The American Fondouk, Fez, Morocco: Michelle's Day in Casablanca

Here is the long awaited entry from my friend and classmate, Michelle Masselink. Below is her story about her day in Casablanca.

Michelle and the Hassen II Mosque at night

An awesome tree in Casablanca

"After Michelle and I parted ways at the airport, I grabbed a coffee and paid far too much money to connect to the Internet so I could plan out my day. After finding some addresses of different restaurants that looked good and hammams (traditional bath-houses) that seemed tourist friendly, I took the train from the airport back into Casablanca for a day of adventuring. Once I got back to the city, I caught a taxi out to the huge mosque in Casablanca. I had a few hours before the tour but I figured it was a good place to start my explorations of the city since it is easy to see the mosque above all the other buildings so I could find my way back there if I got lost (which I always do). It was almost noon and I was getting hungry so I set out to Sqala restaurant for lunch. I was armed with the address but no map of how to get there. I found someone sitting outside the Mosque and asked which direction I should walk in the find the restaurant. He pointed left so I figured I would just start with that. After about 15 minutes of walking with my backpacking pack and all my belongings, I stopped in a park to take my jacket off and try to find another person to point me in the right direction. I found some gorgeous trees to admire and watched some kids play soccer and then started walking again. I found another man to ask where I needed to go a few minutes later. Unfortunately, he spoke no English and I speak no French. Through our charades I thought he was saying to walk through the wall of the medina- so I tried that next. No luck. I remembered seeing a military/naval base of some sort across the street so I wandered over there. They were able to give me better directions and after walking for what seemed like a good hour, I finally found the restaurant. It was a gorgeous outdoor patio restaurant where the atmosphere was better than the food. I had some delicious fresh squeezed juices and some satisfactory food and then just relaxed for a bit. When I flagged down the waiter for the check an hour later, he insisted that I stay longer because “I was so beautiful I was attracting more customers.” I explained that although this was a kind thing to say, I needed to get going so I could make it to the 2PM mosque tour, which was the last one of the day. We finally settled on the fact that I would stay 10 more minutes and then he would bring the check. Eventually he did bring the check and I loaded myself back up with all my belongings and set off back toward the mosque.

The entrance to the restaurant

Inside the restaurant

I made it to the mosque in about a half hour (the walk is much shorter when you stop going in circles). It took me a lot of asking around to figure out where to go for the tour but eventually I found it. I had brought enough cash to pay for the tour, however, when I got to the front of the line and said I was a student, they said they require a student ID, which I didn’t have. Without it, the tour was double the price and I didn’t have enough cash. Luckily they took credit cards so I paid, stashed my massive bag behind the counter, and joined the English-speaking tour group. The mosque was absolutely gorgeous. It had pure iron doors that weighed 3 tons, intricate carvings on every visible surface, massive chandeliers probably worth twice what my life is worth, a heated floor, and a retractable roof. I can’t remember all the impressive details of how many people it holds or how long it took to build but it truly was gorgeous.

Approaching the Hassen II Mosque

The Hassen II Mosque

The other side of the Hassen II Mosque

The detail around the large 3 ton doors

The inside of the Hassen II Mosque

The front of the prayer area in the Hassen II Mosque

The beautiful marble and stucco pillars

Try to appreciate the grandness of the Mosque

The baths in the basement of the Mosque

The large bath fountains

The bathing pool that is not really used anymore

The courtyard of the Mosque

After the tour, I was ready for what I had been anticipating all day, a traditional hammam experience. Hammams are bath houses that Moroccan women go to a couple times a week to get a good exfoliating scrub and to bathe. Most of them also offer a range of spa services. It is a huge part of the culture there and I couldn’t leave without at least trying it. Besides, I was on my way to Uganda and wouldn’t have running water for the next two weeks so a good bath was probably in order. I caught a taxi to the hammam and signed up for the premium package; steam room, exfoliating scrub, seaweed wrap, massage, and shampooing. I was ushered to the women’s side of the hammam where I put my belongings in a locker and the attendant handed me a basket of things and pointed me toward a room to change. She instructed me to leave on only my underwear. I went into the changing room and spent 2 minutes debating if a bra counts as underwear or not and eventually decided just to leave on my bottoms. I sifted through the basket of things and found two different strips of fabric with some strings on them that I assumed I was supposed to use to cover up. I experimented with about 6 different combinations of how to cover myself with the fabric before I finally invited the front desk attendant to help me clothe myself. She giggled and asked if it was my first time; I wonder what tipped her off!

