All The Dumb Things

Back in 1982, when I was in Morocco, I travelled south to Goulimine. At the time Morocco was in the middle of what its government laughingly described as a “green revolution”.  The so-called green revolution was actually a naked land grab by Morocco of what was once the Spanish Sahara..  In late 1975 as Franco was in the process of dying, (the odious) King Hassan of Morocco with tacit American and French approval, declared that he was sending in 350,000 Moroccans as mujahedin to reclaim the area for the motherland totally disregarding the local population’s desire for independence from Spain and self rule that had been sanctioned by the U.N. since the early 1960s.
 
Morocco has not been a good neighbour to the countries that surround it and has been in an undeclared state of war with Algeria for the last 30 years due to Algeria’s support of the Polisario (which had been fighting for independence from Spain since the early 1970s). Plus Morocco did not recognize the right of Mauritania to exist until 1969.
 
At the time when I was in Morocco, the furthest south that a foreigner could travel was Goulimine.
 
When I was younger, I had romantic notions of travelling through the desert with the Tuaregs to Timbuktu.  So when I was in Morocco, I tried to make it happen by going down to Goulimine. The further south that one travels in Morocco the more “African” it becomes.  The European influenced whitewashed houses of the northern coastal areas give way to pink and blue structures with touches of sub-Saharan design.  In the north of Morocco near the Mediterranean, many of the people could be mistaken for Greeks or Italians but the further south, one goes, the more African looking the people become. Still fine featured like Arabs but with much darker skin and frizzy hair
 
Just like in the rest of Morocco, one is beset by touts, offering to be your guide as soon as you step off the bus.  I’m pretty deft at losing these guys, but in small towns It’s hard to get away from the really persistent ones as they will follow you to your hotel, and then wait outside the front for when you decide to go out later.  The guy in the photograph latched on to me from the time that I’d got off the bus and followed me around for at least two days before I eventually relented and had conversation with him. 

Even I can’t be unrelentingly rude.  His persistence is a testament to how a little work there is and how desperate people are.  There was no way he was going to let a clueless, pasty, foreign, bag of money like me slip through his grasp.
 
Moroccan culture is impenetrable to people who don’t speak the language, and after a couple of days in Goulimine I was starting to realise I wasn’t going to get anywhere without some local help and that’s when I made the mistake of asking “my guide” to help me find some Tauregs who would be willing to take me to Timbuktu as part of a camel caravan.
 
By the next day, my newfound friend had arranged a meeting for me with some very hospitable and amiable Tauregs.  In retrospect, it is no wonder why they were so friendly.  After all, there I was, a totally clueless and naive sack of money from overseas, who was only too willing to part with his money for the craziest of reasons.  Why would you want to travel by camel through the desert when you had enough money to fly?
 
I was plied with mint tea and regaled with stories about the Tauregs, and their amazing skills in the desert.  “I have a friend, a very wise man, who can travel in the desert using only the stars to tell him the way to go”, I was told in awe by one of my hosts.  I guess astral navigation can seem pretty amazing to someone like him who hadn’t been in the Boy Scouts.  Some Taureg clothing was also brought out for me to try on.  They really knew which of my buttons to push as I thought it would be pretty cool to cross the desert in disguise, accompanied by people with dangerous reputations.  This would surely all lead to an experience “worthy of a song”, as the Klingons would say.

It was explained to me that there was no way that I could go into the camel market and buy a camel for myself as I would just get ripped off, and the same would happen when it came to me to buy the other supplies that I would need for the trip.  It was also explained to me that it would be nearly impossible for me as a foreigner to just walk up to some strange Tauregs, and ask them if I could just tag along on their next trip to Timbuktu.  Another aspect I had to take into consideration was that as a tourist I would stick out like dog’s balls.  I would attract the attention of the local security forces and would probably end up in jail, as what I wanted to do was considered illegal from a Moroccan point of view. The Moroccan government didn’t want foreigners going into a country that they were in the process of stealing.
 
Then came the time to talk about money.  I was told to pay $300 US to get things organised and that I should get ready to leave in about a week’s time.  Normally I don’t pay upfront for anything, but I figured I had to trust these guys at some stage.  If I didn’t pay the money upfront, and they were crooks, there was a good chance I would be taken out into the desert to be killed and robbed while I slept.  This was of particular concern, considering that I would be traveling illegally and incognito.  If I paid the money upfront, and they ripped me off I’d only be a little poorer, but I’d still be alive.  So I paid them the money and arranged to meet them in a week’s time.  I had to go back to Tarrazout, which is up near Agadir to get the rest of my stuff that I had left in storage, with Louasin.
 
Needless to say, I got ripped off.