El Jadida

From Essouira, Charlie and I traveled to the next UNESCO site, the medina of El Jadida. This medina is known as the Portuguese City, but I think that is taking things a bit too far; it is really a town, if not a mere village. Compared to the Marrakesh medina, El Jadida's is the size of a postage stamp. However, it is a solid Moroccan community unlike any other we saw. There were only a couple of souveneir shops, one guest house and one group of Japanese tourists in matching hats when we were there. Otherwise, it was full of young kids playing football in the street, Moroccan women screaming at each other while the neighbors watched, the wafting smells of bread baking in the communal ovens, kittens hiding under the bicycle tires.

We visited the underground cistern where the Portuguese stored water in the 16th century, walked the full perimeter of its ramparts and then its little alleyways, and poked our heads into the old Portuguese church currently being renovated (and in much need of it). It all took about 30-45 minutes. At the end, Charlie asked, "Why is this a UNESCO World Heritage site?" and then answered his own question by saying, "I guess if it weren't, and UNESCO did not invest money, everything here would fall apart."

I looked up UNESCO's official answer, which is that El Jadida is an "outstanding example of the interchange of influences between European and Moroccan cultures." By this, they mean that, in a completely Muslim community, there is an old Catholic church that no one has used since the Portuguese left in 1769. There probably aren't a lot of Moroccans lining up to preserve a crumbling Catholic church.

In the end, we are glad we visited El Jadida. But, we didn't need to spend more than an hour here before we moved on.