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First Place in Arabic Speech Contest

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:16:00 +0000

Each year, the University of Arkansas hosts a speech contest for each of the "non-traditional" languages, among which is Arabic. If students wish to enter, they're asked to perform a speech in Arabic--from memory--in front of the audience and judges, after which the judges will deliberate and the winners will be chosen.

I entered this year with a poem I wrote about my experiences in the Sahara Desert over the course of several summers, from 2006-2008. It was my first attempt at writing a poem entirely in Arabic, and the performance of the poem went really well--although I started to forget the entire second to last stanza, so I actually had to improv more than half of it. Nobody noticed. I think. I hope.

Below is a video of me reciting my winning poem in Arabic, with English subtitles--and below the video is my poem written out in its original Arabic, with an English translation underneath:

بينما أنا أتكلم، أنا أحلم

أحلم بالمغرب

أحلم بالصحراء

أحلم بكل رجال القبيلة

الذين دخلوا إلى ضوء الصحراء

وشاهدوا الإيمان

واللون

والله

أحلم بالليلة الأولى في الصحراء

عندما أكلت خبز الأرض

ونمت داخل شبح البحر

تحت بحر من النجوم

وشاهدت وجه الله

بالليل في الصحراء

الأرض والسماء يصبحان واحداً

وفي الصباح

يلدان الشمس

أحلم برجل إسمه مصطفى

صحا كل صباح

لمشاهدة ساعة بدء الضوء

يمكنه أن يتكلم مع النجوم

سألته ما قالوا له

وقال لي

<<.الناس، والرمل، والنجوم كلها واحد>>

الصحراء تتكلم لغة خاصة

صعبة الفهم

طوال الوقت، بدأت أفهم هذه اللغة

وهذه المفردات

وبدأت أترجم هذه التجارب

إلى كلمات يمكنني أن أفهمها

جئت إلى الصحراء

لمعرفة الحرية والسلام

وخرجت من الصحراء

مع العلم أن كل الناس واحد

نحن هدايا من الصحراء

هدايا من الشمس

هدايا من الله

As I speak, I dream.
I dream of Morocco,
I dream of the Desert,
I dream of all the men of the tribe
who entered into the light of the Desert
and saw Faith
and Color
and God.

I dream of the first night in the Desert
when I ate the bread of the earth
and slept within the ghost of the sea,
under a sea of stars,
and saw the face of God.

At night in the Desert,
the Earth and the Sky slowly become one,
and in the morning
give birth to the Sun.

I dream of a man named Moustafa:
he awoke each morning
to see the moment when light began.
He could speak with the stars,
and when I asked him what they said
he told me:
"Men, Sand, and Stars are all One."

The Sahara speaks its own language,
difficult to understand;
through time, I begin to understand this language,
this vocabulary,
and I begin to translate these experiences
into words possible for me to understand.

I came to the Desert
to know Freedom and Peace,
and I left the Desert
knowing that all men are one.
We are all gifts of the Desert,
gifts of the Sun,
gifts of God.

I fell in love with a voice...

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:57:00 +0000

I will post a true update soon about my recent adventures at the Red Sea, and the oldest Christian church in the world (St. Anthony's Coptic Monastery).

But for now, I MUST post this song that Jasmine wrote for me. I came back to my hotel after a midnight swim in the Red Sea by moonlight a couple nights ago, and in my inbox was a song from Jasmine. She wrote the song for me in about the span of a week, and with the help of my buddies Ben and Paul (who are amazing musicians themselves, and true geniuses at recording--Paul has his own studio in his house), Jasmine was able to record her song and send it to me.

I'm posting it here for everyone to listen to, because it is truly an amazing song. I mean really incredible. Jasmine has such a beautiful voice, and her piano is equally as beautiful in the song. The beauty of her voice and piano are matched only by the tenderness and sincerity of her lyrics. It's very difficult to listen to her song without the incredible urge to pack everything up this instant and come home to her. I've listened to it over and over since she sent it. I made a playlist on my iPod with just her one song, and I listen to it on repeat. All the other songs on my iPod have lost their flavor, have failed to capture my attention anymore. Jasmine's song is just perfect. Beautiful. Thanks again, Ben and Paul, for helping her to record it so that she could send it to me--it means a lot.

Here's the song she wrote for me, called "Home" (just click the "Play" arrow button):

The night I got her song and listened to it for the first time, I fell in love with a voice. I hope that voice continues to make music.

A Day at the Great Pyramids of Giza

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:32:00 +0000

Several things over the past few days to update everyone on.

On Thursday we were at a very rural desert town called Beni Suef, far outside of Cairo. There is nothing in Beni Suef but proud egos and hopeless cul-de-sac dreams. But breaking through the aforementioned bleakness like a rainbow were the wonderful children of the surrounding humble villages who gathered at Beni Suef with us. They were all very poor, but very intelligent middle and high school students who were studying English as part of a scholarship program hosted by the U.S. Dept. of State--the same people hosting our Arabic study abroad scholarship program. We met with these children to help them practice their English, and they helped us practice our Arabic. They were a handful of kids who possessed nothing in the world, but there at Beni Suef they were sharing such invisible riches!

Left to right: Marina, Mariam, Maryam (one of my fellow Arabic students), and Me. The Four M's.

One of the girls I was paired with, Marina (the first girl on the left in the above photo), made me a bookmark from pink construction paper.

It was so incredibly sweet that it made me tear up a little. I'm not exactly sure what she meant by "invention"--the best I can figure is that she meant to write "invitation." It only adds to the cuteness of it all. The most touching part was her writing "I hope not to forget me." With those words, how could I?

