Day 4 - Ifrane

June 16, 2022

Alpine Academics, Medina Mayhem, and Elaine’s Birthday

by Brian Ash

One highlight of the day was our visit to the beautiful Swiss chalet-esque campus of Al Akhawayn International University in Ifrane. Aside from the sporadic “China Day” New Year dragon costumes, Wushu performances, a thoroughly delightful student tour guide, and a delicious make your own tagine buffet lunch, the focus was the history and architecture lecture by Dr. Said Ennahid on “The Essence of the Islamic City: Fes as Example”. As a history teacher I loved his style, he was thoroughly prepared and then once the lecture started he organically dipped and diverged on topics, academically side-stepped and shimmied, jumped from a historical timeline of Morocco to an architectural example, then he executed a quick side-google of a random topic one of the participants brought up. In the presentation we moved from the late 8th century with Idris I to the early 19th century with Lyautey’s Villes nouvelles. It was my type of lesson, covering 1000+ years of Moroccan history in an hour. It could not have been more perfect. Dr. Ennahid’s lecture reminded me of the way my HS classes inevitably go back home in CT, but his was just way more informed. Now, just like my own students, I have to find the articles I was supposed to read before the presentation to fill in the gaps in knowledge I should have had for those 1000+ years presented in his enlightened lecture.

The second highlight of the day was our Long March through the Fes medina. It was a sputtering, tripping, bumping, start and stop kind of affair that can drive a group mad. How many teachers need to take the same picture of an overly ornate horseshoe arch door? All of them. 45 minutes into the claustrophobic ancient urban trek, I was contemplating a mutiny, but then realized, like Theseus without a ball of string (thanks for this analogy, Mary Faye, my back of the bus bestie), there was no way I could find my way out of that prehistoric labyrinth without paying one of the Fes kids 100 MAD to guide me. As our collective lost souls were shepherded through the maze of passage ways, people, riads, cats, carts, twists and turns, dogs, mosques, low mounted chin level supports, bees, dars, dangling wires, errant soccer balls, tunnels, donkeys, workshops, and stalls, the medina became a fascinating carnival ride adventure. Around each turn was a new Moroccan revelation (and a new photo op). The thunderstorm added an nice slippery touch, too, just to keep it real. A much more fun and experiential way of approaching the medina with a group of myopic camera phone appendaged teachers would be for the guide to attach an Apple air tag to each Fulbright participant and then set them all free in middle of the medina with the task of finding the bus on their own. That would be fun. Just floating an idea for the next MACECE sponsored Fulbright program to visit Fes. First contestants out of the medina gets a bottle of water and bus ride back up the hill to the hotel. The rest can just fend for themselves. We could track stragglers on our phones and pick them up Saturday on the way out of Fes.

All in all, the march through medina was a great experience. All the walking made me feel no guilt in eating a couple extra multi-layered cubes of love from the dessert buffet in honor of Elaine’s birthday. Side note on her birthday - I was in sight of the wait staff when our group started singing “Happy Birthday”. I witnessed utter panic on the faces of the waitstaff, who were enjoying a pretty relaxed vibe until they heard the first note. Once the Fulbright cacophony started, there was an terrible dashing, scrambling, and a general melee amongst the 4 servers, all of them scrummed around the check-in podium frantically opening and closing drawers and cabinets. Watching this, I thought, “What the heck are they doing?” Sometime at about the 2nd “you” of the song, a young waiter found his prize - a lone candle and a lighter. He emerged from the pile of servers and sprinted across the dining room, flicking sparks along the way until he finally lit the candle. He braked right behind Elsa, who was just about to deliver Elaine’s birthday plate of pastries, and he managed to get his lit candle into the top of one of the tiny birthday delicacies before it hit the table and the song ended, just in the nick of time. It was an amazing and a truly heroic effort to end the night perfectly and it highlights all the exceptional hospitality we’ve received from the Moroccan people on this trip.