Marrakesh – walking and shopping in the Souks in the Medina

 

 

Last time I was staying in the Medina and decided to embrace the souks and getting to know them. Walking through the souks, you often end up getting lost, however after a couple of days I managed to find my way around a bit and also found myself connecting the dots - so to speak - between different areas and finding myself unexpectedly close to ‘home’ and/or not a long way away. What a sense of achievement, feeling you getting to grips with the city, you are starting to know it. I love it!
:-)
Going back to your favourite shop or café/restaurant. I tend to stay away from the big touristy restaurants. And, as I have allergies and do not eat meat, it is rather restrictive where I eat. Nevertheless I found some brilliant places to eat or take away food.

 

I suppose when you first go though the souks they all seems very similar. However once you get some firm points you can move from there. You need to believe that all connects with each other and eventually you’ll get close and where you want to be. It seems a nice, clear map of the souks is unobtainable. Perhaps it is all part of the trick to let you get lost in them, like in our supermarkets where they change the shelves/food aisles layout to ‘encourage’ you to buy things you usually do not need or want.
Same in Marrakesh, either that or to give work to the guides, official or not, who then get paid, therefore making it another way to boost the local economy. The souks are a city within the city (the Medina is). The souks are  differently named and the names are defined by the trade based in and around that area. So you get the ‘babusher’ for the leather slippers and the one for the dyers, and so forth. Which is kind of handy if you know what you want to buy and you can aim straight to that ‘quartier’ and have plenty to choose from.

   

It is harmless to go through the various alleys and street and squares. The trick is not to be lured into all the shops and only when you feel like it. I often find the one that do not harass you and drag you in, are the best. You need to follow your instinct and I found a lot of very nice people that have a love for what they sell and make. I like mostly the artisans, not so much the shop keepers who are just trying to shift another item. In all or the majority of the souks you find motorcycles speeding through despite the crowds. There are also the occasional tricycle and lots of bicycles and carts. The worse are the motorcycles as they produce huge amount of fumes, which I find pretty toxic when inhaled. Not sure if this is due to the mix of petrol & oil they use – different from ours – and/or also to the large number of motorcycles in such confined and enclosed spaces that makes it for a not very nice air quality to breath in, as well as having to be pretty much on the alert as they spring out from nowhere behind you!

   

As I mentioned shopkeepers do their best to get you into their shop and buy. They start the conversation with ‘bonjour, comment se va?’ (Good morning, how are you?) and it is handy if you know a few phrases of French to be able to reply. Although my 20 year old ‘Moyen’ level French is now pretty rusty, I am told my pronunciation is good, it helps, I suppose, that I speak Italian. However it makes it complicated as I need to translate from English to Italian, and then from Italian to French as most words and phrases are similar. Nevertheless I've often wished I could speak it better, especially when bartering so I have just bought an online a refreshers course on CD to listen in the car, I reckon 30+ minutes a day, it will do the trick and put it in my ear and refresh both my vocabulary and phrases. Will let you know.

Souks and sellers

Anyway, back to what we were discussing... Marrakeshi souks sellers. Even though I respond to the ‘Bonjour’ I often keep on going. Some of the more pushy shopkeepers shout at you ‘just looking’ hoping, in so doing, to invite you in their shop… I think they do not fully understand the meaning of the phrase… do not let me put you off window shopping! It is the best part. You need to be firm if you do not want to buy. They will trick you and kind of making you feel guilty. Do not be fooled! You don’t want to buy, you do not buy. No matter how far in your negotiations you have gone, or how many bags, shoes, carpets, etc. they have got down from the shelves. Enjoy the experience. I tend to ask prices first and also look at the quality. Once I decide the shop I want to buy from I get in and chat with them.


