Marrakech, Morocco: Day 1

Early in the morning we drive from L'Artaudie to the airport in Lyon, just about 2 hours away. I'm not used to the friendly coziness of a small airport, but it is refreshing. After saying goodbye to my mother at the train station, my uncle Dominique and I head through the itty-bitty security checkpoint and on towards the gate. Waiting for the plane, I read over with great amusement an idiotic advertisement for a museum exhibit. It's in pseudo-English: "There is another way of looking at things language allows us to create new thoughts to interact with others to change in every moment of our lives everywhere in the real world the human longing for freedom ..." yadeeyadee. I shake my head at the lack of punctuation.

The flight itself is uneventful and full of Radiohead.

When we touch down in Marrakech, I brace myself for the heat that I know is waiting outside the door. Sure enough, the runway is an oven, especially compared to the 8 degrees C that we had left from. But it isn't as bad as I had anticipated. The heat is very dry, so it doesn't stick to you and the air doesn't feel heavy. 

The car ride home is certainly an adventure. I had not anticipated that Marrakech would be such a city and therefore possess a correspondingly messy traffic situation. As the car driven by one of the employees from my uncle's house careens through the streets and the roundabouts, at all moments I feel that an accident was imminent. There is such a quantity of taxis, cars, scooters, and little motorcycles rushing about in a virtually lawless brawl that I'm not sure how anyone manages to be brave enough to drive. Scooters are the worst. A man with huge packages of goods piled on the back of his vehicle zig zags through traffic with as much bravado as the family of three that has all squished on to one little motorcycle for a trip to the grocery store. 

I notice how many veiled women there are. Maybe 75% of women I encounter are veiled, and of those 10% are completely veiled in black with just a small slit to be able to see. Still others wear American style clothing complete with high heels and glamorous sunglasses. But despite the heat, only the dorkily sun-burned tourists are wearing anything without sleeves or shorter than knee length. 

We finally make it (in one piece) to my uncle's neighborhood in the palm grove, La Palmeraie, and I breath a sigh of relief. It's an area with palm trees as far as the eyes can see, dotted with huge villas, resorts, and golf courses. Amidst the luxury, we pass a poor village with a football field right next to a spigot where children meet and haul water back to their hut-like houses. We would pass by this village on the way to my uncle's house every day, and it's a place I would come to think a lot about during my trip. 

My uncle's neighborhood