“He who says he is happy in the desert means he knows where the well is.”
Vikrant Parsai
Let me first start this post by raising a glass to Morocco. This beautiful country filled with color, hardship, sand, crystal waters, music, love, anger, and most importantly so full of life. I have realized over the past two weeks that spending an eternity in this country would allow me to glimpse into the timeless nature of a people weathered by sand, sun, and ice-cold water. The people that are scented with musk, mint, and Cyprus forests. The ones who clap and dance to the unspoken rhythm that rocks and sways beneath our feet. These are the people who have known the hardships of colonialism, invasion, immigration, internal displacement, war, revolution, peace, kingdom, change… these are the people who stare back from the bus stops along the desert highway, who sleep next to their herd, who trade in the markets, who smile back at you early in the morning on your way to school, these are the people who make this country. I continue to return to the theme of commonality, and seeking to become part of something in my adventure this summer and I have truly come to realize that without people in our lives there is no future and there is no past. We then become creatures that simply exist in structures that rest upon earth, we have no attachment to and this forces us to ask the question what then is the purpose of life. People are what make a place and vice-versa.
As always you are free to skip ahead to the pictures but I will be discussing my trip to Chefchaouen and Ackchour and then also my 4 day adventure to the Sahara. This post will hopefully be small vignettes of what I have done and fun tidbits of history and insight I have gained. Nothing too heavy but I cannot promise anything seeing I always end up falling on the deep side of things in these posts.
A little bit of background on Chefchaouen, it is a small town built on the hills of the lower Atlas Mountain to the north of Meknes. The city is painted blue because of the influx of Jewish refugees in the 1930’s and the tradition of painting the city blue has far outlasted its Jewish residents. The city is known for its hospitality, views, hiking, hash farms and clean mountain air. It is a place that Moroccans and foreigners alike have come to cherish. To get to the city you take four hour bus ride through the Rif (countryside) and into the mountains that will reveal a deep valley with awe inspiring mountains on each side, thick with Cyprus and pine trees that cloak the hillsides leading to the rocky mountainsides. The sun glints off the white roofs and blue walls of the city as the sun begins to set. We arrived and settled into our beautiful blue hotel. The city is truly blue, I feared as with most world famous tourist sites that the reality would be underwhelming and instead we stumbled into a beautiful mountain town; quiet and serene, where the pulse of the city was decidedly slower, beating on and on and digging its roots further into the rock. The smell of fresh grapes hanging from eves about the alleys mixed with the heat of the summer sun and sweat dripping down your face. The animals of the city breathing the sweet mountain air, the relaxing scent of smoke floats through the restaurants and the coffee brews darker each hour into the night. The wine flows from bottle to glass to lips. The conversation mixes with the sound of car horns honking in the distance and motorcycle motors revving along the narrow sidewalks below. The soft wind embraces the couple holding hands on the roof below. The sun burns the mist from the evening mountains. The blue mixes with the piercing tangerine sky and glows periwinkle, as if walking amongst the smoke blowing from hash pipes along the street. Chess is being played in the square, the lights on the fountains and trees twinkle like Christmas day. Darkness is upon the town and the heat begins to recede into the night but leaves a faint layer of dust and sweat on your skin. The stars twinkle, the conversation continues deep into the night. The music rings out from the rooftop and one begins to realize where they have been and where they are going. The people around you become the people that are your everything because for one moment they are all that have and ever will be. Much like this city is filled with people that have and will continue to exist in these mountains. Embrace on the streets, smirk at tourists as they go by. In general they will continue on much as they always have. I wash my face in the public fountain, drink deep the cold water, breathe, and realize that it is all worth it.
The next day we awoke early and took a grande taxi through the mountains to the small village of Ackchour which contains valleys filled with hundreds of crystal clear waterfalls, ice cold water, outdoor thatch hut cafes that line the rivers that go deep into the mountain passes. On the trek I learned some critical things with out guide Ismail:
1. Rivers are hard to walk through and no amount of Boy Scouting and proper footwear will keep you balanced forever.
2. Moroccans are insane when hiking in terms of speed, skill, and ability to drink milk in 100 degree weather and continue jogging.
3. Danish people who are incredibly built will get frustrated by having to wait for Americans, but they will be able to finish a pack of cigarettes during a two hour hike.