On Friday, I went out with a young, hip, wealthy, and affluent young Egyptian man named Moe. He is a very cool, very nice guy. Moe knows people all over Cairo. Whenever I told him of a very particular gift I was hoping to get for Jasmine, but didn't think I'd be able to get here in Cairo, he knew just the place to take me to. He took me deep into the heart of some unknown place, and there before me was just the thing I was looking for. It is currently in the process of being made, and should be ready by next week. I'm so excited. I owe so much to Moe!

And finally, today we took a trip out to the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The Great Pyramids of Giza--how can a man approach these wonders of the world without seeing what he has expected his whole life to see? For thousands of years they have been a tourist destination. Herodotus writes of travelers who used to slide down the then smooth sides of Khafre's pyramid, before time and weather erased a thin veneer of its history. In our age, The Great Pyramids have been prepared for us for centuries--through stories in books, sweeping poetry, countless movies and television shows, advertisements, travel literature, and even the name itself: 'The Great Pyramids.' It is hard to approach these marvels of human engineering without seeing what the world has prepared for us to see.

And yet, they impressed upon me palpable sensations of historical sight and touch. Layers of civilization on the edge of Africa.

I had the sensation of viewing layers of geohistorical strata: the ageless desert sands. American tourists on camels--the ancient mode of transportation. The Great Pyramids, those ancient stone sarcophagi, sleeping in front of a backdrop of modern skyscrapers. Hotels. Apartment buildings.

All of this gauzed by smog and dust.

While walking around the pyramids, I noticed a young boy on a camel who had written the name "Micheal Jackson" (he spelled it wrong) on the saddle covering, presumably in homage to the recent death of the musical legend. I stopped to take a picture of the camel with Michael Jackson's name, and then I had the young boy take a picture of me with the camel.

The pyramids are definitely as impressive in person as they appear in the pages of a book, or on a television/movie/computer screen. It is still important, however, to remember that you are standing in front of history. Too often, people rush around experiencing the pyramids through the lens of the camera, offering to their own eyes and to the eyes of those who view their photos only a particular view of the pyramids, a slanted view, a carefully chosen view. At any point, the person behind the camera has the sovereignty to experience these sights without a filter. I chose, for the most part, to walk around the pyramids, touching the stone, inhaling the dust of their histories, tortured by the same sun that burned the skin of those who built these monuments thousands of years ago. I tried to use my camera sparingly, but I knew that I could not leave the pyramids without taking pictures of them.

For more pictures from my trip to the Great Pyramids of Giza as well as from various other excursions around Egypt, please visit my Facebook album at the following link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2087091&id=46103709&l=8d8ed1510a

Signing off until next time. M'assalama!

What I Miss the Most...

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:27:00 +0000

There are three girls in my life that I absolutely miss right now. They are all very dear to me, and I think about them every day that I'm here. I wish I could spend more time with them, knowing that I'll be leaving two of them behind soon when I move:

My beautiful girlfriend, Jasmine. The only girl who could ever make me wish to be home, instead of overseas. The only girl who could ever make me reconsider my previous thoughts on relationships and even marriage. The only girl who I could ever give up all of my personal, professional, and academic pursuits for (though she would never want that). She's just that amazing.

The most beautiful little girl in the entire world, my niece Rylee Walter. Before I knew this precious baby, I was never sure that I wanted to have children of my own. But after seeing her sweet mile, and her innocent laugh that shatters shackles and melts hearts, how could I not? She has truly been a gift not just in the life of her parents, but in my own life as well. I will miss her very much when I move away.

And of course, my awesome dog, Shadow. Shadow is so full of personality and character, and she has almost literally been my best friend for years here in Kansas. I spend almost every day with her (except for every summer that I travel abroad for months at a time). I miss how excited she gets every day that I come home, and how sad she looks every morning that I leave for work or school. I miss how excited she gets when she hears the word "walk," and how she knows the sound and scent of her leash, and knows what it means. I miss the way she jumps up onto the couch or the bed to lay with me (or on top of me).

I'm excited about the remainder of my time here in Cairo, Egypt. I'm excited about the things I will see and experience in Egypt, and about all the Arabic that I will learn while I'm here. But I'm also excited to return home, to see the people (and the dog) that I love and miss. I'm excited about the move and the transfer to the new school, but I'm also sad for the people and things that I'll be leaving behind.

Our world, I think, is less populated by various species of life than it is by certain distributions of relationships, joys and sorrows, longings and wishes.

Wisdom of the Sands

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:12:00 +0000

We all took a tour Saturday morning out to Saqqara, home of Egypt's oldest pyramid--the step pyramid of Djoser, and the surrounding funerary complexes. These are some of the oldest monuments ever built, and Djoser's pyramid is one of the first monuments ever built entirely of stone (which led to a new era in architecture, largely replacing mudbrick). It is almost 5,000 years old according to current carbon-dating estimates.

Standing in front of Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara

Our tour guide was a bit partial to Egyptian history, favoring Egypt as the birthplace for human architecture and writing, which is simply not true. The earliest forms of writing, architecture, language, and civilization came from Mesopotamia (ancient Babylon, mostly occupying modern-day Iraq). This is not to take anything away from Egypt. The step pyramid of Djoser, along with the Great Pyramids of Egypt (which we will visit next weekend) still stand to this day after 5,000 years of virtual human neglect. This is more than can be said for other architectural wonders of the ancient world. I know it is a bit cliche, but standing in front of Djoser's pyramid, surrounded by little more than desert sands and the scorching sun, felt like stepping back in time.

