Crazy Oyibo - Into The World

2 PEOPLE, 1 MOTORCYCLE, 55.000 KM, 14 MONTHS IN AFRICA
PART 1
ANA HOGA & IONU (JOHN) FLOREA
Bucharest, 2013
We are Ana Hogaş and Ionuţ (John) Florea, Romanian architects. From June 2011 to August 2012 we traveled by motorcycle around Africa. The
14 months 55,000 km adventure is part of an on-going journey we like to call “Into The World”.
In an expedition of extremes, we worked as volunteers in the rainforest of Nigeria, crossed the Sahara in suffocating heat of over 54°C, climbed
Mt. Cameroon, and explored the Okavango Delta in flood and the Congo basin during the rainy season.
Some of the expedition setbacks were: being stranded with minimal supplies in a remote Cameroonian community, towing the broken bike, malaria, attacks by a hippo, a scorpion and many Tsetse flies, riding 3000 km off-road in the Congo through torrential rain and mudslides, tackling
bureaucratic and military interference and buying tea in Egypt.
Countries visited: Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Morocco (+ Western Sahara province), Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo,
Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey.
We document our adventures at: www.intotheworld.eu
Copyright © 2013 by Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ (John) Florea, All Rights Reserved
Photography, layout & book design: Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ (John) Florea
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OYIBO,
noun
Nigerian word originating from Igbo Language and later adopted by Yoruba and other western Nigerian and
Southern Nigerian tribes as the standard slang name for “white person”. It is not a derogatory term.
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Dedicated to all the Africans who invited, welcomed, fed and helped us, and
who revealed the continent's great wealth and humanity; without them our
journey would have no meaning.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We owe a great deal to the people who made this adventure possible and to those who do or will help and support our quest in other ways: our
families (Mana, Viorica, Gheorghe and our siblings); friends (Ştefan, Alex, Andreea, Mihai, Laura, Andrei, Andreea, Iulian, Radu & Betty); Kala, Carmen and Ionuţ; Alin; Louis & Marine; Karen, Wenike, Makszi and Aneesha; Laura; Rotila & Mircea; Harry; CJ, Asuko, Majeed and Peter Jenkins;
Jacques and Delphine; Chioru’ & Frederik; John & Shams; Jacob, Jessie, Laura and Pete; Vital and Melissa; Iulia; Charl & Lynda; Charl & Carla; Silviu; JJ; metaljockey; Bernard; Cami & Martin; David, Sam and Layla; Neyfuu; Antonio & Francisca; Gadiel & Beatrice; Cristian and Antonia and Mr.
Parov.
The “Why”
With a complicated history, ever-growing population, astonishingly diverse ethnicities and stunning but dwindling natural resources, Africa offers a
traveler an experience like no other. Much like our own country, the continent’s rapid transformation is affecting the lives of its people and wildlife,
constantly pressured to adapt, and even to disappear. This is the story of the 420 days we spent traveling by motorbike around the continent, on
a nomadic adventure that inspired us to document what we’ve seen and experienced along the way. You might find here your own childhood fantasy, maybe even a little inspiration. Thank you for taking this journey with us.
Ana & John
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FROM ROMANIA TO MOROCCO
Part 1
v
1
A KICK IN THE ARSE
My grandfather’s Ford Taunus
“Life is what happens to you while
you're busy making other plans.”
John Lennon
THE GARAGE OF ALL POSSIBILITIES
“Y
ou came from Europe on this one?” he says in
pidjin1. “Eh!” The Nigerian police officer shakes his
head in disbelief and touches my motorbike, as if to
make sure that he’s not imagining it. “Crazy oyibo,”
he whispers. It’s not the first time that they say this in Africa.
And frankly, not too long before this journey began, I was just as
doubtful about it myself.
The first clue that I was primed for adventure was finding out where I
was born. “In your grandfather’s car!” my mother told me. That ’67
Ford Taunus was already centric to most stories from my childhood.
Each summer, my grandparents loaded it with supplies and left on mys-
terious overland journeys for weeks. I, being six years younger than my
brother, was never taken along.
“They’re back from Zakopané!” mum would suddenly announce at dinner, which meant the wait was over. I was anxious to hear over desert
about my grandparents’ adventures to places that made my head spin.
I had no idea where Zakopané was; it sounded like the end of the
world to me, “but one day” - I used to say to myself -“I’ll go there”.
Shortly after the trips ended, my grandfather was feeling restless again.
His way of coping was to drive alone to the seaside, and just linger. Nomadism, I began to learn, was woven into my destiny.
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8
Sandwiched between Europe and Asia, at a former crossroad of migrant tribes and commercial routes, my country is a peculiar place.
The largest population of wolves and bears in Europe roam our forests. We entertain our children with stories of werewolves, vampires,
goblins, ghosts and other members of the undead. Even the Dacians, our mythologized ancestors, were believed lycanthropes, their
warriors said to ride into battle under the standard of a snarling wolfhead, which trailed a tube of fabric that roared an unearthly howl as
they charged. Not few are the people clinging still to a deeper consciousness of the wild. My family history is full of them: pilgrims,
beachcombers, accidental drifters, sheep herders stuck in the city
between transhumance runs, and now this temporary nomad – my
grandfather, a mechanic.
As a kid I spent most of my time lurking around him and in his garage, which during the communist era became an extension of my
grandfather’s workplace. People used to bring their broken Dacia
cars here to be fixed, and what couldn’t be bought, was fabricated
from scrap. Even today it’s every bit the space of a consumed
petrol-head,
the perfect place to prepare for my
motorbike trip to Africa.
Playing in my grandparents’ yard.
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A MOTORBIKE ON THE DANUBE
I
caught the travel bug at young age. There's a picture of us
somewhere: my mother in her sultry summer dress, my older
sister and I in painfully cute fluff, sitting on my uncle’s Mobra2,
all of us excited about our first motorcycle voyage. We were just pretending, of course - I was barely five months old - but it was by motorbike how I eventually traveled with John around Africa.
Long before our journey began, I was just a girl living in a quiet industrial town in eastern Romania. To me it was the most boring place in
the world. All provincial towns are dull in their own way; in Galaţi there
was an elemental boredom, which depleted the imagination. My
mother used to tell mouthwatering stories from her childhood, when
Jewish and Turkish vendors pushed their carts with fruit and sweets
along cobbled streets. It sounded nothing like the Cartesian urbanism
of the town that I knew, where the streetscape consisted in a variation
of brown or grey. Only the weekend shacks were left, selling sesame
bagels, balls of puffed rice smothered in multicolor sugar syrup and braga3. The place to go for these ephemeral treats was the Danube
falaise. This long strip of manicured paradise was our chance to escape boredom. The entire town would congregate along: to walk, jog,
play, fish, and eat. Danube’s windswept banks and wide, murky waters
flowing silently towards the Black Sea have always had a soothing effect on me. Our family would often spend weekends to the wetlands
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and beaches across. I used to bring along a favorite book, and kept
it shut while I stared vacantly at the Danube, daydreaming. There
was Jules Verne’s round-the-world in 80 days saga, or Ulysses
‘quest, or Joshua Slocum’s old-fashioned voyage, or even the
catcher in the rye. There were those bigger, untamed rivers that
flowed along bigger, uncharted banks, where wild animals roamed
and where nobody had blue eyes or blond hair like me. Would I ever
go there?
In time I grew to believe that moving to the capital city of Bucharest
was of theological importance. To travel there from Galaţi – which
we did every couple of months for a theatre play or to visit relatives was to move from lukewarm stasis to sudden consciousness. Exiting the train in the Central Station always jolted me into another dimension. The art-deco building curved a slender steel skeleton
above a crowd that felt like the entire population of Galaţi. Faces
and bodies mingled and jostled, each fighting to hastily carve their
way to some mysterious meeting that appeared to suffer no postponement. I couldn’t wait to escape the conservative left-winged
safety of my hometown, and because I liked drawing and geometry,
I enrolled in Architecture school. But I spent all my bursaries on
backpacking, which reduced the furniture in my room to cardboard
boxes and a mattress. Luckily I met John, who shared my interests,
so after we hooked up our travels became more daring. Then Romania joined the EU, friends became emigrants and university gang
scattered. Eventually the real estate bubble popped, taking down
the development industry along with our independence.
We are now living in his late grandfather’s house, sort of a temporary arrangement we think. We cannot find our place.
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We’ve been simmering in this state of procrastination
since too long, disillusioned with the idea of a career,
of becoming a statistic. Something has to give.
BECKHAM’S HEEL
I
n 1986, at the prude age that allows the regular American lad
their first legal pint and long before Romanian grandmothers
would carry groceries in plastic bags branded with his face,
Hagi was scoring in the finals of the UEFA Super Cup the only goal
of the match and arguably the most important in Romanian football.
The win of the coveted trophy led to a shift in the national psyche.
Denied of their freedom by the Communists and forced to content
with impotent humor scolding their political status quo, Romanians
had finally something to believe in. They called Hagi “The King”, and
football became Romania’s underground religion.
It was not by accident that my aunt’s wedding was booked during
Romania’s group stage match against Colombia at the 1994 World
Cup. Nor the bride or the groom was the leading act of the night.
The guests had a far more serious reason to stampede in the lobby,
where cloudscapes of cigarette smoke hovered around a color TVset like burned incense around a painting of the Holy Trinity in
church.
The 40-yard curling lobs of Hagi made everybody’s heart throb. During football’s wondrously accommodating installment it was not unusual to see furniture and even TVs flying off windows either after a
score or a fail. In Bucharest fans of rival football clubs hated each
other passionately, and had specialist shops with branded merchandise that helped express that feeling.
Today it looks like the dream of fame has already peaked, yielding
little more than depressing beer sales, while some audiences keep
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hitting the snooze button of hope. I can't say that either John or I are scoffing the game. We just
ignore it as we ignore its power to shift destinies. Our due time to settle this score comes on a Saturday.
What is especially ironic about all this, as I recall the events that lead to such a dramatic change in
our lives, is that the weekend was shaping as ordinary as they get. The most thrilling thing was
that we had plans to buy our tickets for a trip to India’s Holi festival. While emailing back and forth
to Jet Airways staff, I was surfing the web and John was playing Counter Strike with a teenage
cousin. Then the kid called. “Some mates rented a football field,” he said, “you wanna come?”
Why not? So John hits pause and abandons his spawning shifts for a quick game of foot. It was a
brief outing. Later in the afternoon he returns home with a curious limp in his right leg and a swollen ankle. “I sprinted,” he says, “and suddenly felt a burning pain in my foot, above the ankle. I
turned around to see the motherfucker who had killed me and the closest player was at least ten
meters away.” This cannot be a good thing. On Monday we visit the orthopedist. After a few minutes I am also invited inside the doctor’s office, where John is sitting with his jeans rolled above the
knee as the doctor points at vividly colorful representations of human guts. John looks at me and
flashes discretely a scissor sign with his fingers. That’s how I find out that he has an Achilles tendon rupture.
“It’s an atypical injury, so there will be an atypical rehabilitation,” the doctor starts to outline what is
in store for John.
“Of course, you’ll have to stay in bed for about one month after the surgery. Then we’ll take the
cast off and you’ll start walking with a crutch. We can’t predict how long it will take, but eventually,
you’d be able to walk normally again.”
John keeps quiet, looking like he is already familiar with this information.
“I beg your pardon?” I say, peering at the gory poster for the first time.
“It may take anywhere from twelve weeks to a year,” the doctor says unfazed. “Oh, and you’re in
great company by the way,” he waves his hand joyfully. “David Beckham has just suffered an Achilles tendon rupture as well.”
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2
THE MAKING OF AN EXPEDITION
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has
the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
Andre Gide
TWO ARE BETTER THAN FOUR
R
omanian winters don’t last long. The snow rarely lingers into
early March, when the sky, cloudless again, cracks open to allow the sun a shy peek. As the warm days settle in, the landscape overflows with color. Green buds unfold, sleek stems of snowdrops and fuzzy nettles thrust through the mold, trees put out an explosion of pink and white blossoms and a dense hue of blue conquers the
sky. Water surges across the land – in swollen rivers and thawing mountain falls; in icicle drops, drizzles and soft rains that echo the sexy summer storms to come.
field. I also know I’m not going there. My stint in football is over. On the
contrary, I cannot wait to get back on my motorbike. With my legs taking an unwanted leave of absence, I have a lot of time on my hands, so
I come up with a plan.
But my 2010 winter has been the longest that I can remember. Motionless days dispersing into sleepless nights: the grip of boredom, the
tease of hope, interrupted only by Ana’s gentle torture with anticoagulant injections. Keeping up with David Beckham’s progress would seem
rather impractical, but as I am restricted to staying in bed and I’m
spending most of my time online, news of his recovery is pretty much
unavoidable. I become all too familiar with the size and shape of his
scar; I know what type of orthosis he has and when he’ll be back in the
“Yeah, so?”
“Let’s do it,” Ana says to my idea, and frankly, I don’t know if that
makes me relieved or scared shitless.
“You do remember the Top Gear Africa special, don’t you?” I have
asked her a minute ago.
“Well, we said we’d do by car and then give it to a school, right?”
“Yes,” she says, “but I also remember we can’t afford a Carnet de Passage.”
“Listen, forget about the car. Let’s go by motorbike. Two wheels are better than four.”
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Comana Wetland
MY KINGDOM FOR A... METAL HORSE
A
lright, given the fact that I’m still unable to walk, the idea to
ride across Africa sounds insane. And we know that it is not
going to be an easy task to convince our families and friends
that it’s not a death wish. But once the decision to unplug is made,
things start falling into place: as I’m recovering my fitness, we are both
becoming mentally stronger. We feel experienced enough to undertake
this journey, and at the same time we are free of family commitments.
The rules are loose, our future less bound - it is the right moment to do
it.
Africa is calling. It’s where our roots are, it’s the place where humanity
success story began, with Lucy, Livingstone and Stanley, and even with
a certain Colonel Ewart S. Grogan who around the year 1900 walked
from Cape to Cairo to prove that he was man enough to marry his beloved. With the map of the continent laid out before us, everything
seems possible. We sketch a route and already we are facing our first
decisions and compromises.
The snowball has started rolling!
While Ana starts packing our previous life in cardboard boxes, I am
most looking forward to the addictive freedom of uninterrupted horizon.
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The first thing to pin down is the vehicle. My
Hornet is out of the question. So I sell it. I
watch again “Mondo Enduro”, “Long Way
Down” and “Long Way Round”. Then I start
reading dozens of ride reports written by Polish or Estonians riders and even French families vagabonding with up to five kids on tow.
