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Casablanca, Morocco
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Time of Visit: October 26-28, 2022
Casablanca is the economic capital of Morocco, home to the country's entrepreneurs, strivers, and hustlers. Although most tourists enter the country through the nearby airport, few stay in the city for very long, if at all - it is reputed among Moroccans as dirty, crowded, and dangerous, and my visit confirmed this hypothesis.
Coming from Portugal, the most third-world looking first-world country, it was still quite a shock to arrive in an actual third world country. I booked a hostel located about a fifteen minute walk from a train station on the outskirts of Casablanca and navigated my way through an obstacle course of dog shit, random piles of gravel blocking the entire sidewalk, trash in every conceivable shape and form, and busy intersections with no pedestrian signals.
I was a bit concerned about finding a place to eat at 9pm, but it turns out that Morocco remains alive well into the night since cafes and restaurants have absurdly long hours of operation. I guess you can do that when the minimum wage is less than $2/hour.
The next morning, I walked about 10 minutes to the newly opened tram station that connected the nearby heavy rail station with the city center. It cost 7dh ($0.70) for a clean, smooth, and safe ride on a German-built tram. (I took a picture of the tram, but a station security guard made me delete it - it was only later that I realized it was because he was in the picture.)
I got off the tram at the United Nations plaza right in the center of downtown. The air was thick with pollution from rush hour vehicle exhaust and breathing hurt a little. I wonder if you can get used to it.
Unlike most big-city downtowns, Casablanca makes no attempt to project a veneer of order or civility. Cars are triple-parked on both sides of the road, creating one-way bottlenecks; trash is everywhere; deformed strays limp around between cafes, trying their best to live another day. Tourists are scarce in the busiest quarter of Morocco's busiest city.
A wide boulevard segregates the colonial-era casas blancas from the medina: the dense labyrinth of shops and homes at the center of every Moroccan city.
The commercial part of the medina largely consists of unscrupulous merchants hawking cheap goods drop-shipped from Taobao. Step into the maze beyond, though, and a picture of local life begins to emerge.
Next to the medina is a neighborhood so dense that the streets on Google Maps overlap with one another. Although it's undoubtedly one of the poorest places in the city, the streets were surprisingly clean and the residents kind - in the span of half an hour, I received a few "welcome to Morocco"s and "ni hao"s, and a lot of kids whispering "chinois" until I smiled and waved to demonstrate that I was, in fact, human - and then they switched to French with polite "ca va"s.
Asian-Americans often express grievances over unsolicited "ni hao"s abroad, but I don't really mind. Rarely is a "ni hao" expressed with any ill will: rather, it's usually just someone reacting with polite curiosity to a novelty. Uneducated people in homogeneous societies assume that other countries are equally homogeneous and that any East Asian-looking person is from China - and what better way to greet them than with their own language? If anything, I think it's nice of people to throw out a "ni hao", as long as it's not a group of snickering teenage boys obviously trying to get a rise out of you, which I've only experienced once (and I've received a lot of ni haos).
The poor, dense neighborhood is abruptly cut off by a wide boulevard as one walks towards the Atlantic; on the other side of the boulevard is a group of high-rise apartment buildings with ocean (and slum) views.
The only tourist attraction in the city is the immense Hassan II mosque, bankrolled by various Muslim donors and organizations from across the world. It's a good single attraction to have.
I went for a sunset walk along the beach at the corniche - a word synonymous with class and wealth everywhere in Morocco. Even here, however, trash is strewn everywhere. The sunset illuminated a vaguely apocalyptic scene of polluted air and polluted ground.