There are a lot of myths surrounding the pyramids in Egypt, largely concerning their construction. This is a complex topic that I don't wish to get into here, but it should be sufficient to say that they were not built with the help of extraterrestrial beings. Human hands built these massive wonders. Calloused hands credentialed by decades of sweat, blood, and human labor in dedication to the yearning for immortality and curiosity about the afterlife built these monuments. They started out as simple mastabas--funerary structures that were essentially large, flat square boxes that housed burial chambers and tombs. Eventually, the ancient Egyptians began to stack one mastaba on top of another. Djoser's pyramid in the picture above shows, essentially, six mastabas stacked on top of one another. The next step in the formation of the quintessential Egyptian pyramid was to fill in the sides to make them perfectly smooth, as in the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The tour itself was a little too touristy for me. We drove out on a large, air-conditioned tour bus. We had our tour guide speaking to us over a microphone the entire ride. Headsets through which we were to listen to our tour guide as we visited Saqqara were passed out to all of us. They basically resembled walkmans, with a large, obtrusive earpiece that would channel the voice of our tour guide.

Lame.

The fact that he wasn't quite accurate with his history only encouraged me to ditch the headset. I wandered around the Saqqara complex on my own, preferring to experience Djoser's pyramid and the surrounding funerary structures apart from the group, and through no other lens than the blinding light of the desert sun. It was much more preferrable than standing in a large group surrounding our tour guide as he explained what the pyramid was all about.

-----

Before visiting Saqqara this past Saturday, and before laying my eyes on Djoser's pyramid, I was afforded a rare view of the Great Pyramids of Giza. A bird's eye view, the view from which all is brought to a proper perspective, the view that makes sense of the jumbled patchwork of humanity. Thursday evening after class, one of my Arabic instructors, Sharif (he will be our advanced reading and writing instructor next month) invited me out to explore Cairo with him. I'm not quite sure what drew him to me (it may have been the fact that I was the only Advanced-Beginner student to introduce myself in Arabic instead of English), but after orientation before our very first class last week, he came up to me and asked to exchange numbers. He was very nice, and was offering to help me with Arabic outside of class, take me around Cairo, etc. He's in his mid 30's and is a very religious man, a devout Muslim, with a penchant for Abercrombie & Fitch (which he gets when friends from Canada or the U.S. come to visit him). I was afraid that he might only be interested in prostheletizing to me about Islam, but I couldn't have been farther from the truth. He was only interested in friendship.

So after class last Thursday, he called me up and we went out to explore Cairo. He took me to the Cairo Tower, a massive modern tower that gives you an expansive, breathtaking view of all of Cairo. At a height far above Cairo's tallest skyscrapers, you are afforded a bird's eye view of the bustling city, and to the territories far beyond.

The most impressive sight struck me there on Cairo Tower. It was a view of the Great Pyramids of Giza, far beyond the city of Cairo.

As I was talking to Jasmine about my experience the other night on videochat, and showing her the pictures, she made the comment that all of Cairo's modern buildings seem to be but merely paying homage to the great stone structures of Egypt's past. I think she's right. Far beyond the modern buildings of concrete and steel that dominate the Cairo skyline, the Great Pyramids resemble three large arrows rising from the ground, penetrating the dense atmosphere of smog and pollution that looms over Cairo, trying to pierce the heavens. If their goal was to touch the skin of heaven and thereby gain immortality, perhaps they have succeeded.

It was a humbling sight. These structures, thousands of years old, untouched, still stand to this day. Our modern buildings of concrete and steel, if negelected for a few dozen years, begin shortly to crumble and rust. Leave them to themselves for a hundred years or two, and they will begin to slowly disappear. After several hundred years, they will have vanished forever. What has changed from then to today? Why do we build such fleeting, superficial structures, constructed from processed materials, only to temporarily tattoo the flesh of our planet?

It struck me as almost beautiful that men in the ancient world chose to construct their monuments from the dirt of the earth, the same material from which we ourselves are built. These testaments to ancient engineering will stand long after our modern buildings crumble from neglect. What has changed? Perhaps it was the shift from architecture built with the intent to reach out and touch the divine to architecture that is being built for commercial profit alone. 5,000 years from now the pyramids will still stand. If humans are still around on this earth, the pyramids will be remembered as a fitting testimony to the life and the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. Where will our great monuments reside? What will our current age have left behind to those in the future? What will be the message of our lives, our beliefs, to those who will come after us?

It reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite writers, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory,
abides with us more potent, nay, more present than the living man."

He wrote those words in his book, Wisdom of the Sands, about men who have died, fellow comrades, and their memories that remain with us in a sense more strongly than the experiences we have with those who are still living around us. But I'm flipping his quote around a bit, because I think it applies just as equally to explain the potency of the architecture of the ancient world, and how their wonders are, in a sense, more present than those we attempt to construct for ourselves today.

I think that we have so much to learn from those men who have gone before us.

Lessons from the movie 'Redbelt' about the Middle East, and life.

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Today (Thursday) was a very interesting day in Cairo. I'll get to that in a minute.

But first, I need to establish context. Trust me, what follows about the film leads into the story of my interesting day in Cairo. Stay with me here.

The Film

Redbelt is an incredible movie. It's so good that I have it on my iPod so that I can watch it whenever the desire hits, and I often find myself rewatching several of my favorite scenes from the movie. It is a modern day Warrior Tale. It is a story about the struggle of a warrior who lives by an ancient code in a modern time and place; it is a story, essentially, of a man trying to live by his principles and ideals in a world that is indifferent and inhospitable to them. Many of us who attempt every day to live by our principles and ideals in the face of indifference and stigmatization hold communion with the ethos of this film. And although the film is about a warrior, and about fighting, there is very little action in the film itself. However, what few actions scenes that exist in the film are both brilliant and realistic; like brief flashes of lightning in an otherwise dark sky, the scenes burns themselves into your mind with vivid clarity.