I know that we will take some tumbles and
have to push across many miles of sand and
mud. At the same time a nomadic journey
means we will need to carry everything, from
spare parts, to tools and water. So I am shopping for a sturdy mule that can carry both our
luggage and us for a long time - a dual sport
motorcycle. The Yamaha XT 660 Z Ténéré is
not the lightest, nor the most powerful machine out there, but I like it at first sight. On
the contrary, both of the Romanian owners
we visit are determined not to sell us their
bikes.
“You’ll never make it
to Italy on this thing,”
the second guy says. “The bike’s too vibey,
it’ll wear you off within days. For a trip like
that you wanna get one of these,” he winks,
pointing to a brand new BMW 1200 GS.
Later he confesses that his consultancy in adventure riding is founded on a two weeks trip
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to Germany, with such cliffhangers like doing high mileage on the
highway and dining on sausage and mash at gas stations. This setup isn't at all what I have in mind. By way of homework and my experience on other machines, I am convinced that even if any bike
could take us there – if within our budget, which the GS is definitely
not - the lighter I go, the happier I’ll be.
I find another Ténéré with a British hippy who has retired to Germany's Mosel Valley, and I fly there after a dozen of emails that have
us mutually agreeing that for some mysterious reason, he is also reluctant to sell his bike to me. The Mosel Valley is what some visitors
imagine the bustling, industrious Rhine beyond the border would be:
peaceful, sleepy, and quaint. Cobbled villages are aligned between
steep vineyards, a few storybook castles and the river. It’s a good
place for friendly negotiations, and I leave on my new bike, feeling
confident about the upcoming expedition into Africa.
But May is a transitional month in central Europe, and the gods of
travel decide I must be thoroughly tested. The three days of riding
and the 1700 kilometers of highway from Germany to Romania have
me gritting my teeth and pitting myself against wind, gale and rain.
What the hell am I doing? I am either naïve, or insane to believe that
I could ever do this for many months in a row.
Test trip at Comana Wetlands
on my new bike.
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THE LAST NIGHT OF LOVE
W
e decide to spare our families from worrying until it’s inevitable. The operation of buying the bike, fabrication of parts
and designing a blog is kept secret. We become recluses,
and our living room fills up with gear and packaging, so we can’t invite
anyone over anymore. Then the tent arrives: it is our first real “house”
together, and the first that has us debate not about foundation, steel
rods and regulations, but about weight, color and breathability. We
start going for test rides long before all the gear is there, so we often
carry an enormous amount of random stuff from around the house,
mimicking the expedition load.
Nothing is yet streamlined, everything’s improvised, and we couldn’t
be happier.
The white Ténéré is wild. From the first rides I feel it wants to get into
trouble, I just can't imagine how big… 50 kilometers south of Bucharest, the forest hides a surprising opportunity for fun: the Comana wetlands. An untamed maze of dirt trails leads to the threshold of a hidden
universe, from where a choir of critters broadcasts their whereabouts
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The packaging weighs more than the gear.
and mating cycles. With a little effort and a canoe, one can navigate
along the shallow water channels choked between walls of lush vegetation that barely allow the sun. Spring is always a wonderful season in
such setting, so that's where I haul my Ténéré and my Ana for a mud
spin. That's also where we take our first fall, in a ditch that Ana joyfully
discovers to be dappled with celandine. She forages a handful for dinner. It is the beginning of a transformation.
Do we doubt our decision? Of course we do: we worry about everything, from being forgotten, to forgetting our friends, from blowing our
professional career, to the petty details of living like: how will we wash?
How will Ana do our laundry? What if she suffers from really nasty
PMS? What if we run out of money? The kind of things we say to excuse ourselves from achieving our dreams, to escape the guilt. Our
anxiety is burden enough, but we also feel vulnerable to what others
say. “You are so lucky,” they say, too polite to call us blatantly selfish.
“You are brave,” they say, meaning downright foolish. “We could never
afford to spend so much money,” they say, fiddling with the latest
iPhone model.
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Is it selfish to let go of everything
that brings conventional happiness,
to risk what we already have in the
hope that we can find better?
Perhaps it is. We risk not finding happiness or finding it, only to never
be able to feel satisfied again. We will have no home, no shiny belongings, and no bills; no car and no career to speak of; we will have instead everything else that we want. But true adventure is dangerous,
as testing and discovery builds new character. And going at it with a
partner makes it double scary. We are not naïve to believe that by the
end of our journey we will be the same people who left and we cannot
predict what that will do to our relationship. But because nothing can
possibly prepare us for the outcome, we decide that this journey represents the inevitable change within and between us is, so we’d better
embrace it.
Then, being a total newbie on Facebook, Ana accidentally leaks the
news of our expedition. My mum calls immediately.
“Where are you?” “What is it?” “Are you coming over? “
“Why would I come over? You know I’m busy.”
“Well, I baked some pie, there’s some for you. “
Where are those damn screws?
“John?”
“Huh?”
“So are you coming or not?“
“What? No, mum, I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Um... I need to talk to you, y’know, about your plans.“
“What plans d’you mean?”
“I don’t know…about Africa.”
“Um... Let me get my bike.“
Ana further disarms this time bomb by coming clean to her parents.
They seem to be cool with the idea, then they start emailing her all African doom of massacres, natural disasters and civilian conflicts ever recorded. As we’re readying, so is the motorcycle. The first mod I do is
eliminate the snorkel - on the second day after I arrive from Germany.
Even without any fueling mod I can feel the improvement. Next I fit an
Iridium spark plug, hand guards, a higher wind shield, wider foot pegs
from Ebay, a custom Leo Vince exhaust, fabricated central stand and
luggage rack for the aluminum panniers. Finally I build a fueling mod using instructions from a forum. Wow!!! That is one completely new bike.
It pulls so nicely now, with no more heavy vibrations at low range. The
exhaust is mental though. It definitely makes my neighbors pray that
we leave sooner. By fall our expedition seems primed to take off. One
week before departure we summon our closest friends to a farewell barbecue at the garage. Ana’s chicken satay gets rave reviews, reassuring
everyone about our stakes for survival, which is surprising, given the
fact that there is hardly any curry in the jungle. The next day we go for a
final test trip to the Danube. We make soup, pitch our tent and lay inside for a movie. Then the storm comes and it keeps rattling thru the
night. Would anybody sane leave home to be rained on? I wonder. Nevertheless we enjoy the experience. We snug closely, a little spooked,
yet knowing that there is no other place we would rather be in. We just
need to get ourselves going, and for a while we are tempted to forfeit
whatever gear is left in Bucharest, and leave…
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PUIG Touring Windshield
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3
CHEESE AND TOMATOES
CHEESE
“P
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you
know pain.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
roper sheep cheese must smell of sheep poo.” my grandfather used to say. Outside late fall gives a reddish hue to
dwindling vegetation. It is already shaping to be sunny
and dry, a fine day to leave for Africa. But not on an
empty stomach we won’t. I wake up and put on my gear with more
than usual care, indulging briefly in the smell of newness: zipping off the
motorcycling jacket and pants, tying my helmet and buckling up my riding boots. The market sits at the end of the street where I’ve spent the
better part of my childhood and I quickly find the kind of cheese I want,
lying in large blocks on the counter. I also jam a kilo or two of tomatoes
in my brand new top case, feeling awfully hungry. On the way back, the
streetscape is the same as I have seen it thousands of times before:
narrow and straight, interrupted every now and then by small alleys
marked with speed bumps and give-way signs. At the last junction before my house, I see it – black, rolling from the right. In a split second I
realize the car isn’t going to brake.
“Whaaat are ya’ doing you son of a bitch!” I shout inside my helmet.
But I don’t think I make it to the “son of a…” part. Before I finish the
“what”, a louder sound cracks across like a grenade going off - BANG!
I momentarily register the bike slamming into a bigger something. Then
everything stops. Lights-off.
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I wake up lying flat on the tarmac. Where I am? I try to push gently
to an upright position and look around; the sight is a brutal update
to my brain. I breathe the air in and out, and my mouth becomes as
dry as dust; the sun is overhead, but a bleached vignette frames my
world, so I remove the helmet: small cracks stem from a dent the
size of my palm. “Don’t move, lay down!”
This isn’t my voice, I think, it’s not me who’s shouting; across the
street, a man is waving vigorously in my direction. With his other
hand he holds a mobile phone to his ear. What are you doing man?
I don’t have time for this; I need to find my bike and go home.
“Don’t move!” the waving man shouts again.
I’d call him a name or two, but the trees and the street have started
to rock and roll. The man has sunk from view, but I rely on his voice
to reach the safety of the sidewalk. Minutes – I don’t know how
many - go by. When I finally fold back into a sit-down on the tarmac,
cold sweat pours on my body, making my eyes itch. I’m not sure
when the ambulance or the police officer on a motorbike arrive. Suddenly there’s too much sound – questions are being asked, as I
struggle to cope with the answers. Then my phone rings: it’s Ana.
“What’s up?”
“Um…”
“Where are you? I’m super hungry!”
“Yeah… um… I’m coming…”
“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you alright?”
“Um… yeah… I’m fine.”
“John! What is going on?”
“Um… It’s just… I’ve been in an accident. You should come outside,
I’m at the junction.”
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TOMATOES
O
n that brisk morning our neighborhood
was gradually populating with sound.
A blackbird male has started its wonderful routine in front of my window; across the
street, a vendor was pulling the shutters to his
shop as a group of students laughed by.
Listen the
blackbird
Busy reading about the Xhosa people, I might have heard the ambulance, but the rattle of hunger in my stomach is what shakes me up
really. I realize that it’s been an unusually long time since John has
left to the market, so I call. His voice is strange, like he’s been drinking. He stammers. He tells me to come outside. My heart goes instantly berserk and my hands start shaking - as they do now, while I
struggle to hit the right letters on the keyboard. I rush down the
stairs.
But the street is deceptively empty. Only about 50 meters from our
doorstep some uniformed people are scrambling about. I see the
ambulance at the junction and John sitting on the sidewalk, alone.
My sun falls from the sky. My blackbird breaks its song. The vendor
gawks in front of his empty shop and I feel my face wrinkling. John
gets up and staggers towards me: his eyes are bleak with eerie sadness and guilt. What is he sorry for? My heart sinks like rock thrown
overboard an abandoned ship. As he hugs me, I feel him broken;
only now I can see over his shoulder the white motorbike, lying
down, gutted, in a dark puddle of petrol.
Tire marks are leading to a black sedan that sits askew between the
sidewalk and an empty parking space. I lean over the broken window and look inside: scattered across the driver’s seat, there’s a mosaic of broken glass, sheep cheese and squashed tomatoes.
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4
A DOG SLEEPING IN THE SUN
“It’s not that we have a short time to
live but that we waste a lot of it.”
Seneca
SILVER LINING
A
We’re waiting for a cab outside the hospital where they have
sewn me back to man. It’s one of those desolate yards so typical of Romanian public facilities: patches of grass and concrete blocks shaped into a garden, piles of plastic bags that an unforwarned visitor could mistake for flowers and in the middle of it all, a
mutt dog blissfully sleeping in the October sun. I lean onto Ana, on a
bench that feels like it was designed by the Spanish Inquisition. A ray is
piercing through the foliage. Aliveness, togetherness, a bit of warmth…
isn’t this enough?
know when the next rock hits… Then why wait for the “right” moment?
If you want to live, go outside and do it. Make your dreams your priorities, and start investing your most valuable resource, your passion, to
pursue them. Stop working for things that buy you extra time, if you invest none of it in what you love, but turn into more busy work instead.
Twenty-four hours per day you are lucky anyway if nothing remarkable
happens: you didn’t get fired, you weren’t late for your appointment,
your plane didn’t get hijacked - you didn’t die. The extraordinary, the
awesome, that big ride into the world – that is your job.
Life is supposed to be difficult, they say, have it hard and enjoy your
break when once in a while we cut you some slack, because you never
Me, I’ve had my warning, twice. I am ready.
30
If I am to break any more
bits, it’ll be in Africa.
To be honest, going there is just as daunting for me as
for the next guy. It’s the prejudice, and the media. The
popular story of Africa triggers the instinct of selfpreservation rather than the spirit of adventure: beautiful
landscapes teeming with wild but dangerous animals,
vibrant but incomprehensible people, “half devil, half
child”4, fighting brutal wars, dying of AIDS, waiting to be
saved from poverty by the providential white man.
From the beginning our plans have already inspired fear
and disbelief. After this accident, it seems that our journey will never happen. Everybody takes the double uturn as an omen of bad things to come, a sign that we
mustn’t go. And even for us it’s getting harder to see the
silver lining.
Friends and families come to see me in the hospital and
I feel them saddened, but somehow relieved. Being hurt
is a form of danger they can understand, being away is
not. Danger - what a peculiar word. There are so many
definitions of it: distress, jeopardy, and risk; exposure to
injury, pain, or loss. Each indicates a subtly different attitude: distress carries an element of surprise, relative to
an accident; on the contrary, risk and exposure suggest
volition. But they are all warnings. Littered with sediments of our tumultuous history, language suggests that
an attempt to venture outside the known territory will
hurt you.
31
ALEA IACTA EST
“A
frica is dangerous!” everybody tells us.
“How do you know that?” asks John.
“Well, we’ve seen it on TV!"
“You cannot believe everything on TV, of course," he chuckles. We
don’t even have one, you know, since seven years ago.
“Aren’t you afraid of diseases? Malaria, blackwater fever, yellow fever,
Dengue fever, Rift Valley fever…” the hypochondriacs say.
“Trypanosomiasis, bilharzia…” add the nerds.
I have to point out that we’ll be properly inoculated against many of
those and just be reasonably cautious about the others. “Most people
in Africa manage” I say.
“But only until 35!” our parents say. “What's wrong with you?” they
sigh. Micromanaging, see, is what typically overprotective Romanian
parents do.
“Nothing’s wrong with us. It's just that we’re sick of being afraid of life.”
Eventually we gain clearance: we keep our stance, and everybody else
keeps their pessimism. But we will not allow fear to stop us. Fear is
what makes you lose today while worrying about tomorrow. Of course
32
we know that something can go wrong, but
just as well everything may simply go right.
And even if our plan is not bulletproof, we
should be able to fill in the gaps in the field.
