So this week and weekend have come and flown by again, and somehow I am nearly a week behind again on updating my blog. (this seems to be a reoccurring theme…) I will go a bit backwards and talk about my week and then move back to the weekend.
Tuesday morning my boss pops her head into my office and asked if I wanted to go to a conference in Casablanca that afternoon. I didn’t event really hear what kind of conference it was, but I love field trips, so any excuse to get out of the office and I am in! She didn’t tell me a time, but I heard her say something about 12:30 out in the hall, so I was guessing we would leave around then. Having a notoriously small bladder and knowing how last minute things seem to function around here, from noon onwards I resisted the urge to stop into the bathroom, thinking we might leave on a moment’s notice. Sure enough, 12:53 rolls around and my boss yells in
“Come Kelly, now..we have to leave RIGHT now”
“Can I run to the bathroom first??”
“No- we have to go NOW”
I took the stairs instead of the elevator and ran into the bathroom as fast as humanly possible to go before we took off to Casa. When I hoped into the nice, new air-conditioned car with a driver (quite an upgrade from the ghetto, squished Fiat petit taxis from the late 1970’s that I normally take..)I saw that our third passenger was Carrie, a 2009 MSFS graduate. Before leaving Morocco I was told that I should meet Carrie because she had served in the Peace Corp in Morocco and now she worked for MCC headquarters in DC. I never ended up getting her contact info, but coincidentally ran into in Rabat. The three of us ladies chatted on the drive over about development, and Moroccan culture, and our families, and all sorts of things and it was really nice to hear about both of their lives and the different tracks that they took to get to where they are. I adore my boss, she is such a rockin’ lady, and Carrie is awesome to so I was a happy camper.
The conference turned out to be a working group meeting on entrepreneurship in Morocco, an initiative that the ambassador has really been pushing for, so we were asked to come along because we have an extra $10 million for our vocational program that we are probably not going to spend so we were looking to be potentially involved. The meeting was kind of a dud, no one was really prepared, the group didn’t have an action plan or a budget or any research to back up their ideas or a business plan- so it was kind of a waste..but I was happy for the field trip so I didn’t mind. After the meeting my boss took us all out for Oliveri’s ice cream, a Casablanca institution, which topped off my field trip adventure.
Wednesday night after work I met up with Carrie again, and Leslie and her boyfriend Mike. Leslie is a 2010 MSFS grad, who in a bizarre coincidence, was in Morocco on vacation and wanted to get in a few interviews, so she and her BF who works at the World Bank met with my boss about possible jobs. MSFS is tiny- there are only about 90 students each year, so the fact that I was hanging in Rabat with two of them, who are both connected to MCC (also considerably small) is even crazier. It was really great to catch up with the three of them and hear all their stories, and then another bizarre coincidence happened. Their friend James was coming to meet us at dinner, who was in Rabat on vacation and lived here for 2.5 years, over a year ago. Earlier that day I was commenting on my MSFS friend’s facebook photo album who had visited Morocco a week or so ago. She said she was sorry she didn’t have a chance to visit me, but her friend James who is starting at Fletcher was still around and asked if if I wanted to go out and hang with him..the same James who was coming to dinner, it turns out.
The coincidences continue. After dinner James and I were both going to Oudayas, but to different places. Because I still had to wait for my roommate to arrive, I went over to James’ friend’s place who was having people over and one of the 5 people there, was in town from Marrakech and worked with the girl whose going away party I was waiting to go to, but b/c he was unexpectedly in town, didn’t know it was going on. I invited them to come along, and when they showed up later, it was just more people who knew each other through other people and didn’t know each other directly and so on and so forth. It was quite strange and kind of awesome.
Last night my roommate and I went to another expat’s place for a Canada day party which was ironically filled with posh Moroccans and French people.(slightly awkward) There were 2 Canadians there, and they were from Quebec, so they didn’t even really celebrate it anyway. More people showed up, some Spaniards and Americans and a few guys from Dubai who would not stop talking about how great “How I met Your Mother” is and made me promise them I would watch at least 3 episodes. I don’t get why everyone likes that show- it’s all about Barney hitting on women, who is played by Doogie Howser and who in real life is gay!
Anyways, this weekend was great, bittersweet but overall really fun. Friday afternoon 5 of us, 2 Germans, 1 Moroccan, and my American roommate and I loaded into a tiny red Fiat and hit the road, destined for Essaouira. This past weekend was the Gnawa music festival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnawa where 450,000 of my closest friends descended on the sleepy beach town of Essoauira for some music and hippie goodness. The drive down was really fun, about 6 hours or so along the coast, with multiple ice cream stops along the way. The town of Essaouira itself is pretty cool, it’s an old port town and back in the 60’s and 70’s, Jimi Hendrix loved to hang out there.
We rented a flat on the outskirts of town, which fit us all surprisingly comfortably (aside from the random location.) We were 9 people as a group in total and although I really loved hanging with everyone..moving together with 9 people is nearly impossible, especially when everyone is completely indecisive.
Music was played at different stages all over town from about 7 pm- 4 am every night. The music was really cool but the crowds were awful. There was zero security, and whenever something would break out, the police would show up 15 minutes later and just start beating people indiscriminately. There was an overwhelming amount of young Moroccan men, many of who were out of their minds drunk or huffing glue. It was kind of scary actually. As a fiercely independent woman, I don’t like to have to admit that I need men, but if we didn’t have guys in our group, it would have been impossible. Every minute we would be swarmed with men who would stand right up next to us, or try to grab you, or just overall be obnoxious. We would try to stand in a group with the guys acting as bodyguards on the outside, but inevitably creepy Moroccans would squeeze their way in. The worst part was the stampedes. Someone would get in a fight and then people would panic and start running. When 150+ people are running at you- you run to- or you will get trampled. And it didn’t just happen once, after about 1:30- every 30 minutes another herd would come running at you. It made being at the concerts really uncomfortable, and it was such a shame, because the music was really good.
Sunday we left a bit after noon and took a different route up through the highway, 75% of which was under construction. We stopped at an argan oil co-op for breakfast and had some unbelievably good amalou and bread for breakfast and then again in Marrakech to watch the Germany vs England game. We were all pretty exhausted from the weekend so the drive home was a bit rougher than on the way down. We finally made it home after 10.
I am happy that I went, but I wouldn’t go to the festival again. Too many people, not enough police, and too much chaos. This weekend I am staying in town so it should be a bit more tranquilo. I am still trying to calm this Friday couscous coma. Ughh- soo good, but sooo bad.
Instead of reposting all of the photos, here is a link to my Essaouira photos:
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