Aside from the sharp screenwriting of David Mamet (one of the best writers in the business, hands down) who is also the impeccable director of the film, and aside from the absolutely brilliant performance of lead actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (pronounced Chi-woat-el Ee-oh-for), who perfectly acted out one of my new favorite characters in the past three decades of film, the movie itself has several important lessons to depart. Some of these lessons, I have discovered today, are vital to a proper understanding of and interaction with people throughout the Middle East and Arab world. But also to life in general.

The Lessons

1) "Everything has a force. Embrace it or deflect it--why oppose it?"

Tim Allen's sleazy character asks Chiwetel's character, Mike, "What in life doesn't get you in trouble?" Mike responds simply, but brilliantly, "Turn to the side. Everything has a force. Embrace it or deflect it--why oppose it?"

Mike is essentially echoing the mantra of his craft, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. When you are presented with conflict, what is the essential aim? It is to end the conflict. To deter the struggle. It becomes necessary, then, to take the most efficient route in ending this conflict. There are, Mike says, two ways to do this: you embrace the conflict, or you deflect the conflict. That's it. Opposing the conflict--meeting force with force--only leads to strife, which is the exact opposite of our aim. Important points to consider: conflict need not be physical, as with a fight, but can also be emotional. Nor should conflict always be external--the result of an outside force acting upon you--but can often times be internal, as in the mental anguish that most humans undergo on an almost daily basis, many times self-inflicted. Many of us, for instance, battle with internal forces like lonliness and despair. So often we choose to oppose these forces; we think of ways we can overcome and conquer them, to vanquish them from the recesses of our hearts and minds. This, I believe, is perhaps the exact opposite of what we should do.

Lonliness and despair are geniune human emotions, neither good nor bad, but necessary and vital to our humanity. Instead of struggling with lonliness or solitude, learn to accept it, to understand it, to embrace it. Learn to accept solitude as a means of coming to terms with yourself, your individuality, your uniqueness. Learn to understand the depth of despair; use it as a context with which to understand that, in your despair, you are holding hands with those who suffer across the world. You become part of their brotherhood. You are not oblivious to their plight, but empathetic to it.

You can also deflect these forces. You can turn to the side. You can, essentially, ignore them. Ignorance is one way to avoid conflict, but perhaps is more aptly suited for physical strife than for emotional struggles.

2) "There is no situation you could not escape from. There's always an escape. There is always a way out."

In the opening scene of Redbelt, Mike is teaching a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. Two of his students are engaged in a battle, one of them being placed in a tight chokehold from which he struggles to escape. He can't seem to find a way out. Mike assures him that "There is no situation you could not escape from. There's always an escape. There is always a way out."

Mike is relaying one of the basic tenets of his creed: that there is a way out of every single situation you can ever find yourself in. One of the reasons why, in the movie, Mike's character does not compete in martial arts tournaments is because they're bound up in rules, in parameters, that are not indicative of real-life situations, that don't allow you to do whatever necessary to prevail. When asked if he teaches men to fight, Mike responds with "No, I teach men to prevail." It is an important distinction. Competition can weaken the fighter because the fighter is focusing on the boundaries placed upon the competition itself. IN a real-world situation, the fighter would be free of all parameters. The fighter would use anything and everything to prevail over his predicament, whether he simply deflects the opposition, or chooses to emrbace it.

But, again, the message here is that you can escape from any situation you find yourself in. To do this it becomes necessary to think, and to act. But before you can think or act, it is very important to...

3) "Control your emotions."

In the movie, when Mike notices one of his prized students reacting with anger to his fight training, he tells the fighter to "Control your emotions." If you fail to control your emotions, you can not control yourself. If you fail to control yourself, you cannot control your opponent. If you fail to control your opponent, you cannot control the fight. If you fail to control the fight, you cannot control the outcome. The chain is clear. It begins with controlling your emotions. Anger, fear, surprise--it doesn't matter. "A man distracted," Mike says, "is a man defeated." Control your emotions, then you can think of the way out, and act upon it. There is always a way out, you need only to think of what it is, and then to act upon it with confidence. "Insist on the move. Insist." is what Mike tells his students.

We can see, then, how a few of the many lessons imparted in the film, Redbelt, can be applied to our general lives. But how do they fit into the context of my story about life in the Middle East?

The Story

Today our Egyptian colloquial teacher quit. She walked out of the class, telling us she was quitting and will insist on getting us a new teacher.

We have two Arabic instructors right now. One instructor for our Modern Standard Arabic in the morning, who is absolutely amazing. She is intelligent, funny, a great communicator. She is challenging in a way that is very conducive to learning. We all look forward to her class for several hours each morning.

And then we have our 'Ammiya (Egyptian colloquial--the spoken dialect in Egypt) teacher, who is...interesting. I really have no desire to learn 'Ammiya, even though it is a widely understood dialect throughout the Muslim world. Wherever I go, people will understand Modern Standard, as it is the universal and the formal form of the Arabic language. The only real colloquial dialect I wish to learn and become fluent in is Darija, the Moroccan dialect. So really, I go to the 'Ammiya class every day with no desire to learn it. In fact, I feel that it is really just a hindrance to my education in Modern Standard.

