LMS Photo Album Pictures

At risk of copyright infringement, I wanted to highlight for my loyal readers a super cool book of photographs that I saw pop up on eBay, leading me to the wonderful-looking shop Globus Rare Books & Archives. If you click the link (provided no one has since bought it), you’ll find for sale at the bargain-basement price of $3,750 (man I wish I was rich) a “historically significant collection of original photos, illustrating the activities of the Central Africa Mission of the London Missionary Society.” It’s so cool man. So many photos of cool things I hadn’t seen before, and it amazes me that this sort of ephemera survives and makes its way out there into the world.

Since it’s a missionary photo album, most of the pictures are focused on daily missionary life, along with travel through places they would have seen on their way to and from the mission. There are also a number of photos of contemporary life in the area, such as this one labelled “Spirit Huts – Mambwe:”

I can’t tell who made the album, though the pictures seem to range around 1905-1910. There are a few different group photos of the missionaries. The below photo is labelled “Wright, Mrs. Clark, Clark, Ross, Mrs. Turner. 1906.” So that is Rev Robert Stuart Wright, Rev Earnest Howard Clark and Harriet Emily Clark, Rev James Arthur Ross, and Gertrude Alice Turner. When I was assembling the LMS biographies I couldn’t find a picture of either of the women, so the above is the best photo I’ve seen of either Harriet Clark or Gertrude Turner. In 1906, Wright was stationed at Niamkolo, Ross and the Turners at Kambole, and I think the Clarks might have been stationed at Kawimbe (they were married there, at least). All of which to say is the above photo could have been taken in a wide variety of places and it’s hard to tell. There are plenty of cliffs around the southern part of Lake Tanganyika though I wonder if maybe it was taken on a sightseeing trip to Kalambo Falls. They certainly seem to be having a rather grand time!

This set of photos is sadder. Our friends at Globus interprets the below two captions as “Mrs. McNeil’s grave, Kawimbe” and “May & Mrs. McNeil, Abercorn, 1907”:

I’m not sure who either of these women are. I can’t find a record of any McNeil being associated with the London Missionary Society, so it may be a member of another missionary society or the British colonial administration. I’d have to do more digging and I’m not familiar with all the records. However, if the graveyard pictured is the Kawimbe church graveyard, I have been to it! I wish I had known what I was looking at when I visited and one of these days I have to go back. When I visited it, it was overgrown, and I didn’t take pictures of every gravestone (and the ones I did take aren’t very good), but going through my files I have the two below. On the bottom left is a stone that I think says “In Loving Memory of Amy, the Beloved Wife of [] McNeil.” Of course it is a bad photo, I am bad at reading this particular type of writing, and also there is no gravestone in the picture of Mrs. McNeil’s grave. But maybe they added it later. The photo on the right I thought might be the gravestone pictured as being behind Mrs. McNeil’s grave since it’s a similar shape. It’s the gravestone of Dr. Charles Mather, who died in 1898.

Also included in the album are landscape shots, and having lived in the area it is entrancing to see people a century ago enjoying the same sights. The photo at the top is Kalambo Falls, where I have also been, and it was as impressive then as it is now:

Less touristy but just as interesting to me is a panorama shot labelled “View from Niamkolo Station.” The first time I tried to find the Good News, I wound up on the plain above Mpulungu and must have stood pretty close to the spot where that photo was taken (though not exactly the same). Since then, as you can barely see in my photo, Mpulungu has built up a lot more since then, but the distant shores of Lake Tanganyika fade away in just the same way.

Besides landscape shots, there are architecture shots. The below photo (as you can see) is labelled as the church in Kambole. Since the album spans about 1905-1910, this would have 10-15 years after the mission at Kambole first opened. USC Libraries has another collection of LMS Central Africa Mission photos, and this photo is also labelled as “The Church” in Kambole. It is from a different angle but looks like it could probably be the same building, except in the linked photo the church has a cross on the top which I don’t see in the above photo. The linked photo is labelled as being circa 1925, so another 10-15 years afterwards and has definitely gotten a new thatching job at the least. Still, pretty neat to see the same subject (potentially) a number of years apart.

Then there are some more adventure-oriented photos. The stern-on shot at left at bottom is labelled “LMS Canoe T’yika.” There were a few different canoes owned and operated by the LMS through the years. This one doesn’t seem to have had a name, but looks to be the same canoe pictured in the story “Afloat and Ashore in Central Africa,” by the Rev. R. Stewart Wright published in the November 1905 edition of the Chronicle:

And then speaking of boats, here are two more! Neither of them are in our usual area of operations for this blog, but are neat nonetheless. The ship on the left below is identified as the SS Clement Hill at its launch. The Wikipedia article differs, but according to The Lake Steamers of East Africa by L.G. “Bill” Dennis she was launched on December 21, 1906 in Kisumu (Lake Victoria), and she carried 250 tons of cargo and passengers in “elegant accommodation.” On the right is the SS Queen Victoria, a cute little boat not covered in Lake Steamers but which makes an appearance in this pdf. According to that pdf she was put into use on Lake Malawi by 1898, making her probably around a decade old in the above photo, give or take.

Anyways, as long as it hasn’t been sold yet you should def check out the album, there are more pictures of Zambia, Zanzibar, and Uganda, and it’s all super cool. And then someone should give me enough money to buy the thing. If you’re reading this from Globus Books then please don’t be mad at me, I just want everyone to know about this fantastic photo album you have.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This may cause strife, even within my own marriage, but I have to speak my truth: there is no better chocolate chip cookie than the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie. Nay, there is no better cookie than the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Right up front, you must know that this comes from the heart. I’m not in the pocket of big cookie and have no relationship with the Nestle company. I just have a life-long relationship with chocolate chip cookies. They might be the very first thing I learned to make in the kitchen. They were always my favorite, and I always liked to “help” mom make them, which involved eating a lot of cookie dough at various stages of cookie dough-ness. Eventually I realized I could just do it myself, the instructions were right there on the package. I could have cookies whenever I wanted. One time I recall making cookie dough just because I wanted to eat the dough and my sister snitching on me, like I was doing something wrong. But love can’t be wrong, she should have known this. I eventually got a chemistry degree and a daresay step one of that was discovering that I was good at following instructions for mixing things and then heating them up.

