0172. The Every Single Town In Morocco Project (Mor 021--revisit)
After 8 years of being stuck in Pennsylvania, I've finally decided that I've had enough. I'm heading back out to the "real" world again--permanently... A world where the streets are bustling and alive, a world where people still struggle, aspire and dream. A world where adventure and uncertainty is waiting right outside your door. Goodbye to land where everyone lives their entire lives locked indoors--from house to car to air conditioned workplace to supermarket to house... Goodbye to a world where you feel like a ghost walking down empty streets and where all the corporate owned chain stores look exactly alike...
I'm moving back to Morocco.
OK... now if you've read blogs 1 and 4 you've seen I actually DID have a lot of cool experiences wandering around and parkbenching the United States--and I'm sure there is much more that I could discover.
Why Morocco? You'd think that I'd be finished with this country by now. After all, I've spent a total of more than 4 years in the country already--in fact, I just spent a couple of weeks here back in February, parkbenching in 20 different cities. You'd think that I'd want to set up base in a completely new place like Turkey or India or China... but no, I'm back in Morocco.
Well, why not? It's the best country in the world for parkbenching... I've still got scores of towns to tour... I can take a ferry to Europe or a vehicle of some sort to Subsaharan Africa... the people are great...the food is great.
...or maybe it's just the food...
Whatever the reason, I'm here and I'm pumped to go.
It took me 12 days and 1 hour to get back in the groove of things...find a place to live, move in, get my work papers started, buy a 300 dirham "travel guitar" (I couldn't fit my Shanghai travel guitar in with all the luggage)... spend a couple of days brushing up on my songs...
...And today I'm finally off--I'm using a map this time. Why? Because I've got a very precise objective this time: to Parkbench every single city and town in Morocco.
So where do I start? Well, Casablanca was already parkbenched last February and I'm eager to cover some new territory... so I head out to the bus station to grab the next bus heading out.
Khouribga.
It's a dry, brown mining town about 2 hours southeast of Casablanca--looks like a good starting point. I visited there back in 2000 when I went to see Sivi, an Angolan friend who was studying there. Nothing really special--but it's got its unique traits.
Morocco is one of the biggest phosphate exporters and Khouribga is one of the main mining areas. A Moroccan joke goes, "how do you know is someones from Khouribga? They have brown teeth!" Apparently, there's a lot of phosphate in the water, and it tends to stay on peoples teeth.
I will hasten to say that I did see a lot of Khouribgans WITHOUT brown teeth...
My first destination was to visit the sprawling "souk el hedd" (Sunday market) that I'd seen on my ride into town. I knew I was heading in the right direction because I passed endless flatbed horsecarts carrying ladies home from market--apparently a major form of transportation in Khouribga. I did manage to take a very discreet picture of one of these...
Highlights of the souk el hedd included the picturesque butcher section (though not as varied as, say, China) the "scrap" section where you can buy a screw, a twisted piece of plastic or a widowed shoe, the mountains and mountains of beautiful watermelons and the huge piles of used clothes brought down from Italy by Khouribgan emigrants.
Next I toured through the middle class rather boring neighborhoods of large, three to four story freshly painted homes and wide boulevards. I suspect many of these homes belong to families of Khouribgans who have emigrated to Italy...
...Then back into town--took my clip next to a couple of decorative railroad cars that symbolize Khouribga's phosphate industry... Found a little plaza to parkbench at--unfortunately I ended up with a couple of glue sniffers as an audience--and that kind of drove away any potential respectable audience--so I cut that session short...
...Then through a neighborhood of large French-style villas with gardens--actually built by the French back when they ran the phosphate mines... Then a little French-style park...
I decided on a new rule of thumb for parkbenching in Morocco: if the first session doesn't go too well, try at least once more--I'd hate to give up on Khouribga so quickly...
So I pulled out my guitar there in the park... sure enough, soon a respectable schoolteacher stopped by--we had a great conversation as he told me of his adventures teaching in a village high in the mountains above Marrakesh. He said that he and his wife even climbed Mount Toubkal--the highest peak in the Atlas. That was quite interesting to hear about--as not very many Moroccan women are into mountain climbing... Afterwards we headed over to his place for tea and msimin.
Quite satisfied with my experience and exploration of Khouribga, I headed out to discover a new city...
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