Nonetheless, I agreed to the rules of the program, and I am learning the 'Ammiya. And it's useful. When I'm out and about on the streets of Cairo, it is 'Ammiya that I will mostly be using, not Modern Standard. But once I leave Cairo in a couple months, I doubt I'll ever again use the spoken dialect.

But the instructor.

She is the exact opposite of our first instructor. On our first day of class Wednesday, she made one girl break down and cry. Today, on our second day, she made two separate girls cry. She is a very difficult (and I mean that in more than one way) teacher. We spent five hours on Wednesday learning 12 different ways to say "Hello" and "Good morning." While it was certainly interesting, and taught us a great deal about the culture, it perhaps wasn't the most effective approach. We only have 'Ammiya for two or three weeks. It's meant to be a "crash course" in "survival Arabic." We're supposed to be learning as much of the spoken dialect as possible in those brief weeks so that we're able to navigate Cairo competently.

So this instructor has her own method. It's scientific, she says. Many in the class disagree with it and don't like it. She doesn't smile. She doesn't joke--actually, she does joke, but it's very dry humor that doesn't often translate well across languages. She does not speak English very well, and often times has difficuty communicating with us. It becomes difficult for her to convey key concepts to us. She shuns questions, often times shooting them down and then making the person who asked the question feel stupid. She doesn't like anybody to say, do, or think anything that she is not currently explaining. It's a very tense, very awkward environment. It is not very conducive to learning.

On the first day of class, I couldn't stand her. I dreaded going to class the next day.

On the second day, I actually began to feel as though she was going somewhere. She was laying down القاعدة‎ (Al Qa'ida), the foundation or groundwork, for us to expand and build upon. I do believe there is a science behind her method. I was beginning to see that. Unfortunately, many of the girls in class were not. They were wanting to learn how to say "Help!" and "Don't touch me!" and various other phrases of that nature. They were approaching this course from a nature of fear and distrust. The instructor was approaching this course from a nature of trust and faith.

She is challenging and difficult. She stays on you until you pronounce the words perfectly. There is honor in this, I should admit. However, I do not think it is necessary to have to pronounce the spoken dialect perfectly. The goal of 'Ammiya is communication. Egyptians will still understand you if you don't pronounce if perfectly. Modern Standard is different--it is a formal language, a scholarly one, and pronunciation is very important. We all felt she had her priorities reversed from ours.

Anyways, after making two more girls cry, the girls became more and more defense, and arguments ensued. The situation became more and more tense, more and more awkward. Eventually, the teacher broke down and apologized. She told the class that she does not think she is right for this class, or this class right for her. The girls were instantly relieved, but I was a bit saddened. Here was a woman who, in her nobility and faith, struggled to retain the dignity and honor that she felt was inherent in her profession (and which is). It just wasn't working. I think that the guys in our class--me, Christian, Basit, and Yusuf--were all okay with her teaching method, even if we weren't too keen on her personality. We felt that her challenging and her discipline would build within us a foundation of the 'Ammiya language on rock, and not on sand.

But it just wasn't working, so she apologized and said that she was finished. She would find someone else.

The People

To the girls in my class who live in a prison of fear and paranoia. To all people who, when unable to understand a foreign culture, a different way of life, or something that is simply just unknown to them, revert to fear, prejudices, sterotypes. To all the people of the world, I will say this:

You can prevail over this. Everything in life has a force. Embrace the force or deflect it, but why oppose it and cause yourself strife?

If the girls in the class had done what us guys did, and simply deflected her negative energy and embraced her instruction, the tension and the conflict would not have existed. The conflict can only exist when it is met head on. Conflict and opposition require opposition to exist. Deflect it. Ignore it. Turn to the side. Negative energy? Bad personality? Where? Embrace her instruction. Embrace the challenge. This alone would have solved the class' problem.

In regards to fear about being in a foreign country alone, the same message applies. In the Middle East, it is very common for young, single men on the streets to give catcalls to women and girls they see passing them by. The religion and culture forbids premarital sex, dating, revealing clothing. It is only natural that there will exist more sexual tension here than in any other place. Girls who come from overseas without understanding this and acting and dressing accordingly will receive stares and catcalls. Any girl who has traveled in the Middle East can attest to this. In America, we are so defensive. We choose to meet our opposers head on. We choose to scold them, to tell them off. We are a defensive people.

I can say in all honesty that the Middle East (I know I am generalizing here, and I apologize) is much safer than most places in America and Europe. I have always felt safer on the streets of Morocco past midnight than on any street in any city back in America past midnight. Women traveling alone may receive stares and catcalls, but it will rarely, if ever, escalate to anything more.

Please, girls, do not choose to oppose this force. Do not feel as though you must scold those who stare at you, or say things to you. What would be the purpose? What would be the gain? Deflect it. Turn to the side. Ignore it and walk away. Problem solved. No conflict.

To those who live in fear, to the girls in my class, I want you all to know that there is no situation that you cannot escape from. In the rare and unlikely case that an opposer pursues you and refuses to let you be, trust me, in the Middle East, there will be a dozen people who will come to your rescue. If you're alone with your opposer on the streets at night, saying something as simple as "Assalaamu-alaikum" (Peace be upon you--the conventional Islamic greeting) can diffuse 99% of all confrontations. It is more useful than the Arabic word for "Help!" or "Don't touch me!" which is only meeting force with opposition, creating strife.

If the girls could only understand this concept--deflection--I doubt they would have wrestled with the instructor as they did, and they would perhaps feel much safer about exploring one of the most beautiful and one of the most safe regions in all of the world.