I realize that people have incentives to say that cookie recipes other than the Nestle Tollhouse one are better. And I am not knocking other types of cookies! I, too, will enjoy an M&M cookie, or a double chocolate chunk cookie, or a white chip macadamia nut cookie. There is room in this world for all types, except maybe oatmeal raisin, look I know I am not breaking new ground here on the cookie opinion front. But what really gets my goat are the fancy-pants recipe writers, who think their take on the chocolate chip cookie could ever be better than the original, the sublime, the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie.

I’m talking about the people who think you need flaky sea salt as a topping. Who create absurd shortbread versions, who think it means something to add browned butter to the recipe. Those recipe writers who think their version could possibly be more “gourmet,” or somehow better, than the simplest and most straightforward of them all. These people are blasphemers, who would who create Ecce Mono of Ecce Homo, who would look around on a perfect summer day with cloud-dappled skies and a gentle breeze and wonder if things couldn’t be made oh so slightly better by adding I dunno a wine bar. The Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie is already the most masterful mix of flavors, the perfect proportion of chip to dough, the correct amount of crinkle, and the leading luxury in an overwrought age. They can do no better.

I mean, there are actually tips and tricks to improve your cookie a little bit. But even as I say that they mostly boil down to following the instructions. When they say cream your sugar and butter, they mean it. Mix it until the sugar is fully dissolved. Add the eggs only one at a time, preferably at room temperature, to let the sugar and butter meld even more. The flour should be put in only a bit at a go, to make the mixture smooth. The one tip not in the instructions is to maybe refrigerate the dough overnight. If it has benefits, it is to let the dough homogenize a bit more and I think maybe it does something to the edge of the cookies when you bake them and the dough is a bit cold. But that’s not totally necessary, just an added bonus when after you make your first batch you stick the rest of the dough in the fridge to make the next batch the next day.

But look, I know I’ve gone too far here. I mean, I’m still right, Nestle Tollhouse is the best, you don’t need any other cookie recipe. But the joy of baking is in the process and the sharing, and it doesn’t matter so much what cookie recipe you use if it achieves that end. This brings me to my final tip, which is the most important of all. The secret ingredient that will make every cookie delicious. The first step in any cookie recipe should be to ensure you are making them with love.

Gardening Anew II

The Amistad Revolt by Iyunolu Folayan Osagie
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

It has been the better part of a year since my last gardening update and once again the rainy season is upon us, so it is time to let you all know where things stand. The dry season was actually pretty good for the garden. The disadvantage of the dry season is that you have to water the garden yourself, so that’s a morning chore I had to accomplish the whole time. The advantage of the dry season though is that many plants don’t actually like having gigantic deluges dropped on them every day, so a lot of stuff grew really well. The picture above is probably the garden at its peak. As covered in the previous post there are some additional garden boxes but they were trying to grow brussels sprouts which never gave us any sprouts for reasons I am too lazy to even google. But the above boxes gave us some pretty alright harvests. The chives and green onions grew well, though a bit slowly, and we have still a good garden bed of mint my super amazing wife likes to make into tea. And then our single most successful crop was basil, which grew really well in this climate. We made a lot of pesto. Some of our other harvests are below, which included calendula, purple green beans, and about a half dozen total cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes just didn’t grow well.

The two plants I have tended to the most though are the trees I am growing, below. On the left is an avocado tree that I seeded and has shot up. It’s getting to be almost as tall as I am and I am excited for it to be taller than I am. There is also my little lime tree. Both of these trees I grew from seeds from fruits that we had bought so that is neat. I am a bit confused as to why the lime tree is still looking more like a short lime bush, but again I am too lazy to google like, lime tree lifecycle. I just like growing fruit trees even if I’ve never managed to keep one alive long enough to actually see them bear any fruit. But someday somebody will get fruit from these trees and that is neat.

We have not been the only ones enjoying the garden. Thankfully we haven’t had too many pests of the type that will actually eat plants, but we’ve had some visitors. The bird below acted a bit suspicious but I don’t think ate anything. And if the rather large spider ate anything I don’t mind because we aren’t eating the same things. I had to remember to not walk through that web though because for sure that spider would have eaten me.

As stated above it’s now rainy season and a lot of the plants don’t really like all the rain. Although the beans and the mint do well the basil we were using so much of absolutely just wilted under the rain. That’s fact one. The other fact you have to know is that we have a gardener and our neighbors have a different gardener. I think our gardener gets jealous of the other gardener. We really hired our gardener just to mow the lawn, and him working on the garden is just a bonus thing on top of the lawn. The neighbors though, they have a much smaller lawn and also give their gardener more leeway. And the neighbors’ gardener shows up seems like 2-3 times a week, whereas we only have ours come once. All this to say that the neighbors’ garden, although not as big, is much more lush and has a wider variety of plants. I think this makes our gardener jealous. Often when the neighbors garden gets some feature I’ll discover our gardener has done the same to ours.

