physically, long-term budget travel isn’t easy. hand washing clothes means hand wringing clothes with an arthritic thumb. i also walk and work with a creaky neck… plus a stiff back from a long and reckless life… and the coup de grace – a pulled groin muscle from 2004 when mom collapsed and i tried to lift her from the floor. various other nicks, scrapes, dents, and defects. these are damaged goods backpacking with lady k up down steep places for long periods of time over varying terrains where they speak unknown tongues.
lady laughs at me in the mornings because i have to shake my body back in place, get all the various joints and mutinying muscles reacquainted. let this be a lesson to you young ones – there’s hidden cost involved when you marry used goods. there’s no warranty, and most likely the original manufacturing plant’s no longer around.
long-term budget travel to irregular places also contributes to smelly clothes, stinky bodies, and bladders which need be emptied right now when now seldom coincides with public toilet. lady k thought i wasn’t feeling well when i turned down my second cup of coffee this morning – but we’re going out, and coffee rapidly creates more bladder water. i’ve learned bladder pain trumps coffee pleasure. travel teaches you lessons you can never pre-imagine.
is the journey worth it? oh yes. lady alone’s worth the pain. besides, there’s no pain like the pain of boredom from sitting in the same seat in the same house in the same town living the same life looking at the same spot on the same wall licking the same lack in your sorry heart daze after day after daze.
we two make a good life lesson – lady k at 34 shows it’s never too soon to start living your dream, while my 61 proves it’s never too late to run off and join the circus. we’re also example of collaborative get along: we’re old-young, tall-short, male-female, and both sides of the barcode – yet we work wish walk will pretty much as one… i am she and she am me and we will whether the walrus together.
went to a home-made dinner yesterday in the old city, lamb with almonds and prunes. our host spoke some english so i was not entirely out of the loop. he took my broken computer ac adapter to a friend who took it apart and fixed it for $11.
today we went to a hammam, a moroccan public bath. hamid’s teenage son went in with me since hamid’s missing finger is still oozing and not welcome. i was unprepared to have his son wash my body. i’m not used to being touched by strangers of any sex. but it felt good to be washed, scrapped, rinsed in hot water. if i go again, i will wash myself. i don’t like guides, servants, helpers, hangers-on, etc. i come from poor people, and i’m not comfortable being treated like the big boss man. i’m trying to flow with the customs of the countries we’re in, but i prefer to carry my own bags, make my own bed.
after the bath, hamid took us to his mother’s. she gave us fried fish and cold potatoes and two woven baskets with our mint tea. then we visited his brother for more mint tea – the rooster in the next room kept crowing, its cries bouncing about the tiled chamber. you’ve no idea how loud a rooster sounds inside a house.
each meal we eat fixed by others has upset my stomach and bowels. not as bad as the madrid airport food poisoning, but enough to be wary. trouble is, if you’re uptight and afraid to try anything, why be here in the first place. we’d rather take the chance, have the experience, maybe pay for it physically later. besides, it’s good for weight loss. i bet to lose ten pounds overnight, all i’d have to do would be to drink a glass of tap water.
we watched Babel last night – the core of the movie was filmed here in morocco. odd seeing on film sights we see in flesh. what a sad, complicated, interconnected film. my first thought was why make it. i noticed by the film’s end the cate blanchett brad pitt white couple gained happiness, and the japanese father and his disturbed daughter attained a chance for reconciliation and redemption – but the brown-skinned moroccan family and the brown-skinned hispanic family both suffered greatly and were destroyed. racism or reality? or a bit of both?
the most kindness in the film was shown by a moroccan, the least kindnesses came from older white american males. now that i think on these things, i begin to understand why the film was made.
