Road Trippin' Moroccan Style

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Optimism
Clearing blue sky,
A promise in bare branches.
In winter, there are sunny days.
In adulthood, childhood can return.
- 365 Tao: Daily Meditations

We left Kelaat Sraghna at the crack of 1pm in the rain. Hichem had suggested the night before that I get everything ready so we could leave by 9am. But this is Morocco and time is fluid. Actually, the real reason we left much later than we had planned was that Maryam & Hichem's poor little '85 Golf had been waiting to see the mechanic for quite some time, and the mechanic apparently wasn't able to get to it any sooner. Perhaps his time is more fluid than ours, or more likely, with everybody travelling for the big holiday of l-eide, he was busy.

Either way, we got out on the road and discovered that the mud flaps made a horrible scraping noise since the car was so loaded down that the flaps dragged on the ground. I suggested taking them off, but Hichem found a way to tie them up to the bumper so they still somewhat served their purpose but didn't touch the ground. In the back of the car were two barrels of Kelaa olive oil, since the family had requested we bring oil from our town. It really didn't make sense to me since olive oil everywhere in Morocco is delicious, but apparently they wanted our oil. There were also several other parcels and boxes of presents for the relatives, including a new TV for Maryam's parents. L-eide is the biggest holiday of the year and even if people can't really afford to buy lots of presents they go all out. I guess that's one similarity to American Christmasses.

The drive was happily mostly uneventful, my favorite part being when we drove through a town called Souk Sebt which translates to Saturday Market. On a long drive, crammed in the back of a Gold surrounded by packages and squished up against the TV, every bit of humor I could find helped. My least favorite part of the trip was when I noticed that it was getting late and started wondering if we would make it to Errachidia before dark.

Peace Corps policies on travel can be very strict and we are not allowed to travel after dar for safety reasons. Morocco is not known for having the best of roads, especially in the Atlas and Errachidia is on the exact other side of the mountains from Kelaat Sraghna. I had to ask and the answer came back "We're not going to Errachidia" I sat there blinking at Maryam for a minute, wondering if I had misunderstood a very simple phrase in Arabic then managed to ask "Where are we going?" Khemisset.

Khemisset? That's in the north up by Rabat and definately not on the way to Errachidia. What I was really trying not to panic about was that as a part of the Peace Corps travel policies, I was approved to travel with my host family to Errachidia - and only to Errachidia. It was far too late to do anything about it though, so I sat in shock for a while, wondering if I could get sent back to the US for this and pulled out my CD player and listened to Tribe Called Quest to calm me down a bit. When I finally gathered up the courage to ask why we were going to a different city, and one so far away from where I was supposed to be, Maryam explained that since we had had a late start and they had found out that the most direct road was snowed out, we had to go up north to a safer pass over the Atlas. It was too far to make it in one day, so we were going to spend the night at Hichem's sister's house in Khemisset.

This made sense, even in Arabic, and I managed to call Peace Corps and warn them where I was, so I guess the trip was a success. At least I got to see a lot of countryside I definately would not have seen otherwise. I do feel much closer to Maryam now, and her sister Aziza who lives in Rabat managed to meet us that night in Khemisset. It's fun gettting to meet some of the extended family - they are all very wonderful people.

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Comments

[Moneek]

khemissett ?
Ezeur im happy you enjoyed your trip to morocco. As well as your trip to Khemisset. I have a trip planned to visit my fiancee' there he is arabic and im american ive never traveled abroad but im actually looking forward to it. He lives in Knemisset and i havent read much about Khemisset morocco, wish i new more about his birthplace but im sure i will enjoy just being there with him...Thanks for the good read