Essaouira, Morocco: Listening to the Djembe and Getting Scrubbed Down in a Community Hammam

After two days of sensory overload in Marrakech, we took a bus to Essaouira to enjoy the breeze and slower paced atmosphere. We were able to walk down the street without aggressive vendors talking to us but some guys still shouted out Japanese phrases. One guy said to us, "You are very interesting. People want to touch you." I wonder if they know what they're saying sometimes.


The buildings are mostly painted in white with blue accent windows and doors.




The view of the ocean from the tower.








Some men wear long robes with pointed hoods that come in different colors. I wonder if the KKK got their inspiration for their clothes from Morocco.








This is what your friends do to you when you get drunk and pass out. I'm not sure what this dog did to deserve this.


As we were standing on the tower overlooking the ocean, a guy (pictured on the left) approached us and invited us to listen to him play music at a bar at night. We talked for a bit about his life in Essaouira and the types of people he meets in the town (he doesn't like the French because they look down on Africans and thinks that the Japanese are the most trustworthy people). We ended up hanging out with him and his friend at his friend's instrument shop and listened to them play the djembe, a drum typically played in West Africa. They struck the djembe with such passion, playing off of each other's rhythm as the deep sound of the beats reverberated off the walls.


Since there wasn't much to see or do in Essaouira, I felt like getting another massage. I asked the drummer if he could recommend a place and he suggested for me to go to a community hammam so I can get the full Moroccan experience. He called a woman who gives grommages (body scrubs) to meet me at the place. She was no taller than 4 ft. 10 and didn't speak English. I went with her into the hammam to the locker room and she gestured for me to take off my clothes. Then she took off her clothes. Hmmm, this is kinda awwwkward...why would she need to get undressed to give me a massage? We walked into the main sauna-like room where everyone was bathing themselves. Women (they were either nude or had on underwear) were sitting on the tile floor with buckets of hot water, scrubbing themselves with mitts to exfoliate their skin, washing their hair and pouring water on themselves. One woman was laying on her stomach getting her back vigorously scrubbed by an older woman. Perhaps she wants to clean me before she massages me? As I was sitting and getting scrubbed by the woman, I couldn't help but look at the full-figured women around me (plus I didn't want to see my scrubber's boobs jiggling in front of me). After she finished cleaning me, I thought I was going into another room to get a massage but she had me get dressed and then waved bye to me. I didn't even bother to try to use sign language to ask for my massage. This was the strangest experience I've ever had.


The next day we went back to Marrakech. The weather was about 90 degrees and the sun is much more intense there so we were in a bad mood and didn't feel like walking around. We sat at a cafe and watched people in the square.


I had some dirhams left so I gave it to the snake charmer so I could photograph him. The cobra was probably drugged up.