What's for sale?

In Morocco it seems everything is for sale. The markets in the medinas sell tourist souvenirs intermixed with vegetables and fruits, bread, and pots and pans. It makes for a visual feast. Many of the artistic media can be found in everything from slippers and tee shirts to rugs, pottery, and tiles.

Gateways sometimes mark of sections of the market and in the crevices you can see ladies from the village who've brought some of their produce to sell.

One hallmark of a medina in the neighborhood and dwelling place is the communal oven. Families bring their bread dough here to be baked.

A larger communal oven in Fes. Each of those cooking sheets has one family's bread on it.

The finished bread is stacked on shelves, each family that subscribes to this bakery has their own section. They will come by later in the day to pick it up.

One expects for find spices in a market in Morocco or any country in this part of the world. The dark looking stuff is Argan oil used for soap, in cosmetics, and even in cooking.

The fish market in Fes is very large and very fresh, there was no odor of fish whatsoever in that large room crammed with fish. Moroccans do not like to keep food for long, so people come often to the market to get what they need.

You can guess this is swordfish. Not sure what anyone will do with the swords. In a time when we are thinking about over fishing and depleting fish stocks, we wondered if they were able to sell all that was there that day. We were told they did.

An abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables. Moroccans do consume too much sugar but overall do not eat much processed food and there doesn't appear to be an obesity problem overall.

Textiles of all kinds are produced in Morocco. The government is trying to encourage and maintain traditional handicrafts mostly through support of cooperatives.

Chiseling a tombstone.

The tanneries of Fes are famous and the only ones that can still be found inside the medina. While leather production is substantial in Morocco and produced the traditional way most tanneries have been moved to the outskirts. You can see then man working in the vat at the bottom of the screen. He moves the skin around in the color vat with his arms and jumps up and down on it to get the color really soaked in. This is the way it's been done for many centuries.

The different colors you see contain the dyes (all natural) for each desired color of leather.

Skins hanging to dry.

Small skins drying in the sun. As you an see this is right in the center of where people live and work. The smell was not as bad as I expected and they gave us mint leaves to sniff while we watched.

Moroccan carpets are famous worldwide and this is a selection found at a cooperative in Fes. Cooperatives work on consignment, mostly produced by women in both Arabic and Berber patterns. When they are sold the women are paid for their work. Some cooperatives help with advances to poorer women.

You might be offered a cup of mint tea in a shop selling all sorts of things and if you are, your tea will likely be set on a marquetry table such as this.

Pottery is a traditional craft in Morocco as is ceramic tile. It starts as dry clay.

It will eventually become a pot, maybe a tagine for cooking traditional Moroccan food with coos coos. The small one in the upper left corner is a small tagine.

One of the kilns for firing the ceramic pots and sheets of clay for tiles. First unglazed and then fired again after the color is applied.

Tiles are cut by hand with a very simple tool that needs to make very precise cuts to create those geometric patterns.

A sampling of some of the individual tiles that will go into the design of either a wall or a table.

Friday afternoon in Fes, the dyers street. Very quiet in preparation for Friday prayers.

A region in the area of the southern oases is the chief growing region for roses. Rose water is essential in Moroccan cooking and cosmetics. Every year there is a rose festival in El-Kelaa M'Gouna. We were fortunate to be there during that time. We expected something like the Boonville Fair with displays of actual roses, though the booths were all about the final products and we didn't see a single rose petal.

A weekly market that draws villagers from all the surrounding area.

Jews had a huge presence in Morocco starting in the 5th century. Another post will talk more about this history but Moroccans are aware of the connections that Jewish people have to the heritage in Morocco, especially Jewish tourists. Making fake "old" doors allegedly from abandoned Jewish homes seems to be one way to generate more business.

The turban was not for sale but Mohammed (the rug merchant and tour guide) gave us a demonstration. He started with 25 meters of cloth and created a turban out of it. Next picture shows him almost complete.

Olives of every type are served at every meal. They grow everywhere in Morocco, in the tallest mountains and in the desert oases.

No one can say Moroccan souvenirs don't mirror the color and pattern of the traditional Andalusian art.

The fishing boats are returning at the end of the day with their catch. It's abundant but who knows how long that will last on the Atlantic coast.

Picturesque though Essaouira a real working port. The walls date from the 18th century.