January 2007
The last time I wrote to all of you the end of Ramadan was rapidly approaching and the Little Feast (L’Eid Sghir) was almost upon us. At present, my fellow volunteers and I are celebrating the Big Feast (L’Eid Kabir), the principal religious holiday of the Muslim calendar, with the greater Moroccan population. This is the holiday where every Muslim household sacrifices a sheep in reverence of the divine intervention made with one of the Qu’ran’s most revered characters. Shamed by an illegitimate son begat by he and his Egyptian slave girl, Abraham was going to remove the blight when God intervened, instructing him to sacrifice a sheep in lieu. Hagar, the slave girl, and her son, Ishmael, fled to Arabia, where Abraham later constructed the shrine at Mecca. Abraham is venerated as the father of all monotheists (though strangely, not considered Jewish by the Qu’ran) and progenitor of the anointed Arab people. He is, in other words, an important dude, and as such, his holiday is the most festive of all. In many ways, it is roughly analogous to Christmas, where everything shuts down, prices on holiday-related goods and services skyrocket, each household emulates Abraham’s sacrifice, and family come flocking (no pun intended) home from all corners of the world to do so. Likewise, similar to Christmas, it is the most emphasized family celebration of the year even though Ramadan (like Easter) carries far more religious significance.
For the volunteers, we can spend a good week with our neighbors, getting acquainted with every organ on the sheep anatomy for two principal reasons. First, as Christian bachelors and bachelorettes spending the holiday alone, they pity us and perhaps see it as another opportunity for us to see the light and right of Islam. Another reason we are visiting our neighbors and fellow villagers is because we are… well… grounded. The enlightened administrators of Peace Corps Morocco, once again assuming that we are incapable of thinking for ourselves, have declared that anyone leaving their village during the 12 days before, during and after the holiday will be fired. The rationale on paper is that transportation is too dangerous, but this is a ruse, as are many of the silly policies. In reality, moving oneself from point A to point B anywhere in the developing world at any time of year is never a good idea.
Take the other day, for instance. I took a taxi ride home, though it may not be the kind of taxi that you are imagining. In a broken down Jalopy of a station wagon, roughly the size of a Subaru Outback, sat 11 men (10 Berbers and your intrepid correspondent) packed tightly enough to bleed into each other’s wounds. Two guys sat in the driver’s seat and took turns steering, and sometimes agreed that two drivers operating the vehicle in tandem was far safer. On the roof there were two full grain sacs, several duffel bags and a bundle of hay, on top of which three more blokes laid down, clutching firmly to a rickety aluminum rack as we drove a serpentine mountain pass road. It looked more like a circa-1955 fraternity stunt than a viable mode of transport. But I was not concerned – anything with four wheels and a motor is a joy ride these days – and after two years of Morocco, I was not particularly phased either. Nor was I disquieted by the sound of the undercarriage moaning like the bow of a pilgrim’s ship navigating gale force winds. I was simply grateful that the Berber next to me knew to cough into his hands rather than share his delightful affliction with us all.
The station wagon, or “bush taxi” as former PC volunteer Fran Linn calls them, is actually the anomaly. The majority of volunteers living in remote areas share the transit experience. No, I am not talking about BART, or any other pioneering rural subway system. I am referring to a decrepit mini-van, van or bus that is most likely unlicensed and insured to carry a single person. So, they carry 35 instead.
I am still amazed by the extreme urgency with which the transits and all of its passengers will leave the stand on a sweltering summer day. A dozen Moroccans will languish for hours under the aluminum awning, drinking pot after pot of tea and playing cards. Then at a moment’s notice, the driver will come sprinting out of an alleyway, jump into the front seat, blaring the horn and preparing for battle. Like a crew of drunken, bellicose firemen, 29 men, 5 women and I go lunging for the rear and side entrance, bickering over who claimed whose seat and who will have to stand on grain sacks in the back or will be left clinging to the rear door ladder for the 130 kilometer trip (fortunately, I get dropped off after only one third of that journey). Despite the transit’s carrying capacity of 15, this cacophonous mélange settles itself with surprising efficiency and we are off in about four minutes, invariably with at least one adolescent male sprinting after the departing vehicle. The van will travel 75 feet and then be left to idle, motor running, for 10 minutes, with all doors closed (windows are often sealed shut too since many Moroccans believe that mischievous spirits and the common cold attack by means of a draft). Wiping sweat from my forehead, I peer out the window to see five Berber men arguing about the best way to hoist two sheep and a spare tire to the roof. Once this is accomplished, the van inches forward, just to the middle of an intersection, and then stops again. A toothless man inside argues with a toothless man outside while five vehicles behind us start to lay on their horns. After 4 minutes of friendly fire, the van may actually leave the city, stopping only one more time to pay off the local authorities.
