Teepee For My Bunghole

Before I get onto my present bewegings, let me just bring y’all up to par. I last wrote just before the 3am train I was going to catch to Marrakesh. Well I took that train and ended up in Marrakesh at 9am. Then found that the bus at 3h30pm was not fully booked as per the mense up in Kenitra and so I had a few hours to kill in Marrakesh instead of the missioning finding a different bus like I expected.

Walked around trying to find a bookshop selling English guidebooks on West Africa – and I actually did. I’m now the proud owner of a 1985 edition of Africa on a Shoestring guidebook. Fat lot of good it’s going to do me. Apparently according to the book, I was about to travel through a war zone to a country no-one actually goes to. Seems like contrary to popular opinion, Africa has actually changed in the last 20 years.

Anyway, then I took the 24 hour bus ride from Marrakesh to Dakhla. (Mostly I just read one the novels I had bought). They had stops for breaking fast and mealtimes (midnight and before fajr). I used to think of Marrakesh as the South of Morocco but there’s a kak lot of country below and its gorgeous. Dakha itself is nice without being exotic but its location on a stukkie land out into the ocean is breathtaking. Finally a city in Morocco that opens itself to the beauty of the ocean rather than a weakness to defend (and litter).

I spent a night in Dakhla and left the next morning with another bra to Mauritania (for 250Dh). I met him at the police stop next to Dakhla (during the last 2 hours of the bus ride I had to get off 4 times to give my details to the police – and as the only foreigner had the whole bus waiting for me while they did their dutiful handwriting).

This Mexican nutjob also organised the same ride. I call him a nutjob because his method of travelling was ‘get to the country, kneel and proclaim it for Jesus Christ, buy a keychain, take a photo of the flag, gets some coins and then it’s off to the next country.’ I shit you not.

The ride from Dakhla to the border is a desert and ocean mix that was quite spectacular. Looked some nice beaches but I didn’t have a metal detector with so that I could check it out. I didn’t see any mines or loose limbs lying around.

…or are you happy to see me?

Yes, it’s time to skud [shake] again and I’m skudding with my digital camera in my pocket because it’s time for new places and new faces. Those of you tired of reading the inglorious subtitles of my life can rejoice because you can expect some pics. But not soon; I have like a gazillion miles of desert to cross first.

Now any travel wouldn’t be the same without a couple of things going wrong and true to form some things have gone wonky on me.

First off, my guidebook did not arrive by the 5-working-day-ridiculous-express-fee-dhl-mutherfscker-advertised time, despite me constantly contacting the DHL office for updates (or maybe because of it) and being told it would arrive on time.

Secondly, the bus from Marrakesh from to Dakhla (I was going to buy one ticket to take the train to Marrakesh and then onto the bus) is full for tomorrow so I’m going to have to mission in Marrakesh.

Anyway, I did a quick turnabout and I’m hopping on the 3am train 4 hours from now. Should give me enough time to find a bus to Dakhla tomorrow and maybe even find an English bookstore. Because without a guidebook, I’m going to have to rely on word-of-mouth for places to stay. And since word-of-mouth won’t be in English, I’m pretty much screwed.

So next post should be from Mauritania but I can’t say for certain. I’m kak excited though.

Well, it looks like I’ll be starting off on Tuesday since the train is at 9h40am and I still need to get to the post office on Monday. It’s going to be fucken hard to say goodbye and I’m getting tears in my eyes just thinking about it. I mean, I bought my surfboard 8 years ago just before I went to Bali with it. We’ve had some good times man and if there was any way I could justify keeping it, I would. But it’s just not feasible to travel with it any longer or to post it home. It’s going to break my heart to leave it here; I’m going to miss that surfboard.

Anyway, besides that I just have to do a couple of small things like change money and get the vaccines injected. And get another type of anti-malarial because the one the pharmacies have here is ineffective in West Africa (yep, it’s that stupid.) Apparently they have another one (doxycycline) but its not listed as an anti-malarial so I’ll try to get that. Then it’s off we go…

So today I got some shopping out of the way. Morocco’s got some cool stuff but as always I’m contrained by how much I can afford to carry or ship.

The medina’s are great places for shopping but I have a limit to the amount I can do. Here in Kenitra you don’t need to haggle too much for the actual price, so it’s less effort.

There’s almost anything you can buy including all the Chinese knockoffs of famous makes – Nike, Adidas, Diesel, etc…

Best thing for me is to be able to see all the tailors and carpenters and weavers and caftsmen in their tiny little shops doing their thing. I love this old school artisan shit.

Yep in Casablanca and I have my Mauritanian visa. It was pretty easy to get with 200Dh, 2 passport photos and photocopy of my passport (besides the original of course). It is for one month from today, so I will effectively have 2 and a half weeks. Should be enough for a country I know nothing about.

I’ll be using the safarine malaria tablets but I still haven’t found a place to get mosquito lotion and the mosquito nets. That’s my next mission. I still need to figure out if I need any other shots. There are no other mandatory shots besides yellow fever, which I have, but I’m wondering what other vaccines are a good idea.

I also didn’t find a place that sold English guidebooks, so I payed through the hol and ordered one online from Amazon UK express delivery. I leave after it arrives; probably next week Monday.

[By the way the country Western Sahara that you see in the map I put in, hasn’t been a country since 1975 when Morocco and Mauritania took it over and split it amongst themselves. Apparently some of the locals too offence at that and there’s been some fighting but in the last few years it’s calmed down enough so that you don’t have to pass through by military convoy anymore. There are some left over mines though, so I’ll let you know if I see anyone blow up or any loose limbs lying around.]

