Day 19 - Marrakech

by Brian Ash, Friday July 1, 2022

Today was a tale of both sides of Marrakesh. In the morning we started out at the beautiful Majorelle Gardens, we had lunch at the sublime Amal Women’s Training Center, went to the exhuberant El Jadida High School in the afternoon, and capped it all off with a fanatastic dinner and belly dance show at El Baraka restaurant on Je’ma El Fna square. By any standard, this was one of our group’s best days in Morocco.

In the morning we hit the top Inventing Anna, hoi polloi photo spot in Marrakech – the very blue Majorelle Gardens. The gardens are home to 300 species of plants, arm-long Koi fish, birds, some toads (for you, Elsa!), and a few too many Instagram models. For fun, I made it a personal crusade to casually insert my big-ole’, broken, bargain basement body into as many social media set-up shots as possible while wandering around “in the gardens”. We also toured the Berber (sic) Museum which had a great collection of Amazigh craftwork, tools, jewelry (housed in a bizarre, mirrored, starlit, black room for some reason?) and clothing. The interesting Amazigh outfits, surprisingly, were a major influence on some of the dress collections housed in the Yves Saint Laurent museum next door. Here I would like to introduce a discussion about the inequity of French colonial artists and designers using Moroccan culture as inspiration for creating Orientalist paintings and fashion for Western conspicuous consumption and personal wealth accumulation, but I would like to keep the blog post on the positive, lighter side, so I won’t mention it.

Next we met an actual saint. At the Amal Women’s Training Center we sat around a shaded, grassy courtyard, as Nora Fitzgerald mesmerized us with the most engaging and sensible presentation of our trip. I actually had a thought while listening to her (and this is not hyperbole), that we were like the Greeks sitting at the feet of Socrates. As the director of the Amal Women’s center, Nora explained their simple mission of giving Moroccan women, to whom life had thrown an unfortunate curve ball, the opportunity to learn marketable culinary and language skills to raise themselves and their children out of the poverty cycle while generating funds for the center through the simple act of feeding people. Nora’s stories and her assertion that the women who train at the Amal Center are “are experts in resilience and survival” were some of the most meaningful statements I have heard all month. If Nora’s not a saint, she’s a bodhisattva – those are the only 2 possible explanations of her existence.

Oh yeah, the couscous Friday lunch at the Amal Center was phenomenal. It’s always about the food with me. The secret spice mix of Nora’s passion, the Amal Center’s mission, and the dedication of the chefs-in-training made that lunch the best meal of our trip. Check them out and donate at http://amalnonprofit.org/

Then, unbelievably, the day got better. After a long drive and a dusty U-turn, we arrived an hour late to the greatest reception any Fulbright group ever received. El Jadida High School pulled out all the stops with a two band, never ending, student led, music, song, dance, tea/dates/pastry-fueled, raucous 3 hour party for 15 high school teachers. It was a little overwhelming. Never have I seen a more excited and exuberant group of high school students. The kicker is they were all on summer vacation and came back to school to see us, very humbling.

Once we were dragged through the ebulient student welcome and funneled into the classroom for the actual program, the party followed us right in. Eventually, the bands were shooed out and the program started with our group crammed around a long table with rows of students jostling behind us. Thankfully, the administration had installed 2 arena speakers in the back of the classroom to echo and reverberate the speeches above the din at max volume. There were 15 Fulbrighters, a dozen or so El Jadida administrators and teachers, and 60+ students jammed into one normal sized classroom. Students were crowded around the windows and doors trying to peek in. It must have been the Fire Marshall’s day off. Three students gave delightful speeches in perfect English to welcome us and their gregarious English teacher, Younes El Maher, presented on the success of Virtual Exchange programs at El Jadida HS. Mr. El Maher was passionate, funny, well-respected, and beloved by his students, we could easily tell. He did fail miserably at teaching our crew a few Tamazigh phrases, though, not from his effort, but more from our innate inability to make the proper sounds.

Eventually, we exited the classroom for a group photo and were greeted with the bands striking up again. We pushed through to the coffee break unscathed, and then we were shepherded to a third round music and dance show under a big tent. El Jadidd HS went way overboard with their hospitality and I’m not sure we really deserved it, but it was a blast and much appreciated. That HS visit and this entire day were some of the best experiences we have had on our journey through Morocco. They will not be forgotten any time soon.