Which brings us to the most dramatic events of the past week. One solution to “the plants don’t like all the rain” is to build a shelter over the garden. Our neighbors’ gardener had built a little hut over their garden and put a tarp over it to shelter it from the rain. So our gardener started talking about doing the same. We were enthusiastic about this, for the sake of the basil. Except a couple things. One is that it took us too long to get our act together and the basil was pretty much done for anyway. The other is that by the time we got our act together our neighbors’ garden shelter had collapsed because the rain was too much for it. This was not going to show our gardener up. He was undaunted. He was not only undaunted, he was like, taking this as an opportunity to shine. The neighbors’ structure fell down because it was too weak, our gardener explained to me. We would do better. Still I was surprised to come home one day to find the man constructing the absolutely giant canopy pictured above. It was a very robust structure. The picture above was taken last Tuesday, when it was brand new. But alas, the picture below was taken last night. The poor thing didn’t even last a week. It’s not our gardeners’ fault, his structure held up beautifully. But the tarp failed. The tarp I chose. So I have let my gardener down and I don’t know how I will face the man on Tuesday, when he comes again. But I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, basil RIP.

*The hubris of man against the forces of nature.*

Tink

Our cat Tink died a month ago. It was sudden, and I wasn’t here to help my wife when it happened. I had left the day before and she woke up to find Tink unwell. Where we are there isn’t much veterinary care available. Our neighbor drove my wife to what vet care there is but almost as soon as they got there Tink was gone. They buried Tink near the avocado tree I planted in the yard.

We didn’t know Tink for very long. We adopted her from Mt. Purrnon in October 2021. We have pictures of when we first met, with her curled up on top of a cat tree. She was already six when she came home with us, so we never knew her as a kitten. “We don’t have her baby photos,” is how my wife described it. We don’t know much about her life before we met her, though her paperwork said she came from a hoarding situation. She had the name Tink when we got her, and we kept it because she would come when called, though day-to-day she quickly became Tinkerbell.

Despite knowing her for so little time it was such a delight to watch her personality change as she grew more comfortable with us. Mt. Purrnon described her as a “Curious Calico” and that was always true. Any time we brought her to a new space she would want to explore. We had planned, when we brought her home, to keep her in the bathroom for a bit to let her get comfortable. But right away she wanted to head through the door and see the new space, jump on all the surfaces and discover all the nooks and crannies. Her curiosity would always overcome her fear. At the vet she would be terrified, but it was still a new place to explore, and she would be out of her carrier and climbing up to the far reaches just to see what was there. If you held her, she wanted to be up on your shoulder, to give her a better view of her domain.

She was also always so extremely kind. She would, in extremes, hiss to let her displeasure be known, but she never lashed out, never bit, never scratched. We put her through some trying times occasionally, trimming her nails or giving her a bath, but she largely just put up with it. She forgave easily, especially if she got a treat.

Tink was so small, not even six pounds. I wondered what that meant about her life before she came to us, whether she had kittens young or hadn’t eaten well in her first home. Everyone said she was small but I liked to insist that she was perfectly normal-sized, lest she ever develop body image issues. And when she first came home with us she was so quiet. She didn’t meow much or at all. You could tell when she wanted attention because she would approach you but not quite brush your leg and vibrate her butt. In the mornings she would make her presence known, walking all around our bed to try to gently encourage us to wake up. Eventually she found her voice, coming into our bedroom in the morning to loudly meow for her breakfast.

The best part of Tink getting more comfortable with us is how she eventually became a lap cat. She always liked people. When we had guests over, she wouldn’t run and hide but would make sure to be in easy reach for a scratch. At first the three of us, Tink, my wife, and I, would hang out on the couch, Tink perched on a pillow on top of the couch for maximum comfort. One time, in a special moment, my wife and I were laying on the bed, her falling asleep in my arms. Then, unexpectedly, Tink came to lay on me as well for a nap, and it felt like my whole world was right there. Tink eventually grew to like us enough where instead of being on the couch next to you, she preferred to be on your lap, and family movie nights were just perfect.

We were excited to move to this new house with her. Tink was always an inside cat. She was curious of the outside and liked looking out windows, but I remember the first time we opened the door to the balcony she was scared of the wind. We thought a house would give her so much more space to explore. And it did, though for a long while she liked to spend most of her time on our dining room table. We tried to convince her otherwise, but through and through Tink was a cat. So we forgave her sleeping on the table, and as she got bolder we forgave her drinking from our water cups and, when we weren’t fast enough to stop her, we forgave her from snatching pieces of chicken off our plates. These are the things you put up with from the ones you love.

I came home a week and a half after Tink had died. I knew it had happened but it hadn’t felt real until she wasn’t there to greet me when I returned. We had shaped our life around Tink and with her gone the hole feels so large. I go to leave the bedroom door open at night so she’ll be able to come wake us up in the morning. I go to close the kitchen door so she can’t get into the sink. Descending the stairs I expect to see her there waiting impatiently to be fed, a meow in greeting hoping for a treat. Every box we opened she would inspect, using some for weeks as a bed and others discarding right away. Now we just throw the boxes away. These are the lingering acts of memory.

We loved Tink, with all our hearts. I hope she was happy with us. We were so very happy with her.

National Museum of the DRC

*The South Korean flag is because the South Koreans funded it.*

Because I was very lucky I was able to go to the Musée National de la République Démocratique du Congo! The lucky part was that I was in Kinshasa and therefore able to go. Getting to Kinshasa is the hard part. If you’re already in Kinshasa it is pretty easy and you should definitely go, it is great.

Although the institution is older the physical museum itself is pretty new, having opened only in 2019. It’s a really nice location, with a brick fronting and an open and airy interior. It is such a nice location that when I arrived I originally thought it might be closed for an event as there was a wedding (I think) going on out front. But it was very much open, and despite it being a Saturday is was rather packed with school groups, which is just awesome. It is those kids that this museum should really exist for and by golly it was existing for them. Though I suppose it is a pretty alright wedding venue as well.

