out laughing. It's a bit ridiculous and I'm not entirely sure what runs through their heads...it's very odd for a country that is generally so modest. I mentioned this to Loubna, and she just shook her head and was a little embarassed. On that note, I highly recommend a trip to Morocco, if nothing else, to see the amazing curb pee-ers on display for free=) No, but seriously, a trip to Morocco is definitely worth it- the most amazing tea, great sights, friendly people, cool souvenirs, and an interesting mix of people...not to mention the sahara, mountains, and the mediterranean/ocean.
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