Morrocan desert conquest

Two weeks after i’m back, I still have no idea how to spell Morocco in English.

 Wow, what can I say. The trip was amazing, tough, shattering, mind-opening, and I spent most of it wanting to go home….. It’s my diary. I can tell the truth. But now i’m glad I did it. This is also the truth.

The whole thing started because my friend at the paper wanted to do something nice for me. They needed someone to cover this super-publicized women-only exotic extreme jeep trip, so she signed me up. I could have said no, but how can you say no to a once in a lifetime experience. "Do something every day that scares you", said Not-Kurt-Vonnegut. Couldn’t have picked a better one than this.

I should have known from the beginning that this thing was very not-for-me, on so many levels. First of all, I don’t drive stick-shift. So that pretty much makes me indifferent to the whole jeep experience. Not to mention my back, and my lack of love for long drives (when i meet those big 4X4’s while hiking, i always wonder why those a**es have to stay in their big polluting cages instead of coming out and really soaking up nature!). The desert – which was the big deal of the trip – is not my favourite peice of nature. I always prefer greenery, and the greener the better. Hey, that’s why I went to Ireland! Desserts are so monochrome. And the Sahara dessert aspecially – was a big nightmare for me when I was a kid.

 ALSO , i’m not a big fan of big crowds – and here we were talking about 70 girls! 48 participants (contestants, actually), 10 reporters, 4 counslers (or leaders… but really counslers, exactly like in camp). 5 Tv crew people…. how much am I at already? Anyway, I always felt sorry for kids who got sent away to camp or weeks… it seemed so "total institution" to me, kind of like the army or a prison. And here I was doing the same thing to myself.

 So… WHY? Because it’s an experience. Because all of these women fight each other for the right to do it. Because if I said no, i would probably never see Morroco or the Sahara. Because to say no would be to be a wuss. Because a life is fuller when you challenge yourself and do things you’ve never done before. Because it’s a good story, something to tell people when they ask "what’s new?". Because it’s been years since I slept in the open air, in a sleeping bag…

 Even at the preliminary meeting, the "orientation", i knew I was different. I guess it’s my thing, to be different. I always stick myself into groups i don’t really fit with. When i first saw these girls at orientation, they were scary. I felt shy and tired next to them – they were all bundles of energy and sportivity… you know the people who just touch others easily? – hug, push, move, laughingly punch? I’ve always been the opposite. I won’t even shake your hand without asking permission first. My kindergarden teacher told my mom that i was "physically timid". Well, these girls were that, in the negative.

But they were NICE! And FUN. They never ran out of energy and willingness to help. Of coure, there was female bickering, but basically these girls were really unique in their outgoingness and friendlyness and helpfulness. I don’t know if i have friends for life from there, but i do know that if I will meet one of them, i’ll feel a lot of warmth.

I’m dragging this entry to much and to long, so I’ll just mention the highlights:

* I didn’t get along with the girls in my jeep. One was a PR woman and i’m sensitive to them. She was a really feelingless, heartless jellyfish person. She kept running off with our jeep to do all kinds of PR things. It was like "hello, i’m stuck in the desert and I *depend* on you!!! Have the decency to let me know where you’re going. She would be like "can you carry this for a second" and then she’d disappear, and i’d be carrying it for the whole hike. Also, i got the feeling from her that if i said stuff in the jeep, it wouldn’t stay confident, and that if I told her things that were bothering me in life, she would not be compassionate, but rather she’d think les of me… and i had to think of my continuing work relationship with her. So mainly she was blah. And the others – were okay but i didn’t fall in love with them. One of them was to attached to ms. PR. The other was reighteous, moralistic… she was nice enogh but we almost always seemed to find something to argue about. So during the third day we pretty much went our seperate ways, which is difficult to do when you’re confned to a jeep procession (? There has to be a better word). We had to find another jeep that would take us despite the fact that we would overcrowd it… at first i fealt bad about it but jeep no 12 had just had a fight too, so i joind them instead of one of their girls, and all was semi-well.

 * On the second day, we’re riding through the mountains, and suddenly the leader says "look – it’s a wedding". And suddenly everyone’s running out of their jeeps, towards the celebration. The morrocans were maybe 30 people? We were maybe 70, decending on them like white aliens. The girls had no problems with just running up and singing with them. What were they thinking? What did these people think of us? They sang to them in Hebrew and Arabic and palyed their instruments? They kept asking "were is the bride? Where is the bride?" But the celebrators wouldn’t let her out.. i don’t blame them. It was surreal.

