This blog entry marks the end of my journey and the blog. This is my last day in Morocco, but it is a travel day. I am sitting in the Marrakech airport as I write this, waiting to board a plane to Casablanca and from there, another plane that will take me home--well, to DC, anyway. From there it's another quick flight to Charlotte the next day and *then* I'll at last be able to sleep in my own bed.
Will I return to Morocco? I might. I was especially impressed with the craftsmanship here. I just about fell in love with the ornately carved wooden tables I saw in the main woodworking souk of Essaouira, which the king of Morocco himself has visited. I have developed a fantasy of flying back to Morocco someday, once I have a house, and furnishing it with furniture, brasswork, ceramics, and other beautiful products shipped from Morocco. Naturally, this is a fairy tale. First, it would be more sensible to find a website specializing in Moroccan crafts and order directly from there, rather than traveling back to the country and manually scouring its souks. Secondly, I doubt I'll have the budget to fill my home with such beautiful goods anyway. But still, it's a pleasant dream. Given my current limited budget and lack of a house in which to put such a table, I limited my purchase at the woodworking souk to a small, intricately carved "secret box," which involves something like three steps to find the key, reveal the lock, and open it. The salesman helping us at the souk had me record a video on my phone of him opening the box in case I forget, it's so involved. But I thought it was a cute idea for my husband, who likes puzzles. I'm going to fold up a note to him into a tiny square and stick it inside the box, for him to find once he figures it out. Our anniversary is coming up this week, so it will form part of the arsenal of gifts I bought him here to mark the occasion.
Marrakech was the last stop on our journey. I heard a lot about it, but I have to say it didn't live up to its reputation. I concede that the city is very pretty. Low-lying buildings, all built with the same pale pink granite, line wide and clean boulevards. They are peppered in-between with lush greenery and colorful flowers. This felt like the most livable city of all those I have visited here for me, were I to make a radical life change and decide to move to Morocco. However, as a tourist destination, I didn't feel that it stood out from everything else I've seen in the country. The souks of the medina were like the souks in every other medina we've visited, it's just that there were more of them. The square of the medina I've heard so much about, Djamaa el-Fna, was lively, to be sure, but the performers weren't exceptional and the people peddling small goods were aggressive. The guy in our tour group literally got accosted by two food peddlers trying to hold him back from walking away. A woman who drew henna designs followed us for like five minutes, inserting herself into our group and trying to grab at our hands. I did have a very nice juice there, though. Moroccans do juice very well. Tldr: I found Marrakech to be a livable, pretty city, but not one that was all that enjoyable from a tourist perspective.
A pretty street in Marrakech, Rue Yves St. Laurent. There is a museum about him on this street, as well as a pretty garden that he purchased to protect it from being destroyed for real estate development
The Jardin Majorelle. This is part of the aforementioned garden that Yves St. Laurent saved
A pretty pathway within the garden
I went hot air-ballooning for the first time the morning of my full day in Marrakech. The hot air-ballooning itself was fun, but it was unfortunately marred by the fact that all the sickness that had evaded me for most of the trip decided to hit at once that morning, the day before my flight home. I guess just like the rest of my group, Morocco wasn't about to let me go unscathed. Without getting too graphic, I woke up with GI issues and had to take some of my roommate's imodium. Then my motion sickness, which had miraculously hibernated for most of this driving-heavy trip, reared its ugly head in the van ride to the hot air-ballooning site. My head felt thick, and a few minutes after getting out of the van, I felt that tell-tale feeling in my jaw. I started vomiting into my hands while running as fast as I could to the bathroom, but it was closed, naturally. So then in front of everybody I got down on my hands and knees in the gravel and finished my business there. Not fun. Then one of my travel mates gave me a packet of two dramamines, which I was so grateful for I downed in their entirety without thinking about the consequences. I had forgotten that dramamine causes drowsiness, and two is a big dose, so I was out for most of the day after that. This began on the hot air balloon itself, when I felt myself falling asleep and wondered how I could be so callous as to be unfazed by being in a freaking hot air balloon. When I finally realized later that night it was probably the dramamine kicking in, it at least made me feel better about myself.
Have you ever seen a hot air balloon being inflated?
Me in the hot air balloon. You can see another one in the distance behind me, for an idea of height. This selfie came out astoundingly well, given that I was doped up on dramamine and imodium at the time and had just vomited like thirty minutes prior. Is there some kind of takeaway in all of this regarding how to take good selfies? Seems doubtful, but you never know.
Overall I really enjoyed the trip, and I was happy to see a new part of the world and to get out of the States after a year and a half of being trapped there. I am excited to return to North Africa in the future, either to visit Morocco again or to go to Egypt, another country about which I have long been curious.
Before I sign off for good on this blog, a couple of last thoughts on language: I did speak quite a bit of English today, getting myself to where I needed to be in the Marrakech Airport. Practicing languages is fine and dandy, but it's important to remember that language is ultimately a tool of communication. There is a time and place for practicing a language one doesn't speak that efficiently, and checking in at the airport is not that time and place. The workers want to get through what they need to do as efficiently as possible, so to have insisted on speaking French to them may have come across as a burden. Just as important as seizing the opportunity to speak in a foreign language is recognizing when it may not be the best time. To always keep this balance in mind is to be humane. It is to remember that other people don't exist merely for the benefit of your language practice, but that they have their own agenda and goals that need to be respected.
I remember being given the advice, about halfway through grad school, that I should keep speaking at Chinese people in Chinese until they finally gave up on using English. In other words, I was told to wear them down, otherwise I would never get any better because everyone would speak English all the time with me. I have given this advice much thought. Ultimately, I have decided it's not that easy. Everything depends on context. If the person to whom I am speaking clearly doesn't speak English that well and we are in a leisurely context, that's one thing. But if together we're trying to get something done like get me checked in to my flight, and their English is sufficient for the purpose, then I feel insisting on using the moment for language practice borders on the obnoxious. So yes, seize the moment, but always remember the humanity of the other and hone your sense of when it is appropriate to practice your foreign language and when it is not. It's not like you're losing out on opportunities--there are enough people out there who aren't very comfortable in English that even with allowing yourself to speak English with some, you will have plenty of opportunities to practice your language. While I did speak English at the airport today, I also spoke French, at security. They addressed me in that language, and I dared to respond in turn. We never switched to English until the very end of our interaction. So don't be that obnoxious American who insists on badly speaking someone's language at them when it would be more efficient and appropriate for the two of you to speak in English. Always consider the situation, the context. Everything is a balance.
This is probably the best message I could leave you with. Travel humanely, and practice languages humanely. In any endeavor where people are involved, one needs to tread carefully and remember that the needs and desires of others should be considered in addition to our own. Practice your language, but remember that at the end of the day, the language is just a tool of communication. What you really care about, the reason you learn that language, is for the person to whom you are speaking. They come first, always. I am pleased that I had plenty of opportunities to speak French on this trip, but am also pleased that I didn't force it when I didn't feel it was appropriate. Communicate in whatever language you need to to connect with the other person in the way that you want or need. Interest in language as an end in of itself is best reserved for linguists, holed up in their universities surrounded by grammar books and indices. As language speakers, our ultimate aim is connection, in whichever way and with whatever languages we need to get us there.
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