constanttrek

In honour of Madani and MBarak

1 comment March 21st, 2006

And so the end is here. The end of six months, 2000km through the Western Sahara, and a totally life altering experience. And, as ever, it was a bit of an anti-climax.

We walked the longest distances we ever have, after leaving Boujdor. There were only two wells on the route to Dakhla, and Mbarak was stressed out about water – and landmines, although he didn’t want to talk too much about it. We met a few other nomads and they all frowned when we said we were continuing to Dakhla, and told us that after the second well, feed for the camels was absolutely terrible, and there were no other nomads – though plenty of opportunists who might take a fancy to the camels in the middle of the night.

A day came when we found a stunning camp – near water, and with the most amazing feed for the
camels that I have seen on the entire walk. And for the first time since we left MHamid, Mbarak asked for a group discussion.

I kind of knew it was coming. We were all exhausted, and I could sense he was worried about the coming week. So we had a long and involved conversation, with lots of sand drawings, tea, and translating by Madani, and he explained his concerns:

The road to Dakhla is actually forty kilometres off the direct route south into Mauritania. There is absolutely no feed for the camels along the route, as it is a Peninsular jutting into the Atlantic; this means we would have to camp back in the hamada before the road departs the main route. The problem with this, he said, was that this point is a notorious contraband route, and he would be very
concerned about someone stealing the camels. There is also no well for some 100km, or good feed. I had originally planned to rest in Dakhla for a week or two, and sort out what my next move was; but Mbarak said that he really felt he couldn’t camp there for a week without a water supply or good feed – something we were all in agreement with. After many previous problems, Madani and I were reluctant to be forty kilometres from the town, since this inevitably means hassles with hitchhiking and paying for a hotel. There are also not many Mhamid people in Dakhla, which cut out our usual fall back of having a helpful family member deliver water and supplies to the camp. We discussed our different options, and agreed that the place we were currently camped would be the best for Mbarak to rest; but there was no way for Madani and I to get into town from there. In the end, after long hours of looking at all the different options, we agreed to finish walking where we were, and turn back to a place not far from Boujdor where there were other nomads we could leave the camels with, and loads of family to help us.

It was a tough decision. I have been hell bent, in the past, on always reaching exactly the destination I set out to; but after six months here, and with camels and other people to consider, I had to ask myself what on earth a difference of fifty kilometres made in the grand scheme of things. I also thought that if I am able to continue walking, then where I stop for a break is absolutely irrelevant; and if I don’t, I will still have made it through 2000km of the Sahara. So I threw my hands up, we all breathed a sigh of relief, and back to Boujdor we came.

I rented a cheap house here for a month – there are family everywhere, and it was organised within a day. We put the camels with another nomad, where they are grazing contentedly on the lush pasture
that grows here, and Madani, Mbarak, and I packed up our gear and started life in the town.

I thought they would both leave; my money is pretty low, and I can’t afford to pay them after we finished walking. But they have both stayed, telling me I can’t possibly be here on my own, and besides – if I can find the money to keep walking, Mbarak wants to meet the new guide, and put him
through a rigorous interrogation process. The poor sod.

So here I am now, in my Moroccan home, trying to adjust to a life that doesn’t involve packing up a tent and four camels and walking every day. It has its bonuses; electricity for me to write on the computer (although this is intermittent at best – it goes off for about seven hours every day), a proper wash in the morning, and internet around the corner. But I miss the air blowing through the tent, and the peace, and the excitement I always feel in the mornings when we pack up and set off. It is also a little difficult to adjust to being around other people – I can’t just wander out of the house, answer the door, or be with people, without melekhva; and there are a lot of people! Every family and tribe member in Boujdor has either invited us for dinner or eaten with us – it makes for a busy social life.

The house is typical Moroccan – squat toilet which doubles as the place for washing – personal, dishes, and clothes, since there is no sink. The only tap is also in the toilet, and in the mornings we fill all the buckets and bottles, because the water usually goes off after ten o’clock and doesn’t come back on until late at night. There is a room that is obviously designated as the kitchen, evidenced by the long tiled bench and spaces beneath for storing food; there is no light in there, though, so we cook on the porta – gas by candle light, just like in the tent. There is a tiny room where I sleep and write, and a larger salon, where Madani and Mbarak sleep and we eat and receive guests. The camel blankets and mattresses cover the concrete floor, and in the large corridor running through the house there are lovely mosaic tiles on the walls and floor. Friends donated a car stereo and speaker, so Madani plays his Moroccan and Saharawi music incessantly; occasionally I protest and we switch to Bob Marley, the sole Western cassette he has. The other women in the street are lovely and invite me for tea every day.

