Yet another day in which I learn two things:
1. Plans are not something one makes and keeps in Morocco
2. Moroccans are impossible to describe, shifting, confusing, and fascinating.
Two days ago, I rented a car in the town of Essaouira with three other people...Hannah, Yvonne and Suzanne. I met Hannah in Meknes and we have been traveling together ever since. Yvonne and Suzanne are two friends of Hannah's from Germany that arrived about a week ago.
So we rented this car with the plan to drive to the desert, rent some camels and enlist the help of some guides, and head into the desert for a truly Moroccan, Saharan experience. We almost made it.
The renting of the car itself was an adventure...As always, someone that we met knew someone (a cousin) that could help us. The guy opened the store for us, we debated the price for an hour (normal here) and we were on our way.
The drive began smoothly and perfectly. We hit the road in our beautiful Volkswagen, turned up the Arabic tunes and began quickly eating up the miles between us and our destination.
Arriving in Marrakech, things got a bit hairy, as here in Morocco traffic patterns are something like an afterthought and nobody seems to find it important to follow them. I found myself stuck in intersections in which cars pointed in every possible direction. Fumes in my face, horns in my ears, motorbikes whizzing by...Somehow, we made it out of the town alive and unscathed and continued on our way...
Here in the South of Morocco it is becoming more and more normal to find people that don't speak any French at all, something that can make the trip rather difficult, but which I find rather refreshing...It's somehow nice to see that not everyone has a need to learn the language of the invader, of the opressor, of the colonizer...Still, I don't think that this is in any way a conscious choice on the part of the Moroccans, but rather a problem of education in the hinterlands of the country.
And so, when we found ourselves in a truck stop outside of Marrakech, I had to laugh at the beauty of the sitution...Opening my journal and beginning to write, I was shocked to read the title of the entry -- "January; 2006, Truck Stop outside of Marrakech." It all just seems rather surreal at times...Due to the lack of linguistic understanding between us and the proprietors of the establishment, we eventually ended up eating, after pointing at things that others had and that looked good...Everything was delicious...
Moving along, we arrived in the town of Ourzazate without any problems at all. Ourzazate is sort of Morocco's Hollywood, so everyone here is constantly talking about Ridley Scott and Russel Crowe and Brad Pitt...rather strange really....The town itself is nothing all that exciting, but it serves as a sort of gateway to the desert for many tourists, and so, tired from the long drive, we decided to spend the night...
Yesterday morning we woke up, drank coffee, checked email quickly and got on the road...And the problems began...
The car began acting funny...I would floor the gas pedal and very little would happen. I could not accelerate to pass other vehicles, everything seemed sluggish, and I could feel that somehow the gasoline was not getting where it needed to get. We debated our options--continue and find a gas station, or turn back the 25 kilometers already driven and find a station in town? I finally decided to pull over on the side of the road next to a truck and ask them about the possibility of finding a gas station further down the road.
As we pulled off the road, the car stopped. It just died right there, half on the road, half off, and refused to start again. After a few minutes, we got out and pushed it off the road...
The next 5 hours or so were spent on the side of the road...The truckers tried to help us, then some other guys tried to help us (and sell us a camel trek at the same time...a bit of shotgun diplomacy it seemed at the time--sort of "hey, i'll help you if you buy my really, really expensive services"), then another car stopped...
At one point there were about ten people on the side of the road, everyone with a different opinion about our options and the causes of the car troubles...The hood went up and the hood went down, the key was turned and unturned, various parts of the car were smacked and caressed, laughed at and cursed at...We finally decided on an option that seemed rather unintelligent to me, but at the time was the only option: We would wait for a 4-wheel drive vehicle of one guy's friend and tie the two cars together...I would then sit in the driver's seat of our car and steer while the Truck pulled us the 25 kilometers back home...
And so we waited...We hung out and drew pictures and took photographs and accepted the invitation of the truckers to join them in their lunch...They had been cooking a tagine in a pressure cooker atop a propane stove for a couple of hours and were more than happy to invite everyone present to join them in their meal...And so we sat in a circle around the food, dipping into the rich sauce with bread, sharing cups of water and attepting to add something to the general pot of food...all we found was some cheese (they laughed at us) and yogurt (they ate it).
By this point we were all quite calm, having come to terms with our fate and realizing that the best thing to do was relax, enjoy this time with our new friends and hope for the best (As one guy said, we could plan a meeting like this and it would never happen. It is the coincidence that brings us together like this and that is beautiful).
Finally the truck arrived and we said our goodbyes and tied up and I nearly shit my pants as we moved about one minute down the winding road, the guy next to me yelling at me not to touch the brake, me freaking out and sweating and shaking, knowing something would go wrong, and then the rope broke with little fanfare and we were coasting slowly along.
We now enlisted the help of some metal workers that tried to connect the car with a steel rod. The effect was basically the same as that of the rope experiment, and we ended up once again on the side of the road. By this time, our friends were getting rather impatient. The camel guy wanted us to leave the car on the road, where a friend would watch over it until a tow truck to come (there is only one in the area and it was 5 hours away). We were obviously nervous about doing so, and refused to leave until we could get in touch with the owner of the rental agency...
Finally we spoke with Khalid, the car rental guy, and after much argument, he agreed to let us leave the car on the side of the road with this guy Mohammed, who would make sure it got towed and then call a friend in Ourazate that would bring the car back to Essaouira after it was fixed...
Here's where things got a bit weird, and here's where the strange and wonderful behavior of Moroccans come into play...Driss, the guy that wanted us to go to the desert with him and take a camel trek, started to get a bit impatient and a bit agressive...He told us that if we didn't leave the car at that very moment and go to the desert with him, he was going to leave...We weighed our options--overpriced camel trek or abandonment on the side of the road????
Could we just pay him to drive us back to Ourazate?, we asked him.
No, he said, and told us that he didn't want our money but that his friend would gladly bring us back to town for free, that everything he had done (5 hours of work) he was happy to do and that he expected no payment in return...He merely asked that upon our return to town we visit his shop and speak with his brother about tour possibilities in the future:
So then, this guy brings us back to town, drives us on a tour of the beautiful, old sections, and drives to his aunt's house. His aunt gives us delicious tea and homemade lemon cake and almonds grown on her land. We sit on luxurious carpets in a sprawling room in her house and munch away and chat and laugh together. We then drove to the store owned by Driss and his brother, drink more tea, haggle for prices and buy a few nice items.
I just don't get these people...just when I begin to lose faith and feel that a man like Driss, who seemed so kind and generous, is merely helping me to make money, he proves me wrong...Now, of course, we did visit his shop and buy some stuff, but very little, and this is a small price to pay for the help that he gave us and the time that we shared together...
So now, having once again had my plans destroyed, having once again experienced firsthand the strange generosity of Moroccans, having once again made new friends, I'm still in Ourzazate, destination unknown. I've been invited by a guy here, Hisham, to spend the 11th of January with his family here, for the religious festival known as Al-Eid adhaa, in which every family in Morocco (and most of the Muslim world) sacrifices a lamb and has a huge party. So, I guess this means that I'll be in this region for the next few days, checking out the desert and the gorges (maybe) and hoping that time moves as slowly as possible...
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