Marrakech… still awesome.

March 17-18

We headed out early on Saturday for a cooking class that I had booked online. When looking at restaurants to eat at in Marrakech, one had caught my eye and when I looked into it further, I found out that they do cooking classes. Perfect!

The class was held about 15 minutes from the medina. So we jumped in a cab and headed for Association Amal. Association Amal is a nonprofit that is ultimately a job training program for disadvantaged women in Marrakech. Amal trains women to cook and work in other food service jobs. The organization started in 2013 when an American expat grew frustrated with all the women on the streets who had no opportunity to improve their lives. After talking in depth with one of the women that she would regularly give cash to, she was encouraged by the hope in the woman’s eyes despite the fact that she had nothing. Hence the name Amal which they told us means hope in Arabic. (But when I googled it, it said “charity”. That said, Moroccan Arabic is different than all the rest of Arabic, so maybe this is one of those differences).

The women in the program have to be very disadvantaged to be allowed entry to the program. Some of the stories we heard spoke of women whose parents have died, or who had abusive husbands and by leaving them are now on the streets. One story spoke of a small girl, 6 or 7 years old, whose father sold her to another family to be a house servant. She ran away several times back to her family, but they kept sending her back. Eventually she left her town and came to Marrakech to try to find a better life and ended up on the streets, pregnant. All of this and she’s still very young – in her early 20’s or something.

They accept a new class of students every 6 months. The most recent class had 30 women accepted and turned away about 60. So the need is great.

Once in the program, the women are taught how to cook in a restaurant kitchen, table service and a variety of other skills critical to success. They all take English, hygiene, etiquette and business lessons. The students both cook and serve in the restaurant and also help with the cooking classes. And each student does an internship with a restaurant to have some experience before leaving. The director mentioned that time spent with the cooking classes is some of the best learning opportunities for the women because it gives them experience with different cultures. Their ability to work closely with us and observe us at Amal helps prepare them to handle tourists in the real world. They are also given hints on how best to interact with foreigners.

While in the program, each woman is given a weekly stipend so she can continue to take care of her family while going through the program. Amal seems committed to helping any woman be successful who really wants to be there. They will help with child care and additional funds if the woman needs more help.

At the end of the program, Amal helps place the women in restaurants and ryads around the city. There are some restaurants in the city who have started asking for women who have not even finished the program yet, realizing how hard working and determined these women are and how well the program is training them.

The newest outreach that just started at Amal is outreach to deaf and mute women. As the director noted to us, it is very hard to find a job in Morocco. It is even harder if you are a women. If you have any disadvantage (no family, single mom) it is impossible. If you have a disability… there is no chance for you. So Amal has not started bringing in deaf women to learn skills and enter the workforce. The pilot program is going on right now and apparently the first two women are doing really well – better than expected and the director seemed really excited about them. She even noted that many of the other women in the organization have started learning some sign language to speak with them.

Amal was started with a large funding in 2013 from an outside organization, but is working to be completely self sufficient. They offer cooking classes, have two restaurants, and cook school lunches for two local schools to bring in funds to support their outreach. Their activities currently cover half of their expenses. Another thing that Amal is working on is becoming zero waste. The best example of this is the orange tree they have on the property. It’s beautiful and had huge oranges when we visited. That said, they aren’t oranges that you can cook with or make orange juice out of. So they use them along with coffee grounds and a few other items to make an exfoliating hand soap for the organization. Amalnonprofit.org

But the real question: how was the cooking class? It was great! The director that I’ve mentioned above is an incredible woman and a great teacher. She spoke American English after doing an exchange with a Cuban family in Miami. We asked if she suffered culture shock being in the US. She said she grew up watching US television and knew American culture before the visit. What threw her was the Cuban culture. That was apparently a huge adjustment. But she loved her family, Miami, the Dolphins and her time spent in the US. She was incredibly personable and she added a lot of value to the day.

