Teepee For My Bunghole

So I’m back in Morocco. Not a bad first morning. When I woke up this morning, I heard Meera in the kitchen of the surf school. Nora is normally the lady who looks after the place but they bring Meera in when there is a big meal to be prepared and she always makes sure there is food around. So I got a typical Moroccan breakfast including the mint tea and the freshly squeezed orange juice just before I went off to surf and chill on the beach. When I got back I had lunch and went back to sleep. Not really in the mood to be constructive.

Switzerland was really relaxing and I still can’t thank Shaheed and Fatie enough for their hospitality. Everyone remarks (actually more like hand signals) on how dik [thick] I got. And how my tan is gone. And how big my hair is. Moroccans aren’t really tactful.

My last night in Switzerland was pretty weird because the tannie [lady] next door invited us for tea but because Fatie was sick, Shaheed had to look after the kids and I ended up having tea alone with an 83 year old granny who couldn’t speak English. We got by though and I got to see the inside of a Swiss home at least. She gave me some cake that was kak sour; like really fucken sour. I told her that I had eaten a big supper and wouldn’t be able to finish the cake. Then I tried to figure out how I was going to eat a couple of more bites while keeping a straight face. So when she went to the next room to fetch some photos I took my gap and bit a huge chunk.

I know what you’re thinking but there was nowhere to dump the shit because Swiss keep their houses so neat and the shutters closed. So I figured I had to get it over and done with while I could pull a face. When she came back in the room, my eyes were tearing but I think I managed to keep a straight face. She put down the album and started to eat her piece. She poured sugar on it first. It was then that I realised what she had been telling me in French when she gave me the cake. It wasn’t too bad once I poured sugar all over the cake.

Okay so I got permission to leave the country. It’s a typed four-line printout that I could have duplicated in an hour. It looks easier than manufacturing a fake stamp for a Le Club matinee (back in the day). I still need to get someone to translate it for me so that I can be sure there’s no hiccups though.

Anyway I went up to Rabat and met up with some Slovenians (not to be confused wth Slovakians) I’d met in the Casa hostel. In the hostel in Rabat I also met up with a group of Aussies. I also ran into a bra from Rabat that I’d met at the Gnawa Festival and ended up going for supper to his friends with the Aussies and the Slovenians in tow. Also a French 17-year old lightie who was staying in the hostel with his family went along.

Anyway the supper was late but great (normal in Morocco) and we ended up chilling the night on some rooftop somewhere. Music – strangeness – beautiful – bunch of characters people – lots of laughing for no reason (all normal in Morocco).

When we got back to the hostel the next morning, they chucked us out. Apparently the French kid hadn’t let his parent know where he was even though we checked with him a gazillion times that they were okay with him staying out and he had a cellphone on him.

Chucked out of a fucken youth hostel  – made to pay for a night I didn’t sleep there including a breakfast I didn’t have. We took photos and went out different ways. I came back to Mehdia to sleep, get my laundry done and shower and greet the ocean – basically wash off the crazy part of Morocco.

Deciding what to do – again.

Okay so I went to the Surete Nationale (cops) 9am today (in a very nice building actually) and they sent me to the airport to get letter from the airport police there saying that I couldn’t leave so that they give me a letter to allow me to leave. Serious.

Anyway the response at the airport was negative, very negative. I had to stry with them just to get a scribble on a card out of them just to prove I’d been there.

Then it was back to the police station where I got to see how the rest of the world used to use typewriters 20 years ago. Never clicking Print a couple of times, this was 5 layers of carbon copy in action. Yeah that got boring pretty quick but I just had to sit there and wait. Basically I figure typing so much makes you kak scared of making mistakes and kak lazy to type documents – which is what I needed them to do.

They called me over a couple of times to see if there was anywhere else they could send me but I had them covered and cornered. At times if I could have figured out the amount of kak I would have to cause to have me sent out the country but not put in jail, I would have done it.

At 4h30pm someone told me that it was possible for them to help me. I got slightly happy. At 5pm they told me to come back tomorrow. I wonder if I killed enough people if they would consider me too dangerous to keep in their jails and just send me out of the country?

Turns out that “semaine” in French actually means weeks and not months. So somewhere along the line I got told I have a 3-month visa when I actually have a 3-week visa. So they won’t let me leave the country – ironic that I have to fight to leave the country when one of the reasons I want to leave the country is to stay longer. 

