Pencils of Promise

To be honest, I was completely indifferent when I heard that Adam Braun would be joining us as an inter-port lecturer on the leg of our trip from Morocco to Ghana.  When it announced that he would be giving a speech as part of the Explorer Seminar series  I mentioned earlier, I only ended up going because it so happened that I literally had nothing else to do.

Adam started off by explaining that he was a Semester at Sea alumni whose first inspiration for the organization came during his voyage while they were docked in India. It was an encounter with a child, who when asked what he wanted if he could have anything in the world, simply replied a pencil. He began passing out pencils to children throughout the rest of the voyage and in all of his subsequent travels. It was only later, after he had moved to New York as part of a full time job that the idea for Pencils of Promise fully formed.

It is the organization's mission to partner with developing communities in order to ensure a good education is available to the children living there. In the only three years POP has existed they have broken ground on 41 schools throughout Laos, Guatemala and Nicaragua and are still picking up steam. POP is unique in the fact that they truly form a partnership with the community by requiring that each one provides between 10-20% of the funds (either monetarily, through supplies or labor) in order to ensure that the community feels like they own the school instead of viewing it as a handout.

 Adam himself is an incredibly gifted speaker who could start up a non-profit giving silly straws to seagulls and would probably still be successful but his focus on education coupled with the for-profit mindset his business background has instilled into Pencils of Promise make it a non-profit that seems to have a great future ahead of it and one that I might like to be a part of.

Morocco - Days 3 and 4

Marrakech Day 3 - Culinary Action

Morning time meant cooking time, my traveling group and I made our way across town by taxi to the hotel "La Maison Arabe" to partake in a Moroccan cooking class.

It is worth mentioning the somewhat flexible pricing structures of Moroccan Taxis and merchandise in general. A group of 9 of us split into 3 taxis on the way to the class and bargained for our fares individually. Upon arriving my taxi had paid 40 dirham ( ~5$) for the three of us to make it across town (seems reasonable to me!). Our friends who arrived after us revealed that they had only to pay 20 dirham much to our embarrassment. It was only when third taxi arrived a few seconds later and shared that they had only paid 5 dh. (~63 cents) that we realized how badly we performed. This was a lesson well learned for me in terms of bargaining, a skill necessary in every facet of commerce in Morocco.

When we made it to our class we got to work on learning how to make Chicken Pastilla; an awesome half dinner, half dessert dish that is big enough to replace both.  It consists of:

Chicken and scrambled eggs in delicious stuff, covered with almonds tossed in butter and brown sugar, wrapped in Filo dough (crunch wrap supreme style), fried in oil and dusted with powdered sugar, cinnamon and almonds. Also of note, I now know how to make a rose out of a tomato skin which will most definitely come in handy some day.

After class, which turned our creations into a fantastic lunch and made our way back to the hostel before visiting Marrakech's massive outdoor market in the heart of the city. They sell everything a tourist could want in morocco: spices, soaps, oil, slippers, garments,  instruments, tagines, tea sets and lamps, wood work, scarfs, carpets and all types of street food. I tried my hand at bargaining to various degrees of success then had a few glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice before heading to the train station to catch the evening train to Casablanca. Fun Fact: the McDonalds in the station sold both a "Royale with Cheese" for all you Pulp Fiction fans and a Toblerone Mcflurry, the latter of which I purchased while waiting for our train to arrive.

Day 4 - Casablanca

I spent the first part of my last in Morocco exploring the fisheries of Casablanca as a field extension of my Marine Biology class. Afterwards I broke off and explored Casablanca with a few friends. I hopped a taxi to the Hassan II Mosque -the second largest in the world I believe- had a quick meal at the underwhelming Rick's Café of silver screen fame then walked back to the main port area through some back roads where we ran into an actual Moroccan market. No more souvenirs, this  had fresh fruits and vegetables abounding, butcher shops, kids playing soccer and no other tourists in sight. It was a brief but nice glimpse behind the curtain and something I plan on seeking out in other countries.  After we made it through the market we arrived our ship. I boarded the MV Explorer at 4pm and had made it through the first port on my Itinerary intact.

