Austin and I met Mohamed one afternoon in Imsouane which was one of the surf towns we spent time in this past December and January. We all spent time together in Imsouane and also in Taghazout. Mohamed invited us to stay with him (and his family) if we were to stop by Taza, Morocco in our travels. Taza in a couple of hours from Fes so we decided to add it into our trip plans!

We spent one night with Mohamed and his family. During the day, we walked around Taza and saw the old city (medina), visited a great cafe, and nearly walked the entire city. Taza is a city surrounded by rolling hills / mountains dense with olive trees and the city itself has a population of around 150k people. Some of his cousins were visiting from France so it was a packed house with lots of people to (try to) interact with and learn about. His family speaks French and Arabic and we do not speak either of those languages so Mohamed helped translate some of the conversations. Our Spanish did not help us here, ha! His sister and brother spoke some English so we were able to communicate a little with them. We had dinner with his family the night we stayed, some of his extended family that was visiting joined us as well! We first had a big veggie, rice, and tuna tray, then a roasted chicken that you picked at with your hands, bread, and dessert which was fruit, my favorite are always the oranges. Side note- the oranges in Morocco are absolutely incredible, so fresh and delicious. You can get a fresh squeezed OJ on the street for about $1, yummm! 

It was fascinating to learn all about a new culture, some of the items surprised me and others I had already learned about in past travels. Earlier in the trip, a Moroccan man briefly explained to us that men are able to have multiple wives. We asked Mohamed about it and Mohamed explained that it is true and that there are some rules in place in order for it to work. One of the rules is that the man must be wealthy enough to support each family he has with each wife and that each wife has their own home with him. Another rule is that the wife must agree and be supportive of the husband having more wives.

Something else that was interesting was the division of chores and cooking. Typically in Moroccan, women (moms and daughters only) do all of the chores and cooking whereas the men focus on work. Austin and I shared that we split 50:50 the cooking and cleaning when we were back in Denver and their family was shocked. When we told them this, Mohamed's sister and his mom lit up and expressed how they wished the men would help them! In their culture, if there is a sister in the family, the sister and mom will do all of the chores and cooking even if there are multiple brothers; the brothers typically don’t do chores nor help with cleaning. Those tasks are only for women so regardless of # of siblings and gender, it will be only girls helping the mom. We gave Mohamed a hard time and encouraged him to start helping his sister and mom with chores and cooking since it is a lot of work, haha.

We got a couple of group photos: one where we were all laughing since it was quite a process to prop up / balance the phone (which may have failed once or twice) and one additional photo that turned out a bit better and included Mohamed. In the photo starting from left to right is: Mohamed's cousin, Mohamed's cousin, Mohamed's father, Austin, me, Mohamed's mother, Mohamed's brother, and Mohamed's sister. Mohamed himself is in the second photo right in the middle. 

Safae, Mohamed’s sister, gave me such a sweet gift. She gave me a homemade, knitted scarf and it was even my favorite color! It was so thoughtful of her and was very special to receive it from her :) Safae is 25 and currently getting her Masters in geography!