الدار البيضاء

I arrived at Mohammed V airport at 2am yesterday. My friend Hamza picked me up and brought me to his family's home. Up 4 flights of twisty marble stairs, we got to their apartment, one of the most beautifully decorated homes I have ever seen. I have the guest room all to myself, and after spending 14 hours getting here (getting to Skavsta, waiting around in the Barcelona airport during an epic thunderstorm) I fell straight asleep. In the morning, I met mom, dad, sister, brother, brother's best friend, and the maid. They all speak French, Arabic, and the 'Moroccan language' but only brother speaks any degree of English (luckily Hamza is fluent though). The Moroccan language is a bit of a mashup between classical arabic, french, spanish, and some invented words. It is only a spoken language, all the signs are written in Arabic or French. Most of the billboards and ads are in French though, and Hamza did all his schooling in French, he considers classical Arabic hard to take an exam in.

The maid made us some crispy bread/pancake things for breakfast which we ate with honey and jam, fresh orange juice, sweet Moroccan mint tea, and coffee. Then Hamza took me for a (rollercoaster) ride through Casablanca, past ferraris and porsches and villas, and past shantytowns with cows, donkeys, chickens, and stray cats. At one point we passed a mule cart on the main road. We saw the beach (which a man tried to make us pay to drive to... Hamza just yelled at him and kept driving... 'who is he anyway, he is nobody, silly man'). We drove past several mosques, heard the call to prayer around midday, and went to a marketplace where we stopped for some more mint tea (his dad tells me they call it Moroccan whiskey). Hamza told me it is made with Chinese green tea, mint leaves, yerba, and something else he didn't know the English name of.
We went back for lunch, also prepared by the maid. Started with a plate of salad in the middle of the table, made of a grain (barley?), lettuce, radish, cucumber, tomato, some kind of small white onion, tuna, and boiled and spiced potatoes. Then she brought out a big plate of roast (beef?) and prunes and a platter of flattish bread. Everyone started peeling off bits of meat from the bigger chunks with their fingers, grabbing a bit of prune, and wiping it all up with a little piece of bread. It was delicious.

We went back into the city for a while. Traffic in Casablanca is INSANE. Luckily Hamza spends most of his job driving around clients so he knows exactly what to do, but its terrifying for me. Bikes, mopeds (often a family of 3 sits on one moped), cars and busses going every direction, driving in the opposite lane, in the bike lanes, on the sidewalk, and don't forget the occasional mule cart. Swedes don't honk... but let me tell you... Moroccans do.

Hamza's parents are both muslim, so they go to prayer 5 times a day and there is no alcohol in the house. They run a furniture business, his father makes and decorates the wooden frames and his mother does the textiles. They made almost all the furniture in their home, and it is gorgeous.

Bought some roasted corn from a guy on our streetcorner for dinner, and right now I'm eating some deep fried french toast! These people.

Anyway, I'm super tired now. It wasn't all that hot (28?) but quite humid... time for sleep. No clue what I'm doing tomorrow!

Mosque

Corn on our balcony

Animals and people in the road

Mint tea