Tourism Issues

We are only at day one with the tour and I am already struggling with it. It's more than the frequent stops to take ridiculous photos, it's more than the impossibility of keeping up with the French guide. It's the sick feeling I get while a part of a tour. I feel like I am contributing to something sinister. There's nothing wrong with the people on the trip nor those that run it. It seems to creep below the surface of life here--looks on peoples faces, being swarmed by sellers, crowding through tiny passages.
An insurmountable barrier is laid down between those who come to see and those seen. It feels like a perverse neo-manifestation of nineteenth century colonialism. The people might be "free" but they are forced to be put upon because we don't have anything better to do than come look at things, at them, to relax under their sun while they bring us sodas and sandwiches.
To those that say, "you are helping their economy," I say there were jobs before.
To those that say, "it raises cultural awareness," I say travel raises cultural awareness. This just creates an "us" and a "them" mentality--lucky us, poor them. Equality can't exist. It's like arguing that going to the zoo can show you how animals live. Biologically speaking those poor beasts might be alive but they are not living.
The tragedy of course is that I see all this, I feel all of this but am cynical enough to know that there is no hope for change. And that cynicism, that loss of hope is a bigger tragedy than anything I might see here.

Marrakesh Day One

I have a lot to write but not a lot of time to do it in. Normally I think I would be okay but the keyboard is not only a French keyboard but a French-Arabic keyboard. Somewhat difficult to handle. Please forgive mistakes.

The first thing that I noticed stepping off the plane was the haze that covered the horizon. It is a bit odd to long for a desert but when you spend winter in Paris you can understand the delight of debarking in a desert.
After finding our tour group, we boarded a bus and headed into the city. So far there seems to be only one candidate for my old French guy friendship experiment and he really is not even that old.

Marrakesh is an hour behind Paris so it was just after 11AM when we got to the hotel. We had the day largely to ourselves so we set out for a walk before lunch. With no plans we just started ambling along. Two minutes into our journey a man noticed we had crossed the street and were not turning. He told us that we had to go left to the Medina. We hadn't exactly been looking for it but we thanked him and turned left. Two minutes more and we had another friend. This friend took us to the Medina and then led us through the non-touristy parts of the inner city-through cold covered portions of the inner walls, into nooks hiding a vast array of tanners soaking goat skins, downstairs into dark "boulangeries" with brick hearth ovens. It was a unique experience and the man was genuinely nice (all schemers are). I had an idea something was going on and thus wasn't too surprised when we were led into a few shops towards the end of our journey (Morgane astutely noted that his conversation died down considerably once he realized we weren't buying anything). After we politely declined the shopkeeper's entreaties our buddy got us a cab and we returned to the hotel five euros in the hole. It was money well spent.
After lunch and a nap Morgane and I went down to the pool (Since I forgot to pack any trunks when I left for Paris in December I bought a pair of "Burberry" trunks for twenty bucks). When we got out to the pool Morgane immediately noticed that no one was swimming (if this were literature class the professor would tell you the author is "foreshadowing"). We sat down to read at a table while I worked up a sweat before the plunge. It was a very dry sunny day and well into the 80s. Over a period of twenty minutes I didn't witness a soul in the pool. Not so much as a toe tester--again, foreshadowing. After finishing a chapter I decided it was time to do a few laps, maybe a white-tail dolphin and call it an afternoon.
I almost passed out the second I hit the water. It was like the poolboy had imported snow from the mountains and dumped it into the pool. I felt like I was being stabbed with tiny needles all over my body. I could barely breathe let alone make it to the side of the pool. I've had my fair share of cold water swimming but this was a new kind of cold, it was like swimming in a slushy.
My immediate problem upon coming up for air was that I couldn't touch the bottom--i.e., stand and catch my breath. Gasping, I paddled over to the side of the pool so I could compose my self. When I got out of the water I realized I was on the wrong side and the only way back was to dive in and swim back. Holding back my rage at the pool I said a little prayer and dove back in. I repeated the same gasping frantic swim to the other side. Once I was out and drying off my skin felt like pins and needles. It was akin to the feeling you get in winter when you put your cold hands under hot water. And thus my plans for an early morning swim on day two went out the door.

Say for me that I'm all right

"If you see him, say hello, he might be in Tangier"*

-No Tangier for me but it was the best I could do to suit the context of my impending departure for Morocco. Can't really say when I'll be able to update the blog next because I'm not taking my lap-top. *(The altered quote is from "If You See Her, Say Hello" by Bob Dylan. Hands down one of my favorite Dylan songs. It's beautiful)

This will be my first foray into Africa and I don't really know what to expect. I'm both nervous and hopeful. Admittedly I'm also a bit fearful (Unfortunately I still hold on to the remnants of a warped and unfounded Occidental world view). Despite the fear I can't wait to see the country, experience it for what it is and not what my nervous mind says it is.
There should be plenty of interesting experiences along the way because Morgane and I are going with a French tour group. She's afraid it will be a horrible experience. I can't help laughing out loud when I think about the situation. My secret hope is that we are the youngest people in the group by about 30 or 40 years and I make friends with some old French guys. I guess I'm a bit optimistic but there isn't much sense in thinking about it any other way. Until next time, As salaam Alaikum.

"If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find. Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time."

Being Late in France

Everyone is always late here. Some of you might recall last month when we were supposed to leave for Brittany at 11AM and didn't get on the road until about 3PM. That's a particularly egregious example but serves to highlight the prevalence of the situation as well as the general acceptance of it.

