I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had two exceptionally challenging years back-to-back, but I’m still feeling tired a LOT. And I’m trying to listen to what my body wants and needs.
This meant I slept on and off most of the morning, getting up only to feed my furry companions and then returning to bed.
I made a late brunch of eggs with tomatoes and cucumbers, and spiced my eggs with what I’d learnt were Moroccan style spices: cumin, paprika and salt.
As in the evening I had planned to meet Mary to go to another dance event in the city with her, and I also needed to go to Agadir for my next Rabies jab, I’d decided to head in during the mid afternoon so that I didn’t need to make two trips in one day.
Once again, I called an InDrive from outside the mosque and this time got a lady driver. She didn’t speak English so we had only a little conversation in French – mainly me telling her I really liked the music on the radio – but she was really lovely and insisted on counting my change out to show me she’d given it all.
It still amazes me the Rabies clinic is open on weekends, considering it’s in a government building. This time, a random man was sitting on a chair outside the entrance. I have no idea if he worked there or not, but I greeted him and headed straight up the stairs.
I took a seat, as there was already a lady inside the office with the doctor.
Within a few minutes she’d left and I was called in.
Today was a different lady doctor and this time she didn’t speak any English, so I had to give French my best shot again. It worked, as we didn’t have any communication issues and she was remarkably gentle with the vaccine. I genuinely didn’t feel it. I managed to communicate this to her and her face lit up with happiness as she thanked me. We wished each other a pleasant rest of the day and I was in and out within five minutes max.
As with my first visit, I walked to the Souk El Had to take a seat in my tranquil spot under the trees with the cats.
I hadn’t realised this the first time, but this Souk is actually the largest in Africa. It’s got over 6,000 shops spread over 13 hectares and 12 separate entrances.
This time, I chose a different entrance and found myself in a food court area that was thick with acrid smoke. Most vendors called out to me but I wasn’t hungry – and nor did I want to linger as the smoke and crowds were too overstimulating for me – so I just kept walking.
Stepping down into the market proper, I found it was a lot busier on a Sunday than it had been on Thursday.
I made my way back to my tranquil spot – goodness knows how I found it – and took a seat in the shade.
This area too was much busier, with lots of local people sitting watching the world go by.
Opposite me, an older man in a cream-coloured caftan sat with a blue bag filled with dry cat food. Every time a cat or kitten came near, he’d sprinkle a little of the food for them. One tabby, missing a tail, received extra love from him and I swear that cat smiled.
After sitting for a while,I bought myself a sugar cane juice to sip on and explored a new section of the market. Here I did indulge one seller determined to show me toothpicks made out of Anise plants and the little pots that you wet to make lipstick and blusher.
He also showed me solid blocks of perfume, telling me that these are popular as normal perfume is made with alcohol and Muslims cannot therefore use them. He got me to smell black and white musk, Oud, lavender and citron and then rubbed the jasmine and amber ones directly on my arm. As it happened, both of these were my favourite of the scents.
Apparently, as well as rubbing them onto your body you can put some in with your clothes to wash, or between dry washing, to fragrance them.
I’d already told him I wasn’t buying anything but it was a really interesting exchange and they could be useful as a non-liquid perfume for travelling: I’m not one for buying ‘stuff’ so I’m going to mull it over before I return to Agadir on Thursday.
Leaving the market, I chose a new area to explore.
Spotting a dog lying outside a building, I instinctively went to cross the road only to see once I’d made it half way that there were maybe four dogs lying around a car on the other side. Fortunately there wasn’t any traffic, as I hurried down the middle of the road until I’d passed them.
I came to a large park, spanning both sides of the road. This was the Jardin Ibn Zaidoun and it’s a peaceful spot with paved pathways, picnic areas and expansive play areas for children.
Lots of local people were gathered in pairs or groups, eating picnics, playing with children or just sitting and passing time.
As well as picnic benches, there were large, curved and ornately carved stone seats.
I picked a spot on one of these, opposite a fenced-in pond, and watched a group of men opposite set up a game of Monopoly.
Behind them, a very small boy pushed what I assume was his brother in a wheelchair, both of their faces lit by wide smiles.
Sunset was approaching and as the time drew on, more and more people came to the park. Girls sat in pairs and gossiped; families gathered to eat and watch their children play, mainly with balls. There was even a teenage boy on a laptop at one of the picnic benches.
I’d been messaging Mary to confirm our meeting time and place and knew I had time for dinner, so I headed for the spot Anna had recommended me as a local breakfast place: their reviews had said they also are exceptionally popular in the evenings for their Harira soup.