The nine months that follow are still a blur to
me. While he is waiting impatiently to get his
good karma back, John knows we have to
step up our game. On the second day after
his surgery, he asks for the laptop and sorts
out Internet access and immediately starts
searching for another bike. He is quite frustrated to be back in the hospital instead of
riding in the south of Spain, so naturally his
first choice is the buff Ténéré of JMo. Yeah,
that’s right, the tough British chick who broke
her leg in the 2011 Dakar Rally. The dramatic
pic of Carlos Sainz zooming by her crash
with a photogenic splash of sand was all
over the news. Of course, JMo’s bike proves
out of our financial league, so John fetches
the second Ténéré – a blue one, with 30,000
km on board – on the same forum as the first
bike; this time from a London commuter. A
friend who lives in the U.K. helps with delivering the bike to a forwarder. A thin layer of
snow still blankets our street as the courier
van pulls in front of the garage. The hunt for
a bike is over.
33
The first act is swapping the engines between the two Ténéré, as the white motorcycle had a little over 12,000km at the time of
the accident. John looks confident doing it,
but I’m overwhelmed by the firehose of complicated details. Once the transplant is complete, we start joking that the soul of the first
Ténéré will still do the journey with us. The
rest – stripping the mods off the white bike
and fitting them on the blue one and making
other parts - goes smooth, while also ratcheting up the pacing of the entire preparation for
Africa. But by late May we still see no end to
the waiting games: the insurer is stalling to
pay the damages for the destroyed bike,
while we are pretending to live a normal life.
So John is the one to
abruptly cut the umbilical cord.
We’ll take a shortcut to Africa, he says. We’ll
rent a van, load the bike inside, and get
someone to drive in shifts to Italy. One week
before it is scheduled to leave from Livorno/
Italy to Tanger Med/ Morocco, John buys on
a whim tickets on the ferry. With a click of the
mouse, the final countdown begins.
34
Windshield
John’s Gear
Handlebar
Navigation
Photo/Media Gear
Luggage
Suspension
Protection
Engine
Tires
Ana’s Gear
Camping Gear
35
5
FIRST VICTIM
“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
Sun Tzu, The Art Of War
PAPER LAUNDERING
O
n the eve of our departure Andrei drops by just in time to see
us scramble. The scene in our living room must be hilarious
and weird. Unidentifiable bits of gear brazenly litter the floor.
Ana is quietly scanning documents, her slow, methodic gestures interrupted by sudden explosions of panic, effectively mimicking
the bloodrush of a terrorist assault.
“You’re not supposed to leave in the morning bro?” asks Andrei. Apparently he finds our situation unsettling. This guy has been around since
before elementary school, and we’ve done plenty together, from playing in a high school band, to going to the same university. But as our
once gargantuan parties have become tamer, Andrei continued to live a
double life: architect by day, rockstar by night. With a decade of stage
diving under his belt I thought he isn’t easily impressed.
“You bet” I grin, “we’re almost done here.”
Indeed we are, by 6 a.m., when Ana discovers that her mum has accidentally washed both the registration document and the insurance for
the bike along with my riding jacket. We try to contain the panic. “I
could get a duplicate issued in a couple of hours,” I say, but that
means driving to the other end of the city, or sending a legally delegate
to do it for me. We have no choice: I and Iulian (who is supposed to
drive the van back to Romania) must go queue at the police. Ana stays
behind with the mission to wrap up the documents and be on time at
the meeting point. At 2 p.m., instead of crossing the border to Bulgaria,
we are driving through horrendous Bucharest traffic, 12 hours behind
schedule. “What’s the rush, boys?” says the police office at the
counter. Whatever man, in 31 hours I’m boarding a bloody ferry in Italy.
37
DEATH ON THE HIGHWAY
C
onsidering that the van only broke down 300 km to destination, I’d say that my plan worked quite well. We have been rolling since the day before, while the names of the countries
kept changing: Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. The
moon came up a tattered, pale shape, making us dream of vast savannahs. When we hit Italy, I assume we have it in the bag. So I take my
shift on the car floor, looking forward for a nap. During the last 60 hours
I have barely slept 4. As I am dozing with my feet on the tank bag, Ana
gives me a pat on the shoulder.
“Wake up! Something’s wrong with the car.”
I open my eyes: “What is it?”
“Um… something’s broken, I guess. You have to come see. It just
stopped rolling.”
The car’s dead, alright. And we’re in the middle of nowhere. Hoping
that the other cars on the highway spare me, I go out to investigate.
The news is bleak: for some mysterious reason, the transmission belt
has broken. This just wasn’t supposed to happen. A chaotic race
against the clock ensues: Iulian calls the Roadside Assistance and 45
minutes later we are loaded on a platform by a lovely chap, Giovanni
from Vescovana. We brush our Italian and he enjoys our story, but once
at the warehouse in Rovigo there’s no more time for pleasantries. No
gear-folding, no box-ticking off packing lists; things get crammed into
panniers, bags are strapped onto machine. We abandon civilian
clothes and become rider and pillion in a desperate sprint for Livorno.
A light rain quenches our nerves, and we hope that nothing essential
has been left behind.
38
MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE
W
e make it in the nick of time. “Welcome onboard!” says the
Greek captain. “Claim any free spot you like, and enjoy the
trip.”
Ikarus Palace is a retired cruise ship from the 80s. Eight decks, a casino, pubs and restaurants offer plenty of sleeping real-estate up for
grabs, if the best spots haven’t been already taken. In this surreal floating bedroom of mirrors, neon and velvet, dozens of families have rolled
up their mats, sleeping bags and carpets on every square inch of available space where no enormous clusters of unshapely luggage lay.
Most passengers are Moroccan emigrants going home for the holidays.
The rest is crew, plus us two and a posh Italian couple in their 60s who
- by the size of their Louis Vuitton bags - must have gotten on the
wrong ferry to Barcelona. After scouting the entire ship, we settle for a
corner in the pub, big enough for our sleeping bag. It’s comfy, but
we’re low on food, because the shop in Livorno only had Lady Gaga
CDs and we barely hoisted anything from the van. But worry not;
cooked lunch and dinner are available in the canteen: mushy sides, bits
of mammal DNA floating in sauce, even gooey deserts and bread rolls.
Ah, the feast! Prices judiciously match a Parisian bistro, to remind us
that we are on a Mediterranean cruise after all.
In the end the two and a half days trip feels two and a half days too
long. By the last day of sailing we have smelled the feet of hundreds of
39
people, the two toilets we all share are spurting into the lobby, and even the coffee in the
bar has started to taste good. At the last
breakfast onboard, the Italian tourist wears
an elegant nude shirt that would look great
on the Rambla. I glimpse at her, and she attempts a smile, while a curly Moroccan lad is
smearing her silk sleeve with a delicious apricot jam.
As the river of passengers cools down, we
roll out of the recently inaugurated Tanger
Med port. Engulfed with joy, I parked for the
first time on Moroccan soil and leave Ana at
the bike while I handle the paperwork. “Her
eyes look different now,” I think. I liked to feel
those eyes on me as I walk away. When I return, I have two stamps and the entire Africa
ahead.
“You know what I deserve? “ I ask her. “What?” “A kiss.”
Photos on Ikarus Palace
40
6
FRIEND OR FOE?
“The only thing that interferes with my
learning is my education.”
Albert Einstein
THE FIRST NIGHT OF WAR
W
e have deliberately chosen to do little planning for Morocco. It’s supposed to be our testing ground. Adventure is
a state of mind after all. We want a challenge, not a guidebook holiday; we have to let it happen. Of course, as scores of ride
tales praise its diverse landscape, foodies the beguiling cuisine, and
potheads the Riff, nobody comes to Morocco without super high expectations. The later attraction would not fit this time on our itinerary,
but the rest sounds just too good to be true. But only one hour of riding the coastal route from Tanger to Larache and one spicy kafta later,
we are sold. A patron of the small street-side joint is happy to chat with
strangers. With his small fishing town feeling the crunch of a spiraling
economy, this fisherman is busier hanging around than heading out to
the sea. “You are going the wrong way around,” Sayeed says. “You
should go to Chefchauen. The Prophet, peace be upon him, says that
the closer you get to Mecca, the more delicious the fish is.”
Not a bad advice, but this time we’re heading south. John has seen
some lagoons on the map, so I ask someone which way we need to
take to get there. Unfortunately the man speaks no French, which
keeps the experience uncluttered by communication. We go in circles
for hours, paddling in the deep sand that soon covers the entire dirt
road. We fall and sweat buckets, and John curses his road tires won-
43
Practicalities
Visas and TIP for the motorbike.
EU citizens, Romanians included, are allowed a 90
days stay in Morocco without a visa. The formalities for the bike are a breeze in Tanger Med port.
The temporary import permit is called Declaration
d’admission temporaire de moyens de transport and it is issued for free. You can fill in your customs papers online.
The International Motor Insurance Card (green
card) from your country of origin may also cover
Morocco; you want to check this with your insurer
(that is the case for Romania). Otherwise, you can
dering if we should stop and fit the knobbies on.
Of course we never find the lagoons.
what we identify in the morning as Rabat’s garbage dump. It’s the first glorious wild-camp of the
expedition. We cross the street for a coffee, keep“Can we sleep here tonight?” I ask a few villagers,
ing an eye on our tent and the bike, while an ortoo tired to desire to go on. But either they can’t
ange sun is rising above the Atlantic. Our nomadic
understand, or they are scared to have a couple
journey has begun. What until now was just a
of strangers out on their land. So we return to tarword – Africa – has become real.
mac, and push on to Rabat.
“Can we camp here tonight?” I ask again at the
police checkpoint at 1 a.m. But we get turned
down again. We finally pitch around 3.30 a.m. on
44
INDECENT PROPOSALS
T
he next bush-camp is prettier: a lonely beach, between a pond
and some shrubs – crucial for a bit of midday shadow. We
leave the bike on one bank, and carry our gear across the
pond to the other, though waist-deep, cloudy water that reminds me of
the Danube. The place is 20 km away from Rabat, a good base for our
visa runs to Mali and Mauritania embassies. While Rabat has a European feel, the shanty towns that line the coast and the lively fresh food
markets are quite different. So is charming Mahommedia. We ride
there twice a day, for soup and chatter with the vendors, who soon
start to supersize our meals and offer free servings of freshly squeezed
orange juice. This sweet delight becomes the ubiquitous fuel of our
days.
If I have worried before about wild camping, I am now discovering I had
every reason for it. Our routine requires locating and then settling into a
new spot at brief intervals. This has two major effects. First, it breaks
down all my personal habits to atomic level. Intimacy is the first thing I
have to give up. Secondly, I start to scan all surroundings – both wild
nature and its nemesis, the city - in terms of potential campsites. After
feeding the pond, the stream trickles along our beach for about another mile before joining the ocean. It is not even a palm deep, but it’s
the only flowing water available and the place seems remote enough to
45
The first kafta, the first friendly face.
46
experiment with my first shower. I keep the bathing suit on, and rub my
back against the rocks. I’m chuffed. Suddenly two fishermen pass by,
interrupting my splatter. I jump up reaching for my towel, but they look
even more ashamed than I am as they walk away without saying a
word.
About half morning, John sets off for food supplies. But after we cross
the pond, we discover that the battery has discharged overnight.
There’s no point to try to push the bike through sand: we decide I
should walk to the road and look for a helpful driver with cables and
time to spare. I am lucky. Across the bridge there’s some construction
site with plenty of vehicles laying around, but bummer, none has what
I’m looking for. Finally the chief of staff shows up. He listens bewildered
to my story, then agrees to drive with his entire team there. The men
are ecstatic to meet John and lend him a hand, and after we kickstart
the bike, he gets to leave to town with an impressive group of acolytes.
The third day, a girl and two men, all wearing a baseball caps arrive on
our beach as I am filling a bottle with water from the stream.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the girl says. “This water’s not good.” Soukaina tells us that she is Echoudine’s girlfriend, and that Echoudine and
Dawar are brothers. That doesn’t fit at all with the Moroccan stereotype. Men and women are rarely seen mingling like this in the Kingdom,
even if they nurture close family ties and friendships, greeting each
other for minutes. Women remain a rare encounter for the traveler and
they stick to the hammam for socializing – these are places where the
threshold between torture and pleasure is finer than we have ever imagined. Innumerable Parisian-style cafés do line the boulevards and they
have plenty of business, but the patrons are invariably clusters of men.
From dawn till dusk they sip on coffee and read newspapers. None of
them appears to have moved for many hours, and if we happen to look
away for a moment, the one man that decides to leave is quickly replaced by another, almost identical.
The five of us share lunch: the Romanians bring the roast meat, the Moroccans cook a fish tagine right on the beach. With sand between our
toes and scooped with the hand, the food tastes amazing. As they
leave home, the girl and the men invite us to move camp in their village.
Just give us a call, they say. We are tempted, but also a little paranoid.
“Should we go?” I ask John later in the day.
“Um, I don't know. What do you think?”
I’m not ready. “Next time maybe?”
“Yeah, I don’t wanna go either.” John says. “Let’s do Meknes tomorrow.”
“What about the itinerary? What about our passports?”
“The hell with the itinerary. It’s just a few extra kilometers.”
We soon realize that French is not enough, and that in the countryside
a couple of basic words in Arab or Berber would come a long way. We
base ourselves 15 km off Meknes - one of the four “Imperial Cities”
founded by Berbers in the IXth century. It’s a grubby little campsite, and
the stocky man who should theoretically guard, fix and clean the place
doesn’t speak a word of French. But Sadirkel Habib won’t stop talking
- in Tamazight, a Berber language. With signs, and later with sketches
in the dust, we try to make sense of his jabber. We learn that Sadirkel is
from Merzouga and that while living in isolation in this corner of
Maghreb, he has it all figured out. He will marry a beautiful French
woman with a plump dowry, like all European wives must have, and
47
use the money to build a house with Moroccan tea saloon and a
rose garden.
Sadirkel is fun, but a little messed up. Soon he starts cutting off
power and water supply, from early morning, till almost midnight, so
we have to beg to let us charge our computer. One day he asks us
to move the tent to a different spot, and after we do, we find it
drenched as Sadirkel is watering the garden. What’s his deal? But
when his tantrums become proper crises, and morning handshakes
evolve into awkward hugs, I decide that I am no longer in the mood
to find out.
Sardikel is not the only failed attempt at making friends. One afternoon in Meknes, we meet Mustafa, if that is his real name. Many locals, lacking proper jobs and having to feed extended families, became touts. The imperial towns are full of them. Mustafa approaches us as we are haggling for figs with a vendor, and it takes a
kilo of fruit, two miles of walking and a lot of lies to finally get rid of
him.
