In our last weekend in Morocco, we took a day trip to the Fez Medina.  Fez was the capital city of modern Morocco until 1925 and is now the capital of the Fès-Meknès administrative region. The city has two old medina quarters, the larger of which is Fes el Bali. It is listed as a World Heritage Site and is believed to be one of the world’s largest urban pedestrian zones (car-free areas).  The  medina is shown below and seems to cover most of the city. @ibmcsc @ibmaotalbany #ibmcsc #ibmmorocco9

We spent a day shopping in Fes el Bali with our guide, Shahid.  He is pictured below with Jessica O’Gorman, Phillipa Hartley and me.  It seemed like Shahid knew most of the people in the narrow streets that we walked in (and there were many!).  I highly recommend a guide for exploring the medina.  It is enormous and narrow and you will quickly get lost on your own.  Shahid did a wonderful job of taking us to the sections we wanted to shop (more on this below)

Before shopping in the medina, we stopped at several palaces, gardens and mosques.  Fez is an old city, it was founded about 800AD and the beauty of the architecture is amazing. North America does not have structures that are this old with this level of detail.

There are many crafts in the city.  We started first outside the medina and visited a local ceramic business.  This business made everything from glasses, bowls to large tables and it was all made by hand!  The bottom left is a picture of tagines, a traditional pottery that is used for cooking in Morocco. The work was detailed, beautiful and way to heavy to even consider trying to buy something large and bring back home.  The visit did highlight a pressing need for small businesses in Morocco.  They need an effective e-commerce presence on the internet to reach markets outside of Morocco.  This will give them opportunities expand and provide living wage jobs for Moroccans.  This business did not have an e-commerce website.

We moved on to shopping in the medina.  The medina is divided into many different sections.  Top left below is a picture of the leather section.  It is where all the leather products in the market are made.  The top right is a person carrying a bunch of leather skins.  The rest of the pictures below show us in various shopping situations.  I purchased three large tagines and now I have to figure out how to carry them back on my trip home.

Finally, I leave this blog post with a couple of pictures with one of dear friends that I have made on this trip,  Phillipa Hartley.  When we first meet three weeks ago, we quickly realized that we share a common passion for gender equality and shopping (and yes.. you to Jessica).  I look forward to working with them and my other coworkers on prompting gender equality.  We have shopped ourselves out this trip, we will have to do so again in the future.