On the corner there is a tiny shop which bakes absolutely awesome bread; it is a rare treat for us to be able to buy it fresh and hot for every meal, rather than eating two day old sand bread. In the morning men wheel carts past our door calling out their wares of mint and eggs; it is strange to taste tea with mint in it again instead of the small plant we used in the desert.

Ali Baba, our faithful donkey, was the first casualty of our new circumstances. He was unceremoniously loaded into the back of a Landrover and came to town with us, where he was promptly sold. Mbarak has not quite recovered from the shock, and I doubt that Ali Baba will ever recover from the trauma of being bodily lifted into the back of the vehicle. The poor thing was terrified. At night Mbarak gets all teary whenever he thinks of Ali Baba and Chamlette; when we look at the photographs on the computer, Madani and I crow over the people, and Mbarak points wistfully at the camels. Maybe he will miss us, but there was more than the suspicion of tears on the day he hobbled the camels for the last time.

I have applied to the Royal Geographical Society in England for a grant to continue my walk into Mauritania and Mali. I have met with some guides who are interested in taking me into the next stage, but not only am I unwilling to engage someone before I know if I have the money, I am also not ready to let go of Mbarak. He has been the most wonderful guide and friend I could ever have hoped for, and now is more like family than anything else. He and Madani have been my teachers, friends, guides, and the bridge between two worlds for six months, and I will never, ever forget them, nor be able to properly express my thanks. Mbarak taught me how to tie my melekhva; how to spot meteorites amongst the rocks on the hamada; how to greet other nomads correctly, and behave with them; the names of the plants the camels feed on, and what is good or not; how to handle the camels, and pack them so they are comfortable. He sewed up my clothes when they tore, kept a secret stash of cigarettes for when supplies ran out, and showed me how to make sand bread. The things he taught me are too numerous to ever list on this site; but above all, every day, he exemplified the unquestioning hospitality, open welcome, endless patience, and unfailing good humour that the Saharawi nomads are famous for (even though he himself is Berber).

Madani has been my best mate, confidant, and in-betweener for the whole trip. He will stay with me if I can walk into Mauritania; he understands my work, and is the invaluable link between French and Arabic when my grasp of the language fails. He taught me about the zig-zag country that is the other side of Morocco; the way nothing is ever direct here, and how to recognise the bendy parts and deal with them. I would never have survived the towns without him.

People ask me how I managed a camp of Arabic men, alone, for the last five months. I say I didn’t manage a bloody thing; Madani and Mbarak managed me, with tact, patience, and understanding. I have been very lucky indeed to have such companions.

I will not hear from the Royal Geographical Society until the end of April. My visa here finishes on the 26th of that month, and I plan to stay in Boujdor for one month, and see where I am at after that. I may return to the UK for a brief organisational trip, or if I actually get invited to the final interviews for the grant; if that isn’t the case, I will be working on trying to sell some articles about this leg of the walk, and my first book, which is still in the hands of London agent Jeffrey Simmons. The difficulty he has had in selling it comes down to the fact that I am not famous enough, something which gets me down a bit.

I want very much to keep walking. I love it here, and the other major bonus about having a month in Boujdor is the time it gives me to be with other Saharawi women, and learn from them. I am increasingly fascinated by women in Saharawi culture; unique amongst the Islamic world, they have long commanded equality and respect with men both in the home and wider community. In the refugee camps of Tindouf, where thousands fled during the war between Morocco and the Saharawi liberation army (Polisario) over the Western Sahara, it is the women who are the doctors, teachers, nurses, and administrators. In the ongoing demonstrations in the Western Sahara, which remains occupied by the Moroccan government in defiance of a decision by the International Court of Justice stating that Morocco has no claim to the territory, and a UN resolution calling for a referendum on the issue, it is Saharawi women who lead the activist movement – and who are frequently persecuted and imprisoned as a result. The women work together, placing community and the wellbeing of the group far above individual achievement; and they are remarkably self assured. I have never heard a Saahrawi woman moan about her weight or appearance, or make a self deprecatory comment. I find them inspirational, and a challenge to Western notions of what constitutes feminism. I think that in Saharawi culture, the women have a stronger grasp of what being feminist truly means, than in any Ph D thesis I have ploughed through on the subject.

