How to Help Marrakech Right Now
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I was almost on my way to the airport for my flight to Morocco on the morning of September 10 when I got word of the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that had hit the area around Marrakech and the High Atlas Mountains late the night before. It was exactly where I was headed for the annual PURE travel conference, which every fall brings together in Marrakech members of the global travel industry for four days of meetings and hobnobbing.
To go or not to go? A similar question arose last month about Maui. Was it unseemly to engage in non-essential travel to a place where lives were so tragically lost? Maui officials initially urged travelers to stay away, even from those parts of Maui unaffected by the catastrophic wildfires—but then changed their minds. Why heap economic woes, was the reasoning, upon natural and humanitarian ones? Still, for several hours, I agonized about it.
I almost couldn't bear not going. So much about Marrakech is so familiar to me. I've been there nine times already (also in Fes, Essaouira, and the Skoura oasis). The first time was for my honeymoon, which I spent mostly at La Mamounia, the grande dame of the city's hotels. There is nothing about Marrakech that I don't love and crave and look forward to: from the bustle and traditional treasures of its labyrinthine walled medina, a World Heritage Site, to the chic shops, restaurants, and galleries of its Europeanized Gueliz quarter; from the uniquely Moroccan charms of its hotels and riads (zellige tiles, nejjarine woodwork, bowls of roses everywhere) to the sounds of dogs howling at night out on the Haouz, the tawny plain beneath the High Atlas Mountains upon which the city was founded in 1059 by the Almoravids, Morocco’s first Berber dynasty (originally as a military encampment and soon after as a walled city).
And how thrilling—at least for me it's always been—that just beyond those mountains, so gorgeously visible from Marrakech and over which camel caravans used to arrive from Timbuktu, stretches the Sahara desert. Le plus proche des pays lointains is how the French, romantically and Euro-centrically, have described Morocco's allure: "The nearest of the distant lands." Indeed.
I did cancel my flight. PURE hadn't been called off yet; but bets were on that at any moment it would be. And it was, as soon as the full extent of the tragedy—by far the worst of it unfolding in the fragile, mud-brick Berber villages of the High Atlas Mountains—became clear. To date, almost 3,000 are reported to have been killed, some 2,500 injured. (The Berbers, or Imazighen, "free people," as they prefer to be called, are the historically fiercely independent pre-Arab inhabitants of North Africa, and Morocco's largest ethnic group.)
Recovery up in those High Atlas settlements will likely take years, if not decades. But that should not stop you from traveling to Morocco—especially Marrakech. The airport is fully operating. The city itself, which lies 43 miles from the quake's epicenter in the mountains, is, with a few exceptions, essentially unscathed. Friends and colleagues who had arrived in Marrakech before the quake, were rattled but unhurt.
One, who was staying at La Mamounia, reports running toward the open area around hotel pool as soon as she realized what was happening: “The pool had a huge wave in it, the pool equivalent of a tsunami.” She and fellow hotel guests spent the night in the garden on pool loungers and towels on the ground, and were back in their rooms the next day.
If you are nevertheless anxious about the appropriateness of traveling there, consider this: Two days after the earthquake, at a gathering of PURE attendees already in Marrakech, Hamid Bentahar, president of the Tourism Council of Marrakech, addressed those gathered with these words: "Please tell your friends that we are still here. Marrakech hasn't gone away." In other words, "please encourage people to come." By that time, most hotels were already assuring the public on their social media channels that they are fully open for business, including La Mamounia, Oberoi Marrakech, Fairmont Royal Palm, Mandarin Oriental...the list goes on and on. A wedding is taking place at the Royal Mansour this weekend, guests largely from the United States.
Bentahar's plea is wholly understandable: Many Moroccans who work in hospitality have families up in those Berber villages. And most families in the region, the city and the mountains, are affected, in one way or another, by the tourism industry. A weak tourist sector won't help farmers, guides, shopkeepers, drivers, chefs, weavers, seamstresses, leather workers, artists, craftspeople, and countless others rebuild their homes, livelihoods, and lives.
Working to do that on the ground are a number of local charitable organizations, who are providing various combinations of medical supplies, food, water, shelter, transport, counseling, and who are dependent on donor dollars. If you wish to help that way, these three orgs are on the lips of trusted friends of Morocco:
Education for All Morocco
This remarkable organization, whose work I witnessed first-hand, provides chaperoned dormitory housing near schools for young Moroccan women who, because of the remoteness of the mountain villages they call home, would otherwise have no reliable access to formal schooling. The destruction in the High Atlas makes its mission even more urgent. See also @efa_morocco.
Banque Alimentaire
Founded in 2002 in Casablanca, this food bank works with more than 200 associations across Morocco to provide food storage, transport, and delivery to communities in need.
Global Diversity Foundation
This philanthropic organization has been working in the High Atlas for more than a decade, supporting its traditional communities in a variety of ways. Among the current priorities are temporary shelter and clothing (winter is coming to the High Atlas) for those who have lost their homes and, in the longer term, finding solutions for earthquake-safe traditional home rebuilding.
If you are contemplating a trip to Morocco, now or later, I highly recommend the following travel advisors, both of whom specialize in Morocco, have deep local connections, and will organize for you everything from the best hotels to guides, restaurants, transport, and excursions: Hicham Mohammedi Alaoui of Experience Morocco (email: hicham@experiencemorocco.com ); and Michael Diamond of Cobblestone Private Travel (e-mail: michael@cobblestonprivatetravel).
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