Farewell, Fes!

I'm now on the train from Fez to Rabat and will post this later. For my final week in Morocco. When I bought my ticket, I was sure that I'd find other students to travel with the week after the program. Oh, how very optimistic I was. There are some people staying around, but some only for a few days, others for other language schools, and yet others for places I am not really interested in and moving around far more than my 45-pound bag will allow. How did I let myself stick that much into my suitcase??? It was so easy because the bag still wasn't full. Ah, well, I'll find things to do.

The last week of classes was very busy, as you might imagine. I studied a bit, went to class (sometimes wishing I hadn't) and ran around doing things that needed to be done. Like buying goofy little presents. There are so many cute things that I tell myself, 'oh, someone will like that.' Hopefully I'll actually give them away this time. I think I still have a couple of keychains from Tunisia. You know, other than the one that I actually use on my office keys.

One of the things I did this week was to go to the hammam, or public bath. I still had never been, in part due to not knowing who to go with, and in part due to my dislike for saunas and jacuzzis. I had heard that the hammam is hot, and part of the idea is that you kind of sit around and sweat off the dirt for a while. That did not sound the least bit appealing to me. But then some of my friends went and said that there are actually rooms of varying heat, so it's possible to not be dying-ly hot. I was convinced.

Of course, going to the hammam is not as simple as grabbing your shower stuff and heading out. You need supplies. Typically, Moroccans use this stuff called 'black soap' that is made in part with olive oil at the hammam. It is thick and dark and doesn't really suds, but is supposed to be amazing for your skin. You can get it in tourist shops. And you may pay 35 MAD (about $8.50) for enough to last you 2-3 showers. My friends somehow had a Moroccan guy helping them, and they each got the same amount for just 2 dirhams, or 25 cents.

Well, our second Moroccan mama (she's the mom's cousin and lives with them, doing the traditional woman's work of cooking and cleaning) knew we were headed back and also that we wanted to go out in to the souk with her, so she took us the other night. Before we even left the house, she told us several times that we were not to say a word, but we could go with her. We agreed and set off, trailing close behind her, but trying to look innocent and uncomprehending. My roommate had brought a small tupperware dish that she wanted to fill, it would hold about 1 cup, but mama 2 said we wouldn't use it right then. We walked up to one of the general stores and she started talking to the guy, and I thought I heard the word "kilo" but thought she must be getting other things too. I mean, one KILO of soap?? It's dense, but still! No, no, we walked away a few minutes later with a rather large, heavy bag with half a kilo of soap for each of us. To use and then take home. Not in any nice container, but in a plastic bag. Our family is incredibly sweet. When we asked how much we owed her, she said it was 3 dirhams each, but that she wouldn't let us pay her back, that it was a present. It's crazy, less than 40 cents! And people are stilling it online for about $15 for a few ounces. Crazy, crazy.

[Now that I think about it, I don't know how well that bag is closed in my suitcase. I know that she said it stays better in the fridge, and I observed that it gets softer when it's hot. Ah, well, nothing to be done at the moment but hope that it doesn't ruin anything. And if it does, I guess it'll lighten the load a bit!]

Back to the hammam. You put the soap on and then scrub the heck out of your skin with a little bath mitt that is to a loofah what a loofah is to a t-shirt. They are incredible scratchy, and help get off the dead layers of skin. I got one the first time the others went to the hammam and have been using it in the shower, since it's hard (or impossible) to get a loofah in Fez, but I don't press very hard. At the hammam you're supposed to do it so hard that your skin turns red. Yeah, no thanks.

When you go into the hammam, at least the one we went to, you pay 10 dirhams and go into a room where you leave your clothes (and you give the lady who sits in there and watches your clothes another 5 dirhams... or at least foreigners do, who knows how it works really.) Well, there was a teenage boy there on Thursday that the girls hadn't seen before who was insisting that it was 50 to get in, because it was closed to everyone except those getting a massage. Don't let the word fool you, it's not actually a massage, but a brutal scrub-down by a Moroccan woman who knows how to wield a scratchy mitt. Not what we were looking for. One of the girls who had been there before speaks great French and started arguing with the kid, saying that was ridiculous, that we'd been there at the same time and always paid the 10 that we know it should cost, and that we weren't willing to pay more than that. He insisted and said it was a new rule and we could go find another hammam if we didn't want to pay. Then she asked him if it was a price for us just because we weren't from there. He said no, and that any Moroccan would pay the same. He said to watch and see.

A Moroccan woman came up and he asked her if she was getting the massage as well, and she said yes. Then somehow we started talking to her a little bit (I'm not sure how, now that I think about it, b/c she didn't speak French) and she told the guy not to be ridiculous, that if we wanted to come in without a massage, we could. Hooray for helpful lady! So we came in and she made sure we were comfortable and knew what we were doing and every now and then she'd make sure things were ok. I'm not sure if she worked there, or just felt like we should be treated 'right' because 10 or so minutes after we came in, three Belgian girls came in and she led them around a lot, too, and ended up doing their 'massages.' But she did pay to get in herself. I don't know.

So, we sweated like crazy and drank water (we'd brought some in) and soaped up and scrubbed down and poured water over ourselves and got clean and poured more water over ourselves and eventually went home. When we got home, mama 2 and papa's sister laughed at me, saying I must have gone to the pool and gotten a sunburn, not to the hammam. And then pulled me in front of a mirror so I could see that my face was tomato red from all of the heat. I don't know how it does that, especially since we'd been out of the hammam maybe 20-30 minutes by then, but eventually I became a normal color once more. I just don't like hot water.