I took a taxi to the museum and he was nice enough to wait for me in the parking lot, which itself was pretty neat because it had shade structures built of solar panels and a cool display showing you how much power the solar panels were generating. Paying for admission was a bit confusing though, because from the parking lot I actually had to go back out the gate to find a guy who took down my info and who handed me a slip of paper. This slip of paper I handed to lady in a booth across from info guy, along with the entry fee. This lady gave me a receipt. I then walked in past the wedding to the front desk, who took my receipt and at that point handed me a ticket, at which point I was I guess fully in the museum.

*A hall showing musical instruments from different cultures within the DRC.*

*Displays showing various household objects.*

The museum is not terribly large but packs in a good chunk of stuff. There are several permanent and a couple temporary exhibits, arranged on two floors. Since the museum is new the displays are very well done with explanations mostly in both French and English. One thing that confused me is I couldn’t tell at first if different exhibit halls were open, as they are behind rather large sliding doors/walls. The exhibits are in fact open, it’s just that the exhibit rooms are air conditioned while the hallways are not, so they doors are keeping in the cold air. A lot of the items on display were familiar to me, what with having gone to the Royal Museum for Central Africa. One object that it took me a moment to realize was familiar was a Kakuungu mask, pictured below:

What was significant about this mask is that the Royal Museum had made a bit of hay about having returned it to the DRC, with President Tshisekedi himself having participated in a ceremony. So I recognized it from the Royal Museum and now here I was seeing it in the flesh, pretty cool. The mask isn’t officially owned by the National Museum, as Belgium doesn’t have the laws on the books to officially return it, so when you go to Kinshasa to see this mask it is merely “on loan.” As I discussed in my post on the Royal Museum this is a bit of a thin excuse but I guess possession is nine tenths of the law and right now the mask is in possession of the DRC so that’s something I guess.

Despite my familiarity with a good chunk of the objects on display, a good many were new to me. We are interested in witchcraft and divination on this blog, so seeing the divination basket was pretty cool. I was also entranced by the collar in the below gallery. That sucker must have been really heavy to wear but I suppose that is the burden of status. And when I first looked at the Monzombo backrest, I thought it was trying to be a chair of some sort (it was next to some other chairs), but I thought surely it must be something more utilitarian like a sword stand or something. But I guess it is the sort of chair you give to dignitaries. But maybe it was for dignitaries you don’t like? Or maybe it is more comfortable than it looks? And then finally in addition to being fans of witchcraft on this blog we are also fans of palm wine, and now I need a palm wine cup and a palm wine cork or else my kitchenware collection will never be complete.

*“Panier Ngombo Tshokwe, Katanga Province. This basket serves as an object of divination. To obtain the answer, the diviner shakes the oracle and interprets the position of each object found there.*

In addition to the household objects it is was the mellurgy and blacksmithing displays that I was particularly interested in. They had a whole recreated forge set up with hammers and anvils and bellows and everything so that was very neat to see. Then on the wall next to it they had the blacksmiths’ products on display. The utilitarian objects that the blacksmiths produce, like hoes and other farm equipment, are impressive in their own right, but the arts pieces are really what blow me away. I saw more decorative and ceremonial knives and objects like the bells shown below are really what give you an insight into the mastery of craft that these guys had achieved.

Alas I am sad to say that I didn’t spend way too long in the museum. Like I said it is not particularly large anyways but the masses of schoolkids moving through the place made it feel pretty hectic. I am super glad to have seen those kids in the museum though; me visiting all by myself would have been rather sad. The museum isn’t really meant for me and I have access to places such as the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium that these kids might not be able to see. But here they were very, very excitedly going around the museum entranced by the tour guides telling them about their own history and culture and that was really great. After kind of zooming through I instead found refuge in the gift shop, where the very kind sales lady showed me the different crafts and postcards and souvenirs. I eventually bought a ceremonial stole covered in cowrie shells that was really beautiful before heading back out into Kinshasa. The National Museum of the DRC is really really great and really well done and is existing to serve the people of the DRC and Kinshasa and if you are in town you should visit too to see all the cool culture they have on display and to support their mission. And maybe get married, who knows?

Morocco IX: Casablanca

We were off to our final city, Casablanca. Before we left we found out some fun information about the tortoise in our Fez riad. For 11 years the tortoise had been named Paul. Then a friend of the owner brought over another tortoise and after it had been around for a bit they found Paul laying eggs, and so they changed her name to Paula. Oh, love. The trip to Casablanca was fine. It was another slow speed train, and we were a little mortified to discover that instead of individual seats we were in a compartment with four other people. The other people were lovely, but the mortifying part is there was no place for our large suitcases except bumping up against the knees of our fellow passengers, which to their credit were extremely nice about it (they took it all in due course). The final leg of our ride to the hotel was a taxi ride, made unfortunately exciting by our bags flying out the bag of the car as we headed down the highway. The taxi driver stopped and we recovered our bags with all their contents unharmed, though not without damage to our calm demeanors. Settled into our hotel (the Hôtel Central, which I’ll charitably say looks good for being over 100 years old), we got some dinner and settled in for the night.

The big tourist attraction in Fez is the Hassan II Mosque. And I will say it is big. This is very much its defining trait. Quoting from Wikipedia, it is the second largest functioning mosque in Africa, with a capacity of 105,000 worshippers and a minaret 60 stories high. We decided to walk to it from the hotel, because we thought we were relatively close, but we were not, it was in fact kind of far away but because it is so big it looked closer. We got a little lost trying to find the entrance, which turns out is via the museum, but once we got there someone there very kindly gave us a ride in a golf cart so we could make our designated tour time.

