Morocco Diary #8

Morocco Diary #8
By American Kabuki

Its mid August and we are truly in the "dog days of summer".    The beaches a chock-a-block with mushrooming beach umbrellas and kids splashing and paddling the waters in the boogy boards and floaters.  Thousands of Moroccans jam the beaches now.  I had no idea how crowded it got here. Moroccans come north this time of year to swim in the Mediterranean Sea and feel the cool breezes coming off it.  There are also a good number of Spanish visitors but that has declined in recent years given the economic troubles in the EU.

Oeud Laou, which has been largely empty most of the year ,has taken on carnival like atmosphere, crowds so thick at times you'd think you were in India.  Streets populated with the white tents of spice, clothing and beach toy merchants,  bumper cars, pop corn vendors, cotton candy and grilled corn on the cob.  Does the francophile in you have a tasted for a cup of stewd snails-in-shell? That's there too.    Its not an American scene, although it does bear some semblance to perhaps New York's Coney Island and California's Venice Beach in its variety of sights and sounds, and the culture of America bleeds through even here courtesy our media.

Along with the traffic, the prices have also jumped.  4 days of short term housing in August cost what it does for a month during the rest of the year.    For the locals this is a great time for their businesses and property rentals and this will last through the end of the month.  It perhaps compensates them some what for the loss of income during Ramadan. The children go back to school September 15, which means most families will be gone at the end of August as there are books and clothes and supplies to buy for the kids.

In our village the local store where we buy what food items we can, has a small bamboo shack next too and kids play foosball and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.  The thought occurred to me the "analyst" for Mahgrebia.com (US Military African Command propaganda site) who thinks ISIS is an every present danger somehow organically arising in Morocco, must have been watching too many kids play grand theft auto and got weirded out by it.  These kids are no different than American kids.  Its just a different cultural context they live in. And when I walk by they always smile and wave at me.  There's no hostility because I am American. Too bad my country can't use its great creative genius to create more inspiring games for the worlds children than firing bazookas on the imaginary streets of Los Angeles...  The best in brightest imaginations in American seem to either create actual tools of destruction or imaginary ones to sell to children of the world.  We reap what we sow...


The water situation here in the village continue to deteriorate.  I have been with running water for 45 days.  One day its the pump, then its the water level, and each time someone in the area plays "beggar thy neighbor" by drilling yet deeper for water, the other wells find their water seeking the lowest point somewhere else as gravity calls.    The rock structure here is a layer of slate like material, it looks like it might be an ore of some kind, its silvery and crystalline...I am not a geologist...but its very slate-like in its layering and its between these layers the water flows to the wells.   My landlord has been slow to fix the issues, has promised a reservoir which can be refilled by truck, but that has not come.  He asked me to go to Tetouan for well pump impellers and is balking at reimbursing me for them.  He prefers to spend his day at his seaside tagine shack cooking sardines for tourists than insure his rents continue to come in.  I am frankly at the end of my patience with the situation as I am paying him good money for the place I have (which is one of the nicer apartments) but not even getting basic services.  He only speaks Spanish and Moroccan so I have a number of communication issues with him as well. Its likely I will end the lease, if I can find a replacement place, I may end it anyway and just have faith that I will find something by September 15. If I find something new I will move much sooner.

Even though there is difficulties with housing and water, I feel very peaceful and contented lately.  Its not that dramas have stopped or people trying to engage me in them.  Its just that I see and sense them now better than I did before and don't attach to them when the crop up.  And much of that was simply people self-identifying who they are and what their agenda's were, for all to see.  Some dramas recently have been almost deja vu moments, like the universe was testing me to see if I learned the last lesson or not.  Been there done that.

I've gone through weeks of energy surges in my body that felt literally like I was a pulsing electromagnet.  That has abated somewhat last couple of days.  That has changed into a finer sense of energy now, like the prior sensations was some buildup creating an energy field for the body that I didn't have before, or had very weakly.  When I reported these sensations nobody else seemed to have experienced them.  But I have been seeing people in skype rooms and in emails now entering into the early stages of it, which I was experiencing beginning 2 years ago.

