Hiking Adventure in Rural Morocco

Les Pieds Marcheurs is a hiking group that consists of Moroccans of all ages.  I heard about the group from one of my roommates friends and I immediately knew it was something I wanted to get involved in.  I have always loved spending time in nature, but after having lived in Casablanca for several months it has become something I seek out actively (think traffic, pollution, garbage, and noise 24/7 and you have a pretty accurate image of Casablanca).  The city is definitely a far cry from the quaint town of Kingston, Ontario, where I have been living for the past four years, but by no means am I complaining, I love this city and find long walks in the medina or along the main boulevards a great pasttime.

Ok but back to Les Pieds Marcheurs.  So naturally when I heard about the group I did the same thing anyone who grew up in my generation would have done.  I found them on Facebook.  Once I knew the details of their next trip I was convinced that I wanted to go.  I copied down the information for the registration meeting and then tried to recruit some friends to join me.  Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in finding a friend to join, so in true Sarah fashion I showed up to a meeting of strangers on my own.

As I climbed the stairs to the second level of the cafe that serves as the meeting place for Les Pieds Marcheurs I wondered who and what I would find around the corner.  At the top of the stairs I tentatively walked towards a group of Moroccans I saw sitting at some sofas in the corner.  As I approached they all looked up at me with blank expressions, waiting for me to ask them for directions or something.  When I explained that I was there for the Les Pieds Marcheurs meeting they all looked slightly taken aback, but quickly concealed their surprise by offering me a seat with welcoming smiles.  Apparently there haven't been many foreigners who have (1) heard of the group and (2) participated in a hike.

Ok let's jump to the hike.  I won't go into details because I wrote about 10 pages in my travel journal and that would be far too tedious to type up haha.  Essentially it was the most amazing experience I have had in Morocco so far.  The views, the people, the hiking, the food, the music and dancing at night, the sunsets etc etc.  Everything was just amazing and I feel so fortunate to have been on such an authentic Moroccan trip.  So instead of describing it I'll post some pictures for you.  Enjoy!

We arrived at the hostel around 4am, therefore it was pitch black.  When
I woke up, this is what the view from my window.  Not too shabby.

I had my first spelunking experience on this hike, with a head lamp and everything.  This is the cave next to the one we explored.  The entrance to the one we went into was nowhere near this big and anything more than a tight crouching position while moving it resulted in a head bang or a battered knee. 

The landscape on the hike was absolutely incredible.  I pulled an Aliza Sovani
and took approximately 500 photos over the two day hike :)

Hanging out with one of our guides during a break.   

Oh hello there paradise valley!

Paradise valley, in the other direction there are cliffs that the guys and I jumped off of.
I won't post the pictures of the cliff so that my mom doesn't faint haha.
Haven't felt my heart beat that fast/such an adrenaline rush in a while :)

Just living the dream.

You know you are becoming Moroccan when you have piled into the back of a truck with a bunch of people in the middle of the back country haha.  There wasn't enough room in the truck for everyone, so our guide was hanging out the back with the door open (his arm is the white-sleeved one that is slightly visible at the back). 

The crew.

On our way to our accommodations for the night.  Sun is starting to set over the mountains.
Watched the sun set from the room of our auberge while drinking some Moroccan tea.   

Nothing is better at the end of a hike than a swim at the beach.  Taghazout is a surf town
that is definitely on my list of places to visit again.  And who doesn't like watching
camels roam the beach as you soak in some rays?

For my next post I will share stories about my experience participating in the religious holiday Eid al-Adha with one of my friend's family.  Spoiler alert: I saw 3 sheep get slaughtered and then proceeded to help clean and cook the intestines and stomach of one of them.  That will be a post you won't want to miss :)

Cheers,

Sarah

What is Sarah doing in Morocco?

I would like to thank those of you who have filed complaints with me recently regarding the infrequency of my blog posts. The guilt resulting from your pleas was the push I needed to finally sit back down on my couch and divulge some details on my covert Moroccan life.

So let's start with my internship. What am I doing here, other than soaking in some sweet Moroccan culture?

