Not sure if many of you are aware, but Morocco is having one of the coldest and rainiest fall seasons this year since most can remember. There have been severe floods in much of the country, most intense being around the Nador and Oujda regions, which are reporting deaths and people loosing their homes. These most extreme cases are far away from me (about a 10 hour bus ride), but the rains did not forget to make their presence felt here too. For over 3 weeks now it has been raining, heavily at times, occasionally stopping for a day, or two at a time. This has caused many inconveniences for my town and I, not the least of which for me being an indoor rain (or a steady leak) from a substantial area in my living room and kitchen. (As I recently frequented another volunteer's home in my region who was having a similar problem, I have concluded that this problem is either a common fault in the architecture here, or is otherwise brought on as a form of torture to Peace Corps Volunteers by the local jins.) Besides the issues with homes, a flooded cobble stone medina and a souq organized around puddles and mud, the most difficult issue in this weather has been travel. Moroccan transport is in itself is an unpredictable phenomenon, but add the rain and flooding and you get a downright adventure. An account of one of these adventures you will find below. Before I go on with the problematic travel that this rain has presented, let me not forget to mention that the rains are actually very welcomed in this country. The majority of Morocco is arid and dry, and needs all the water it can get for its vegetation (not to mention the oncoming fresh water shortage that threatens much of the globe). No Moroccan has yet failed to praise the rain for its agricultural benefit anytime I try to complain, therefore quickly shutting me up.
WHY PEACE CORPS SHOULD GIVE OUT HOVER CRAFTS
This year Peace Corps has been kind enough to make the flu shots optional. Each volunteer now gets to decide whether to get injected with a weakened flu virus, while getting a paid travel day to a nearby town and a chance to hang out with other volunteers, or forego the procedure and stay in site. To make our decisions, everyone carefully weighs each scenario, considering the side effect chances, their fear of needles, what work they will miss, or can escape from and whether the other people attending are worth seeing, or are just going to complain the entire time. My careful scenario weighing left me with a conclusion that I was not going to miss another brownie baking at Miss Lindsey's house (a nearby sweet-toothed volunteer and friend who happens to live in the consolidation point for the shots).
Lindsey's site is about a 2.5hrs away from mine. A trip to her consists of an hour drive through the plains, and another hour and a half up a mountain. I have made this trip many times and in my mind, it was equivalent to taking the New York City L train to work (as I had done for the few prior years).
The shots were scheduled for early Tuesday morning, requiring me to arrive the Monday night prior. Luckily, Monday happened to be an off day for the rains. The arrival to Lindsey's, the brownie baking and consumption, as well as the shot administration were all a success. Everything, except for the upper arm soreness, went as planned.
Because of my proximity to Lindsey's town, I was not worried about the timing. I stayed for lunch and even gave a haircut. It began raining again during lunchtime, a fact that I hardly noticed. The interchangeable periods of pouring rain and drizzle were something that I grew accustomed to in the preceding weeks.
I got to the taxi stand at around 3:30pm, giving myself plenty of time to make it home before nightfall. The rain at that time had picked up and was ruthlessly pounding away at the mud of the taxi lot. Looking around at the few people present at the stand, it occurred to me that weather impacts Moroccan travel plans much more then it does for us Americans. Considering the fact that I still needed to find 4 more people to fill the taxi, my wait was going to be longer then I had expected. I decided to set a deadline for my latest possible departure in order to make sure I was not going to miss the last bus to my site from Beni Mellal, my transfer point. Since it took about and hour and a half to get to the destination point, I allotted a full two hours.
As the clock reached my deadline time and the rain slowed and the taxi "boss" (a translation of the Moroccan term) signaled that our taxi was full and we were ready to leave. As luck had it, two women with a baby bought out an extra seat, and the three and a half of us got to share the entire back (the half sat on one of the women for the entire ride, therefore subtracting a whole person from this typically tight squeezing equation).
