I am a Camel Jockey
Everytime I go to Germany, it seems something bad happens. The first time I
passed through (early in my travels), my pants were snatched from next to my
bed and the cash taken out of my wallet as I slept. Luckily I found the pants
and wallet (credit cards included) just at the end of the hall.
The next time I went through, it was during Oktoberfest. I had a great time
and nothing got stolen. But as we left the festival area, a drunken phonecall
stateside informed us what the rest of the world already knew; the U.S. had
begun its bombing campaign in Afghanistan. We were at war. Talk about a buzz
kill.
You can see why Germany has left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because of Germany
itself, perse, but because of what seems to happen when I go there. However,
there was one more thing I had to see. Dachau. The WWII Jewish Concentration
Camp, as if that would change my perception. I decided to get in and get out
as quickly and efficiently as possible. Overnight train out of Switzerland,
spend the day at the camp, and overnight train back to Switzerland.
Unfortunately, I chose a bad day. I arrived early enough, shortly after opening,
and I felt I had sufficiently prepared myself for the blunt reality of just
how cruel the human race can be. But I seem to have chosen a day on which an
entire school district of German high school students were there on a field
trip. German high school students are the same as students anywhere else. They
don't really care about history. Or if they do, they won't dare admit it while
surrounded by their friends and classmates. So I spent the day trying to avoid,
but being constantly surrounded by, little packs of roaming teenagers who were
far too excited about being out of class for the day to give two shits about
the fact that their own grandfathers had possibly had a hand in nearly wiping
out an entire race of people. People who's grandchildren just might have been
friends of mine, had they lived. But as it was, the guys flirted with the girls.
The girls giggled at their jokes. And they all seemed to have headphones.
Nonetheless, I managed to find myself alone at one point...in an empty, never
used gas chamber. Alone with my thoughts. And I found myself alone again...in
a kiln room. Alone with my imagination. But then I walked outside where I was
greeted with the sounds of laughter and giggles, and it all seemed just so sureally
wrong, on so many levels. I was glad to have my overnight train ticket back
to Switzerland.
But I couldn't spend my remaining days in Europe hidden in a
perfect Alpine valley. Not for as long as I had left, anyway. Not after the
summer in Ireland had left me pasty and white without any semblance of a tanline.
An uncomfortable state for any true Southern Californian to find himself in.
So I packed my bags again and headed down to one of my other favorite places
on Earth. Riomaggiore, in the Cinque Terre, Italy. It was exactly as I remembered
it, except that now there is a Tourist Information center next to the train
station with an internet cafe upstairs.
In Rio, I rendezvoused with Matt, whom
I had met in Gimmelwald, Switzerland a few weeks before. We decided that I would
take on Matt, the Grad Student, as a kind of travel apprentice, or prodigy.
It seemed only natural as I led him on the hikes, introduced him to Gelatti
and Lemoncino, and instilled in him a love and appreciation for the Mediterranian
sunset. To his credit, Matt quickly graduated from his apprenticeship and moved
into a roll of friend and, well...Texan.
One day, Matt walked into our room with an excited grin on his face. "How
do you feel about Morocco?"
I was in Morocco last year on a one-day, three-city "tour" which
turned out to be just an excuse for the tourguide to take us to his friends'
carpet shops. I didn't need any carpets. I didn't even have an apartment. And
I sure as hell wasn't going to carry one strapped to my pack as I trekked across
Europe.
"I don't really want to go back to Morocco, but I'll go with you through
Spain as far as the ferry port." I love Spain.
I guess that's how I woke up in Morocco one morning, by way of Barcelona, Alicante,
and Granada (where we met up with Michelle, another Gimmelwaldian alumni), apparently
prepared for 6 or 7 days in the Saharah. I will probably never be entirely sure
what happened, and I suspect drugs were involved somehow. But I am clear about
two things: I woke up in Granada (in the southern center of Spain) one morning,
and then somehow found myself waking up no more then 20 hours later on a train
pulling into Marakech (in the center of Morocco, on the African continent) with
a small backpack containing 3 pairs of boxer shorts, four pairs of socks, three
t-shirts, one pair of jeans, a toothbrush, and my journal. The time between
the two events is all a fast moving, blur.