Then there is the camion. I had never heard of the automotive company “Bedford” before arriving in Morocco, but the name will be forever burned into my memory. At some unspecified point in modern Moroccan history, the government apparently struck a deal with the company to import a mind-bogglingly large fleet of Bedford clones. It must have been a one-shot deal, as every single camion in the kingdom is a facsimile of the group, all of which exhibit the same level of wear and tear, rock side-to-side disconcertingly as they navigate the pock-marked roads, and adorn the same sexy, flaking maroon paint job on the cab. The front end resembles an F350 on stilts and it tugs behind it a hollow steel cage whose sides are lashed together by chains. The rear compartment is sometimes partitioned into two levels, to carry a wide gamut of imprudently stacked goods: sheep, grain sacs, cattle, lambs in burlap sacks, Berbers, etc. I cannot imagine any greater health hazard than passing a fully loaded Bedford descending a mountain pass during the wheat harvest. To get a sense of their perilously high center of gravity, picture a willowy Kenyan girl carrying a day’s worth of water on her head, running down a hill. Luckily, I will be gone by next harvest season.
These are all the accepted means of transport in the countryside. Many volunteers may never even step into one of these during the entire service if they live in the city. But their travel options, and how we bush-whackers get to them, have their own perks. I am speaking of the intercity bus and grand taxi. The latter is a Mercedes sedan that will take off for a scheduled destination – usually the next city, but sometimes one can find a long-distance taxi – once six passengers show up. It can be a relatively painless ride as long as the three passengers with you in the back seat are skinny guys (the Moroccan population is a strong testimony of the benefits of the Atkins diet for women if there ever was one). If you are a woman, it might be less pleasant as the cramped quarters can make for some uncomfortable situations. But if you really wanted to escape sexual harassment, you would never come to North Africa in the first place.
Someone who lives in the north of the country near a medium-sized city has access to the national train line and bus line, which, like all governmental and bureaucratic functions, is a poor-man’s version of the French equivalent. In either, you could easily forget that it is the Maghreb that is quickly racing by your window as you glide imperceptibly from urban center to urban center. But here in the dirty south, we utilize a large number of privately-owned bus companies. What they lack in efficiency, organization, comfort, customer service, and cleanliness they make up for in… I am still working on that. Compared to these sluggish and disorderly transport systems, Greyhound seems like the Tokyo bullet train. While these do have some semblance of a schedule, many paying passengers are unable or unwilling to go to the station, and so it operates as an intracity and intercity bus.
It is often said that automobiles are designed for a six foot tall man, and that the designers are insensitive to the needs of most women and short men. The people who design Moroccan buses, on the other hand, arrange the seats in a fashion suitable for a dwarf and are insensitive to the needs of most normal human beings. One possible solution to this is to ride in the fetal position, which I do on occasion. Another advantage is the fact that traditional Moroccan women seem to all suffer an inner ear problem which quickly turns any transport system faster than a mule into an emetic. At the beginning of many bus rides, a man walks up and down the aisle, passing out motion sickness bags to many of the females on board. On certain routes, a large number will be used.
I can only grin, thinking of some of my traveling mishaps and experiences since 2005. Riding in the back of a transit, wedged between two donkeys. A taxi ride at dusk that quickly spiraled down into a motorized rabbit hunt. Picking up my bag on a bus and having to wipe someone else’s vomit off of it. My bottle of wine that broke at the beginning of a long mountain pass, spreading the devil’s brew under the seats of twenty veiled Muslim women, all giving me the evil eye and wishing me a quick entry into hell. The van with a hole in the exhaust pipe and the floor, spewing bluish-gray smoke into the riding compartment and trying to explain carbon monoxide poisoning to the driver. Being tossed from taxi to taxi as drivers brawl over who-gets-to-take-the-rich-white-folk-to-Marrakesh. Passing drivers playing chicken and tearing out the other’s side view mirror. Some of my friends have better stories.