But I guess I am rambling on. I will keep posting – regularly, since I find life here absorbing and fascinating, and find I have a lot I want to say. You will all be subjected to my naval gazing, so apologies in advance.

In the meantime, Mbarak, Madani, and I are resting content and enjoying the odd bottle of contraband. For a month, life could be a lot worse.

All the best to you and thanks for reading; Inshallah, there will be many more months of adventure to come. If the Royal Geographical Society reads this…

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!

Cheers from the non-famous European woman in Melekhva. And PS: it is hugely difficult to upload photographs, so I willbe putting them in over several days.

boujdor

2 comments March 6th, 2006

We got to Boujdor three days ago.  After we came off the piste and met up with road, about thirty kilometres from the town, the first car that passed us just happened to be – of course – family of Madani’s who live in Boujdor.  Inevitably, they are both extremely kind; and, extremely insistent we accept their hospitality.  For me this came at a bit of a bad time, as after the hassles we had in Laayoune, I had planned to get to Boujdor, book a room for a couple of days, and get some articles written and sent off; catch up on correspondence, and generally have a bit of space for the first time in four months.  But family is family, and so we have spent much of the past time in houses, being showered with kindness and generosity.  I finally put my foot down and said I had to work; but I am giving up today, since my phone rang incessantly yesterday with outraged voices demanding why on earth I am in a hotel when there are endless homes for me to stay in?  It is difficult to explain that to write I need just a bit of peace and quiet, and that is hard to find in a home with people everywhere.

But enough of the personal dilemmas – it is par for the course in Morocco and, as I have said, the family is incredibly kind and has taken care of us amazingly well, delivering water out to Mbarak at the camp and sparing nothing in order to aid us.

Thankfully the piste after Laayoune was a great deal better than the one before.  The landscape was more varied, feed for the camels plentiful, and there were a few more water stops – although they are far from regular around here, and the wells are often very saline.  We have been lucky to find large puddles from the left over rains, which is largely where we take water from; it is much fresher, if a bit brown in colour!

We hit some more big dunes through this stretch – quite startlingly beautiful, and dramatic from a distance.  Although after we had plodded through them for half a day and seen no sight of relief, even Mbarak got a little tense, and sent Madani up to the top to see if they were ever going to end; dunes might look pretty, but as far as feed for the camels or water goes, they are far from desirable.  Our camp that night, though out of the dunes, was a pretty barren, sparse affair, and we were glad to get back to the more familiar rocky hamada, where there is good vegetation and wood to build a fire for bread. 

After here, we are on the final haul to Dakhla.  It is a long stretch – 340 kilometres – without any kind of village in between.  We have heard there is water about, and okay feed, but I think all of us are feeling a little nervous about such a long stretch of isolation.  Generally, for the first six days of any walk, we can happily move twenty kilometres a day, and mentally are fine.  But – and with time I have learned it is always after six days – gradually the mental and physical strain starts to show.  Perhaps we have three nights where sleep is scarce because of the weather, or mosquitoes, or restless camels; often we walk four or five days straight into gale force head winds, which puts strain on us and the camels; or we might have several days running where our water is low and the camels haven’t eaten much, meaning we just have to stop when we find good feed, whether we have walked four kilometres or forty.  Often on this trip people (usually the gendermerie, who seem to fancy themselves expert on all things, despite never having met a camel in their life) are surprised when we say that we only walk fifteen to twenty kilometres a day.  Frequently there are comments to the tune that we should be doing thirty to forty.  Back when Gary and I walked with packs, it was customary for us to average between 25 – 35 kilometres a day; although this pace, after a year, took it’s toll on our bodies.  But there are many huge differences between this walk and that one.  For starters, at the end of a six day stretch on the last walk, we would always find either a good established camp ground with showers and general civilisation to relax in, or – more likely – a cheap hotel to sloth about in for a few days.  Here, there is no break from routine; this hotel is the first room I have stayed in since I went back to Spain, and even this is only for a night.  And I feel horrendously guilty leaving Mbarak with the camp and camels – he needs a break, too.  For us arriving in a town means simply a lot of problems – three hours here spent in the office of the gendermerie whilst they painstakingly traced our history via their colleagues through the desert, and went through all of our identification piece by piece.   Buying all of the supplies necessary for a month out on the piste is time consuming, and finding a way of getting it all back out to the camp, often difficult.  In between these things, family obligations, and trying to get some work done, there is little time for luxuries like a hammam, or finding the things really important – like sunscreen, which I ran out of on this stretch. 