To the girls in my class, to everyone in the world, I would say to control your emotions. Resorting to anger, frustration, and fear is allowing yourself to be instantly defeated. Control your emotions and you control yourself. Control yourself and you control the situation in which you find yourself. Control the situation in which you find yourself, and you can prevail over it. There is a sequential chain. Follow it. If the girls could have controlled their emotions in class, they could have learn to ignore the negative energy. None of us guys resorted to anger, or to frustration. Sure, we felt frustrated at times, but we controlled our emotions. We controlled our situation.

When you're in the Middle East, life is different. "Good" or "bad" are subjective terms and hold no merit whatsoever. They are meaningless. Life is different. Understand that whatever force that you encounter that appears to you negative, you can deflect it. You can ignore it. You can walk away. There will be no strife. You will have prevailed. You will have prevailed because you have avoided the struggle and the conflict in the first place. You can prevail over any situation you find yourself in. Control your emotions.

I feel bad for our instructor. I think she was on the verge of tears. I do not feel sorry for her because I think she thinks badly of herself, or of us. I do not think that she believed, for one second, that she failed as an instructor. Nor do I think that she believed, for one second, that we failed as students. I think that she believed that we failed to understand each other. We resorted to our emotions--to frustration, to fear. We failed to understand each other. We failed to hold communion with one another. This is the worst failure of all. There is nothing more important in this sea of humanity than to understand those with whom we swim, no matter what strange port they may hail from.

Almost everything that mankind has achieved over the course of thousands of years--all the advancements of language, civilization, technology--have all been for the singular purpose of bringing men together. Language brings men together. Why else does language exist? Civilization brought men together. Why else did we part from our foraging ways? Technology--the airplane, the train, the microscope, the advances of medicine--all aim to bring together and to heal. To unite and to solidify. Perhaps that is what makes us human, after all.

Failure to understand our fellow humans is the greatest failure of all. For that I am truly sad, and regret what happened with our instructor in class today.

Still, I must admit that I feel some relief. I do believe that a new teacher will be more conducive to learning. That the classroom environment will be more healthy. That we will look forward more to class each day. Insha'allah, alhamdulilla!

M'assalama!

Through the heart of Cairo

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:10:00 +0000

I arrived Sunday afternoon in Cairo, Egypt, the beginning of my next two months studying Arabic in one of the largest cities in the world. With some of the oldest testaments to the beginnings of human civilization still standing, it is a city that has been collecting the dirt from travelers' shoes for thousands of years. It is thus a dirty and crowded city, well trampled, well accustomed to the sight and sounds of people from foreign ports. It is a city well developed; what was once a green oasis rising from the arid sands along the Nile River is now a city that sleeps in a cathedral of smog and steel.

I'm feeling quite spoiled on this trip, and am still adjusting to the dissonance of the lifestyle afforded to me by this program. Typically when I travel, I do so with very little money, always being resourceful and finding creative ways to save what little I have. I typically stay with local people, in cheap budget hostels, on hotel roofs, or in a tent. I eat in the streets. I wash in the bathroom sink. I skip showers for days, or weeks. I eat sparingly and always lose weight. On this trip, it is quite different. The U.S. Department of State, who is hosting this Arabic study program, is taking good care of its participants. Upon arrival in Cairo, we were taken to a pretty decent 3-star hotel with spacious rooms, hot showers, room service, and breakfast and lunch provided for free. Our hosts gave us all a white envelope stuffed with a wad of cash--a stipend that we will receive every other week to cover additional meals, transportation, and other things that we might need to buy. They cover all bases, spared no expenses, and we are very well taken care of.

Classes will officially start this Wednesday, and will be from 9am - 3pm every day of the week except for Fridays and Saturdays--the typical Muslim weekend. From my conversations with other students in this program, and with some of our hosts, the chance is likely that I will be switching from the Beginner's program to the Advanced program some time within the first week or two. I seem to be about as competent with Arabic as most of the advanced students who have been studying Arabic for several years, and most were surprised that I was in the beginning program. I applied as a beginner because I felt I needed a stronger foundation in Arabic, but from what I can tell about the class structure thus far, I will be feeling too far ahead and quite bored in the Beginning Arabic class.

The other participants in this program are all pretty interesting. We are a diverse group of people with a large stratum of interests and goals. I am the only anthropologist in the group, and there is one girl studying archaeology. Other than us, most other people seem to be studying something far more practical: international relations, economic development, political science, etc. There are about 30 of us total--divided into two groups: Beginner and Advanced. I am one of the few undergraduates in this program, with most participants (both Beginner and Advanced) being graduate students working on a master's or PhD. The ages range from 18 - 32, and there are about 12 guys and 18 girls. A very diverse group, but one united by a common theme: a visceral interest in the Middle East and the desire to learn the Arabic language.

My hotel room is much nicer than expected. It is on the "third floor" (which is really about the 10th floor, since there are many floors in between the "three" that do not belong to the hotel itself but to various offices), and it is pretty spacious. There are two beds (we all have roommates--I get along with mine well!), a lounge area with a couch, and hot showers. There is also a nice balcony (we were the only ones to get a room with a balcony!) that overlooks all of Cairo and the Nile River. Each night, I get the amazing gift of watching the Sun set behind the Nile River.

It's about 1am here, and as the call to prayer shoots like an arrow through the heart of Cairo, my bed is calling me to sleep. Tomorrow will be another day of preparations for class on Wednesday, and hopefully the classes will go well...insha'allah!

M'assalama!

I Followed The Open Desert

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:07:00 +0000

I followed the open desert to find
the greatest temple hidden in the palms
of my heart; I sat and considered
how honey gold hills, burnt brown
by seering sun, bled alms of thanks
to my shade.

