First of all, let’s get one thing straight: they are dromedaries, not camels!! According to our guides, there are no camels in Morocco.
After a whirlwind few days in Marrakech, a city I loved the moment I stepped off the plane, Lisa Smith and I ventured forth into the south of Morocco, on a quest to see the desert. After almost two full days of non-stop driving with our guide Abdelilah (mind you, the speed limit on the two-lane national highways is just 90 km/hour and Abdelilah followed it faithfully… a little too faithfully for my taste, but that’s why they call me Leadfoot…)
Anyhoo, after the very long car ride south, across the snow-capped Atlas Mountains, into the Dades gorges and the oasis valleys, we arrived at Merzouga, gateway to the Moroccan Sahara.
We immediately leapt onto our trusty dromedaries, Jimmy and Malé, and sped off into the sunset over the dunes. Or sort of.
Anyone who thinks that riding a dromedary is similar to riding a horse is sadly mistaken. The beasts lurch along at a very uncomfortable rhythm, guaranteed to chafe you the most in spots where you have never been chafed before. Mind you, there’s no saddle, just woolen blankets seemingly woven with desert thorns thrown over some sort of metal frame. My inner thighs and buttocks are still complaining and I’ve been off the dromedary for a good four days now… I don’t know if I’ll ever walk the same again. Plus, sand does not make for an easy trail (hence the lurching). You are often going up a dune or down a dune and especially on the downward stretches, you feel like you’re going to pitch forward head first over your dromedary and into the sand. I held on for dear life, grimacing and wincing over the pain in my butt, occasionally crying out in a sound not unlike that the dromedaries make, which was surely the inspiration for Chewbacca’s voice in Star Wars.
We were led by our very own nomad, Omar. Omar is from a long line of nomads, and grew up in the Sahara. Thanks to his work in tourism, his family now lives in a house in Merzouga instead of wandering around aimlessly in the desert.
We arrived at our tents well after nightfall, tired, cold, sore, stiff and hungry. We were served mint tea (surprise, surprise). In Morocco, every event calls for mint tea. I love mint tea (see my earlier post from September 06 when my wonderful friend Judy likened it to hot chocolate without the chocolate) but I’m pretty much all mint-tea’d out for a while after consuming it several times a day, every day, for 8 days straight.
Omar surprised us by cooking up a fantastically delicious tagine all by himself (normally in Morocco, cooking is women’s work) which we then consumed using only our right hands. (Ok, well I cheated and sometimes used my left hand, but I don’t think anyone noticed.) For those of you wondering why you’re supposed to use only your right hand, let’s get something straight: this is the third world.
Charmin doesn’t exist in the third world.
Your left hand exists in the third world.
Nuff said.
After sating ourselves on this fabulous repast, Omar built a fire out in the sand and we gathered around to gaze at the mind-boggling amount of stars, warm ourselves by the fire (it was extremely cold) and meet Omar’s nomad friend Hahmed, who just happened by on his way to deliver 4 dromedaries somewhere. They got out their drums and treated us to authentic Berber music, explained the Berber ways and languages to us, and regaled us with stories of navigating at night in the summer when it’s too hot to travel by day, using only the stars and their expert knowledge of the desert to find their way.
When the fire had settled down to softly glowing embers, the echo of the drums had faded, and we were contemplating the stars in the deep and philosophical silence available only in the desert far, far from the farthest reaches of civilization, with each person lost in his or her own inner world, Hahmed suddenly piped up “So, do you know any good jokes?”
After recovering from our laughter and surprise, we realized that none of us had any good ones to tell (there were four of us tourists, Lisa and myself and a young British couple) so Hahmed launched into his comedy routine.
“How do you get a dromedary in the fridge?”
We pondered this for a while, proffered up some lame responses, then finally gave up.
“You open the door, put him in, and then close the door.”
Berber humor.
Then he launched into one that wasn’t really a joke, but more of a riddle, one of those “Three people come to a river to cross it. One person sees and touches the water. The second person sees the water but can’t touch it. The third person neither sees nor touches the water. Who are these three people?”
Of course, it’s a pregnant woman carrying a child on her back. It took us a while, but we figured that one out.
Then he came up with one which we couldn’t tell if it was a riddle or a joke.
The lion, king of the jungle and all the wilderness, decides to hold a party to end all parties. A magnificent feast, where none of the animals would eat each other, but all would be vegetarian for this extremely special occasion. The entire animal kingdom is invited, every species, in a kind of Noah’s ark rave.
Only one animal doesn’t come.
Which one is it, and why?
Again we racked our brains, guessing madly, but none of our answers came close apparently, until I shouted out “the dromedary!” and Hahmed seemed rather impressed. Yes, the dromedary was the only animal who didn’t attend the lion’s celebration. But why?
More guessing, to no avail.
The fire had almost died out at this point, and we were freezing and sleepy, so Hahmed finally took pity on us.
“Because he’s in the refrigerator.”
