We are staying with a Moroccan family in Meknès -- the sisters of the girls' former preschool teacher, a beloved French-speaking Moroccan woman in San Francisco. We have a hard time deciding whether to stay with her family, imposing all four of us into their home, or to stay in the inexpensive, lovely, and convenient hotel we've booked. Clearly, we would actually be more comfortable in the hotel, especially since we don't know the family that has invited us. On the other hand, while the hotel is guaranteed to be comfortable, the home-stay offers a chance for an interesting cultural experience. And in the end, I know myself well enough to know that I would always regret having passed up this chance. When else will we stay with a Muslim family in Morocco?
They are as gracious as can possibly be, but one of the biggest cultural differences we notice is that the TV is always on. Always. They eat to the TV. Their kids are also on school holiday and spend their days in front of the TV. Even our kids, who are practically hypnotized by the cartoons -- even in Arabic -- complain after a while that the TV is boring (Victory!). Eventually, they get the Moroccan kids to go out and play soccer in the streets, and that's probably the favorite half hour our kids spend with them. Our girls also learn that the Moroccan kids have never been more than an hour away from their house. We hope this gives our girls a better appreciation for just how lucky we are.
The kids' names take us the entire day and a half to memorize, and I'm sure I'm not spelling a single one even remotely correctly (well, especially since they'd be written in Arabic): Wizhden, Obdurachmen, Chafsa, and Samya.
The whole apartment is filled with flat couches, which are used as beds by the kids and by us, too. We eat dinner of couscous and chicken off of one large communal tagine. They all dig on from their side with their hands but give us spoons, presumably having heard that Americans are used to using utensils. We are surprised to realize they actually don't speak much French, but we muddle through anyway. I'm the only female over the age of 12 who will show her hair.
From their house, we hire a taxi for the day to go out to Volubilis, an almost 2,000-year-old Roman ruin that was at the Southwestern edge of the Roman empire in its heyday. Named after the morning glory that grows there, it is now populated by storks in their huge nests, and is surrounded by rolling green hills dotted with olive trees. It is incredible how much it suddenly feels like being in Italy.
Pippicus, Goddess of Flowers, and Zinzibar, Goddess of the Hunt.
We take over an abandoned home and make stores in each of the rooms. Gigi's store sells bread dough, which we purchase with plant-pod "coins" then take to a bakery to bake in the wood-fired oven. This is how the Moroccans actually do bake their bread, still to this day. The "dough" she is selling in the white plastic bag is the dreaded FFF: Four-day-old Funky Feta -- two lumps of feta cheese we bought for about $5 to use for a picnic, then decided we didn't want, then decided was too weird to give as a thank you to our guide in Fez, then decided was too weird and old to give as a thank you to our homestay family in Meknès, then decided was too funky and old to actually eat. But, it turns out, it is just the right squishy consistency inside three layers of plastic bags to make excellent fake dough.
One last stop for the day: a photo-worthy nearby village called Moulay Idriss, so named because it houses the shrine of Idriss I, who founded a dynasty in the 8th century here. As everywhere in Morocco, you can tell where the mosque complex is by the green roofs. A man attaches himself to us for the entire trip there, depsite the fact that we clearly state that a) we do not want a guide and b) we are not going to pay him anything at all. Still he hikes up and over with us and, of course, holds his hand out for a tip at the end. We hold strong, despite his obvious annoyance. It is a picturesque town in obvious ways and one not-so-obvious -- according to our uninvited, unwanted, unpaid, and therefore unhappy guide, this is the only round minaret in Morocco and one of only four in the world.
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