South Africa: Day 5

The day went as follows:

 

I woke up.

 

I went to the waterfront and abused the free wifi to Facebook chat the awesome people who were online while I was.

 

I went shopping at the mall, and I by shopping I mean the kind of shopping where I walk into a store, look at the prices, then proceed to storm out of the store grumbling "what, was the dress spun with gold?!" in a yiddish accent. I bought nothing, of course. My wardrobe has certainly NOT been expanding as Semester at Sea alumni assured me that it would, and I am getting VERY tired of my underpacked clothing selection.

 

I HIKED A F***ING MOUNTAIN B*TCHES WOOP WOOP

 

I ate a South African buffet dinner in the treetops. There were no baboons, and it was a very nice restaurant. I ate springbok, which apparently is an animal. I broke my budget again. People really need to start telling me the prices of things BEFORE I show up in the shuttle. Oh well, at one point I had an entire plate of desserts, so it was worth it.

 

Summary of the Day: Fat, broke, tired, and happy.

South Africa: Days 2-4, aka SAFARI TIME!

So! The safari.

 

As some of you all know, I've wanted to go on a safari for like, ever. I think it's one of those things where I was jealous of my grandparents being cooler than me and having pictures of lions humping, so I had to catch up.

 

Here's the general summary of my 3 days:

 

Total Hours on a Plane: 4

 

Total Hours on a Bus to and from Kruger: 10

 

Total Hours on Game Drives: 16

 

Total Number of the Big 5 Seen: 5

 

Time it took to See all 5: 3 hours (so I guess I really could have done the 1-day safari. Huh. I'm assuming I was just incredibly lucky.)

 

My Favorite Animal: HIPPOS. They waddle so waddlingly.

 

Animal My Car Saw that No One Else on the Trip Did: Hyena

 

Cast of the Lion King Accounted for: Everyone but the racistly black lion with a British accent.

 

Number of Times the Animals Burst into Song: None. WTF.

 

My Favorite Moment: When a freaking LION emerged from the brush and began to roar because he couldn't find his lionesses. He walked along with our car for a full minute, roaring and grunting morosely all the while. And I got it all on tape. I'm going to put it on Youtube and call it, "A Depressed Lion". He was totally 8 feet away from me. Our guide got shivers.

 

Funniest Moment: We walked in on two baboons humping. The female baboon did not approve of the male baboon's advances and shrugged him off of her. The male was depressed. Luckily he had a baboon harem, so he went over to one of the other ladies and proceeded to get the massage of a lifetime. The look in his eyes as that lady baboon picked ticks out of his back was reminiscent of me eating Wild Ginger's pad thai woon sen after three months on Iowa dorm food. Confused? Don't worry, I have pictures.

 

Worst Moment: Throwing up my malaria med...again.

 

Rating of the People in my Safari Car: F*** them. No, like seriously. They were utter dicks to me. You know the types of people who make friends and suddenly decide they don't need to get to know anyone anymore ever because they already have friends? They were those people. Like, they legitimately ignored me when I tried to talk to them. I was left making friends with the one guy no one else wanted to talk to because we was an annoying diva. That did not help my image amongst the group. It was like being in high school all over again.

 

Accomodations: CUTE! I stayed in a little bungalow that on the outside was reminiscent of my hut in Tagorme, but on the inside was filled with modern Western accomodations. Unfortunately the outlets were South African and I left my adapter on the ship, so my camera ran out of batteries on Day 2. I had to borrow diva boy's spare camera, further cementing me in the group as the girl who was friends with the diva who therefore we shouldn't talk to even though we weren't going to already because we already know each other and hate everyone else. Sorry, did I just rant there? I guess I did.

 

Food: We got breakfast at 10am and dinner at 8pm. The in-between was an epic struggle for survival. I enjoyed the challange. Also, one time a monkey dropped from the ceiling and stole our jelly. Why do monkeys keep invading my space?

 

Drink of Choice: South African Semi-Sweet White Wine. Mmmmmm...

 

Biggest Let-Down: Didn't see the wild dogs. :(

 

Cutest Thing Ever: Giraffes wrestling. Try to imagine it. I'll tell you if you got it right later. Also, baby elephants. Olivia, the word "heffalump" popped into my head on multiple occasions.

 

Overall Rating: I wanted a safari, I got a safari. It was just that: a safari. I saw almost all the animals we could see, and even had a few out-of-this-world moments. I also had long periods of seeing nothing. That's fine. That's how a safari is supposed to go. And I paid 50% of what the SAS trip cost, so awesome for me! Still, there's a little part of me that feels unimpressed. I don't think it's because of the safari itself, because it was about as good as it could have been. I just think it was one of those things where I had built it up in my mind for so long, it was never going to be as good as it was in my imagination. I guess for something costing me a grand, the stingy part of me was aiming for a leopard to jump into my lap and give me its cub. But I'm glad I did it, and I'd like to do it again sometime. I'd also highly recommend the experience to other people! Hopefully next time I'll have better people with me, as they definitely put a damper on my whole experience. I think I want to go to Uganda or Rwanda for my next one to see gorillas!

South Africa: Day 1

South Africa is beautiful, but daaaaaaamn is it cold. Like, seriously...no one informed me about this. I did not pack for the cold. Africa, why aren't you behaving like Africa right now? Get it together.

 

The field trip today was so dumb that it doesn't even merit an explanation. It was a sorry excuse of a program that didn't even include food from the ship. I was running on one apple from 9:00am when we finally got out of that stupid bus at 7:00pm. Needless to say, I will be asking for--nay, DEMANDING--a refund. $90? Puh-lease. I know my rights.

 

We went to Mitchell's, a pub, at around 8:00. My day got considerably better as I received a hot plate of Cape Malay Curry, sweet potato fries, a glass of white wine, and a shot of an "African Toilet"--otherwise known as alcohol mixed with chocolate syrup and banana puree.

 

So, my first day in South Africa was not great. I'd rate it at around the level of my first day in Morocco, but less scary. Nonetheless, I'm on a plane to Kruger National Park tomorrow to begin my three day SAFARI!!!

 

Bring it on.

The Seas to South Africa

Take a plane. This shit is ridiculous. It's like a roller coaster ride that lasts for a week without stopping, only there are no loopdie-loops and I want to shoot myself in the face. I think my history professor has grown so accustomed to me running out of class to barf that I'm essentially a half-time student in his class.

Explanation

Alright, alright...to be fair, here's the email I sent my parents on Neptune Day:

"So.

I know I've been a really good kid for most of my life, and have never really done anything too crazy. And I know that you know that I'm extremely obsessed with my appearance, so much so that I've been known to weigh myself upwards of 10 times a day.

What you don't know is that on Semester at Sea, when we pass the equator like we did today, there's a ritual called Neptune Day where some of the girls liberate themselves by shaving their heads.

I may have done that today. I cried the whole time, like literally sobbed. But I think that since I thought the only thing beautiful about myself was my fake red hair, it was unhealthy for me to keep it. So I hate being bald, really really hate it. And I feel hideous and disgusting. But I want you to know that I did it for the right reasons. I hope I can find something beautiful about myself now that isn't from a bottle of dye.

I'll have very, very short brown hair when you see me in December."

So there you go. I look like a boy right now, I hate it, I hate myself, and I don't want to go outside. But I know it's good for me. If I can't go to a temple and meditate in India for three days, I guess I'll be doing this and seeing the repercussions for the next year. Does anyone remember what my natural hair color is? Because I don't.

Back at Sea: Neptune Day

Shaved my head. No big deal.

