Day 160: Casablanca – Cairo – Addis Ababa – Entebbe

Our 24 hours of airports and airplanes began in search for a grocery store. By 8 AM we were standing outside of a closed grocery store wondering where we were going to find an open store to buy Catherine and Brian some Thanks-sooo-much-for-letting-us-stay-at-your-place wine, and some eggs and bread (to make up for what we helped ourselves to the previous morning). We walked across their neighborhood to find another closed grocery store. We got some coffee while we waited until it opened at 9. Then we were crazy people running through the store in hopes we would be back to, and out of their apartment by 10 to make it to train on time.

This “day in a minute” is the only video we took for the day. It’s boring. As was the majority of our day traveling from one country to the next, only it didn’t start out so boring…

“I know you!” I heard as I tried to pick out candy for the school we planned to visit in Uganda. I rolled my eyes, thinking there was no way I could know someone in the grocery store in Casablanca at 9 AM. I glanced up in surprise. “Oh! Tara! Hi!” (Catherine and Brian’s colleague and friend who we had dinner with the week before, and who met us with their key two nights ago) I recounted our morning to her in a single breath. She looked at me like I was absolutely bananas and wished us luck catching our flight.

We made it with enough time for me to skim through an entire Marie Claire in the gift-shop.  Airports are good for two things: fancy perfume, and bored gift-shop clerks who don’t pay attention to me reading entire magazine articles in the back of the shop.

Our flight to Cairo was blissfully uneventful, and even showed a movie I enjoyed watching:

Cairo’s airport, on the other-hand, has to be in the running for worst airport in the world. First, we were told we had to purchase a visa to retrieve our bags and re-check them for our next flight. After we were able to avoid doing so, we had to hand over our passports for nearly 6 hours to airport security and carry both big backpacks around the airport with us while we waited for our next flight to check us in. The “free wi-fi” didn’t work. A bottle of water in the food-court cost nearly 4USD. And none of the six different bathrooms I went into in the six hours of waiting had tissue despite all of them having a bathroom attendant, for what purpose, I’m not so sure…

I could feel Andrew’s excitement as he surveyed those waiting at our gate thinking there were only going to be eight passengers on the flight. Unfortunately, we ended up boarding a flight that was nearly full and just stopping for more passengers after departing from Europe. The plane was packed except the one man sprawled across our two seats when we got on. It was 3 AM. He wasn’t pleased he had to sit up.

Day 159: Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca

Waking up in an apartment and not having to check out sometime between 10 AM and noon felt so… indulgent. It’s become the most random things that I appreciate the most on this trip. We slept in. Andrew made breakfast (toad in a hole) and I put on a movie while I transferred videos and edited photos. It felt like a “normal” Saturday. The kind we would have in Seoul before we left to travel around the world. We went out for coffee (and wifi) and then went out for a drink at Rick’s Café in Casablanca.

p.s. I have no idea why I look like an Oompa loompa in this picture. It was taken immediately after we sat down, so it’s not from the drink!

Rick’s Café in Casablanca, felt indulgent as well. We sat at the bar and enjoyed some Casablanca beer (trying not to think about how much the beer cost). Aside from being at a swank bar in gym shoes and a Northface fleece, no one made us feel like we didn’t belong and it felt like we were on holiday from our holiday. I grabbed Andrew’s camera to go upstairs to take pictures (and videos) of the place and was delighted when one of the servers offered to show me around. How sweet! He took me through nearly every room and pointed out where was a good place to take a picture and introduced me to other members of the wait-staff. I asked him if many Moroccans come or if it’s mostly tourists. I believe he said it was around half and half. I cracked a joke about being a tourist and he smiled, but said I was just as welcome. I appreciated his sincerity and how he didn’t look down on me for being a back-packer traipsing through the trendy venue.

Not long after I returned to Andrew at the bar, a middle-aged western woman sat down at the seat marked reserved and thanked the bartender by name when he delivered some water. Andrew had told me that the owner (an American at that) was usually around in the evenings. I wanted to say hello and tell her how much I appreciated the tour I had received. I leaned over and asked her if it was her place. She said yes and I gushed over how lovely it was and how nice her servers were to show me around. She smiled, one of those plastered kinds, and then walked away from the conversation.

No “I’m so glad you are enjoying yourself.” No “You sound American as well, where are you from?” No “Excuse me, I’m terribly busy at the moment.” Nothing. She just walked away and all of the warm fuzzy feelings I had for Rick’s Café and the entire wait-staff started to disappear. My holiday from my holiday ended. I was a backpacker in dirty gym-shoes and a NorthFace fleece again.

It’s a peculiar beast, this trip… Spending my entire life savings to travel around the world on a budget. Living out of a backpack, wearing the same clothes over and over again, when I have a closet full of clothes, shoes, and even bags waiting for me on the other side of the Atlantic. Believe me Rick’s Café lady, if I could, I would be in your café dressed to the nines, but I’m having trouble zipping up my backpack as it is.

I wanted to march back up to her and explain our-selves and shame her by telling her she was no better than the department store make-up ladies who refuse to pay attention to you because they don’t think you’re going to give them any commission. How it’s always been my dream to travel around the world and that we made her café part of this dream realized. How we had quit our jobs and had been traveling for nearly six months making this dream come true. How we’re on a $50 per day budget and spent nearly half of our budget for the day on two TWO beers at her bar. How up until meeting her, I felt like the expense was totally worth the experience.

