TRAVEL | MOROCCO | GLOBETROTTERS MONTHLY CHALLENGE

We Snuck Through the Garden to Visit an Old Mosque During Lockdown

It felt good to get outside and stretch our legs

The view from our terrace where we were locked down during the initial stages of Covid in 2020. The rainbow creates a true spiritual sight if I ever did see one. Photo Credit: Jillian Amatt - Artistic Voyages

It was April of 2020. We had been locked down in our hostel in Morocco for almost a month and had only left the building a couple of times.

“Let me take you somewhere.” Our host said one day.

We still weren’t sure about our status and whether or not we were allowed to go outside. One other time we went out, we were ridiculed by some local carpenters in an alley asking us if we had our papers.

At the beginning of the lockdown, one person from each house was to go to the municipal offices to state that they were the head of the household. They would then get a piece of paper that they would have to present to shopkeepers and vendors when they purchased something. We were also told that the police, on occasion, would ask for this paper even if a person was simply walking on the streets.

This limited the number of people leaving their homes, hopefully containing the virus. Of course, our host was the one to do this, and he used the paper in the beginning, but things soon loosened up and he said that he didn’t need it anymore.