Morocco

For Carolyn’s midterm break we went to Morocco. We didn’t fly straight from Gambia, that would have been too easy. First we had to take a taxi to the ferry and once across the Gambia River we took a taxi to the border where we crossed into Senegal and walked to a bus depot and got a bus to Dakar where we would then fly to Casablanca.

The drive to Dakar was as expected and planned for; 7 hours in a small three row bus, 4 to a row, with extra sideways seating in the rear, enough for 5, plus the front window seat for two. We were 20 bouncing bodies tumbling over the bumps of the highway and then off-road when there were too many potholes to stay on the main road. It was quite the trip. Coming after the ferry across the Gambia River and a Taxi to the border it was a full day travel. Once out of the bus, we took a taxi to a Chinese restaurant and then one to the airport where we took the red eye to Casablanca getting there in the morning. We got a French breakfast and planned our next move.

Our next move was to splurge on a nice hotel and shower and watch TV. It was real nice, the shower was the first hot shower for Carolyn in 3 months and over a month for me. The TV was non-stop Benazir Bhutto coverage on the only two English speaking stations; CNN and BBC News. She was a wonderful leader and inspired many while she lived. In her death a nation was mourning, as played out on TV. Being the only story, the coverage became exhausting, I was really looking forward to some sports and end of the year recaps like news channels do. Not having TV for over a month and then only being able to see the same last minute clip of that guy with the gun in his hand was lame. I really feel like I suffered more than anyone else in the world due to the untimely passing of this political leader. Sure she was a female icon in the Muslim world and perhaps the one hope for Pakistan to scale back it’s extremist leanings in favor of a more democracy oriented system that would stand up to Al Queda and bring moderation to a country on the front lines in the battle on terror, but I wanted to see some NFL highlights! Really, is that too much to ask?

So I guessed we might as well leave the hotel and see some of this city since there was nothing good on TV. Casablanca, what a town! Buildings over two stories, power that stays on, Castle Beer “The Queen Of Beers”, it was great!

The Medina is the city center, it is the ancient city that was surrounded by a great wall for protection during antiquity, it has been the home to people for thousands of years, and it’s where you can get really good deals on black market DVD’s and hookahs. All the bigger cities in Morocco have Medinas and they are generally touristy type places but still house a great deal of people. Casablanca’s is pretty small but Marrakech’s Medina is huge with a large central square called the Jemma el Fina where for thousands of years people have come to trade and eat from the food stalls and see the snake charmers. Not a lot has changed in two thousand years, people still come from all over the world but now it’s less for Moroccan wool, glass and grain and more for rugs, hookahs, trinkets and Wayne Rooney jerseys. The Moroccan craftsmanship on these imported Chinese Manchester jerseys is staggering. The way they get the breast patch to look so real while misspelling van Nistelrooy is really something. Ok, so perhaps that’s a bit cynical, but let’s just say that there is plenty of stuff for western kids to grab up while mom and dad look for a rug.

I really loved both the cities we traveled to, We met some nice people and bought a beautiful lamp, ate in the food stalls. We met Ibrahm a guy who worked at a food stall, as well as his 4 other jobs, who liked to talk to us about anything but it was the best when we got into politics and exchanged the names of some political thinkers to read. He wrote down Samuel Huntington and Edward Said for me and I told him to read Chomsky and a few others. It is easy to see that most people I’ve met in my travels do not blame the average American for what Bush has done. Our reputation is not as sterling as it may have been pre-911 but people don’t put that on us. For some mentioning Bush was the first thing they did when we told them we were American. And some did even say, ‘Bush is Hitler’ but nobody at all got up in our face about it. It could have been due to the fact that as soon as they said ‘George Bush’ I said, “No, No, No please don’t associate us with him. He is not our country. Everyone hates him in America now” Or words to that effect. Also, when we actually talked for a while to people and let them know we were living in Gambia teaching West Africans they loved us. People are just friendly in general if you are friendly to them, and Americans on par are really nice people. Much nicer than Euro-trash, Dolce Gabbana fur coat wearing asses who don’t even look at the people who approach them or ask them for change. One day I said to Carolyn, lets pretend that we are from Canada today and then see what people think about Americans. I kept forgetting to do it though so I don’t have too much to report about the experiment. One time I said I was from Canada to a guy and asked if he liked it and he said, “I like Jim Carrey!” So do I my friend…so do I. Plus I couldn’t believe he knew where he was really from, I had forgotten myself. America is still the place where everyone has a relative and where many want to go if they can get a visa.

