First medina

So I really enjoyed the medina. At first I felt a bit ridiculous just randomly wandering around a place for sheer personal amusement…but then I got over it. I intentionally kept my camera and wallet in my bag. I wanted to just wander and see what I saw without putting on the lenses of looking for things to buy or take pictures of. It was really busy in the morning and you got pulled along with the crowd. To avoid getting lost I started stopping to write down where I turned marked by nearby landmarks (before red dress, after dried fruits) but after a while gave it up. I was also going to attempt the walking tour from the guide book, but upon failing to find even the first turn to the first landmark, gave that up too. But I still saw everything in the tour and more; I had a running commentary in my head as I passed souq after souq (“you can watch the metal workers as they finish platters frequently rented out for weddings”…“ the shaded trees in the henna souq”… “the tanneries make themselves known by scent long before you arrive”). There is EVERYTHING in there. Gorgeous leather work, gold and silver, dried fruits, fresh fruits, candies, spices, rices and beans, henna, pottery, beaded jewelry, fabrics, clothes…seriously, if it’s not in the media, it doesn’t exist. And all stuffed in tiny little shops in narrow little alley ways, each alley a little differently constructed than the last.
The hagglers weren’t too bad, relatively speaking. Sometimes they tried to follow me, but at least they didn’t yell at me and/or grab me. Walking around was sometimes exasperating and I had to remind myself to chill. Moms with little kids going at a snails pace. Teenage girls walking slow in conversation. Old ladies hobbling along and stop randomly right in the middle. Two friends stopping for a handshake and a hello….right in front of you, in the middle of the walkway. I could tell I was still in Uganda mode because my first inclination was to push and shove my way through, but I realized even though the personal space is small, they won’t just brush by people if it requires brusque bodily contact….so I wasn’t sure what to do and ended up waiting a second or two and then shimmying my way past. I got pretty lost in the top end of the medina and after wandering the same area for an hour (which seemed to all be steeply uphill…even when I back tracked) finally gave up and exited through a gate I had found earlier rather than the gate I came in by.