By Allan Siao Ming Witherick
A trip to a country like Morocco isn’t complete without seeing a Medina and the bazaars which inhabit it. Whilst it might be seen as touristic by some, for us it was a rapid dance through the crowded streets of Fez to see some of the things which have helped to shape and form Morocco and it’s cultural delights.
The first stop was to see Zellige creation in action where we witnessed the incredible patience and skill of the artisans at work on the tiles and clay products that we had seen throughout our travels. Most people will recognise these as the ornate mosaics made up by small individually chipped pieces.
We then moved on to a carpet weavers which demonstrated both the linguistic flexibility and the skills of the practised salesman. For those who have come across Sun Tzu’s treatise ‘The Ancient Art of War’, they recognise that it can be applied in many different contexts… Today we experienced it as applied during hard sales techniques as it allows the salesmen to push hard and offer very different ‘best’ or ‘special’ prices to their sometimes unwilling participants!
This in itself demonstrates a difference in the refinement of sales practices and how the passion we often see in the Southern countries reaches out in to other parts of life from dance and music through to sales. Something important to recognise where in the West we often mistake passion in debate with anger or the unwillingness to listen to the oppositions arguments.
That said, I did find myself rescuing colleagues who had been peeled off for the hard sell!
We then moved on to a tanners- a reminder that to get to something beautiful sometimes you have to be dragged through, well, I think you understand what I mean if I auto-censor the word! Part of the process of tanning includes curing the leather with ammonia, extracted in this case from pigeon droppings. As you can imagine this lead to a pungent smell which necessitated some of our group stuffing mint in to their nostrils.
The last stop was a weavers with fine scarves and clothes, although one wonders at the true costs with some of the quoted prices…
Interspersed through out this whirlwind tour we saw communal water fountains, various mosques including an innovation I was surprised I had not seen in a Christian church- a place to make donations even when the mosque was not open.
A number of the fellows managed the feat of a small purchase in our mad dash, but I don’t think a whole week would’ve been enough for what some might have had in mind!