I am working for a project called YouthInvest that is run by MEDA Maroc, which is MEDA's Moroccan branch. First I will share a bit of information about the project and then I'll delve into what my role is. So as not to reinvent the wheel I am graciously borrowing snipits of the project description from the MEDA website for your reading pleasure:

Within five years, YouthInvest will directly touch the lives of at least 50,000 young people, 15-24, connecting them with innovative financial and non-financial products and services that will help them develop skills to increase their possibility of finding meaningful work.

Activities included in the project are:

Training: MEDA’s 100 Hours to Success program includes three key curriculum areas: life skills, business and entrepreneurship training and financial literacy.

Savings: all participants open a safe and secure bank account with one of our commercial banking partners. These partners have developed special youth- specific products with lower minimum balances.

Loans: Youth who have completed the 100 Hours to Success training and who are interested in starting their own business are referred to one of our MFI partners. Each partner has developed a youth-specific loan product, taking into account the needs and requirements of younger clients.

Internships: Job placement and mentorship will allow selected participants to gain practical experience in the workplace, an essential step in securing meaningful employment.


My title at MEDA Maroc is Communications Development intern. My role consists of two parts: developing communication materials and creating a knowledge management system. The following is a description of each of these parts.

Communications:

- We are currently working on the redesign of our website. There are several things wrong with the website; it is very static, only available in Arabic, not aesthetically pleasing, and does not have enough interesting content for youth to browse. In the last several weeks we have met with many communication agencies in order to get quotes for the redesign. Our team has a bunch of great ideas for the new website and we are all looking forward to getting the redesign underway (we are still waiting on a couple quotes before we can select an agency). To take a look at the site as it is now check out: www.medamena.org

- In the past two weeks we have been preparing the November issue of the quarterly newsletter. It has proved to be a difficult task to have one person writing it in Arabic and the other in English while maintaining a certain level of consistency between the two versions. We are hoping to have it published early this week. I will post a link of my blog to the English version for those who are interested in reading it.

- We are also meeting with communications agencies to get quotes and accumulate ideas for an educational campaign in Casablanca on the importance of savings. In Morocco there isn't a culture of savings, especially among youth, therefore one of our goals is to raise awareness of the importance of savings and facilitate the relationship between banks and youth. The savings campaign would make use of several mediums of communication in order to disseminate messages in the voices of youth who are discussing their experience with saving. We hope to use the radio, newspapers, the internet, signs, etc. to get the message across. It is likely that this campaign will be launched in January.

Knowledge Management:

Since YouthInvest was launced in 2009 the members of the team have accumulated a lot of knowledge and created numerous documents. However all of this knowledge is currently stored in the heads of the staff or on their personal computers. In order to document everything the team has learned I am conducting extensive interview with all the members of the MEDA Maroc team and partner organizations. The format for those interviews is based on a format used by the UNDP during their Knowledge Management campaign.

The information collected in these interviews will be used to create a toolkit for other similar organizations who can learn from the experiences of MEDA Maroc. This toolkit will include documents such as guides for developing a monitoring and evaluation system, guides for training trainers and instructions on how to collect and write Success Stories. The knowledge collected will also be summarized in a report that I will be writing near the end of my internship.

The task of collecting and documenting as much knowledge as possible from the team is a daunting task but it is also an incredible opportunity for me. Having the opportunity to speak to a wide range of people in the organization means that by the end of my internship I will truly have an in depth understanding of the different roles and responsibilities of the members of an NGO.

Last week I conducted the first interview with our Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist. Her job is fascinating and getting to hear the lessons she has learned in the field over the last several years was very interesting. This week I have 3 interviews scheduled with the Communications Officer, the Training Specialist, and the Director of Financial Services at MEDA, who manages the YouthInvest project.

I'm looking forward to a trip to Oujda at the end of November to partake in a workshop for partner organizations. Throughout the day I will have the chance to perform interviews with the participants to ensure that knowledge from our partner organizations is being documented as well. I had a great time in Oujda last time I was there so I can't wait to see all of development agents again.

