Arrived and First Iftar!

Things did not start well on this trip!  I arrived at the airport in Rochester to discover that my flight to JFK was cancelled. Actually all flights to the New York Metropolitan area were cancelled due to thunderstorms there.  After a half hour at the ticketing counter I got rebooked to Detroit and from there to Paris and then to Casablanca.  I arrived in Casablanca at 2:00 this afternoon, but my luggage did not arrive.  No suprise.  I then found my driver (that took some doing too, as my lateness and the delay while filing the lost luggage claim took a lot of time) and arrived at the the hotel but my group had already left for the tour of the mosque that I had hoped to be here for.  When they got back, shortly after I finally got into my room, we set off for an evening in one of the worst slums of Casablanca, where we were hosted by a community group that is doing amazing work in that impoverished community with young people.  Mr. Mazoz Boubker was our host.  He is an amazing man, who has worked for many years in this community building the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center which provides tutoring, sports, music, religious instruction to hundreds of kids in this particular ghetto.  The work they do is amazing and he has hosted many international guests and visitors, even taking groups of the kids from his neighborhood overseas on cultural exchange programs.  During Ramadan they do a football (soccer) tournament every day during the holy month, so we arrived as a few of the teams were hard at it.  Hundreds of folks come out to watch the kids play.  We then got a tour of the community center, which has up to date classrooms with computers and wifi and musical instruments and textbooks for tutoring.  They teach the kids English as well as the basic reading, writing, math and they also do a lot of work to help the kids overcome or avoid gangs and drugs which are the easiest temptations in that impoverished neighborhood. As we drove there, we passed a number of shanty towns - real poverty, with little tin huts as family homes.  After touring the facility we saw a video about their work and then we were honored guests at the Iftar (breaking of the Ramadan fast) and dinner that follows.  They insisted that we get our food first, even though they had been fasting all day!  They had prepared quite a feast of all kinds of foods, many of which we had not idea what it was we were eating, but it was good!  Lots of pastries and cakes, I noticed.  You break the fast with a date and a cup of water, but then you dive in and feast away!  The members of the community prepared all the food so we got real home cooked Moroccan fare.  I've included some pics of the food, the community center and a big group picture at the end.  Also, a shot of the young boys who did some Qur'anic chanting for us.  As we left the kids were starting to sing and dance and I suspect they are still partying!  We were exhausted so had to depart by 9:00-ish!  When I got back to the hotel we tried to track my luggage which I had been told would have arrived by 8 PM but there was not sign of it.  I spent a good deal of time on the phone with Air France in Georgia trying to locate it.  Pray it shows up tomorrow morning, as we are leaving Casablanca for Marrakesh tomorrow and, in Morocco, they don't deliver bags to the hotel, you have to go to the airport to pick them up!!  At this point I'm beyond exhaustion and am going to bed hoping that, by some miracle, I will learn tomorrow morning that my luggage is in the Casablanca airport!