In America we are time conscious. That's evident. When you are late everyone wants to know: Why? What took so long? What happened? That is if you are lucky. If you aren't so lucky the responses will be more openly hostile.

Here no one demands reasons. C'est pas grave. No big deal. If you are asked simple excuses suffice. One of the beauties of the mass transit system is an easy excuse. I missed the bus. Bomb sweep on the metro.

I found myself behind schedule the other day and was mentally preparing my story for why I was late only to discover that no one cared--a reoccurring French motif. I can't tell you how much time I've spent concocting excuses and stories to assuage people when I'm late in the States. Trying to avert attention from the fact that I was too tied up in myself to leave on time. Excuses that say, "I'm so sorry. I do care about your time. It was beyond my control. No disrespect."

Here everyone knows everyone else is self-involved. There is an acceptance that personal lives are busy. The emphasis in America is supposedly "individual freedom" but so much time is invested into group activities--rotary club, team sports, book clubs--that we all learn to limit our own individuality in respect to others. We're brought up as a community, we learn to interact, to behave in group settings. As a result we learn to lie or make excuses in order to not offend.

Whereas our individual freedoms stop at the expense of others they know no burden here. You live your life. You identify yourself with yourself. In America we often define ourselves by our social outlet group. I play ultimate Frisbee. My friend is a duck hunter. Another is a drummer in a band. In the eyes of the French, part of our supposed "individual identity" gets lost at the expense of that activity. We lose a piece of our "self" by coalescing into something larger.

Food and the World

Depending on where you are in the United States (or world) there are generally two types of people (or areas)--the sauce people and the meat people. My friend from west Texas has lamented that the BBQ focus in central Texas is on the meat as opposed to the sauce like in his native Lubbock area.

This "theorem" can be expanded more generally to what I'll call "accoutrement" people (the sauce and toppings people) & the basics people. Simply put is it the ice cream you enjoy or is it the sprinkles on top?

As usual this whole line of thought was spurred by an innocent remark from Morgane at dinner on Saturday night in reference to "Le Burger" I was going to order. She intimated that it was going to be really good because of the French cheese on it. I replied somewhat in jest that where I come from the meat makes the burger not the cheese. In America when we order steak we order specific cuts. In France its just steak but that steak comes with a wide variety of sauces! We have to know what we are eating, how it was raised (Kobe beef, free range, grain fed, etc).

This predilection for accoutrements carries over into the salad arena as well. When we have a salad at home we pull out the tube of ranch or Italian dressing. Here salad isn't salad unless you have the sauce. Any old Hidden Valley will not suffice. The sauce is created from scratch.

Morgane thinks that the majority of the world is accoutrement driven. Throwing out a wide swathe of examples: Indian, Thai, Mexican etc. This is most definitely true but it also occurred to me that the sauce divide falls across economic lines. If you are poor you most likely aren't eating meat at all. If you are surviving off of a staple crop like rice and eating it daily, it honestly needs to be kicked up a notch to remain interesting. Taking that a step further-how much of the prevalence of spices in the "developing world" is aimed at diverting your attention away from your hunger?

Conversely, the ability (or leisure) to focus on the meat is a statement on where the U.S. (recession or not) is in comparison with the world. We are among the few nations whose populous can afford to care about this stuff.

A Few Pictures from Belgium

Exploring Bruges

During our exploration I discovered Cookies Kitchen. I'm not entirely sure why Zoe made me put my hands up...but there I am.


You can imagine our surprise when we found this picture hanging in the Cafe...




The Sudden Death!

Traffic and the world around us

Morgane and I were driving to pick up some things from Zoe when the traffic on the periphrique went from "fluide" to "perturbé." As we crept along the traffic ballet began--cars trading places with each other in the hope that the other lane could get them to their destination quicker. I soon realized that as drivers the French change lanes with the same detached recklessness they use each day on the sidewalk. Walking along the city streets I noticed the tendency for the French to walk along, oblivious to everything around them, until they bump into someone or a horn is honked and they are momentarily halted in their self-absorbed journey.

Thus far I had yet to see this tendency carry over into the roadways. Very quickly I realized that no one really knows where the other cars are. A blinker is clicked and the car enters the next lane. No glances in the mirror, no waves. The lane is taken as if the road was empty. The closest thing to a "courtesy" or a "warning" is the blinker, which isn't much of a warning at all but it serves to absolve them. Unless you are also of the "head down" school of driving you must constantly be on guard.

Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair but it's not hard to make the leap from here to the examples of French Foreign Policy where this sort of "head down" attitude manifests itself. And here I'm talking about Rwanda, about the French insistence in handing out huge subsidies to farmers while the world changes around them--while it passes them by, while it threatens to alter their inflated sense of power.

(Paradoxically, France is the same nation that has given the world Doctors Without Borders as well as Reporters Without Borders. Paris is the headquarters for UNESCO. It's a confounding dichotomy)

Sarkozy rode the hope of systematic change to the French system all the way to the Presidency. But even his thrusts for change, his bids to regain prestige and economic viability have been characterized by his ability to see the goal and not the traffic around him. How else do you explain his handling of the Libya incident or Carla Bruni? He successfully negotiated the release of Bulgarian nurses who had been convicted in Libya of intentionally spreading HIV at the expense of the EU. A conquest of sorts that was the first step towards putting France back in the center realm of the national stage. Seven months later and this one mindedness has diminished the Sarkozian sheen. He seems to have stepped too far out into the street with the Carla Bruni business and the public has honked its horn. His popularity has tanked and with it, some would say, his "mandate for change."

Perhaps being cut off by a red Renault is too large a jump to genocide and Presidential policy after all.