In 2013 I traveled from Paris to Mafia Island, Tanzania, where I lived with my partner at the time until the end of the year. I kept a fairly regular and extensive blog of this journey—and some of the posts are worth sharing here. I’ve previously shared Part 1 from Paris (Blank Tombstones) and Part 2 from Madrid (Marathon Watching).
This is Part 3.
17 May 2013
Atlantica Parc Campsite
Taghazout, Morocco
Imagine you’re hanging out where you live. You’re sitting on your balcony or grass or porch, maybe chatting with your neighbour. A couple of foreigners walk by. You know they are foreign by the way they walk, and their wide-open eyes, their cameras and clothing and nervous smiles. You go up to them and say, this is closed to you. You indicate they leave.
Imagine you are a retailer, or restaurant server, or mechanic. The same foreigners arrive at your doorstep and ask how much it is for a pair of shoes, a full meal, or an oil change. Because of their ethnicity you multiply the price by a factor of two or five, even ten. Maybe they’ve been around and they’ll barter, or maybe they’ll just nod and resign and pay. There is one price for you and your kind, and another price for the outsiders.
Are these simply cultural differences? Market opportunism and community safeguards? A system of rinsing those who choose to be rinsed? Or just disrespect?
We’re in Taghazout, Morocco’s surfing capital, a site awash with tanned westerners, dreadlocked Arabs, excellent bays, and fenced-off waterfront development projects. I write to you from the oceanside campground where we’ll be holed up for a few more days, until our carnet de passage arrives from the UK. Without it, we cannot continue with the car past Morocco.
It’s a happy place to be waiting, though. The wind is strong and the ocean is an emerald green with patches of white flickering in and out of existence on the giant Atlantic canvas. I had my first surfing lesson on these waves the day before yesterday, and got knocked around a few times without ever catching a ride, but feel I've caught the principle. At least, the principle that I’ve got a little too much weight in the legs.
It’s easy to get angry and righteous when treated not as a human being but as a walking dollar symbol. Of course the price should be the same for everybody, and of course a public road is for everybody. And, everybody includes everybody. Right?
Al and I expected and were prepared for the hassling and haggling and ripping off. When we came here by bus and thumb two years ago, in 2011, we visited Marrakech, Imlil and Essaouira, and by the time we visited the latter coastal city we were so armoured against “the game” of being sold something that we almost missed the chance for a fun, and insightful, night out.
Just outside of our relatively inexpensive riad (a traditional Moroccan house) in Essaouira, a young man made his rounds, up and down the street, and each time we caught eyes he approached us, asked us about ourselves, and then got a little pushy asking if we wanted to go for a drink. At the end of every exchange, out came the question, hushed and crouched to give the added effect of him doing us a favour: “You guys want to buy some hash?”
No, we always said. To get away from Mr. Hash we had to get a little rude. We were just another couple of wallets, after all. It was only a matter of time before he’d move on from hash and drinks to his cousin’s wedding, to which we’d be invited—and once there, we’d have to pay a handsome sum to the new bride. In Marrakech, Fez and other places, these “weddings” occur every night in the high tourist season. I’m tempted to go to one without a wallet, if only to witness the squeeze.
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On our last night in Essaouira we decided to chat with Mr. Hash, leaving our valuables behind and agreeing beforehand that we wouldn’t buy, and certainly wouldn’t join, the wedding. We knew by now the hustler’s best card: friendship. If you were my friend, you’d buy a little hash—even if you don’t smoke. Or these beads, even if you won’t wear them. Or my cousin’s wedding, even if you know it’s a scam.
We found Mr. Hash on the street, laughing with his actual friends. He said hello and shook our hands and opened fire with the cannons of charm. We agreed to a drink, and he brought his two friends. Before we knew it, we were going for a ride out of town, listening to Eminem and getting a lesson in how not to drive. The five of us arrived at a cliffside vantage point, and talked.
We talked language, music, culture, careers, sports and politics (the Arab Spring had only just turned to its first winter). We drove on to a beach, and talked some more. We talked about how easy it was for us to visit Morocco. About how hard it was for a Moroccan to visit Europe, or Britain, or Canada, or the US. A ridiculous sum of money was required in advance, like bail for a prisoner, in addition to a complex and bureaucratic process designed to discourage the less-desirables.
One of Mr. Hash’s friends was a wrestler hoping to make it big. He said he’d performed in Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, but the real chance to make it lay far away, in our world, and so he sliced fish 12 hours a day in between bouts to save the money to cross the Atlantic. His hope didn’t betray the mathematical logic that it would take him 50 years to get the cash together from this kind of work. Moroccans are for the most part inherently, vehemently social, and like to talk the talk. Mr. Future Hulk Hogan, we’ll call him, might have been giving me the yarn, but a quick minute of research shows that the quixotic visa process for Moroccans visiting Europe or North America isn’t a beachfront exaggeration.
We left Mr. Hash and Mr. Hulk Hogan outside of our riad, laughing and joking and asking for nothing. There was a lot to think about. Morocco has two economies: one for us, and one for them. The system is designed to bring money in, yes. But it’s also designed to protect the one from the other. If tourists and locals were given the same prices, the prices would rise for everyone. Not only visas but real estate, furniture, electricity and food would get more expensive, even too expensive. Wages, now an average of 80 dirhams (C$10) per day, would not magically go up in tandem. Is it all a good thing? A bad thing? Or just a thing that depends on perspective?
And what about this word, public? Does that include us foreigners? Are there two economies, and two publics? On the one hand, I get it: we’re the money, the opportunity, the marks. Keep us in the hotels, in the markets, on the tour-buses—and stop us from the real streets to keep them real and keep them yours.
But on the other hand, is this where we start talking about globalization, that lazy cap to every political discussion? How do I fit in, with all of my ignorance and education and desire for the bargain and a heritage of pinky-white skin? How about imperialism, institutional racism, the north-south or east-west divide, corporate-government piracy, or development-money banditry? It doesn’t help that I’m reading Émile Zola’s L’Argent (Money), does it? We both know where else this can lead. Let me stop while I’m ahead.
While I was going off, here’s what you missed in the last few days: the impressive Roman ruins at Volubilis where a stork perched in her nest atop a 2,000 year-old Corinthian column, feeding her chicks. The gargantuan, intricate seaside Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, built in just six years between 1987 and 1993, which features a retractable roof not unlike a sports arena, has ablution pools that have never been used, and typically has five times more men praying than women, as women are supposed to be at home with the children. And then pretty Chefchaouen, whose paths and doors and homes are one with the rock, meandering with the formations of the earth, with a dash of light colours to keep it all cool.
An old Italian proverb says that in the end, the king and the pawns both go back into the same box. You could make up a new one along the same lines: all surfers get the chance at the same waves. Maybe, but why am I getting bashed into the sand?
Did you enjoy this piece? Would you value future interviews like this? If so, would you prefer more or less detail? What kind of questions would you like to be asked? Let me know!
Reading and Listening
Nearly finished the extended audio version of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.
Continuing The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, in a very similar vein to Snyder’s book.
Quote of the Week
“We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content.”
Solid writing as always!
An t thought-provoking blog, Ben.