Engineer and Commercial Director of the Moroccan government chartered company SAPT Hassan Mzerma opened Day Two of the 2011 April Seminar, with the focus on the SAPT project of the conversion of Tangier's city port. We thank SAPT chief Abdelouafi Laftit and Mr. Mzerma, probably two of the busiest people in Morocco, for their valuable … Read more Tangier’s New Port: Let the Water Flow
Note: Marking its 10th edition in 2011, TALIM’s April Seminars have attracted audiences from Tangier, the rest of Morocco, and beyond. This year, with the theme of Tangier’s Ports: Circles of Impact, we piggybacked on the US Trade Mission which participated in the Med-Log (logistics, with a focus on foreign investment) Conference. – – – … Read more Live Blogging The 2011 TALIM April Seminar
WeatherOnline gives a great description of Tangier's crazy wind called the chergui. Crazy, in that it blows in over the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, laden with desert sand. Figure that one out. Crazy, in that sometimes, like yesterday, it blew low towards the west, while up above the wind from the Atlantic Ocean … Read more Blame It On the Chergui
MRE – to some Americans familiar with the military, that stands for "Meals Ready to Eat," the food for soldiers in the field. But we're talking here about the French acronym for Marocains Résidants à l'Etranger, Moroccans living abroad. The travails of MREs in Libya were profiled here in SOS Marocains en détresse, from Info … Read more MREs From Libya Return to Morocco
On Saturday 11 December HM King Mohammed VI inaugurated the Tangier maritime traffic control centre (CSTM), which will contribute to improving maritime traffic efficiency and protecting the environment in the Gibraltar Strait. The Tangier centre is the first in the Arab world and Africa to be mandated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as a … Read more Keeping an Eye on the Strait of Gibraltar
The festive music wafting up the hill to the medina was a giveaway: it was either a wedding (unlikely in that it was midday) or His Majesty was in town. Yesterday, Morocco's King Mohammed VI was in Tangier to be briefed on the multimillion dollar plans to convert the port. For centuries, fishing boats, ferries, … Read more Tangier: Old Port, New Port
While the US State Department deals with the Wikileaks crisis, we have our own brand of leaks. The literal kind. Leaks that seep in between the large, gaping spaces in window frames, through shutters that are rotten, or via walls that are cracked from foundering foundations. Think I'm exaggerating? Well, look at the map (Bestcountryreports.com). … Read more Wicked Leaks & TALIM: Our Own Liquidity Problem
It's official: Lonely Planet has ranked the World's Top Ten Cities for 2011, and this city on the tip of Africa has made it to runner-up position, just after the Big Apple. Here's what they say: From its extraordinary position perched on the northwestern-most tip of Africa, Tangier looks in two directions: one face towards … Read more New York #1 – Tangier Number Two
That's a rather silly title, given that millions of car ferry passengers and cruise ship tourists see the city on the Strait of Gibraltar every year from their ships. I guess what I meant is this: there was a time when three-masted sailing ships, men-of-war and of commerce, regularly moored off this ancient city on … Read more When Tangier Was Seen From the Sea
The Legation's door, that is. This is a story of a fine building, the "Old American Legation" in Tangier, home to TALIM, the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies. Our new home. A fine building that has seen better days – sometime between when it was given to the United States of America by … Read more Gibraltar Shrouded in Fungus, or the Cat Who Ate the Legation