In most Moroccan cities, an avenue named after a famous king (usually Hassan II or V) divides the thick-walled medieval medina (the old
town) from the ville nouvelle (the new town), built during the French
protectorate. We go past Bab el-Mansour gate, lavishly covered in
zellij, we cross the el-Hedim square, and venture inside the souk.
We are making our way to our regular venue for chat - a corner tea
stall. Moroccans love mint tea - sometimes peppered with sage, always saturated with sugar. The flamboyant pouring from pot to pot,
at arm’s length, with never a drop of the hot liquid potent enough to
power a car being spilled, isn't just a ritual; it’s a sign of hospitality,
friendship, and, luckily for us, a delicious tradition. We wouldn’t miss
the 10-minute sit down in the shade, to carefully hold our hot tea
48
glasses by the rim and watch the bustle of the medina. The embroidery
shops, the wood carvers making window frames, the brass and copper banging of the craftsmen, the vendors who push their donkey carts
past - piled high with watermelons and cactus fruits - calling out as
they go. Across the alley there is a hole-in-the-wall for soup and other
bits, and they don’t mind serving our bowls of harira right at the tea
stall. The other customers pause from their newspaper reading and
gossiping to quiz us. Where are you from? What is your name? What
do you think of Morocco? Of course they all assume we are married
with children, and it’s always uncomfortable to disappoint them.
The second day our spot is taken, so we drift to another cafe.
“Bonjour!” is the first thing he says. The elderly man sitting to my left is
looking at me. He is perhaps fifty years old, with bony features, sleeves
of his white shirt rolled up above the elbows. A glass of coffee is getting
cold on his table, next to a folded newspaper.
“You’ve chosen well,” he adds in French; “these people make the best
coffee in Meknes.”
“Yes, they do” I say. A couple of tables to the back, the conversation
has stopped: both men, in similar white shirts, are now staring in our
49
direction; next to them, a very tall man in another of those white shirts
is stirring sugar in a pot – a tea man. Circling his feet expectantly is a
family of cats.
“Where are you from?”
I look at John. “Romania.” I mumble a bit surprised; it’s bothering me
that in such a conservative environment this stranger is addressing to
me, instead of my companion.
He doesn’t seem to mind though: “Morocco must be too hot for you at
this time of year.”
“Actually, the weather isn’t much different in Romania really.”
“You don’t say. Are you a tourist?”
“Yes sir, I am traveling with my husband here.”
“On that motorbike? Is that what you do?”
“Oh, no sir; we are both architects.”
He takes a sip from the glass. “Oh, what a coincidence. I am an engineer, you see. Retired.” And adds softly: “tell me, do you have extramarital relations?”
50
I do not move for several seconds. “Excuse me?” I say. Either my
French is really rusty, or this conversation is going the wrong way. John
touches my arm. “Why are you talking to this guy?” he says in Romanian. “At this hour in all the cafes in the entire city of Meknes you are
the only woman; you should know better than to entertain strangers
with details about your personal life.”
But he barely gets to finish his word.
A bee flies over our pile of figs and
into his right hand.
“See, you're mad!”
“I'm not. I’m just a tad disappointed.”
“What about me? Nobody gives me a second look; how am I supposed to get a date around here? ”
“That bee sting should do it.”
“Ouch! That hurt.”
I grin. “Why would that man say he was an engineer?”
Making friends is not going to be easy, I think.
Half of an hour later, John’s hand looks like a bear paw, and we must
run to nearby Moulay Idriss to buy antihistamines. The fairytale town
sitting on top of a mountain is an oasis of calm. It is from there that Islam started to spread throughout Morocco, and to where six pilgrimages are said to equal one Haj to Mecca. In the central square dozens
of stalls are ranged in tightly drawn rows. We take a seat beside them,
in a café, under the shade of oak. Men wrapped in beige kaftans hoist
their donkeys to market; women pass on foot, toting baskets with live
chicken. Nobody gives a damn about my unscarved hair, or about our
knees slightly touching under the small table where a swarthy waiter
brings our honey yoghurts.
“Well, judging by the way things went so far,” says John, “you aren’t
gonna leave Morocco unmarried.”
I turn my face away. “Very deep,” I say, “you should get you own talkshow in Romania. They're running out of crappy jokes you know.”
Bee-attracting figs.
51
Sunset in Volubilis.
“That was French for I’m whatever you want me
to be sweetheart. What did you expect him to
do?”
“Eat up,” I say, “I’m going in to pay.”
“Don’t forget to zip up!”
“Very funny sir, very funny!”
Frankly for a country where concealing clothing,
including head coverings, is not mandatory for
women I find the definition of modesty quite inflexible. And in this heat I’d happily trade my sweaty
riding gear for a djellaba and a scarf, but I’m not
sure if Muslim garb makes foreigners look inconspicuous, or more provocative, really.
I still haven’t made up my mind as we stroll along
the cardo and decumanus of Volubilis. The 3rd
century Phoenician and Roman city lays in ruin,
just miles from Moulay Idriss. It’s an inspiring place
for an architect, vast and complex, but instead of
52
Doric capitals, it has stork nests on top of
the svelte columns, and outside the site
scalpers sell stolen bits of ancient mosaic as
souvenirs. We decide to bump our mood the
next day in Fez.
53
WORKINGMAN’S DEATH
A
seat of Arab learning, a Holy City and a place of pilgrimage in
times when the route to Mecca was obstructed, Fez has
been until recently a place of considerable importance - the
depot for the caravan trade from the south and east of the African continent. More colorful, and trickier to navigate than the one in Meknes, the
legendary medina of Fez – a cacophony of merchants and craftsmen,
stalls with spices, dried fruits and nuts, fish, handmade carpets and musical instruments - feels oddly touristic. We arrive in the early hours of
the morning, so the touts are still sleeping. But the visitor buses are
here, and people are already shopping for “I Heart Morocco” t-shirts
and fridge magnets with the monumental gate of the medina. Even
more surprisingly,
in the al-Seffarine square the workers are rhythmically pounding their
copperware only as tourists start
tipping.
„Harira?” asks John an old man who has laid out some greens on a
piece of cloth. The man stands up and starts walking fast. We don’t
54
know what is he doing, but we follow him anyway. He leads us to a
carpet shop. From barely big enough for the knees of a man at pray,
to many meters wide, carpets are the most desirable and heavily
traded goods of the medina. But we are not interested in shopping,
we are just hungry.
Sayeed smiles demurely from the back of a small restaurant. John
steps inside: there are two wooden benches, a long table and an
enormous clay pot simmering on the open fire. “B’sara”, he says to
my pulsating nostrils. It’s a fragrant fava bean soup, typical to fassi
cuisine, a 2.0 version of the harira we’ve known since Rabat. I don’t
know how he does it, but at 13 years old Sayeed makes the best
soup in Fez. Many times what they put on our plate makes or
breaks the trip; it certainly adds to the experience. We would miss
many spicy details of local culture if we didn’t sample street-side, if
we didn’t risk our stomachs with unfamiliar flavors, or lift the lids of
mysterious pots where grandmothers have forged in decades of
service the most amazing stews. In all our travels and culinary adven55
tures we seldom had a disappointing meal. We’re not anthropologists. We’re not even journalists; our opinion is, at best, of humble
amateurs, of foodies. But chances are that a good soup in the right
place will make a couple of strangers stop being strangers. The
world may look bleak in the news, but in fact everybody is simply doing the best they can. People love their families. They like a good
joke. And if they are lucky enough to have food, they are proud of it,
and they invariably enjoy sharing it with us. Shuffling his yellow babouche slippers, Sayeed brings an extra bowl to the table. “It’s
good, right?” he says to John. As we slurp the first spoon of this divine soup, a distant muezzin starts calling the faithful to prayer.
There is one place in this astonishing medina which doesn’t smell of
honey and spices, but reeks instead of cow urine and pigeon
guano: the Chouwara, the largest and busiest of the four traditional
tanneries still operating in Fez, and world’s oldest. To reach it, we
tackle a spiraled labyrinth of stairs and climb on a terrace out in the
blazing sun.
56
From up here it’s a confronting vision: in a
process that is still as manual as when it began in the 8th century, dirt-poor workers,
many just teenagers, make some of the
world’s most expensive and delicate highstreet leatherwear. It’s a lengthy affair: first,
sheep, goat and cow hides are cured in
smelly concoction. Then a Maluum artisan
stretches and refines the leather to rid of any
imperfections. Finally the hides are dyed in
honeycombed earthen pits, and laid atop the
rooftops to dry.
After this, I can never look at shoes the same
way again.
African Artisanship
Maghreb
After the demise of Cordoba, Chouwara tanneries became instrumental for an age-old craft. The
tanneries are still one of the most important
sources of income and trade for the city of Fez.
The only modern concessions to have infiltrated
the process are a mechanic rinsing machine and
the use of chemicals. In the past the colors came
from vegetable dyes: poppy (red), turmeric (yellow), mint (green) and indigo (blue).
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Chouwara, the largest
and oldest of all Fez
tanneries.
59
7
OFF THE ROAD
“Great things are done when men
and mountains meet.”
William Blake
A GIFT OF MILK
T
he 25th of June. We drive to Casablanca - the city that is nothing like the movie. It’s Morocco's biggest, and ugliest: modern,
crowded with advertising boards and cars; a pungent,
mackerel-smelling, polluting high-rise and fast-food-idolizing version of
its imperial self, hardly a place that says “Africa”. We ramble in the medina in search of grilled corn, and settle for the boiled kind. Then we
catch the sight of the world's highest minaret atop Hassan II Mosque.
The 689ft tall spire makes us hope that world’s biggest orthodox cathedral – which the Romanian Church plans to erect - will never haughtily
cut the already gritty skyline of Bucharest.
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“You do realize that there’s people back home who envy us in this very
minute, don’t you?” I say.
“I know. They imagine we’re relaxing over sundowners, as a Moroccan
beauty fetches us a rose petal bath. But they aren’t too far from the
truth, are they? I can’t remember the last time I felt this good.”
Leaving Casa behind we realize that the first challenge of the High Atlas, which lures us with the promise of a motorcycle exploration paradise, is to be getting up the bloody thing. There are dozens of alternatives, some appear on our maps, others not. And by the end of the first
long, draining day of riding, finding a place to camp in the dark proves
the worst idea ever. The tarmac ends abruptly as the road starts uphill.
With every bend, the wind gets stronger and the plateau rockier. It’s impossible to pitch anything here. My head is rattling and every bone in
my body hurts. We’re both exhausted and new to this sport.
A trodden body is indeed a wonderful outcome of a day well spent: it
allows no turbulent mind. In my line of work I met so many clients who
complained that they could only fall asleep with the TV or radio on. I
wanted to explain that you shouldn’t have those damn things in your
bedroom, but what would be the point? Nowadays if you don't own a
plasma screen TV, people think you're an extremist - so we just put outlets in each room of their house, whilst contributing to Xanax sales
across the nation. Besides, I admit I had my own share of days when
the buzz of stress was so loud, that at night I needed a noisier thing to
knock me off. Tonight it is definitely not the case.
“I cannot do this anymore,” I say. “We need to stop.”
Pushing further will make absolutely no difference tomorrow. John rides
back to the tarmac, then takes a left and continues for another few kilometers, and then turns left again, right into the field. We pitch our tent
on the first available spot, without headlamps - the moon is bright
enough and we can’t be bothered to fish more gear from the bags. The
roar of passing cargo trucks will do for lullaby.
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“As-salamu alaykum,” is the first thing we hear in the morning. John
unzips the tent and steps outside. “Wa’ alaykum salam,” he replies
to Aziz, who is standing next, holding an aluminum can. The day
looks steamy, maybe already 30sh degrees. It’s quieter now than
last night, and a thresher combs the blond field, filling the air with
barley stardust. The man must have noticed us while walking home
after milking the cows. I wonder if villagers here mind strangers pitching tents on their land, as they would back home.
But Aziz only wants us to have
some milk, and his telephone
number.
How can we acknowledge such kindness? John asks, and the best
thing I find is a bag of dates. The milk is raw, lukewarm; I sniff a faint
smell of grass. It’ll make for a fantastic breakfast. Generosity of
strangers is as moving as in familiar settings we take it for granted.
But do we travel, John wonders, to meet the very people who back
home we don’t even notice? The language barrier keeps our encounter somewhat superficial, but nevertheless we part ways
happy: I have the sentiment that this is what we came here for. And
boy, the day continues to deliver!
The road uphill seems to exist contrary to the will of nature. It slices
a razor-edge track of dirt, gravel and sand, along mountainsides
and canyon faces, through some of the most astonishing vegetal display we have seen. “It reminds of Transfăgaraşan, doesn’t it?” John
says. But the Mediterranean climate makes the scenery in the High
Atlas dramatically different from home. A succulent flora in the most
brilliant magenta carpets crevasses, fragrant juniper and cedar forOuzoud Falls
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ests rise from sheer rock, and cactuses double every boulder.
The hot weather makes us decide in favor of
a dip in the Ouzoud falls. But as we arrive,
the touts are on to us. “Parking here!” says
one. We look around; there is no parking, no
sign, nada. “We’re fine, thank you,” John
tries to dodge. But the parking guy won’t
give up that easily: “Want to see waterfall? I
take you to waterfall. Official guide, 20 dollars.” Now, we appreciate people’s ingenuity
65
in trying to make a living, but the waterfall is behind that shrubbery over
there. Actually, the roar is almost louder than the tout’s voice, and if we
squint, we can see the water flowing. If all that the tout wants is to
point it to us, I’m afraid that at twenty bucks a pop, we are unconvinced it is a snip. So we pass. Down the stream the waterfall has
carved a couple of pools. There are a couple of dozens Moroccans out
here. As inconspicuously as we can, we strip down to our knickers and
sneak in. The coldness of the water stuns me. When I’m ready to pop
out, the air feels like a giant blow-drier. It wicks my skin within seconds.
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Back from the swim, our guy is still there. This time he wants to fix us a
meal, but no, thanks, I’ve already seen the toilet, which is next to the
kitchen, and frankly, the loo was the better looking of the two.
But hungry we are: the bite is had in Azilal, and the respective calories
spent climbing from 2000 to 4000m altitude. We pass lifeless valleys
with cactus-infested walls, solitary holm-oaks and pines, and the occasional Berber settlement, nestled in the bare folds of the mountain. If
not for the barely-there windows and the trodden-dirt roofs sewed on
top of the walls, the huts, molded onto sheer rock, would be invisible to
us.