I enjoyed the mosque. Going in I thought it was going to be an interesting comparison to the Mezquita in Cordoba but man. I mean, it is. They are both mosques. There is a mosque style. Open floor plan, etc. But this thing was just on another level. The columns are gigantic. It has to be one of if not the largest room I have ever been in. Enormous. Colossal. Truly monumental. It is a beautiful structure. I had expected it to be rather plain, like many of the more modern cathedrals I have been in. But the mosque delivers, no expense spared. The walls and ceiling are covered in mosaics and patterns and the stalactite-mimicking ceiling in the corners. One aspect I particularly liked is that the mosque is built on landfill due to a Koran verse and the western “doors” open up into a sea view. The sea off Casablanca and the mosque was so powerful. The entire time we were there it has been nothing but heavy Atlantic rollers crashing into the reef. They come straight it off the ocean and curl over the shallows to bash themselves into the seawalls. Adjacent the mosque, the sea becomes part of the majesty of the hall.

One question that the tour guide got asked over and over is how long it took to build the mosque. When I was viewing some of the other large cathedrals and mosques that took centuries or more to put up (like the Mezquita), it made sense. It seems like you would just need that much time to stack so much stone and plaster atop other stone and plaster. But this sucker got put up in six years! With no detail lacking for the compressed timeline! We had learned over and over on this honeymoon that there are so many mosaic motifs that the mosaicists will use and when they put up this mosque it seems like they made sure to use every single one. My super amazing wife also pointed out in the more ancient mosques there is a more limited color palette but in this mosque they really expanded their repertoire given modern-day color technology. This included more pinks and purples and different hues of green.

After the main area we went down to the ablution area with the sturdy and delicate fountains that I would have liked to see in action. And after that we filed out of the titanium doors and the tour was done, but for us walking farther and farther away to finally be able to get the whole thing in frame. Before our visit I was pretty whatever about it actually but afterwards I was glad I went. My super amazing wife didn’t feel the weight of history in the Hassan II Mosque, especially as compared to the ancient sites we had seen, but I felt the weight of sheer weight in the thing. “It belongs to God,” the guide said, and it looks it.

But onto our final event. No trip to Casablanca would be complete without a trip to Rick’s Café. We went there for our final dinner of the trip. Lemme tell ya it was really great! The place doesn’t look anything like Rick’s Café from the movie in terms of layout but on the other hand they got the ambiance just right and it is in fact a really nice restaurant, and not too expensive to boot. We split some oysters and my super amazing wife got the seafood linguine and I got the duck confit and man that was to die for. Melt in your mouth. The waiters wore waistcoats and fezzes and the service was prompt. The piano player showed up as we were having dessert. He started of course with “As Time Goes By.”

And that, dear reader, was the last thing we did on our honeymoon and the last thing we did in Morocco. After dinner we packed our bags and went to the airport to take an overnight flight back on home. It was a beautiful country and we can’t wait to go back, hopefully when we are filthy rich so I can buy all the mosaic tables I could want.

Morocco VIII: View from Above

Reading this week:

Memories of the Slave Trade by Rosalind Shaw
The Lake Steamers of East Africa by L.G. “Bill” Dennis

Don’t worry loyal and overextended reader, our journey through Spain and Morocco is coming to a close. The morning dawned on our last full day in Fez, and since we were now experts on the artisan scene in Fez, and since there would be no other towns after this (we go to Casablanca after this but didn’t expect to do much shopping), it was our last chance to pick up any particular souvenirs we wanted.

One thing my super amazing wife coveted was a copper tea kettle. In our artisan tour adventures the previous day we had swung by the metalworking street (the damascener was on the saddle street) and although didn’t really stop to check anything out it meant we knew where to go. Many of the things for sale were like, large copper pots, but we found a shop with a few copper teakettles. We asked after a few, got rather high-priced quotes and so walked away for the moment to go back to the leather street. I had wanted a weekender bag but after poking around I didn’t find anything that I really loved or cheap enough to settle for less. But it gave us time to gird ourselves for copper kettle negotiations. I was letting my super amazing wife do the haggling though I tried to act unenthusiastic as a foil to help her lower the price. The most entertaining part is that when I pointed out the lid of the kettle she was looking at didn’t fit (I was trying to get the price lower), the guy just took it over to the anvil to reshape it until it did. The was pretty neat to see actually. We eventually walked away with the kettle and in my recollection we paid more than we should have but what that price was I don’t remember, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

The weirdest buying interaction I had is when I noticed a stall selling wooden buckets that they use in the hammams. My dad at the time wanted a wooden bucket for his blacksmithing purposes. The one he was looking at was expensive but here was one at a very reasonable price, hand-made I assume by the two older dudes who were lounging on the floor of the shop when we stopped by. I was eventually convinced that it would be difficult to a) fit a whole bucket into my suitcase and b) ship it back home to my dad, but on the other hand they had these very cute wooden mugs made in the exact same style of the buckets with staves and copper bands and everything. That was much more doable and I did eventually buy one but the dude seemed kind of confused about me wanting one and also I couldn’t understand what he was saying but presumably eventually I handed over enough money. Dad liked it a lot.

And that was very nearly the end of our shopping. We poked around for some slippers but didn’t find any we liked, so with our two purchases in hand we head back to the riad before setting off on our next adventure. We had gotten a thorough tour of inside the medina, so now we were going outside the medina. To do this we arranged a car tour and met our driver Sadiq at one of the gates of the medina. He drove us around to look at different things while trying to explain them. It was fun but a lot of being driven around to different spots, which is suppose what we asked for. First we stopped at the Jnan Sbil Gardens, which were pretty. Sadiq had us wander around them for a bit. There was a section with guinea pigs, chickens, and pigeons in cages for reasons we were unable to determine. From there we popped over to the Jewish Quarter and looked at the cemetery. We checked out the door to the palace (or more accurately the seven doors) before it was off to a panoramic viewpoint. Sadiq had the joke of the day when he called it the “parabolic viewpoint” because of the all the satellite dishes. That was really good.