This is her… super embarrassed that I don’t remember her name, but she was too awesome not to mention.

So Michael and I made lamb tangine. Tangine is a cooking technique where you roast meat and vegetables in clay dish covered by a clay dome cooked over charcoal. Awesome. It’s almost the mix of a stew and braised meat. Moroccans use lots of different herbs and spices including saffron, cilantro, parsley, turmeric and ginger. Throw that all in with onions, meat, potatoes, carrots, olives, lemon, and then put your tangine over the fire for an hour and a half and you have an incredibly easy dish that is delicious and rich in flavors. We love it. We not only love the food, but were enamored with the cooking process. We’re definitely buying two tangines when we get home. Dinner parties when we get back are going to be next level.

Here we are putting together the dish:

This is the vegetable tangine that another group made:

Then it cooks:

Then some carmelized dates on top!

The class was really successful for a few reasons. One, it was super hands on, but everything was within my skill level (which is low). Two, we saw several different types of Moroccan cuisine cooked and they made sure that each was done one at a time so you didn’t miss anything. Also, there were a few party tricks like seeing the main chef make filo pastries. We were in the back of the group so we didn’t get a good photo, but it is a skill that apparently few people know and the training is labor intensive. The pan is hot and has to be turned by hand while laying out the dough like a crepe but tissue paper thin. Apparently when chef taught herself she practiced for hours a day for months, only taking breaks when the blisters on her hand were too bad to continue. Super intense.

There was tea served while the meal was cooking and we got a chance to try our hand at properly pouring the tea.

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Did you see how pleased Michael is at his tea pouring skills?

And at the end of the meal we got to eat our super delicious tangines. Awesome. Now having uploaded these pictures, I’m realize the food doesn’t look that sophisticated, but I assure you – it was crazy delicious.

After the class, Michael and I headed over to the MACAAL Contemporary Art Museum.

This is the brand new modern art museum in Marrakech. Like it just opened two weeks ago. An article had popped onto my facebook newsfeed that morning about the museum (creepy that the internet knows we’re here, but also super helpful). What’s interesting about this museum is that they are attempting to only depict African artists doing African art through the eyes of Africans. Often African art is made to be sold to foreigners and tourists, so what is created often looks how tourists want to see Africa or how they believe Africa should look. This museum is focused solely on how Africans see Africa.

There were two exhibits when we visited. The first, Africa Is No Island which brings together the work of emerging and established African photographers who are working from a distinctly African perspective of family, tradition, spirituality and the environment.

The second exhibit was called Essential Landscape and focused on art that had reused materials. Much of it was turning garbage into art. Some of it was beautiful like this piece which was made up of antenna cable turned into a calligraphic verse from the Holy Quran.

And some of it was just straight social commentary on the waste and destruction that we contribute to this planet.

Later that night we had dinner at La Maison Arabe. It is a fancier ryad that was the first restaurant in Marrakech for tourists in the 1930s. A favorite of Winston Churchill who use to call Marrakech the ‘Paris of the Sahara’. I mentioned that Epcot is the reason why Morocco was so high on my “to visit” list. This courtyard where we ate is “Disney World” Morocco. The lights, the music, the tile, the food… everything was perfect.

The next morning we hung out at our ryad for a bit, making some plans for upcoming travel and trying to get a blog post out. The wifi was strong enough to get us through the first, but not the second. After this we went shopping. Mall shopping. Michael needed some new running shoes, so we headed to a new part of town with legit stores and no haggling required for a purchase. On our way back from this, we popped into a travel agency and booked a two day tour in the Sahara desert.

After dropping off our shopping bags, we ran over to the square to hit up a few more food stalls. Before dinner, we were hoping to find a glass of wine on one of the terraces to watch the sunset over the square, but none of them sell alcohol. So more orange juice and a beautiful sunset!

And the food!!

And a few more shots from when we were wandering around the Medina.