Ghana: Day 4

We’re docking in South Africa tomorrow and I’m feeling pretty ill, so I’ll need to wrap up this blog about Ghana ASAP. I guess I won’t be doing as detailed an account of Day 4 as I initially planned. Here it is in brief:

I woke up early the next morning, had a very fruity breakfast, then was graced with a rare group discussion with the village elders. Here’s what stuck out to me: when asked what the greatest problem in Tagorme was, the chief told us “poverty”. “But,” he insisted, the poverty was a result of the village’s lack of education. As the old man had told me on day 3, villagers only had a primary school, but aside from that had no feasible access to secondary or higher education. How, then, could they be expected to learn skills? Then men knew how to weave and fish. The women knew how to make pots. But those skills alone were not enough to bring money into a village when most of everyone else already has their own fish, cloth, and pots. If given the option, they would not spend so much time making pots by hand. They would rather use machines. “Forget tradition”, they said. All they wanted more than anything in the entire world was for their children to get an education and bring their village into the modern world.

The chief posed a question to us. “What will you do for us?” We didn’t really know what to say. They had an idea to market their crudely-made pots in the USA to further their sales range, but as my professors explained to me later, this was simply an illogical business move which would bring in no money. They wanted us to contact our schools and set up exchange programs for Ghanaian students. This one seemed for reliable, but the problem for Tagorme was in secondary education, not higher education. Who in the USA would be willing to feed and house a Ghanaian student through middle and high school? It’s a tough situation. None of us knew what to do.

To finish off the day we went to a game reserve for lunch, whereupon a baboon attempted to steal my lunch. I caught the bastard red-handed and scared him away. He then came back with six of his baboon buddies, who stole another girl’s lunch. We spent the next hour throwing apples at the hungry baboons surrounding us. I am now two for two in countries where I’m attacked by apes.

I miss Ghana dearly. I want to go back as soon as I can, hopefully in an education-related role. I don’t much approve of Americans going into countries and promising to “help and save” them, like they’re children. But when the actual inhabitants of said country come straight up to you over and over again and say “help us”, how can you say no? The Ghanaians didn’t ask for money. The people of Tagorme didn’t dig into my wallet as I was sleeping, which they could have done easily. All they wanted was an opportunity, a chance at social mobility like we have at least somewhat in the States. I want to help give them that opportunity. Fulbright? Yes? No? Maybe?

People discount the value of a good education. Ghanains will be quick to tell you why you’re a moron for doing so.

Ghana: Day 3

I’m not sure that I can put days 3 and 4 of Ghana into the right words. There’s a reason I’m not a fiction writer, and that’s because the long, elaborate paragraphs on scenery, people, and emotional upheavals are pretty tough for me. But I’m gonna do my best, because my overnight to the Tagorme village was possibly the most memorable experience of my life so far.

On day 3 we started our journey into the Tagorme lands. We drove and drove. Slowly we stopped seeing cities, shops, and stands as the scene changed to lush greenery. We had officially left the hub of Ghana and had moved into the rural wilderness. As we approached the village, the streets turned into dirt roads. We bounced up and down and down and up so much that I was happy I hadn’t had breakfast that morning. Finally we began to see crudely constructed wooden buildings and mud huts. But, before we could even take in the traditional architecture of this place, we were all distracted by the mob of children. At least 100 little boys and girls clad in their green school uniforms were running towards our bus, yelling and screaming and smiling and waving. They ran after our bus until we came to a stop near the village center, upon which they mobbed us so completely that I was sure I might be pulled to pieces by all the little hands tugging at my arms. Considering that there was only one tiny little school house in the village, I couldn’t help but wonder how all these kids could fit into the place at one time.

The kids led us further into their village, where we were greeted by a sight straight out of a documentary. There were mean clad in traditional Ghanaian cloths wrapped around them like togas, little boys covered in paint and wearing white skirts, and even a village chief sitting in a sort of throne carrying a large bronze staff. Drums were playing, people were singing, chickens and goats were running in and out of the party circle…it was trippy, so very trippy. My immediate thoughts were, as you might expect, “is this for real?”

We were escorted into our seats, which were pretty much front and center and directly across from the stern gazes of the village elders. The next two hours were filled with some of the kids performing traditional African dances and chants for us, heavy on the Ghanaian drums. Interspersed between performances were the naming ceremonies. I was called up in front of the entire Tagorme village, where I was given two African names. The first was…well, I don’t really remember what it was, but it was the name all Ghanaians give to girls who were born on a Thursday. (Incidentally, Kofi is the name of a boy born on a Friday, so I guess I learned something about our WWE superstar that day.) The second name was my new, official African name: Sitsofe (pronounced something like sitchopay). It means “shelter”. Upon naming me, I was given a handmade pot and bracelet. At the very end of the ceremony, we were introduced to our official hosts. I was greeted by Ben, a man clad in red and blue Ghanaian cloth, and then pounced upon by his enthusiastic mother. The girls were not particularly comfortable with the idea that we would be isolated from each other in the village, half of us with a male host. But before we could speak our concerns to the trip leaders, we were whisked away to lunch.

Compared to what had just occurred, lunch was pretty uneventful. We were brought to some ritzy hotel and given traditional Ghanaian food. It seemed dumb to have left the village to eat what the villagers pretty much ate every day, but I assumed that SAS was trying to ensure that our lunch was as hygienic as possible. I ate a lot more pepe. There was a lizard on the ground. That’s about it.

After lunch we returned to the village, where we were once again promptly mobbed by the kids. The adults tried to get the kids to leave us alone, but that  just straight wasn’t going to happen. We got a brief tour of the village, where we were introduced to the women’s main profession of pottery-making and the men’s professions of weaving cloth and fishing in Lake Volta. It was an incredibly interesting presentation, but I have to admit that I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. The kids were pretty persistent, and I ended up holding hands with them, giving them piggy-back rides, and stopping them breaking my friends’ cameras for the entirety of the tour. The kids were just. Too. Cute. Keep in mind, I don’t really care for kids. But when you’re surrounded by children who think you’re the coolest thing since sliced fufu, it’s pretty hard not to fall in love. They gave hugs for EVERYTHING. Did they want us to give them presents because we clearly had more money than them? Well, yeah. But what kid doesn’t? I’m pretty sure that the one who was most attached to me only knew three English phrases: “yes”, “let’s go”, and “fish”. It was pretty fun to mess with that.

After the tour we were sent to our respective hosts. I went with Ben and was officially introduced to my new living arrangements. We walked into a small collection of little huts, the likes of which people tend to imagine when they think of peasants in Medieval Europe. I’m talking one room, thatched roof, mud walls…seriously, primitive as primitive gets. The ground around the huts was nothing but dust and trash. In Ghana, it’s very, very dirty because the concept of a trash can doesn’t seem to have reached most of the general public. So, in my new Tagorme home, I was surrounded by orange peels, candy wrappers, broken sandals…and I heck of a lot of poop. Yes, you heard me, poop. Or did I not mention? The place was literally crawling with chickens and goats. Everywhere you looked, another one was wandering by. I’m actually not sure if I was ever more than three feet from an animal during my entire stay in Tagorme. There were more goats than people. (Kristin Wirtz, you’d be in heaven.) In actuality, I did like this quite a bit. It’s refreshing to see a community that lives as one with animals, allowing them to live full lives before finally using them to make fufu. Sure as heck beats locking the poor things up in a cage and pumping them full of pesticides. However, in terms of the villagers’ personal hygiene, I’ll admit that the horde of goats didn’t seem like the best decision. 