The highlight though was checking out Art Naji! Man that was really great. My super amazing wife was interested in the pottery and they have a whole factory there and they are super impressive in the way that people doing a certain thing day in and day out for years and years are. We had a little tour of the pottery making which included a guy throwing a tajine in just a few seconds entirely freehand. Then we saw them painting the things and while the main painter had some measuring tools mostly everyone was just again free-handing the things and they all looked perfect. But the most amazing part was the large-scale tile pieces they did. I was honestly blown away they so were gorgeous and intricate. Truly, very truly, poetry without words. The helical borders were the most amazing to me. Our guide from Art Naji made sure to point out their secure shipping methods but we couldn’t bring ourselves to ask the price. We did check out their gift shop but of the things in there I didn’t get any because they didn’t quite live up to the song in my heart that watching the process had inspired (it was more pottery in the shop than mosaic).

Filled with beauty though we left for another viewpoint, across from our parabolic view and beside the Merenid Tombs. We had been ensconced in the city but to see it from above was a different experience. The view really is stunning. A whole medieval city full of people and life and you are looking down upon it from the Atlas Mountains and it becomes mysterious and distant and a mass of puzzle pieces to pictures you’ll never see. Perfect.

Morocco VII: Artisan Tour Continued

As the name of the post implies, our artisan tour of Fez continues!

From our brocade artist we popped pretty much across the street to see some tile makers. We had of course been admiring mosaics all across Spain and Morocco at this point, but now it was time to see them made. Fez, as a city, does really support its artists and artisans, and these mosaic makers were housed in a nice new workshop in brightly renovated building. Except what I found funny is that they still did it the old-fashioned way despite the new-fashioned space. You see I was surprised to learn that the first part of mosaic making is to chip all the tiles into the correct shape. The mosaics are made up of all sorts of different shapes, like 8-pointed stars and 12-sided platters and ribbons and lots and lots of others. I had assumed the tiles were just molded in that shape? Like there was a little star mold and they stuck the clay in there to form it into that shape and then fired and glazed it in that shape? But no, what happens is these guys take square tiles, like you would tile your bathroom with or something, and using a hammer they chip them into the appropriate shape.

So what these guys were doing in their large, bright, airy workshop was sitting in one corner sitting on cushions and facing each other, chipping away at tiles while watching YouTube videos as piles of rubble and the raw materials of mosaics piled up around them. It was very old-fashioned and extremely impressive and I liked it a lot. It took a lot of skill to break a tile in just the right way to get just the right shape, and to do it thousands and thousands of times over and over again all day, every day. As I was standing there they carved up a little heart with my super amazing wife’s initial on it for me to give to her. Really just phenomenal skill. Later, they will assemble their many thousands of pieces into a mosaic inside of a mold and then cement them all into place for something like a table, or else for a wall mosaic it will be created in place. Artisans!

Since my super amazing wife was interested in textiles our tour could not help but go through the dyeing street. This felt like the most medieval thing we saw, in that it felt most untouched by the centuries. Like I marveled at in the last post every part of the supply chain is in this town, so those weavers weaving their beautiful cloths are getting the beautiful fibers they are weaving with here from the dyers. They still use vegetable dyes and we popped into one shop with his simmering vats of fibers undergoing the process. Then to get rid of the leftover dye they toss the water into the street where it goes down the drains down there. With the shade and the cramped space it was really a throw-back and downright magical.

But this, finally, brought us to the end of our artisan tour because it was time to go rug shopping. We knew we wanted to leave Fez with a rug so this was exciting. Our guide took us to a big ole’ rug emporium where we were treated to a whole rug-buying experience. First we got to see how some of them were made; upstairs was a woman weaving a rug, tying knots directly onto the warp to create the designs. My super amazing wife got to give it a go and the lady was very patient. Alone she operated at warp speed. But then it was time for the shopping. They sat us down in one of the alcoves lined with rugs and started unfurling rugs for us to look at. We saw Fez carpets, “magic carpets,” and our favorite were the traditional Berber carpets. There was a wool Berber carpet that I liked but was more than we were prepared to spend. Eventually they busted out a beautiful agave silk Berber rug which we settled on. Our guide declared the one we picked the most beautiful of the lot though I think we was just getting a little tired of watching us shop (he denied it). As I went off to pay for the rug the salesman tried once again to up-sell me, now that I was away from my presumably more fiscally responsible wife, and I admired the hustle. Souvenir in hand, and heads full of dazzling artistry, our guide brought us back to our hotel and our artisan tour came to an end. It was really really great and you should definitely go to Fez and check it out yourself.

BUT! The day was not over. The tour had brought us to slightly past lunch and boy were we hungry. Following the guidebook I dragged us over to Cafe Clock because their camel burger is apparently famous and I wanted to eat a burger made from a famous camel. The cafe is an amusing spot. It is wild to find; as we walked through the medina I thought we had overshot it but then found a sign pointing us down a dark alley. We went further then expected only to stumble into the restaurant. We wanted a table on the roof and got it, bursting out into the sun and admiring the view. The best part were the cats, which were everywhere. The staff kept trying to chase them away but based on the results I think it was more of a game for the sake of us tourists than anything else. A beautiful calico posted up next to us for a bit which was nice. The camel burger was pretty good though I only got to have half of one; we ordered two and the second never came and we spent two hours there. In the abstract I like the thought of a long lunch, though I started to get grumpy before the burger which I chalked up to being hungry. Once sated I was still a little grumpy, so I think my real issue is simply that I am American and don’t know how to relax. Unlike the very cute cats. Also though on American-ness the guy at the table over from us ate his burger with a fork and knife and like, man. America really is the greatest country in the world and what the hell is everyone else doing. Anyway.

