As I discovered this morning in MoroccoSavvy, Morocco has decided to throw together their very own music awards over here at the NextLine site - we’re not talking aissaoua, though - more like Aissaoua style (though the popular H-Kayn song didn’t get a mention because it was released in 2005.

I’ll tell you, I’m shamelessly voting for people I’ve personally met. Awhile back I got to hang out on a Bigg/Ahmed Soultan video shoot where just about all of Morocco’s big players in hip hop were. I got to talk to those who spoke English (Bigg is entirely fluent, which he claims comes from his young love of Whitney Houston in a TelQuel article a couple of months ago), and ended up appearing briefly in the video (but I’ve checked - you actually can’t see me for all but one second, which I count as a positive thing - since they’re quite talented, that is, and I don’t want to be famous! For that anyway…)

So go vote for the Best Album, Best Video, Best Song, Best Fusion Act, Best Hip Hop Act, and Best Rock/Metal Act.

Imagine a room of your countrymen, be they American, Dutch, French, Canadian, whatever. Imagine them discussing social problems in the country - sexual harassment, corruption, government inadequacies, press freedom. Imagine them, in all their vast and diverse intelligence, analyzing the problems and coming up with their own innovative solutions. Imagine them getting so excited when they realize their solutions could work.

And then, watch their crestfallen faces as they say, “It’s the government’s responsibility.”

And worse, when they tell you, “But I refuse to vote.”

This is the very case in Morocco. You fill a room with innovators, incredible people, intellectuals - give them a handful of important issues, and they will discuss them - no one can accuse Moroccans of being too quiet. And their ideas are good. But inevitably, someone comes up with the “it’s not our responsibility” spiel, and then it’s over.

Why? Take these results from a L’Economiste survey - of 776 young people from all backgrounds surveyed in fall 2005:

- 95% do not belong to any political party
- 68% do not trust politics
- 73% find that their representatives represent them badly

Interesting - and yet, with the voting age lowered to 18 a couple of years ago, one might think that Morocco’s youth would try to take matters into their own hands regarding politics.

However, as Magharebia.com reported last June, “The majority of Moroccans continue to criticise political parties, the government and the parliament. This same majority thinks democracy does not exist in Morocco and subsequently refuse to ‘politicise themselves.’ Young people say this, intellectuals repeat it and as a result only 50 per cent of Moroccan people vote. This is not normal.”

Now, of course there are barriers - much of the political process is Francophone, those living in the bled aren’t being reached, but that first group I mentioned? Urban elite. So, why don’t they vote? But more importantly, if they do believe that the government won’t change (just as many young Americans do), then why not start their own grassroots organizations to fix these simple problems they complain about (lack of trash cans in Meknes, too many street kids sniffing glue). I suppose that’s a question for another time.

I found this article somewhat irritating. In summary, it discusses Georgia’s future with the EU and NATO, and whether Georgia ought to be considered part of Europe or Asia. Aleksandre Rusetski, the Georgian interviewee on the matter, made it very clear that Georgia does not wish to be grouped with the European neighbors program (read: Muslim Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Morocco, Algeria, etc). His comment that Georgian culture is more similar to Italian, Spanish or French culture, “in short with nations who drink wine” was particularly um…nice.

If the statistic posted here is true, then mobile phone ownership has surpassed literacy in Morocco.

16 million mobile owners, approximately half of the population (give or take, I’m no statistician).  As the effective literacy rate lingers around 48% (a recent American magazine propped it up around 56%, but most Moroccans tell me that the government is of course faking the stats.  I can’t be sure, nor can I find a good English source online to cite).

Pretty incredible, this.

You’ve seen the Meknes Bar Report.  But I suppose you have no idea where to eat in Meknes!  Sadly, Meknes is not the restaurant mecca that its larger sisters Marrakech and Rabat purport to be, but she holds her own compared to Fez at least.  So without further ado, I bring you…

The Meknes Restaurant Report

Le Pub (Allal ben Abdellah) - My personal favorite, for the sheer fact that salmon roleaux are on the menu.  Their steak is so juicy, it’s probably not halal, and they have a full wine list and bar.  The downstairs “club” of sorts is a bit rowdy, with a live band, noise which occasionally assaults your ears in the dining area, but it’s of no matter - the lasagne quatre fromages or the cotelete avec champignons make it worth it.

Palais Didi (medina) - My favorite of the medina choices (though I admit that I have not yet eaten at Ryad Bahia).  The food isn’t even that spectacular, but this renovated guesthouse-riad has the best atmosphere and the best views from the rooftop.  If you order the tajine for your whole party, it will be fantastic, but the other choices weren’t so stellar.

Les Colliers de la Colombe (medina) - Another incredible view, but this time it overlooks the dry Oued Boufekrane and Meknes’ ville nouvelle (Hamrya).  The steaks were too fatty, but try the b’stila - to die for.  The best part is that this fancy restaurant is nowhere near as overpriced as the palace restaurants of Fez.

