CASABLANCA

I woke up this morning with an overpowering desire to break wind. That doesn’t happen very often so I waited until I was safely seated on the biffy before letting fly. It was a good thing I waited, because that was the start of a bout of “Delhi belly”, for want of a better phrase. I managed to go downstairs and have some breakfast, but had to bow out of the offer to go for a walk around town.

I decided to hole up in the room and finish this blog, which I’ve been neglecting the entire trip, while my intestinal tract figured itself out. One thing I haven’t enjoyed about this tour is the lack of free time. In every other tour I’ve taken we’ve arrived at our destinations in the early afternoon, which meant we had two or three hours to write in our journals, read, swim in the pool, and otherwise chill the frak out. On this tour we’ve been on the go non-stop every day from 8:30am to 8:30pm. I’ve enjoyed what we’ve seen of the country but if – or when – I come back I won’t spend as much time on the road. I’ll also make sure there is more down time at the various layovers.

We stay at the hotel until 10:30pm tonight when our poor bus driver, Hisham, comes to collect us and drop us off at the airport. As I mentioned earlier, we should have ended our tour in Marrakech instead of coming back up to Casablanca. Hisham drove us here yesterday afternoon, stayed overnight, and has to wait around all damned day just to drive us 15km to the airport tonight. Meanwhile, I’m sure he’d much rather be at home in Marrakech with his family, preparing for the festival this weekend.

Oh yes, the festival. Tomorrow is Aid el-Kebir, a festival to commemorate the day when Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac but Allah interceded and replaced Isaac with a lamb. So, every year at this time families buy a lamb or sheep and slaughter it. So, all week we’ve seen people selecting and transporting their lamb or sheep. The transportation is the most interesting. We’ve seen pushcarts with sheep in them, men on bicycles or scooters carrying their trussed-up sheep across their laps, sheep in trucks, sheep in the trunks of cars, sheep in the back seat of a fancy Mercedes, sheep, sheep, sheep. It was an unexpected addition to the cultural and religious experience of Morocco.

Well, I’ll sign off for now. It’s time for a nap.