"Careful Leo - remember how you upset yourself at Mombasa!"
Chris and I were in Morocco last week. We sepnt a few days in Marakech being hassled by locals, visiting tombs, mosques and museums, eating lots of nice food and trying to locate alcoholic beverages. Marakech is a nice place - its narrow backstreets and walled courtyards are strangely reminiscent of Oxford and have a similar sort of undefinable mystique. I was uncomfortable with the keen, grasping quality of the locals - incessantly trying to give you directions to places you didn't want to go, insisting that certain streets were closed off, begging you to buy from their stalls and so on. Obviously this is as much a cultural difference as it is an economic one - but it was irritating and slightly discomfiting. I should point out that this isn't a critique of the country itself or even its people - they just do things differently there. This is just an honest evaluation of the impression it made on me. Also, this makes it sound like I had a terrible time, which I didn't, as I hope comes across from the first sentence of this entry. The place was really interesting, unlike anywhere I'd ever been before and I'm really glad to have seen it. Also, despite my annoyance at the way the locals just wouldn't leave you alone, there's no European city I've ever visited which feels safer than this one - and not just in the city centre. Also, everyone was generally friendly and upbeat, which is as positive as it is somewhat discomfitting for someone as reserved as I am. I guess there's a fundamental paradox (and again, I'm not trying to make an informed political observation, merely analysing how I felt at the time): Morocco's economy is heavily dependent on tourism but poverty is, relative to the UK, more ubiquitous. I couldn't quite shake the weird feeling that I was exploiting the locals whilst at the same time being exploited by them. [I'm painfully aware that 'the locals' is a horrible blanket label to use, but it will have to serve for now]. I'm overthinking it perhaps, but this was a pervasive feeling and I feel I need somehow to pin it down in words.
Essaouira was more to my taste. It was much more relaxing after Marakech and much less cluttered than that city - everyone's pace of life seemed to be different and there was no traffic of any kind. The latter was a particular boon. If it weren't for the fact that Chris would probably have killed me, I was tempted to buy some cigarettes in Marrakech - partly because they were cheap and partly because (joy of joys) you could smoke wherever you wanted, including indoors (!) By the second day, however, the pollution was such that I felt as if I'd already gone through three packs of twenty. Essaouira was very different - clean, quiet and relaxing with astonishing views of the Atlantic, really pretty old buildings and a feeling that the old town hadn't really changed since Francis Drake ate his Christmas dinner on the ramparts. Even the three-hour car journey in a misleadingly-named 'grand taxi' (the same as a normal taxi, but with seven people squeezed into it) was quite fun in a strange way.
So all in all, a really interesting and enjoyable holiday which is still really vivid and detailed in my mind almost a week later. I learnt that the French word for 'avocado' is the same as the French word for 'lawyer'. I saw a man trying to fit a sheep into his luggage (and looking really pissed off and puzzled when the sheep wasn't having any of it). I realised I needed to buy new glasses after being mistaken for Harry Potter by a stoned man in an alley. I got a tan in November. So yes, good times.
Essaouira was more to my taste. It was much more relaxing after Marakech and much less cluttered than that city - everyone's pace of life seemed to be different and there was no traffic of any kind. The latter was a particular boon. If it weren't for the fact that Chris would probably have killed me, I was tempted to buy some cigarettes in Marrakech - partly because they were cheap and partly because (joy of joys) you could smoke wherever you wanted, including indoors (!) By the second day, however, the pollution was such that I felt as if I'd already gone through three packs of twenty. Essaouira was very different - clean, quiet and relaxing with astonishing views of the Atlantic, really pretty old buildings and a feeling that the old town hadn't really changed since Francis Drake ate his Christmas dinner on the ramparts. Even the three-hour car journey in a misleadingly-named 'grand taxi' (the same as a normal taxi, but with seven people squeezed into it) was quite fun in a strange way.
So all in all, a really interesting and enjoyable holiday which is still really vivid and detailed in my mind almost a week later. I learnt that the French word for 'avocado' is the same as the French word for 'lawyer'. I saw a man trying to fit a sheep into his luggage (and looking really pissed off and puzzled when the sheep wasn't having any of it). I realised I needed to buy new glasses after being mistaken for Harry Potter by a stoned man in an alley. I got a tan in November. So yes, good times.