I was planning to write this post from Switzerland instead the flight ticket butted and I got sent to Casablanca to sort out the problem. So after 5 hours on a hot train yesterday, then sleeping on a hotel roof terrace because the hotel was full, sleeping on some chairs because the terrace couches were full, sleeping in snatches for 3 hours and missioning early to the airport, I had the pleasure of missioning around the hassle of Marrakesh, another 4-hour train ride, followed by a couple of more hour long train rides and visiting police stations and airports and talking to lots and lots of uniforms only to be told that I needed to come back Monday morning.

It was heartbreaking to be stopped at passport control and be denied. To be told that my ticket isn’t refundable. To have to go all the way back to Casablanca. To smile and stay positive. It was one hard fucken day that’s for sure.

But if these motherfsckers think they’re going to wear me down by sending me missioning around in the heat with my backpack from place to place, they got another thing coming. They’re going to run out of places to send me long before I run out of energy that’s for fucken sure.

Basically I figured out now that I need authorisation to leave the country and I also figured out that these mense have been sending me around for very little reason. But now I scheme I’m on the right track, but we’ll have to see Monday I suppose and then its the budgetting planning mission to see if Switzerland is still on.

I could mission to London or Mauritania (bet that’s the first time you ever heard of that country!) to renew my Moroccan visa because its cheaper and easier but I just don’t lus for London and there’s some brasse I smaak to hook up with in Switzerland. Only now it looks like I’ll be limited to less cities. But I’m still here, finally showered, finally with some solid food in the belly, ready to face another day, ready to… ready to sleep actually. Mmm, sleep… ZZZ

• If I ever write a book on Morocco, I’ll call it: There are No Stray Dogs in Morocco
• The most Moroccan I feel is when I blow snot out through my nose onto the ground when I walk up the alley after a surf from the beach to the joint (okay, unlike Moroccans this is the only place I do this and it’s probably sea water and I first check if there’s anyone around)
• Someone should tell Moroccans that the moustache is out of fashion
• You know the saying: ‘The best thing since sliced bread’? Morocco seems to have missed the whole sliced bread thing.
• It’s lucky that Moroccans keep tables and tablecloths clean enough to eat off because they generally do.
• Eighties love songs are still romantic here.
• I always thought it logical that when making a cheeseburger that the cheese would be directly on top of the patty so that it can melt.
• And come on already! Is fucking sit-down toilets so hard to install? What’s up with these constipation-inducing glorified holes-in-the-ground? I feel like I’m on candid camera everytime I go into place and open the door to one of these ridiculous things.

So after the festival I figured I’d get some sleep but I ended up going out another couple of nights including some time in Pacha Marrakesh (which is kak expensive with kak music and just generally kak). [kak = shit] But I had some fun as well and even feel like going back to Essaouira to finish some conversations I never got a chance to start.

Anyways… I’m back here in Mehdia Plage staying at the surf school again and trying to figure out what to do next in between surfing and sleeping. I have a week to decide as my visa expires on the 11th.

The school was busy this weekend so I went to Rabat and stayed with a bra, Ali, I met in Essaouira. Really cool people. Alex – this chick from England – was also staying there with his family. Alex is crazy, she went to a friend’s farewell party, got drunk and ended up coming to Morocco with her friend. And I thought I left at a whim!

Life is good here by the beach but I need to mission this week and get my ass into gear. Soon you’ll hear what my plans are, as soon as I find out what they are. Check my photos as I’ve added some today. Notice on the right of this page there’s a link to my photos. 

Yeah. So it’s been four days since I’ve written but it feels like forever. The festival has been a cauldron of people and music and missioning through crowds and incredible music mixed with cheesy music mixed with high energy dancing with people and snatches of sleep and grabbing bites on the go and home-cooked meals.

Intense. Fucking intense.

So during the festival I was looking for something surreal to beat the Moroccan rasta freestyling in Arabic from my first night in this town. Rachid Taha, the Algerian rock star that looks like he is one of the Rolling Stones was a contender, but then the reggae/heavy metal group (yes – heavy metal and reggae don’t seem like to opposites to this band) at a 4am sunrise was definitely more arb. But the winner will have to be the light coloured camels carrying people along the water’s edge at night past us listening to Moroccan hip hop on the beach. The white skins shining from the lights of the beach against the dark sea and sky will have to be some of the surrealist shit ever. Ever.