4. The water really is as cold as it looks.
5. Yes it is clean enough to drink… upstream of the men washing themselves in it.
6. You will fall, or at least severely lose your balance and question all the life choices that have led to this point where you are on the side of a mountain on lose rocks with young Moroccans running past you singing.
7. Moroccans love to sing… loudly and often… especially while walking… where the mountains bounce the sound back on you
8. You will get sunburned; I repeat you will get sunburned. Especially if you fall asleep on the rocks in midday sun.
9. The best tagine in the entire world will be potatoes, carrots and chicken next to the river and the waterfalls in the distance.
10. Waterfalls will be diverted to water hash plants in the mountains.
11. Let me just say this one more time, you will fall.
12. You will also need at least two hours to regain consciousness after the long awaited shower in the Riad you are staying at.
One quick story:
If your friend (Nadeen) happens to close her backpack in the door and she begins to panic because she can’t find her phone she may or may not really panic and wont calm down. Then she might open the door while going 60 down the side of the mountain. I can guarantee that her phone will fly out from the crack between the seat and door. Her initial reaction will be to simply scream, “PHONE! My PHONE! MY PHONE!” this is also in Arabic and the cab driver is so confused. He slams on the break and I have never seen her run so fast. Full on running up the side of this mountain hoping another car doesn’t come down and crush it. It will be incredibly funny and amazing that the phone will not have shattered. The cab driver will find it hilarious and will continue to drive down the side of the mountain. I cannot fully convey how hilarious and terrifying it is to watch an iPhone fly out a grande taxi after an 8 hour day of hiking, swimming, laughing and crying only to culminate in that final moment.
We also began to learn the lesson that has since been solidified in Meknes that someone will always not get his or her food. Always. It will be forgotten, given to someone else, the wrong thing, or simply just never arrive and then you have to convince the owner that you are not paying for something that never came.
We spent the rest of the night relaxing and eating and just trying to stay awake after an extremely long day. The next day we awoke and walked around the city for a few hours in the morning exploring the blue walls and dark alleys of a sleepy town on a Sunday morning. The scent of fresh paint hung in the air of some of the alleyways and men and women prepared themselves for another day of mountain life. I have found that the city of blue and the waters in Ackchour provided a sense of calm, beauty and serenity to a busy world. Many places in Morocco have reminded my of the stories told about what people envisions when they think of heaven and once again the grande red mountains that tower over the narrow pathways alongside the flowing valleys that go deeper and deeper into the heart of a world that almost seems unreal. The ice-cold water grips your body and for a moment you just cant breath but in that moment you can feel the pulse of water, the lifeblood of water flow through your body to its most essential form. I strong agree that little moments make the mosaic of our lives and that without the pieces we can never see the whole. In the waters of Ackchour much like the waters outside of Ifrane, I breathed deep, plunged my head and for a single moment felt incredibly free in the most elemental way.
Now I must tell a bit about the most insane journey that I have experienced thus far. First I will discuss it in short in list form and then delve into the key moments and stories.
We decided to take a trip to the south on a grand adventure, we decided not to make any plans because Zainab’s host uncle was going to join us and so we decided to commit to getting on a 12 hour bus ride on Friday afternoon.
Given that this is the Arab world the bus which was supposed to leave at 5:00 Pm actually left closer to 6:30 PM. The public bus companies that run between cities in Morocco look like tour company buses that were left behind. Many of them struggle to function properly, all with varying degrees of efficiency with air conditioning and legroom. Many busses being to leave as people run to get on, some busses will continue to be fixed and worked on until the last moment that they pull out from the station. You can learn a lot of things on a 12-hour bus ride through the night. You will not sleep well; Dramamine will knock you out but also give you nightmares about falling off cliffs when the bus comes to a halt. Stopping in small towns means paying a dirham to go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground without toilet paper. Which bring me to say make sure you always bring toilet paper. The bus will leave whether you are on it or not. Always eat at the restaurants where the meat is hanging outside.
We arrived shortly after 7:30 AM in a town called Ouarzazate pronounced Warzazat, this medium sized town is referred to as the Door to the Dessert and when we walked around the town we realized that we were clearly not in Meknes anymore. Although there are many similarities the architecture is distinctly different. The first thing we noticed was that the streets and the sidewalks are incredibly wide and except for the high Atlas Mountains in the distance the city is incredibly flat. The Kasbah rules the skyline on the far end of town and the market stretches out beyond it. The silence was almost deafening in the early morning light. We walked around for an hour or so and then wen to a café to have a coffee and change our clothes from the Bus. Most all of us proficient at Arabic except maybe myself and we all began to notice the mixtures of language between Arabic and Darija and Amizighi tribal language were becoming noticeable.
