Cold, rainy days

     Generally speaking, the past few weeks since my trip to the Sahara have been pretty bland.

     Get up in the morning.  Go to class. Use the internet.  Go to class again.  Hang out at the ALIF Villa.  Go home to the family's house.  Eat dinner.  Do homework.  Go to bed.  Repeat.

     Our second six-week block of classes just started last week.  The last block ended really well and I've made pretty big strides with the Arabic, but not nearly as much as I'd like to know.  That's what this six-weeks is for.  During the break between the two, I studied quite a bit and have gotten off to a pretty good start.  One of our teachers last quarter is teaching us once again, and he was somewhat impressed with how much I'd practiced in the five-day break.  

     Even so, the weather has gotten cold and rainy here, so going to the medina can be a wet, miserable experience.  I've been staying in Ville Nouvelle, trying to find out where I can buy packs of regular athletic socks, since I seem to have a less than sufficient number of them, considering how long it can take to do laundry.  From most of the stores in Ville Nouvelle, one would think people only wore dress socks, but there is a rumor that regular socks can be found in the medina.  

     This routine is accentuated by some of the broader difficulties a couple of us are having.  We're trying to apply for residency cards (required for anyone staying longer than 90 days), and there are quite a few administrative obstacles to overcome.  We also have a lot of classwork, and between that, the weather, and some peoples' living arrangements (not mine), it can be difficult to break out and feel like you're really experiencing Moroccan culture.  

     I have a hunch, though, that a hint of the boredom I'm feeling with Moroccan culture is not so much because I'm not experiencing it, but more because I'm getting used to experiencing it.  Meals will occasionally catch me off guard, but fewer and fewer things seem foreign, and really only a complicated Moroccan dialect of Arabic stands between me and really getting to know this place for sure.  And that is just going to take time and patience.

Pant Shopping

     So a couple weeks ago I decided that I didn't have enough pants here in Morocco.  After a couple good wearings you feel like they should probably be washed, but you know that laundry can take so long that you decide to wear them twice as many times as that. 

     So yesterday rolled around and, to my extreme surprise, Ahmed actually followed through with doing something on schedule.  We went shopping for jeans, and he took me to some neighborhood in Fez I've never been to before, and he found a shop that sold "medium quality" jeans, and he told me they'd be 250 dh tops ($30), which was pretty okay because I knew they'd be Levis and I'd probably be happy with them.

     So we get there and this place is tiny, like all shops in Fez.  So tiny, in fact, that when I went to try on jeans, I found there was no dressing room.  Instead, the store owner hauls out this bi-fold wooden curtain behind which you undress and try things on.  They fit, and life was good.

     So then Ahmed starts bargaining with the guy, and and the store owner starts off with a price of 210 dh--better than I'd expected.  But Ahmed has a little surprise in store, because a few days ago he'd bought jeans from this guy, but this guy didn't remember who he was.  So Ahmed busts out with the info that these jeans actually sell for 160 dh ($20).  The guy realizes who he is, and all of a sudden, I've just paid $40 for two pairs of jeans.  Sweet deal.

     So this morning when I go to put a pair of them on, I have trouble buttoning them up.  That's because in Morocco, somehow, we sell Levi jeans whose button holes haven't been cut through yet.  They've got the stitches in so you know where the holes are supposed to be, but you have to cut them through yourself.

     Just more of the typical services offered by Morocco's House of Random, Unexpectable Surprises. 

The Desert, Epilogue

     In order to add a sense of humanity to the past few blog posts, and to keep the people contained within them from sounding like more than characters in a dramatized story, I thought I'd update the blog with just a few words about how things have turned out.

     First off, Deborah seems to be doing fine.  No one that I know of has seen the letter that supposedly exists, but this was the third seizure she has apparently had.  She missed class on Monday, I think, but has been back at class since.  She was pretty tired for a couple days, but seems to be doing better.  I think it would be interesting to find out how this has all impacted her relationship with Martina, but that's between them.  

