Marvelous Marrakech
Salaam Aleichhem!
This blog should be alternately named "there's no such thing as just looking".
Marrakech is a wonder. A flurry of activity, a mess of colour, a city of smells, alight with energy. I'm staying in a Riad in the Medina, a maze of street after street, cobblestone after cobblestone, all long-necked corridors and dark cornered elbows, like a baby giraffe.
After a mess of blocks that I had to pay someone to take me through, I walked from a dark, dank, narrow alleyway through a fairly short door into a beautiful central courtyard, surrounded by our rooms. All of the people in the Riad are lovely, both those who work here and those who are staying here. Yesterday my new Riad friends, a lovely melange of Brits, Americans, and Australians, toured around together, went to dinner together and tasted each others' tagines, and smoked the hookah on the Riad roof. Today we went to the souks, soaking up the lively enegergy, which now is a little bit more tame I'm told, as it's Ramadan and everyone is tired and hungry during the day. This hasn't stopped many shopkeepers from trying their very best to woo us as customers.
Speaking of wooing me as a customer, the buying culture here is more different than I ever could have imagined. I've never experienced anything quite like it. Not in South Africa, Nepal, Guatemala, nowhere. Shopping is a dance. But not the kind you're used to. When we shop, we ask the price of something. That generally determines whether ew like it enough--is it worth $20? Yes? I'll take it. $20?!!!! No thanks, and we walk away. Here in Marrakech, there is no price. Nothing is too high, and prices are often picked at random. Today I saw the same kind of rug for sale for one price, and at another place for a price that was exactly 1000 times the first. So, when I ask how much something costs, I get "you give what you like." Then there's the part of the dance where you stumble over your partner's feet. You divide their original price by four, say your price, and the shopkeep feigns taking complete offense, as if the price you named couldn't buy it if it were soaked in shit.
Next, the haggle. The haggle I can do...it's these first steps that have me so off my game. This part of the culture is so phenomenally strange that all of the
folks in the riad come home and talk about what we paid for certain items. Then we ask our Riad manager what we should've paid, and take our great newfound esteem in haggling skills and shove them, lowering our tails between our legs after finding we've once again overpaid.
Today all of the girls and I went to the hammam. Similar to a Turkish bath, we got washed with black soap, massaged, and rinsed down. Then we got scrubbed raw with a scrubber. It was alarming to see the amount of dead skin come off each of us like we were practically molting. Then our hair was washed. Then they put natural musk all over us and left us to bake in a hot room, sweating ourselves into slippery messes. We were than washed off again with soap, and that was the end of it. A very enjoyable experience, as we girls were blabbing the entire time and giggling when our feet were scrubbed, even if it was only a fun ritual rather than a weekly need for cleanliness.
Today I'll wander around a but more before leaving tomorrow morning for a trip that will take me to the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara deset. I am REALLY excited. To think I almost didn't come to Morocco is razy. I'm SO glad I did!
Ma Ha Salaama,
Sara, aka Kanchi
This blog should be alternately named "there's no such thing as just looking".
Marrakech is a wonder. A flurry of activity, a mess of colour, a city of smells, alight with energy. I'm staying in a Riad in the Medina, a maze of street after street, cobblestone after cobblestone, all long-necked corridors and dark cornered elbows, like a baby giraffe.
After a mess of blocks that I had to pay someone to take me through, I walked from a dark, dank, narrow alleyway through a fairly short door into a beautiful central courtyard, surrounded by our rooms. All of the people in the Riad are lovely, both those who work here and those who are staying here. Yesterday my new Riad friends, a lovely melange of Brits, Americans, and Australians, toured around together, went to dinner together and tasted each others' tagines, and smoked the hookah on the Riad roof. Today we went to the souks, soaking up the lively enegergy, which now is a little bit more tame I'm told, as it's Ramadan and everyone is tired and hungry during the day. This hasn't stopped many shopkeepers from trying their very best to woo us as customers.
Speaking of wooing me as a customer, the buying culture here is more different than I ever could have imagined. I've never experienced anything quite like it. Not in South Africa, Nepal, Guatemala, nowhere. Shopping is a dance. But not the kind you're used to. When we shop, we ask the price of something. That generally determines whether ew like it enough--is it worth $20? Yes? I'll take it. $20?!!!! No thanks, and we walk away. Here in Marrakech, there is no price. Nothing is too high, and prices are often picked at random. Today I saw the same kind of rug for sale for one price, and at another place for a price that was exactly 1000 times the first. So, when I ask how much something costs, I get "you give what you like." Then there's the part of the dance where you stumble over your partner's feet. You divide their original price by four, say your price, and the shopkeep feigns taking complete offense, as if the price you named couldn't buy it if it were soaked in shit.
Next, the haggle. The haggle I can do...it's these first steps that have me so off my game. This part of the culture is so phenomenally strange that all of the
folks in the riad come home and talk about what we paid for certain items. Then we ask our Riad manager what we should've paid, and take our great newfound esteem in haggling skills and shove them, lowering our tails between our legs after finding we've once again overpaid.
Today all of the girls and I went to the hammam. Similar to a Turkish bath, we got washed with black soap, massaged, and rinsed down. Then we got scrubbed raw with a scrubber. It was alarming to see the amount of dead skin come off each of us like we were practically molting. Then our hair was washed. Then they put natural musk all over us and left us to bake in a hot room, sweating ourselves into slippery messes. We were than washed off again with soap, and that was the end of it. A very enjoyable experience, as we girls were blabbing the entire time and giggling when our feet were scrubbed, even if it was only a fun ritual rather than a weekly need for cleanliness.
Today I'll wander around a but more before leaving tomorrow morning for a trip that will take me to the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara deset. I am REALLY excited. To think I almost didn't come to Morocco is razy. I'm SO glad I did!
Ma Ha Salaama,
Sara, aka Kanchi
posted by sara leib at 12:04 PM
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