Casablanca

We left Kénitra by car today and headed south on the toll road to Casablanca where I have now arrived. We are staying with friends in a neighborhood known for various embassies (we are a stone's throw from the Embassy of Belgium) and for the many Moroccan Jewish families that reside in here.

As we passed through Salé (the sister city of Rabat, Morocco's capital) we stopped at an artisan cooperative to admire the handmade crafts. Unfortunately, photos are not allowed inside the cooperative, so the best I can show you is this picture of me outside the cooperative.

Morocco had the most creative and talented craftspeople! We saw a fell array of products: Rugs, carved furniture, items made from brass, ceramics, leather, and embroidered cloth. There were paintings and calligraphy as well. I was most pleased with the bookshop at the cooperative where I was able to buy books for my classroom: Books by local authors written in French as well as some children's books that even my French I students will be able to read with Berber stories, folktales, and beautiful images by local artists.

As an American, it is easy to have a stereo-typed image of what Casablanca should be since one of the most iconic films of American cinema is "Casablanca" with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Reality couldn't be further from the fantasy! Here's a comical bit of dialogue from the film:

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

What makes this exchange so comical is not its original intent to be funny (and it is funny!), but rather, the fact that the writers obviously knew nothing of the geography around Casablanca. Morocco's largest city (indeed the largest city in the Maghreb) is Morocco's #1 port. It is not in the desert! It's on the Atlantic coast and the breezes off the ocean here are actually quite pleasant.

I will share more tomorrow about the history of Casablanca, but I will make one simple mention today about taxis in Morocco and in Casablanca. Most people here cannot afford a car, so they depend on bicycles, mopeds, buses, and taxis to get around. If you want to go from one city to another by taxi, you have to take a "grand taxi" --- a 1980's Mercedes where they load 4 or 5 people in the backseat and 2 people in the passenger's seat in front and hit the road for a dangerous ride. If you are taking a taxi just in town, you take what they call a "taxiette" or "petit taxi" which will accept no more than 3 passengers. They are very cheap and easy to hire. To keep these taxis off the highways between towns, each town has its own "taxiette" color. In Kénitra, they are yellow/beige. In Casablanca, they are red, such as the one in this picture.