Thoughts:

Morocco in my opinion was the perfect choice for the first port of my itinerary,  it was definitely out of my realm of normal travel and as a result provided me with significant challenges. Bartering is something I had never dealt with previously and as my taxi example illustrates, I wasn't perfect. Though as time went on I got better (talking down an item from 200 to 25 dh on one occasion!) and it helped to prep me for the rest of the itinerary going forward.

There were many negative things about the country as well, I felt like a walking dollar sign in many areas, especially those frequented by tourists. There was a noticeable discrepancy in the treatment of the male and female students traveling with me. And ultimately it proved to be a little bit dangerous, with a small number of students who were intimidated, robbed or even mugged while we were in port (though admittedly some of those were walking around with their cameras around their wrists or money belts hanging outside of their shirts)

For me personally, Morocco was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I will always remember my trek under the stars,  the satisfaction of bargaining successfully, trying my hand at Moroccan cuisine and the incredible time I had just talking with a  car full of Moroccans on the train ride back to Casablanca. Its incredible to think that there are still many more countries to go.

Morocco - Part 2: Road to Marrakech

Seeing these camels was a truly surreal moment and a kind of validation for the rest of the entire voyage. We were actually in the middle of the Sahara under the most vibrant and beautiful display of stars I had ever seen in my life.  We were in Canada only a week before and Ghana would be coming up the week after, all of this was actually happening and that is the point where it finally sunk in for me. All of the other students and I grabbed our bags, left the bus and stood next to our respective camels.

Now for all of the horror stories you hear about camels -they're ornery, they spit, they smell, they're violent- ours were pretty docile, gentle  and even regal creatures. When we first approached them they were sitting and had kind of folded themselves into a manageable size in which you could just swing your leg over and sit down, standing up was the interesting part. Camels don’t stand up as much as they just unfold step by step, back legs first so you are left holding on for dear life at a 45 degree angle forwards. Then the front legs come up and you equalize at a pretty sizable height off the ground. Just when you thing you are done they almost double in height again and you are sitting about 8-9 feet off of the ground.

We trekked under the stars  to a small Berber camp about 40 minutes away where we were treated to another dinner of chicken Tagine, learned from our guide how the Islamic religion made it's way into Morocco. After the meal we were part of a quick, interactive drumming demonstration during which I thoroughly embarrassed myself before we decided to spend the rest of the night sitting on the dunes of the desert with our hosts.

We talked about everything, played music, sang "Hotel California", dug our feet under the cool night sand deep to where it was still warm from the harsh afternoon sun before finally retiring to bed around two or three in the morning.

We woke up the next morning at sunrise, washed up, ate a quick breakfast of bread, butter and honey with mint tea to drink before beginning the trek back to our bus and continuing on back through the route that brought us from Casablanca. We stopped to buy cactus fruit which tastes a lot like watery watermelon with about 50 times more seeds. We stopped above a valley that was absolutely filled with palm trees as far as the eye can see and we made a detour through one of the Kasbahs, Moroccan forts with walls made of clay and straw that have stood for hundreds of years before we made it to Marrakech in the evening.


On the way to our hostel, near the main square of the city, our guide told us to have our bags packed and everything ready to go when we stopped. A few minutes later we pulled over on the side of a busy road and rushed out of the bus as quickly as we could. Our guide then lead us directly into the swarm of people lining the road as we made our way to the hostel. Merely walking peaked your adrenaline, people accosting you buy their merchandise, motorcycles whizzed through the packed crowds and human traffic was headed in every direction. In the end, we finally made it to our hostel in Marrakech and passed out for the night

Ghana

Sitting in the Tema port now, waiting to debark into Ghana!