Morocco has been physically very very healthy for my body.  The water  here is very mineralized, very high in magnesium.   Last year in Tangier I noticed the tartar on my teeth simply fell out, without a dental hygenist, but perhaps that was a result of the pH in the bottled water I was drinking at the time.   Fresh fruit is not easy to get in the village except for watermelons and yellow melons.   There's never any oranges here. Others have had the usual symptoms of what people have called "ascension clearings" with mild flu like symptoms to stomach disorders.   I have been relatively clear of that lately, but have experienced it in weeks past.

Physically I am in the best health I have been in 15 years. My legs that were scarred in 2009 are healing and the discoloration is going away.  I don't know the scars will completely disappear but I do know now they will look the same color as the rest of my legs within the year.  I still have the hernia, which came to fore in the spring of 2013 when I lifted a heavy new toilet up a flight of stairs in San Diego for my family. Doctors told me I need to lose at least 100 lbs before they could fix it and I think I have done that already.  I have lost a good deal of weight while in Morocco and it continues to drop. My waist size has gone from barely fitting into a US 48 inches to 42 inches.  My goal is to get down to 36 or better, 32 being ideal - but we will see where this body thinks is the right width.  Hopefully I can get it fixed this winter if it doesn't heal on its own (I am not ruling out that it can be simply healed).  I can have it repaired at specialist clinic in the North America, that Dani recommended, who doesn't embed plastic mesh in my belly, but the travel expenses and doctor fees will cost me at least US$6,500.

I've gotten used to kids in the village calling the hernia "fat tummy", I'd explain that its not fat to them but...they wouldn't understand anyway...due to language and education levels, and until people know you as who you really are, its just appearances they see.  Moroccans are mostly very thin people. Americans themselves are unique in appearance to these kids, much less a 50 something man with a hernia.  So I just smile and forgive.  I would have probably said the same stupid things at that age myself.  And the kids that know me don't even notice it anymore.  Perhaps knowing a bit ridicule feels like is part of this journey as well.  I love this body and it has served me very well... its been very durable... it even survived dying...

When we were the desert of Merzouga last year there is a legend out there of how those sand dunes came into existence suddenly and unexpectedly.   They are not connected to the main set of dunes in the Sahara - they are isolated from them.  The story goes was a destitute pregnant woman would needed food and water badly, the sahara is a very hostile environment by day, and the locals turned the woman stranger away. The legend says the following day the villagers awoke to their once fertile land being a mass of blowing sand and it has stayed that way every since as a result of their turning away someone in need.

I have seen a bit of that energetic balancing on a local scale when it first appeared water would be an issue, the landlord disconnected the family above us who also uses the well for their needs.  He had always had plenty of water even when the greedy old lady who owned the house next door did not. Within days his own well went dry and he could not blame it on the man above him, for he had already disconnected that family.   And its just got worse.  After returning from the trip to Casa Blanca with Caleb to help get his cars out of customs, I really noticed how strong the energies are here in this area, I could feel it through my feet the moment I got back and put my feet on ground.  Things are manifesting very fast here due to these energies.  It just seems to be a bit stronger here first before it is in the rest of the world.

Islam, whatever your opinion may be of the faith (and the west has had much negative propaganda spread about it by the Bush regimes), is very much about sharing and hospitality.  The vast majority here have been very hospitable and have shared with me in countless ways, whether it was a meal, a ride from Oeud Laou back home, a slice of melon, or a piece of prickly pear cactus fruit (the ones here are much less tart than the ones in the American Southwest).  The vacationing family downstairs who is also without water has helped me carry plastic bottles of water from the well at the beach... sharing the burden of transporting water for my needs...  But there are also the minority here who want to milk the cow but not feed the cow.... If Morocco is to prosper long term they will need to learn cooperation and sharing and generosity needs to extend to their business activities.  American for all its plastic facade it has at times, has learned that service sells and value given generates more business.  The better businesses and landlords here know that too...but some have not yet learned it.

If you enjoy reading the blog and would like to help support it, your assistance is needed as never before. I am not at all certain my landlord will reimburse me for the pump parts and utility bills I have paid for him when he was out of the country in good faith, he is not known locally to be a particularly generous man.   I am counting on his better angels to surface, but if not, it may be... to quote Shakespeare "I wish that were were better strangers...."

I still have the option to end the lease, but your thoughts and energies about this situation would be greatly appreciated...  especially a place with running water.    I don't require a lot, but I do like my hot showers and clean clothes. I am not a stranger to desert climates, I lived in Phoenix the first 26 years of my life, and I know well how important it is to stay clean in the heat.