At the beginning of the drive I watched with unease as the driver was speeding through the curvy mountainous road, but after some time passed I comforted myself that at least I would make the bus and got lost in my daydreaming. I half watched as we passed Afourer, which marked our decent from the hills onto the plains. I also half watched as our once aggressive driver slowed down and pulled up behind what looked like a stopped truck. Our lack of movement spun my curiosity and awoke me out of my daze. I looked out the window, but could see very little due to fogged windows and dark clouds. It was still raining, and for a while it seemed to me that we were just following either a really slow moving truck, or there was a checkpoint up ahead causing some traffic. Pretty soon though, the truck pulled ahead, and our driver stopped in what looked like the middle of the road. Other cars began to honk and slowly move around us. The two young men passengers sitting in the front seat and the driver now began to frantically argue about something, the speed of which was preventing me from understanding much of what they were talking about. I took my sleeve and wiped off the fogged window. From just the looks of it, I would have guessed that we were parked in the middle of a river. There was no ground, or edge of the water in sight. Different objects such as branches and empty plastic bottles were floating right passed us, carried by the rushing current. After another couple of minutes of arguing and heavy gesturing, one of the male passengers opened the door and guided the driver as he joined the rest of the traffic on the right side of the over-flooded road.
Once back in traffic (though still in a river) the atmosphere in the car lightened up. The driver's panic episode now became a source of laughter and amusement. The men in the front and the women in the back did not miss their chance to jeer at the driver. Slightly embarrassed, the driver tried to defend himself with the fact that this was not his typical route. The passengers tried to engage me in their jolly mocking session, but my amazement in the surroundings made it very difficult for me to engage in this conversation. Especially because by this point there were not only water driving cars, but also people riding passed us on bicycles, and even random people walking by in their rubber boots through this newly formed body of water. The water was probably only about 10" deep, but with the gushing current, I could not imagine what would inspire someone to go for a stroll in this. I am still not sure whether it was people walking, because their cars just could not make it, or whether they had a dire need to get from point A to point B.
After about 20 minutes on this road we were stopped by a couple of cars. A man standing ankle deep in water, holding a pink plaid umbrella informed us that the rest of the road was not drivable. Instead, he directed us onto a "safer" detour to our left. The man was obviously a civilian, not a policeman, nor any other city worker that had donated his time in order to direct people to safety. We passed many more of these volunteers on the way, which made me wonder if people in America would do the same in a similar situation.
I am scared to imagine the state of the road that we were detoured from, as the "safer" road contained more of the same river flooding. The driver still shaken up from the earlier fiasco, honked down at least four different cars on our way in order to confirm that we were in fact headed to Beni Mellal, and if the road ahead was in fact drivable. Slowly, but eventually we arrived at the Beni Mellal taxi station, way passed the time of the scheduled departure of my last bus. Upon arrival, I hurried to the bus station, hoping that the rain had perhaps also delayed some of the busses from leaving. I ran into the station. As is common in all Moroccan buss stations, I was quickly accosted by the ticket attendants. I asked about my bus, but of course there were no more for the night. I tried for other routes. After substantial arguing with a couple attendants on why it was not a good idea for me to go to Oued Zem through Fqui Ben Sale and then track back home (which would have added an extra 3 hours to my trip) the buss attendants agreed to show me a bus going to Kaspa Tadla. Out of there I hoped to catch a 20-minute taxi up to my site. My new found bus turned out to be full, and had I not caught the curiosity of one of the attendants with either my Darija speaking, or arguing skills, I wouldn't have gotten on. The man lead me to several different attendants in order to find the one that would let me get on this buss. Even though I rode on the back door steps of the bus, I eluded nothing but gratitude for moving closer to my home and warm socks. Although I could not see out the window, I heard that we had to take another detour to get to Kaspa Tadla.
In Kaspa Tadla, I again arrived beyond my time expectations, and once I got to the taxi stand found no one waiting to go to any destinations. The taxi "boss" informed me that although the taxis were still in the lot, they would not leave unless they were filled with six people, which at this point looked unlikely. I asked him for the price of the whole car. As it turned out, the price at night was higher (of course). Although my scenario weighing abilities were now limited due to my exhaustion, I utilized what I could to consider whether it was worth to spend the night in a hotel and leave in the morning, or pay the money equivalent to the cost of the 10 hour bus ride mentioned earlier and get to my warm socks and bed. I decided on the latter. The taxi "boss" found me a willing taxi driver, and after a 20 minute ride/discussion on God, why I was not yet married, and why I will not be marrying a Moroccan here, I finally made it all the way home. I was ecstatic to be home, I could have kissed the floor! And I would have, if only it was not all wet from my "indoor rain"…
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