Lawndale Tribune
AND lAwNDAle News
The Weekly Newspaper of Lawndale
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 80, No. 49 - December 9, 2021
El Camino College Celebrates
Vaccinations With a Vax Winter Festival
The “Vax Winter Festival” event hosted by the Associated Students Organization (ASO) and Student Health Services (SHS) was a blast. Attendees picked up free food and El Camino merch, played games along the plaza and got their COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters on-site.
Reminder: El Camino College requires all students taking in-person classes, faculty, and employees, to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and upload proof of vaccination by January 3, 2022. Learn more at https://bit.ly/ecc-vaccine-mandate. Photo courtesy El Camino College.
Travel from page 2
will spot the ornate early glimmerings of the
future Spanish architecture—until you file into
a Mosque and find a vast, empty, contemplative
space free of all those Christian saints and
Marzipan in the Medina—If you love dessert and pistachios, the
Spot the foreigner—Le Marché aux Épices at midday. Souk is your sweet spot.
statues glaring down at your guilty conscience.
As in many European cities, the key historical
influence on residential architecture was
the tax collector. And the result can intimidate
the visitor. Street lights are non-existent in the
Souks and Kasbahs. Serpentine alleyways are
fronted with drab, claustrophobic, mud walls
that discourage official interest. Yet open a
door, and inside you find an immaculate minipalace
with courtyards, fountains, convoluted
living quarters, and ornate bedchambers. Such
palaces, or Riads, when converted into hotels,
are the only places we want to stay.
We are by no means done with traveling
to Morocco. One bucket list has us taking a
train from Paris down to Spanish Seville and
then retracing in reverse the progress of the
ancient Moors—a bus south to Algeciras, a
quick ferry-hop across the Mediterranean to
Spanish Ceuta, another bus to Tangier, an
overnight train south to Fez and Casablanca,
and finally, a (preferably old and rickety)
bus up into the Berber highlands of the
society like America. The simplest of Berber
traditions are rooted too far back in the mists
of history to reliably record an origin. Some
of the grandest civilizations have risen and
fallen into the desert fossils, bleached and
ground bones, and paving stones underneath
your feet. Poets and warriors, scientists and
emperors, pirates and priests, have created,
fought, trampled, and destroyed here. What
you see around you is the complicated, uneven,
and sometimes unfair legacy of those
vanished millions.
Colonialism in these parts arrived in two
distinct phases and flavors. In the first, the
Muslim Moors, as they were then called,
burst northward into Europe and swallowed
up the entire Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish
and later the French returned the favor, and
when the inevitable exit came, managed to
disengage without the clumsiness of the French
Algerian War next door. So, be it invasion and
colonialism, the long Atlantic Ocean littoral,
simple proximity to Europe, an ancient history
of wandering both ways, or educational and
commercial ties, Morocco has always been
both more exotic and more outward-looking
than its desert Arab cousins.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
arts and architecture. As in the Christian world,
religious authorities took charge of nurturing
the earliest artistic traditions. The Qur’an’s
prohibition on the representation of idols,
human or otherwise, gave rise to geometric,
arabesque, and calligraphic patterns of infinite
complexity. So when you walk around the
Medina and Kasbah of a Moroccan city, you
Atlas Mountains.
Along the way, we will hopefully develop
more of a taste for the cuisine. We didn’t miss
the bacon and pork chops, and it might just
be us, but the celebrated local Tajine makes
for a nicer kitchen ornament than a cooking
implement. At least the way we’ve seen it,
Moroccan cuisine lacks the angry kick of its
neighbors in Tunisia and Algeria, much less the
thrills and spills of the Lebanon and Istanbul.
But as we say, it might just be our Asian and
Francophone tastes outing us. In food, as in
everything else about the country, Morocco isn’t
a place you digest in one quick and easy—or
rude and insensitive—bite. As Mama used to
say, you’re your manners and leave room for
seconds and dessert.
Next up: In a Winter Wonderland—Travel
in the Off-Season.
Ben & Glinda Shipley, published writers
and photographers, share their expertise and
experience of their many world travels. If you
have any questions or interest in a particular
subject, please email them at web@heraldpublications.
com. •
Spot the bikini—On the beach at Casablanca. Colors everywhere, except on the orange salesmen themselves.