First Night in Marrakesh

After a long day of traveling to Marrakesh, we decided to go find some dinner. We turned the quiet corner near our hostel and walked into a bustling, local market. All along the street vendors were lined up selling vegetables and spices, the narrow street was full of mothers pulling along their small children, young men on bikes, and older women shopping to make dinner. I was so excited to be in this place, but just walking down the street bordered on sensory overload.

We made it out of the overcrowded side street and down the next, near Bab Doukkala. There were a few small restaurants and tea shops, filled with older gentlemen, which we later would realize was a normal sight. The smell of fresh bread and roasted meat mixed with cigars and the exhaust from motor-bikes rushing down the street. Around another corner was a larger market which was even more crowded with locals speaking in French and Arabic. I heard a phrase in Spanish and turned my head. The shopkeeper smirked when he noticed me looking, and started to call in Spanish, “Chica! Quieres cena aqui!” (Miss! You want dinner here!). I quickly turned my head back and stepped closer to Jake, not exactly sure why I felt so nervous.

If I’d thought that crowded plazas in Cadiz were overwhelming at first, this was ten times more. I could use the stereotypical descriptions of 'exploding colors', neon and bright, hearing snippets of different languages from each corner of the market, delicious smells I’d never experienced before, etc. All those would be true, but not enough to describe the awestruck, and strangely isolating feeling it all gave me. It felt like this entire place was pressing into me, everything demanding my attention. One of the reasons I’d always wanted to travel was because I knew there was so much of the world I didn’t know about and so many types of people to meet, and things to experience. But the actual realization that there was even more than I thought there was, and that it was even more different, was intense. Almost a lonely feeling, which was something I hadn’t anticipated. I felt Jake tug at my hand and the world went rushing away, I partially came back to my senses and focused on the sandwich shop he was gesturing towards. He noticed my eyes bugging out of my head and my nervous fidgeting, he looked me in the eye and said “Babe, I want you to remember how this feels and let yourself feel it. It’s normal and it’s totally okay.”

I think that feeling, and getting over it, was what inspired me to love travel so much.

One important thing is to let yourself feel through an experience and the realization that I was somewhere so different and ‘other’ was more shocking than I expected. I felt small and out of my element, and just in the way in this bustling local market where I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going. I’d felt awkward, and out of place when I first got to Spain. But this was a whole other type of out of place. I’d studied Spanish language and culture for years, now I was in a country where I had no experience with the language and knew little to nothing about their customs and social norms. Spain was different but similar enough where I could understand more or less what was going on. When we got to Morocco, the market was an onslaught of stimuli, everything new to see, hear, smell and experience. With all these new things and feelings, my first reaction was to block it out. But recognizing that insignificant, isolated feeling and understanding what was making me feel like that was probably one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed this trip so much.

Obviously, we didn’t experience an entire culture in four days, but we did get to meet some of the most welcoming people. People that I would have been so nervous to interact with if I hadn’t dealt with that initial shock of being surrounded by a different culture. We met an elderly hotel employee who offered to show us to an artisan market, a pharmacist who offered to let us stay with his family and show us their village if we came back to Morocco. We bargained with a craftsman who claimed to be famous for his teacups and had a great time learning how to cook in a Tajine from one of the men who ran our hostel. After that first night in a claustrophobic, overwhelmingly new market, I could have decided it was all too much and not really experienced anything I wouldn’t normally. Instead, by acknowledging and feeling through all that chaos, I was able to be open enough to meet and talk with all these incredible people and really experience a unique corner of Marrakesh.