Marrakech

We took a grand taxi to Marrakech, through a less scenic but safer route down from Azilal. Marrakech was a reintroduction to heat, fashion boys, tourists, pollution and too many people on motorcycles. Progressively, there were also many women riding around on motorcycles, although I didn’t see many being as annoying as the men and driving around the narrow, crowded streets. I had seen and been irritated by motorists in the medina in Rabat, but it was much worse in Marrakech. We stayed in a hotel in the narrow alleys behind Djaama El Fna. The area was touristy as fuck—dominated by foreigners—but I still liked it. I enjoyed the orange juice stands, and the food stalls. Still it was annoying to be constantly pestered by all the vendors, after the calm of Azilal and Rabat. In Marrakech, discerning eyes could tell I was a tourist even if their guesses of where I was from were often way off. Although I had heard vendors try to hook you by yelling out a greeting in whatever language they think you speak (hello my friend! Mon ami, c’est pas cher, etc.) but had never encountered so many people that just yelled out the names of countries. Did they seriously think that if they could guess correctly we would reward them by buying their overpriced leather bags? Walking around Natasha we got some outlandish countries, Cameroon, Jamaica (Natasha’s twists elicited lots of Jamaica), Martinique, Belgium, France, and some more sensible ones like Brazil and the US. If one of them had said Dominican Republic I would have let them name the price.

Market Thursday

Azilal is also small enough to have a weekly market which the whole town goes to. We too headed out, Natasha cause she lives there and has to get food and other necessities and me, cause well I was curious enough to wake up early. There were rows of fresh fruit laid down on the floor and collected in buckets blackened with what I can only describe as “food soot.” But you could buy pretty much anything at the market, from blankets, electrical sockets to clothes and raw wheat. The ingredients bought at the market made for damn good meals.

Azilal

In Azilal I stayed with Natasha. It is a beautiful town in the mountains that is postcard ready with snowcapped mountains, lots of green and waterfalls. One of my first days we walked around and picked fresh olives. It was also cold, and small. The cold was difficult because it’s the kind of cold that gets into your bones cause due to the poor insulation it’s just as cold inside as outside. Consequently, there is nowhere to be warm but in your bed under several covers. It’s also a small town, and therefore shuts down early. Not much to do at night, especially when it’s cold outside.

Yet it was in Azilal that I ate best. Natasha cooked much amazing food, including another of the greatest meals of my life (and yall wonder why I was in Morocco for a month). We went to the slaughterhouse where we bought a chicken, saw it murdered before us, and then defeathered and gutted. The first night Natasha made—I cut some tomatoes or something too—some delicious fried chickens with its left side. But the next day she outdid herself with a Moroccan couscous dish with the right side of the chicken.

Irregular Transport

After a small eternity in Rabat, I finally got my ass off of Currun’s couch (if I had stayed any longer I would have felt obligated to pay rent and change the litter box) and made my way to Azilal. Leaving Rabat, I also left “development” behind and enter the world of irregular transport. Rather than the sterile CTM bus station, I had to go to Rabat’s bus station where before I had even crossed the street dudes were already coming at me promising the cheapest rate to Casablanca and Marrakech. But I wasn’t going there, I was headed to Beni Mellal a random town in Morocco (honestly I know nothing about it) on this bus that I had to wait an hour to fill up before it would take off and then stopped for every couple of large Berber women standing by the roadside the whole way there. It reminded me of Dominican voyages past, when people would be standing in the middle of nowhere by the highway with live chickens waiting for the bus to the capital. Again I sat next this really nice women who offered me food when she saw that I was hungry (do all Moroccan women just carry food around all the time?) even though she was pregnant and I would have survived without the bread and milk. Somehow we managed to communicate all of this even though I don’t speak Berber and she doesn’t speak French. When traveling you realize how little you really need to say with words. In Beni Mellal, the final stop was a gas station which was convenient for me because the grand taxi station was right behind it. A grand taxi is a shared taxi or what we would call a bush taxi if it was slightly more beat up and driven by other kinds of Africans. Again I paid for a place in this dude’s four-passenger ride only of course they cram six people, don’t leave until they have all six, and then drive like maniacs. This was one of my worst crazy bush taxi driver experiences, as we were whipping around all of these narrow mountain roads and this fool wasn’t even trying to attempt to stay in his life even though often you could see who was 50 m from you around the next bed heading at you in the same middle of the road. I made it alive and met Natasha at the post office. Even though, to be honest after four months in Senegal none of this felt crazier than a stopover at Port Authority.

Gnawa

One of the best things about travel is finding things you never knew existed (even if millions know about it, and it’s not necessarily hard to get exposed in our global media age). In Morocco, besides the fashion boys this was gnawa music and subculture. Two of Currun’s awesome friends were gnawa musicians and we spent Eid ul-Fitr, the feast to end Ramadan at one of their homes. There was great live music and pastries. Gnawa, I’m a fan.

What White Folks Eat

Ever since I was in Brazil I wondered what it is that white folks ate, or at least what they ate before their former colonial subjects introduced them to flavor. I learned (and yes this was a great revelation at the time) that there are different kinds of white people and they ate, yes, different things. A random morning in Rabat, Currun and I met these French girls and we invited them over for a raif lunch. I took advantage of the opportunity to ask them what they ate in the Netherlands. Boiled potatoes, vegetables and “really long sausages.” God forgive european folks, I understand now why they had to go out there and rape, murder, conquer and exploit the rest of us. I mean can you imagine eating that crap?

Flag-Off

Once at the bar we paid more than normal for these tiny bottles of Flag, only it really wasn’t the Flag I know and love from Senegal. In its place there was this watery knock-off that I can’t call even call Flag. Spain-style though, you could get a contact high from all the hash and tobacco smoke in the air.