Ben introduced me to his family…or who I thought were his family. It’s pretty hard to tell, because in Tagorme everyone is “my brother” or “my sister”. The only ones whose identities I was sure of were his mom and wife. I gave his kids (maybe his kids) the gift I’d been saving for them: an Iowa Hawkeyes football. They went craaaaazy. I’m not sure they knew what it was at first, maybe a broken soccer ball. I had to teach them about American football and how to throw the ball, but before I could even think of playing with them, they were already wrestling each other to get to the ball. Ben had to take it away from them.

I was shown into my room, which amounted to my own personal hut. It was reasonably sized, with a large painting of Jesus on the thin wooden door to remind me which room was mine. There were protective coverings over every piece of furniture in the room, which led me to believe that either they were afraid of contaminating me, or they thought I might contaminate them. My mattress was firm and made from locally-grown straw. I’m not sure what the floor was made of, but my guess is that it was some form of solidified clay. It’s important to establish that I did indeed have electricity…in the form of one really creepy light bulb in the back corner of the hut that glowed a sickly shade of green reminiscent of a nuclear power plant. Ben had placed two fans in front of my bed to counteract the sweltering heat. There wasn’t really a window. In short, the place was pretty much the exact vision you have when you imagine those guys in the Peace Corps who live in the depths of Africa living amongst the locals, and everyone else rolls their eyes and says you’re just ignorant and stereotyping a country. Nope. Still happens.

Ben showed me around the village for the next three hours. Yes, three hours. Of course, half the time was spent getting to his canoe a mile and a half away on the lake. He was very proud of that canoe. He was a fisherman. At one point he introduced me to another one of his “brothers”. The man seemed very skeptical of me, and didn’t believe me when I told him just how much a liked Ghana. He pointed to a girl across the way about my age. “You see her?” I nodded. “She finished school here, but now can’t afford to move on. She wants to go to school. We have no money. You can help us.” I looked at my host, who didn’t seem to have a problem with this statement. Eventually, we moved on.

It was about dinnertime when Ben asked me if I’d like to bathe. I was a little hesitant, knowing full well that the lack of flushing toilets and running water in this village did not leave much chance of me getting what I defined as a bath today. But he and his wife grew more and more persistent, and I was already caked in sweat from the heat and humidity of the day, so I finally gave in. They took me behind a wall and showed me to my bath: a wire sponge, soap, and a bucket of water. It did the job washing off the sweat, but I’m pretty sure the river water I’d just threw all over myself had probably made me dirtier. Luckily, they gave me about a gallon of perfume to coat on my skin afterwards, which succeeded in making my skin nice-smelling and incredibly sticky. It was an odd experience, but I’m glad to say that I did it.

Dinner was pretty much hotel food again. Nothing to discuss.

After dinner the village held a bonfire, which pretty much amounted to an all-out dance party for me and the village children. I taught them the Macarena and they taught me they’re local dances. Whatever sweat I’d just washed off of me came back ten-fold by the end of the night, due to the combination of hard-core dancing, fire, and children on all sides of me. When I finally sat down to take a break, the village children took pictures of each other with my camera. They gave it back, and were utterly entranced when I showed them photos of Morocco. I think the food photos were they’re favorites. They kept making slurping and munching sounds when they saw them.

Finally it was time for bed. I went behind my Jesus-door and collapses onto my straw mattress.

Ghana: Day 2

Alright, so we’ll begin the epic tale of Day 2 in Ghana by concluding the events of Day 1. I ended last time by saying that John, Maria, Gabriela and I ended up wandering into a Southern Fried Chicken in Tema. We ordered some chicken and fries (vegetarianism is hard in Africa) and a bunch of Smirnoff Ices. The food was actually really, really good. I suppose that any semi-decent American food would taste delicious to me now, considering the quality of the food on the ship. But I’m dead serious when I say that the fries (or as Maria British-ly calls them, “chips”) were the best that I had ever had. They were like…crispy, but melt-in-your-mouth at the same time. Is there such a thing as Michelin-star caliber French fries?

At this point, we were all having a great time. Considering that we were about seven Smirnoffs in between the four of us (3 each for Gabriela and Maria, 1 for me, and none for sissy old John) and that we were yet again the only foreigners in the restaurant, we were drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. The waitresses were very amused. I flagged one down and told her that Southern Fried Chicken was the best food in Ghana. She was nearly in hysterics. Then, seeing as how Ghana is INTENSELY communal, the waitress actually pulled up a chair on the job, sat down with us, and started talking with us. Her co-worker joined her soon after. I’m not sure anybody was taking anybody’s order from then on through the night.

The waitresses’ names were Grace and Sandra. Sandra was also 20 years old and was a student at the University of Accra, studying HR.  She wanted very badly to be either a trainer or a teacher in the future. But, as would be a common theme during my time in Ghana, she explained to me that she feared she would be a waitress for the rest of her life due to her deficits in education. Education was so expensive, and the extra training needed to teach was out of reach for her. She was already driving an hour to work every day from 4:30 to 10:30pm, and still studying as a full-time student two hours away. The woman was completely overworked and I honestly don’t know how she still had so much energy. Grace was a 25-year old mother whose husband also happened to be a taxi driver. Upon finishing the rest of the Smirnoff Ices in the entire restaurant (Maria is a heavy drinker), she set us up with her husband, who charged us a mere 5 cidi to get back home. Before that, however, our newfound friends promised us that if we returned tomorrow, they would have specially prepared “fufu” waiting for us. Not entirely sure what “fufu” was, but aware that it had been highly recommended to us by the Ghanaian student onboard the ship. We promised to return. Upon leaving, Gabriela restarted her weird tribal chants of “Marek! Marek! Marek!” Grace and Sandra joined in chanting my name. I am now an international celebrity.

Now we can finally begin the story of day 2.

We boarded the SAS bus which took us to Cape Coat Castle and Elmina Castle. These were the places that they used to hold slaves during the Atlantic Slave trade. It was pretty intense, to say the least. The dungeons were dank, dark, and incredibly hot. A room hardly bigger than my room in my apartment was expected to hold upwards of 100 people at a time. They were literally eating, drinking, and sleeping in their own feces.  If anyone resisted, they were locked in an even smaller room to starve to death, or in the case of the last one left alive in the room, suffocate. The most intense experience was when the guide took us into a cell, all 50 of us, and locked the door. There was no light, we were sweating, and a lot of us were panicking pretty badly.

We were in there for exactly 10 seconds.

Here’s a “fun” fact for my student friends: Although in America we mostly hear about how many slaves died on the ships to the Americas, a higher proportion of the slaves actually died in the dungeons while waiting to board the ships. I can see why.

We ate lunch at a hotel, which was really anticlimactic after such a dramatic retelling of history. Nonetheless, I FINALLY drank out of a coconut. More specifically, I drained three coconuts. I also had about a pound of straight pepe. I really needed to stop having all that pepe, because I was definitely getting a stomach ache from eating it. My response to my tearing eyes and burning lips, however, was to drown it out by eating more pepe.
That night we went back to Southern Fried Chicken, where we were happily greeted by Grace and Sandra. As promised, they brought us a massive bowl of the traditional Ghanaian soup, fufu. It’s tough to describe it, but I’ll do my best. The broth was red and kind of tomato-ey, and delightfully spicy. The fufu itself is essentially a gigantic dumpling composed of flour, sugar, and ground cassava. It was slimy and tasteless, and I wasn’t a fan of that part of the meal. What really struck me, however, was the meat they put into it. It was goat. Now obviously I’d never had goat, so I knew I had to try it. I still felt really guilty though, since goats are to Ghana like cats are to Morocco and rabbits are to America. They wander around the streets without a care in the world looking cute and innocent. I felt like I was a monster for eating it. It only got worse, though, once I realized that the thick gray stuff on top of the goat meat was not fat…but the skin. Goat skin. Now keep in mind, goat skin is not the same as, say, chicken skin. It is thick. It is icky. It is really, really, REALLY skin-like. I put the soup away. Fufu 1, Marek 0. No more meat for awhile, please!

