Morocco, Pg 19

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We’re up early today, it’s our last day in Morocco. We got all our gear together and packed for the long trip home.
But there was one more thing that Eve and I have to take care of before we leave the compound.

Three weeks ago when we got the Double Zero hash and the idea light in my head turned on, which was of course was all about taking a chunk of this Hash home.
We wanted to get some friends high with the best Hash they’ve ever smoked.
But first things first.

We made a plan how to get it home, and what could happen if something went awry.
We kept about six or seven grams for the plan. We broke it into two equal chunks and rolled them out as flat and thin as we could with a wine bottle, particularly the outer edge, keeping any bulk to an absolute minimum, then sealing them up in a piece of plastic wrap.

We shaped and fitted the chunks into the bottom of each cup of Eve’s bra. After she put it on I ran my hands over her breasts to determine if I could feel the chunks, I could, but only ever so slightly, and that was only because I knew they were there.

If she got frisked somewhere, and she would, everyone would; it’s not as if they’re going to be feeling her up or fondling her, they’re just going to pat her down.
On just a pat down these chunks would never be detected; this is going be a piece of cake.

With the Hash plan taken care of and all our gear packed we said goodbye to Sale’ and Rabat and headed south to Casablanca.

An overview of a section of Sale’ on the way out of town

It’s 9 am, we’re on the road again. No one is saying much, everyone’s reflecting I guess. We’re all experiencing a bit of group sadness about our parting of ways.

But for Eve and I, even though we’re in a moment of group sadness there was still an upside for us, and that was the nice warm feeling about going home and being with our kids again, this was a really good vibe for both of us.

Since their birth, we had never been away from our kids for any more than three or four days at a time, and those times were very few and far between.
Being away from them for a month had taken on an uncomfortably strange feeling.
We knew it was time to get back home.
We missed our kids and needed to be with them.

Casablanca is going to be about a two hour drive.
Along the way we passed through several very depressed looking communities.

We came to a city named Mohammedia, population about 100,000.
The information we had stated, – through a recent redevelopment process the city now has a fairly modern central core and port facility-, which is all to the west of us.
We’re on the road which runs along the east side of the city where all the slums are.

This is a very depressed area, very dirty, stinking of garbage, and very run down; pretty much a total slum.
If my memory serves me well, and it does, most neighborhoods along this road were just poorly built shantytown hovels, many exposed to piles of open landfill garbage right in what would be their backyards.

At the time we were there, nothing on the east side of the city had been redeveloped yet. That wouldn’t happen for years to come.

The city, east to west was quite narrow, less than a mile wide.
From north to south it was several miles long.
My remembrance of the east side road was one of large neighborhoods dominated by hovels, squalor, and garbage.

The population density in this region seemed quite high, and nowhere did we see any evidence that would indicate any kind of life above an extreme poverty level.
That seemed to be the norm for all of the communities along this road.

For the people out in the bad-land areas as well as in the mountain communities, none of them lived in the squalor and garbage we saw along this road.
I’ve never seen anything like this before, It was disgusting.

Although we had seen a great deal of poverty in our month here, what we were seeing along this road is beyond typical poverty. These people are sharing their land space with large mounds of open landfill garbage that is encroaching the back of their homes.
These garbage mounds are rotting and stinking, and likely producing a great deal of germs and bacteria that could cause major health problems.
Yet they stay, not because of the risk to their health, that they may not even be aware of, but because there’s just nowhere else to go.

But of course the people who live here see it all from a completely different perspective.
For them it’s not extreme poverty at all, it’s just life.

Having lived in Canada my whole life I’ve never seen extreme poverty before, poor and needy or rundown and slummy, yes, at times we all have, but poverty on this level, never.
Poverty on this scale does not exist in Canada.

We know it exists in varying degrees in regions around the world, we’ve heard about it many times over the years, we read about it, we see it on TV.
But somehow it doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on most people. And that’s simply because so few have ever actually dealt with it up close and personal.

But when you find yourself living right in the middle of it, and on this scale, that’s when you know it really exists, that’s when it grips you; and that does something to you.

Life for their people has been this way for at least a couple thousand years,
maybe longer.
The generations that are born here into this life of poverty knowing there’s absolutely nothing they can do that will ever change things, it’s just become the accepted norm, and they appear to have adopted a “no big deal” approach to it.

Yet many of them knowing all the while that in many parts the world that a much better life does exist, but it will never exist for them.
They just accept what [we] see as extreme poverty as their everyday way of life.
For the majority there is no other option.

I absolutely hated the level of poverty we encountered as we travelled around the country.