We continue eastward, and up. The soulless vistas have us wonder if
we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. To add to the stress, the swirling
road starts to disintegrate in clumps of boulders and icy water. This
means landslides, but how recent? Should we worry that they are still
at work higher up? After the initial baptism in a shallow pool, the wet
sections rarely allow a dry patch, until the right side of the road eventually collapses into the abyss. We see kites circling high above. Our accelerating pulse and freezing knuckles aside, this is a place of unbridled
67
beauty. That’s why we enjoy traveling overland so much: it’s uncomfortable and engaging; it makes us process every inch of the voyage with
every atom of who we are, leaving us unable to stay indifferent, or the
same.
John suddenly stops, takes the camera and positions it in front of us,
at arm's length. “What are you doing?” I ask. “I'm going to take our picture. So I don’t forget you, or all this.” Since Azilal we haven’t seen a
soul all day. When the road appears to end, children come running with
wide faces, slanted eyes and gnarled hair. We are in Imilchil.
RAJA
F
atma is beautiful. High cheekbones burnt by the wind, strong
eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes – the eyes of a mother. The
scarf she wears wrapped over her hair matches her robe,
which is stained with proofs of a busy day in the household. She is not
much older than me, really, but quite taller. The way she stands there,
holding her youngest, says “I belong.”
“Good evening,” I say.
“Good evening.”
“We’re looking for a place to sleep. Can you help us?”
“You can stay with us,” Fatma says.
I’m not sure what she means. It’s too cold to sleep outside.
“At the gite,” she smiles again.
We are in luck. Meaning a place to hide or to rest overnight in case of
heavy snow, a gite d’etape is usually a wooden little house in remote
alpine areas of central Morocco. Trekkers and sometimes even the
herders use them. Fatma and her husband Aziz have organized a gite
in a room of their house. Their typical Berber homestead is built by
Aziz. The walls are painted in white and are made of dirt, which is not
red, like in the lowlands, but grayish brown, like the mountain. The
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kitchen, the saloon and the residential wing
with the bathroom are organized as three
separate units connected by a small uncovered inner yard where we park the bike. A
narrow hallway leads to a central space: two
small windows cut right under the roof flood
the entire house with a soft light. There are
three bedrooms: one for the children, one for
the parents, and one for the gite, where four
hay mattresses are lined up. In another room
Fatma has a vertical loom for making traditional wool crafts. Aziz, who is a licensed
guide, sells them in their shop, up in the village. Fatma’s artisanship is evident around
the house: colorful kilims and tapestry cover
the simple cement floors and the walls, blankets soften the sofa in the saloon, and Berbers symbols are woven onto everything to
bestow prosperity on the family. In a small
tray placed under the window, rose petals
are drying out, filling our room with delicate
scent. Everything is clean and has its place;
it’s a proper home.
It is hard to imagine that these people are Aït
Haddidou Berbers, belonging to the last
semi-nomadic tribes in North Africa. Traditional shepherds, their forefathers emigrated
in the 11th century from Boumalne Dadès to
higher altitude, where conservative social
norms and geography make finding a partner
69
a complicated affair. To fix that, one of the most famous Berber
events in the world was designed: every September the members of
the tribe gather in this alpine village for Imilchil Marriage Festival.
It’s probably the only time of year when camouflaged as it is in the
rockscape, the place doesn’t appear deserted.
We bring our bags inside the gite. Raja is standing in the door, her
brown eyes gulping with curiosity the details of my face and of my
biking gear. She is irresistibly cute - you can tell why she’s the family’s darling – not just because she’s the youngest. I take her in my
arms as she probably knew I would. Raja has the most delicate
skin, soft henna-died curls, but she is proper heavy - a well-built,
strong mountain baby. Her brother is playing outside and her older
sister, already in her early teens, takes us to meet him. Amzil jumps
straight into John’s arms. He carries the boy to the house, where
Fatma is heating water for a bath.
Cleaned and fed, I cuddle in the sleeping bag. I can’t help wondering if everything in our life – our childhood, the stint in architecture,
the accidents – were supposed to lead us to this exact point, but I
fall asleep before arriving at the answer.
African People
The Berbers
By early Roman, Greek, and Phoenician colonial accounts, several tribes collectively
known as Berbers were already living in northern Africa around 3000 B.C. In the old
Greek “Barbarian” meant non civilized, which was what the Greeks called the Germans, Celts, Iberians, Thracians, Persians, and generally all that was not Greek. The
Berbers call themselves “Imazighen”, the free. Even if they are non-Arabic tribes,
as many have converted to Islam over the last several hundred years and as some
trace their lineage to Yemen, Berber people are often referred to as Arab-Islamic.
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PLASTIC SANDALS VS. ENDURO BOOTS
I
n the morning the house smells of fresh bread. Fatma has laid
out for us a couple; couples more are folded and ready to be
baked in the clay oven. A tagine pot is simmering on the fire.
With its coziness, this charming place tempts us to cancel our nomadic
intentions, and just stay. But there’s a grey area on the map that I am
curious about. So after breakfast we take the road to Dadès.
Enter the most thrilling piste so far. Past Agoudal village the road isn’t
sealed. Soon gravel turns to traces in the dust, and then disappears altogether under a riverbed. I am feeling the crunch of every single extra
pound of gear on that bike, so we decide that Ana should walk until
solid ground. I stop every now and then to let her catch up, but I ain’t
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much faster than her, really.
After about a mile, I notice that Ana has removed her helmet.
She isn’t alone anymore. He sees my bike and lets out a faint
sound of surprise.
“Tisbah 'ala kher”
I greet the man who seems to have materialized out of thin
air. “Tisbah 'ala kher” he says, and some other thing, possibly in Tamazight. He is very thin; wrapped rather than
dressed in thick grayish fabric, and he carries a stick. But I’m
sure that we look just as alien to him as he does to us. And
frankly, I am too hot to worry, or to think. Ana keeps quiet:
walking in boots on the sharp stones through ankle deep water must be tiresome for her, but the man seems to do it effortlessly just in plastic sandals.
Little after we rejoin the road, the man stops and points to a
lump of rock – a hut in the distance. He shouts, and a
woman comes out and waves; then he turns his back to us
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73
74
and starts walking to that shelter of some sort which allows these people to exist in
such remoteness. With our mountain of gear, GPS and water filter we feel again inadequate. Nothing about the place says home to me. The strange geological formations, the pattern of bare rock and tumbleweed, the silence, the ferocious emptiness – it’d be more reasonable to suspect it’s another planet than our own. I realize
how little I understand it, how I cling to what’s familiar, reluctant to surrender it to
the distance. Images of my dear ones and Bucharest flash by; the time and the
space I have put between us are now tangible. It’s time to move on. It’s time to own
my decision.
I am fully torqued for the road ahead. And the piste certainly does not disappoint:
alternating sand with bog, decent gravel with rocky goat paths, climbing to frosty
mountaintops at 3000m, and then sloping down in hairpins, it could rightfully feature on lists of the world’s greatest roads. But it is a bitch to drive, really.
When time comes for me to inevitably bite the dust, I have two reasons to feel
lucky: first because Ana is not in the saddle at the time, and second for wearing enduro boots. What has happened? I was climbing a stretch carved by downpours,
with deep trenches running along for many meters, the last place I would expect a
kid to jump in front of my wheels. I tried to avoid the waving’n’screaming apparition,
and lost the back, sliding in a ditch with all the 250kg of bike on my left foot. The
kid was petrified, and his dad or older brother came running to watch the process
of getting myself, and then my foot, out of the trap. Have I not had proper boots on,
the panniers would have crushed my shin. Of course soft luggage helps avoid such
problems, but those were never an option for our 2-up journey. Now I have dented
panniers, but an unharmed limb. Since our cheap aluminum boxes appear to be
worth their price and I am still a man potentially defeated by gravity, we feel that it is
better if I have less weight to drop. So every now and then, Ana gets a chance to
test if her riding boots are made for walking. She can also pay more attention to the
surroundings.
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“Camel!” she shouts promptly, pointing somewhere to my left. The
camel chews on like: “I’m a dromedary, you fool!” but who are we to
speak dromedary? Then a dozen more long legged creatures become visible: it’s as if our eyes are slowly becoming accustomed to
see in the dark. The day is still young and things are looking positive, but I still have to focus and push hard. We need to reach the
city early enough to avoid another after dark scramble for a bushcamp. I need a good average speed and will have to ride for about
six more hours with only very short stops, perhaps once every two
hours. After six years on road bikes,
the High Atlas is my maiden offroad trial,
so progress continues to be fun, but slow. I work hard to cover
100km in the first four hours, then, as we cross a last river, the
gorge of Dadès suddenly allows a different world to unfold.
Tarmac spaghetti zigzags down and a scarlet canyon cracks open
for a patchwork of gardens, crops and gushing springs. Climbing
the mountain was frugal, there was nothing but the sky to aim for;
on descent the landscape opens full of sun, and the mind can wander. The summit has stripped our soul to the bare. Back in the lowlands, we are relishing the aspects of community. Things are easy
again.
Lush oases explode, olive and orange trees and date palms sway in
warmer winds. Women and children lean in the fields, cutting hay by
hand, stacking it in small bunches, then wiping the sweat off their
foreheads to wave. The villages we cross appear to share one mill,
76
and donkeys to be the transport of choice, if anybody here ever had a
choice.
In Dadès the vibe is political, and festive. This is Morocco’s take on the
Arab Spring, which has been bubbling for six months across North Africa and the Middle East. Rallied behind the recent Referendum on constitutional reforms, hundreds of people have taken to the streets over
77
the weekend, brandishing flags and posters of the King. We ride by
dozens of cars – maybe the same from a few days ago in Meknes. The
men and women are young and look quite happy that their equally
young King is willing to loosen his grip. We shake a few hands and
search for a peaceful spot outside town. Tomorrow we’ll leave at sunrise for the place where Sahara begins.
8
INTO THE DESERT
“We don’t see things the way they
are. We see them the way we are!”
Talmud
A PINK WORLD
T
here’s something about this wide stretch of sand and rugged
mountain that bewilders the imagination: one third of Africa is
Sahara – and scientists say the desert keeps advancing south,
towards the fringes of the tropical rainforest. A Berber tale says that
this is the ebb of a once a lush garden of jasmine, palm trees and nightingales, a place of harmony where all men and women were honest
and kind. It all ended when someone told the first lie. “Each time one of
you lies again,” God said, “I’ll throw a grain of sand onto the earth.” The
people didn’t think much of a little grain of sand, but lie after lie, the
story says, the world was covered in sin, leaving only the odd oases as
testimony that not all men lie.
The dunes of Sahara rise from two sides of Morocco, in two different
shades of yellow: golden in M’Hamid, and a psychedelic pink in Merzouga. We were going to do both. Purists say Merzouga has been too
heavily touristed, but in the ides of summer, daytime temperatures
rarely drop below 50°C, so few bother to visit. The downside of dog
days is that it’s gruesome to camp, unless you pack a touareg tent of
goat hair, which foolishly, we don’t. So there is nothing else to do at
noon in the Sahara, but nap, sip water and save our energy for later.
Suddenly a light rain patters the baking sand, but the miracle only lasts
for a few brief minutes.
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It’s our first night in the desert - we think how hot it is, and that we’ll
have to ride in this for days. Too excited to sleep, we wake up early, to
catch the sun rising behind the glistening mirage that is Erg Chebbi, a
160m high dune bordered by the village of Hassi Labied. The desert
looks lifeless, but close to the village there are faint traces of snakes,
small rodents and some other godly creatures. Brittles grasses pop
here and there.
From here and up to the Nile, nothing but more of the same spans the
entire continent. John and I are insignificant specks. And once again, it
is not just geography that astonishes. The ocean of sand tempts us
deeper, revealing newer, more voluptuous shapes with each step that is
soon erased by wind. I climb the dunes, trying to guess where it’s solid
and where it would crumble under my foot, how far I am from John, or
from the village, and I am wrong every time. I’m stopping often for photos. Then I lay on my back: Sahara’s sky is steep, the steepest my eyes
have ever seen. Such extreme places – like deserts or mountain tops, I
think – have the potential to change you. I breathe in, and I feel the millions of atoms of raw cosmic material interacting with my body, becoming the flesh and bones that I inhabit.5 Or perhaps I’m just hallucinating
from the heat.
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THE WEAKEST LINK
M
y rant suggests we lingered; we did not. On the next day a
technical problem we have been nursing for a while now becomes serious. “What was that?” I say when I hear the pingchug-ping resonating from underneath the bike. It’s the sound of something metallic meeting its demise, and coming from a vehicle that is
much more than machine to us, we both take it quite personally. I
watch helplessly as John, who has been honing his mechanic skills
since tender age, lurches to investigate. “Yeah, it’s just as bad as it
sounds,” he says solemnly. He means that our chain, barely used when
we left Romania, has just become useless after less than 5000 km in
Africa. “Forget about M’Hamid,” John says, “we have to ditch it now, or
get stuck who knows where, if we are lucky to even make it that far.”
We are carrying half of bike in spares, so I assume we’re set, but do we
have a chain? “No dude, this one was meant to hold until Cape Town.”
Within moments a storm breaks out in our corner of the Sahara – we
are having our first fight of the trip. Somehow though, call it motorbike
catharsis or just heatstroke, before long we are both smiling again;
there is no practical or personal reason to stay angry in our situation,
we have committed ourselves to this adventure, and to this home-onwheels; we are stuck with one another and both with a blue Ténéré.
“We’ll be fine.” John says, and I know he’s right. We just need to crawl
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to Ouarzazate, the nearest place where it’s possible to order a replacement chain from Casablanca.
The 400km road happens to cross more of the Sahara: the desertificated Drâa Valley. Whimsical as it may appear, the desert it’s actually a
battlefield for survival. Every lizard, bug and plant that we see, appears
marvelously adapted to life in this harsh, waterless environment. Thorny
shrubs, thistles of all description and prickly seeds don special “wings”
ready to make use of the faintest breeze. We are hardly as well
equipped. We make tiny, incremental progress, with agonizing efforts.
Our bodies cringe to stop and the chain is audibly dying on us. It takes
a fair amount of diligence to keep doing this grind.
In the blazing sun the sky is so blue, the gravel so red and the shadows
so black, that I can feel each pixel of this Daliesque landscape scratching my retina.
