For its size, the meat market in Meknes is amazing. Taking only five minutes to cruise through, your senses are bombarded with a million different sensations and I saw some of the most incredible and most disturbing things I've seen so far in Morocco.
There were guts and bits all over the floor, headless chickens with blood dripping on your feet if you weren't careful, smells that prevented me from moving until I pulled myself together... I love a good meat market but boy did this one push me to my limit. Apologies for the lack of the photos (although I think you will be thanking me), but when you're trying to dodge miscellaneous meat bits on the ground and at head height, getting the camera out is the last thing you think about. Here are my highlights...
The Automated Chicken Plucking Machines
I knew what these were, we'd gone through the chicken market in Marrakech where you kind of got what was going on but couldn't quite see because of so much happening, but I heard the familiar bzzzzzz sound identical to a wood chipper and just couldn't stop myself from looking... I don't think I really need to explain what I saw!
The Acrobatic Butcher
Whilst wandering in my state of bewilderment, I absent mindedly decided to look at an unmanned stall and saw the most incredible thing. The butcher who worked there made a run towards his counter, hurdled over it with the assistance of a meat hook acting as a swing and landed perfectly back inside his hut, to then look at me with an almighty grin. I had to pick my jaw off the (scarily colourful) floor and scurried after Brim to try and explain what he had just missed out on.
The Hanging Animal Heads
Pretty self explanatory however there were an awful lot of them and we had finally hit the North where camel is eaten more regularly. I came face to face with a poor dead-eyed camel at one stall but it must be said that the hunks of meat on offer looked divine. Around the corner were rows of freshly decapitated sheep and goat heads hanging on hooks, amongst hind cuts with tails intact and rings of intestines.
The Hacking Axe Man
This one still makes me shudder. I don't know what was being hacked up other than it contained a lot of bone and the sound it made was horrifying. I was petrified walking past that a shard of bone was going to come flying at me.
The Massacred Meat Mess
Hrm. Going past a stall I saw a bloody pile of some cut of meat. It was huge, like 20-30kg huge and I couldn't work out where or what it belonged to. I was leaning towards it being some weird cut of beef where a hip was still intact and then some organs as well. As I got closer I realised that there was hair still on some on the meat where it hit the ground and a huge pair of lips... This poor meat mess was a gigantic camel head where the skin had mostly been peeled away, leaving behind an almost unidentifiable meaty mound.
Aren't you glad there were no photos!
Read about the rest of Meknes here - According to Nicola - Majestic Meknes