We then took a short bus ride to the film studious on the edge of town. Many famous movies were filmed there including the Mummy, Gladiator, Cleopatra, Passion of Christ, The Hills Have Eyes, Salmon Fishing on the Yemen, Moses, Kundun, Game of Thrones and many more films. The sets are massive and aging and it’s amazing that these films can fool us into believing that these places exist. Walking amongst the ruins of Egypt and Asia and imagining the films that have been shot here and the amount of money that has been invested in this small compound on the edge of the Sahara.
We then caught the bus back into the city and ate lunch in the marketplace before heading to the bus station to board another bus to the edge of the Sahara. We took a bus through the Draa Valley, which is unlike any other place I have seen. Large calcified sand mountains dotted with deep gouges run alongside the valley. The valley floor is miles wide with an oasis that’s lush and full of tiny plots of corn, and squash covered by date and palm trees with aging and dilapidated castles dotting the hills within the valley. It’s like a dream from another world and incredibly hard to say in words. We arrived in the small desert town of Zagora four hours later. As we sat on the edge of town the mountains towering behind us and to the north and the vast emptiness that is the Sahara spread out before us. We booked our camel trek sat down and had some tea before we left. A wind storm rolled in shortly thereafter clouding the horizon with a hazy mixture of moisture and grey sand the blotted out the sun and the mountains in the distance. We then all loaded into a tiny car and headed towards the edge of the desert. Through the oases and onto the desert road, six camels awaited us there to take us on a two-hour trek to a camp out on the edge. We had to opt for a shorter trek given time constraints and therefore were still close enough to the city to see the lights dot the horizon but far enough away to feel the soft shifting sands beneath our feet. We are a beautiful tagine dinner out in the tent played a short round of Moroccan cards before heading outside to listen to some Amizigh music. We quickly became the favored group of tourists because we spoke Darija and Arabic and began to dance. The dancing was soon helped along a little bit of “water of life” which is basically the equivalent of Moroccan moonshine made in the towns along the edge of desert. Its sweet strong aroma soon filled our night with laughter, dancing, and conversation. We fell asleep under the full moon on the sand dunes and that night I truly felt like I was in another world. We slept under the moon and awoke shortly before sunrise to see the ball of fire rise above the distant horizon. The sand storm had not fully lifted and the sun was clouded creating the effect of an orb hovering in the distance just outside of your grasp. We then boarded our camels for the trek back out of the desert. We arrived at the hotel and swam, showered and prepared ourselves for the day. I would like to remind you at this point we have slept on a bus and a cot in the desert without anyplace to call our own in two days. We decided to walk to the weekly market, which happens on a specific day in each city and usually takes place just outside of town. As we joined the hoards of people headed to the market and the morning sun began to rise higher and higher we began to feel further and further away from our homes in Meknes. The weekly market taught me many things but first and foremost is that the people in Morocco continually surprise you. As we walked around one can tell that the tribal nature of Morocco and especially the south is strong with distinctive facial and hand tattoos for the women to signify their family status and tribe. The men and women walk around in simple yet elegant robes and headscarves. The market walls stretch out in front of us as we enter. There is certainly more skepticism of our different clothes and faces here then to the north. One man reminds us once again that we are clearly spies working for the government. Although this is not true given the conflict territory in the South of Morocco there is certainly apprehension about new faces. Throughout the south there are marking of the Amizighi tribes in the area as well as marking that indicate areas where the tribes successfully defended themselves against the French keep their sovereignty. The people here are tough, fascinating, and worn, you can almost feel the living history walking amongst them knowing they have seen more hardship and life than I would want to. We ate heart of goat at a stand in the market and enjoyed the miracle of cold orange juice in the desert.