The anecdotes are all very amusing until you look at the statistics. In a country of only 30 million people, 3500 people are killed every year by motor vehicle accidents. With incredibly lax traffic law enforcement (true enforcement, not collecting bribes), a generally casual attitude towards safety, and a dearth of posted speed limits, the numbers are not that surprising. Half of those fatalities are pedestrians, which really emphasizes the look-both-ways axiom. Since September 11, 2001, about 19,000 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in Morocco, whereas 30 were killed by terrorists (excluding the attackers themselves). Nonetheless, Americans are petrified of traveling in Morocco or anywhere else in the world where people watch Al Jazeera. But traffic accidents simply do not offer the same shock and awe as bombings do, and besides, we have justify those pesky, bloated Iraq and Homeland Security budgets somehow, don’t we? Honestly, unless you are in a bona fide war zone, you don’t have to worry about being ambushed or targeted as a white person. If you want to be safe in the Middle East, just make sure your taxi driver is watching the road.
For the volunteers, we can spend a good week with our neighbors, getting acquainted with every organ on the sheep anatomy for two principal reasons. First, as Christian bachelors and bachelorettes spending the holiday alone, they pity us and perhaps see it as another opportunity for us to see the light and right of Islam. Another reason we are visiting our neighbors and fellow villagers is because we are… well… grounded. The enlightened administrators of Peace Corps Morocco, once again assuming that we are incapable of thinking for ourselves, have declared that anyone leaving their village during the 12 days before, during and after the holiday will be fired. The rationale on paper is that transportation is too dangerous, but this is a ruse, as are many of the silly policies. In reality, moving oneself from point A to point B anywhere in the developing world at any time of year is never a good idea.
Take the other day, for instance. I took a taxi ride home, though it may not be the kind of taxi that you are imagining. In a broken down Jalopy of a station wagon, roughly the size of a Subaru Outback, sat 11 men (10 Berbers and your intrepid correspondent) packed tightly enough to bleed into each other’s wounds. Two guys sat in the driver’s seat and took turns steering, and sometimes agreed that two drivers operating the vehicle in tandem was far safer. On the roof there were two full grain sacs, several duffel bags and a bundle of hay, on top of which three more blokes laid down, clutching firmly to a rickety aluminum rack as we drove a serpentine mountain pass road. It looked more like a circa-1955 fraternity stunt than a viable mode of transport. But I was not concerned – anything with four wheels and a motor is a joy ride these days – and after two years of Morocco, I was not particularly phased either. Nor was I disquieted by the sound of the undercarriage moaning like the bow of a pilgrim’s ship navigating gale force winds. I was simply grateful that the Berber next to me knew to cough into his hands rather than share his delightful affliction with us all.
The station wagon, or “bush taxi” as former PC volunteer Fran Linn calls them, is actually the anomaly. The majority of volunteers living in remote areas share the transit experience. No, I am not talking about BART, or any other pioneering rural subway system. I am referring to a decrepit mini-van, van or bus that is most likely unlicensed and insured to carry a single person. So, they carry 35 instead.
I am still amazed by the extreme urgency with which the transits and all of its passengers will leave the stand on a sweltering summer day. A dozen Moroccans will languish for hours under the aluminum awning, drinking pot after pot of tea and playing cards. Then at a moment’s notice, the driver will come sprinting out of an alleyway, jump into the front seat, blaring the horn and preparing for battle. Like a crew of drunken, bellicose firemen, 29 men, 5 women and I go lunging for the rear and side entrance, bickering over who claimed whose seat and who will have to stand on grain sacks in the back or will be left clinging to the rear door ladder for the 130 kilometer trip (fortunately, I get dropped off after only one third of that journey). Despite the transit’s carrying capacity of 15, this cacophonous mélange settles itself with surprising efficiency and we are off in about four minutes, invariably with at least one adolescent male sprinting after the departing vehicle. The van will travel 75 feet and then be left to idle, motor running, for 10 minutes, with all doors closed (windows are often sealed shut too since many Moroccans believe that mischievous spirits and the common cold attack by means of a draft). Wiping sweat from my forehead, I peer out the window to see five Berber men arguing about the best way to hoist two sheep and a spare tire to the roof. Once this is accomplished, the van inches forward, just to the middle of an intersection, and then stops again. A toothless man inside argues with a toothless man outside while five vehicles behind us start to lay on their horns. After 4 minutes of friendly fire, the van may actually leave the city, stopping only one more time to pay off the local authorities.