Our final major destination for the day was the Nejjarine Museum of Wooden Arts & Crafts, housed in what was once the carpenters’ market. No pictures allowed except of the interior courtyard, so sorry. It took us a bit to find the place but we eventually got there. The part I liked best about the museum is they had tons of displays of all sorts of different wooden tools that we had just seen that morning still being used on our artisan tour. History and the present colliding through the power of tradition! Other cool things were decorated wooden hammers used for breaking up sugar blocks, and I learned the intricate tiered shelves I had been admiring all over the city are called “marfa.” The crown jewels of the museum had to be the stuff on the top floor, which includes a funerary stele from tomb of the saint Sidi Ali Al-Hajjam in cedarwood, and 17th century boards carved with customary laws. Super cool to see!

And then with that, finally, our day was over. We were going to go hang out by the pool in the Riad but I got us lost (again) on the way back and after taking a very circuitous route we were too pooped to do even that. A lovely dinner at the hotel though and another beautiful sunset capped off our excellent first full day in Fez.

*Interior court of the Nejjarine Museum.*

Morocco VI: Artisan Tour of Fez

Reading this week:

Living’s the Strange Thing by Carmen Martín Gaite, translated by Anne McLean
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

Having rested well in the riad, it was time for our first full day in Fez. Fez is a phenomenal city because of, among its other charms, all the artisans that live and work there. Derek Guy at Put This On talks about the whole like, tailoring interconnected universe, where there is a whole ecosystem of people who specialize in different crafts that all operate in the background of any particular piece of clothing you wear. He worries about this system dying because people just aren’t buying the kinds of quality clothes that they used to. But man, it is alive and well in Fez. Everywhere you turn in the city, in storefronts and in little workshops down side alleys, there are artisans working on something or another, scraping leather or weaving cloth or sewing together shoes or chipping tiles or hammering metal. So of course we had to go see them. To do that we went on a Fez Artisans Tour that I can highly recommend (TripAdvisor here). When you arrange the tour they ask you the sort of stuff you’d like to see, and day-of meet you where you’re staying to take you around the city. After a little low-down in the comfort of our riad we were off!

One of the other notable things about Fez is that it is a car-free city (though occasionally you get some people on motorcycles), and so one of the first things our guide discussed was the logistics of the place. We had set off on our tour around 10am, when the city was still waking up, and thus we were treated to the wonderous sight of a garbage donkey. That is, there was a man going around picking up the garbage, and he was putting it into bags that were being carried by a donkey. A garbage donkey! It was great. As we wandered around we saw a good number of very well-behaved donkeys and mules so that was very cool.

The first artisan we visited was Said Akessbi, apparently the last person to make damascene in Fez. He may very well be the last ever, because, as he told us, he has only daughters and no sons. And all his daughters are in school, too. This was a little bit of a theme on our tour and was conveyed with some sense of sadness. Said was at least a third-generation damascener, having learned from his father and grandfather to take over the family business. To step back a couple seconds, damascening is the art of inlaying one metal on top of another to create patterns or pictures. We were told that he used to inlay gold into the steel objects, but that got too pricey so now he focuses on silver. He was working on a piece when we arrived (I assume he is always working on a piece). He scored the metal to help the silver stick, and then takes silver wire and hammers it into place. There is also a finishing and polishing process and creates just absolutely beautiful stuff, all in this tiny little alcove of a workshop. I bought a plate and my super amazing wife got some earrings and then we popped along to the next artisan.

*I loved the cat hopping around the vats.*

The most famous sights in Fez are the leather tanneries. They are in the far end of the medina, tucked through doorways along a street of shops selling, of course, leather goods. As you enter they hand you a complimentary sprig of mint to try to cover up the smell. That smell is of rotting flesh and pigeon poop. The pigeon poop is used as an ammonia source to clean off the hides. I made good use of the mint sprig though my super amazing wife said it “wasn’t that bad.” The tannery is quite the sight indeed. The central feature are the tanning vats, but our guide told us the whole system is a co-op, instead of one specific company. A family might own a couple vats in which they process their own leather. Around the vats were arrayed other leather-related workshops and tanning steps. The whole thing was so very old-school. Besides the electric motor running the gigantic washing machine, you could have been transported there at any point from the centuries and not noticed. All of the work was done by hand, down to the man we spotted in an alcove scraping leather using a gigantic knife he pushed with his chest and sharpened every few cuts. Although most of the leather is tanned in the vats, to achieve a yellow color they use turmeric (they used to use saffron but that’s too pricey now), and this is done by spreading the turmeric mixture over the leather by hand. The yellow leather is used for slippers, and every day there is apparently a 1-hour auction where the slipper makers buy the leather they need. They later auction of the slippers they make as well.

