The Old Medina and Jobs I'd Never Do,

 The Old Medina was build around 800 when Fez was settled as the first capital city of Morocco.  It is situated in a valley and the Medina seems to sit right in the centre of the old city.  It is an absolute step back in time and we were there early in the morning, before all the life started.

I guess the first thing you notices is it is none too pleasant on the nose.  We passed two King Bins full of rubbish and the contractors had a donkey with two side baskets, to take the rubbish away.  That is the way it has been organised!!  Looks like it might be a 24/7 kind of job to get rid of all the rubbish.  There are 1.7 million people living in a very small, very old section of what we would consider to be broken down alleyways.

UNESCO have moved in and they are repairing areas and have put in scaffolding to hold up other buildings that are likely to collapse.

nThe areas that they have done up look very nice and clean, but not any wider than the ones that have not been worked on.  It is a series of meandering alleys, doors and tiny corridors and we had to stick close to our guide because I doubt you could ever find your way back to the beginning.

The water was being taken from a well type structure that seems to refill itself from God knows where and since you can't drink it, it doesn't really matter that this guy is standing knee deep in it!!


 It is totally like stepping back into past centuries, except for up the middle of it is a bunch of pampered Westerners, complaining about the uneven ground, the donkey poo and pointing out health and safety risks.

Travelling with Americans and commonly heard phrase is 'oh my Gaard'  worse, travelling with Australians we have not noticed anything other than the facials, which don't say 'I love it'.

We found the very first Islamic University ever founded and this is in the heart of the Medina.  They opened the gate for us and we went from scum city Arizona, to a well tended, beautiful inside of the walls.  Then they shut the gates and we were back to the 1400's!

The most interesting and appalling part of the whole trip was the tannery.

We were taken into a leather shop and up a very, very narrow and low set of uneven stairs to a rooftop verandah that overlooked the tannery. The smell is something I cannot begin to explain, but imagine fermented dead things....

Each colour for the final leather is created in the earthenware vats, and each colour is made and fixed using natural ingredients with saffron for yellow, poppy for the red, coal for the black, lapis for blue etc

Down in the vats, in the fermenting dead things smell are actual people. IN the vats and handling the pelts, pulling them in and out, beating them, jumping on them, with no apparent problem with the overwhelming stench.

The tannery remains unchanged for the last 600 years, so........

I don't know what else to say. What a job!??? You must surely go home stinking like a .... fermented dead thing???? Ick.