Walking out of the desert back into the town and to the bus station to try and grab a bus to our next destination. Unfortunately given everything is far from everything we cannot get a bus out of the city till 8:00 Pm and its 1:00 currently and so we decide to try and hire a grande taxi to drive us through the mountains back to Ouarzazate and then on to Tinghir in the evening. Spending these fleeting moments in cafes alongside empty streets in tiny towns in Morocco are truly what make these trips worth it. The small moments that seem to define the experience. On our way back our cab driver decided that it was as good as time as any to smoke some Hashish for the mountain drive, speeding through canyons, old castles looming in the distance, the wind whipping through the open windows and the music of Fairouz softly floating through the afternoon air. We arrive in Ourzazate and then board another bus to Tinghir, a supposed two hour drive quickly becomes four hours considering there are no rules about the number of stops and where it stops and therefore a trip can quickly begin to sprawl on for hours and hours. The little girl next to me refused to stop poking me in between bouts of vomiting. Taking these busses is truly a Moroccan experience and one that I will not easily forget or will have forced out of my mind so as to forget the trauma. Arriving an hour before sunset in Tinghir only to exit the bus and hire a grande taxi to take us to the Gorges. The Gorges are all over southern Morocco and consist of steep mountains with rivers running through their narrow valleys, lined with small farms and villages intermixing with oases. The water bubbles from the rock, ice-cold crystal clear water welcomes you to take a dip and sit beside it and have a bite to eat, to just relax. At this point in the day it has been a long time since any of us have eaten, slept fully, or been not in a moving vehicle for more than a few hours. Just as we are getting ready to leave our friend Ashraf gets out bags of nuts and biscuits that we had bought earlier in the day, and just as we reach for them the bag rips and they all fall to the ground, after a loud scream we all dropped to the ground and began eating them off the ground. It was a truly low moment for the trip but also one of the most memorable. Our yells were apparently enough for a sweet old gentleman to pull up alongside us a few minutes later on his moped to make sure we were all right. On our way out of the gorges we realized that being there close to dark was maybe not the smartest ideas and therefore as light rain fell and the light of day disappeared we tried calling the cab driver who had driven us there and said he would be on his way… an hour later we had tried to convince an ice cream cart guy to drive us back with his stuff. A little why later a van rolled up and it was the same guy and said he would drive us back. Successfully having hitchhiked back we went and ate at a local café and then went to go find a place to sleep for the night. At this point we have not slept in a normal bed in three days. We arrived and knew because of the price it was going to be an interesting night, for seven dollars a person we were guaranteed a bed, a working light bulb at least one working toilet and shower amongst all of us, and our fair share of cockroaches. Showering with no lights on, struggling to get a breeze under the desert moon, watching the town shutter itself, the smell of min tea and Hawaii floating through the air.
The next day we awoke boarded the bus and made our way north. Our final 10 hour trip back to Meknes back through the desert and then onto the mountains near Azrou and then back into the Middle Atlas valley. It was a long and very hot bus ride; the air conditioning gave out shortly after leaving and resulted in 9 hours of sweating in 100 plus degree heat. On the way back I was reminded of how truly developing Morocco is, people fighting each other alongside the road to get on the bus and willing to pay whatever price to get on, with their being no guarantee of another bus coming anytime soon. Watching the small towns go by, covered in Amazighi symbols, the people aged and weathered by the harsh sun and years of rolling sand and empty mountains. Lookout towers from ages past dot the mountaintops in the distance. There was a sense of otherworldliness to the bus ride because nothing made sense, everything was foreign and at the same time there was a sense of calm because I was part of it for just a split second. Both being part and apart from everything around you, puts oneself in the game called life in a weird place never fully knowing where you belong.
Which brings me back to the original point at the beginning of this post: “He who says he is happy in the desert means he knows where the well is.” I have found my happiness in the desert of Morocco knowing where the water springs. As the crystal clear waters of the earth bubble forth to North in Ackchour and to the south in the Draa Valley I am constantly reminded that they waters we seek in our daily lives are under our feet. We just need to seek what lies below in order to find common solace and the lifeblood to keep going. As my time in Morocco comes to a close I am reminded of the things that have made me happy here and that there will always be more miles to trek in the desert but there is beauty in knowing where to find refreshment. Finding solace and comfort in the waters that breath life into us.
Two weird side-notes:
I have been spat on by a crazy man and saw a kid be attached by dogs. This country is strange, there are no rules and I’m just a white boy with a heart who thinks he is Arab trying to get through.
Cheers to this upcoming week! I am headed of to the ocean to enjoy the beautiful sun!
