I'm riding the bus everywhere now: in the morning, on the way downtown, the bus is inevitably packed with bodies. In order to assert my right to a space I often must make liberal use of my elbows, jostling for the privilege of cheap transportation. Once, on a Friday evening, I quite literally had to raise both my arms above my head in order to make space for just one more commuter. We all pay our 3.50 dirhams to whatever open palm emerges from the tangle, and then spend the rest of the ride strategically maneuvering towards the front of the bus (no gentle task, believe me) in order to catapult out the front door upon arriving at our destinations. Thus far, I have consistently been the only non-Arab on the bus; some Moroccans have grinned at my willingness to jostle with the rest, while one woman grabbed a cloth and buried her face in it as soon as I climbed the stairs. I am, after all, still an infidel.
It seems hardly possible that I've been here for almost 4 weeks. My study of microenterprise still seems, to me, to be going excruciatingly slow. I've conducted a number of informal interviews with individuals and organizations, but so far I haven't been able to use any other tools in order to triangulate the data. Maybe I just need to chill out, but I've been a bit disappointed with my seeming lack of ingenuity thus far. I guess I just need to be more trusting, because the one who began a good work...
I might be leaving the city for the first time next week, and I'm excited to see some of the countryside and the rest of Morocco. I didn't know until I arrived how varied the climate and scenery is in this small country: Casa and Rabat are mediterranean and temperate; Fes and Marrakech, slightly more inland, are by this time of year covered with a dry heat that is oppressive in the sun but beautiful in the shade. If one travels further south, the Atlas mountains tower upwards in the traditional lands of the Berber people. Some of the peaks are covered in snow year-round, and more than one town open ski resorts in the winter. Past the mountains, the pre-Saharan oases with their rural villages of Berber-speaking peoples fade into the Sahara desert.
Anyway, I'll end with a few pictures. Hopefully I'll be taking better ones soon?
This is somewhere deep in the heart of Derb Ghalef, the massive and labyrinthine market in Casa. This is actually an unusual section, as in most parts the shops and stands are so close together that they form a roof, and the whole place is dark except for the artificial light coming from TVs for sale. You can buy fake Rolex's, genuine iPods, pirated DVDs, second-hand clothes, fresh(?) fruit, hand crafted furniture, coffins, olives, laptops, live chickens, seat-covers, or buy raw snails right out of the shell. Guaranteed to make you sick.
This is taken outside the Derb, where people who can't afford a place in the Derb itself sell their wares on blankets or straight from carts. They're also, of course, completely informal (though the Derb operations are semi-formal at best, from what one shop-owner tells me). They mostly sell second-hand clothing (and advertise it as such), though a few blankets held "prada" purses or other such treasures. For the most part people just sell whatever goods they can afford.
This final picture is of an empty plot near the Derb, but there are two noteworthy things in the background. The first thing is a bidonville (just beyond the wall). The second thing is globalization. By "bidonville" I mean the Moroccan term for a shantytown. And by "globalization" I mean high-powered satellite dishes in places where the toilet is a plastic bag. I have a really hard time knowing what to think about that. You can see some of the apartment buildings where most people live in the further background as well.
This is already longer than it should be, so I'm off to bed.
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