Hippity-Hop

The exciting inter-city souk bus ride didn’t happen. Nobody likes a girl unwilling to pay full-fare to Agadir even though she’s just going a third of the way to Taliouine, so I pulled a little maneuver we like to call “taxi-hopping”. It’s a delicate science, not unlike baking, of negotiation, proper mixing, and timing.

As I stood next to the dogmatic ticket salesman whose continuous cries of “Agadir, Agadir, Agadir” nearly brought me to tears, I overheard a tourist ask in French if the bus would stop in Taliouine. The dogmatic man replied “Yes, Agadir, Agadir, Agadir, you pay full-fare, Agadir, Agadir, Agadir.” Mr. Tourist promptly turned on his heel to ask another ticket salesman about his destination. Having waited an hour and half already in the hopes that the silly man wouldn’t sell all his tickets I cried (with only the slightest hint of desperation), “Do you speak English?” His lovely wife said, “Yes.”

Anjuli: Is Taliouine your final destination?

Helen: Yes. Are you going there, too?

Anjuli: Yes! Do you want to join me in a taxi? None of these men will sell you a ticket to Taliouine; it’s New Year’s you know.

Helen: Yes, sure, let’s go.

Hallelujah! Helen (actually Surinamese), her husband Jan (actually Dutch, not French) and I went outside to the grand taxi station to negotiate with the kurti, or coordinator/god of all taxi drivers. It’s a powerful position he holds. My fate has been determined by more than one grumpy, toothless kurti who insisted on 150 MAD for a 5 MAD ride. (Hence my clinging to the hope that the bus ticket salesman would relent.) Helen, Jan, and I negotiated a reasonable, though still inflated, price and piled into the backseat of a grand taxi that to the normal eye should hold a total of five passengers, including the driver.

Helen: We go now?

Anjuli: Ummm, no, we have to wait for the other three passengers.

Helen: Where will they sit?

Anjuli: Well, there will be two in the front passenger seat and four of us back here. We can’t leave unless they sell six seats. Hopefully, there won’t be any livestock.

Helen: Livestock?

Anjuli: Yes. If someone didn’t sell his sheep at market, especially because of the recent holiday, we might be joined by a sheep.

Helen: Oh.

Luckily, there were no sheep, and we were joined by three men (one of them blessedly small) who accompanied us to Taznakht. Wait, wasn’t I going to Taliouine? We’re taxi hopping, people! You can’t just go straight to your final destination. That would be a) efficient and b) boring. I know, I know it’s hard to keep all these towns straight (and, yes, they all begin with t’s and, really, they should preferably end in t’s), but bear with me.

When we arrive in Taznakht the six of us are swiftly piled into a station wagon. Ah, room at last. I can knit and eat oranges. Lovely. Oh, wait, no. They add two more men to the taxi, and we are all squished again. After paying the kurti, we watch the driver expectantly. The car is running, he is behind the wheel and he has even shifted into first gear. We’re on our way! Oh, wait, no. He needs to adjust the bags in the trunk. He returns to the driver’s seat and we begin our journey. Oh, wait, no. We only traveled about 5 feet. The driver kills the engine and gets out of the car. He returns with a jug of water and opens the hood. This is reassuring. I love a taxi driver that maintains his car. Finally, he gets behind the wheel, turns on the car, and we actually drive all the way to Taliouine, with only one teensy stop to pick up a suitcase from three children at a gas station on the side of the road. I didn’t ask what was inside.

In Taliouine I left Helen and Jan to join Anny and Matthew, my fellow volunteers and dear friends, who had arrived some time before me, having taken just one taxi from the opposite direction. Taliouine is famous for it’s saffron. It’s one of the only places in the world where it grows in large amounts and there is a huge farming cooperative just outside of the town. It takes about 200 flowers to generate just one gram of the stuff.

We didn’t see any of it. (Harvesting ended in November.) Instead, we spent the entire weekend talking, and reminding ourselves that we’re not crazy; we’re just products of our culture. (Yes, we’ve totally internalized Peace Corps training, but at least we’re aware of it, right?) It had been about a month since I had seen them, and I have to say they looked better than before. We’re all obviously sleeping more and eating better than we did during training. Matthew is learning the fine art of leather making (it involves pigeon poop) and Anny is exploring the world of underground goat cheese-making (goats climb trees here, so I’m not sure how she herds them together).

We also did some hiking (actually the German, wandern is more descriptive of what we did) around Taliouine. We forded a river, climbed a mountain, discovered Roman ruins, and drank tea with a nice lady that was so shocked that I spoke Tashlheit she almost dropped her baby boy. We also went to an amusement park, which had a rickety old Ferris wheel that I would love to tell you I was brave enough to ride. But I wasn’t. I’m afraid of heights. I did eat fried food, though, and we all know that that’s what amusement parks are really all about. Then we went back to our hotel room, watched Center Stage, which I’d never seen before, started Gone With the Wind, and then fell asleep as a happy little family. This is how I celebrated the coming the New Year.

Taliouine is officially my new second favorite sleepy little town, after my site, (codename: T-Toot) of course. It’s a little crazy to think that I’ve been in Morocco for nearly five months, and that it’s next year already. I wish you all the best in 2008. Leap years are always tons of fun. Make the most of that extra day!