The next things we looked at were what my super amazing wife was most excited for: textiles! Earlier we had actually poked into a store where a man on a loom was making cloth; he showed us some looming. My super amazing wife was impressed by a rope system he had to shoot the shuttle back and forth. We inspected some of his beautiful cloth and learned about agave silk, which I hadn’t known was a thing (I thought they had been talking about rayon when they said “vegetable silk”). Also I don’t have a great place to mention this but as we were walking through the city we saw some other cool sights, such as a store selling songbirds (which seemed popular in Fez), and most amusingly a chicken stand with a bunch of live chickens out front along with two cats very intently watching the chickens. But that journey brought us to Abdelkader Ouazzani, the last man in the city doing brocade. Alas, this poor man also had no sons, but he did have at least one apprentice. The fabric was so beautiful and vastly outside our price range. To make it, the master sat at the head of the loom doing the shuttle work and working the pedals. Meanwhile, the apprentice controlled the patterns (I think). There was an elaborate system of strings he pulled, which in turn would tug on a series of overhead cords. These cords controlled the particular loom arms (probably not the right term) which came up as the shuttle went through, weaving the threads in a particular way. I could see behind the apprentice whole different sets of strings, which must have been the different “programs” for the different versions of the brocade. You can see why someone got around to inventing punch cards eventually for the whole thing. His fabrics are very popular for wedding dresses, though not really very many people buy their wedding dress, instead renting them because it would be so very very expensive to actually own one of these outfits outright. I was very jealous and wish I could man.

The tour was not over at that point and sorry to fake you out on like a Part II of something that is already Part VI, but to be continued!

Morocco V: Slow Speed

Our time in Tangier had drawn to a close and we were off to the second-to-last city on this trip: Fez! To get there we again took the train, though this one was not high-speed. The title is “slow speed” but that’s just to contrast with my other blog post, it was really a regular-speed train, I don’t want to demean the trains in Morocco. They also have high speed trains! But we didn’t take those ones.

To take the train we of course had to first get to the train station. The hotel was nice enough to arrange for us a taxi. I asked the front desk lady how much we should pay and she told me 60-70 (this is in Moroccan dirhams). When we arrived at the station he asked for 100, which I gave him because I didn’t feel like arguing and also he tried to give us a little tour of Tangier on the way (he didn’t go out of the way) and also also I was feeling guilty about if I had been tipping properly in Tangier so I was fine with giving him 100. In my notes I wrote that the train station was “beautiful,” though really I just meant like, it resembled a modern shopping mall. Still, nice!

Safely at the station we settled into our train. Since I’m American and my best frame of reference for trains is Harry Potter, it was a Harry Potter-style train. In that, there were different compartments with six seats each and no place to put our luggage. We had big ole’ suitcases for all the souvenirs so this put us in a bind and we spent the train journey with our suitcases between our news. The other people in the compartment didn’t seem to mind, I guess this is pretty standard. Later on a Harry Potter-style snack cart also came wheeling by, though I didn’t get anything.

I spent the train ride admiring the view. Most of the land between Tangier and Fez (we took a dog-legged route) was farmland. I was surprised by that. I know I had this same revelation when we were arriving in Tangier, but I guess I was still expecting desert. Though in Fez you look out over the landscape, and like, yeah, that’s what I expected. Maybe it’s just the particular face of the hills you see from the rooftops in Fez but they are brown and gorgeous and resemble the American southwest (especially the sky at sunset, the blue and pinks and oranges running together in bands across the sky as the sun goes down on the opposite horizon, just peering over the medina roofs and the hills and, man, this is why all those painters came to Morocco) and like that was what I was expecting.

But on the way to Fez it was farmland. There were a couple of men fishing in the little river that went under the train tracks, and lots of sheep and cows and sheep mixed in with cows. I saw people herding sheep over the rolling green hills and we drove by mudflats I didn’t understand, like maybe they were fish ponds or salt ponds or rice paddies? Seeing them I realized we were still near the ocean on the other side of the train and I could see if I looked over, but just barely in the distance. We also saw a lot of donkeys and multiple people actually riding along on donkeys which was fun to see. As we got farther south the land started to remind me of Florida with orange groves and palms and pine trees and the roads cutting through it. Also a good chunk of the land I think they were growing sugarcane but I couldn’t really be sure.

Eventually the land flattened out (though with hills in the distance) and I saw “ACAB” graffiti, which, solidarity, exciting. There were olive trees as well here and I looked it up on the map so I know south of Sidi Kacem we started to get back into hills. The houses seemed nice and we passed through clusters of towns with little train stations with tiled exteriors and one house I saw had a big solar setup on top despite being wired into power lines.

Eventually we arrived at the train station and a man gave us advice on how to avoid getting scammed on taxis and when buying things in the market. We thought he was going to scam us but he was in fact just nice. We exited the train station and found the guy the hotel sent to pick us up. He drove us to the nearest door of the medina and then handed us off to a luggage cart guy. Since there are no cars in the medina there are men with carts who haul stuff around, and besides not having to carry our own bags hiring the guy came with two advantages. One, we had no idea how to get to our hotel and two, and this is the real nice one, no one bothered us. Like everyone knew we already had a guy so we were just on our way.

The walk from medina entrance to our hotel, the Riad Laaroussa, was surprisingly long. We turned into a kinda grimy looking passageway off the main thoroughfare and through the door which opened up into a stunning courtyard. There wee tall orange trees and so many tiles and lovely fountains. Later we discovered they had not one but two tortoises. The front desk was expecting us and sent us up for mint tea on the roof as they shuttled our luggage up into the room. Tea finished, we were shown the room, which had a lot of character because the house itself is 300 years old but recently renovated. Unpacked, we could finally relax from the journey, and spent some more time one the roof reading and enjoying a fantastic dinner. While my super amazing wife took a call I ducked out to find an ATM. As I was exiting the Riad a guy with a small stand outside the door found out my name and tried to convince me to buy something. When we were there he posted up right outside the Riad (“we are neighbors,” he said), and so was our constant greeter during our entire time in Fez. Eventually I had almost decided to buy something from him but when I had reached that conclusion he was for once not sitting there. And so that was our introduction to Fez!

Pat in the World

Paperwork enthusiast seeking new frontiers of paperwork. Former submariner, former Peace Corps Volunteer. Opinions, thoughts, and comments reflect no actual persons, living or in the Navy.