MEDINA STREETS
After being here over a week I still cannot find my way around and am almost afraid to leave my second floor Airbnb that is down an alley that looks like every other alley because I won’t be able to find my way back.
Every narrow, colorful street looks the same as the next with the same kinds of shops catering to tourists, European and Moroccan. Essaouria is known for its wood work and Argan oil and for its rugs and ceramics. Every street has a variety of these shops with restaurants mixed in.
Every shop has its goods display in one low shelves outside the shop or hanging from the awnings outside. And every shop has a person sitting outside, passing the time joking loudly with neighboring shop owners or sitting morosely staring at their cell phones. When a passerby shows even the slightest interest they awaken and try to lure him or her in. How, when there are hundreds of shops selling the same things anyone makes a living, is a mystery.
Argan oil is made from the kernels of the Moroccan Argan tree. It is said to taste good when dipped with bread for breakfast or drizzled on couscous but is also used as a cosmetic, reputed to soften the skin and hair. It can be bought commercially bottled or bought directly from women who feed the kernels into a machine, powered either by hand or electricity, that dribbles out a brown goo. All day the women sit there turning the crank as the goo fills a tin can.
I would like to buy something lightweight, easy to pack and striking to bring home. I would like to buy a small rug and a table cloth and some pillow cases, but so far am not confident enough to try the bargaining process. My Indian experience where I am used to haggling in the bazaar should help me and so should my American flea market and yard sale experience. I should be able to bargain better than most European tourists, only here for a few days. But having no idea what anything should cost and knowing that on their few sales a day the shop owners have to make a killing, I hang back. We are all sitting ducks I’m afraid, whom smiling practiced men are willing and able to cheerfully dupe.
So far I have located two streets where I can find my way back. If I go out of my alley to the slightly larger main road lined with colorful shops and turn to the right and then take the first right I will be on my way to Marrakech Gate, one of the main gates into the Medina fort. If I go left and then bear slightly left after several hundred yards when the road hits a T I will get to the main square beside the ocean.
Everywhere else I rely on GPS, always taking two spare batteries for my iPhone because if the power runs out and I lose GPS I will be wandering for hours in circles with everything looking familiar since I have been by there before several times, but with no way to distinguish where I am. When I get to my alley there is a large metal pig for sale. When I see the pig I feel great relief because I know where I am and can find my way to Casa Rosa, my Airbnb.
To eat again at a restaurant that I like or when I am anywhere off of these two main roads, I have to use GPS. Google maps is everywhere, thank goodness.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 