The Boyz Touch Down in Morocco

Happiness

MerHba Foster and Nolan! The New Year brought the best belated Christmas present ever with the arrival of Foster and Nolan in Morocco. The week that has passed since their arrival has been filled with both fresh reminders to appreciate all that is different and special about our everyday life in Marrakech and some new family adventures.

We wasted no time in immersing the boys in the chaos of Djemma el-Fna - giving them just a couple of hours to rest up before introducing them to the monkey-trainers, snake-charmers, vendors, and general madness of an evening on the square. They got to experience their first call to prayer from a rooftop terrace while testing out their first round of olives, harissa, and tajine. It was a classic Marrakech night to jumpstart the transition to Morocco time. Then, it took nearly four days for them to recover.

A local funduq

Brianna, thrilled to have her brothers here, got straight to work catching up on movies and binge-watching t.v. shows with them. She also took advantage of having company to venture out shopping in the medina without the usual hassle that comes with being a single female. We celebrated a late Christmas together and, then, finally ditched the dead palm fronds and stale gingerbread house in favor of moving full speed ahead into 2017. We visited some of our favorite restaurants, went to see the local storytellers, and visited the Bahia Palace. We visited the knock-off stores for super cheap imitation sneaker shopping, and I was introduced to the world of YZY's - some kind of Kanye West sneaker craze that this oh-so-hip mom managed to miss along the way. The quest for the perfect fake YZY's involved some super secret system of sole, seam, and font evaluation. They all kind of looked the same to me, and I just tagged along for the ride. Fortunately some impostors made the cut, and Foster and Nolan came away sporting new shoes. Nolan then got busy trying to scheme up ways to start his own business shipping fake YZY's home to his friends. This semester promises to be a real world education for him. First up: "Honing Your Entrepreneurial Skills Through Illegal Export."

Celebrating Marrakech Christmas

Winoo - our favorite juice stop

Nolan enjoys a camel burger

Bahia Palace Moments

Foster and Nolan also got to meet some of the characters in our Marrakech life, pat the neighborhood cats, and experience some of the daily challenges that continue to boggle our minds from time to time. This week's "Morocco moment" was the discovery that stores are no longer selling trash bags because they are not environmentally friendly. The staff at Carrefour assures me that someone out there is working on an eco-friendly solution, but, in the meantime, there will be no more plastic trash bags. I do, honestly, applaud the effort, however, it would have been quite helpful to have a plan in place before phasing out trash bags entirely. I am not quite sure what we will do tomorrow, when our last trash bag goes into the dumpster. We live in a concrete building surrounded by concrete. I don't have a worm bin, a compost pile, or a fire pit. To my knowledge our neighbors do not either.  It's a good thing I have three children here with me this week to run handfuls of garbage down five floors to the dumpster. Oy.

En route to M'hamid - entering the Draa Valley

After a few days of "real life," we headed south for a desert adventure. No visit to Morocco would be complete without camels, so we headed to Ouarzazate. We survived the four-hour bus trip through the mountains without any barfing (unfortunately that was not the case for everyone on the bus), and we silently gave thanks each time the bus passed another sheer drop and remained on the road. When we arrived in Ouarzazate we were thrilled to set our feet on solid ground and breathe in fresh air. The city was remarkably quiet, and we searched for our hotel without once having to risk our lives in traffic. Once we settled in, we set off to explore the kasbah. We wound our way through the labyrinth of empty rooms and tried to imagine what life would have been like in a different era.  We strolled through the old village and eventually made our way out to enjoy the shops on the main road, where we found ourselves in a magical maze of a store, over-stuffed with ancient treasures. It felt as though a genie would magically pop out of a lamp at any moment.

Kasbah in Ouarzazate

A cave of magical treasures in Ouarzazte

The next morning, we headed further south, this time in a 4X4 with our guide Abdou. We were headed for M'hamid, the last town on the frontier of the Sahara, en route to our desert adventure. The landscape grew progressively more rocky, dry and desolate for the first hour. Then, we emerged into a sea of palm trees, marking the beginning if the Draa Valley, a 100 km "river" valley that stretches from Agdz to the Sahara. The change was stunning, and the next 100 km was an amazing contrast of the palm oasis with its ancient kasbahs and the towering red rock walls that formed its backdrop. From time to time we detoured from the main road into the oasis to catch glimpses of alfalfa farmers tending their crops under the forest of date palms and children driving donkeys along dirt roads.  We noticed as the more conservative long robes of the women of the city were replaced with more festive and sparkly skirts in the valley. And, finally, after a long dusty day in the car, we came to the literal end of the road in M'hamid. Forty kilometers from the border with Algeria, the road ends, and the Sahara desert begins. We passed through a few different police checkpoints, and our driver reassured us over and over that they were just protecting us. They wanted to know that we were sleeping in the desert he said. He also went on to tell us all about the cameras on the border, the helicopters waiting to be deployed whenever something moved, and the fact that he would just call 117 if we got lost in the dunes, and immediately helicopters would be looking for us. I wasn't sure whether we should be reassured or nervous.