Brown phallic mountains thrust upward
in cobalt sky, giving birth
to conscience-shackled stillborn clouds
storing drought for a rain that will never come--
unleashing deprivation upon desert
and deserting those who walk in faith and color
and light.

I left the suffering desert to find
the greatest pain burned in the ruins
of my heart; hear my hollowing mind--
how weeping clouds give birth to Life.

I have written many poems about the desert over the last few years, and, in fact, much of my writing in general at least contains passing references to the desert. This is the latest, the result of an almost stream-of-consciousness exercise at a meeting of artists in Wichita several months back. During the meeting, I wrote the first paragraph of this poem, and have just recently finished expanding upon it.

Studying Arabic in Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 21:11:00 +0000

I just received the notification of my acceptance into the Critical Language Scholarship Program, run by the U.S. Dept. of State, to study Arabic for two months in Cairo, Egypt. I originally applied for this scholarship two days before the deadline last November, at the behest of one of my anthropology professors. Thinking it a long-shot because of its highly competitive nature, I applied and thought little of actually winning.

I was hoping, hoping, hoping that if I did get accepted, it would be for the Arabic study in Tunisia, instead of the other two possible locations in either Jordan or Egypt. The reason I was hoping for Tunisia is because:

a) it's, of course, a place I've never been before
b) it's a place I've always wanted to visit
c) I would be able to, once again, return to my favorite place in the world: the Sahara
d) it would give me a very good chance of being able to continue my anthropology research among the Berber ethnic group, as they extend from Morocco well into Tunisia
e) I would've been able to be housed in a "home-stay" rather than in a hotel
f) the program in Tunisia is an immersion program, where Arabic is the only language you're "allowed" to speak, while the programs in Jordan and Egypt are not.

Apparently, based on my phone interview, they decided that I was a potential candidate for moving up from the beginner's program and into the intermediate program based on my level of understanding of the Arabic language (which, in my opinion, isn't very much). Egypt is the only location of the three that offers both beginner and intermediate Arabic studies.

I'm still excited about the program and about staying in Egypt for two months. I wish that we weren't staying in downtown Cairo, with its crammed population of 36 million people, but I'll take what I can get. This is a great opportunity for me to study Arabic and be immersed in an Arabic-speaking population with a regular opportunity to utilize the language. I'll be leaving on June 11, and returning August 09.

I thought it might be interesting or useful to share my answers to the four essay questions on the application now that the process is essentially over and my acceptance has been finalized. Each question required a short-essay response:

1) Please explain how you become interested in studying Arabic and what preparation you have done to date to learn about the region.

My first encounter with the Arabic language came in the summer of 2006. I traveled to Morocco after my first year of college in order to see first-hand a world that I had only previously read about. I was immediately surprised to find that, for a culture so different from my own, we shared many similar values and belief systems. I knew right away that I wanted to learn more not just about Moroccan culture, but about the entire Arabic and Islamic world.

The first step in understanding any foreign culture is to understand their language. When a language is translated, we are crossing entire gulfs of cultural and historical symbols and meanings, many of which do not find parallels in other languages. Knowledge of a foreign vocabulary doesn't just increase one's understanding of that culture, but will also help shift and redefine cosmological paradigms. Entire world-views can be changed simply by adding a single foreign word to your vocabulary that more adequately defines some state of being or human emotion that your native vocabulary doesn't entirely address.

Since my return from my first trip to Morocco, I have begun visiting Islamic centers in my neighborhood, and have worked with one nearby mosque in studying Arabic in an after-school language program. I am currently an Anthropology student focusing on the Middle East and the role of 'tribal Islam' in North African and Middle Eastern society and politics. I have traveled twice more to Morocco, over the summers of 2007 and 2008, the last of which I conducted anthropological fieldwork among a Berber tribe in the south of Morocco.

2) Please explain what you hope to obtain from participation in this intensive language program and how it will contribute to your immediate and long-range goals. Within your response, please include answers to the following questions:

a. How does the program fit into your academic career?
b. What are your career goals and how does study and mastery of this language contribute toward meeting those goals?

Proficiency in the Arabic language is absolutely crucial for my field of study. As an anthropology student focusing on Islam and the Middle East, it is imperative that I have a firm grasp of the Arabic language, including any local dialects of regions I conduct fieldwork in. This program will surely be one of the single-most useful tools in succeeding in my chosen field. Unfortunately, my present university does not offer any Arabic language courses at this time, so I am missing a crucial piece of the puzzle that will help ensure my future success. I am confident and excited that the opportunity provided by this program will fill in the current void in my academic curriculum, and will give me the skills I need to continue the study of Arabic in graduate school and beyond.

The implications of my mastery of the Arabic language are farther-reaching than mere academia. Aside from being able to better understand and record cultures that I'll be studying in North Africa and the Middle East, I will be able to use my knowledge of Arabic to perform translation work, and to hopefully pursue a long dream of mine: diplomatic work. I think it's hardly necessary to stress the importance of having skilled, educated people in our nation who have a firm grasp of the Arabic language and the cultures of the Middle East; I am excited about the prospect of putting this knowledge to use in the larger contribution of discourse between the East and West.

3) Please explain how you expect to build upon the experience of participating in this intensive language program. Within your response, please include answers to the following questions:

a. What language courses do you plan to take in the future?
b. What resources are available to you to further your study of the language? This may include resources through your college or university, community organizations, personal or professional contacts, or other institutions.
c. If language courses are not offered at your institution, what specific steps will you take to continue your language study?