One of the colorful sites on the way to the Hammam

Once I was stripped down to my underwear and covered in my little pieces of fabric, I was told to go down a stairway. At the bottom there were 4 different doors and a women standing there who kept asking me questions in Arabic. I responded with “I only speak English” to which she laughed and yanked my pieces of fabric off. At this point I realized that my tinkerbell underwear were probably not the best choice for this experience. Oh well. You live and learn. I was pushed through a doorway and into a room full of other naked women on stone tables being scrubbed down by the bath attendants. I was starting to have some second thoughts about whether or not I really wanted this much of a cultural experience. I was ushered into a steam room where I spent at least 5 minutes trying to figure out how to not look awkward while sitting on an uncomfortable stone bench in nothing but my tinkerbell underwear. A few minutes later the steam turned on and within 2 minutes I become convinced that they are actually trying to kill me. The steam is burning my lungs and I am becoming severely hypoxic due to the thickness of it. I can only see 2 inches in front of my face meaning I could no longer find the door to escape if I tried. I am in the middle of stifling a panic attack when out of nowhere a hand starts rubbing soap all over me. I am hopeful that this is one of the attendants or a hallucination due to my lack of oxygen and not some creeper who isn’t supposed to be rubbing me. But, at this point ,I can’t see enough to tell the difference or escape so I try to relax. After about 5 minutes of being soaped up, the steam shuts off and I am relieved to see one of the attendants in front of me ushering me out of the steam room.

I go back out into the room with all the women being scrubbed and sit down on a table. My attendant tries to tell me something that I once again cannot understand so I just kick off my flip-flops and put my feet up like all the other women are doing. She keeps talking and seems to be trying to tell me something important but I am not getting it. Finally she just grabs my arm and pulls me off the table and out the door. Oh, I guess she was trying to tell me we needed to go somewhere else. So I follow her through another door and she motions to a massage type table. She dumps a few buckets of water on it before motioning for me to climb on. Now, I am pretty sure the plain water didn’t kill all the germs from the last person but I don’t feel like I am in a good position to argue so I climb on and lay down. She puts an orange exfoliating glove on her hand, dumps some buckets of water on me and starts scrubbing. Within minutes she is collecting little piles of dead skin and making me feel them over and over to see how good of a job she is doing. I am glad she is taking her job so seriously, but I am also pretty sure she is about to get down to my muscle layer and about 90% of the dead cells she is removing only died when she gouged them off of their blood supply moment earlier. I had been meaning to grow a fresh layer of skin anyways so I continue to try to relax and soak up the experience. When she is done removing my entire epidermis, she motions for me to stand up and rinse off with a bucket. She then tells me to take my underwear off. I obey and watch as she lays down a piece of plastic and rinses off the table for step 2: seaweed wrap.

She has me climb back on the table, this time on top of a sheet of thin, clear plastic. She starts to pull a privacy curtain around me now that I am completely naked but the curtain is not very big and only obscures the view of my head. At least no one could see what head belonged to the naked body on the table. She starts to lather me up with a seaweed mud, which actually felt amazing. Once she finished my backside, she motioned for me to roll over so she could do the front, at which point I proceeded to slide off the side of the table and make her catch me only seconds before I cracked my skull open on the floor. Also, I was still naked. It was an enjoyable show for all the Moroccan women in attendance and I learned an important life lesson: seaweed mud plus plastic is VERY slippery. I managed to stay on the table while she lathered my front up with the seaweed and then wrapped the plastic wrap around me to let me cook for a bit. She walked away and I tried to relax and enjoy the spa experience; which worked for about 2 minutes until my butt started burning from the seaweed. My first thought was “Oh God, I am having an allergic reaction and I am going to die naked and wrapped in seaweed mud because I won’t be able to tell them that I am dying because I don’t speak Arabic.” So I spent the next 5 minutes deciding what I would use to give myself an emergency tracheotomy when my throat closed. Eventually, the burning sensation moved to other parts of my body and I realized it was just because my entire epidermis was missing and the seaweed was a bit salty. Crisis averted.

The view on the way back to the Mosque

Once my 20 minutes of soaking was done, she put me in a shower to wash the mud off myself, which I was very okay with. After that, she rinsed me off again and put me back on the table for the massage, which was definitely my favorite part of the whole experience. Amazing. After the massage, she sat me in a chair and shampooed and conditioned my hair and then did some more bucket rinses before putting a robe on me, handing me my sandals and informing me that I was done. I went back upstairs and got dressed again and was actually amazed by how awesome my skin looked and how relaxed I felt. Granted, next time I would wear different underwear, try not to fall off tables while naked, and maybe bring some disinfectant to clean things with before I lay on them; but overall, I was sparkling clean, relaxed, and minus a few pounds of skin so I felt like it was a success.

When I left the hammam, I grabbed a cab back to the mosque to watch the sunset over the ocean, which was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, when the sun goes down in Morocco, it seems the men’s manners disappear too and I was soon being harassed left and right by guys wanting to talk to me, stare at me, marry me, etc. So I took that as my cue to head back to the airport. By the time I got back to the airport, it was around 8 PM so I only had 4 hours left to kill until my flight. I was able to amuse myself by getting some work done online and reading for a bit before ending my Moroccan experience. As much as I loved Morocco, I boarded my plane absolutely giddy with excitement over what adventures I would find in Uganda."