We are all much happier when we start walking again.  But, as I said, at the end of a six day stretch, we start to slow down, and this time it will be very hard to take a break – probably around twenty days walking for this stretch, and nowhere, really, to stop, unless we find a good well.  We are hoping too.  There is a lot to do when we finish our walk; finding wood and making a big fire to cook the bread, and dinner (we try to save the portagas for when conditions are really bad).  Preparing the dough for the sand bread, organising the tent if weather is bad, repairing things, keeping a close eye on the camels, since there are a lot of other camel herds grazing through these parts, meaning our camels get either bolshy (if the herd is male) or extremely excited and worked up (if they are females).  We have had to get in between fighting camels a lot lately.

I don’t write all of this to moan about how difficult it is – these things are all just part of the walk, and I accept them and they do not detract from the experience.  But it’s tough when people question our progress, especially when I know myself that this has been the slowest of any leg I have done on foot, but understand totally the reasons why.  The weather during this stretch has been a big factor.

But we remain in general, in good humour, although I think we will all be glad to reach Dakhla and take some time out.  For me I have learned so much, and will know a lot more about how to organise my camp for the following leg into Mauritania.  I have spent most of the last year in Morocco; sometimes I think I am more at home here now than in my own culture.  It is a far different country to the one I experienced when we walked through last year with packs – travelling with the camels, and being accepted as part of Madani and Mbarak’s family, makes me a part of the country rather than someone simply travelling through it.  Sometimes now I knock into other tourists in town and I find myself without much to say.  Two young blokes who are just setting out on a backpacking adventure told me that our excursion was “rad, man,” and that they would really love to come walking with us.  I just smiled and said thanks, I would think about it.  They wouldn’t last a week.

The walking itself is easy, and probably the most enjoyable time of every day – that, and sleeping out on the hamada at night, which, thankfully, we have been able to do again on this stretch.  But although many people say they crave the isolation and peace of the desert, what few understand is the neverending socialisation that comes with it; there is rarely a day when we are not mixing with other nomads, visiting a tent or entertaining in our own, and here this is a long and often very traditional business.  Answering the same questions day after day, resting in a tent and speaking another language, often for hours on end, and having to always be cheerful, takes it’s toll; as does running a camp of two Arabic men, who also miss their homes, lives, and women. 

This post, I think, lacks my usual humour.  I am not down and out, no need to worry, but sometimes I think it is also necessary to tell the other face of the story, give a complete picture.  All things in life that are worthwhile and rewarding come with challenges attached, and this is no exception.  For me the trade off is absolutely worth it; I fell in love with the desert the day I saw it, and it is a love affair that has only grown stronger with time.  But it takes a lot of strength to get through life here as I have chosen it, and I am a different person to the one who set out from Mhamid.

We are heading off again tomorrow – if we don’t end up in another family home tonight – and, Insh’allah, we will be in Dakhla sometime at the start of April.  I have absolutely no idea what happens after that.  Much of my hopes about this part of the walk rested on getting some kind of publicity, in order to help sell my first book, and to raise some money.  But there has been no media interest, although this is the first time any Westerner has crossed this part of the desert on foot; and never has a woman alone attempted anything like it.  Part of me thinks I should be doing that horrible networking thing to get papers and TV interested; but something in me just balks at all of that.  I am doing this because it is what I want to do, and I love it.  All I can hope is that I will find a way to continue.  I don’t really fancy hocking my soul to all and sundry to carry on; I have got this far.  I just hope I can keep going.

So, I will leave it there, serious sounding as it all is.  Contraband booze is off the agenda this far into the Sahara Occident, so it will have been a sober old two months by the time we hit Dakhla – where, I am told, there is a plethora of bars.  Mbarak, Madani, and I have agreed that we will happily pay someone all of our combined petty cash to guard the camels for a night while we get pleasantly plastered in honour of our arrival.  If any of you adventurous tourists out there are really serious about wanting to experience the desert, here’s your chance….!

Thanks again to all who send messages to the site – and I have to say a special hello and thankyou to the Morris family: my darling mate Jodie, whose emails get me through the tough times, Andrea, who has listened to all my moans a million times, and Helen and Tony, for sending me a lovely message and reminding me that I am very lucky to have such good friends and support.

I’ll see you at the end of Morocco.