I went to Spain!!! Last week I was in Northern Morocco and then Spain for 3 days. It felt so good and so refreshing to be in a European country. I can’t even explain in words how refreshing it was. It was nice to walk down the street and not be stared at, followed or harassed. There was a normal ratio of men to women on the streets. When I walked into a café it wasn’t a room full of men staring at me, men and women alike were inside and didn’t even notice me walk in. I was able to go out after dark, something I haven’t really done for 2 months! It was just nice to experience some normality for the first time in 2 months. We stayed in the city of Malaga which was gorgeous! The Spanish architecture with slight Moroccan influence was beautiful. The hardest part of the trip was changing my dirham into euros….that was painful.
Let me start at the beginning of the trip. First we went to Chefchaouen (I think I spelled that wrong) which is in Northern Morocco. The landscape reminded me a little of Colorado. It is an adorable mountain town and if you are ever in Morocco you have to go there. We also stopped at an incredible Moroccan villa for lunch on our way to the border town of Fnideq. It is a villa owned by two of the professors that work at my school and it was absolutely stunning. It was in a random town that really has no significance other than the olives that grow there and the whole area operates off of drug money. The one thing that ruined the Northern cities for me was all the drugs. In Chefchaouen there was weed everywhere! Like shopkeepers would just sit in their shops all day smoking pot. On the bright side this made everyone very chill and shop keepers wouldn’t hassle us! But Chefchaouen was like a druggy’s utopia. Ok now I need to tell you about the strangest town I have ever been in in my entire life (and I’ve been to a lot of towns), the eerie town of Fnideq. It is a town on the border of Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. It is hard to put into words and honestly you just have to experience it to understand the weirdness of it. The town runs entirely off of contraband goods. People smuggle things over from Spain and then sell them in this town. We were only there for one night thankfully but it was like living one night in the twilight zone. I’ll try to paint the picture for you. It looks like it used to be a normal functioning town with a main road lined with shops only all the shops are abandoned. One girl in our group described it as an anti-utopian world. There are no cars in the streets, instead the sidewalks and street are covered with men who spread out one or two tables or blankets covered with things to sell. It didn’t seem like a lot of people were buying things but there were tons of people standing around trying to sell things. There was barely any room to walk around because the ground is covered with everything ranging from food, pots, blankets, underwear, sunglasses, etc and men the men who sell the stuff all stand around talking to each other. Then we saw what looked like an abandoned mall and we gave it the fitting name “Contraband Mall”. It was a giant concrete structure like a mall in America without all the fancy signs. We went inside and it was basically just that, an abandoned mall. Again people had things spread out inside and filled the shelves of the stores with random goods. We didn’t venture to the second floor because it looked creepy and we were creeped out enough as it was. None of the stuff being sold was aimed towards tourist and come to think of it I didn’t see any other foreigners there other than our group. I don’t think outsiders go there very often. There were almost no women on the streets and the only ones we saw were wearing djellabas and hijabs (the traditional Moroccan robes and head scarf). So after roaming the streets with my eyes the size of saucers for about an hour and seeing the best contraband Fnideq had to offer, we bought the essentials (which in this case were two boxes of Oreos!) and retreated to our hotel room to be comforted by Oprah. I wish I had a picture to show you but since the entire town is covered in illegal sales none of us wanted to find out how the locals would respond to us taking out our cameras.
After surviving a night in Fnideq we headed for our next challenge; crossing the border! Originally our bus was supposed to drop us at the border; we would walk across and then be picked up by another bus on the other side. Thankfully when our bus dropped us off the other bus was there on the Morocco side waiting to drive us over the border. Let me give you the scene so you can see why I was so thankful we were able to drive over the border instead of walk. When we arrived at 7 am at the border there was already a line about half a mile long, not single file but about 5 men wide waiting to cross. Next to the line of men there was a line for women. The line for women is not even a line it is women showing their papers and walking through. The reason for this is b/c there are a lot more men going in I believe, but also women are not searched at the border due to the social gender codes. The male guards cannot search a woman so they are able to walk through, while a man can be searched by the male guards so it takes a lot longer to get through. Until about 50 meters before the actual border there isn’t any sort of boundary between the men and women line except for guards every 8 feet and these guards do not hesitate to get violent. Whenever the men step out of line or if the line just seems too big they push the men back or beat them with a big leather strap. I’m not sure if we would have walked by this line but 15 American girls just waltzing through the border seems a little bit like we are laughing in their faces or something. It just seems wrong. So I am glad we got to hide in the bus while all the passports were being stamped and then drive across the border. They never even came on the bus to make sure it was only us on board. We could have been full of Moroccans and I’m not sure they would have known. Crossing the border on the way back was the same except there was no long line of Moroccan men and a guard boarded our bus and drove over the border with us. When he stepped on our bus we all went silent haha. I don’t know why we were so intimidated but none of us said one word as he went around checking our passports. It was a great trip!
I have two weeks left of classes and then we start our independent research projects, which is for 4 weeks. After the program I am heading to Turkey! Me, Brishon, Alizabeth, Mark and hopefully Barrett and some friends from Hawaii, Barry and Patty will all be renting a villa in Istanbul for a week. I am so excited and can’t wait to see my siblings! Oh and this week a friend was visiting the woman I live with and she grew up where Alizabeth and Mark live in India! So we spent an afternoon drinking tea in a café and she told me all about where they live. It was great to hear about where they live from someone who lived there, but made me miss Alizabeth more than I already do. That is what I love about traveling; all of the people God puts in your path! I think about my friends and family at home a lot and miss you all very much. If anyone wants to visit please do! I love writing these blogs because when I stop and reflect on what I’ve done and the experiences I’ve had it makes me all the more excited for the experiences to come! Thanks for all the prayers and know you are in my prayers too! Much love from North Africa!