We bade the girls farewell very sadly, knowing that we’d probably never see them again. They left, however, many US dollars richer. We had made sure to tip them very well for being so kind to us, so much so that their final words to us were “God bless you. God bless you all.” I hope so much that Sandra will be a teacher. God bless her too.

Grace’s husband took us home afterwards. We were walking back to the port when we were stopped by Ghanaian security. Naturally we were all a bit freaked out, as we’d been warned ahead of time of how corrupt the Ghanaian police system was. It is not uncommon for a police officer to put his gun to you and rob you blind. But honestly, since coming to Ghana, I’ve grown rather skeptical of that assessment. The Ghanaians are so unbelievably friendly. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. You know what the security guards wanted? Conversation. They wanted to know how much we were enjoying our visit to Ghana, what America was like, how we liked Ghanaian food…the works. We left that encounter having exchanged email addresses and promising the guards that we would contact them if they ever dropped by the states. I freaking. LOVE. Ghana.

And thus concludes the tale of day 2.

Ghana: Day 1

Okay, so I am incredibly far behind on my blog right now because of how busy I have been in Ghana. I have to do about 4 blog posts in the span of one night, and I have 96 hours of stories to tell. So forgive me if I forget some details, but I have the pictures to make up for it when I get home.
We arrived in Ghana early in the morning. After a few hours of getting ready (or I should say of Gabriela considering and reconsidering what to bring with her), she, Maria and I finally went out to find the much-touted Coacoa beach. We were very dubious of the cab drivers in Ghana after our experiences in Morocco. The driver who approached us told us that the fee to get to Coacoa was “fifty”. We automatically scoffed and turned to go. Eventually we settled on “okay, okay, thirty-five”. We were satisfied with that price, since the driver told us that the beach was an hour away and 35 Ghanaian cidi is the equivalent of about 23 dollars. Between the three of us eight bucks cost seemed cool. Unfortunately, we were yet again sucked in by the manipulative ploys of foreign cab drivers. No sooner had we arrived at the beach did the cab driver demand his pay. We gave him 35 cidi, and he handed it back angrily demanding “no, dollars”. We were naturally like, oh HELL no, and tried to get this guy to grow the hell up and treat us like people. The “hour trip” had only taken twenty minutes, so we sure as hell weren’t paying more for a cab in freaking AFRICA than I would for a ride to the airport in Iowa. Unfortunately, we were three smaller women, and he was a rather large man. He started to get very angry and raise his voice at us, so we bitterly gave in and handed him his godforsaken 35USD. Pissed off and poorer than we wanted to be, we headed out to the beach.
Coacoa beach turned out to be the backyard of a Ramada Hotel. We were not amused about this, so we walked about two blocks to the right and opted to go to “Shining Beach”, a beach populated entirely by Ghanaian locals. We had to pay 2 cidi to get in (though the “guard” was basically a skinny guy in a wooden hut). We handed the man a 5-piece and waited for change. After about a minute, he told us (without looking) that he didn’t have any change and that we should come back later. Rolling our eyes, we went to the beach and forgot about the 3 cidi we knew we’d never see.

Immediately upon lying down in the sand, we were approached by a man. He seemed genuinely surprised to see three non-African women in a sea of natives. We were wary, since the last two men we’d met were kind of douchebags. But this guy welcomed us to the beach, told us to make ourselves comfortable, and assured us that anything we wanted was all ours. He introduced himself to us as Tyler. We LOVED Tyler. Not only did Tyler charge us absurdly low Ghanain prices for food (1 cidi for water, 2 for a large alcoholic drink, and 5 cidi for a plate of food that even I couldn’t finish), he took us in like we were a part of his family. But more about that later.

After Tyler left to get us drinks, we were approached by another man. He introduced himself to us as “Prince”, and welcomed us to Ghana. We got a weirder vibe from him than from Tyler. He was about Tyler’s age, probably late twenties, but was extremely well-dressed for a man at the beach. He stood over us as we lied on our beach towels and began starting up an awkward conversation about how beautiful we were. Essentially, we knew his game right away.

Gabriela and I were very weirded out by Prince at first. He proposed marriage to Gabriela within about five minutes of talking to her, and kept on insisting upon how much he loved “white women”. This was rather ironic, since Gabriela is not white by American standards. In fact, she’s pretty Hispanic. Apparently “white” doesn’t necessarily have to do with skin color in Ghana, Africa. He nicknamed Gabriela his “African Queen”. Maria was his “Princess”, and I was his “Angel”. I think it’s because I was the whitest. He insisted that he was an “exercise trainer”, but insisted that he was very good at giving massages anywhere we wanted. Then Prince proceeded to regale us with tales of how good he was at sex compared he was to our white boyfriends (we made up names of boyfriends we had in America to stop him trying to get us to take him to the US with us. Mine was Sheamus from the WWE). We were very cordial to him, of course, and let him talk to us for nearly an hour. When he finally left, however, Gabriela and I breathed a sigh of relief. Maria told us very frankly that we shouldn’t have been surprised by the way that Prince was acting. She said that in certain cultures, intense statements of masculinity and sexuality are parts of mainstream conversation. Maria is from Singapore and is very well-traveled. From then on, we just laughed and smiled whenever a Ghanaian man made comments to us that were suggestive in any sense.

Tyler was a welcome face after the ordeal with Prince. He brought us a gigantic concoction of blended pineapple with a touch of what I think was rum, but Gabriela thought was vodka. It was so yummy. There’s nothing quite like fresh, local pineapple. But what he served us next was amazing. He gave us a local Ghanaian dish called “Banku”, which was a combination of sauce, rice, beans, bone-in fish, and my all-time favorite part of Ghanaian cuisine, a spicy black paste called “pepe”. It was so very, very good, and so very, very spicy. It was really hot with high humidity outside on the beach, but I was sweating bullets from the spices in the food.

After lunch Gabriela and Maria wanted to go swimming. I decided to stay behind and guard all the bags, as we weren’t sure what to expect from Ghanaians yet and I didn’t care to test out what doxycycline’s side effect of “extra sun sensitivity” meant by going in the water. They ended up bringing back three local boys with them. I think they were all brothers, but I’m not really sure because their accents were difficult to understand. They were very nice, and like everybody else on the beach very intrigued by us. They wanted very badly to hang out with us for awhile. We did so, but left when Gabriela got upset. One of the boys had explained that his father was very sick, so he’d had to quit school to support his family. All he wanted was to go to school, but couldn’t afford it. “You can help me. Please help me”, he said. It was very upsetting, especially for Gabriela who is getting licensed to be a teacher.