Grilladiere - Moving into the next class of restaurants, Grilladiere is Morocco’s equivalent of say, TGI Friday’s.  Clean, somewhat out of the way (I don’t recall the street name), but with a delicious menu of brochettes, Frenchy salads, pizza, and even a “poissonerie,” Grilladiere is a good bet, particularly with family or for lunch.  They also deliver!

Pizzeria Le Four (near the Amir Abdelkader train station) - Styled with Italian woodworking, low ceilings, and a fake rose on table, the pizza here is delicious and I believe they have draught beer.  Quite tasty onion soup as well, and good prices.

Quik (Route de Fez, Kumbata) - A bit out of the way, but a great stop if you’ve got a car and are heading in the direction of Fez.  The specialties are pizza and Vietnamese.  You heard me right.  Try the Vietnamese soups and the Jardiniere pizza.

Serenity (Ave. Mohammed V) Another of my favorites.  This place is bright and sunny, the servers are highly competent, and they serve pizza, pasta, tajines, panini, crepes - you name it.  The salads and desserts are the best in Meknes, and in the summer, their rooftop patio is absolutely lovely day or night.

Label’ Gallery - Why am I mentioning fast food?  Because if you’re in Meknes for quite some time, you might start craving it and McDonald’s is atrocious just like everywhere in the world.  And because it’s the only really “foreign” food in town - there’s Petit Libanais (excellent), Bangkok Cafe (delicious) and Nachos y Tacos Tex Mex (um, only the fajitas are edible).  We get delivery from Bangkok frequently - the salade Vietnamienne is so good I can’t resist it.

Midway Pizza - Delicious pizza but virtually no seating area.  There’s one in Fez as well.

I give each and every one of those the seal of approval.  There are a few other nice places, but I haven’t tried them out yet.  Restaurant Bellevue is one, but it’s only open for lunch and has a bar, so I’m waiting for a long day off to really try it out.  Another is some new hotel out by Marjane, but without a car, it’s pointless, as taxis don’t often run after Marjane closes.  I’ll keep you posted.

Maroc Telecom, or Itissalat Maghreb’s fixe line service, El Manzil, recently launched a new campaign (more info in English) which offers unlimited calling to other Maroc Telecom numbers domestically.  A great campaign, sure, but the name leaves much to be desired.

You see, it seems the national telecom operator didn’t pull its English-speaking team together on this one, creating an Engrish blunder.

pho·ny  /ˈfoʊni/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[foh-nee], -ni·er, -ni·est, noun, plural -nies, verb, -nied, -ny·ing. –adjective

–noun

(Source: dictionary.com)

I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if the new service lives up to its name.

Leading up to the Christmas/Eid al-Adha season, there were advertisements for LG in all of the local papers featuring a Santa Claus in a sleigh full of electronic goods. Was the Moroccan paper catering to the small foreign Christian population? Not at all - these advertisements read “Aid Moubarak Said” (Basically translates to “Happy Eid,” in celebration of Eid al-Adha, the day of sacrifice).

Image from Laila Lalami’s blog

The next holiday on the Hijra calendar, having just passed the 1st Moharrem (Islamic New Year), is Ashora.

Now, when I first came to Morocco I admittedly knew very little about Muslim holidays, despite having read the Qur’an in university nearly all the way through. I particularly knew very little about Ashora, this mystery holiday that I had always thought was just for the Shi’a Muslims.

Even my “Islam for Dummies” type books (I have two, which I bought solely for research while writing my book, and both proved mostly useless, hence my omission of their titles. Incidentally, neither was actually from the “for dummies” series) skimmed over Ashora, referring to it as “a Shi’a holiday honoring Imam Hussein” and mentioning that “some Muslims fast on this day.”

What’s a girl gotta do to find out about Ashora?

So I decided to ask some Moroccan students. In one intermediate-level class, the second unit discusses holidays and events, with grammar focusing on structures such as “On Eid Al-Adha, it’s the custom to…” or “During the month of Ramdan, it’s expected for Muslims to…” Hoping to learn a little bit about the mysterious Ashora, I assigned the holiday as the subject for their homework.

The next day, I received a stack of papers. Eager to learn, I pored over the first: “Ashora is the day when children get candy.” And the next: “Ashora is the day when we put toilet paper on houses.” “Ashora is the day when kids get new toys.” “…when we throw eggs at people and donkeys.” “…when the Shi’a Muslims fast” (well, at least one kid is thinking about religion!)

Still without any real knowledge of the religious background of Ashora, I began to realize that in Morocco, Ashora is the holiday where kids do stuff that American kids do on Halloween. Put that on the blackboard and smoke it.

Oprah and other bleeding hearts (I use the term in kindness, and assume that you know my liberal stance) might make statements about how American kids only think about new sneakers and iPods, but they’ve never been to Morocco. Now, I know I work with the “rich” kids, or at least the ones who can afford around 800dh per 10 weeks of classes, but that’s a growing demographic, and the majority of Morocco’s 10 million or so city dwellers could probably swing it somehow.

But that isn’t my point - what I’m getting at is that commercial holidays aren’t just for America anymore. While you’re out buying 100 Christmas cards at $2 a pop, Moroccan kids are looking forward to their new outfits on Eid al-Fitr and loads of candy on Ashora, and I’d put money on the fact that most of them couldn’t tell you why they even celebrate the latter.

