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Back home!

Alaric and Great Grandma

Making fun with great grandson Alaric.

The baby with reddish hair and eyes of deep pool (we decided that's a color).

Standing and step therapy under way.

Dinner @ Marquis Mill Park First meal at rehab.

Doing research today for Linda on her g-g-grandma.s Cherokee roots!

Salt Lake City answer to panhandling.

Good World. #4 combo. Says it is very good!

Casablanca's Mosque Hassan II

The previous king of Morocco, Hassan II, built a huge mosque that projects out over the ocean on the ocean edge of Casablanca. It is the 3rd largest mosque in the world. It was very impressive.

 We toured inside and rather than get stuck in a group of 40 with the official mosque guide, our tour leader took us around by ourselves and then we sat down under the cavernous ceiling as he  explained some aspects of their worship practices as well. Here are some views of the mosque.

An entry lobby. 

These massive doors are designed to lift up. The whole thing. Up. Allowing prayer goers to stream in underneath.

The main hall. Between this and the women's area, the place can accommodate 120,000 people. 

Example of the exquisite wood working and plaster carving.

Windows and doors.

Casablanca walkabout

We did a walking tour of some sites in Casablanca after our camel lunch. In no particular order, here are some things we came across.

Chili peppers on the left and "wild berries" on the right. Typical way of shopping for food in this area. No grocery stores.

Thanks to the French influences, Morocco has many a patisserie. This one is famous in Casablanca. The shop was full of people. The ovens are across the street. They make hundreds of trays of goodies each day. 

Water men. No water fountains in public squares. These men would carry water and brass cups and offer drinking water, for a fee. This is the typical costume. Seen in every city we visited. Nowadays they earn more posing for photos than dispensing water.

The School of Andalusian Music. Why in Morocco? Because the Moors used to be in Spain. Couple hundred years ago. 

Tile work of the school's sign. 

Typical entryway to a riad or home in the old Medina area. 

Camel Lunch

In Casablanca our guide took us to the oldest, still operating camel market. I was expecting to see camels being traded and paraded around to show off their personality. But, no! It was a market for camel meat!!

Not only that, but our guide bought ground camel from this lady butcher. She is the first, maybe the only female butcher in Morocco. She is a celebrity and has worked with many top chefs in the country and on TV.

We took the camel meat around to this open air cafe. The owner grilled it up for our lunch. He made camel wedges about 2 x 3 inches each. The well done meat pieces are served with ground green cumin, chili powder and salt. That gets sprinkled on the cooked meat.

Then you take a piece of bread and scoop up some grilled onions and meat, and eat. It was actually quite tasty.

Marrakesh

After having been in the countryside for days, the experience of Marrakesh is an assault on one's senses. So many people, traffic, motorbikes, donkeys, people jaywalking, noise, movement; it's all a bit chaotic! Here are some encounters ~

Balek! They yell that as they come down the narrow passage ways. It means get out of the way, donkey coming through! And you best move it...

The town is known for it's horse carriages. Our group split up into 4 carriages and had a tour of the town. These guys ride in traffic, along with the thousands of motorbikes and cars. Everyone careens around the moving object in front of one's vehicle, honks to say I'm coming around! It's chaos. The horses, just trot along and are objects to be careened around 

The Argan oil workshop.  There is a shrub; goats eat the fruit; they discharge the fruit seeds through their mouth...or the other end. The seeds are collected  and these ladies crack open the seed with a mallet and harvest the insides. They then press that producing argan oil. Abdul was the sales man who dispensed argan knowledge to our group while selling us.

Yves St Laurent Garden. He created a bamboo forest and cactus garden with such plants from around the world. Very nice refuge in the chaotic city.

I bought two pieces of art from this one. After we settled on price, he said his boss wanted me to pay more. I shrugged and said no. Let's use the price we agreed to. He was happy to oblige. His workmates were making fun of him as I took his pic. He said will my picture be in America?!

A solar tree. It has plugs for any device that might need a charge; powered by the sun. Free. 

