Morocco: flirting with danger

Again, I was lucky to be in the group that was first allowed off the ship. We took a tour of the Mosque of Hassan II. It is the only mosque in Morocco that allows tours, and even then there are only three hours of the day you can take a tour. This billion-dollar Mosque was built in the early 90’s. It only took 6 years to build this elaborate place of worship, but there were 10,000 workers who literally worked 24-7. This massive mosque is located right on the water and can accommodate 100,000 worshippers.  It even has a retractable roof. There are windows in the floor looking down into the basement bath area. There are dozens and dozens of fountain-like baths in the basement. Our guide explained the methodic way that Muslims cleanse themselves before they pray.

One of the oddest sights we saw on our panoramic (basically a narrated bus ride) tour of Casablanca was a middle-aged man angrily throwing bricks at a crumbling infrastructure. We weren’t sure if it was a normal thing to see or if we should be startled and stay away from the windows of our bus.

The whole morning was filled with unusual events that gave me mixed feelings towards Casablanca. For example, while we were walking through some narrow streets on our way to one of the King’s six palaces I noticed two men dressed all in untraditional black garb. When we stopped, they stopped. When we crossed a road, one would cross and the other would stay stationary but they would both start communicating on their walkie-talkies. Turns out, they were just police officers watching out for us. I am not sure if that made me feel better or not..

I met some people on our tour that were interested on exploring the city on their own. So we ventured out in the dreary raining weather to the old medina. A medina is an old fortified city within the city. The weather added to the excitement of exploring the medina. The vendors were very pushy, following us around offering different things to us. They would shout out in English to get our attention: ‘California!’ ‘ Your Welcome!’ or ‘Heyy America!’

A small group of us continued to explore despite the increase in wind and rain. Observing the medina was incredible. A boy with leprosy passed us, there were whole horses skinned and hanging in store windows, there were all ages of people cooking, selling, and buying. We winded through the streets and eventually ended up in a precarious situation. One of us literally ran into an official with a rifle. At that point, we realized we had come into the wrong alley of the medina. There was an impenetrable produce section to one side, a dark alley to the other side, a brick wall in front of us with a cluster of armed officials and two Moroccan gangs standing around us. We walked down the dark alley of course and I watched some men gamble and a drug deal go down.

That night, I donned my rain jacket and headed out with a group for some authentic Moroccan nightlife. This did not include any raves or clubs. First of all, crossing the streets in Casablanca is a game of life and death. Secondly, shishah (hookah) bars are plentiful and are ten times more potent than the sketchy places in downtown Milwaukee. In these bars they did not serve alcohol nor did they watch football- we watched a bull fight. Thirdly, upon looking for some late night munchies we found two places: a café with only Moroccan men only drinking coffee outside and McDonalds. We ate at McDonalds, where they served the McArabia, shrimp sandwiches, and steak fries.