Stepping off the plane in Morocco, I was not super sure what to expect. While we did have classes to prepare us beforehand, there is only so much you can teach. When we first got off the plane and headed to find our baggage, it was already pulled off the baggage claim and set in piles for us to find our bags, which is something that really surprised me because in the US and other places I visited, you don’t touch other people’s bags, but I thought it was a nice gesture. After the airport, we headed to the mosque, and on the way there, I noticed that most places had Moroccan flags flying and that there were billboards with the flag on them. When I was discussing this with some other people on the trip, we said that most countries feel very patriotic to their country, whereas in the US, while we are all Americans and patriotic to our country, with the US being so big we tend to also be patriotic to our states. So the flying of the American Flag is mainly just on flag poles throughout communities and individual homes, but definitely less than here in Morocco, which made me realize just how much Moroccans love their country.
Once we got to the Hassan II Mosque, we were able to walk around the outside and take pictures before we got inside, and while it was quite large from the outside, I was definitely shocked by how large the inside was. The tour guide said that roughly 20,000 men can worship on the floor and 5,000 women in the balconies since it is separated during worship times. While the size was one thing that shocked me, the main thing I was surprised by was how different it was from a typical church in the US. As I grew up Catholic, I was used to typical churches that have an altar and church pews for sitting, whereas in the mosque, there was no altar. Instead, it was just a pathway for the king to come in, and then it led him to where we can pray. However, the area he prayed in was the direction to Mecca, which is in a mihrab, which is a niche in the wall that shows people where the direction to Mecca is. By doing the tour of the mosque, it really opened my eyes up to how different religions practice their faith and what are important symbols to them.
The most interesting thing to me in the mosque was the purity rooms that you could see from above when yow where in the mosque. When inside the purity rooms, there were many tables that had water in them that I was told would flow out where people could do the cleaning ritual before praying, which would be done almost always three times before praying and takes about 2-3 minutes. The most interesting fact that I learned was that the purity rooms have built-in natural dehumidifiers in them, so the chandeliers they have inside of those rooms never oxidize, whereas the ones outside do because they are exposed to all the elements. When I stepped off the plane this morning, I had no idea what to expect, but after the first day we have had so far, I am excited to see what else Morocco has to offer.