We called Tyler over to pay for our food and drinks. He asked why we were leaving so soon, and I explained that Maria was having an allergic reaction to the salt from the ocean. This was an excuse, but not a lie. She really was getting a bad rash. So, shockingly, he told us to follow him to his house so she could wash the salt off her skin. We were hesitant, but Maria told us that her allergic reaction was getting really bad, so she needed to do something. So, we followed him a little bit down the way and went into his backyard. It was a very simple place. I can’t really describe it without pictures. But suffice it to say, the “shower” he provided for Maria consisted of him filling up a large bucket with water, leading her behind a curtain outside and telling her to rinse. She did so and felt much better. Then Tyler insisted that Gabriela wash off too since she also had saltwater on her. This sounds creepy, I know, but it was actually incredibly generous of him. He did not have any sort of running water in his home. The water literally came from a hand-pump in his yard, and he gave us a LOT of it. He gave us so much, in fact, that we were worried that he and his family might run out of it. But he brushed it off and insisted that the girls get clean.

Tyler wasn’t done making us feel at home yet. After the girls washed, he insisted that we meet his sister and her baby. He literally called her out of the house as she carried in baby in her arms and made her pose with us for photos. Then he gave Maria the baby to hold. The baby started crying, and he kept scolding her. “Hannah, Hannah! No! Smile! No crying!” This man wanted us to have a good time with his family.

But that wasn’t all. Upon hearing about our awful cab driver, Tyler insisted upon getting us a fair price to get back home to the ship. He told us to hide in the back while he hailed a cab, because the second a cabbie saw an American “the price goes up three times”. For what cost us $35 to get there, it cost us 20 cidi to get back, which is equal to just over $13. Tyler was a saint. Although we had tipped him for the food, I made a point of giving him some extra USD for helping us out so much. He looked shocked, absolutely shocked, and gave me a huge hug. “God bless you.”
We went back to the ship ranting and raving about our Ghanaian angel.

That night we went on a hunt for food. However, it was about 8 at night, so most Ghanaian places were no longer serving food as Ghanaians usually eat pretty early. We had meant to eat earlier, but were accosted by the merchandise men right outside the ship who wanted to sell us woven bracelets with our names on them. Having had quite a bit of experience with this in Morocco, I was able to avoid their tactics. Gabriela, Maria, and John, however? They’d gone on the camel trek in Morocco and weren’t used to these guys. Before they knew it they had been suckered into shaking a guys hand and getting a bracelet they didn’t want tied around their wrists. “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?!” I laughed really hard at them. But that took a long time, so we were starving by the time we’d finished getting away. We settled on the first place the cabbie showed us, a hole in the wall called “Southern Fried Chicken”. We were skeptical, but very hungry, so we paid the cabbie and went inside. This would soon become our absolute favorite place in all of Ghana…but the reason why is better explained on the story of Day 2.
TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Ghana Tomorrow

So we're going to show up in Ghana tomorrow, meaning that I am officially entering malaria territory. That of course meant that as of yesterday I needed to start taking my malaria medication, doxycycline. I took it promptly at 7:30am yesterday, went to class, ran out of class, and promptly threw up. Thinking it was due to the fact that sometimes taking pills on an empty stomach makes me nauseous, I ran to the dining hall, ate half a pancake, and ran back to class. I sat down in class for 5 minutes, ran out, and threw up again.

 

Today, determined that yesterday was a mere result of the rough seas, I took my doxycycline yet again. To be safe, I made sure to eat a hard-boiled egg five minutes later. About five minutes later, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Well, great. I decided to walk to class, made it inside the door, then ran back to Old Faithful (my trusty toilet) and threw up again. Class started, I got through 10 minutes of lecture, and guess what happened? My teeth are going to fall out SO quickly if this keeps happening.

 

I went down to the clinic to talk to the Doctor (whose real name is actually Dr Phil). He informed me that it was indeed the doxycycline that was making me so violently ill, and recommended that I switch to Malarone. Thing is, switching to Malarone will cost me about $300, considering it's priced about as fairly as a Moroccan carpet at a tourist site. If I can't find a way to keep these pills down, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do.

 

At this point, I'm weighing my options. Malaria...or puking? Hmm...

Back on the Ship, Day 1

Came back from work today to find this in my inbox:

Congratulations Marek,

Your play, BEAR-LY LEGAL: A LOVE STORY, has been selected to be part of the Future Ten play festival! This year we received more than 550 submissions, nearly triple what we have ever received for past festivals!

The 8 final plays this year are:

* 'The Chair' by James Ferguson
* 'The Interview' by Andrew Clarke
* 'Bath Time is Fun Time' by Arthur Jolly
* 'Bear-ly Legal: A Love Story' by Marek Muller
* 'The Department of Famous Last Words' by Jeffrey Wolf
* 'Bury My Heart on Diabolical Kung-Fu Island' by Joe Lyons
* 'The Telephone' by Roger Mortimer-Smith
* 'There She Goes' by Gayle Pazerski

These eight plays are currently in the hands of our four directors, who are reading them and deciding which they would like to direct. Once they have made their selections, and we make the final assignments, we will put you in touch with them so you can discuss your show in detail.

Auditions are scheduled for September 17 at the Future Tennant Art Space in Pittsburgh from 10am to 1pm, and you are welcome to attend if you are in town and wish to come. The performances are on Nov 3-5 and 10-12 at 8pm. As a playwright you are entitled to two comp tickets (airfare and hotel not included).

Good God am I happy right now. Daniel Michael Muller, you live in Pittsburgh, and I have free tickets. You are now obligated to see my show.

And incidentally, why is the concept of bears on crack the thing that is getting me a cult following?

Morocco, Day 4: Casablanca

Was awoken early on Day 4 in Morocco by the obnoxious ringing of the ship’s room-to-room telephone.

“Hello…?” I mumbled.

“Hi, Marek!” came the chipper voice of rich boy.

“Whattttt…?” I half-whined, half-groaned. Who had given him my number?

“Whatcha doing in Casablanca today?”

“I don’t know…? Going to the bazaar with my fr--“

“Oh, cool! I’m coming with you!”

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. At what point in the etiquette-obsessed high society did it become proper to continually invite oneself into my personal life? Like seriously. I was raised to believe that when you’re going to sit at a table with someone, you start by asking “can I sit here?” When you want to go somewhere with someone, you ask “can I come with you?” You don’t just barge in and assume everybody is graced by your presence. But rich boy does both those things to me, and on a regular basis. Honestly, I wouldn’t dislike him nearly as much if he’d just STOP. DOING. THAT. But the message doesn’t appear to be getting through. Maybe I should stop bitching about it on my blog and start doing it to his face.

That aside, I managed to break away from rich boy eventually and proceeded to explore Casablanca. I didn’t have much planned for the day. All I knew was that I needed to be back on the ship by 6:00pm, and I HAD to buy my little brother a fez. It was the one thing he had asked for before I left, it was my last day in Morocco, and God help them if anyone stood in my way. It was time to put my haggling skills to the test one last time. Yet again, I’d rate myself as thoroughly average throughout most of the day. Here are my results:

A Moroccan tunic top: Was originally 220 dirham, got him down to 120 by trying the shirt on, looking happy, taking it off, looking unhappy and apologetic, and starting to leave.

A fez for my brother: Went to two shops. One was selling them for 100 dirham and wouldn’t barter at all. One was selling them for 50 and was willing to go to 30 dirham. I felt good about that until my friend Jake haggled the same guy down to 25. A difference of about 75 cents when converted back to US money, but still…

A keychain: I got it for free by making friends with the shop owner. He even had tea with me. I think I won that battle fair and square.
Pants for a girl on SAS: I’m proud of this one. After having annoyed the people who gave me my tunic top until they sold me my shirt for 120 dirham, I proceeded to come in and out of the store for hours on end with a friend of mine as she constantly demanded pants for under 120 dirham. The original price was yet again 220. They said no, no, and no again. Finally, as the day was ending, I took the shopkeeper aside, used my “give-me-sympathy” face and said, “Look…my friend REALLY wants those pants. But she honestly only has that 80 dirham on her right now. I just want her to be happy…” I pulled out some US cash and gave an ultra shy, effeminate look. “If I give you this, which is all I have in my wallet, will you please consider letting her have the pants? Pleaaase?” My lips trembled.