I do vaguely recall agreeing with Matt that maybe it would be safer for us
if we pretended to be Canadian. So Matt and I 'aquired' Maple Leaf patches,
and sewed them on our packs. I didn't like it, I didn't really want to do it.
But I didn't know what we were getting into. I also somehow decided I should
try to grow a beard, as some kind of a show of my respect for their beliefs.
With this in mind, I didn't even bother to take along a razor when we left our
bags at the ferry port in Spain. All I kept thinking was "Muslim country,
bad place for Americans to be right now given current international tensions."
Happily, I was wrong. Which is a good thing, because our "be a Canadian"
plan turned out to be ill-fated when Matt had a hard time concealing his Texan
"Y'awll." The other Canadians we met quickly saw right through us.
Our guide through the city of Marakech, who's name was Mustafah, was very friendly,
even if he was somehow under the impression that we were all three from Vancouver
and studying Spanish in Granada. Mustafah was very accomadating, and showed
us all the areas of the old city that he thought would intrest us. When we passed
the site of the old slave market, I asked him how many camels I could get for
Michelle.
"10,000," he said. "With no exaggeration." I think
he may have been exaggerating just a little
bit. I began to think what I could do with 5,000 camels (Matt would of course
be entitled to the other half). Not much. But...
""How many Arabian Horses
could I get for her?"
"Mustafah had to think for a minute about the camel
to horse exchange rate. "500 Arabian horses."
""And what happens
to Michelle?"
""She will be my wife!"
"Sold! Hey Sis! I think I
found your wedding gift!
"It should be pointed out that Michelle and I have developed a love-hate relationship.
In her world, my name is Jackass, and I happily call her Wench, and we laugh at anything
the other does. We had agreed to never speak or write to each other again once
we parted ways back in Spain, and that eased the tensions considerably. Even if it was all just a joke.
"The
relationship among the three of us was such that, when our "We're Canadian"
story fell through, we were still able to convince our travel group that we
were all family. We were realted like this, we said: My parents split when I
was three (they didn't really...still married, thank you). Mom moved to Seattle
where she remarried and had Michelle. Dad moved to Texas where he remarried
and had Matt. No one bothered to ask what became of me, at the tender age of
three. We claimed to have just recently been informed of each other's existence
during the past few months, and decided to all meet up in Switzerland, where
I already was at the time. Matt and Michelle were therefore unrelated to each
other, and were free to do whatever it was they were doing under the stars at
night.
"To help the story along, whenever Michelle could not be found, I would ask
"where's my sister?" In the company of others, I would call Matt "Bro."
And, as if to hammer home the point with undeniable authenticity, we fought
and squabbled like siblings. I'm sure we had the whole group convinced.
"Unfortunately, when it came down to it, Mustafah already had his legal allotment
of 4 wives, and Michelle claimed that she had never actually agreed to being
sold as a slave, and what right did I have to sell her off anyway? I tried to
explain to her that slaves rarely have a say in whether or not they want to
be sold, but she wasn't budging. Oh well, with that attitude she probably wouldn't
have lived long anyway.
"We slept on the roof of our hotel that night, at a cost of 4 Euros, including
breakfast. 5 stories above the noise of the city traffic and the horns of the
snake charmers, we were awakened ever so gently by the morning call to prayer...at
5:21 AM, just before sunrise. Throughout the city, men on loudspeakers at every
mosque in town called the men to their first of four prayer sessions of the
day. There was no doubt at this point that I was not in Kansas anymore. The
three of us crawled out of bed and onto the tourbus that would take us on a
four day excursion through Morocco and out into the Saharah Desert.
"The first day was mostly spent on the bus, driving through the mountains of
Morocco and stopping occasionally for scenic photo-ops and lunch. We all stared
happily out the windows watching the scenery change from city to mountains,
to rural towns, to rocky desert.
"When we finally got off the bus for the night, about 10 hours later, we were
immeadiately told to take what we needed for the night and hop onto one of 14
waiting camels which were then led away from the hotel and into the darkness
of the desert by individuals from the tribe of Nomads who would be our hosts
for the evening. They cooked us a dinner of chicken tagine (potatos, meat, and
cooked veg), played their drums, and helped us lay out our beds, making sure
we had enough blankets, and ensuring us that the threat of scorpions was not
a concern.