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9
HEAD FIRST
“The best things in life make you
sweaty.”
Edgar Allan Poe
BRAIN OF LAMB, VOICE OF NIGHTINGALE
U
p on Tizi-N-Tichka pass the air is cooler, but as the road tumbles in hairpins towards the arid expanse of the central plateau
where Marrakech splendor awaits, the temperature starts rising again with every kilometer, until our riding gear clings to our sweaty
bodies like Berber houses onto the mountain. We have a new chain
since Ouarzazate, so we are in no hurry to waste the vistas. Huts cluster, fortified mud-brick villages and citadels dot the horizon and myriad
of paths disappear into an overcast valley.
We've now traveled for a while across the desert, but Sahara
proves just training ground for Marrakech. This is a steamy, bursting
with energy mess of a city; finally a proper introduction to urban Africa.
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Instant love or hate deal, it hits us like a punch in the face. To survive
the unbelievable heat and humidity, we strip to flip-flops, leaving our
bike in the guarded parking behind the Koutoubia mosque, our riding
gear strapped-on as best as we can, and the cover thrown over. We
dive headfirst.
If New York has Times Square and London the Piccadilly Circus,
the beating heart of Marrakech is
Djemaa el-Fna (‫"ء‬#$%‫)"(' ا‬. *+",).
It’s a nine centuries old living organism, the hub of the community and
a chaotic arena: the hum of storytellers and tourist touts, the frantic din
of snake charmer’s oboes and gnaoua drums, the Berber potion makers quarreling for customers with henna artists, the swirling Senegalese
dancers… I see no direction to this flow, but I sure smell it: beyond the
carts chuck full of animal bits said to cure both broken heart and body,
there are dozens of stalls arranged around a smoking barbecue.
“What’d you think?” John asks, and I nod; I am suddenly very hungry
indeed.
If I may indulge in overstatements, let me start by saying that few cities
can rival the street food variety and quality of Marrakech. And when it
comes to placing an order at one of Djemaa el-Fna’s mobile stalls, well,
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the sky is the limit. Food is banked up in the middle: a dizzying array of
seafood, spicy tagines, lamb guts and whatnot awaits whomever can
make up their minds. Even whole-baked sheep heads lay in a row, like
the old Marrakech pasha’s enemies that once hung on the nearby city
walls. Djemaa el-Fna, they say, means “place of annihilation”. People
continue to attend its public executions, and happily they are no longer
under, but behind the knife. Insha’Allah we’ll join them behind the fork.
John points to barbecue stall number 14: is that sheep tongue? To
some diners this might sound gory, but the melt-in-your-mouth chunks
of tongue sizzling in cumin are some of the tastiest street treats around.
African Cuisine
Maghreb
Food is a reason in itself to visit Morocco.
Breakfast usually means flat bread dunk in olive oil or eaten with honey-sweetened
leben (a yoghurt variety), or couscous with sour milk served on ice by street-side vendors. In Fez bakeries sell spongy Moroccan pancakes. Lunch must be a tagine - a
typical stew of meat or fish, slowly cooked on charcoal in a unique clay pot that
shares the name with the dish. Dinner is protein-based: kafta (minced meat) or harira
(bean soup with aromatic herbs, which in Agadir is served with a local twist: dates, a
boiled egg and a piece of hard caramel!). Other signature Moroccan treats are freshly
squeezed orange juice and strong tea perfumed with fresh mint (le whiskey marocain).
Tap water is safe to drink countrywide.
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Bring on stall 31; the smell is inebriating, so
we sit down and let our taste buds rejoice.
The cook offers us a choice of deep fried
mussel or squid, with soft or crispy dough.
But the next treat is unabashedly, exuberantly delicious. Snail soup with thyme: a
buoyant handful of shells topped with the
briny taste of the ocean. Even a locavore’s
delicacy can be had here for less the usual
price and minimal fuss. The Moroccan pastilla may be a pastry, but stuffed to overflowing with pigeon mince, pine nuts and raisins
and dusted with cinnamon, this one is anything but mundane. “Fancy some brain?”
says John. He knows it is one of my favorite
foods, the way my mum makes it. But what
separates this version from everything else I
had before is the cut of meat (sheep instead
of beef) and the spices that go into the clay
pot where the buttery thing was baked. Over
the decades, the taciturn chef has built up a
loyal clientele willing to wait up in sweltering
rows for a spot on the bench and a plate of
his masterpiece.
Then we taste the tangia, a local creation of
mutton or beef slowly cooked in a doughsealed clay pot with cumin, ras-el-hanout,
preserved lemons and olives. What results is
an extraordinary street food meal with the
cumin salt and the flat bread served sepa87
rate. If proof is needed of its flavor, come to Marrakech, a city that over
the last hours I have come to believe is the most sheep-centric in the
world.
On the fringes of this meat bonanza there’s a belt of fresh orange juice
squeezers and gem-like sweets and pastry vendors, but sadly we
never make it with enough space in our stomachs. Well, that’s what
second days are for.
As the heat of the day wanes and the night progresses, crowds migrate shoulder-to-shoulder back to the entertainment area, forming cir-
88
cles around performers. The halqu – street theatre – is in full swing:
hands tied in front and with beads of perspiration dripping from his
brows and into his heavy moustache, a man is bellowing at the top of
his lungs. These artists seem to know that if it falls flat, their performance would certainly be sanctioned by the audience. When we leave
the square, another man – apparently immune to the heat in his thick
woolen robe - is bewitching a pair of spitting cobras poised to strike.
We’re spent, and for a change, tonight we will not return to tenting. The
Moroccan riads are world famous and Marrakech boasts some of the
best; with so many months of travel ahead, we are obviously not fit to
splurge on a proper one, it doesn’t take long
though to find a shabby riad to fit our
budget.
It’s a crumbling old building, not the glamorous type you see in magazines, but charming nevertheless. Our zellij- covered room
doesn’t even have a fan, yet it gloriously
opens to the central atrium, where in the
morning nightingales gather and sing by a
spurting fountain. What wonderful simplicity!
We architects strive to imitate nature’s ways,
when it would be much easier to just let it enter our buildings and infuse life into our designs.
After another delicious breakfast, we return
to a resurrected Djemma el-Fna where mobile restaurants, fortune-tellers and diviners
are slowly regrouping. Two months ago a terrorist attack has rattled the square, and in
plain daylight we can see the damage. Men
are at work to rebuild the bombed building
and keep the show going. Back home we
never have to deal with such threats, and we
are hardly equipped to understand them.
Here it’s the local folk that suffered most, yet
nothing seems to quell their spirit; it is a miracle that this square hasn’t been yet bulldozed out to make way for a mall!
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Djemma’s light and amplitude couldn’t contrast more with the labyrinth of dark and
dusty souks. This is a different kind of chaos:
jeweled mirrors, rusting teapots, leather handbags and baboush slippers stacked on top
of spices and Chinese merchandise, making
us stop, take photos, or just appreciate the
mosaic. But the medina is not as tidy as in
Fez, nor as intimate as in Meknes, and we
get too tired and too hot to continue. Luckily,
beyond the sacks of saffron and almonds of
the city’s souk, a magnificent wooden door
catches John’s eye: the 16th-century Ali ben
Youssef Medersa.
This wonderful Koranic school is nothing like
the noisy, blistering hot rest of the medina;
we spend a good few hours exploring it, and
then escape from more midday heat in the
shade of Jardin Majorelle, a vast collection of
North-African
Architecture
Berber Vernacular Architecture
Typically, nomadic Berbers lived in tents made out of
goat hair called khalima. During their sedentary period, they started to build ksours, fortified villages and
kasbahs, fortified citadels. The building materials adobe, stone and sun-dried brick – make them blend
seamlessly with the environment, but also vulnerable
to decay. A homestead consists of several separate
dwellings surrounded by a wall and is usually shared
by an extended family. Because it’s prevalent in the
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cactuses and other bush. Soon, gluttony
forces us to return to our main sport in Marrakech: eating. Be it a protein load in the carnivore’s “mechoui alley”, or another plate of
über hot sheep brain simmered in cumin, we
keep getting properly stuffed and visibly
chuffed.
By evening we arrive back at the bike to discover that our boots have incandescent
buckles and that the soap has melted into a
shapeless blub. It takes a while to gear back
into shape, and when we’re done, what we
have on is already soaked in sweat. All this
intensity has us longing for the calmness of
the desert, which we remember vaguely as a
distant mirage from another life. We certainly
hope to find it somewhere else again, and
soon we will. But it is to be neither easy, nor
without hazard.
Mechoui alley.
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92
10
SMOOTH CRIMINAL
INGREDIENTS
H
e has described himself to me as, alternately, an “artist”,
and “the last vigilante in Essaouira.” He owns a spice
shop in the medina, and sometimes organizes tours and
accommodation for the few tourists who straggle out to this side of
Morocco. The smell in his boutique, where jars of incense, condiments and tea line the shelves next to food dye and henna, is intoxicating. He gives me that weird look again: “Don’t worry, I’ll help
you,” he says. But it’s an awfully pathetic catchphrase for this unlikely savior. Besides, I already know that Simon is a liar.
I smile politely and excuse myself for having to consult Ana in Romanian. I’m thankful that our lingo offers now the refuge that tourists
94
from former colonist’s countries rarely enjoy. We have to discuss how
to fix our first great mistake; in the three weeks of journey across Morocco we have never made an error like it: we are here because we’ve
been robbed.
rocco: it’s easier to walk unnoticed, the light is softer, and the narrow
streets are animated by seagull’s shadows and gnaoua music.
Yesterday at 5pm when we left Marrakech, the roadside thermometer
read 53 degrees Celsius, but 200 km further, in Essaouira, the wind
capital of Africa, it’s a chilly 22. Here every morning begins at noon; as
the ocean mist fades off and the sun starts shining, everybody in Essaouira feels hungry. Somewhere deep inside the medina, fishermen
are spreading the day’s catch: sardines, crabs, octopus, mullet, sea
beams, marlin, barracudas and swordfish. People buy their bits, and
then leave the bags in line at a three meter-long public grill, where fish
will be charcoaled and smoked to perfection for only 5 Dirham per
plate. It’s just that the place isn’t easy to find. Sure, cobbled streets
throughout the medina are lined with seafood bistros: these are the
tourist restaurants. There is also some fresh fish in the port. But the
really good stuff is tucked away behind any photogenic va-va-voom.
The white and blue architecture of Essaouira echoes a distant Spanish
influence; the colonial settlers were once stopped with cannons still visible in the fort. A sleepy market town until about six years ago, the picturesque town has recently become a hotspot for western bourgeoisie.
Prices in the medina have exploded, expatriates are buying holiday
homes and opening new businesses throughout town, and their white
Q7 4x4s are lining the beach in the nouvelle ville. It may be a heaven for
wakeboarding and kite running, but the NorthListen to gnaoua
west trade wind of humid Atlantic anticyclones,
music
the Aliseo, drives every sun-worshiper away.
Only on Fridays the wide strip of sand is covered in people out for a stroll or a picnic. The
locals are mellower here than elsewhere in Mo-
Environmental Concerns
Where is the fish?
With 3500 kilometer of coastline, the Kingdom of Morocco is the largest fish market in Africa. Water sources contamination due to waste dumping and litter is
just part of the present ecological concern. It is hard to imagine that these
nutrient-rich waters can be depleted of fish, but the environment has suffered
greatly from over-fishing. Officially only vessels from Morocco and Spain are
permitted enter these waters, but there are plenty of poachers as well. The numbers of the native species are dwindling, which calls for drastic repopulation
measures. Unfortunately this means that there are now more young fish than matured in the water, and vessels therefore harvest bigger loads because of the
smaller fish sizes.
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METHOD
W
e relax so much that we walk straight into a trap. North of
medina, there’s a winding alley where the last artisan vendors of Essaouira seem to congregate: a fresh produce
market, a butcher, two shacks with fried fish, a tailor selling traditional
djellaba and kaftan, some bakeries and a couple more teleboutiques
with leben and eggs, water, washing powder and mobile cards. In the
back of the alley there it is - that fabulous public grill. There are no souvenir shops here. No tourists. Women lay out their laundry to dry in the
blazing sun, kids play, vendors broadcast their best deals. Inside the
fish market though, it’s pure mayhem.
We jostle in to auction our lunch. There’s shouting, and shoving, and
people crowding in. Soon enough I feel my backpack move; or at least
I think I do. When I turn around to check, the men behind me just sit
there, hands in their pockets, eyes on the fish. A minute later I feel it
again, I look again, and this time I see my guy making his way out
across the crowd. I put my hand inside the bag and it takes a moment
to know. “He grabbed the GPS!” I shout, and rush after the thief. But
within minutes he simply vanishes in the maze of alleys and shadows of
the medina.
I get back to Ana, who is waiting for me outside the market with a desperate look on her face. We’ve taken a serious blow: many days of
work, many gigs of data – basically all our maps - and our most essential piece of kit, all gone. Albeit we have lost our appetite along with the
GPS, there is no point to waste two kilos of perfectly good fish. We line
our bag next to chatty locals, and wait silently. That’s when Simon
comes in.
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AFTERTASTE
H
e looks like a hipster gigolo: five foot two, tanned body, western clothing.
“Look,” he says in French, “this dude” (and he points to a second guy in rags and smeared coif) “he says he saw you earlier chasing
someone. He asks if somebody took something from you.”
Bang! So we got pwned… “Yeah,” I say.
“What was it? Your wallet?”
“No, man, a GPS.”
The bum says something in Arabic. “He knows the thief,” translates Simon. “He’s offering to go to his place and get your thing back.”
“Right, now why would that work?”
“Look, man. This ain’t a town, it’s family. Everybody knows everybody.
He knows him, he knows his mum. He’s gonna get there, tell him he’s
got the cops on him or something, and get your thing back. That’s all.”
“What’s the deal, then?” I ask.
I look at Ana; it pains us to fall victim to such petty scam, but we want
to see where this is going, and we have at least another hour to kill until
our fish gets barbecued. I suspect that this gang was hoping for a
smartphone or money. What they got instead is a gizmo that is a hard
to sell, and of little use for a local. So why not try to sell the thing back
to me, right? Let’s see, I say, maybe all is not lost. Shipping a new GPS
from Europe to Morocco would cost us a wad of cash anyway.
“Follow me,” Simon says. “I told them to bring your fish to the shop
when it’s ready.”
