We left Fes last night by a night bus that left at 8:30pm and brought us to the desert city of Mezzouga at 5:30am in the morning. I feel sad. Fes has captured my heart in a way I didn’t think would be possible. When we first arrived in Fes, I was coming from an intense few days of debrief from Mijas and was emotionally and physically drained. Coming into Morrocco, I felt uncomfortable. It was our first time outside of Western culture on the race and I felt on guard. I felt restricted, we couldn’t eat fresh vegetables or foods and we couldn’t drink the water. Coming in, we paid careful attention to what people were wearing and where they were. Women had hijabs and long flowy dressses and in many cafes, they were crowded with only men.
Our team also got sick and I got sick when we moved from our first riad to our air bnb. The first place we stayed in was called a “riad” and it was in the heart of the old medina and was a large family house, with multiple rooms. Before, people would live in these houses altogether, the mother, father and children – when a son married, he would stay at the same house and raise his children there. However now, families are becoming smaller and children are leaving their family home so these houses are not so full anymore. Then, these families were able to apply to use these homes as hotels, or riads and we stayed in one our first few days in Fes. While it was lovely and I talked about how beautiful and ornate everything was in my previous blog, I still felt confined. We were praying and reading our Bible in our rooms but didn’t feel free outside of our rooms in the common areas. We prayed as a team and came back together to see what God spoke and it was wonderful to get multiple confirmations that it was time to pick a different place.
We found an airbnb apartment in the newer part of Fes and that first night we moved, I got sick. Our apartment was nice but the cushions on the couch were itchy and the kitchen was old and dirty and the bathroom was stinky (mostly because of us and our dirahhea). That first night I had diarrhea and major cramps. I went to the bathroom multiple times that night and had chills and a fever. It sounds just like being sick, but it happened so fast. At that point I had been feeling bad for my other teammates who were sick but thought I wouldn’t…and then when it hit me, it was such a gut wrenching pain. The next morning, I had no energy to move and slept the whole day. I didn’t even leave our apartment that entire day.
Our place also didn’t come with air conditioning and we were right next to a mosque and the first day I was sick, the window I was sleeping next to faced the mosque and there was loud chanting and men praying on the streets. Also the temperature was so hot, it was hard to do anything outside until after the sunset so it was just an unwelcome, and uninviting first impression. I didn’t know how I was going to be in that apartment for another few weeks. In the back of my mind, I was just hoping to wait Morrocco out until the next month.
But it all changed, slowly but surely into our grande finale of the last few days. Slowly, I got better and slowly our team got better, physically. We were bound together and made it a priority to spend time together as a team instead of just focused on being out and spending time with others. I started joining some others on our rooftop to pray at 6:18 in the morning. And that first week of praying every morning did wonders for my soul. To roll out of the couch in the dark and in the cold, to climb up 4 flights of stairs, to sit, barely awake praying together for our team, this city and whatever else God played on our hearts, was so completely life giving. There were days when I had to go back to sleep because I was so tired and days when I couldn’t wake up. But I will not forget those first few days of praying together, half awake, eyes closed. And then to open my eyes and see the sky had lightened and the birds flying west and the sun coming up over the horizon. To be able to pray and intercede together and then after to see the magnificence of God in his glory and then to be able to worship / pray / read the Bible on the rooftops by myself was so life giving. We have come really far as a team this month and I shared our story of Melanie and her foot in my last blog entry and we started doing church together on Sundays – with some worship and sermon podcast steaming.
After physically getting better and growing stronger as a team, we were able to spend more time with our friends we made. The old man, Abdoul and his daughter, we were able to bless with a home cooked meal at our place. And it was such a turning point I believe.
I talked about him previously but he showed us these ceramic stores and invited us over for tea and dinner which we enthusiastically accepted but then it went a little sour, we were expecting to pay for the groceries and bless him financially, but what we offered wasn’t enough and we ended giving him more than we were planning on and coming home, I felt conned and scammed but we didn’t leave it at that. Andrew was convicted to use his money to buy food to cook and invite him to our home, we are took time to pray together as a team and all came onboard. It was so nice, some of us went to the store, others cleaned, cooked and then we hosted and we played games and Yassine (our friend who helped us bring Melanie to the doctor) and Imad and Marouane (our neighbor friends) were there and dropped by. And Andrew blessed him financially more and we shared our hearts. That was the last time we saw Abdoul and his family, but we spent more time with friends closer to our age.
We had an open door house – our doors and windows were always open and our friends, mostly Imad and Marouane would drop by every night and we would eat together and talk and play games. Before they would knock on the door or peer through the window but not long after, they’d just walk right in. And one with Jacob, Imad and I went to the rooftop to look at the city and stayed up late talking about our life and Christianity and Islam and then the next day we went to Ifrane, a nearby city, our whole team and Imad and Marouane and then explored the city together. It was chill, we got some food, went to a lot of parked and chilled and joked and relaxed.
We had other nights of dinner and our last night we invited all our friends over, Noura, Miriam, Ikram, girls who we met at the mall who had been friends since forever and Yassine, Imad and Marouane and shared words or encouragement for them. And earlier Lauren and I walked around and sat at a park with Halal, another friend who we met want had spent time with.
And yesterday, we were able to store our bags at Marouane’s place after leaving our apartment and then go to the mall to get groceries and say bye to the girls and say bye to the street boys, who we had blessed with McDonald and Burger King meals previously and then to Imad and the kids in our apartment who we had played ball with and then Yassine went with us to the bus station and stayed with us until we left.
It’s hard to leave this community because I felt like we were just living life together. It flowed so naturally and. Our apartment didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore, it became a place of laughs and memories and just life.