One of the things that drive me mad in Morocco is when you ask about the price and they reply to you with another question: ‘How many?’ Arggghhhh! Even though it would make sense that the more you buy the better the price, many years ago I found it not necessarily true when I found myself in a small Moroccan town. I wanted some of the lovely colourful typical bowls and set about asking prices. It followed a sort of tag of war. Finally I was given some prices, different colour had different prices. So, as I was going about choosing some bowls, I was mentally adding up the price. At the end I put them on the table and my idea was to bargain – as that is the norm – however the guy quoted me a price higher than what I had totalled up having used his prices - given to me a few minutes before – so I left without buying anything. I found having a base price is essential, and then you can decide if you want more than one and so forth before starting haggling. It is also the case of what you think it is worth it.

Last time I was in Marrakesh however I was ‘done’ on a small bottle of Sprite. I asked for the price at a small bar/shop and was told 6 dirham. Fair enough, I knew a similar size bottle of water was a little bit cheaper so I accepted the price in good faith, paid and left. Once out of the shop I cleaned the top and side before opening it and ‘oh and behold’ there was a pre-printed price on the plastic bottle: 3 dirham!! What could I do!?! Annoying though. I did not go back as I was a few paces away from the shop and had already opened it. It wasn’t so much the money, really pennies, it was the principle!
You have been warned and have lots of fun as you go around.

  

Easter Traditions

Have you ever wondered why Easter’s Day is on a different date every year?  Well, many years ago the Church decided that Easter Day would always fall on the Sunday following the first full moon after the first day of Spring (21^st March).  This meant that Easter could be as early as 22^nd March or as late as 25^th April on any given year in the West, such as in UK, America, etc., where the Gregorian calendar is used; in the East, where the Julian calendar is adopted, Easter could be as late as May.

Easter is the most important of the Christian religious festivals.

Long before Christianity people in Europe worshipped the Goddess of Spring, 'Eostre'.  They believed that the Sun died in winter and was re-born again in Spring (easy to believe in UK and some Nordic countries!).  They thought that Eostre brought back Spring and that it would encourage the Sun to get stronger.  Some believe that Easter’s name derives from this Goddess.
In most countries though, Easter is called a variation of Pasch (Passover), which remains the name most used in non-English language countries.

Easter is preceded by a period of abstinence – Lent.  Historically, before Lent began, eggs - as well as other rich food - would be eaten in every household before Lent began.   This accounts for Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) or Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) the day before Ash Wednesday, the day which Lent officially begins.  Both in Western and Eastern Christianity, eggs, meat and dairy products were prohibited during Lent.  Pancake Day originated by the need to use all the eggs in the household before the period of Lent began.

In the Orthodox Church, Lent begins on a Monday, rather than on a Wednesday, to give more time to use up all the ingredients in the house before Lent.  As chickens could not be stopped from laying eggs during Lent – and in the old days it would have been difficult to store eggs for as long as 40 days – any egg that did not hatch would be preserved by being boiled to lengthen its edible life.  This has confirmation in the many recipes containing hard boiled eggs or eggs in general as a main ingredient, that are found in many countries (i.e. Spain-Hornazo, Hungary, etc.) as typical Easter’s recipes.

With the arrival of Easter, eggs could be eaten again.

Before Christianity, giving eggs at Easter was associated with the celebration of new life as well as a practical gesture - as 40 days without eating eggs must have left households with an excess of them and they would have been particularly welcome by people without chickens as well as not eaten eggs throughout Lent.  The egg is traditionally associated as a symbol of fertility and rebirth.  Eggs were thought to be special because although they do not seem alive, they have life within them, especially when chicks hatch out at springtime.

The tradition may also have merged into the celebrations after Lent.  It seems that the custom of Easter eggs originated in Mesopotamia.  And that the Christian Church officially adopted the custom of regarding eggs as a symbol of the resurrection, in 1610.

Parallels between Christianity and the celebration of Passover in Judaism are also notable because of Christ celebrating Passover with his disciples on the evening before Good Friday.

