So we went to the story telling tonight. The first two stories were told i English by twenty something university students. And the last one was told in Arabic by a 75 ish year old master story teller. None of the stories told were particularly great. However, I enjoyed every minute of it as the story tellers were so engaging without having any audience participation. Each story was about half an hour long and by far the most entertaining one was the Arabic one which I did not understand a word of. Apparently there used to be story tellers in the squares working the crowds like monkeys and snake charmers today. But the last one stopped working in squares 7 years ago.

After hearing the above it occurred to me that Morocco could be a model for using tourist dollars to preserve cultural heritage. Most times I think tourist dollars require changing culture or Disney -fying things. I feel like Morocco is still wild and still it’s crazy self but the tourist dollars are being used to enable it to preserve some of its traditions by allowing tourists to view them.

All that being said I still really liked our g adventure stuff that was not Casablanca or Marrakesh as all that stuff still felt totally pristine.