Saidia Week One

So, the Saidia craft fair has been officially up and running for about 6 days, although the tents actually went up late, as can often be the case with events here, so we’ve really only had 4 full nights of work. The festival itself is running from 5pm-midnight, so daytime has been freed up for me to go swimming and sunburn all the parts of my body that haven’t seen the light of day for nearly a year! Beaches are crowded, and the water and currents have been suprisingly rough (but fun) for this to be the Mediterranean. When you head towards the eastern end of the beach, you can see the Algerian border post -- not allowed to cross!

Since Fatima and I didn’t come with a lot of products, we opted to share a tent with Halim, an artisan from the town of Boujaad, which worked out nicely for us in that it created a good aesthetic balance in our tent set-up without adding a lot of product-specific competition. We’re still struggling with sales, but after feeling a little down on things the first day, Fatima began to make the most of it, meeting other artisans, getting product ideas, and even consulting with Halim, who has a really sophisticated sense of aesthetics, color, etc.

Here I am with Fatima in our tent. The things on the walls are some of Assoul's traditional products, while the boxes and purses are from Boujaad.

Saidia itself is a bit bizarre – lots of Moroccan ex-pats home for vacation, but many actually dressed for the beach, which is startling given what one gets used to seeing elsewhere in the country. The town swells to crowds of tens of thousands this time of the year, although the rest of the year the population is quite small. Some of the artisans let their hair down and play on the beach, while others, including Fatima, have found their first trip to the beach to be a letdown, given all of the hashuma attire they see on the beach, with men and women right next to each other! When we got off the bus, Fatima immediately told me how shocked she was to see so many men running around with their shirts off…

The festival lasts through mid-month, but I’ll only be here through the end of this week (and the first week flew by, thanks to long days on the beach and long nights manning the tents followed by occasional additional “socializing”). I do hope we eventually manage to sell a thing or two…