Hammam: Pleasureful paradise or painful primping?

So I had my first authentic hammam experience with my friend Fatima and her sister Meryem. Hammam, for those who may not know, is similar to a Turkish bath in that men and women from the neighborhood gather together in a steamy bath house, scrubbing each other's backs, and gossiping about the days events. In Morocco, most hammams consists of a series of rooms increasing in heat and steaminess as you venture deeper into the hammam. Women enter the hammam, pay their 7 Dirhams ($1), and strip down to their underwear.

In my experience, upon entering the first room, I found women sitting on little stools, gathered around a bucket of water, brushing their teeth idly. We continued through two more rooms of women gathered around buckets of water and henna paste as they scrubbed each other with a coarse rag not much different from sandpaper. We entered the final room of the hammam where there was one large tub with scalding hot water and another with freezing spring water. We each got our bucket and mixed water from the two tubs until we got a temperature we were happy with. Fatima and Meryem laid out their plastic mats to sit on and began situating all their soaps, shampoos, foot scrubs, hairbrushes, and oils around them. As I went to join them, I got cornered by a large, burly woman who brusquely positioned me in a corner and began building a little barricade of water buckets around me. I pleadingly looked at Fatima and Meryem, who were happily scrubbing each other's backs, for rescue. Fatima just smiled and waved her hand as if to indicate, "just go with it!" So . . . I went with it.

The women, whose name I found out to be Amina, motioned me to sit on a little plastic mat she laid out for me. She sat down beside me, straddled her legs and thrust my head onto one of her large, muscular thighs. She gripped my wrists and flung them up over my head. Now, to envision this a little more precisely, it was as if I was a washboard (minus the six-pack stomach) and she was setting up to scrub her laundry down the length of my body. She proceeded to take the sand paper scrub and violently brush it down my forearm all the way to my hips. She did this repeatedly for about 10 minutes until she felt that removing seven layers of skin and seeing my raw flesh glow red was suffice.

It actually reminded me of the time I was in the Peace Corps and I got incredibly sick off of some fruit I ate from a tree. My host mom told me to get naked, made me lie face down on my bed, and gave me a full body rub down with vegetable oil. Sounds like it could be pleasant, but if you could see the size of my mom and her coarse, strong hands, you would understand why her pushing my pressure points with all her might and body weight behind it was a painful experience. Apart from that, that fact that I barely knew the woman and was lying in the bed naked, vulnerable, and ready to be slow roasted made the situation all the more awkward.

Hammam was a similar experience. After she had peeled me from the front, she grunted and literally flipped me over onto my stomach and began the process all over again. She would scrub diligently around my neck and shoulders and then sand my butt until I seriously thought I may be bleeding. I probably would not have permitted the torture to continue if it weren't for the millions of white noodle-like clumps of dead skin all over my body. It was disgusting and incredible all at the same time. And I felt like it had to be good for me, so I endured.

After I thought she had finished with me, she propped me up, grabbed my cheeks with her pudgy fingers, looked at me in the eyes and began cracking up. I think she saw the tears of pain welling up and thought it was humorous. She then took the "brill-o pad" and scrubbed my face so hard that I think she was trying to remove the mole on my right cheek. Thankfully, she was unsuccessful and gave up on the beauty mark after about five minutes. Finally, she slapped me on the back and quickly got up and moved on to her next victim.

I sat their, skin stinging, utterly confused at what just happened and what to do next, and a little angry at my two friends. Then Fatima came up with some green, slimy, henna paste and began to gently rub it all over my body. The cool slime felt so good. I let her cover my entire body as I gradually drifted off into partial unconsciousness, listening to the muffled sounds of women chatting in darija and children splashing in the water tubs. Ahhhhh, it was heavenly and my skin felt softer than anything I had ever felt before. I couldn't stop rubbing my shoulders and thighs.

After we rinsed off with the remaining water in our buckets, brushed our teeth and towel-dried in the outer room, we got into comfy clothes and headed to the hair salon. It was 9 PM on a Sunday night and the salon was packed with other women who had just gone to hammam, painting their nails, getting their hair died with henna, and dancing with the owner of the salon to an Algerian pop video playing on the small TV overhead. I got what little hair I have trimmed and Fatima and Meryem got their nails painted. We had a couple pots of tea at the salon and then went back to Meryem's house to go to bed. I fell asleep, still rubbing my smooth skin and thinking of Amina's painful, yet pleasureful, powers.

Flat Stanley . . . we meet again!

During my Peace Corps years in Costa Rica, my aunt sent me a little man made of construction paper and wearing a crayon colored superhero outfit designed by a first grader from Pennsylvania. This was my first introduction to Flat Stanley, a popular project used in elementary schools to promote cultural awareness and a more global perspective on education. Basically, the little six year old tykes create a Flat Stanley doll and send him to various countries around the world, where the recipient of Stanley then takes some pictures of him visiting that country and sends it back to the 1st grade youngster. I assume then the students talk about the different countries and broaden their worldview a bit. That part is beyond me. However, upon receiving a Flat Stanley in Costa Rica, I soon became aware of my responsibilities as a good host and began planning trips with my unideminsional pal to show him a good time. Well, to make a long story short, during one of our drives through the mountains of Costa Rica, Stan the Man decided to go sky diving out the car window and into the dense, dark jungle. He was never to be seen again, however was reinvented! Yes, he traded in his scribbled SuperStan suit for a carefully colored traditional Costa Rican farmer's garb. Now, after my adventures with this Flat Stanley (and a bit of stressing after his extreme sport venture), I thought my relationship with Stan had come to an end. But nooooo, alas, we meet again! And this time he is even braver, coming across the world to Morocco for a taste of tagine and some desert heat. Well, let's just say my second time around with his guy proved to be more interesting than the first and even sparked quite a bit of interest from my friends leading to a technologically creative "Flat Stanley in Morocco" blog. Yes, if you would like to see more of the country through the eyes of a physically one dimensional, but mentally multi-faceted paper doll, feel free to visit the following site. I promise you will learn more about Morocco than my experience has been able to tell. http://www.flatstanleyinmorocco.blogspot.com/

I miss the snow down in Africa . . .