In the dim-lit boutique there’s a small gang of backpackers hanging
out: two Canadian chicks and a French guy. “Where’re you from?” they
giggle, as Simon’s friend starts brewing a tea of verbena, cardamom,
cinnamon, rose petals, and surprisingly, no narcotics.
Sometime later the fish arrives, and yeah, it is delicious. But it’s after
we’ve bought our stolen GPS back from the thief, for roughly 30 Euros.
As much as we’d like to explore more of Essaouira, after losing our anonymity in such a public way, it’s time to move.
“He helps you out, you are nice to him… give him a gift. Come, you
and your wife can figure this out in my shop,” Simon says. “It’s round
the corner. Here’s not safe.”
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11
SAND, SKY & EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
OFFICE TAN
“I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, ---that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.
But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth
from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”
Rabindranath Tagore
A
fter the assault on my backpack and on our reputation in Essaouira, we turn to Agadir for a more relaxing environment.
We must deal a.s.a.p. with an unfinished project from Romania; we promised our clients to do it before leaving Morocco. They fear
that once in Mauritania, we’d get immediately kidnapped, stabbed and
shot.
“It’s not like that at all,” John told them in Bucharest. “Romanian hostages aren’t popular with kidnappers. Besides,” he joked, “stabbing
and shooting almost never happen to the same person. It’s usually just
one or the other.”
But clients don’t pay us to be funny. First we stop on a beach outside
town, where we quickly wear off the laptop battery while skyping our
mums. To do our job, we need to get a decent room with actual electrical outlets and light bulbs and a table; in one word, stop vagabonding.
Working inside all day long, shelters us from the sun and from the zeropersonality of the package-tourism scene of Agadir. Because they own
miles of prime beachfront real estate and the mildest climate in Morocco, you’d think that the locals have become accustomed with the
sunbathing crowd. But we soon start suspecting otherwise. At least
vendors in the market and patrons of the harira stand we visit every
night aren’t particularly fond of westerners who flaunt their bronze na99
ked skin in skimpy white mini-shorts and halter dresses. With our “office tan”, long
sleeved shirts, baggy pants and a sketchy at
best attempt at Arabic, we look like another
breed of aliens, and this encourages people
to chat. They are curious to find out where
we’ve come from, and why we aren’t at the
beach. Our answers seem to be to their liking: Hakim, the tomato vendor gives us discounts, the grocer offers a handful of Medjool dates, the fruit vendor cleans our cactuses for free, and we are even pitched the
real price for olives. “Come inside if you like”
says one day the friendly baker on our street;
but I’ve learnt my lesson. I remain on my side
of the counter and admire silently the precise
kneading and shaping of the dough, and hundreds of flat breads being lined on plank and
then into the oven. This bread, honest and
tasty, with a dense crumb and a thin,
crunchy crust, ensures the survival of generations of artisans, and of an entire nation.
Even the wacky Sadirkel has taught us how
to appreciate it, the Moroccan way: dipped
in fragrant olive oil, bread makes a complete
and tasty meal.
We have been by now for over three weeks
on the road. Things are starting to show
signs of wear: the color in our salt-crusted
jackets is paling, the tent is bleaching, and
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our weights are dropping. But the human is a quirky animal: it’s hard to
simplify one’s life, and deceptively easier to let it overcomplicate. Various trinkets packed because of watching too much Bear Grylls are becoming quite a nuisance. It has downed on us that no waterproof
matches or foldable shovel are going to save our ass in case of real
trouble, as in the desert, or a warzone for that matter, things just ain’t
work like that. We’ve had enough of this clutter, of having to pull things
aside each time we want to reach the really important stuff. More out of
necessity than logic, we are becoming the manbearpigs of the desert:
some sort of minimalist hippies. But when we lose our multi-tool -
which had tweezers, toothpick, corkscrew and a horseshoe extractor –
and I call that “serendipitous,” John declares that it is time to get rid of
the unnecessaries. Until Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott it’s very unlikely we’ll find another opportunity to ship stuff home, so we make our
way to the post office in Agadir with six and a half kilos of brake plates,
broken Kindle, clothing and other bits. Even the tripod has to go. We
do hold on to the pepper spray and the machete, and for a while we
keep sleeping with them at hand.
Even if achieved empirically, our newly gained ability to thrive in a wilderness we used to consider ourselves unfit for is the ultimate empower101
ing experience. I’ve done little camping before, John is arguably more seasoned; even
so, our first two weeks of wild-camping in Africa have been both frustrating and exhausting. Unaccustomed to the variety of sounds
in nature, we slept very little, shrieking unheroically at the faintest grass-swooshing
and tent-fly-flapping. After we relaxed, we
moved on to learning how to pitch our tent in
ghastly winds, to forage and clean cactus
fruits and to navigate by following natural patterns of land and fog. It is a new world of ups
and downs, of pleasures and pains. We learn
that a success or a fail doesn’t guarantee
that we have mastered the move. We learn
to improvise, and to do more with less. We
try to figure how much food and water we
have to carry, and how often we need to resupply. That requires a bit of planning. We
make plenty of un-catastrophic mistakes, until it eventually becomes second nature, just
like the distribution of tasks in camp. Each
takes their share of chores without debating,
and as we progress south, setting up and
packing out become faster, and the spots we
find more spectacular. Our kitchenware consists of one multi-fuel stove, a fire starter and
a stainless steel bowl which we use for cooking and serving. A Belgian couple overlanding by van has given us two Delta Airlines
sets of plastic fork and knife; we keep them
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spotless, and continue eating with our hands. Everything that we do to
those poor legumes and meats – cutting, chopping, cleaning and stirring - is achieved with one two-Euro pocket knife acquired from the
Agadir flea market. Showering is still problematic, because fresh water
requires some form of paid accommodation, which we try to avoid. After a while we realize that with a couple precautionary measures, not
showering for days is no big deal. “It’s just nature” John says: sand in
hair, dust on shoes, or rain on roads… since when we’ve started calling
all that a dirty inconvenience?
Not too long ago I would shriek at the idea of a bug in my bed and
John would not bat an eye without his pillow. But by now, hardened to
long hours in the saddle and accustomed to the unpredictability of nomadism, we have found our rhythm. We can claim any wild spot we
fancy, and bush-camping is relaxing at last. John still has a sore bottom and neck, and we are still careful to leave no trace behind, yet we
wake up ever earlier to make the most of being out here. We eat streetside breakfasts of couscous and sour milk from villages and fill our water bottles from fountains. The beauty and brutality of nature inspire
awe and plenty of curse words, but we end most of our days happy to
test ourselves in some of the world’s wildest and loveliest environments. We can finally appreciate our freedom.
Our warm-up month is soon coming to an end: after the Souss-Massa,
we cross a dashed-line on the map, entering the southern province of
Western Sahara. Ageing international travel warnings list this as one of
the most dangerous territories in the world. Perhaps the officials don’t
get out that much, because the not-quite-autonomous nothingness is
mostly barren, and its scarce population of nomads unlikely to assemble a threat. From here on, there are no more stalls with harira and cow
head stew, no more bread-baking ladies in souks, and no souks what-
soever; out in the misty horizon, nothing but featureless, uninterrupted
desert. The same Sahara that has begun its dominance along the route
we rode on, past the black khalima tents we sipped tea in, spans the
last 1000 km to Dakhla and beyond the border of Mauritania. As the
sun blesses the end of another good day, we feel like two of the luckiest people alive.
African Tradition
The Moroccan Hammam
Try the hammam! Follow that inconspicuous ally into the traditional Moroccan bath
house and dare to go past the wooden door that looks like a prop from Mel Gibson’s
Passion of the Christ. The place is segregated into women’s and men’s areas. Inside
the damp steamy rooms populated with naked people, sit, and stand or fold your
limbs as your masseuse’s directs, or they will do that for you in a way that suggests
you may still consider a career with the circus. Buckets of hot water and hours of rubdowns later, emerge a cleaner, rejuvenated you.
If a hammam sounds too intimidating or is an expensive plane ticket away, consider
the easily available takeaways: savon noir, Rhassoul clay and argan oil. Savon noir
aka “beldi”, or “Moroccan Black Soap”, is an olive paste used to soften and prepare
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RAHIM
A
few facts: less than half a million Sahrawi inhabit one of the
harshest and most sparsely populated parts of the world. A
former Spanish colony, Western Sahara is at the center of an
unresolved dispute since 1975: the separatist organization Polisario proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Mauritania withdrew
from the conflict in 1979, and a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire
agreement was reached in 1991. Then, a wall was built to keep the
guerrillas and the cultural tragedy at bay: a two-meter high 2,700 km
long structure of sand, with bunkers, wire fences and landmines
throughout. This is the Berm of Western Sahara, also known as the Moroccan Wall. It’s arguably the longest continuous minefield in the world.
In our three-day marathon we never see it. The recently built highway
lines the Atlantic coast far from the berm. With no steering to do, no
traffic lights and no traffic to keep me busy, I can focus on the
sightscape: steep cliffs carved by the ocean on one side of the road,
and looming, creamy dunes on the other, with the Saharan wind shushing like a ghost river through. I already find riding a motorcycle in itself
like a form of being in the moment; it’s much more so when out in the
open. And in the Sahara I am in my prime territory.
Except for the wind, our first bivouac is quite romantic: a night quilted
with clear Saharan sky, a shipwreck leaning against the thump of the
ocean, city lights flickering between two shades of indigo. As soon as
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we pitch our bedroom, a man comes waving
a laminated document. “IT IS FORBIDDEN
BY THE MOROCCAN AUTHORITIES TO
CAMP IN THIS PLACE” it reads. We’ve
heard about these bogus rules, so we came
prepared.
“As-salamu alaykum,” I say. “Me and my wife
here (and I point to Ana) are coming by motorbike from Romania (no reaction, name
doesn’t ring any bell). We want to sleep here
tonight; tomorrow we continue to Mauritania.” He shakes his head vigorously. “No sir!
It’s forbidden. You must go to town, to hotel.”
“My friend, we’re very tired, we’ve been riding all day long; we need the rest. Please.”
“Go to hotel! Here’s dangerous.”
“Why is it dangerous?”
“People can attack you.”
I sight. “Listen, I don’t want to get you into
trouble. Tonight we stay, tomorrow morning
we go. No need to worry, I take full responsibility for whatever happens; thank you.”
“Do you think he left?” Ana asks after I zip
the tent.
“I hope so.”
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“You know what? I bet this guy’s not guarding us; he’s weary for others
who might come and find out that he didn’t report us.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Strangers are not necessarily welcome guests
everywhere; I guess it isn’t unlikely that such guardians – either selfappointed or official – could fear for their own security, if proven to have
sheltered the news, or even worse, the presence of unregistered visitors.
“What if he comes back with the police?” she says.
I am in no mood to fold back the tent and start searching for another
spot. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. It’s either us, or him. Lets'
watch a movie or something, I'm not sleepy anymore.”
“Hey, listen!”
“What is it?”
“Nothing, I mean, it’s the waves; isn’t this like Arugam Bay?”
“Yeah?”
“I used to wake up every morning because of the sound. I’d come outside with my eyes closed, and opened them slowly, hoping to see
wales jumping out of the ocean, but I never did.”
“Hold on to that thought; maybe you will.”
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It’s dark in the tent, but I bet she’s smiling.
She picks a David Attenborough documentary, something about the Arctic, but before
the icecap melts we’re both dreaming.
At dawn our guardian is back.
“Did you sleep here last night?” I ask him.
“Yes sir. They call me Rahim,” he says.
“I’m John. This is Ana.”
Rahim tells us he is also a fisherman, and we
tell him we build houses; he seems rather impressed. Does he have a wife and kids back
in town? I ask.
“No” is his answer. “I lost her to hashish.
Then The Prophet, may peace be upon him,
told me to come here and change.” He
raises his chin to the furious Atlantic: “So I
did, but I miss my mountains.”
Rahim is from the Riff area, where a guardian
job like his is much envied. It’s a humbling
fact; clearly back in our socioeconomic
bracket, deluged with options, we haven’t
been able to make the best of our plenty. On
the other hand, have we been more successful, we would probably never come here like
we did, and never meet this man.
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PORTRET D'ÉTAT CIVIL
W
ind becomes a constant for the next days. It blows so hard
that riding requires a lot of stamina. To be able to breathe
and to keep some of the sand from coming inside the canopy of our double wall tent – which is basically a mosquito net – we
build belts of rock around it. Nights are damp and cold and we sleep
with everything on. We try not to rush through, but even so, by motorbike we’re too fast to notice the small details of what only appears to
be a monotonous landscape. Carcasses of camels and dogs, and
even the odd snake that never made it across lie in various stages of
decay at the roadside. At the bivouac we take more time to explore: we
find shells and fossils of some prehistoric arthropods scattered in the
sand and embedded within the boulders. Deep-frying in the sun for so
many days, we have forgotten that this is a former sea floor. On day
two, the heat rises above 45°C, and our skin starts to feel like an old
shirt that doesn’t fit anymore. Water is becoming precious, and scarce;
we dissolve a couple of hydrating salts in the bottle, and save it all for
drinking. We never imagined the desert before, when researching the
prospective route of this expedition. It was the one thing that slipped.
And here it is: a void, and yet a haunting presence. The Sahara we are
crossing today is indeed very different from the desert of The One Thousand And One Nights. There are hardly any caravans or camels left, but
despite its roads and ghostly towns, this place is still untamed, a world
without compromise.
108
I love traveling. To me, this is what makes the world real. We’ve been to
places like Paris, or Sri Lanka during the civil war and had those experiences and we came back; since then these names are never the same.
They aren’t just words, they have smell and sound, and their people
have names that we remember. We’ve built a personal relationship with
them. But on this land we struggle: its soul remains a mystery. The very
few people we meet at all are reluctant to talk to us. With Morocco controlling the territory to the west of the berm and Polisario patrolling the
east, but with no border crossings, what lies between feels like a desolate place of paranoia. The official rhetoric appears out of touch with ordinary people. “We're not like the Arabs,” says one Saharawi at a gas
110
station, “to think naively that a violent revolution will magically fix everything. Since the war, things only got worse.”