My trip to Oujda also happens to coincide with the 3 month mark of my time in Morocco. Since I'm on a tourist visa here I have to leave every 3 months. Therefore I will be making the trip to Melilla, a Spanish enclave that is attached to Morocco, in order to get my passport stamped so that I won't have any difficulty leaving the country later. I have spoken to many expats who stayed even just a day longer than their 3 months and they were detained at the airport and missed their flight. So there is not point in taking chances, and it's off to Spain I go soon :)

I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about what I have been doing at work. I'm going to follow this post with a quick post about my life outside of work as I have had many adventures during my time here. Check back soon for that post! (possibly later tonight...and I promise it will include some pictures)

Shop til you drop in Marrakech

Soooo apparently I have a difficult time keeping blogs up to date.  For those of you who followed my adventures in Switzerland you will remember that I updated my blog twice...in 7 months.  Well this is my second blog post from Morocco, so let's cross our fingers that I'll break my record and make it to a third one soon!  I am only slightly better at keeping my travel journal up to date and am becoming somewhat adept at documenting my adventures in photographs.  So unless I want to totally forgot this experience in 10 years I will have to pick up the pace with my blogging and journaling.

Ok so let's start with the most recent events, and then I'll see what I can remember from the past couple of weeks.

This weekend I went to Marrakech with one of my coworkers.  Did you know that when taking a train in Morocco just because you bought a ticket doesn't mean you are guaranteed a seat?  That's right, we boarded our 3 hour train only to be squashed in a hallway with our luggage and resort to wedging ourselves between a compartment and our bags in order to remain stable on the tumultuous train ride.  Thankfully less than an hour into the trip some people got off the train and we snagged some seats.

A glimpse of our riad, with our
balcony on the second floor.

We arrived in Marrakech around 11.30pm on Friday night and took a taxi to one of the doors to the old medina (the furthest the taxis can take you because after that the streets aren't big enough for cars).  After enlisting the help of some passersby we made our way down some vacant dark streets to our riad.  A riad employee led us down the sketchiest road I have ever walked down, it was covered by some slabs of metal and the lights were broken, therefore it was complete darkness and we were just following him blindly down the alley to the riad.  GREAT IDEA SARAH! ahaha but it turned out ok since I lived to tell the story.  When we reached a door at the end of the alley the man opened the door onto a magical moonlight courtyard.  He brought us to our room and then after settling in we headed downstairs for our 3 course meal that was served to our moonlit table.  Needless to say we felt like princesses and this feeling was only intensified when we realized that the other three rooms in the riad were vacant (it's currently not high tourist season).  A full weekend with a riad all to ourselves, with 3 course dinners and extravagant breakfasts, I'm sorry is this real life?

After a great sleep we woke up early on Saturday to seize the day.  We started our shopping off strong at a fabric store where I purchased two big beautiful blankets and 3 shawls.  My friend that I was traveling with is very friendly and merchants love talking with her.  That turned out to be very much to our advantage over the weekend because although I was a white foreigner who would normally get offered absurdly expensive prices, my friend would always ask the prices of items first as I just browsed the shops and the merchants would always give her the "Moroccan price", after which I would start showing my interest in items.  We met a ton of really nice merchants which surprised me because I had heard such harsh criticism about the dealings of Marrakech merchants.  Apparently after the terrorist bombing last April they have become a lot friendlier since foreigners aren't as numerous.  Anyways, I won't bore you with all of information about my purchases, all I will say is I was just as successful at many other shops as I was at the fabric shop :)

After some shopping we walked through Djemaa el Fna (the square famous for snake charmers, belly dancing, musicians, storytellers etc etc).  We saw a couple snakes and some monkies doing flips before moving on to take some pictures by the Koutoubia, which is Marrakech's biggest mosques and also known for its perfect minaret.  Post Koutoubia photo shoot and jaunt in a near by garden we realized we were starving and headed back to the old medina to find some food.  We stopped at a food stall (well known by Moroccans) for a tajine lunch.  Half way through our delicious meal I look down and realized that the server had put a fork next to me.  I have become so accustomed to eating Moroccan food with my hands that I hadn't even noticed his polite gesture for a white girl in a traditional Moroccan restaurant.  To be honest I love eating with my hands now, especially cous cous!  When I visited my friend Soumia's home two weeks ago she cooked an incredible cous cous meal and I almost perfected the "cous cous ball" that you have to make with your hands (correction - hand, the right hand is used for eating, left hand is used for...'cleaning yourself'...traditionally speaking).

Saturday night we headed back to Djemaa el Fna which had transformed from the busy day market to the thriving night spectacle.  Where there were once stalls of dates and figs there were now tables upon tables set up around make shift kitchens.  There were hundreds of foreigners seated at the white-clothed tables taking in the view of the chefs cooking traditional food or the musicians performing nearby.  My friend and I wondered from one act to another before settling in at a cafe to observe the chaos with some mint tea in hand.  This weekend happened to be a major soccer match (Morocco vs Tanzania) that was taking place in Marrakech on Sunday.  Therefore all weekend there were young guys everywhere blowing vuvuzelas, hanging out of cars with Moroccan flags, and selling every kind of Moroccan apparel imaginable on the streets.  Given that I love sports and that I also love chaos I truly enjoyed seeing the city in such a state of pre-game euphoria.

On Sunday my friend and I decided to do a bit more site seeing (after a few quick last minute purchases in the morning of course).  We headed to El Badi Palace to check out its ruins and imagine what used to be. We took some great photos and enjoyed climbing on, under, and in all of the ruins.  Here is one of my favourites from the terrace overlooking the palace pool.

Ok so that's a synopsis of my weekend in Marrakech.  It was an incredible city with so much to see and I look forward to going back again soon to explore more of it!  I'm so thankful that my friend (who shall remain unnamed for various undisclosed reasons haha) was able to accompany me to Marrakech as we had many fascinating conversations and we were able to get to know each other a lot better.  Looking forward to many more adventures with you!

I was hoping to talk more about my internship in this blog post but I think if this post gets any longer either you or I will lose interest, and we don't want that.  So in the next couple of days I promise to write another post!  I'll discuss what I have been up to at work so far and what my plans are for the next 5 months of my internship.  Hope all is well wherever you are reading this from.  Cheers and good night!

A Canadian in Casa

I have now been in Casablanca for almost three weeks and am finally getting around to starting up my blog!  This will hopefully significantly reduce the number of individual messages and emails I have been spamming friends and family with for the past couple of weeks as I have been trying to keep everyone up to date on my adventures.

Since I have been here I have:

•  found a wonderful apartment with a French roommate; it has a beautiful view of the ocean and the Hassan II Mosque
• met a bunch of great people on the MEDA Maroc team both in Casablanca and Oujda
• took an overnight train to Oujda (15 km from the Algerian border) to attend a Train the Trainer session (in Arabic of course...thankfully there were many kind people who translated most of it into French for me).  The training was for pre-selected participants hoping to receive a position as a MEDA Maroc Extension Officer.  Extension officers train youth in things like business skills, computer literacy, financial literacy etc.
• attended a Moroccan wedding to which I wore a traditional Moroccan 'keftan' (formal dress), ate approximately 7 courses of food (no cutlery included, and communal plates and glasses of course) and entertained wedding attendants as I attempted to learn how to dance the Ragada until 4.30am (the slogan for Moroccan weddings should be 'go big or go home'
• taken many trips to Souks and have started learning the ways of Moroccan bargaining
• started learning Moroccan Arabic (known as Darija)...wahead, juge, kleta...1, 2, 3...that's a start right?
• almost died several times in the crazy little red taxis that swerve like madmen through Casa traffic.  They are the main method of transportation here and they can take up to three people, so it's very unlikely that you make it to your destination without several other people being picked up and dropped off along the way.  
• and best of all: ate a ton of delicious Moroccan food! (I now have a gym membership starting October 1st which is crucial due to the fact that bread is pretty much the base of every meal here...and I like bread...a lot).  

So that's my life in Casa in a nutshell.  I'll make sure to start posting some more specific stories now that I've got the blog running...because as my friends that I have been keeping up to date in a Facebook thread know...there have been quite a few interesting adventures here so far...

More to come soon :)

MEDA Maroc team at the wedding.

MEDA Maroc girls at the wedding

At the Hassan II Mosque during sun set.

Fountain by the Hassan II Mosque.

View from my apartment balcony.