The first palace in the town circa 1100. This is the sunken garden filled orange trees. The sultan wanted the scent and fruit of the oranges while keeping the view open so he could see over the tree tops. In another part of town is the original bridge into Marrakesh, also circa 1100. It is still in use! We saw cars driving across it!!

Home Visits

We have done several home visits.

Each time, you are served mint tea in a little glass, Usually with optional sugar cube. There is an art to the pouring. Usually in countryside there is a clay oven for making bread. And sometimes newer kitchen in another room.

Camels

Yes. We rode camels. Here is my guy #2818. We traversed over the dunes

for about 45 minutes. It was a fun ride. I am using an AWERTY keyboard with arabic letters and international symbols; so hard to write much.

Q auick brozn fox ju,ped over the lqwy dog:
That sentence would have said a quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog on a qwerty keyboard.

Couscous

At a women's cooperative in AIT

Ben Haddou, we learned to make couscous.

 Start with flour and water. Mix by hand to a crumble type texture. Keep working it til crumbles are smaller. The seive out the big pieces. Keep working them down smaller.

With the material that came through the seive, seive again with a smaller size hole seive. What you end up with is couscous.

That has to be steamed and dried before it is used or packaged. The women make and package couscous, and a variety of cookies.

They also fed us lunch. It was tagine of meat and veggies with....couscous. Plus the cookies we helped to make.

Moments in no particular order

It's date harvest. Toward Erfoud you can find dates for  sale along the road.

Stewed prunes are a regular meal item. This is beef dish was roasted to perfection and topped with prunes stewed with cinnamon and sesame seeds.

Olives are a major part of the diet. All kinds. Here is pretty display in Meknes market.

This is our home hosted meal family. 5 of us went to their home for dinner. Arci, in real estate, Nadia, his wife and Kenza their college student daughter. Food and conversation great! We watched some of their wedding video (20 yrs ago) and all 3 of them started singing along with the wedding folk songs that were on the tape. 

Who knew they can make silk out of Agave fiber?! We are at that workshop. Several of us  were chosen to model different turban styles. I'm in Tuareg style. Ready for a sand storm.

Here is example of market in Fes. Vendors are grouped by type. "Sweets" or "dreses" or "carpentry" and so forth.

Making phyllo type dough. She's been doing this for 20 years!

Green roof building is part of the first university here or in many other places. In 859 AD, Lalla Fatima started univ of Fes. Nowadays, state sponsors free univ for students from Morocco.

These young men were gathering the acorns from the Cork oak tree. They will sell what they gathered. They said it might bring in $3.

The road, the nomads

On the road for at least 9 hours, with a few stops.

We drove thru the up the Middle Atlas Mtns to Ifrane. Stopped for coffee. A ski resort town developed by French back in the day. Looks like Ashland. It does snow there. On through a national park called the Cedar Forest. Looks like central Oregon. Very pretty. Across high plain.

Stopped to visit this nomad family. Grandma, daughter, daughter-in-law, 2 grandkids. Men off with the herd of sheep and goats. The women were dying wool today.

Amina, the one in turquoise dress, invited us in, made mint tea for us, and served us fresh warm bread.

Our guide translated our questions and her answers. She is 25. Married at 16. They share the work of shearing the wool, dying, selling or making woven material. The live in this set of tent cabins and trade locations with other family members. Instead of hauling their tents around, they are some what permanent. The people move with the seasons.

The two younger women each have a school age child. These older kids live in near by town with an aunt and go to school. Our guide gave them green tea, sugar and olive oil as thank you gifts for letting us visit.

And off we went up through the High Atlas Mtns enroute to Erfoud.

Gates galore

Gates to the city, to the palaces, to the major thorough fares, to mosques, and riads.  Gates in walls that are 18 ft thick. Wood gates, bronze gates. All gates with tile and plaster decoration. An interesting tidbit, per our local guide Hesham, in the olden days circa 800 AD, camel caravans all had to enter the city of Fez through one specific gate where all people and animals were examined by doctors. If any were sick, the individuals were denied entry. To keep the city healthy. They also exited through another gate where they had to prove they had paid any taxes owed. These two gates were called the kidney gates because of their filtering functions.