The clan-based society of the indigenous Hassaniya Saharawi bedouins was broken up after the beginning of the conflict. A part of the population lives in exile in the camps of Tindouf, Algeria. One third of Western Sahara province remains landlocked, dry, resourceless; the other
two thirds are divided into five administrative units called wilayas: Boujdour, Smara, Laayoune, Dakhla and Wadi al-Dhahab. It must cost a fortune to pipe water to these cities scattered in the desert. And with Laâyoune every settlement starts to look like props from the M.A.S.H. series. Almost everybody we see is wearing some sort of uniform. Either
the locals have a quirky sense of fashion, or Laâyoune is slowly turning
into a military base. A wide six-lane boulevard decorated with fountains
cuts this town across: after so many days in the desert, the sight of water jetting into the air is simply arresting. Our best bet to chat with locals is at the police checkpoints. Every fifty kilometers we must stop
and hand over our “Fiche d'état civil” a list with our personal details that
should speed up things.
“Hello sir!”
“Hello. Fiche?”
“Here you go sir.”
“Cigarettes?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Cadeau?”
“No.”
“Rally?”
“Tourist.”
of friendly conversation. We are happy to pull out our little Polaroid
printer and give soldiers business-card-sized photos of their grin.
Now this is another story. A decent portrait requires method and complicity. It speaks of both subject and photographer, of how they looked
at you as you were looking at them. And our first attempts in Africa
can’t hide how shy and uncoordinated we were. With each photo
though, we are learning the ropes of approaching our subjects. Now
I’m forcing myself to engage. I chat to my guy and I learn his name before pointing my camera to his intimacy. I don’t like to do it from across
the street, with the telephoto lens. But sometimes it doesn’t work this
way. We happen to walk into a beautiful and disturbing scene, like this
butcher shop in Boujdour. Our system is craving protein and as we wait
for our kafta to be spiced and cooked, the minuscule stall is assaulted
by hungry UN troops: svelte, blonde, joking and shoving. Imagine: the
foreground is halal mutton, with background the Sahara. So I take out
my camera. It’s not a huge thing, it’s a semi-pro, but to many that
screams journalist. This time everyone stops. People, who were friendly
a minute ago, turn quiet. I try to say, I’m just a tourist, man, but my explanation is even more offensive. “Why did you leave your home behind
if nobody forced you to?” says the butcher.
“Where are you going?”
“Mauritania Insha'Allah.”
Smiling: “Wife?”
“Yes.”
“Photo?”
“Sure.”
Even if eventually we get a bit fed up with repeating the same answers,
we do need to get off the bike every now and then, and these nice Moroccan lads living in the middle of nowhere look like they could use a bit
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12
BUTT OUT
“The sea is as deep, there is as much water in the sea,
in a calm, as in a storm.”
John Donne
BABY YOU’VE GOT A STEW GOING
A
Ana scratches her arm: “We must take a shower.”
emerges from the shower. Slathered in suncream, we venture back in
the pulsating heat for a ride around town. It’s an exotic everyday: near
a mosque, a barefoot vendor piles cactus fruits on his wooden cart; a
white man, 6 feet tall with kaki boots and visible gun, speaks into his
mobile; four boys cross the road carrying books. In Europe it’s summer
holiday - are these kids going to school? Are they coming home from
Koranic study?
Easier said than done; the two campsites in Dakhla have two things in
common: abundance of garbage and lack of electricity. We stake out
the tent where we find the most faucets, hoping that would increase
our chances to sort ourselves out. “I’m a lama again!” Ana says as she
Inside the fish market it’s nearing the end of the workday. The floor is
covered in scales and a man pours a bucket of water and starts scrubbing. We buy our fish filets without having our pockets picked, and turn
to the beach. The shores of Dakhla are steep, with natural caves, great
fter days of huffing and laboring we are arriving at destination:
the city of Dakhla, sitting at the tip of a narrow peninsula. This
time the continent shimmering from across the strip of water
is no mirage.
“Tomorrow we’re going to Africa!” I say.
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for a picnic. I light our stove and by the time
Ana slices a cactus fruit, lime and fresh chilies salad, we have a stew going. The fish is
stunning, with matching surroundings of
frigid coast and sea. Bellies full, we want to
explore more of the peninsula. It proves so
interesting that it requires an extra day. The
place is infested with seagulls; the sand has
a surreal shade of grey, more of a haze than
physical matter. It’s different than the shores
of our Black Sea, different than the beaches
of South East Asia. This beauty isn’t harvested and packaged for tourists. It just is.
After a field of refuse and the electric fence of
the military outpost, we see a path turning
left and a sign - “village de pêche” (fishing village). But we see no fishing net or boats, just
ragged laundry being hanged out to dry by
the most slender men. It is a Sahrawi camp:
an assembly of tin shacks, mozzied puddles,
and booze joints where guys suspiciously
size us up. We feel that our presence here is
voyeuristic and inappropriate. So we take our
questions, and leave.
At night it takes a while to fall asleep,
haunted by memories of Atlas waterfalls, of
Raja and of spicy lamb tajines. At 5am, under a moonless but starlight sky we pack up
and leave town. By 10am we've safely made
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it through the sixth checkpoint – only a few
more to go before the Saharan highway
crosses a border between two countries.
This being a line on the sand in the desert, it
gets re-sketched unsurprisingly often, each
time with slightly different results. Its exact
shape varies according to whose map you’re
using, and if other people would blame governments, here it’s the wind. All this political
doodling has in time generated a strip about
six kilometers wide. This is a UN buffer zone,
a “No Man’s Land” crossed by a sandy,
rocky, unpaved road that is maintained by neither Moroccan nor Mauritanian authorities.
Besides carcasses of vehicles, the strip contains the remnants of a live minefield, left behind from the territorial dispute. That’s where
we are heading. With all the early head start,
at only a few hours to border shut down, I
need to gun down.
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PHOTO FINISH
A
mbiguous as it is, this border does have its fair share of watchful eyes. With the Harmattan haze, I notice the gesticulating
policeman only when it is too late; like all Romanian drivers, I
dare to consider myself a veteran, so I brace for the shouting match
and emotional blackmail. There are two policemen. One saunters with
a badass “you’ve got busted” swagger. He clearly watches “Law And
Order” with unaccountable devotion.
“As-salamu alaykum” I say.
“Wa’ alaykum salam. You know you were doing 110!”
“This is an 80 zone. Is that how you drive in France?”
“I wouldn’t know sir. I’m from Romania.”
“Driving license!”
Now, there is no way I will hand him my papers. “I’m really sorry officer,” I start my plea. “We’re in a hurry to cross the border. It’s quite late,
you see.”
“Well, you must pay a fine.”
“But sir, we don’t have any money.”
“Was I really!?”
116
“Not even 30 euros?”
“Yes! Turkey is Muslim. We Moroccans are Muslim.”
“Oh, no officer, we've just filled up. We don’t carry any more cash.”
“We know, we’ve been here for four weeks.”
“From Romania huh?”
“Four weeks! That’s good. Morocco’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes. Romania. Hagi.”
“Oh yes officer, we went to Tanger, Rabat, Meknes, Fez…”
“Ah! Hagi! Romania has good football.”
By the time I get to Marrakech the two policemen are photographing
us and the bike with their mobiles. All we have to do now is cross into
Mauritania without getting ourselves busted for smuggling a machete,
blown up by mines, or ripped off by border officials for not having the
mandatory Carnet de Passage.
“Well, we did. These days not so much.”
“Hagi… Is he Muslim?”
“Um… I don’t know sir. I believe he is of … um… Turkish origin.”
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13
IN NUMBERS - INTO THE WORLD FROM
ROMANIA TO MOROCCO
JOURNEY / MAINTANANCE / PROBLEMS
• Countries visited: 7 (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Morocco)
• Number of days spent on the road: 34
(10.06.2011 - 13.07.2011)
• Nights in the tent: 24 (minus 1 in the van, 2
onboard the ferry, 1 in gite, 1 in riad, 4 @ Agadir hotel)
• Distance covered by bike: 5500 km
• Fuel burned: 276 l
• Most economical mileage: 4.5% @ 70 km/h
off-road
• Highest daytime temperature: +53°C (127F)
@Marrakech
• Lowest nighttime temperature: +6°C (43F)
@Imilchil
• Engine oil used: 3 l
• Off-road crashes: >10 • Air filters cleaned: 1x
• On-road crashes: 0
• Punctured tires: 0
• Accidents: 0 • Chains used: 1
• Stops by the police: 1 (excluding checkpoints and military posts estimated to have exceeded 100 in Morocco and Western Sahara)
• Biking gear washed (times): NO
• Bike washed (times): NO
• Haircuts: NOT YET
• Fines for speeding: 1, never paid (Western
Sahara)
• Technical issues: 1 (abnormally worn chain
with o-rings missing & frozen links)
• Damaged gear: 0
• Health issues: 1 (bee sting - John)
• Stolen items: 1 (GPS - recovered)
• Lost items: 15 (pocket knife + whistle)
• Record continuous riding (km): 450
• Record continuous riding (hours): 8
• Highest speed: 140km/h
• Highest altitude: 3050m (Imilchil, High Atlas)
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MONEY & VISA
• Fuel: 12,8 Moroccan Dirham/l (1,1 Euro/l)
• Most expensive accommodation: 110 Moroccan Dirham (10 Euro)
- Imilchil gite
• Cheapest accommodation: 20 Moroccan Dirham (1,79 Euro) camping near Meknes
• Local SIM cards bought: 1
• Vodafone roaming available: YES
• Visa required for Romanian citizens: NU
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FAST FACTS - MOROCCO
Area: 446,550 sq km
Population: 31,993,000
Capital: Rabat
Currency: Moroccan dirham (MAD)
Languages: Arabic, Berber (60%), French
Ethnic groups: Arab-Berber 99.1%, other 0.7%, Jewish 0.2%
Climate: Mediterranean, becoming more extreme in the interior
Terrain: the northern coast borders the Atlantic Ocean and the interior is mountainous with large areas of bordering plateaus, intramontane valleys, and rich coastal plains.
Roadways: paved: 35,664 km (639 km of expressways), unpaved: 21,961 km (2006)
Environment - current issues: land degradation/desertification
(soil erosion resulting from farming of marginal areas, overgrazing, destruction of vegetation); water supplies contaminated by
raw sewage; siltation of reservoirs; oil pollution of coastal waters
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WHAT IT TOOK
MOTORBIKE
- Custom made Alu cases rack
- Hepko & Becker Gobi topcase
YAMAHA XT660Z TÉNÉRÉ
- Custom made aluminium engine guard
- 150W inverter for gizmo charging
We chose the legendary Yamaha XT660Z
Ténéré and it proved excellent both on-road
and off-road. Get the scoop of how the Ténéré was prepared to meet the requirements of a 55,000km journey across Africa:
- LED auxiliary headlight
- Alu short brake & clutch levers
- Hyperpro suspension upgrades (front progressive springs with 15W oil and rear progressive spring)
Blue Ténéré (after an engine swap)
GEAR
- Front + rear steel braided brake hose
Helmets: Arai Tour X3 + Shoei XR1100
- High Givi windshield
Motorcycle Clothing: REVIT!
- GPS mount + direct battery charger with
backup system
Boots: Gaerne SG-10 & SG-J
White Ténéré (crashed)
- Foot pegs - cheap eBay, larger than OEM,
nice quality for the buck
- KTM plastic Handguards
- Puig light smoke Windshield
- Custom-made radiator protection
- NGK CR7EIX Iridium Spark plug
- G-IT aluminum engine shield + crashbar
combo
- Kev Fuel Mod
- MK3 pivot pegs
- Cush drive mod
- Unifilter foam air filter
- Custom Leo Vince SBK exhaust
- Kev mod
- UNIFILTER foam sport filter
- Renthal Dakar fatbar with KTM plastic
handguards, alu short brake and clutch
lever and rallyride foam grips
- Stage 3 DNA side filter
- Scottoiler
- Supersprox Stealth Sprocket
- Hein Greike tankbag
- Hyperpro Combi Kit
- Custom made dual Leo Vince SBK exhausts (with custom dB killer)
- 14T JT Front Sprocket
- 14 tooth JT front sprocket
- SW Motech - 30mm Handlebar Riser
- touring Scottoiler
- Alutech Cases (2X41L and 1X29L)
- Custom rack for aluTech 41l cases
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Camping: tent The North Face Roadrunner
33, sleeping bag The North Face Twin
Peaks, mattresses Mammut, Sea to Summit liner; MSR Packtowl; 2x Petzl Tikka
Kitchen: MSR WhisperLite multi-fuel stove
+ tank; Magnezium Swedish FireSteel; SOG
macete
Bags (on top of panniers): 2x55L Outdoor
Research Durable dry sack
Photo & It: GPS: Mio 520 (broken, replaced
with Garmin Zumo), camera body: Canon
5D Mark II; backup Canon 20D, lens:
Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 L USM + EF 70200mm f/2.8 L USM, Sigma 10-20mm
f/4-5.6 EX, tripod: Manfrotto 190XB +
496RC2 Compact Ball Head + 200PL-14
QR (sent home in Morocco), computer: Apple Macbook 13” (2009 model) + Western
Digital 1TB ext. HD
14
WHAT IS NEXT
CRAZY OYIBO PART 2 INTO AFRICA
„Into The World” motodventure had a slow start, but we like to say
“second time lucky.”
The month in Morocco – with a couple of setbacks, some mistakes
and at least one lesson learnt – makes us hungry for more. And
there’s plenty to do from now on: „black” Africa is just beginning.
We go fishing in the Mauritanian Sahara, we gorge on karité and lianas in Mali and discover an artsy tribe in Burkina Faso. We fall
hard for Togo and flee voodoo in Benin. We meet the president in
Nigeria, Jesus in Cameroon and a rock star in Gabon. After we
cross the two Congo on roads that don’t exist on maps, we find a
home away from home in Zambia and see the most beautiful naked women in Namibia. We take a once-in-a-lifetime photo in
South Africa, we pass the alpine test Lesotho, then we change
the route: through the air in Botswana, on rails in Mozambique and
across the sea in Tanzania. In Kenya and in Ethiopia we face the
Flood, we go back to the desert in Sudan, and in Egypt we find out
how much is five millennia of history.
You’ll find in Crazy Oyibo maps with the route inside each country,
information about the traditions, the vernacular architecture and the
gastronomy in Africa, statistics about the expedition, details about
visa and technical gear for the motorbike and much more.
Follow the release of Crazy Oyibo Part 2 at: www.intotheworld.eu
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BRAGA
a regional refreshment drink brewed from fermented millet and wheat.
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INHABIT
Deepak Chopra
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Chapter 8 - A Pink World
MOBRA
a Romanian motorcycle brand now defunct.
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PIDJIN
Nigerian slang; broken English.
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