To Moulay Bousselham
We stop for lunch in a valley overlooking an olive plantation and a shepherd with his herd of sheep and goats. Five minutes into our lunch, a car rolls up, windows down and loud music blaring out, much to the annoyance of the shepherd who jumps up and down shouting. The two very smiley young women and a man who climb out of the car take no notice of him and instead engage in a lovely conversation with us. They are a young couple and the wife’s sister, on a day out, having left their kids with the grandparents. They laugh and joke a lot, obviously enjoying their momentary freedom from their daily responsibilities. After a while, they wish us good luck for our journey, get out their pic-nic and disappear down the valley while we return to our lunch. Strangers are so much more willing to converse with each other here, to smile at each other, to stop off and exchange stories. We will miss these encounters when we leave Morocco.
We join the motorway just South of Rabat, in time to cross the bridge that makes us think of Wales
This part of Morocco is yet again very different to what we have seen before. Quite flat and full of rich fields, with the luscious green of intensively farmed crops – one could almost think we’re in northern France.
We have a little break at a motorway station when my beady eye spots a nice bit of dead tree for our stove. I go for a recce, with saw in hand. Within minutes, two guys have appeared by my side and are offering to help. They do some sawing and also use superhuman force to just break off bits, which they take to Emma.
By nightfall, we arrive in Moulay Bousselham, but today is not Googles best day, as it directs us down a sandy road where we scrape the side of Emma as well as getting stuck in the sand. But no worries, within minutes, someone arrives, has a quick look and promises to return in a few minutes with a spade and some wood to put underneath the tyres. While we are waiting, some more people arrive and Frank has got our spade out the back too. Four guys, a spade, a shovel and several wooden struts later, we’ve been heaved out of the sandy hole and are on our way to the campsite. If you look like you need help, you’re like a magnet to a Moroccan, even if it’s not very urgent. They are always keen to help and in most situations they know a good way out of a fix. Remember the lorry driver from many chapters ago, up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, who’d lost a tyre but wasn’t at all worried in any way about help arriving? Having experienced at first hand this lovely habit to help where help is needed, we know now why he could feel so at ease in a calamitous situation…
What have we lost in our culture that we need to resort to buying costly breakdown services?
We’re going to miss this when we leave Morocco!
Ps.: Some people think that help in Morocco comes inevitably linked with a request for money. This may be so when someone offers to become your guide around a town centre, but the kind of help I talked about in this chapter was freely given. We parted with a handshake and smiles all round. I think they really get a buzz out of helping someone, especially a foreigner. We should try it out at home in the UK! It would make a big difference to how foreigners feel in our country. The recipe is simple: See someone struggle, with ANYTHING? Cross the road, lend a hand.
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