Rock the Kasba

  Fes, Morocco
Saturday, October 25, 2008

After a brief train ride from Meknes, we came out at the rather uninspiring train station of Fes with defenses up and bristles out. Coming to the taxi stop, the group of drivers tried to charge us five times what the trip to the town center should have cost and blatantly laughed at us when we asked them to use their meters (as local law required). Eventually we found a driver who agreed to take us for a reasonable price, leaving an angry crowd of taxi drivers behind us.

We went for the HI Youth Hostel our guidebook, unusually, recommended. It was clean and quiet and run by an extremely knowledgeable and chatty man who told us to watch our wallets while in Fes. Unfortunately the hostel was full save for beds in separate dorms, so we sadly said goodbye went looking at a few places on the suggestion of the hostel owner.

Deciding against some of the dodgy, and dirty hotels we went back to our guidebook and found a nearby hotel that was cheap and grubby, but not as bad as some of the others. We discovered, as we suspected before, that many Moroccan hotels don't actually change or wash the sheets between guests. Thankful for our sleep sheets (Dan sends a big shout out to Aunt Karen), we kept reminding ourselves it was only for one night.

View Over Fes

After some discussion, we went against our usual practice and decided to hire a guide to take us on a tour of the labyrinth that is the Fes Medina. The Fes medina is partly infamous for its inability to be mapped. When UNESCO declared the area a heritage site, they sent in expert cartographers to map the area. Every single cartographer came back with a vastly different estimate as to how many streets there were, ranging from 9000, to 18,000 in the Medina alone. Best estimates take a middle road and vaguely say that there are 12,000 streets, home to around 800,000 people, 83,000 stores and countless bakeries, mosques and hammams. It is said that if a stranger enters Fes' medina alone, it will take at least four days to find their way out.

Our guide was $25.00 Canadian dollars for three hours, and well worth every penny. An older gentleman who previously lived in the Medina, he took us on a tour of all of the best sites that the Medina had to offer, while deftly weaving his way amongst the maze of streets. Due to it being a Friday, an Islamic holy day, the majority of the shops were closed, making the tour delightfully quiet and laid back.

University Steps

We were taken the Kairaouine mosque (site of the worlds oldest university), and although not open to non-Muslims, we could peek in the doorway to view the splendor inside. We did manage to discover why the mosques in Morocco aren't open to foreigners. Apparently it was due to the old French gendarmes (police), who would follow suspected criminals into a mosque when they went to confess and would arrest them inside, not removing their shoes or showing any respect for the sanctuary and place of worship that the mosque was to provide. In response to this, the government of Morocco passed a law saying that any non-Muslims were no longer allowed inside any of the mosques, and although Morocco has not been a French colony for some time now the law still stands.

Leatherworker

Our next stop was the tanneries, one of the most famous sites of Fes. We were taken up into a building, tiny from the outside, but spanning many rooms on many floors once you entered the door, and eventually came out to a balcony overlooking a set of tanning pools. The building was basically a tanning workshop and series of showrooms for finished leather goods, and the smell of the finished leather mixed with the stench of the tannery vats and unprocessed skins. The vats were, visually, very striking with a mix of colours from white vats that were filled with pigeon droppings for ammonia to treat the skins before they were taken to the various colour pools to dye the skins over a period of three weeks. The dyed leather was then dried on the rooftops before being taken to the surrounding workshops where they were turned into all kinds of leather goods.

Colourful Pools

We were really struck by how labour intensive the whole process was. Due to it being a Friday, only a few young men remained at the tannery, hauling piles of skins in and out of the vats, and hanging up sodden skins. Although the tannery staff assured us that the dyes used in the vats were all derived from natural plant sources (pomegranate and saffron for yellow, mint for green, paprika for red, etc.) our guidebook had warned us that, in fact, most dyes these days are chemical based and are very damaging to the workers health. Although it was amazing to view the colourful vats of the tanneries, with the sprawling medina behind, it was an uncomfortably voyeuristic experience to be a camera toting tourist looking down from our balcony on these obviously impoverished young men up to their knees in vats of deadly chemicals.

Stacks of Shoes

We extracted ourselves from the leather shop, resisting the hard sell that, inevitably, came after the tour. Our guide took us on to a herbalist that specialized in traditional herbs, where an extremely enthusiastic young chemist proceeded to extoll the virtues of a series of Moroccan herbs, spices, and extracts, some used for their beautifying, edifying, or aphrodisiac qualities ('this is traditional Berber herb, you make tea with this, no sleep, jiggy-jiggy!'). We passed on the jiggy-jiggy herb but did buy some Moroccan sweet curry powder before we moved on.

Weaver at Work

Our guide continued on to a traditional Moroccan weaving shop (we did enjoy the 'how it's done' aspect of our visits to these shops, but the unfortunate side effect was the constant 'buy buy buy' as we tried to exit). Last but not least was an excellent view from the top of one of the very tall buildings in the Medina. The view was an interesting juxtaposition of ancient, crumbling buildings topped with hundreds of satellite dishes. Our guide informed us that satellite dishes were very cheap in Morocco, which explains the thousands of them that top every Moroccan city and town we've seen.

Intricate Fountain

Our guide also took us amongst the countless narrow streets, peering into cavernous underground rooms that housed giant ovens which were used to heat the local hammams. We passed communal bakeries, and hammams that were identifiable by the tiled entrances and the babble of women's voices from within. He told us of Fes' 1200 year history, the finer points of Islam, and daily life in the Medina before finishing the tour and taking us back to our hotel. Feeling like we had received more than our moneys worth (and actually making it out of the medina in one day) we said a fond farewell to our guide.

Fes' Streets

We took one last trip out that evening, taking in Fes' streets at night before grabbing some pastries for our bus trip to Chefchouen the next morning. Our dinner was at a small restaurant that served heaping plates of roast chicken, rice, potato, and noodles, full of filling carbs but definitely the energy we needed at this point.

Suddenly exhausted we braved our grubby little hotel room for the night. Tomorrow we head for the mountains, our last stop before we leave Morocco.

All our best from Morocco

Dan and Gabes