A Bit off the topic of Morocco but Canada patch wearing travelers really get my goat. You know this is what they do now, they wear a little Canada flag patch on their packs so people don’t mistake them for Americans. I’m not quite sure on how many levels I hate it but here’s what I feel; they put flags on their packs because for the first time ever they actually have a good national self esteem. Which is ironic because this new sense of national identity is still predicated on what America has done, and the fact that we’re not so popular right now, not for anything Canada has done. Canada is like the Democratic Party, they’re popular for nothing they’ve done, just that the Republicans have screwed up so much. Now I say they have just entered a new sense of self esteem because that is exactly true, Canadians have had self esteem issues for a long time, in fact their government even used public service announcements on TV to try and make them feel good about themselves. Like a, “Hey, you’re Canadian, and that’s really good…eh!” commercial before they watched an American show on TV. And now here they are, finally no longer the bitch of the Americas, and they can’t wait to take a piss on the USA. I still like Canada though and almost every Canadian I’ve met.

The hotel in Marrakech does not stock toilet paper so it was up to us to grab as much napkins and TP from other places during the day to use at night in the hotel. I actually looked around the stalls and saw no one selling TP. There were homeless kids selling travel sized tissues in the streets so I bought those on occasion but the best place to get TP was definitely at breakfast where they had a napkin dispenser on each table at our favorite omelet place with outdoor seating in the sun. So one night we were out of tissue and at about midnight I went out to the market area to see if I could find a kid selling tissues. Most shops were closed and no kids were out so I went to a food stall and asked a couple of the guys, whose job it is to stand there and shove a menu in your face and get you to sit at their stall and not one of the others right next to it that are essentially the same, if they had some napkins. One said sure and went over and grabbed me a piece of the deli paper they use when they serve food. Now I was tired at the time and had just been walking for 15 minutes looking for some freaking napkins so I said, “no, it’s to rough” they looked at me with some confusion so I said, in a tired drawl, “ I need it for my butt.” They looked at me like I was from another planet and one said, in a hilarious drawn out way, “Are you from Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I just smiled and walked away.

Dolce and Gabbana; yuck!
Could they make more hideous shit? Could European men dress more horribly? These are the questions I asked myself day in and day out while walking around Marrakech, One guy on a cell phone had a light blue shirt, tight, unbuttoned down to his navel with tacky gold chains and a hairy chest wearing painted on white pants with matching white leather shoes and a huge “DG” belt buckle leaping out over his pudgy stomach. I could not restrain myself from laughing out loud as I passed. These people dress like they’re in a gay American’s nightmare. I feel like I could go on for pages about this, and the fact, they think American style is hideous but I won’t. I’m just going to leave it there. Nothing to get mad about, these people look ridicules and that’s it. I never needed KC to help me mock a situation more in my whole life.

Oh, we went to the third largest mosque in the world while in Casablanca, to some other mosques, and an old palace in Marrakech, and a tomb or two as well. I’ve got pictures of all that touristy stuff that I’ll put up somewhere. Plus we took the Marrakech Express from Casablanca. Carolyn got a beautiful suede pullover with nice embroidery that a man was asking 800 dirhams for (1 to 8 exchange rate for US $ to DH) who we talked down to 130DH. Would never have been able to do it without our new Gambian haggle experience.

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Saw a dog eating a dead elk from the train window as well as some dead animals hanging out a home window as we passed.

Saw a guy break his foot when a large cart blew over onto him by the food stalls, we dove at his papers that were flying everywhere while others went to him. He was carrying Suduko puzzles and was selling single cigs.

Saw a Bush chasing Bin Laden toy train set with Bush driving a tank with his head sticking out the top and Bin Laden on a cart just in front of him. It just went around and around. Metaphoric to say the least. I almost bought it but it was way too much.

Saw a little girl crying for her mom twice. I think it was a scam of some kind. Seriously, these 3 year olds are savvy in the market!

That’s about it. I took about 600 pictures and will show you each of them one by one till your eyes pop out. Just kidding, it was nice being able to take a picture without people yelling at you like they do here in Gambia. I don’t even take my camera out with me here, locals get really upset, I have a pic I’ll put up where one guy is doing just that. Sorry I haven’t put up any pics yet, but I have been taking them, and I will as soon as I can sit down and edit the good ones.


-BBB