Then there is the camion. I had never heard of the automotive company “Bedford” before arriving in Morocco, but the name will be forever burned into my memory. At some unspecified point in modern Moroccan history, the government apparently struck a deal with the company to import a mind-bogglingly large fleet of Bedford clones. It must have been a one-shot deal, as every single camion in the kingdom is a facsimile of the group, all of which exhibit the same level of wear and tear, rock side-to-side disconcertingly as they navigate the pock-marked roads, and adorn the same sexy, flaking maroon paint job on the cab. The front end resembles an F350 on stilts and it tugs behind it a hollow steel cage whose sides are lashed together by chains. The rear compartment is sometimes partitioned into two levels, to carry a wide gamut of imprudently stacked goods: sheep, grain sacs, cattle, lambs in burlap sacks, Berbers, etc. I cannot imagine any greater health hazard than passing a fully loaded Bedford descending a mountain pass during the wheat harvest. To get a sense of their perilously high center of gravity, picture a willowy Kenyan girl carrying a day’s worth of water on her head, running down a hill. Luckily, I will be gone by next harvest season.
These are all the accepted means of transport in the countryside. Many volunteers may never even step into one of these during the entire service if they live in the city. But their travel options, and how we bush-whackers get to them, have their own perks. I am speaking of the intercity bus and grand taxi. The latter is a Mercedes sedan that will take off for a scheduled destination – usually the next city, but sometimes one can find a long-distance taxi – once six passengers show up. It can be a relatively painless ride as long as the three passengers with you in the back seat are skinny guys (the Moroccan population is a strong testimony of the benefits of the Atkins diet for women if there ever was one). If you are a woman, it might be less pleasant as the cramped quarters can make for some uncomfortable situations. But if you really wanted to escape sexual harassment, you would never come to North Africa in the first place.
Someone who lives in the north of the country near a medium-sized city has access to the national train line and bus line, which, like all governmental and bureaucratic functions, is a poor-man’s version of the French equivalent. In either, you could easily forget that it is the Maghreb that is quickly racing by your window as you glide imperceptibly from urban center to urban center. But here in the dirty south, we utilize a large number of privately-owned bus companies. What they lack in efficiency, organization, comfort, customer service, and cleanliness they make up for in… I am still working on that. Compared to these sluggish and disorderly transport systems, Greyhound seems like the Tokyo bullet train. While these do have some semblance of a schedule, many paying passengers are unable or unwilling to go to the station, and so it operates as an intracity and intercity bus.
It is often said that automobiles are designed for a six foot tall man, and that the designers are insensitive to the needs of most women and short men. The people who design Moroccan buses, on the other hand, arrange the seats in a fashion suitable for a dwarf and are insensitive to the needs of most normal human beings. One possible solution to this is to ride in the fetal position, which I do on occasion. Another advantage is the fact that traditional Moroccan women seem to all suffer an inner ear problem which quickly turns any transport system faster than a mule into an emetic. At the beginning of many bus rides, a man walks up and down the aisle, passing out motion sickness bags to many of the females on board. On certain routes, a large number will be used.
I can only grin, thinking of some of my traveling mishaps and experiences since 2005. Riding in the back of a transit, wedged between two donkeys. A taxi ride at dusk that quickly spiraled down into a motorized rabbit hunt. Picking up my bag on a bus and having to wipe someone else’s vomit off of it. My bottle of wine that broke at the beginning of a long mountain pass, spreading the devil’s brew under the seats of twenty veiled Muslim women, all giving me the evil eye and wishing me a quick entry into hell. The van with a hole in the exhaust pipe and the floor, spewing bluish-gray smoke into the riding compartment and trying to explain carbon monoxide poisoning to the driver. Being tossed from taxi to taxi as drivers brawl over who-gets-to-take-the-rich-white-folk-to-Marrakesh. Passing drivers playing chicken and tearing out the other’s side view mirror. Some of my friends have better stories.
The anecdotes are all very amusing until you look at the statistics. In a country of only 30 million people, 3500 people are killed every year by motor vehicle accidents. With incredibly lax traffic law enforcement (true enforcement, not collecting bribes), a generally casual attitude towards safety, and a dearth of posted speed limits, the numbers are not that surprising. Half of those fatalities are pedestrians, which really emphasizes the look-both-ways axiom. Since September 11, 2001, about 19,000 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in Morocco, whereas 30 were killed by terrorists (excluding the attackers themselves). Nonetheless, Americans are petrified of traveling in Morocco or anywhere else in the world where people watch Al Jazeera. But traffic accidents simply do not offer the same shock and awe as bombings do, and besides, we have justify those pesky, bloated Iraq and Homeland Security budgets somehow, don’t we? Honestly, unless you are in a bona fide war zone, you don’t have to worry about being ambushed or targeted as a white person. If you want to be safe in the Middle East, just make sure your taxi driver is watching the road.
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