This is the worst of the eastside slums that we saw. Not only is this the local landfill, of which there are a few in this region, it’s also what many people call home, and their back yard.
There had to be disease carrying vermin everywhere in this area. I can’t imagine living in such filth and squalor. And the stench that hung in the air was absolutely disgusting and gut churning

I tried very hard to just let my feelings about it roll off my back, but there were also times I struggled really hard to not let myself become emotionally attached to it.

I never did talk to any of the others about how I was feeling about all the poverty we’ve seen, maybe I should have. I may not have been the only one that felt the way I did, but I guess I’ll never know.

But one thing is for sure, I never want to see poverty on this level ever again.

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As we moved on down the road Eve would from time to time bend her head forward checking for a hash smell from her bra, nothing yet, it’s all good.

Well, we’re not that far from Casablanca now. We’ve come full circle and we’re looking for road signs, don’t want to miss any turns. We must be getting closer, the road is in better shape and there’s a lot more traffic. It won’t be long now.

We’re now only a few miles from the city and looking to find the airport.
The only problem is there are two, and we didn’t know which one we needed. The airport ID on the ticket is a number, not a name.

Back to Casablanca, we’ve come full circle; back to the city full of mostly rude arrogant assholes. I won’t miss this city; not one fucking bit.

We asked a few people where to find the airport we needed, all they did was jerk us around. Last time we were in Casablanca so many people treated us like shit. They were rude, they ignored us when we asked a question, others just outright ripped us off. To us it was just a city of assholes.
I know they’re not all like that, but the ones we encountered sure were.

We found signs that directed us to the Nouasseur Airport, which as it turned out was the one we needed; nice break.
Someone we encountered told us the other airport was much smaller, and was strictly for military use.

It’s 12 o’clock. We went to find our departure gate and checked our luggage in.
Our flight wasn’t leaving until 3 o’clock, so we have time to kill. We all went for lunch at the airport restaurant and chatted for awhile. By 1:30 the rest of the gang was ready to head out.

I think their game plan, if I remember correctly, was to drive south to Marrakesh and lay over for the night, then head further south to Agadir or Aglou, or maybe even as far south as Tan Tan; back to the sun and sand and an abundance of Hash.
My guess was they were going to Aglou and live in dirt caves, like dead people, just because it would be dirt cheap.

We all hugged and shook hands, there were probably a few a tears, it was a very emotional moment for all of us.
Bye guys, love you, see you back in Canada’.

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The Home Stretch

Eve and I went up to the observation deck to watch the planes come and go.
There’s lots of traffic at this airport.

Eve kept checking for a hash smell, still nothing, its all good.
We walked around the terminal for awhile just to kill some time. It will soon be time to catch our flight.

Well here we go again, another Royal Air Maroc “fucking piece of shit plane” that’s going to attempt to get us safely to Tangier, then to Madrid.

Our last look leaving Casablanca

We lifted off and were heading north along the coast, this was a really a cool sight. We could see the all towns and small communities along the coast we had driven through just a couple of hours ago.

Somewhere near Rabat we headed slightly northeast to Tangier.
They told us we would be there for an hour and could exit the plane.

When we landed everyone disembarked and went into the terminal.
We weren’t off the plane for anymore than ten minutes when they they told us we had to get right back on, we had to leave right now.
They were trying to be as polite as possible about getting us back on the plane, but they weren’t pissing around either, they meant business.
They literally rushed us onto the plane and within a couple of minutes we were back in the air.
The whole deal was way too bizarre to be any kind of normal procedure. Obviously something was going on, but we weren’t privy to that information.

Prior to, and during our time in Morocco there had been some political issues brewing between the Spanish and Moroccan governments that we had never been aware of.
Issues regarding a dispute over the sovereignty of Spanish Sahara, the country on Morocco’s southern border.
It would later be renamed Western Sahara; but only after some kind of confrontation between Morocco and Spain. I believe a third party country, Mauritania, may have had their finger in the pie also.

During the last few days that we were in Sale’ and Rabat, we noticed a few times some low flying unmarked fighter type aircraft flying in a north easterly direction.
We didn’t see it as anything unusual given the part of the world we were in, we just considered it a military exercise.

Of course, looking back now at the political differences that existed between the two governments, plus the fact that we were going to Spain from Morocco surely must have had everything to do with our quick exit out of the airport, and the country.
So now it’s onward, upward, and over the Mediterranean Sea, and in a matter of minutes we’ll be over Europe, closing in on Spain .

It didn’t take long to get to Madrid, and in a few minutes we’ll be on the ground.
And off of this “piece of shit plane”.

Madrid, the airport is at centre right of the photo
You can see the runways

However, it wasn’t near as bad as the first “piece of shit plane”, and there was no Moroccan guy smoking those really dirty stinking “Black Tobac” cigarettes either.
Home is not that far away now. We’re excited and very pumped.

Next stop, Canada.

Page #19

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