Now, after a bit of humiliating snarkiness, I can:

Ashora was designated by the Prophet Mohammed as a day of fasting from sunset to sunset, possibly basing it upon the Jewish fast during Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Ashora commemorates two events: the day on which Noah left the ark and the day MOses was saved by God from the Egyptians. Later on, when the Prophet designated Ramadan as the month of fasting, Ashora became a voluntary fast for Sunni Muslims.

Shi’a, on the other hand, celebrate Ashora as a major festival, commemorating the day on which Hussein, son of Imam ‘Ali and grandson of the Prophet, died.    (Paraphrased from ReligionFacts.com)

So there you have it. Nevertheless, when Ashora comes up soon, you’ll find that Marjane is having huge sales, extra candy vendors are roaming the streets, and kids are up to their usual pranks. It’s just like being home.

Remember that song by 80s pop group Toto (which is, by the way, apparently still in existence)?

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you/there’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do/I bless the rains down in Africa/gonna take some time to do the things we never had… 

Now, he’s talking about Kili, and I know we’re up in North Africa, but but

but…

I bless the SNOW down in Africa!

No joke, that was taken from my living room window.  Hamza woke me up, saying “you’ve got to see this.”  I’m glad he did, because nearly an hour later, it’s gone.  But somehow, everything looks just a little fresher than usual.

I wrote a small, now deleted, post about this a week or so ago, but would like to go back into the realm of the Moroccan Blogosphere, or “Blogoma,” as one of my favorite sites, Global Voices Online, which does a weekly (or bi-weekly at times) roundup of Moroccan blogs, calls it. The Morocco Report got a mention in the last roundup!

I use Google Reader to keep track of my favorite blogs, most of which are listed on the right side of this page. I religiously follow six or seven blogs, eagerly awaiting the next entry, which I devour with abandon. Yesterday, one of those bloggers, Cat in Rabat, wrote about her experience taking Spanish class with Moroccan students, saying: “I haven’t yet decided whether Moroccan students are impatient or just naturally exuberant. Regardless of the answer, I want to strangle them all.” Self-described as snarky, her musings crack me up on a regular basis.

A more recent find was My Marrakesh, written by American transplant to Marrakesh Maryam who has an interest in design and a knack for writing about it. Her most recent post on Moroccan traditional costumes, is enchanting, as are the photos that accompany it.

The View from Fez, which I refer to as my favorite because of its sheer breadth, reports on news, stories from the Fez medina, the woes of building riads, and so many other things it makes my head spin. Their several sister sites offer free Morocco classifieds and even a lifestyle guide (in which they were kind enough to include my post, The Meknes Bar Report).

Moroccan Musings discusses life as a rural volunteer in Morocco, and posts are often accompanied by gorgeous photos of Morocco’s countryside or blad.

The best coverage of the Nichane case came from Eatbees Blog, the best post by far being A Black Eye for Moroccan Freedom.  The blog also discusses truth, Moroccan locales, and of course, the author’s feelings about living here.

Morocco Time is yet another good one; the author writes about a variety of things, from the hammam to ethical Moroccan-made clothing to the misuse of insha’allah.

For those of you dying to learn Moroccan Arabic (derija), Moroccan Vocabulary is a recent find that covers a word a day in the language - today’s word is mshTa or “comb.”

Another new find is The a la Menthe (Mint Tea, my friends, which you know I love).  The post at top, on tourism in Morocco vs. Tunisia, really sparked my thinking spot.  Yet another blog which has covered the recent news stories well.

Even Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami (Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits) has a blog!

The Moroccan Blog Aggregator combines all of the Morocco blogs into one big posting and also has a list of Moroccan blogs in English.

Other links for Morocco news and information:

Magharebia.com - Maghreb news in English, French or Arabic

Maghreb Arab Presse - Morocco’s state-run press finally posts in English too.

Lonely Planet Thorn Tree - Tourist information lies on the Africa > Morocco travel branch.

Sahara Watch - in the group of blogs banned by the Moroccan government, this one covers news of the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara (inside Morocco: try this)

When I moved to the apartment on Ave. des FAR in May, I was fortunate enough to be blessed with this gorgeous bathtub (cat not included). Not only is it a clean, full-sized tub, but it also has a handheld shower that also hooks up to the wall for a stand-up shower…a rarity in Morocco, indeed.

So you can imagine my surprise the first time I showered standing up and realized that I’d gotten water all over the floor.

See that structure in the bottom left of the photograph? That’s a marble shelf and cabinet - while lovely, it makes it nearly impossible to hang a shower curtain in our tub with a normal rod, as the ones found at Marjane do not extend as far as the wall at the end of that cabinet. Our only option, it seems, would be to build a curved rod and buy two shower curtains to cover it.

So how do we get the water out of the bathroom? Moroccan-style! We take our enormous squeegee, the staple of any Moroccan apartment, and move the water from the bathroom to the hallway, from the hallway to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the laundry room, and down the drain. Around three corners. And we do this every, single day.

If anyone has a solution, please let us know! If you’re a carpenter or just pity us…well, come on by.