I’m just writing at random here because I feel I need to post something but haven’t thought of anything much to write. Be prepared for bit of a ramble of thoughts and feel free to skip to the end where you think: “It would have nicer if he just posted some pics.”

Mosquitos. They’ve been on mind recently because the chances of getting malaria in West Africa is 3% which is pretty high – and that’s with anti-malarial medication. It 6% without. Here in Morocco I remember telling someone that the mosquitos here are pretty small and they don’t really bite with a vengeance. That was in summer, now in autumn they’re suddenly the size of small birds and, although I don’t think I’ve been bitten by one yet, I’m sure they’d probably suck me bone dry.

Anyway plans for going south are going slowly (I was going to make a dirty pun with this sentence and the sentence at the end of the last paragraph but my Mom reads this you know). I think I need shots because I can’t seem to find out which and the only travel clinic I could find is Intitut Pasteur in Casablanca. So tomorrow I’m going to Casa for that and to get my Mauritanian visa. I’m actually in Rabat right now trying to find a bookshop with English guidebooks. No luck so far. Besides that, the only things I need to do before leaving is some minor shopping and shipping.

Ramadaan is going by quickly. So quick that I sometimes lose trace of the days. Seriously I even missed jumuah (Friday mosque) once because I didn’t know it was Friday. I only realised that night.

I haven’t learnt much language except a word here and there. Sometimes I can understand what’s going on in a conversation – if I’m not taking part. There should be even less English in Mauritania and Senegal.

Anyway, by the next post I’ll be closer to travel time and closer to newer places – for me at least. And then I’ll be rambling on physically as well.

Most Common Question: When are you planning to head home?
Answer: I dunno (and the indefiniteness is not by choice)  

The other day I went to the butcher to buy some lamb chops. The butchery here is slightly different from back home, especially since back home I was a vegetarian. [A vegetarian that ate fish. A piscatarian you might call it or a fishetarian or a seafood veggie or … I’ll just stop right there before I get really silly and say that back home I didn’t eat chicken or meat. Mostly.]

Anyway its interesting to see the meat being cut from the carcass and then chopped up into, well, chops. I was wondering if back home they chop it up by hand as well or if they use a machine. But then back home the carcass doesn’t hang over the counter, especially when the counter is facing onto the street. I shit you not.

You would think that being an ex-sorta vegetarian (for the sake of brevity let’s all just assume we all know what I mean when I use the word “vegetarian” from now on) that seeing the meat cut from the carcass would freak me out. But I’m not one of those vegetarians that does it because of ‘the poor animals’ or any of that crap, I do it for health reasons.

Eating snails that first time (long ago in Casablanca) was a bit queasy because after eating a few I started to realise that they have faces and that turns me off a bit. The other time was when I was here in Mehdia and someone dropped off a packet of small pigeon-like birds, I think it was quail, with feathers on and everything. Almost still looked alive. Sure enough later that day there was a stew of small bird with sultanas and mielies. It tasted delicious.

Yeah so its Ramadaan. I thought things were quiet before but now it’s a ghost town. The Moroccan schedule is to sleep really late in the mornings, do whatever they need to in the afternoon, break their fast with a meal of various treats and harira (soup), rest/go to mosque/smoke, then eat meal later and stay up till very late (I think till dawn for most people but I’m not sure). I’m trying to adjust but I keep wanting a meal when everyone else is chilling and walking around when no one’s about.

The first night I broke my fast with a friend’s (Youssef) family and it was cool especially because, since it was the first night, lots of their family pitched up out. Drank soup till it came out of my gills and basically ate lots of the delectables. Then came the rest time and when the guys went off to mosque, we went off to watch Barcelona versus Valencia (good match) at a friend’s place. After we went back for the meal of fish tajine. All in all a good experience of good food and good people.

Mostly though I break my fast at the school with Youssef. We have dates and crackers and drinks and whatever we feel like and then later the night make a meal. I’m starting to learn how to make food – even if it’s just to get the cooking started at an earlier time (before I fall asleep). Luckily Youssef is quite a good chef, he even studied it for a bit. Morrocans ingredients and way of doing things is all slightly different to back home, so its all quite a buzz. It’s a trip, I tell you.

Anyway yesterday I had a brilliant thought I wanted to post after Friday mosque about how toes are probably the most individual part of a persons body and how, after thinking this and lining up to pray, I noticed that the guy on the right’s feet hadn’t been alerted that the rest of the body was still alive (talk about one foot in the grave!) and the guy on the left had two toes considering starting a foot of their own, when I get to the internet cafe and see that all of my posts for August have been lost. (That was a long sentence, wasn’t it?)

Apparently the server that hosts my blog crashed and their backups are wonky (that’s technical term in the IT business – non-IT people please feel free to use it to sound clever and “in the know”). There seems to be hope of getting them back but we’ll have to wait and see.

Okay I am still here and loving it. It is the heart of summer so everything is buzzing and there is waves everyday. A lot of Moroccans living overseas are back here on holiday with their families and the vibe is just mal.

Too busy to write much because I just came from the South African Embassy in Rabat where I got a document authorised and have to get back to Mehdia for high tide. So if you do not hear from me for a while it is because I am having a jas time. I will try to post some pics soon though, it is just so hard to be constructive.