She got those pants for 100dirham. BAM.

As my reward for helping her get the pants, my friend (her name is Linda) and her boyfriend showed me a great spot to eat. It was the fisherman’s wharf of Casablanca, and incredibly cheap. Apparently, we got to eat the last two tagines they had, because they had been specially prepared for Linda and her boyfriend who had eaten there earlier and promised to come back. I was graced with some of the freshest fish of my life, and I mean REAL fish. You know: skin on, bones in. It was awesome. Surrounded by a sea of hungry Moroccan fishermen eating either my same fish tagine, whole sardines, or shrimp scrambled with eggs (yum), I chowed down and spit out spinal cords like a champ. I’d never felt more “Moroccan” in my life.

I got back to the ship at 4:00, did some homework, and enjoyed listening to my friends’ stories about their experiences in Morocco. It sounds like that for all the eye-rolling I did about it, the camel trekking trips were actually out-of-this-world good. Their pictures made me slightly regret not having gone with them. Maybe next time, Morocco. Maybe next time.

I left Morocco with both very good and very bad memories. The country may not have been as awesome as I was hoping for, but I definitely learned a lot, both about the country, the people, and myself. I feel that I’m coming out of my first port a better person: smarter, cleverer, more confident, and most of all more aware of the realities of the non-suburban world.

Then I got seasick and threw up again.

Morocco, Day 3: Volubilis and Fes Continued

My hotel roomie and I woke up early the next morning to partake in a Moroccan breakfast. I was still as pudgy as a piglet from the day before, so I had one piece of Moroccan flatbread with honey and called it a day. I did, however, drink enough of the fresh squeezed orange juice to guarantee perfect eyesight for the rest of my life. Wait. That's carrots. Hold on...no, it doesn't really matter. The point is, after breakfast we got back on the bus and headed for the Medina in Fes.

It was around this point that we started to learn that the SAS tour guide we were given wasn't exactly running what you'd call a "pure" operation. He took us to all of his friends' shops and wouldn't let us go anywhere else the entire day. Granted, they were fascinating places. First I got to see how all of that famous Moroccan pottery is made. So much effort goes into making even the smallest little plate. There are at least 3 people doing work for one little egg cup, and you have to go through a crazy apprenticeship process to even be able to call yourself a potter. Same with the tanneries. Apparently no one wants to be a tanner, like seriously nobody. It's essentially a father-son business because the families can't find any other apprentices. We were given mint plants to hold under our noses as we went to see where all the Moroccan leather is made, and now I know why. It's not just rotting cow skin that you smell in a tannery, you're also smelling what they use to wash/dry/stain the leather. I don't want to go into detail, but suffice it to say that the words "pidgeon shit" were used multiple times by our guide. We also saw Moroccan carpets, which can take up to a year and a half to make. Apparently, Moroccan women used to be abused by their husbands via carpet-making. They'd work on the carpets for years at a time, sell them at the market, and get to keep NONE of the money. I guess now it's better, but the guide was never entirely clear on that.

The issue with being taken to all these educational visits of course was that they were not completely educational. We were pretty much held hostage in each of the three shops until enough people bought things that the tour guide and his friends were satisfied. Like, literally. At one point, we were all kept in a little room surrounded by carpet after carpet for over an hour. We all sat in chairs, looked awkwardly at each other, and ooh'd and ahh'd at the carpets we knew we'd never be able to afford. Of course, the longer we sat and sweat in there, the more we started to want the merchandise. It's a good business strategy: get the patrons to ungodly bored that the only thing interesting to look at is what you're selling. I think they managed to convince one woman out of the 30 of us to buy a carpet, and they were clearly getting frustrated. But seriously, gorgeous as they were, how many college students can reasonably afford to buy a $500-$700 carpet? I mean, seriously, rich guy had already spent $400 on a blazer in the leather tannery. When even rich guy is struggling to buy more, you know you've got to let us go.

Somehow we finally got out of the carpet place and were served a huge, multi-course meal again. I groaned and held my stomach...and then of course proceeded to eat the food.

Shifty as our guide was, he definitely kept us all safe in Fes. We were quite literally escorted by policemen the entire time were were walking. Granted, I don't think they did a very good job at all. At one point, I noticed that an adorable little boy, no more than 8 or 9, had sneaked his way into our tour group. He followed us for around a half hour, and stuck close to me in particular. Don't get me wrong, I knew what I wanted. Eventually I greeted him and smiled at him. He spoke quietly and pulled me in a little closer. "Money." I sighed and pulled out a coin to give him. "Thank you". He ran away. I knew it wasn't a great thing for me to do. This kid was one of thousands of poor Moroccans I'd seen already, and I wasn't doing him much good by teaching him early that you can make money by doing nothing by following tourists around and looking cute (granted, that's pretty much what my job was this summer). Nonetheless, I figured, it was better to help someone out for five minutes than to coldly refuse to help anyone at all. I saw him again about 15 minutes later around a dessert stand. I presumed he must have been buying a snack, because he waved at me and gave me the cutest little smile I'd ever seen. My heart was lighter than air. "Marek," I told myself, "you've done good". Of course, that was until about an hour later. I saw the little boy again. SOMEHOW he'd manage to track us down. I began to wonder if he'd memorized this tour. Only trouble was, this time he'd brought along 5 of his little friends. They SWARMED me. I had to push the poor things to get away. No good deed goes unpunished. In retrospect, what I should have done with the original boy was what another girl did: she told the boys they could have some money, but only if they took a picture with her. Genius. They had to work for their coins.

The poverty is Morocco is very saddening. Of course there are always the cute little boys begging the susceptible tourist girls for money, but there are also some much sadder scenes. Until recently, single mothers and their children has almost no rights whatsoever. The kids were basically not treated as people: no access to education, healthcare, nothing. In recent reforms, they've been given better treatment. However, it's still not uncommon to see mothers in street corners holding their unconscious children in their arms and begging for anything they can get. I saw this at least 3 times. The hard part is, I've also come to learn that some Moroccans know that holding an unconscious child automatically makes you more money, so they pose that way for the tourists. It makes it very hard to tell who's "worth" giving to, if that makes any sense.

I'm getting to the point where I'm seeing that honest about their actual situations or not, poverty is a HUGE deal in Morocco. Every other person was begging or looking for an excuse to get near our food and wallets. It's really very sad. I want to do something about it, but I don't know what I can do. When I get home, I want to try to be active about homelessness in the states. Whether you're in the US or Morocco, everyone should be entitled to a home and a reasonable standard of living. I'm no longer going to just sit by and, like rich guy does, brush the homeless off and say "there's nothing I can do about it". Bullshit. There's something everyone can do about it. Be the change you want to see in the world, right? Hold me to this, guys. When I hit the US in December, it's time to start helping the homeless. The picture of Morocco was awful...but it was reminiscent of the same scenes I've seen in Denver so many times before.

Morocco: Day 2 - Volubilis and Fes

Dreary-eyed and skeptical, I got my passport and walked onto the bus to Fes at 7:30 in the morning. I was tired of Morocco already and would really rather have just stayed in bed. Nonetheless, I had put down a lot of cash for this SAS-sponsored excursion to Volubilis and Fes, and I wasn’t going down without a fight.

