Morocco Bound!

Hey everyone, Kevin Simon ('12) here. I'm part of team Morocco, a new ADE team working with farmers in rural Morocco to increase their economic performance and working to increase cell phone accessibility for illiterate mobile users. We are in Tangiers now, and are looking forward to two productive weeks of kicking a**, taking names and refining our venture ideas to combat the conditions of poverty!

This adventure began two days ago with a glorious 2.5 takeoffs. Our first flight took us from familiar Logan international in Boston to the more foreign Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. There we enjoyed the French cuisine of macarons, quiche, and croissants during our five hour layover safely from the inside of terminal F while we rested and planned more for the weeks to come. Takeoff 1.5 came when we came into land in foggy Rabat. Our pilot realized that we were closer to the ground than the pilot anticipated and we flew to Casablanca for a safer landing, bringing us to 2.5 takeoffs. I was sound asleep for the last landing and a half, but according to the others on this plane it was quite frightening. Fortunately, the pilot assured us that it was 'normal' procedure.

A bus ride from Casablanca to Rabat and a few hours of delay later, we made it into our hotel and regrouped with some of our awesome partners at ENIM (l'Ecole Nationale de l'Industrie Minerales) for a later dinner including shawerma and tagines.

An olive shop (yum!) inside the old medina at Tangiers

Today we took a cultural excursion. We were invited by one of our Moroccan teammates to Tangiers for a phenomenal home-cooked lunch and her sister's wedding. On our way to lunch, Preeta and I managed to get ourselves kicked out of a cemetery we wandered into and took pictures of. It turns out that 'sacre' means 'this place is sacred, you shouldn't be wandering around here like dumb tourists.' Who would have thought? Because the wedding was not mixed gender (yes, some things are indeed done differently in other parts of the world) the women on our team had a rich cultural evening that they will be posting about later. This left Bennett, Oscar and myself to explore the city of Tangiers to soak up the local culture, do some market research and drink mint tea at the top of the kasba (castle) before retiring to bed later than we would like.

Oscar, Bennett and me enjoying tea on top of the kasba

The architecture and landscapes of this country are nothing short of magical. These next couple of weeks are going to be great!

NOTE: Post a bit delayed due to technical issues (curse you, iPhoto)