All for a root canal...

I felt out of place from the minute I stepped of the plane.  I was wearing one of my most comfy pagne dresses in a demure florescent green with not even remotely matching, equally bright, batik "melange" purse in a sea of very Euro looking people in black pants, black boots, black sweaters, black bags.  I felt like I had been dumped in Paris. It was my first glimpse of how hard I have tried to fit in in Togo, and how much that makes me stand out everywhere else in the world except West Africa.  I would like to think of this as training week for the inevitable culture shock I'm going to feel in two weeks when I land in California. Possibly wearing the same outfit. Cultural exchange is fun.  I look ridiculous every day and I love it. However, coming to Morocco is a good reminder to not go to crazy with the local clothes, because in a year these clothes will probably be useless.  

I spent my first two days wandering the media and the ocean front of Rabat by myself.  Daily surf checks that amounted to nothing worth renting a board for.  I was much relieved when a volunteer from Liberia arrived a few days later, just as interested as I was in turning this medical evacuation into a vacation.  Thank you Peace Corps!

Thanksgiving we spent at the house of American expats working in Rabat.  I almost cried when I saw their kitchen as it was the most western thing I've seen in months.  We stuffed ourselves on all the traditional fixings and it almost felt like I was in America.

The next day we went to our dentist appointments and then boarded the next train to Casa Blanca to visit my friend Thierry and then headed to Marrakech the next morning. In Marrakech we wandered the old medina, saw some interesting old architecture and stuffed ourselves some more on couscous and Tanjine.  Moroccan food is delicious.

The real adventure was when we returned to Rabat and decided that we should go full local and get washed up in the hammam.  This is a traditional communal bathhouse where women go to scrub themselves raw a couple times a week stemming from a time when hot water, or maybe even running water was not commonly found in the home.

Upon entering the hammam we were led to an area to undress and we were asked if we wanted to get scrubbed.  After an enthusiastic yes, two older women, who spoke zero french, stripped down to their black undies and escorted us into the steam rooms.  This was a fairly confusing process, not knowing where to sit or what we were supposed to do with the bowls handed to us.  As I looked I around, I saw that we surrounded by a handful of middle aged women using a hand mitt called a kiis to scrub their skin like they were stripping the finish off a piece of furniture.  Everyone but me was wearing black undies and I felt like I had missed some important instruction on hammam etiquette.

Our scrub ladies instructed us to go sit in the far corner and the brought over buckets of water and stools and that started a scrub down that made me feel like a toddler getting washed down at tub time.  Through a lot of charades and tapping we were told to lay down, sit up, roll over, arms up, arms down. This is no gentle scrub, the hand scrubber feels like they are using a piece of sand paper and about as much pressure would be necessary for my furniture analogy.  After a full scrub down from head to toe, my lady asks me "two?" by a show of fingers.  I have no idea what she means so I say yes, and the whole process starts over again.  She finishes by taking off my underwear, washing them, and handing them back to me.  I think this might have been her cue that we were done, but I really had no idea what was going on.  So as I sat there enjoying the steam, she refilled the buckets and came back to give me another scrub down.  I guess she took my staying as a sign that I did not yet feel clean?  After round three I decided that I felt sufficiently scrubbed and that I better follow my intuition and get out there if I don't want round four.

I don't know if I have ever been so clean in my life, and certainly not since arriving in Togo.  Natalie and I both agreed that we wished such things existed in our villages and that we would probably go every week if we could.  It certainly made for an interesting end to the trip.  Tonight I fly back to Togo, and I've been here just long enough that I'm ready.  Morocco is wonderful, but its not home, and I'm really happy I feel that way about Togo. 

more pictures here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150979996645032.771587.842270031&type=1&l=fcddb883e0