 * On the thrid day we decended on a non-suspecting village. We stopped there by accident – for real, there was a problem with one of the jeeps. The girls started an impromptu trans party… they had some darbukas and a drum… and the whole village came out to see us. The women brought us Henna, which is this green stuff you put on your skin and it leaves a mark for months… I didn’t want to at first but this little girl came over and painted me with it…. she was so cute. So i said okay and spent the rest of the trip looking like i had cigarette burns on my hands.  

 * That night we slept in some family’s house… hardly met the family woho shied away from us, but their house was AMAZING. On the outside – mud and more mud. On the inside – the most amazing carpets, walls and furniture. Every centimeter was a work of art. Our leader (i wish i had a better word) said that they didn’t have running water before we came, but they built an indoor bathroom with the money we payed them for staying there. That was cool in a giulty, colonial sort of way.

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Y: Arial”>* The girls i spent days 4-8 with were very competetive. The whole thing was a competition (which i wasn’t part of as a reporter) and they were disqualified because they couldn’t keep their group together. They spent the rest of the trip mourning the loos – i’ve never seen anything like that. One of them said "my father always brought me up to excell, to win, to succeed". She’s 40! What’s with being afraid to face your father at this point? The other one said "in all my 31 years, i’ve never wanted something that i didn’t get". 10 seconds after she finished the sentence, i had thought of a million things I wanted and never got, never acheived. So who’s weird – me or her?

 * they made me think that maybe my parents had brought me up too un-competitively… my mom always said "98 is good wnough for the W family! We don’t need 100!" Or "that boy is a show-off – go for someone quieter". Or "why try to be an artist/writer, only the best ones make a living. Go for a profession where even the medicore make a living…". I’m over-stating this a bit, but i wonder if maybe she was emotionally over-protective of me – don’t really try, and you won’t fail.

 * The desert was scary. We entered it on the 5th day. "Today we reach Mahmid, which is the southest town in Morroco. After that, there’s only sand", the lleader said. She was right. Nothing around for miles and miles. Made me feel claustrophobic, of all things. Claustrophobuic in our little jeep group – if you walk even 10 minutes away, you might loose your way among the dunes and die of dehydration in hours. Scary. Loving the desert is like loving snakes, scorpions or dangerous men. It’s not healthy. I was alone among a very large group of desert lovers… and my head was yelling "Green, green , i need some plants!". On the 7th day we reached a river. An oasis. I was as if life had come back to me.

 * On the 6th day, in the middle of the desert, i got sick and all i wanted was a glass of really cold water,. There wasn’t any. I got ind of weird and panicky. I suddenly thought of all of the people who died in the desert… the ones who didn’t have any water, not just cold. I wondered if there were people who were born in the desert and never managed to gether enough water to make the trip out. They would never see grass, trees, lakes… aaaaaagh! I really made myself panic with that one, in the infirmary tent in the middle of the Sahara…

* On the 8th day we went to the market in Marakesh. It was the coolest. Snake charmers and story tellers and so many beautiful things. Then they took us to meet the jewish community of marakesh which is just 200 people. There were maybe 80 of them present. They had made us food and were dressed in their best clothes (we were filthy) and treated us like royaty. Some of them spoke hebrew and told us of their relatives in Jerusalem or Kfar Saba… we sang jewish songs in hebrew and they knew some of them and then we danced with them. It was easily the most exciting moment on the trip for me.

* We went home. I had been secretly counting back the days because the intensity, the lack of privacy and real showers, the desert.. these things were all begining to get to me. I couldn’t believe the last day had actually come. The days were so long that on the 3rd or 4th one i couldn’t believe that the 8th one would actually arrive. No, this might sound insane but days after i was home i kind of still didn’t believe that the 8th day had ever arrived. I fealt like I was still caought there in a different time dimension… i can’t explain. But i had thought so mqny times of the days finally ending and me being home, that when it actully happened i didn’t really believe it.

* Nir came to pick me up from the airport. He seemed so strange and foreign to me. What connected us? My house seemed strange. Tel Aviv seemed modern and gigantic and dark. Nir had cleaned the house thoroughly and instead of thanking him i felat as if i was contaminating it with my desert-dirty presence and luggage… it took me a full two days to really find myself back. I still dream about it sometimes… I say to myself "but the 8th day already was! What day is it!" And i wake up out of place.

* I’m glad i did it. I’m never ever doing something like that again…..