In the evenings people have to queue to get a seat but, fortunately, as I was there relatively early I got a seat right away.
The seating is all outside and affords a great view of Mohamed V mosque, which is the largest mosque in Agadir.
I ordered the ‘Soup Complet’, which is the Harira soup, plus a hard boiled egg, a handful of dates and some chebakia, which are curled sesame cookies spiced with cinnamon, anise and saffron. That’s a whole lot of food for 15 MAD (£1.17).
Some of the reviews on Google had mentioned tourists get charged more, so I braced myself for this. I was the only non-local in the place (it’s a REAL local spot) and so made sure to use French throughout my interactions with the staff.
The meal was delicious and filling, and I enjoyed watching the people around me pour their mint tea by holding the little silver kettle high above the glass.
When I went to pay, I was pleasantly surprised to be charged the menu price.
I still had just under an hour to kill so I went for another wander and came across a place selling Msemen (the restaurant I’d eaten at had them, but they were a filled version and I’m not sure if the filled version is Sam-safe). I ordered a couple to take away and decided to return to the park to wait for Mary as it was a pleasant evening.
Not long after I sat down, a man started blowing a whistle and banging the gates, I guess to signal the park was closing. Most people appeared to be ignoring him.
Preferring not to risk getting locked in, I left the park and navigated my way to where I would be meeting Mary.
She pulled up in a white BMW with a friend in the passenger seat. I got in the back and she drove us to a wide road with bars and restaurants lining one side. We had a little conversation along the way and I asked her if any actual Kizomba was danced here, or if it was all Urban. She’d never heard of Urban Kiz, so said she wasn’t sure. To her mind, what is danced here IS Kizomba.
We parked and walked to a bar that looked a little like a cross between an English pub and somewhere considerably more exotic, due to the ivy-covered ceiling and arched doorways. Adjacent to the bar itself was an open air courtyard.
Salsa music was already playing: this was a free Afro-Latin social that started at 7pm.
Mary and her friend started greeting people as we made our way over to a high table with stools. On each table were bowls of popcorn and olives.
The dance space was small but there were, even later in the night, a maximum of maybe 50 dancers in the space. Many of whom had been at the event the previous night.
In the corner opposite the bar, a TV screen silently played football.
A projector was on, but only projecting what looked like red and green snowflakes onto the wall.
There was no DJ booth and I’m not actually sure from where the music was coming, or who was controlling it.
As people came to greet Mary and her friend, she was introducing me to them and the same people who had ignored me the previous night now greeted me warmly. Never underestimate the importance of an introduction!
I was introduced to one man, who apparently is a local teacher, as a kizomba dancer and Mary asked him whether there was Kizomba as well as Urban Kiz here.
He looked at me and said, “So you dance Kizomba Traditional?’
If you’re not a Kizomba dancer, ‘Traditional Kizomba’ is a term used to describe actual Kizomba, to differentiate it from Urban Kizomba, which is an entirely different dance but has appropriated the Kizomba name.
Since discovering Kizomba, I have worked hard to dispel misconceptions about Kizomba and so I didn’t have it in me to just agree with what he was saying. I therefore answered with, “I dance Kizomba, yes.”
He told me here it is mainly Urban Kiz but he does dance Kizomba too.
I was also introduced to a man who may well have been the DJ – I was told that he does so in Germany – but at no point in the night did I spot him doing anything that resembled DJing.
As I hadn’t really been sitting inside anywhere until this point, I was a little shocked when Mary and her friend began smoking at our table. Mary alternated between a cigarette and a vape, whereas her friend just chain-smoked cigarettes.
A lot of their friends, who’d come to sit nearby, were doing the same.
I couldn’t breathe.
Smoking – and vaping – really bother me: it makes my chest feel tight and I’m the sort of person who will go out of my way to avoid people who are smoking.
But I was grateful for their kindness in allowing me to tag along and experience their dance scene, plus Mary was my lift home, and so I didn’t feel I could just leave, as I would otherwise have done.
I was, however, having to battle intrusive thoughts about the impact of passively smoking for hours on my health.
I’ve since learned that there is a smoking ban in Morocco, but it isn’t always applied in bars.
The music rotation followed the same pattern as the previous evening and, once again, couples swapped partners after one dance regardless of the genre.
I did see Cuban Salsa once – there was a spontaneous Rueda – and Mary told me that that’s the only time people here dance Cuban.
