my first experience at the hammem

The hammem
When we got back from our trip on Sunday afternoon, my sister asked if I wanted to go the hammem with her (the Turkish bathhouse). I was really excited to go and it’s really been something I’ve been looking forward to. A few girls from the program have already gone and had mixed feelings about it because it was just so much naked time with lots of women at the same time. BUT, I was still looking forward to it. When we got there I didn’t totally know what to do and my sister is so used to taking American girls I thought she’s be filling me in on when to strip down and what to do, but she didn’t. To her it’s just so normal—it’d be like someone asking us how to take a shower. But nonetheless, I was so lost hahaha and everyone was looking at me, but good thing I’m apparently not at all upset about being naked so it didn’t bother me. And although I supposedly could pass for Moroccan, I didn’t even trick anyone in the bathhouse—I think the bellybutton ring, tan lines, and tattoo definitely did not help my case either. Ew, I just hate how obviously western I am hahahha.
So anyway, I’ll try to give a play by play. I think it cost only 10 dirham (a little over one dollar) to enter the bath and the woman and men obviously have separate quarters. We went upstairs and that’s when I got lost because I didn’t know if I should take my clothes right off or to be more modest… it seemed like a thin line. But I kinda just watched everyone else around me and figured things out (although the whole “watching” thing may have been a nuisance to some and they might have been annoyed at me for staring but I was genuinely being curious not creepy) anyway, we brought 2 big buckets of water and some little plastic stools full of all our bathroom products and walked from the “dressing room” in to the bath. We stripped down except for our underwear (my sister made sure I wasn’t wearing the “string kind” before we left) and shower shoes. The bath was kind of H shaped and at the cross there were 4 or 5 faucets where you filled up your buckets. Then we brought our buckets full of warm and hot water over to the side and we sat on the little stools. We also had some medium sized scoops that we used to dip out water one scoop at a time to wash ourselves with. It was reeeaaally hot and steamy inside so you never got cold and actually I didn’t mind not having water running on top of me the entire time like a normal shower. It was a perfectly efficient method. But here comes the amazing part, my sister decided it was very important that I pay the young woman who works there to “massage me” for only 20 dirham which is like less than 3 dollars. Oh.my.god. When she said massage what she meant was SCRUBBBBBB. This woman was, for one, very strong, and for two, not gentle hahaha She laid down a mat and had me lie first on my stomach so she could get my back. AH! I thought she was ripping off my skin!! Hahahaha she used a wash cloth that was more similarly related to sand paper than my personal definition of a wash cloth and she was SCRUBBBING without any hesitation! And she wasn’t even using soap which I really thought may have helped ease the pain. But with just water, she scrubbed every inch of my ENTIRE body (I won’t go into detail about the most painful areas, but the armpit was defiantly one of them… that skin is so sensitive, I had no idea!!) She was scrubbing so so so hard I wish I could describe it! I thought she was going to scrub my tattoos off! The pain was very similar to getting a tattoo actually… So after I turned on my right side, onto my back and then finally my left side I opened my eyes to see how bright red I was sure my skin would be and it looked like she washcloth had disintegrated all over my body.. NOPE that was just my dead skin. A LOT OF IT…. She laughed at me when I was like “UGH!!! I’m so disgusting!” she smiled and said “ooh-la-la” insinuating that dumb American’s shower all the time but never actually get clean. I just couldn’t believe it, it was so gross to see all that dead skin she rolled off of me. But really, it felt GREAT! I’m all about exfoliation and I will simply never go back to a freaking pansy-ass lufa! I can’t wait to by my own sandpaper covered wash cloth! I can’t believe Arabs haven’t made millions off this idea in the western world! Because this actually works—instantly! I could feel a dramatic difference in the texture and glow of my skin. And I already was an avid exfoliator! I bet woman pay hundreds of dollars for exfoliation treatments and I paid 3! Anyway.. as you can imagine, I can’t wait to go back and feel clean for only the second time of my life…