Morocco - Part 1

Sorry for the delay (Mom and Dad!) this ship has a way of keeping you really really busy. I will be walking off the ship into Ghana in literally 8 hours, I dunno how it came up so fast

Morocco So far......

We debarked the ship in Morocco after a quick diplomatic briefing from U.S. officials about the cultural Do’s and Don’ts along with a little history about the country. The itinerary for the day was a 12 hour journey deep into Morocco, past the city of Zagora to a camel trek and desert camp in the Sahara desert.
It was thankfully a small group (6 people) in a large van (12 seats) with a pretty interesting guide (Hassan) so the drive was not as intimidating as that figure alone would indicate. We drove along desert highways recently expanded by King Mohammad the VI as one part in a larger plan to nourish the tourism industry Morocco is so heavily dependent on.

The first stop on our trip was the large tourist city of Marrakech where we had our first meal of the trip.
*Just a prior warning, I will probably dedicate a pretty large portion of my entries to the food I encounter, its what I am most excited about in each port*
I’ll start off by saying that Moroccan food is great and this lunch was the perfect introduction, it consisted of the following, shared family style:
 A Moroccan Salad: in Morocco, the term salad refers to any type of fruit or vegetable, cooked or uncooked in any other term you can think of. What we were served was a collection of dishes; 5 types of olives, potatoes, fresh & cooked dates, pastries, peppers, tomatoes and other unidentifiable but entirely delicious dishes. The crowning achievements were these little entrail-looking & cinnamon-tasting pastries which I hunted down in the Marrakech markets later in the trip (you will be able to see all of these if I am able to upload pictures any time soon.)

3 Tagines (Entrees) Chicken, Lamb and Cous Cous – The chicken was marinated lemon juice and other great stuff, served with olives and potatoes, it is something safe but entirely delicious that I could go back to in a heartbeat

The main course was followed by Almond pastries and a platter (literally a platter as big as my arms around) of apples and grapes and a steaming, frothy, aromatic pot of Mint Tea (consists of fresh mint, a lot of green tea and a fist full of sugar)
  
If you are looking for Moroccan Cuisine: 101, this is it, as basic as it gets with a lot of the staples present and executed extremely well. Mint tea is definitely something I will try to recreate when I make it home.
Another part of the meal that was unique to Morocco was the building that we ate it in. It is called a ‘Riad’ and they are extremely popular in Moroccan cities. Most I encountered were built with an open courtyard in the center and invited an extremely social atmosphere among its inhabitants.  They are truly the Moroccan bed and breakfast, with the top floor being the restaurant we ate at and the others below containing hotel rooms. Another popular feature throughout the Moroccan architecture was the salon ever present at the top of every building which contains long benched couches lining the room in a semicircle and facing each other. It seems as if the entire country was designed to promote conversation and interaction among people.
The next leg of our lengthy drive was up and over the Atlas Mountains; lined by cacti, small villages, and people everywhere. Something that I noticed about the highway in Morocco is that people are very much a part of the landscape. As opposed to driving along the highway for hundreds of miles without seeing a person on the side of the road, drive on a Moroccan highway and you will see children playing soccer, workers collecting cactus fruit, Mothers leading their children or men riding donkeys side saddle.

In the end after the 12 hours of driving we made it to our destination, which turned out to be the side of the road, hours away from civilization with only our headlights to show us that nothing else was around.
“Asalam Alykum! (Greetings!)” our guide yelled into the darkness to no answer
“Asalam Alykum!”  he repeated, again with no answer. At this point, the 5 other students and I looked around the van at each other wondering what was happening. We had stopped unceremoniously in the middle of the desert with no explanation and no camp or camels in sight so we were slightly uneasy.
After no response for the second time in the evening he made a call on his cell phone and after a quick conversation in his Berber language we got back on the road and continued for another few minutes down the road and pulled over to the side of the road where this time the headlights actually revealed camels.