     For the rest of us, I think there is a consensus that it was a trip in which everything went wrong at almost all the right times.  Only as many bad things happened could happen, and it still be possible for us to have a great time.  For me, I feel no further need to visit a desert or ride a camel--although I do recommend visiting the desert at least once.  It is beautiful.  After that, it's just a bunch of sand to me. 

The Desert, Part 5: An anxious tension

     If Deborah's seizure seemed to last an eternity, the half-hour spent afterwards felt almost just as long.  A hospital could be found in a nearby town along our route, but sharp curves on steep cliffs slowed our travel.  Once the decision was made to go there, few people spoke but in hushed voices, in anxious tension that another seizure might occur. 

     Still Deborah and Martina were obstinate in that we shouldn't visit a doctor.  Deborah's parents were called and they confirmed their daughter's assertion that a doctor not be seen, and that she certainly not be treated by one.  Around the bus, quiet conversations persisted about whether it was the right thing to do.

     Her parents said we shouldn't go, and we should respect that, some said.

     Taking only her vital signs couldn't her hurt, other said.

     Maybe the doctor would find something worse than we knew, and could do something about it, still others said.

     Along the way, Deborah requested that we stop so she could use the bathroom.   All we could find was a should on the side of the road with a big gravel mound separating the road from an open field.  It was all we could find and it had to do.  Later, an abandoned gas station would have to fulfill the same purpose.

     The hospital was a small building off the main road in a fairly uninteresting town, but the doctor was waiting outside and approached the vehicle as we arrived.  He was immediately ushered to away to a safe distance by someone from our group, but from the back I couldn't tell how much or even if he got close enough to take vitals.  When I spoke to him myself after about 20 minutes, he told me her situation was serious and he didn't seem altogether pleased with the lack of contact he'd been allowed to have.  

     We left without much resolution to either the cause of Deborah's seizure, her current condition, or the prospect of an impending attack.  But we left anyway--with at least the consolation that she had refused treatment--and started what we hoped would only be a 4 hour trek back to Fez.  

     As planned, we stopped briefly for lunch along the way and continued home.  In some of the best luck we'd had that weekend, the rain had stopped and roads were dry, leaving only the terrain and distance as obstacles to our arrival.  We finally rounded a corner on a fairly steep cliff and saw the lights in Fez.  

     We slugged off the bus--tired, but relieved--some of us joking, many of us complaining, but all of us with a deeper recognition not only of the dangers present in the travel itself, but also of the fragility of good circumstances.  Consciousness of that fragility is something that wore off, at least for me, a couple weeks after my arrival in Fez.

     After setting a few bags down Sunday evening, a friend and I took a short walk to McDonalds--if for nothing else than to restore a little normalcy to an otherwise extraordinary weekend.  

     

The Desert, Part 4: Decisions

     Deborah's seizure lasted only about a minute, but for those nearly standing in their seats trying to get a mental grasp on the scene before them, her rigid body and muscle jerks seemed to last forever.  As the driver tried to find a gravel shoulder to park the bus alongside the road, someone from the front approached Deborah and put her finger under her nose. 

     She had passed out, but was still breathing--barely, Laura said.

     For a few minutes we were consumed by what was happening in the bus, and by the gaping lack of understanding about what had just happened.  There she was, unconscious, and her friend tried tirelessly to bring her back to consciousness.  But the reality was that we were alongside the road and couldn't stay there, and decisions had to be made about what to do.

     A few weeks before, Deborah had told Martina that she had a letter of what to do in case she had a seizure.  None of us, not even Martina, now knew where this letter was.  And Martina was just now telling us.  People raced through her bags for a letter that would only be in Italian when we got it.  No letter was found.  

     The bus pulled away and Deborah's eyes opened, much to everyone's relief.  But all Martina got in response to her frantic questions was the blankish stare, void of any concentration or presence, of a person absent from their body.  I had to turn away because the look was just too empty. 

     When I looked back a couple minutes later, Deborah was tying her own hair and talking quietly to Martina, but didn't seem to have any recollection of what we would never forget.  She was just confused and tired.  But then we learned from their conversations that the letter talked of so much was back at ALIF.  We also learned this had happened before and that Deborah knew what to do when it happens.

