Extract Lifted from travel diary entitled: “Never trust a fart in Marrakech”.

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It’s been a while since I last wrote because Mum and I’s trip took an unplanned detour- down the road of acute dysentery, severe gastroenteritis and a good old stint in hospital.

We reached our friend’s private riad in Marrakech late one evening and were welcomed to a three storey open plan stone house surrounding a central courtyard with a mosaic tiled swimming pool fruit trees and tasteful Moroccan furnishings. An absolute haven in amongst the madness that is the Medina.

We spent the next few days marvelling our way though the seemingly endless souqs that make up this fascinating city. They are an absolute assault on the senses in every possible way: Noisy, narrow alleyways banked on either side with towering mud walls (often decorated in suspended hand woven carpets, for sale, naturally), kamikaze scooters winding their way perilously close to all who wander along, caged chameleons, terrapins, song birds and monkeys; shops stuffed so full it’s a wonder they don’t collapse on each other and the clicking noises of men trying to entice you into their stalls, “Bonjour gazelle”… “come come cheap price, only looking”… “Converse only 5 Dirham”.

Also of course is the odd brush of a hand on one’s derriere, every colour of the rainbow mirrored in carpets, slippers, spice jars, lanterns, Arabic candy and dates. On every corner another alley cat waiting patiently for that stray piece of fish to fall off the counter, snake charmers, huge pieces of hanging Halal meat, dusty bunches of fresh coriander piled high on the side of the streets, donkeys donkeys donkeys and even an old man selling teeth in the main square. One thing’s for sure - you could be here a hundred years and never get bored.

From Marrakech we ventured South West and explored the costal medina in Essaouira, which is consequently where I ate a fateful tagine… It looked like a perfectly decent candlelit cellar fit for a hearty meal… it tasted like an alright piece for veal in the depths of my cous cous engulfed dish… alas little did I know this would poison me leaving my guts for garters… I ate most of it as Mum wasn’t hungry, so understandably I got the brunt of the evil forces at work. I spent the night in stiff pain as it began to kick in and the following day I tried to spend as many hours as possible lying horizontal on the beach. (WARNING: Diary extract now goes into extreme detail regarding the effects of the above mentioned tagine on the victim’s backside… for the squeamish please read on from following paragraph…) That night the drama began. Every single half hour on the dot, my arse shot me out of bed to expel the entire contents of my colon down the already exhausted drain. Adding a fever to the mix as well as a burst blood vessel up my bum I become a shivering pooer of blood and probably couldn’t have felt more miserable if I tried. (Well, perhaps if Mum hadn’t been there… yes, that would have been worse). Anyway, we were leaving that morning, and I seriously doubted whether I could survive the three hour bus journey “sans toilette”. There was no other option so I thought “Right… mind over matter”, stuffed half a bog roll down my knickers and hoped for the best… PROBABLY THE TOUGHEST CHALLENGE I’VE EVER PUT MYSELF THROUGH IN. MY. LIFE. Truly, truly awful. And then… the bus broke down. Right. In. The. Middle. Of. Nowhere. I thought I was going to die right there and then… little me with blood soaked loo roll up my arse and a pained look on my face. Bugger.

Somehow we made it back to Marrakech (which felt like returning home by this point) but sadly two days, one doctor and a killer dose of antibiotics later I was still getting worse. Having not eaten even un petite morceau in five days I finally had to go to hospital. “Polyclinique Les Narcisses” was its name. A nice place for all intensive purposes but I felt so rubbish I couldn’t care less. Weirdly enough I was shown to a dusty room with workmen sanding down some machinery… an Arabic radiologist who spoke no French or English told them to leave and they moved to a separate part of the room and he signalled for me to then strip off. (Or so I thought…) I stood there in my bra wondering if he wanted that off too - he mimed a sort of “take it off” gesture so obligingly I began to unclip it. To my horror he looked like HE was going to collapse as I instantaneously realised he actually wanted my top on and my bra off!... talk about lost in translation.

After that I was escorted my a ‘doctor’ that looked no older than my little brother to ‘Box 2’, an aptly named non descript room where I received number one in a series of painkiller, saline, glucose and antibiotic intravenous drips. I thought I’d be out that evening but I was greatly mistaken. Which brings me now to my not- so delightful room companion of my stay… I never caught the name - she spoke no French and barely even Arabic. Her communication was carried out entirely by cow-like moans of pain. I called her Moaning Myrtle.

I’ve no doubt she was probably a very sweet person in real life, but she made MY stay in hospital really quite unbearable. Not only was it inescapably hot after the nurses insisted I wear a head to toe, collar to cuff baby blue fleece SUIT, but she also refused to let me keep the aircon on. It was stifling. She didn’t even use the blanket at the end of her bed and yet complained through a series of moans and groans and clicking the night nurse’s buzzer that she was too cold. So I lay there on my plastic sheets sweating like a furry blue piglet while Madame enjoyed the 25 degree centigrade still air. Bitch.