Turban shopping en route to the Sahara

What did become quickly apparent was the fact that we would be the only things moving in the desert this night. Apparently frigid desert camping is not high on most tourists' lists in January. When we finally rolled out of our dusty vehicle in M'hamid, we were greeted by our dromedary team. Four sweet looking camels waited to bring us to our desert campsite. As Foster and Nolan wrapped themselves in their desert turbans, our camel leader, Youssef, readied the camels. He led them across a tricky ditch before having us hop aboard for our 6 km trek across the sand. As the camels rose from kneeling to standing, we clung to our handlebars and wondered what we were in for.  For a while we giggled at the sheer oddity of riding aloft these weird animals. It seemed a little surreal - being led through golden sands by a young boy dressed in a turquoise robe. He communicated with the camels with clicking sounds, and they seemed to comply. After no more than 15 minutes, I found myself wondering how much longer the torture would last. After 30 minutes, the lower portion of my body had gone numb, and I stopped searching for creative saddle positions to minimize my pain. When Youssef finally brought the camels to a kneeling position again and told us to dismount, I was ecstatic.

Making friends with our dromedary team

My view from the front

While the camels waited, we walked over a path in the dunes and found our desert camp and two friendly staff (who had likely been forced from their warm, cushy homes to accommodate us in the desert).  We were pleasantly surprised to find that we had signed on for some kind of glamping experience. Our giant tent was lined with Moroccan carpets and furnished with four beds, stacks of blankets, our own sink, and a light bulb. There was a dining tent, a tea tent, and a giant fire ring. We were the only souls to be found in this deserted desert paradise.

Glamping in the Sahara

After enjoying tea and chocolates, Razzi presented us with two snowboards and sent us to the top of the nearest dune. "Exhausted" does not begin to describe how we felt after hiking to the top of a dune, carrying snowboards in deep sand. The idea of sand boarding had sounded so appealing before we set out up the dune. Now it seemed like a ludicrous undertaking. We flopped in the sand at the top of the dune and admired the surroundings. Brianna was the first to take the plunge - opting to sit on the board rather than strap in with sneakers. She enjoyed a sweet ride. Foster followed. Then, the two of them set about lugging the boards back to the top of the dune. Gasping and wheezing, Brianna brought me her board. Foster slumped over a nearby dune and rested.  I took my first run, inspired by Foster and Brianna's effort. I flew down the packed sand before digging an edge into the soft sand below and dumping off sideways. It was a blast. Then I had to climb. That was not a blast. Panting and sweating, I finally reached the peak of the dune and planted the board. We spent over an hour just playing in the sand and watching Nolan flip, roll, and slide.When the sun finally set, and we had succeeded in embedding grains of sand in every crevice of our bodies, we took one last ride down the dune back into the camp.

Do real Vermonters Sand Board?

This is not Smuggs

A looong hike up the dune

Standing up looks too scary!

Nolan and desert parkour

When we slid back into camp, we were greeted by a piping hot tajine for dinner, a campfire, and a private drumming session. We shivered in the cold, crept as close to the fire as possible, appreciated the desert stars, and headed to bed very early in an effort to get warm. As the temperatures dropped, we piled on the blankets and wondered what kind of craziness had inspired us to visit the desert in winter.

When the alarms went off at 6:40 to wake us for sunrise, Brianna immediately exclaimed, "Thank God! I thought that night was never going to end." All three kids were wide awake - not exactly frozen, but uncomfortably suffocated under towering blankets. The problem was not waking up, but actually mustering the enthusiasm to get out of bed into the freezing cold. Brianna and I managed to drag ourselves to the top of a dune for sunrise, while the boys opted to stay entrapped in their blankets. Once again, the desert was silent, and we had the sunrise to ourselves. We spotted Razzi down below in his turban moving between tents, and we knew that meant that a hot cup of tea would be waiting for us when we returned. We jogged down the dune, told the boys breakfast was ready, and went into the dining tent to hug a teapot and cradle hot hard boiled eggs in an effort to get warm. The boys eventually stumbled in and found their spots at the table. In contrast to the super sweet mint tea we have grown accustomed to, our tea pot was filled with extra strong, bitter green tea. I looked on in amusement as all three kids challenged each other to gulp it down without making faces. I stuck to the coffee.

 After breakfast, we packed up, bid our desert hosts goodbye, and piled back into the truck with Abdou for a ride through the dunes back to the paved road. We made a quick stop in Tamegroute to visit a pottery cooperative famous for the region's signature green pottery (colored by magnesium baked into the clay). Three hours later, we rolled into our hotel full of sand and fresh desert memories - grateful for the heater in our room, the hot water in our shower, and the power outlet next to the beds. When we forced ourselves out for dinner a few hours later, the desert already seemed like a distant memory except for the sore camel riding muscles which would stick around for days as a sweet reminder of our adventure.