After a month of vacation, I returned to Ifrane late at night. When I woke in the morning, this is what I saw from my bedroom window.

Monkey Business

So, I decided that after my trip to the Azores and on my way back to Morocco, I would visit yet another island . . . Gibraltar. Now if I could describe the rock in four words/phrases, they would have to be: Fish n' Chips, expensive, theme parkish, and cheeto-eating monkeys. I decided to hike up the rock to see these famous Gibraltar Barbary Macaque monkeys. It is still uncertain how these tailless creatures came to Gibraltar, either from the Moors some hundred years ago or possibly more than a million years ago. Either way, the people of Gibraltar believe that if the monkey population begins to dwindle, that Britain will lose political control over the rock. So, whenever monkeys seem to be "scarce", Girbraltar has a few sex mongers shipped over from Morocco. Ahhh Morocco, known for just more than exporting phosphate and hash, but horny "apes" as well. Anyway, back to my hike. So, I'm walking up the rock, which I have to say had some breathtaking views of both Europe and Africa, when I see a monkey jauntily crossing the road. I quietly have an internal celebration thinking to myself "wow, I lived in Costa Rica for 2 years and didn't see a monkey until about 3 months before I left. Now I come to Gibraltar and see one within hours. I must be monkey lucky in 2008!" Well, the balloons in my little auto-party were soon deflated when I turned the corner and saw two tours buses and about 30 tourists taking pictures of the "Rock Apes" entertaining them as if we were at a circus. These guys were pulling out all the stops, doing everything from steeling a little boy's bag of chips (which he wholly deserved, by the way) to fornicating with their babies hanging off their backs. Now, tell me if you've ever seen that in a circus or on Animal Planet. It was a strange scene and I have to admit that I immediately wanted to leave, but not before capturing true love. Yes, can any happily married couple or disgustingly in love pair tell me that they would do the above for their partner? I think not.

All I want for Christmas is a mesa natal...

So as many of you may know, I spent the holidays on the Azores off the coast of Portugal. I went into a bit of a bovine shock when I found myself on the lush green island of Terceira, surrounded by well-fed, gigantic cows. I mean, they made Moroccan cattle look like anorexic Olsen twins gnawing on rocky clumps of dirt and dust. And, like the Azorian cows, the people sure knew how to meet their nutritional needs. The Portuguese have a tradition of setting up La Mesa Natal (the Christmas table), a doily-decorated dining table, covered in a variety of cakes, pies, cookies, and candies and adorned with the best liquor the family has to offer. This table is set on Christmas Eve and remains set until New Years Day. Eight days of passing from house to house, gorging on sweets and gulping down port and whiskey. Need I say more? Even the Olsen twins would have gained a pound or two.

A Spiritual Oasis

I often find myself in situations where I push the pause button for no more than a minute and think to myself, "Ten minutes ago, would I have ever imagined I would be in this moment?" Of course the answer is always no, and the follow-up question is inevitably, "Where am I?" Well, let me rewind a bit and give you some context.

One weekend, I had decided to join some other professors on a trip to the Tafilalt Oasis, on the outer limits of the Sahara Desert. We had been traveling for hours across barren plains and winding through rocky hills when we suddenly descended upon a lush green valley, bursting with date palms and woven with rivers. It was a true oasis in all respects of the term and a fresh gulp of water for the eyes. Now, what's interesting about this particular oasis is that just a few kilometers down the river, or immediately beyond the dam that is plugging this plentiful paradise is a region laden with cracked, dried riverbeds and entire families meagerly surviving on 5 liters of water a day. Why the drastic contrast? Well the answer is not all that surprising . . . religion.

Apparently, and as explained to me by one of my colleagues, an expert on the region, Sufi religious prayer centers, known as Zawiyats, speckled the area dating back to the time when caravans were crossing the desert from Algeria to Timbuktu. These Zawiyats were places where the community gathered for prayer rituals, where the harvest was collected and distributed amongst families, and where any tribal disputes were settled.

Well, not too long ago ,the kingdom of Morocco asked that these Zawiyats turn over their papers to the government. Most of the Zawiyats did just that and find themselves conveniently located on the green side of the dam, however some did not, and only one of them is barely surviving today. This is where I find myself now, seated among some of my colleagues and Sufi men and children, in the central gathering room, deep in a labyrinth of dirt walls, in the middle of the desert, on a stark black, starry night. The Sufi women are on the roof because they are not permitted in the inner room. There is a circular opening in the ceiling where you can see them occasionally taking a glimpse of their unexpected visitors. Below, we lounge on woven pillows and rugs, sipping cup after cup of mint tea, and snacking on fresh dates and peanuts. We had just witnessed poetic chanting from the Qur'an and were about to see the hadhra, a rhythmic invocation of Allah using drums and dance. Now, you'll get a glimpse of what carried us well into the night.

Just press play.

The Sahara