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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 our group parting ways. But for Eve and I, even though we're in a moment of group sadness, there was still an upside for us, and that 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. Since their birth, we had never been away from our kids for any more than three or four days at a time, but being away from them for a month had taken on an uncomfortably strange feel. We knew it was time to get back home. We missed our kids and needed to be with them. It's going to be about a two hour drive. Along the way we passed through several very economically depressed looking communities. We came to a city named Mohammedia, mid 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, less than a mile wide. From north to south it was several miles long. The whole length of the east side that we saw was dominated by slum, squalor and thousands of hovels. The population density in this region is quite high, and nowhere did we see any evidence that would indicate any kind of life above an extreme poverty level. That seemed to be the norm for all the communities along the road between Rabat and 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 even comprehend that poverty at this level could actually 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 at all, its just life. Having lived in Canada my whole life I've never seen extreme poverty before, poor and needy yes, but poverty on this level, never. Poverty on this scale does not exist in Canada. We know it exists in varying degrees around the world., because we've heard about it many times over the years, 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 simply because so few have ever actually 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 that does something to you. Life for their people has been this way for at least a couple thousand years. They're born into it and grow up in it with the knowledge there's nothing they can ever do that will change it; it's just the accepted norm, and they seem to have adopted a "no big deal" approach to it. But still knowing all the while that almost everywhere out there in the world a much better way of life does exist; but it will never exist for them. They have just come to accept what we see as extreme poverty as a their normal everyday way of life. For the majority 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 my feeling about it roll off by back, but there were also times I struggled really hard to not let myself become emotionally attached to it 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 on 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 better shape and there's much 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. 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; they're just fucking assholes. We found signs that directed us to the Nouasseur Airport, which as it turned out was the one we needed; nice break. 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 or Aglou, or maybe even as far south as 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 a hash smell, there was nothing, we're still okay. We walked around the terminal for awhile just to kill some time. 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 northeast toward Tangier. They told us we would be there for about an hour and would be allowed to get off the plane. When 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 had never been aware of. 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 see it as anything unusual, we just considered it a military exercise. 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. So now it's upward and onward, we're over the Mediterranean Sea on our way to the European continent. We're over Gibraltar closing in on Spain. We were soon able to 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 excited and very pumped. Next stop, Canada. 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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