Martil

This past weekend, myself and a few intrepid friends made the trek to the Mediterranean coast. We took the train to Tanger, spent the night, and then caught a bus to Tetouan in the morning. Form Tetouan we got a grand taxi to Martil, and were lying on the beach by noon. Sadly, some of my travelling companions neglected to bring their passports, which mean a lot of waiting around while they went to the police station and got their international information registered etc. It was frustrating.

Martil is one of a few seaside towns close to Tetouan. I think the area is just one long beach between rocky headlands. That’s another thing, we were in the Rif mountains, which are crazy beautiful. Driving form Tanger to Tetouan, we were passing these enormous hills covered in farmland, and even the peaks were blanketed with green fields almost until the top.

view of the Rif mountains from the beach

The beach was pretty much deserted, maybe because it’s a bit early for tourists. There weren’t many hotels, so I’m guessing Martil is for Moroccans on beachy holidays. I didn’t see many other tourists, except for the odd Spaniard. Our hotel was right on the beach, and cost around 88dh ($11) per person for the night. This is one of the many reasons why I love Morocco.

the view from our hotel room

Another reason I love Morocco are the hanoots that are everywhere. Hanoots are kind of like your neighborhood convenient store, with snacks, toiletries, that kind of thing. They are usually housed in a narrow cubicle that faces out onto the street with shelves inside and out that go up to the ceiling. I buy lots of yogurt. So anyway, we found the WalMart of hanoots in Martil, and loaded up on bread, cheese, yogurt and cookies, and had a picnic lunch on the beach. We even brought all our garbage back to the hotel, unlike others before us, who had simply left theirs on the beach. Garbage is a big problem in Morocco, one that continues to bother me where ever we go.

On Sunday we tried to get bus tickets from Tetouan to Rabat, but didn’t consider the fact that it was the last day of school vacation. So we took a grand taxi back to Tetouan and rode the sketchiest bus yet back to Tanger. Sketchy meaning it’s not the nice bus that all the tourists take, it the one that your average Moroccan will take to visit family in another town. It was an uncomfortable experience, mostly because the suspension of the bus was shot and I got moderately carsick, but it got us to Tanger, where we got the train back to Rabat. Mercifully, we found seats for the 5-hour train ride.

a blurry Tetuoan from the bus, but you get the idea

a sleepy shepherd I saw from the train

The least fun part of the weekend was walking home at 10:30pm through the medina. Dark, garbage everywhere, and men hanging out at corners. I did get a good dinner when I got home though.

Tangier etc.

So I can’t pretend to like everything on this trip. I did not like this weekend’s trip to Tangier, and here are the reasons why:

1. the 4 hour bus ride there
2. living with 5 other girls in a cramped, but nice, apartment
3. how those same girls thought it would be a good idea to buy lots of bad wine and get drunk last night
4. tourists are not a novelty, they are a source of income only
5. we got hassled way more by men on the street
6. other things…

Here are the things that I liked:
1. lunch on Saturday at a tapas restaurant called Zoco Chico, where the owner was very nice and the food was amazing
2. walking around the medina
3. the view from pretty much anywhere in the city
4. the cleanliness of the streets

Once we got back to Rabat we tried to catch a cab, and a cabbie herded four of us into a Petit Taxi, which is illegal (only three per Petit Taxi). And then we noticed he didn’t have a meter, so we got out, got hassled, and hailed another cab which dropped us off right outside the medina next to a clump of police officers. I was tired, sketched out, and hungry. It was not a good time.

I was so glad to get back home to 57 Rue des Consuls. I returned in the midst of a cleaning frenzy which was precipitated by the washing machine overflowing (?). My French isn’t working so well right now, but they got the idea that I’m tired.

I didn’t come to Morocco because it was going to be easy. I decided to study abroad in North Africa because I knew it would be different from everything I had ever experienced and I would come away from it a wiser person. This is hard, I admit. I’m tired of eating so much bread and cookies and sugar, I’m mentally exhausted from living in three languages, and I miss my friends and family back home just like everyone else in the program at this minute.

I think it’s a turning point though. Having such an awful time in Tangier really made some of us realize how much at home we were in Rabat. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. This is also the time where we just have to abandon all our feelings of discomfort with our surroundings, and accept what and where we are. It’s no use missing what you can’t have.

This next part is because I know you appreciate my honesty and frankness, and also because I just need to complain to somebody: some of the girls in this program are rather high maintenance. If they absolutely require a western toilet and hot water so they can shower everyday and shit without squatting, then why did they choose to study abroad in Morocco? The mean part of me can’t wait to see what they do for the village stay.