"The next morning, we awoke in time to watch the sun rise over a few small sand
dunes before hauling our sore bodies back onto the same camels that had made
us so sore. 2 hours later, we were back on the bus thankful to at least have
had a bathroom pitstop. The second day was also mostly spent on the bus, with
occasional stops for scenic photographs and lunch, as well as opportunities
for us to buy more bottled water. A mere 10 hours later, we again stopped at
a hotel, this time on the outskirts of a giant sandbox known as The Mezoula
on the outskirts of the Saharah Desert. Once again, we took what we needed for
the night (which in my case was a bottle of water, a toothbrush, and my journal),
and climbed onto the waiting camels. They were much more comfortable that night,
in spite of our still sore muscles. But whether that was due to a different
saddling technique, or the fact that our muscles were too numb to notice, I'm
not sure. Again we were led into the desert by blue-clad Nomads in Teva sandals,
but this time we rode as the sun set over the dunes ...at our backs.
"As soon as we arrived at our camp for the night, the spryer of us crawled up
to the top of the biggest dune we could find and gazed at the stars, satelites,
and meteorites while the Nomads prepared our dinner of somekindofmeat Tagine.
I say "some kind of," because in 6 days in Morocco, I saw only 3 cows.
2000 miles, and only 3 cows. What the hell were we eating?
">When we got the signal to come down the dune to dinner, we ran. Because we
could. Running barefoot and blind at full speed with long strides down a 45+
degree incline of the softest sand I've ever felt with absolutely no fear of
stepping on a lit ciggarette, broken beer bottles, discarded syringes, or sea
urchins. It was almost like flying...exept that I was running.
"That night I slept outside under more stars than even Switzerland has. I counted
5 shooting stars and one UFO before I fell asleep.
"The more ambitious of us woke up again just before the sun, with enough time
to crawl back up the (at least) 10 storey dune to watch the sunrise. Armed with
cameras, we must have looked like tourists at a Superman sighting as we watched
the sand on which we stood turn from black to blue to red under the increasing
light of the dawn.
"As the camels were saddled up, and the others ran or rolled down the hill and
I noticed myself alone on the hill with the horizon bending away below me in
every direction, I decided an opportunity had suddenly presented itself which
I could not pass up. You may see it as slightly juvenile, but I see it as life
offering me a small window of chance to come up with yet another story to tell.
And as I stood on that dune, alone, writing my name in the sand as so many young
men do in the snow, I looked out on the horizon all around me and realized that
I might just be peeing in the world's largest litter box. It made me feel very
small. But at the same time, I was doing it on the tallest peak I could see
for miles, and I felt like the King of the World.
"The third day was spent mostly on the bus, with occasional stops for scenic
photos, lunch, and to practice fending off guys selling unwanted souvenirs.
Just say 'no.'
"That night, after another 10 hour bus ride, we stayed in a rather nice hotel,
where we all took advantage of the showers, beds, and simply the roof over our
heads. Back on the bus for the final day, smelling clean and after a good night's
rest, we headed back to Marakech. Occasionally, the driver would offer to stop
for scenic photo ops, or souvenirs, but by this point, no one was interested.
I sort of felt guilty about it, but in fairness, if you've seen one mud-hut
village... Finally back where we started, Matt, Michelle, and myself were surprised
to hear ourselves refer to Marakech as "civilization." Almost as if
to prove this very point, we stopped off at McDonald's on our way to the train
station. We had had enough of Tagine at this point. 15 hours later, we were
having a proper English meal of fish and chips and a Pint of beer in Gibraltar
realizing that in our haste, we had neglected to get anyone's email address
from our tour group. We legitimately sat there trying to figure out if we really
ever made it to Morocco or not. The whole thing happened so fast, it almost
seemed like a dream.
"Besides, if we really had been to Morocco, surely Matt and I would now have
500 Arabian horses between us. And yet, there sat Michelle, contentedly sipping
her pint, taking drags of her ciggarette, and looking very much single indeed.
Sorry Sis, I'll have to find something else for
your wedding gift.
Props to my Peeps and Peace on the Mothership,
Chris