In addition, eggs have been viewed as symbols of new life and fertility through the ages. It is believed that for this reason many ancient cultures, including the ancient Egyptians, Persians and Romans, used eggs during their Spring festivals.  Slowly the tradition of giving eggs developed into a tradition of giving gifts of eggs carved from wood, precious stones, etc.   

Decoration and symbolism

In the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Church, Easter eggs are dyed red to represent the blood of Christ.  Easter eggs are blessed by the priests at the end of the Vigil (the Saturday before Easter Sunday) and distributed among the presents.

Easter eggs are a widely popular symbol of new life in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, etc.).  Eggs are decorated by using a batik process which is used to create intricate, brilliantly coloured eggs.  The best-known are the pysanka or pisanka from Ukraine and Poland (see further on).
An example of intricately decorated eggs are the Fabergé eggs.  Be-jewelled eggs created for the Imperial Russian Court at Easter.  Most of these creations contained hidden surprises such as clockwork birds, miniature ships, etc. 

Easy to see how the custom to give an egg at Easter has developed into the Easter egg of nowadays.

When boiling eggs for Easter, a popular tan colour was achieved by boiling the eggs with onion skins. A greater variety of colours was often provided by tying the onion skin to the egg with different coloured yarns.  In Northern England these eggs are called pace-eggs or paste-eggs, which derive from the middle-age English: ‘pasche’.

The first sweet eggs to be eaten, were created in the last 100 years, and were made from sugar or marzipan. Since then chocolate eggs have become popular and these are now mainly given on Easter Sunday.
Nowadays around 80 million of chocolate eggs are eaten in Britain each year.

Pysanka or pisanka

 

Pysanka Eggs

The pysanka is an Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated using a batik method with wax.  The word comes from the verb ‘pysaty’ - to write. The designs were written on the eggs with beeswax.

In Ukraine pysanka are typically made to be given to family members. Giving a pysanka is to give a gift of life, and for this reason the egg must remain whole.  Each designs and colour applied to the pysanka has a symbolic meaning and traditionally the designs were chosen to match the character of the person that would receive the pysanka.

Origins of colouring eggs at Easter in England

Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter was a common custom in England in the middle ages. Eggs were brightly coloured to mimic the fresh colours of Spring. The practice of decorating eggs was made even more popular when King Edward I ordered 450 eggs to be covered in gold-leaf and coloured as Easter gifts in 1290.

Easter egg traditions

"Egg tapping", "Egg rolling", "Egg dance" are some of the names of games played with eggs at Easter in different nations across the globe.

In the Mediterranean countries, chicken eggs are boiled and decorated with dye and / or paint and used as decoration around the house or to create Easter trees.  In some countries on Easter Sunday there is also the traditional egg hunt, where eggs are hidden outdoors (or indoors if the weather is bad) for children to run around and find them.

Easter eggs for the visually impaired (I like this)

It seems that since 2008 the 'International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators' have sponsored a charity in US to build Easter eggs for visually impaired children. Each year beeping Easter eggs are built emitting various clicks and noises that visually impaired children can easily find when hunting for Easter eggs.

 

The Easter Bunny

Symbols

In the legend, the bunny or rabbit / hare carries coloured eggs in his basket to the homes of children, a little bit like Father Christmas. It was first mentioned in a book 'About Easter Eggs' in 1682. [ "De ovis paschalibus" of Georg Franck von Frankenau.].

The hare was a popular motif in medieval Christian art.

In ancient times it was widely believed (Pliny, Plutarch among others) that the hare was a hermaphrodite (an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female).  The idea was that a hare could reproduce without loss of its virginity, led to an association with the Virgin Mary.

Eggs, like rabbits and hares, were fertility symbols in antiquity.  As birds lay eggs and rabbits / hares give birth to large litters in the early spring, these became symbols of the fertility of the Earth at the time of the March equinox.