As you can imagine, I hadn’t slept much the night before. So, for most of the first leg of the trip, I was passed out on the bus. It really was a shame, because there was an awesome guide who basically gave us the full history of every single thing we passed, including personal anecdotes that gave real insight into Moroccan culture. He was clearly upset about new women’s rights in Morocco, not because he was inherently a bad man, but because of their affects on Moroccan men. Apparently, now a woman can divorce her husband, but is automatically entitled to keep not only the children, but the house. It was startling to watch a Moroccan man complain “it’s not fair” regarding his status compared to a woman’s. Definitely not what you’d expect in a predominantly Muslim country. Here’s a particularly good example of his one of his views on gender: “Women now can abuse men by three ways: marriage, children, and black magic”. He was a treat. I wanted to take him home with me.
About halfway to Fes, we stopped in the city of Meknes. I think at one point in its existence it was either a fortress, the capital of Morocco, or maybe both. I really don’t remember, because I was still half-conscious. The pictures you’ll eventually see will tell the story better than I can. We stopped by the ruins of an ancient grainery (where I saw cats) and drove through what at one point was a huge irrigation system, but was now a tunnel for cars. Pretty sweet.

Speaking of cats, I forgot to mention: Morocco has SO MANY CATS. I don’t think most of them have owners. They never look like they’re starving or anything, so I don’t cry. It’s just crazy to see so many cats wandering the streets. And good God, a bunch of them are kittens! Who just leaves a cute kitten down on the street? But the Moroccans just walk right on like Americans do when they see a squirrel. It’s just commonplace. As for me, I was ready to adopt about 350 cats today.  Instead I just filled up my camera’s memory card with pictures of all of them. There was actually a teeny tiny super itty bitty baby kitten I saw today who was being washed by a younger Moroccan man. Apparently the mother cat had just died and he was now caring for the infant kitties. This guy was not a rich man. I’d say he was actually quite a poor man. I think I’ll marry that man some day.

We eventually got to stop at a nice place and get lunch. Oh, did I say lunch? I meant a 5 course meal complete with Moroccan bread, bastilla, tagine, mint tea, fruit, a bunch of mysterious zucchini/eggplant-y vegetables I’d never seen before, and the expensive wine I managed to get for free off of a lifelong learner (the old people on the boat) because I’m a moocher like that. Also, I was most certainly NOT a vegetarian that day. There just wasn’t a choice about it. Half the stuff had meat in it, and the only choice was to either eat around it and get the meat juice anyway, or just suck it up and enjoy the carcass. I was so ungodly full.

Naturally, the logical choice after eating so much food was to go walk around ancient Roman ruins for two hours. We did this, and my stomach was not happy about it. They were your typical Roman ruins, complete with stone penises and decorative swastikas. Oh, did I mentions? Apparently the Romans totally had those. I took a picture of a vomitorium for my dad. It was a bad picture, but it had to be done. Again, this is something that’s better described by pictures than in words, so I’ll wait on explaining Volubilis.

After the ruins, all 30 of us got back in the bus and donated the box lunches from the ship (which we definitely did NOT eat after that huge lunch) to some poor Moroccans. I hear that there were tears of joy and hugs…but I was sleeping in the bus again, so I didn’t see it. I really need to stop doing that.

Eventually we finally got to Fes and got to see our hotel. I was not expecting much, considering the price of the trip was under $300…but holy crap, was this place nice. It looked like a freaking palace on the inside, complete with mosaic, bronze, and everything. I shared a ridiculously big double with a girl, and we had a plasma screen, fluffy sheets, artwork, and a humongous soaking tub. Outside our room there was also a spa (temptation), computers (more temptation), a bar, and a restaurant. The lobby even had free wi-fi for my iPhone!

Then it was dinner time. Somehow, someway, I was hungry again after that monstrous lunch. Well it turns out that was a good thing, because the hotel people decided to serve us ANOTHER five course meal. This time we got bread, soup, more wine, more meat tagine, and more other stuff that I don’t remember because at some point I entered a food coma and blacked out.

I’ve got to say, even though I noticed a real “fakeness” about this version of Morocco, it was nice to follow such an awful day in Marrakesh with such a chill day in Fes, Volubilis, and Meknes. Being pampered is certainly better than constantly fearing for your life and wallet. I don’t care how much crap I get for saying it: the SAS trip won my heart on day 2. Luckily, it was a two-day trip. Stay tuned to find out what happened next!

Morocco: Day 1

Time to catch up on the old blog.

So I get out of the boat and take a look around the immediate surroundings of Casablanca. Immediately my first thought is “Wow…sketchy”. And that about summarizes Day 1.

We caught a cab to take us to the train station. I was in an independent travel group with the rich guy (Dammit, prior Facebook arrangements) and since he doesn’t give a crap about money, but is used to getting what he wants, he threw us into a cab without a compteur (counter), and so we got majorly ripped off by the driver. I probably should have said no…but I was so overwhelmed I didn’t know what to do. What should have cost us 8dh a piece cost us 20dh. I hate that rich guy quite a lot sometimes.

We take the train to Marrakesh from Casablanca, which cost the equivalent of $20 one way. At this point, since my budget for Morocco was $100, Marrakesh already seemed like a terrible idea. By the end of the day I would be down about $50 on transportation costs alone.
When we got to Marrakesh, things didn’t look up at all. As we were exiting the train, a “nice” Moroccan man came into our compartment and asked where we were from. The girl next to us who we didn’t know said “Luxembourg”, to which he responded “nice”. We said, stupidly, “United States”, at which point he pretended Miss Luxembourg didn’t exist and proceeded to try to convince us to take a tour of the city with him. We said no at least 5 times: When we were on the train, when we were off the train, when we joined up with the rest of the group while off the train, when we tried to leave the station…you get the point. Anyway, eventually we got out of there.

Yet again, a horde of taxi drivers accosted us and demanded our business. Rich boy, being a rich boy, made us take another cab that ripped us off. We got to the central market place, which was like a scene out of Aladdin. You know when Jasmine walks through the Agrabah marketplace and there are little tents/stands everywhere and people offering her bread and jewels and for some reason a fish? That’s basically a pretty accurate representation of what it’s actually like. People grab you and touch you and demand that you look inside their shops, and when you show the slightest bit of interest, they hound you like you’ve never been hounded before. I took a look at a fez at one point, decided to wait on it, and the shop owner quite literally followed me for three blocks trying to make me come back.

The worst part of the day was actually my best photo-op. So we’re walking through the market when I see a guy who has one of those monkeys on a chain. Now, in retrospect, what I should have done was say “ugh, such animal cruelty. What a disgusting man that is.” However, being thoroughly overwhelmed by being in Africa, my immediate response was more along the lines of “OMGWTF GUYS MONKEY”. The monkey guy took notice of me (I was pretty flamboyant) and said something along the lines of “come take picture with monkey, it’s okay”. I, being new at this whole travel thing, was all gung-ho about it. One of my friends pulled me aside and said “NO. You have to PAY for that”. I didn’t believe her, but I decided to move on. Yet again, however, he kept following us. Eventually I turned back and said “okay, seriously, how much?” Yet again he responded, “no worry, no worry. It’s okay.” I was very hesitant, and turned to go…

And suddenly there was a monkey on top of me. Yes, on top of me. He had THROWN THE MONKEY on me. Well, I decided, I’ve lost. We got some pictures of me smiling with the monkey. I was done, but the monkey guy wasn’t. He ordered the monkey to JUMP ON MY HEAD. I think the only response I could muster was quite literally “Okay. So now there’s a monkey on my head. What do I do with this?” He got the monkey off and I was DONE, so done. I was speed-walking away before he could try to charge me…but then he got my friend. Monkey guy said “it’s okay, it’s okay. I can shake your hand?” So my friend, also being a bit naïve, shook monkey’s guy’s hand…at which point THE MONKEY JUMPED ON HIS HEAD. I have such an immense hatred for monkeys right now, you have no idea. After that, I was still walking, but my friend made the mistake of asking “how much?” God. So the guy tries to demand 200dh a piece, which comes to about $25USD per person. So he wanted $50 for throwing monkeys at us. I was basically like, you have GOT to be kidding me. We got away from him by shoving 100dh at him total. So yeah. Lost another $10 on a monkey. I never want to see another monkey again for as long as I live.