After more moans I realised she was asking me to help her out of bed. So me, not exactly all that mobile myself, wheeled myself and my drip over to her side of the room to TRY and decipher what the latest sounds emanating from her throat meant. I did not sleep well. And then it got slightly worse…

Suddenly a nurse shift swap ensues, and bye bye sweet Nursey with the big smile who wiped away my tears and hello Night Nurse (a.k.a. Miss. Trunchbull in a bad mood). She yanked my arm about fiddling with the wires, refused to let me change my fleece jump suit or switch on the aircon and insisted I eat my revolting milky rice meal. Just to top it off she turned a blind eye when Moaning Myrtle’s mates came round for a good old jolly- switching on the lights, passing round Tupperware boxes of home cooking and kids running about between the beds, but she also decided, of all the bathrooms on the ward, to use mine to take an enormous midnight crap. (That she gave up trying to flush after attempt numero trois. Thanks Nursey, nice.

As my eyes adjusted to the daylight on the final morning my nasal passages became quickly aware to an oddly strong stench of… well, shit. More moans and groans… what NOW I thought? So I looked up only to my amazement to see that bitchy night nurse had sat Myrtle down on the armchair between our beds on top of a bed ban where she was taking her first dump of the day! There, right at the foot of my bed! GROSS FACTOR TIMES A MILLION!! I wanted to be sick on myself. That is what you call REALLY antisocial.
After a couple of days recovering in our delightful riad I began to feel stronger so we decided to adorn the backpacks once more and head north to see a bit more of what Morocco has to offer. First stop: Fez.

We took a 10 Dirham petit taxi to a place called Pension Campini, a budget option our Lonely Planet guide had described as “light and airy”. Oh how very inaccurate. No photos we took of our room did it justice - it looked and smelt like a sewer. The “eau de drains” wafted up through the plug holes like you wouldn’t believe. Oh how we laughed. Not quite the Ritz but it was incredibly funny.
Fez itself is a sprawling medina positioned over a hillside valley and is apparently the largest un-motorized urban centre on earth. It was nice not to have to dodge the scooters like you do I Marrakech and also they’re a lot less pushy in terms of sales which was refreshing.
We found some wonderful souqs and stocked up on all sorts of treasures to take home, listened to live music at a wonderful rooftop hangout called ‘Café Clock’ and of course visited the infamous tanneries that Fez is all about… My goodness all I can say is that if Hell had a smell, that would be it! Giant wells of pigeon poo and sheep wee soak the leather for 15 days followed by the skins being stamped on in adjacent pools of dye for another 2 weeks. (Indigo = blue, saffron = yellow, cedar wood = brown, mint = green etc) It’s a fascinating sight but I have to be honest - the whole place stinks to high heaven and you are offered bunches of freshly cut mint to try and tone down the stench. Kind gesture but really unnecessary- nutin’ gonna disguise that smell baby! (I actually took some Tiger Balm with me so Mum and I smeared that under our noses impersonating Clarisse Starling from Silence of the Lambs but event THAT didn’t soften the kick!... What an experience and the reason the two of us nicknamed it ‘Farty Fez’.

And now finally a few reminders of the delights of Morocco:

• Horses wearing nappies
• Delicious freshly squeezed orange juice
• Scooters everywhere
• Round flat bread
• Peppermint tea
• Tagine dishes of every size and colour lining the streets
• Spices piled beautifully into perfect powder pyramids
• Cats, cats and more cats
• Flies blanketing chopped meat lying out on white tiles
• Yellow leather pointed slippers… everywhere!
• The noise of snake charmers
• Beds of freshly cut parsley and coriander on the roadsides
• Sad looking donkeys
• The nice little man selling molars in Jemmae el F’na
• Piles of second hand shoes for sale
• Arabic women cackling stories on the square
• A ferocity against having photographs taken
• Dead camel heads suspended outside butcher stalls
• The Namaz call to prayer five times a day
• Wooden cages with chameleons and terrapins
• Kids who follow you through the souqs
• The smell of those tanneries
• The beautiful colour “Berber Blue”
• Smelly drains
• Delicious café au lait
• The bargaining game where I kept being told “you are BERBER!”
• Old women with black beard like material covering their face from the nose down
• Wonderful sunsets
• More cats…

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Photos

Bread and laughing Cow Cheese for supper!
Trying to keep up the humour as the food poisoning began to kick in...!

Tiger Balm and fresh mint
... in "Farty Fez"!

Our favourite mosque
(Marrakech)

Queen of Scrabble!
On board the seven hour train to Fez... 50 extra points for using all seven letters in one go!

Un Petit Taxi
Fez

Comments

[Kim Unger]

hello, Sarah!
Read with delight! So glad that you are safe and well now! What a trip! Very happy that your sweet mum was at your side being your nursemaid. The pictures are wonderful. I will probably skip Fez for one of the things on my bucket list to complete before I die. Thanks for the descriptive words and awesome language. I love to hear your thoughts! Many blessings, and you're always welcome back to Georgia. We don't stink too badly here....(- xxxooo auntie kim in georgia (-: