We picked up our guide, Kalam who took us first to a pottery warehouse and then for a guided tour through the impossibly complicated Fes Medina. This is everything you imagined Morocco to be, and more. It was straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Kalam began with a strong speach on staying together, as he explained there were over 9000 tiny narrow streets and about 2000 donkeys used as transportation of items and that we would need to be very careful not to get lost.
As soon as we entered through the gates, the medina (original walled city found in every town), was immediately like stepping onto another planet. Not that I've ever stepped on another planet, but you know what I mean. People scurrying and moving in every direction. Dozens of mini-markets all leading into each other. Squaking chickens getting plucked and then their heads chopped off, skinny cats, mangy dogs, warm eggs, mountains of spices, jewellery shops and junk shops. Metal workers hammering and banging with mallots and chisels. Needleworkers sewing tablecloths at break-neck speed and children feeding them the yarn at their feet with complex-looking home-made spinners. Vegetable markets piled high with figs, grapes and prickly pears. Shoe-shiners and beggers. Bakerys everywhere and small girls carrying loaves of bread above their heads. Mosques and people washing before prayers.
It was hard to take it all in and we had to move as one large group the whole time... I was petrified of getting lost and this was nothing at all like the calm and clean white and blue chefchauon medina - this was the Chaos Theory in action! We wound our way slowly around the streets in a totally ilogical manner and I wondered how anyone could remember their way home at all. We had no chance of being found if we got lost. The first stop was the tannery. We turned left down a small dark narrow alleyway, entered into a courtyard, right into a street, second on the left, and then turned suddenly at a door with no sign, up a set of narrow stairs, past a group of men in a room having mint tea, down a corridor and into an expansive shop. The shop looked out over the enormous tannery below where three stories below us several men navigated or were submerged in huge circular vats filled with stinking brown liquid. They worked all day under the beating hot sun, dying the leather for bags and shoes and wallets and chairs. The heat and stench was too much for me and I had to go back outside after a while. Not really into leather anyway but the rest of the group dutifully bought out half the shop.
The next stop was a cavernous and mercifully cool marbled blanket shop where we were given Moroccan-style chip buddies for lunch with loads of coke. We sat through the carpet speil but I resisted buying any more. They were all very beautiful though.
After the blanket shop lunch, we were taken to various other specialty shops..... jewellery shops and a natural remedy shop with bottles of pastel coloured powders and perfumed oils lining the walls. We were given the speil in almost every place, but there was never any pressure to buy anything. I bought some clay masque 'shampoo' (which doesn't work and feels like you attempted to wash your hair with a, well, clay masque), as well as some rose and almond cream. They also had a sinus remedy which was a kind of spicy powder you sniff, and powder eyeliners that you apply by dipping a tiny brush into a tiny bottle and then kind of 'blink' it on.
Finally late in the afternoon, we were taken back to camp for a brief wash before a convoy of taxis came to take us to the one dinner out for the week. It was an entertainment type place for the foreigners with belly dancers (one was totally useless just rolling her flab around) but one great woman who was very experienced and had a real talent. She had all the girls up in the middle of the restaurant doing the moves with her. Also a magician, a dance troop and musicians provided hours of entertainment. The food was pretty good too.... among other dishes, chicken stew with prunes was memorable.... there were more prunes than chicken! It was tasty, but unfortunately prunes were the last thing any of us should have been eating as most of us had become sick by this stage.
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