Nabeul market in Tunisia - a different way to shop and barter in foreign countries



  

Hammamet Market

Nabeul market, a busy street

Travel guides mention it, and when you go to Nabeul market you realise how expensive it is & how rude the locals are if they don’t get their way. Nabeul market is much larger than the one in Hammamet  – which I visited only a day before. This also had given me an idea of prices and, together with the one I had seen in a local supermarket just outside my hotel, I felt I was armed with knowledge and could easily compare prices and quality. 

Buying and bartering at a Tunisian market is not as fun as doing it at a Moroccan one. Tunisians seemed very rude and if you manage to agree a price, they became grumpy if they felt they hadn’t charged you way over the odds. I drive prices down as much as possible, especially if I have seen it before at a lower price. I also know that they won’t sell if it is not convenient to them and not making a profit. I have a budget and stay within it. 

Once the sale is done, I expect the other side to be pleased and not to hold a grudge.  They had a choice and I did not force them to sell to me, and I do not want them to try to make me feel guilty!   Having been several times before in Morocco and Turkey, I know that if they sell they make a profit, so cheer up Nabeulians! 

Nevertheless even after having encountered some very rude and begrudging people, I still managed to meet great lovely ones. In particular at Nabeul market I met again an old man and his son (?) whom I had seen the day before at the Hammamet market and I had purchased a few items from him.

With Bourawi, market seller

I liked his jovial and welcoming (if a bit too overwhelming) approach. It certainly made a stark contrast with the other local stall holders. This man (Bourawi) had developed an immediate crush for me (!) - he wanted to come back to England with me which I drew a line to (it is very useful in this cases to have a story involving ‘loving husband or partner’ that is working hard at home and waiting for you to get back or joining you in a day or two, if you do not happen to have the ‘real McCoy’!) - anyway, Bourawi was the first to see me in Nabeul street market that Friday morning, while I was walking around hot and confused by the number of people.

Above the noise and hassling a friendly, welcoming voice rose and shouted: ‘Hallo my friend!!’ and I looked around to see a smiling face with open arms! 
You cannot believe how nice it was - after having been shoved and pushed by greedy sellers and harassed by pushy ones - to see a familiar face. He got me out of the crowd, offered a cool drink from a nearby stall seller and a seat!   Well, I supposed I felt like royalty! :-)
And you know, I bought a lot of lovely bits from him again, much more than the day before, as I had regretted not buying more of certain bracelets… It turned out my host was from Nabeul and had more of the stock I wanted and in different colours.

Berber Bracelet with semi-precious stones

I also bought two beautiful amber necklaces. Gorgeous. Did you know there is a way to test that amber is real amber?  With Amber, you stroke it hard against a cloth so it warms up and when you smell it, it has a nice aroma, kind of resin.

Or if you are buying camel bone, the real camel bone/hoof and not just plastic (as sometimes it looks and it is) can be tested by using a flame to barely touch the hoof/bone. It won't smell as nicely as amber, it will have a smell similar to the one of when you burn hair.

Amber Necklace 

 

The way to usually do business in these countries is to sit and chat and sip a drink and bargain, and chat some more and then pick something else to add to the bargaining and you go on for a while. 
At the end you are happy and so are they. I love it when you find people like these, and hate it when I haven’t got scope to buy things from them, as they are so nice (like in the case of the potterer – see photo below) that you want to support their business.
The choosing, buying, bartering is a process that takes time, however I love it, as you get to know a tiny bit of the other person and culture which is partly what is all about for me.

Nabeul - pottery

At the end of my chatting/shopping/bargaining with my new friend (Bourawi) I was also given a present of a Fatima hand pendant in silver and a very nice chain to go with it - which he asked his son to put on my neck - and a little stuffed key ring camel.

Such graceful and nice people! As I finished with my friend, a few steps away, another  seller from the Hammamet market crowd popped up – the one the day before had been a bit grumpy after the sale– and that day he was a bit more charming. Again I bought two more bracelets from him (some the ones I had really wanted the day before) and managed to get them for a very good price.