I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Instead, I whispered in the pianist’s ear how beautiful his playing was. I thanked all of the wait-staff as we walked out. I posed for pictures in front of the sign in the entryway. I tried to forget about the owner’s dismissive attitude. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she was busy, or maybe she was having a bad night… but she didn’t seem to have any problem schmoozing the bigger parties having dinner in the café. Unfortunately, she came across to us as one of those people who are only interested in others when they can benefit her in someway. Andrew teased me and said one day I would have my Pretty Woman moment with her.

Yes. The next time I find myself in Casablanca, I’ll be sure to have an armful of shopping bags or, say, a party of ten of my closest friends? and walk up to Ms. Kriger and say “Big mistake. Big. Huge.” and walk out.

Day 146: Casablanca’s Black Market

As if our couchsurfer hosts weren’t already awesome enough (making us french toast for breakfast and then Russian vegetable pie for dinner), Bryan let us tag along with him for a trip to Casablanca’s Black Market. He needed an external harddrive and a tagine (Moroccan cooking pot). I wanted a replacement lens and possibly some replacement shoes. Off we went.

Can I just point out how awesome the dude above looks? A grey jalaba (Hello, Star Wars) with bright yellow glasses. He was awesome. He also gave me a super great deal on a new camera lens. I dropped mine an uncountable amount of times (or accidentally knocked it against a rock while trekking, or it fell off of my backpack while I used Andrew’s camera to take video of him, or maybe it has a grain of sand stuck in it from when I took it to the beach…) For the past month, I haven’t been able to adjust the focal length and recently, it hasn’t been focusing unless I use the LCD screen to shoot a picture. It’s been frustrating. Bryan helped save the day taking me to the dude above.

He then took us to this awesome store (or booth or whatever it’s called in the depths of the Black Market) that I’m convinced is just a front for something even more ‘black market’ than simply having a store at the Black Market itself. Bryan was pointing out a Nazi dagger or bayonet point in the glass case. Outside of the market, he pointed out old slave shackles. He loves the Black Market and is convinced whatever you possibly need or want, you’d be able to find it there. I’m pretty sure he’s right. We stopped at a tagine store on our way ‘home’ where I tested out my new lens while Bryan shopped and Andrew kept an eye on the car. Andrew refused to let me buy one of these giant ceramic pots to ship home. He likes to crush my dreams like that.

Day 145: Casablanca

Waking up to french toast after the day of travel it took to get from Tel Aviv to Casablanca was unbelievable. Our couchsurfer hosts, Catherine and Bryan, were already proving to be the most amazing hosts. ever. We had breakfast with them, got some directions for our first day in Casablanca, and set out in the direction of the Hassan II Mosque on the shore of the Atlantic.

We arrived too late to go in for a tour of the interior, but both of us enjoyed walking around the mosque and people watching. Women lounged in the sun with their shoes off, girls rollerskated through the columns, families posed for pictures. It felt more like a Saturday at the park, than it did outside of a mosque!

I’m constantly amazed at the size of the mosques we’ve been through around the world. This mosque holds roughly 25,000 people inside its main hall. I always think of my hometown’s population of (roughly) 10,000 and compare.

It’s eye-opening for a girl who grew up surrounded by Christian denominations. There are simply SO many followers of other faiths out there! I sometimes wonder how someone who worships at a huge mosque like this one would feel about the multitude of small churches and parishes in the states. This is just some of what I ponder when sitting outside of something so beautiful and unlike anything you’d find in Northern Kentucky. Is there even one small mosque in NKY? I just googled ‘mosque in Northern Kentucky’ and the results are unsettling. They consist of one for the Islamic Association of Northern Kentucky and the rest revolving around protests in Florence over the construction of a mosque in 2010. Apparently in 2011, the Islamic Association instead sold the property to developers, making 750,000 on the sale. Seriously.

It seems a little coincidental that the sale was ”too good to be true” resulting in them selling the property instead of building a mosque. Next time they should pick a parcel of land near the Creation Museum. I bet the Creationists would shell out some serious cash to not have a beautiful minaret obstruct the view of dinosaurs mingling with Adam and Eve on their museum grounds. The longer we are on this trip, the more I see, and the more people I meet… it becomes increasingly difficult to digest insular thinking.

In the book, “Shantaram” the main character, Lin, says:

“Fanaticism is the opposite of love. A wise man once told me – he’s a muslim by the way – that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. Winston Churchill once defined a fanatic as someone who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I digress. I’m sorry if some of my posts go down the road of being a religious rant. Sometimes- like today, like in the Old City in Jerusalem, like in the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, like in the churches of Old Goa… our days seem to revolve around one religion or the other. It’s incredibly interesting, but as always, reminds me of how little I know of other religions and how much I want to learn about them.

After we wandered around the mosque, we tried to walk through the medina. Every time I hear the word medina, I start singing (to myself in my head, or to Andrew out-loud) “Funky Cold Medina! Bamp. Bamp. Bamp Bamp.” But then I started wondering what a medina is exactly and if the song is related. A ‘medina’ is Arabic for ”city.” Usually it refers to the ‘old city’ and it is comparable to a walled maze of narrow streets, houses, shops, restaurants, fountains, palaces, mosques, etc. Cars are too big for the streets, so it’s quieter, but upon first visit can be rather confusing and makes me think of what it would be like (only way more challenging) if I were to participate in a corn maze.

It’s completely unrelated to ancient walled in cities, yet I cannot stop singing it. Walking through the medina in Casablanca was a bit impossible because the walkways were covered in a thick layer of mud and I’m still stuck with my barefoot ‘water’ shoes with holes on the bottom letting mud seep in.

We walked back through the streets of Casa towards Catherine and Bryan’s apartment. Casablanca doesn’t feel anything like what I thought Morocco would feel like, but then again, we hear it’s the city you stop through getting from Fes to Marrakech, or where you get into Morocco.