     However, she said what needed to be done was nothing, and that she didn't want to see a doctor--a request we were not inclined to accommodate.

The Desert, Part 3: What to do?

     A two-hour came ride took us back to our hotel the next morning, where hot showers, clean clothes and breakfast awaited.  Ten minutes after I showered, it started raining.  Yes, in the desert.  I booked for breakfast and managed to avoid further wetness.  And minutes after that, we were on the bus again, headed back to Fez.

     The bus featured two rows of seats on the left hand side, and a single row on the right.  But four seats stretched across the back row, and with only one other person back there, stretching out for a little nap helped pass the time and alleviate some pain from the dunes and camels. 

     The weather was dry once again and we rumbled over rough roads through small towns, which was no help to the few of us suffering from stomach ailments or unexpected car-sickness.  They clung to window seats in the hope their conditions didn't worsen.  But I was feeling fine, and had managed to get the timing right on using the bathroom.  

     Most people put on headphones or played game to help pass the time.  No one knew what the road conditions would be like as we got further north, and there remained the possibility of another 11 hour marathon drive.  I turned off my computer to preserve a little battery just in case.  But amidst the laughing, joking and impressions of our teachers, an alarmed voice pierced through and urged the driver to stop the bus.  

     I looked around for whoever might be getting sick, and saw an Italian girl in one of the single seats on the right.  From the back I had trouble seeing her--she sounded like she was gagging and convulsing.  But she started lurching forward and her arms tensed up, and her hands were stuck rigidly at right angles from her wrists.  Her Italian friend across the aisle, Martina, quickly shot over and tried to calm her down.  But there was nothing she could do.

     She was having a seizure.

The Desert, Part 2: A Day in the Sand

     Saturday morning we lazily awoke and enjoyed almost painfully strong water flow from the hotel showers.  My British friend Jorge was the first to try it, and the spray sent water over the shower and into the bedroom, where I awoke to water splashing on my face.  The drain also had difficulty keeping up with the immense flow, and water flowed into the bedroom, threatening to soak--once again--our clothes.  

     Discomfort averted, we passed the day fairly quietly, but some of us had a quick swim in the beautiful pool over which the Spanish tourists endlessly oodled.  In true tourist fashion, about 40 of them lined up in next to the pool for a giant group shot of them all in bright green, tour group polo shirts.  Jimmy--a friend of mine who will do just about anything you pay him to--decided to rain on a little parade.  When all the Spaniards lined up for their nice photo, Jimmy ripped off his shirt, cried out "America," and cannonballed into the pool halfway between them and the camera.  Once my video of it hits YouTube, it's sure to worsen U.S.-Spanish relations.  Oh wait, can they be worse than they are now?

     Saturday afternoon we packed up and headed for Merzouga--about an hour drive still--where we almost immediate got on camels and rode for two hours through the desert to a small, permanent camp our hotel has set up for just such excursions.  The sand was a bright reddish-orange and the camels smelled bad.  No adjectives exist that can adequately describe the discomfort of riding on a camel.  Every downhill step the camel takes mashes your balls into Smuckers Original. 

     Once at camp, our guides played ridiculous music on bongos and metal clapper cymbals.  I don't know if it was traditional Berber music, or just tourist music, but it was loud and gave me a headache.  Our camp butted up against a huge sand dune (probably more than 1,000 feet high), and a few of us made the arduous trek up.  The sand was packed so tightly in places that if you went fast enough, you wouldn't even sink in.  That was the easiest way to climb, even if more tiring.  

      We'd left our hotel at sunset, so it was fully dark when we'd arrived at camp, and on top the dune it was pure night.  The desert can get pretty cold, they say, but it didn't seem too bad.  Ben, Megan and I considered sleeping at the top of the dune, since we were going to climb it the next morning anyway to watch the sun rise.  The cold wasn't terrible, but the sand in the eyes was, so that was a no-go.  And when I came down, I knew I'd feel the aches in the morning.