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It's 9 am, we're on the road heading south. No one is saying much, everyone's reflecting I guess. We're all feeling a little sad about parting company. In twelve years Eve and I have never been away from our kids for this long a period. Being away from them for a month began to take on a strange feel. We knew it was time to get back home. We missed our kids. So for us, the upside to the day was about feeling happy and excited about getting back home and being with our kids again; this was a really good feeling for both of us. It's going to be about a two hour drive. Along the way we passed through quite a few dirty looking shitty little communities. We came to a city named Mohammedia, small size, about 100,000 people. The information we had stated; through a recent redevelopment process the city now has a fairly modern central core and port facility, which is all to the west of us. We're on the road which runs along the east side of the city where all the slums are. This is an extremely depressed area; filthy stinking and run down. The dwellings in this region were nothing more than disgusting hovels. At the time we were there, nothing on the east side of the city had been redeveloped yet. That wouldn't happen for years to come. The city, east to west was quite narrow, maybe a mile wide. From north to south it was several miles long. The whole length of the east side, that we saw, was all slum and squalor, and there appeared to be thousands of hovels. The population density in this region seems to be quite high, and nowhere did we see any evidence that would indicate any kind of life above an extreme poverty level. It seemed to be that way for all the communities along the road between Rabat to Casablanca. Even for people out in the bad-land areas, as well as in the mountain communities where life was hard and somewhat primitive in many places; none of them seemed to live in the squalor we saw along this road. I've never seen anything like this before, I couldn't even imagine it. From my own perspective I found it hard to understand that poverty at this level could even exist, it just seemed too unbelievable. However, the people who live here see it all from a completely different perspective. For them its not extreme poverty, its just life. Having lived in Canada my whole life and never being exposed to poverty, poor and needy yes, but poverty on this level, never. Poverty on this scale does not exist in our country. We know it exists in varying degrees around the world., because we've been told so. We hear about, we read about it, we see it on TV; but it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on most people. And that's because few have actually ever dealt with it first hand. But when you find yourself living right in the middle of it, in your own here and now, that's when you know it really exists, that’s when it grips you, and you feel it; and that does something to you. Life for their people has been this way for well over a thousand years. They're born into it and grow up knowing there's nothing they can ever do to change it; it's just the accepted norm, and they seem to have adopted a "no big deal" approach to it. But knowing all the while that somewhere out there a much better way life does exist; but it will never exist for them. They have just come to accept extreme poverty as a their normal everyday way of life. For them, there is no other option. I absolutely hated the level of poverty we encountered as we traveled around the country. I tried very hard to just let it roll off by back, but many times I wasn't able to, I struggled with it emotionally a number of times. I never did talk to any of the others about it, maybe I should have. I may not have been the only one who felt that way; but I guess I'll never know. But one thing is for sure, I never want to see poverty at this level ever again. As we moved on down the road Eve kept bending her head forward checking for a hash smell from her bra, nothing yet, everything is okay. Well, we're not that far from Casablanca now. We've come full circle and we're looking for road signs, we don't want to miss a turn. We must be getting closer, the road is in good shape and there's lots more traffic. It won't be long now. We're now only a few miles from the city and looking to find the airport. The only problem is there are two, and we didn't know which one we needed to go to. The airport ID on the ticket is a number, not a name. We asked a few people where to find it, all they did was jerk us around. Last time we were in Casablanca they jerked us around; fucking assholes. We found signs that directed us to the Nouasseur Airport, which as it turned was the one we needed; lucky break...... It would be torn down years later and a new terminal built and renamed Mohammed V Airport. It's 12 o'clock. We went to find our departure gate and checked our luggage in. Our flight wasn't leaving until 3 o'clock, so we've got time to kill. We all went for lunch at the airport restaurant and chatted for awhile. By 1:30 the rest of the gang was ready to head out. I think their game plan was to drive south to Marrakesh and lay over for the night, then head further south to Agadir, Aglou or maybe even further south to Tan Tan; back to the sun and sand and an abundance of Hashish. We all hugged and shook hands, there were probably a few a tears, it was a very emotional moment for all of us. 'Bye guys, love you, see you back in Canada'. .............................................. Eve and I went up to the observation deck to watch the planes come and go. There's lots of air traffic at this airport. Eve kept checking for hash smell, still okay. We walked around the terminal for awhile. It will soon be time to catch our flight.... Well here we go again, another Royal Air Maroc fucking "piece of shit plane" that's going to attempt to get us safely to Tangier, then Madrid. We lifted off and were heading north along the coast, it was really a cool sight. We were looking down at places we had driven through just a couple of hours ago. We could see the cities and towns all along the coast. Somewhere near Rabat we headed slightly north east toward Tangier. They told us we would be in Tangier for about an hour and would be allowed to get off the plane. When the we landed everyone got off and went into the terminal. We weren't off the plane for anymore than ten minutes when they they told us we had to get right back on, we had to leave right now. They were trying to be as polite as possible about getting us back on the plane, but they weren't pissing around either, they meant business. They literally rushed us onto the plane, and within a couple of minutes we were back in the air. The whole deal was way too bizarre to be any kind of normal procedure. Obviously something was going on, but we weren't privy to that information. During our time in Morocco there had been some political problems brewing between the Spanish and Moroccan governments that we weren't aware of at the time. Problems regarding a dispute over the sovereignty of Spanish Sahara, which was the country on Morocco's southern border. It would later be renamed Western Sahara; but only after a few confrontations between Morocco, Spain and a third party country, Mauritania. During the last few days that we were in Sale' and Rabat, we noticed a few times some low flying unmarked fighter type aircraft flying in a north easterly direction. We didn't think anything about it, it didn't effect us any so there was no reason for us to be concerned. Of course, looking back now, given the political differences that existed between the two governments and the fact that we were going to Spain from Morocco surely must have had everything to do with our quick exit out of the airport and the country. We're over Spain now, we'll be landing very shortly. We can see Madrid a short distance away, and in a few minutes we'll be on the ground. We'll finally be off this piece of shit plane. However, it wasn't near as bad as the first "piece of shit plane", and there was no Moroccan guy smoking those really dirty stinking "Black Tobac" cigarettes either. Home is not that far away now, and we're getting anxious. Page #19 Page links 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 |
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typical Mohammedia east side neighbourhood
so much filth, yet this is not a landfill, they live here
and in here, as well
Casablanca, straight ahead
road to the airport
leaving Casablanca
Madrid
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