Blog Post 3: The Ever-Present Past – Kayla Smith

While the country of Morocco has only existed independently since 1956, Moroccan traditions go back a long way.  From handmade crafts to outdated modes of transportation to ancient ruins, Morocco certainly doesn’t lack traditional practices and commodities, even though the country is modernizing rapidly (along with the rest of the world).  It is an odd contrast seeing these ancient practices alongside modern equipment, transportation, and decor, but this somehow suits Moroccan society.  Through this combination, there is created an interesting meld of past, present, and future.  

Postcards and Plates in the Souks

In our first week in Fes, we visited the souk or market to tour the oldest part of the city.  The various shops lining the narrow streets of the Medina offer food items like spices, meats, nuts, and fruits, traditional craft items, leather goods, “hand-crafted” souvenirs of dubious origins, and more.  The possibilities are limitless in the souks.  There is a bit of irony to the concept of the souk – it serves as food and goods market for those who live in the Medina, a place to buy very “traditionally Moroccan” items; however, it is also home to thousands of goods made solely to serve the desires of tourists who want to bring home something “authentic” from their travels, but often turns out to be a cheaply made simulacrum hanging on a keychain.  

Chaouwara Tannery

In the middle of the Fes Medina, there is the Chaouwara Tannery.  The entrance – a small door in an alley – leads you into the shop where many hand-made leather goods are sold that were died and dried in that very spot.  After winding through the shop’s various rooms, I found myself on an upstairs balcony that overlooks the vats of colored liquid in which the leather is dipped to gain its color.   Out in the blazing sun, men stand in the vats to dip the skins in and out of the mixtures, and then pull them out to be lain and dried in the sun.  The fact that they perform this arduous labor to produce such beautiful leather goods, especially in a world full of factory-made ‘designer’ leather products, amazes me.  

Hand-operated loom

The last shop we visited in the Medina was the weaving workshop.  Not only do they make all the goods by hand, but they use cactus silk to make the thread and a human-powered loom to do the weaving.  They make everything from blankets to scarves to bags and the finished products are of excellent quality.  Family-owned and going back numerous generations, the workshop is clearly a source of pride for the men who work there.  Authenticity sets their products apart from those which are machine-made.

The Amazigh Riad’s kitchen

During our stay in Meknes, the owner of an Amazigh Riad allowed us to tour her residence.  Imazighen is the proper term for the Berber people, originally named “Berber” by the Greek because they viewed the Imazighen as barbaric people.  The owner of this riad, however, proudly displayed her accommodations – all in the traditional Amazigh style.  I couldn’t help but notice alongside her tajines and clay vases the presence of modern appliances.

Interior of the Basilica of Volubilis

Reconstructed olive-oil press in Volubilis

Dining-room mosaic in The House of Orpheus

Atrium mosaic in The House of Orpheus

Not far from Meknes lies the ancient ruins of Volubilis originally built by the Roman Empire.  It was the capital of the kingdom of Mauretania.  Inhabited by Romans from around 30 BC to 280 AD, the city held an estimated 20,000 Roman occupants at its peak.  While much of the city was destroyed in the following centuries by Imazighen, Christian, and Arab inhabitants who were unable to maintain the city’s infrastructure, many of the city’s ruins remained.  After being excavated by French and Moroccan authorities in the 1900’s, you can see the ghosts of Volubilis’s structures such as a few grand houses, the basilica, the Capitoline Temple, and more.  The intricacy of the city’s design rivals modern civil architecture.  The mere existence of a two-thousand-year-old city within kilometers of present-day civilization is incomprehensible. 

Riding off into the Sahara on camels (note the cars parked in the parking lot next to the camels)

Last, but certainly not least, we rode into the Sahara Desert on camels this past weekend.  Whereas camels used to be the main mode of transportation in the desert, they now serve an honorary role.  Tourists pay through the nose to experience a lite version of Berber life as it were, even suffering through the rough camel ride, 100+ degree heat, and lack of bathrooms to stay in a Berber camp in the desert overnight.  Though cars are the more efficient alternative by far, the small presence of still-nomadic Imazighen and the modern world’s veneration of camel riding/racing prevents such activities from becoming obsolete. 

The melding of ancient and modern, while contradictory in theory, can be complimentary due to the modern world’s ever-present desire to preserve that which needs preserving and to remember the ways of the days of old.  This sort of contrast has become the rule rather than the exception in many developing countries around the world.  As technology increasingly pervades daily life, it does not precisely render the old ways obsolete, but it does set the traditional apart from more modernized goods and methods.  Even I feel torn between my preference to embrace the new and my longing to cling to the old, unable to find a reasonable balance.  I can only imagine how the world as a whole feels.