To give you some idea of what the festival schedule was, the concerts start at about 3pm at the smaller venues and going till 8pm. The larger venues start from about 7pm till midnight when the small venues start again till about 3h30am (fajr). After that the crowds drift off to the beach (which started at 8pm) where the last show starts at 3am and carries on till about 5am. That’s when I would usually try and get some shut eye.

In between I also spent half a day with some really cool guys from Essaouira – swimming, braaing (grilling) sardines, drinking tea – on the rocks next to the bastions behind the port. Good times, good people.

Now I need to rest. Staying in Essaouira one day longer than I thought because all the easy ways of leaving (i.e. Supratour or CTM busses) are full and I don’t smaak to mission plus I might get in a longboard surf tomorrow.

I’m in Essaouira now which in down the coast in south of Morocco. Known for windsurfing but I’m here of course for the music festival. Ironically I’ve moved further away from Europe but this place is more European than the North. Apparently the south is like that – a European version of what I’ve been seeing.

It’s kind of expensive here and the ‘cheap’ place I’m staying at is twice as expensive as the other places I’ve been. Still pretty cheap compared to other countries though. Anyway, you have to see this spot. Its affectionately called The Cave but to me it’s more like catacombs painted blue. A creative real estate agent would market it as: “A cosy little hideaway in the old medina of Essaouria, close to the heart of the city. Open plan with lots of character and colour.”

If you actually pay attention to what my plans were, I was supposed to work my way slowly down the coast to where I am now. What happened was that I got stuck in Mehdia because I was enjoying myself, but a bra there knew a bra and I managed to get a lift with a very Cape Town looking ou straight down to Essaouira. The guy didn’t speak English so it was a very contemplative drive. Nonetheless, he was cool and we overnighted with some cool brasse of his in Marrakesh on the way down.

When I got here I had the number of another bra, Kabir, that someone had given me, and I phoned him and he hooked me up with a bed in the Cave. The vibe in the Cave seems cool – I’m meeting the other mense later. It’s kinda weird living dorm-style again after having a room to myself for so long.

So here’s the river that flows from Kenitra next to Mehdia. Normally you surf along the couple of kilometres of beach to the left (where Mehdia Plage is, the beautiful barrelling right is just next to the left pier though) but when it gets too big (5 meters) you surf inside the river at the bottom left of this picture ) where it should be a perfect 2 meters.

Over the last couple of days the wind has been south, so apparently even though its onshore here, there should be perfect waves at Slimane. The problem is that you have to paddle across the river with the current trying to push you out and dodging the ships going to the sardine factories further upstream. Some people claim it’s a 6 minute paddle but later admit it’s about 20 minutes. I’ve rather been surfing the onshores, dodging fucking ships is not my idea of a good time.

Surfers are a nutty bunch and sure enough there’s fuckers who do this mission for waves. How they must feel paddling back I don’t know.

I’ve been running to the toilet a lot over the last couple of days but I’m over that now. I had something that didn’t agree with me that first day in Mehdia but I’ve been eating lots anyway because sometimes the guys pop over to the place I’m staying at and cook. Everyone cooks really well around here so I’ve had some fantastic food. Much better than at the cafes.

I rented a bed in this house but its crazy because they gave me a key and I’m alone there at night so its basically like my own spot. The house has rooms and beds to rent and is a chill out spot for clients and friends of the Mehdia Surf school though its off season for them now. Summer season (July, August) it gets really busy and the surf season is October to December. So there’s lots of surf movies and magazines and posters and everybody in and out during the day. I love it. I find it hard to believe I’m in Morocco sometimes, at times I feel like I’m on an island somewhere.

I need to go to a music festival in the south next week but I wish I could chill out here more. I might come back after the summer depending on how plans go. For surfers I’m trying to get some info on the surf scene and put together an article for you ouens to make yous wys of this duidelike spot. We’ve been missing out. And I’m surfing in baggies.

I’ve managed to watch some football in the cafes along the beach. So far I’ve watched games with German, French and Arabic commentary. No chance of English. And I must be dreaming if I think I’m going to watch a rugby game anytime soon.