Morocco Report

This is becoming an international blog! Here's some stories from my sister in Morocco:

Hello All,
So this weekend we went car shopping, again. We can still afford the donkey, but not quite the cart... Olives are cheap here, cars are not.

My friend Melanie and I went to the Medina today to look for Christmas presents. It was a normal day in the medina; crazy busy and annoying in the pirated DVD souk (area for shopping, many stalls of the same type), smelly in the fish souk and lovely, sweet and expensive in the tourist souk.

Then we came upon something that we weren't expecting. In the perfume/hammam soup souk, we found an entrance to a new little alley, much darker and narrower than the others.
They too had a perfume called Ambre (which looks like a block of soup and smells like heaven), so we decided to see how much it cost. As Melanie was discussing prices with the man I noticed a young boy in the opposite souk mixing what appeared to be potpourri. As I looked closely I realized that this was not like the potpourri I was used to seeing in my mothers mini-crock pot. This mixture had the usual flowers and twigs, but it also contained new things that might not smell so good when simmered; things like rat heads and feet, and chicken beaks, and he was carefully cutting and adding what appeared to be a tail of a lizard.

"que-est ce cest?" I asked with a tone that surely said "what the hell is THAT?".

"It is a potion for virgins"

"WHAT?"

Apparently women who have no husbands wear a little poof of this mix around their necks for three days, then leave it in their doorway for three months, and then burn it and breath in the smoke, and viola they get a husband!

All that work and they are stuck with a husband in the end??? Seems like a crock to me. Just take off the birka and walk down the beach road and you get plenty of offers I say.

They also had the smallest chameleons I have ever seen (mind you I have seen 2 in my life) that they "bleed" and give the blood to sick people. (Melanie and I are going back next week to rescue the lizards, don't worry)

So it appears we have found the VOODOO souk. Good thing to know about I think. It freaked Melanie out a bit, but I am just happy that you can get away with a different kind of dharma here and you don't have to worry about being lashed for it. I mean I seriously doubt the Quran has any recipes for husband potpourri.

So this week I learned not to name my teddy Mohammed, and that dried rat heads will land me a husband.

It is an amazing world.

We do have 30 foot waves at the beach today, it is amazing. Can't get close enough to take a picture, but I have some from yesterday. www.flickr.com/chickenchickenwow.

Miss you all, come visit if you can. If you are unmarried I can hook you up.