We started to get into the heart of the central marketplace. The streets were so narrow that I basically could have been on a lightrail to a Bronco game with how packed in we all were. And to add on to the problem, it seems that the people in Marrakesh have an obsession with motorcycles. They also have an obsession with riding it through the streets, the marketplaces, the sidewalks, and basically anywhere else that has ground underneath it. So yeah, nearly got killed by a motorcycle at least three times. (Incidentally, we also almost got killed by about 5 cars, since Morocco’s traffic laws don’t appear to, well, exist. We saw maybe two crosswalks in the entire city. Street-crossing was the equivalent to skydiving in both risk and adrenaline.) People were doing a lot of staring, and muttering a lot in French and Arabic. Feeling like a freak show is not fun, so I got back at them by taking their pictures like a racist tourist. What now, bitches?

We were very hungry, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money. A nice man (we assume he was nice because we started only speaking in Spanish to compensate for the stigma of clearly being foreign) guided us to a place where real Moroccans ate, not where tourists ate. We paid about 1/6 of what we’d have paid at a touristy place, so yay. Ordering was weird, though. We didn’t understand anything on the menu except the stuff that was, for some reason, American (I guess Moroccans like a burger as much as the next guy). We eventually ended up pointing at what the next table was eating and saying “I want that”. It ended up being some sort of tuna/egg/potato/tomato salad-ish thing with lamb meatballs and fries on the side. Or maybe the sald was the side and the lamb thing was the main course. I don’t know. I didn’t eat the lamb, but the salad-looking thing was fantastic. We also found a Moroccan flatbread stand and partook in that, along with some Moroccan mint tea. I have had SO much of that tea lately. It never gets old.
We spent most of the rest of the day just wandering around the city. Rich boy bought a whole bunch of frivolous things and didn’t even bother to barter. One great moment, though. He comes back and shows me this “awesome Moroccan hat” he bought for his sister. Turns out it was one of those Jamaican hats with the fake dreadlocks hanging down from it. I laughed my ass off and told him what he’s just bought. He didn’t believe me until I made the rest of the group confirm he’d been scammed. Good God, rich boy. Get a grip.

It hit nightfall and we found a cute place with gelato and, mercifully, wi-fi. I popped on Facebook for a few minutes and indulged in melon-flavored and fig-flavored gelato. I highly recommend them both.

We were on the train again, bracing for yet another 3.5 hour ride back to Casablanca. We met a woman who was actually from Ohio, and had been living in Morocco for many years. She actually had lived about a mile from one of the girls in our group. What are the odds? It was refreshing to hear her take on everything we’d just been through. She told us straight up what we should be paying for what, how to barter, where to eat, etc.
Here’s where things get ultra-sketchy. So we get back to Casablanca around 12:30am. Not exactly the best time to be wandering around any city, let alone a foreign city with a high poverty rate. We knew we needed to get home quickly, but the lady on the train had advised us to walk a few blocks from the train station to get a reasonable taxi driver versus another scam artist. The cab drivers kept following us, which was creepy enough. However, eventually they stopped. We weren’t sure why. Then we looked forward a bit and saw a scene straight out of Rent. There was a line of about 30 homeless men sitting side to side against a wall, smoking, brooding, and/or looking at us. We were not amused. One of the girls turned around and saw that there were suddenly about three guys following close behind us. They were yelling “hey, sweetheart” in English, despite there being two guys in our group. We sprinted the hell away. Fearing for our lives at this point, we hailed three cabs (the GOOD cabs) and went home.
Turns out we were the lucky ones. Another SAS kid had been mugged that day. Four guys surrounded him and took everything he had.
So yeah. $50 out with no souvenirs or pleasant memories, my first day in Morocco was sketchy to say the least.

MOROCCO OMG

It's 1:30am and I just got back from Marrakesh. I'm too tired to write the blog...but believe me, I'll get back to you. Some things to look forward to: con artists, monkeys, bread, and Spanish. GOODNIGHT.

Morocco Tomorrow!

Fairly uneventful day today, if only because nothing on the boat seems exciting when you know you're going to be in Morocco in 24 hours.

I got a 9/10 on my first SAS paper today (paper being a loose term. More like two analytical paragraphs comparable to what a 10th grader should be able to do), which was the highest grade in the class. I think I deserved better, but hey, I'm an arrogant asshole, so what can you do? But I already have people lining up asking me to help them. God, I miss being a Writing Fellow.

The MV Explorer is a place where my creativity comes to die. I want to write/act/sing or do SOMETHING artsy...but it's tough when opportunities aren't shoved in my face like in Iowa. Guess I'll have to try a little harder. Time to get "I-Have-No-Shame-on-a-Boat Theatre" started.

I did "Insanity" for the second time today. JesusChristAllahAdonai do my legs hurt. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn't the best move to tear my body apart again right before walking around Marrakesh, Fes, Volubilis, and Casablanca for four days straight. I hope I remembered to pack the Advil.

We'll arrive in Morocco promptly at 8am.

Gahhhh

Huff...puff...

So I just did an extreme cardio workout called "Insanity" with my friends. At the time it didn't seem that hard. The second I got back to my room, I realized I was dying.

It's tough to feel like you're staying in shape when you live on a reasonably small ship, so it drives us to do crazy things like this. Granted, I go up and down a million flights of stairs a day, but it's not quite the same as wandering up and down a college campus or taking a mile walk with my dogs, or weight training at my gym. The weight room is right in the public eye, making it very embarrassing to try to train. And like hell am I running on a treadmill. I HATE treadmills. Oh, and then there's the part where I'm on a FREAKING SHIP. The rocking makes me so sleepy that every time I have a free moment and think to myself "Hey, Marek, here's a thought, why not get off your lazy butt and work out?", I always lay down on my bed and pass out for three hours. Luckily, my friends are forcing me out of bed from now on to do this routine with them.

People say that they gain 10 pounds on SAS. I don't want that to happen. But it's weird, because the food on the ship doesn't ever seem to make you full. I don't find my food intake to be all too heavy or that caloric...but then again, maybe they pack it full of secret calories, like oils and butter. I'm definitely nervous that when the boat stops in Morocco and my scale starts working again (it doesn't work on a moving ship), I'll be unpleasantly surprised that I've gained 60 pounds.

My diet usually consists of fish, potatoes, maybe a different vegetable, and a baby dessert. Maybe I'll throw in some peanut butter for protein. And about 600 cups of coffee for strength. It doesn't seem all too caloric...but I've been wrong before. Just ask about my freshman year of college.

Wish me luck. I'm doing another round of "Insanity" tomorrow.