Camel bone & Resin Bracelet

I wasn’t so lucky when I went back to a shop, just outside the market, where first thing in the morning I had seen some nice cushion covers and lovely decorated glasses to use as T-lights holders. When I went by in the morning there was a woman setting up the shop, and having asked for the prices, I had decided to buy up a few on my way back – as I did not want to carry them all the way through the market. Unfortunately though, when I went back to the shop around mid-morning, the young son and dozy grandma where there instead and the son was much too greedy and quoted me a much, much higher price than the one quoted in the morning.  I didn’t manage to convince him to see reason and sell them to me at his mom’s price. I had promised myself to go back there the following Friday, early in order to catch the woman while setting up the shop again. However, the following week I also wanted to be in Hammamet and in the end decided I didn’t want to go from pillar to post (Nabeul and Hammamet are at opposite ends from where I was staying) and didn’t fancy rushing around on my last day of holiday. 

I went to the Hammamet Medina instead and, eventually, managed to find a shop I had seen the first day of my holiday while wondering around. Boy what a maze is the Medina. And when asking direction, the ‘clever’ sellers thought they could confuse me and take me to their shops claiming to be the one I wanted… as if!  I had a picture on my mobile with the name on it … ;-)

Moroccan humour or trying it on? Little artisan man

This is where cultural barriers might make it hard to communicate...

Last year (2011) my friend and I spent a w/e in Marrakech and to this day we are still wondering if the guy in the video tried it on or it was really his ‘Moroccan’ sense of humour.

My friend was looking for Xmas presents and wasn’t very impressed with the Moroccan selling style and took the view of approaching and buying only from people/sellers that were not harassing her. 
This is how we came across this artisan, who very quietly was going on with his business in a little alley of the Marrakechi Medina. 
We went around his place of business in the course of two days. Yes, no, yes, maybe, shall I buy it, or maybe not? My friend found the choice of goods available in Marrakech overwhelming and making a decision on what to buy & who for became a major decision-making choice (which was driving me mad!!)... Eventually she decided on some wood boxes.
Goods were checked, price agreed, goods wrapped and paid. Then little artisan man decided to produce a little something which – according to him – was a purveyor of good luck if placed in the bedroom (we never got to discover how it would bring good luck!). I stood aside, not wanting to be a disruptive element in my friend's purchasing process or the carving of such ‘lucky’ charm. 
Once all was concluded, items purchased, charm carved I was all ready to move on. ..But no, little artisan man decided he wanted me to have a lucky charm too; he insisted I sat down next to him and watch him as he was doing the carving. 
My friend and I swapped seats. As I started watching him I thought I might as well make a short video of it. I asked little artisan man for permission to film him and he agreed, so I proceeded to take the video. While he was carving various people passed by and stopped to take pictures. As you will see from the video all was amicable and relaxed.....

(Now watch the video)

You can imagine my shock at his request! Hence the sudden termination of the video as I stood up and left, soon to be followed by my friend – who told me later - had her jaw to the floor by the surprise of the request!

Our next stop was another artisan, known by me for his leather notebooks, and where my friend had decided she was going to purchase some lovely boxes covered in brightly coloured leather. We got to this other shop a few lanes away in the Medina and a few minutes after we got there little artisan man (the one of the wood carving) joined us and gave me the lucky charm he had finished carving in the meantime.  And all seriously he told me "it was all a joke"!

To this day I am not sure if it was a joke or not.   Watching the video and listening to the conversation again, I realised he asked for Euros and not Dirham (Moroccan currency).   So maybe it was a joke. On the other side why not saying something right away as he saw our reaction? And all the time he was ever so serious! I am still not convinced it was a joke....but maybe...? If it was, it certainly show the difference in cultures, even in the way we joke and make humour, as we certainly did not take it as a joke!

You can make your mind up and let me k now what you think.