The ONLY actual Kizomba song that was played the whole night was Mago de Sousa’s Carolina – and even then everyone danced Urban Kiz to it. And this may sound dramatic, but that hurt my heart.
Though not as much as the hurt caused by the fact that these dancers genuinely believed they were dancing Kizomba to Kizomba music; they’d been led to believe this, even though Kizomba couldn’t be more different. They know literally nothing about Angola or the cultural and historical context of Kizomba.
And that’s the danger of appropriation.
This also isn’t a Morocco-specific issue: this is what’s happening globally and I’ve had similar experiences elsewhere. Mary told me that ‘Kizomba’ has only been taught here in recent years. The dance scene is very small and the teachers teach a bit of everything, so they aren’t specialists. They also focus on ‘steps that are common across the dance genres’ and if they attend a festival and learn something new, they bring it back. Steps like cha cha aren’t taught at all.
The teacher in me sees this as the outcome of people teaching what they don’t fully understand to others, even though I also acknowledge that, sometimes, it’s better to have something than nothing at all.
And I can see that, just like everywhere, the dance community here comes with a lot of benefits for those who are part of it.
Because Kizomba is misunderstood here it’s also less popular as people see it as too intimate and sexual and they’re not comfortable with that. Though, I have to say, I witnessed more show than sexual moves. And there was almost no Tarraxinha / Tarraxo dancing. One lady actually kicked another dancer in the upper thigh as she and her partner were doing some sort of flashy trick move where she extended her lifted leg out.
Mostly the ‘Kizomba’ music was music I’d never even heard before – Tarraxo-esque. At one point they even played Kenyan Gengetone (which is more Afro House in its dance style) – and one person did refer to it as Kizomba music – whilst those dancing danced Urban Kiz to it. Another couldn’t tell the difference between Kizomba and Konpa.
Most baffling, however, was the man who invited me to dance when some sort of instrumental Salsa medley was playing. I told him I wasn’t sure what to do and he told me to just dance Kizomba. Puzzled, I said, “But this isn’t Kizomba.”
“Yes, you’re right,” he said. “It’s Semba.”
I told him it definitely wasn’t Semba but he was insistent, telling me that Semba is fast. And that he knew this was a Semba song.
At home, I wouldn’t accept dancing Urban Kiz as it feels so jarring and unpleasant to me, but I was grateful to all the leads who asked me to dance so accepted each and did my best to follow as best I could.
I did, however, get pushed backwards into other dancers more than once.
It came as a relief when Mary asked if I was ready to leave.
I paid for my water and waited for them to say their goodbyes.
Before getting in the car, we spent some time in a local corner shop with a coffee vending machine outside; the proprietor went to university with Mary and school with her friend.
Mary drove me home via the Marina, which apparently used to be bustling but since Covid many shops did not reopen, including big name brands – there’s currently only a Zara left. She thinks some are waiting for when a new mall opens to come back.
The Hilton Hotel chain has also recently secured some of the Marina land and she speculated that will improve the Marina.
They pointed out a restaurant that for years has been a meeting spot for locals, Nuit et Jour, and their favourite Spanish restaurant with views of the whole area.
As we drove past the harbour, they told me there are actually several harbours here: the old one at the Marina which is for boats. And the new one, which has sections for containers, cruise ships and industrial factories. The latter is rumoured to be removed, as the coastline is good for tourism. So the area can be used to build more accommodation for tourists.
I asked if this would be good, or bad, and Mary and her friend disagreed in their answers: the friend said good for the economy; Mary said bad as it will increase the prices for locals, just as it has in Taghazout. Locals used to go to Taghazout for the weekend, for breakfast or lunch, but now even the price of a coffee there is prohibitive.
They recommended some tourist attractions to me and I explained that when I travel I like to experience local life as much as I can.
“There is no local life here,” the friend said. ‘It’s a place for tourists only.”
Whilst I could see her point, I’m not sure I fully agree as, especially in Anza, there is very little tourism. I think she meant more not much happens here.
Dropping me outside Anna’s block, Mary said not to hesitate to contact her if I needed anything and I thanked her for her kindness in letting me tag along.
I may not have enjoyed the evening but it WAS an experience – an insightful one too – and for that I am truly grateful.
The security guard was watching as I emerged from the car. I gave him a little wave and he waved back. His presence is great from a security point of view, but I know had I been arriving with a man it would have caused problems.
Once again, it was a relief to come home to my furry companions. I’m really going to miss them.