Raissa Kelly, the Beautiful French Woman Singing in Berber

Raissa Kelly

Morocco has always attracted genuine lovers of Moroccan culture and Raissa Kelly is a true lover. She is French in origin and is considered a great Berber singer, even by the Berber people and that says it all. As a Moroccan listening to her for the first time, I feel her sincerity in embracing such a rich culture as well as  her love for this rich heritage and its beautiful language.

I enjoyed listening to her and I hope you too will enjoy listening to her:

- Raissa Kelly # 1

- Raissa Kelly # 2

When Originality Fades Away and Mediocrity Fills our Everyday World...

Today more than ever before, it is the mediocrity and the lack of originality that fills our air.

Call them the pseudo-thinkers or the lazy-thinkers. But, while both names fit them so well, I believe they are business people more than anything else. Certainly, they are dishonest and unethical too.

Because they can't think or come up with their own ideas, therefore, they find it so easy to steal ideas from other people & blogs and then repackage them and claim them as theirs. All for the money and of course satisfying their bloody ego.

What is even more repugnant, it is that these pseudo-lazy-fraudulent-thinkers are well known authors, who wrote many books in the past.

Maybe, our world is encouraging us to become more manipulative than innovative people!

Anyway, their publishers should be the ones really to blame... How could they make such bad choices and expose these people to the readers/public as dignified authors, without detecting how flawed they actually are?

I am aware mediocrity had always existed, but it is more flagrant nowadays than ever before, because of the internet and new media. And while it is easy to steal ideas from others, it is so easy to find out who stole your ideas.

We should all know by now how much the world is becoming smaller and smaller, and certainly how much the mediocrity is becoming greater and greater!

Shopping the Moroccan Way - Buying Fresh Chicken..

In Morocco, most traditional families are still buying chicken the old fashioned way. You choose your live chicken then you go to do the rest of the shopping. When you come back the chicken is ready. That was just what I did with my brother and Zachary.

After parking the car, we walked to the chicken area of the market. Zachary had to choose and catch the chickens. Yes, you read it right, Zachary had to catch the chicken. Zachary was all smiles, as you can imagine, for an Australian boy to have the opportunity of catching live chickens. The Man weighed the chickens and told us the price and to come back in half an hour.

Weighing the Chickens

After doing the rest of the shopping: buying the freshest herbs, vegetables and fruits, we went back to pick up our four chickens. Ready in two black plastic bags and waiting for us. Then, the man gave Zachary half a dozen fresh eggs. It was a gift to the boy. Generosity is just part of Moroccan culture.

Happy Zachary Showing his Free Eggs

Once home, the chickens were handed to my sister-in-law. Around two hours later, we were served this magnificent dish:  A Moroccan chicken, preserved lemon and olive tagine. It was divine.

Once there Were Four Chickens.... cooked by my Sister-in-Law

This is an everyday routine in traditional Moroccan family life...

Steaming a Whole Lamb in Morocco

It was Sunday and it was pouring of rain. I was with my brother and my sister in law. We were hungry and we decided to have lunch. We stopped at this butcher-restaurant. My brother seemed to know the owner.

Steaming a Whole Lamb

You choose your meat and they barbecue it for you. We opted for kafta brochettes accompanied with fresh mint tea.

Genuine Moroccan Lifestyle

                                      

The atmosphere was genuine and certainly not touristic. They were only Moroccan families having a Sunday lunch out. It felt really homely and with a great sense of community. It was the Morocco I knew when I was living there more than thirty years ago. Genuine people getting on with their everyday life. I am glad the simple way of life still exists far removed from the artificial one that the guide books and bloggers like to fill our heads with…..

Blogs about Morocco fanning only hot air...

When stories are told for the sole sake of making money, then these stories are more than likely to be full of hot air. Stories are told again and again, to the point they sound like they are told in slow motion. Yawns. Anybody can host a blog nowadays. Everybody can attest and advance hot air. Everybody can have an audience and manipulate it as they wish. Hot air artists have blogs too. They keep telling us how wonderful, amazing and unique they are.
Indeed, the world is more and more a confusing place today. Pure hot air is packaged to feed the audience. A few photos with nonsensical captions, boring and stereotyped stories and here you go, you can captivate an audience. They throw in a few exotic Moroccan recipes as if they were theirs. They publish articles about the Moroccan elections. They publish stories about the well being of animals in Morocco. And, what about the human beings, I mean the Moroccan citizens who, when they are very sick, they can't find a bed at the public hospital. What about their story?
I forgot, these bloggers are only after easy fame and money.
Indeed, the money is doing the talking. Writing only for money, sorry, I meant regurgitating stories...
Shame on the hypocrites and dishonest bloggers who are exploiting a genuine culture.

When Moroccan Lifestyle is reported by tourists...

... it just doesn't sound right and above all the TRUTH is lost in translation.
The big question remains, how can a non Moroccan report and reflect on such a genuine, rich, ancient and subtle culture?
Some tourists and temporary residents think they can, but do they really? Personally, I don't think so.
Moroccan culture is such a unique, generous and rich culture.
The Moroccan language and the body language are so unique that I can't see a non Moroccan understanding/getting it. It makes it even harder when we know that the slang and the accent vary from one region to another, without mentioning the sense of humor. Therefore, whatever they write misses the point.
Yes, they can be paid by Google for the number of hits to their respective blogs or have sponsors all over their blogs, but they will never capture the truth about Moroccan lifestyle and its people. To do so, you need to speak/write from the heart and certainly not just from the keyboard.
Again, making money on Moroccan culture by writing nonsense interpretations and pretending to know it is an absolute fraud.
It sounds to me more and more like they are trying to sell a POSTCARD of Morocco for money than telling the absolute TRUTH. I believe, they only contribute to the ripping the soul out of this genuine Moroccan culture, or what is left of it.
Do these sharks really care? No, but I do and I will keep painting them just the way they are: Opportunists, narcissistic and materialistic... etc
I will be the uncompromising and punishing eye, because compromising with this new breed is nothing more than lying and letting down a genuine and beautiful culture.

The Woman Selling Snails in Morocco

The Woman Selling Snails

We all know that Morocco is a great touristic place because of its colorful, ancient and rich history. Today I wanted to write about this photo I took while visiting Morocco in early 2011, it shows another side….

I called the photo "The Woman Selling Snails". My point is that there are so many different ways to look at this photo, depending if you are Moroccan, a tourist or just a computer onlooker.

Tourists will just adore the scene and will see it with only one eye and certainly take so many pictures, as I did.

But, there is much more to this picture than just the beauty of the picture. This picture reflects for me sadness and sorrow as well as profound courage.

Indeed, you can weep for the woman at the same time admiring her courage. You can weep for the social injustice. For what life can throw at you in this Land and it all depends on which side of the fence you are. 

In Morocco you can be doing it so hard just to survive just as easily as you can be driven around every day doing nothing by a chauffeur in a luxurious car.

It was morning in the old market of Casablanca. It was pouring with rain and the footpaths were muddy. It smelled of the chicken and rabbit excrement all around her. This old woman was sitting in the middle of the footpath and didn't even try to escape the rain. The snails, on the other hand, were trying to do just that, escape the rain and the boxes. The woman was confronting the rain, the mud and the smells because she had to sell snails so she can make ends meet.

As I have been living in the West for thirty years, I know that if the Woman Selling Snails was  living in a Western country, she would be sitting at home in the warmth, with probably her grandchildren and close friends, enjoying life, as you do when you are old. Here, she has to work to feed her family at home to survive...