I am a person driven by curiosity and the desire for knowledge. I am not a person who needs somebody else to hold my hand and guide me towards my goals; I obtain them myself. My strong interest in foreign languages has propelled me to seek out, on my own, language studies not formally offered by my university. Last semester I set up an independent study program with one of the religion professors at my university to study Hebrew. Hebrew, aside from Arabic, is one of the languages I hope to master for the purposes of better understanding the relation between cultures in the Middle East.

With the knowledge and skills provided by this unique program, I will be more excited and more motivated than ever to continue my Arabic studies. I have long planned on taking Arabic courses in graduate school after I complete my undergraduate studies, but having a strong desire to master the language, I feel the time is NOW for complete immersion in the language. After this program, I will continue my studies of Arabic at the university I will be transferring to in the Fall of 2009, and will certainly seek out a graduate school with an excellent Arabic studies program.

When you receive my college transcript and letters of reference, you will see that I have thus far studied French and Hebrew at my university, and Arabic on the side. I am a highly motivated student of languages and culture.

4) The intensive language program will offer an exciting opportunity for students to be immersed in a foreign culture. The program will also offer many challenges. Please explain what experiences and unique personal qualities you would bring to program. Within your response, please include the following information:

a. Please describe any living/working experiences you have had, either overseas or in the US (such as in the classroom, in dormitories or residences, work or volunteer activities, etc.) where you have been required to interact with people from backgrounds different than your own.
b. Please describe how you have dealt with challenging living situations or different cultural situations, and how you plan to deal with experiences that may be quite different from those you may have encountered previously in the US.
c. Please describe the unique personal qualities you would bring to the group.

I believe my experiences traveling, living, and studying in the Arabic world over the past few years place me in a unique position to be highly successful in this program. Collectively, I have spent a total of about six months in Morocco over the course of the past three years. As an anthropology student focusing on North African Islam, I have a special understanding of the religious and cultural traditions of Muslims in North Africa.

I am both highly curious about and considerate of foreign customs and traditions; this excited empathy has allowed me to "connect" with groups of people that, in many ways, are isolated from the outside world. I have lived with a small Berber tribe in southern Morocco, and have been witness to ceremonies of which few Westerners have ever seen.

I thrive on challenging new experiences, and most often feel more comfortable in unfamiliar situations than in familiar ones. While traveling through North Africa, I consistently lived in places with no running water, no electricity, no "Western" toilets, and with few of the amenities that we experience in the West to make our lives more comfortable or convenient. Further, when I traveled among a Saharwi Bedouin tribe in the Sahara, I lived for almost two weeks in their tent, moving from place to place, drinking brackish water from wells and eating curdled camel's milk for nourishment. These are only a handful among many challenging and ultimately rewarding experiences that I have encountered and thrived in over the past few years.

As a member of the group, I would bring unique and relevant experiences, natural leadership abilities, intellectual curiosity, and unflagging determination that would certainly inspire and motivate all in the group to succeed.

Obviously, during my two months studying in Egypt, I will be posting regular blog updates on my experiences--full of photos, videos, and stories from my daily life studying, living, and traveling in Egypt.

New Travel Photo Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:46:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've tinkered with the mechanics of the site much, mostly because of school and work, but I finally have the third main component of my website up.

Navigate to

http://www.indianajosh.com/photos/ (the photo gallery can also be accessed through http://www.indianajosh.com/main.html and then by clicking on the "Photos" link)

and check out the new photo gallery. I wanted to do something a bit different from the traditional photo gallery, so I decided to make a niftly little animation in flash. You can click and drag the polaroids all around the page, and if you want to full-view the image, double-click on it and it will expand. To navigate to the next image, either click the left/right arrows on the bottom of the polaroid, or double-click the expanded image and it will bring you back to the scattered polaroids.

I think it's something a bit different and a little fun to play with. I only have about 10 various photos from my different travels on that page at the moment, but I will continue to grow the photo section over time, so that the entire page is full of little polaroids that can be tosses around and expanded at will!

As always, comments are always welcome. Please drop me a line either through e-mail, or as a comment to this blog, and let me know what you think of the new photo gallery. Do you like it? Would you prefer something a bit more traditional?

The Spices of Morocco

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:37:00 +0000

I received the most beautiful gift from Jasmine this weekend. It's a hand-carved wooden box with an intricate camel and date-palm motif carved into the lid. It contains various spices from Morocco packed into seven neat compartments: cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, ginger, curry powder, star anise, and bay leaves.

It's the perfect gift because of the rare power it possesses.

I believe that smell is the most keen of the senses. The most highly tuned. The most intuitive. A simple smell can unearth a world of memories buried like gold in the mines of our past. In an instant, a life once lived has been revived, and in the briefest of seconds you experience again all the joys of something once lived, now perhaps beginning to fade. The sights you once remembered clearly may have since become blurred around the edges, like the last wispy remnants of the morning's dream. The sounds of a particular place or moment can become lost in the cacophony of a hurried world.

But smells are forever. The smell and taste of things remain poised in memories for almost eternity.

When I flip the lid to the box, I am opening a door into another world. The swirling smell of each spice reminds me of particular, special moments in Morocco. Taken together, the combined smell of all the spices remind me of my first visit to Morocco in 2006, and the first time that I sat foot in the labyrinthine markets of Fez, the largest medieval medina in the world. I am reminded of the sights and sounds of that day, of that moment. The way the sun cast slanted beams of light through holes in the makeshift roofs of the open-air market. The way the scant light illuminated the dust in the air, kicked up from the weary feet of so many strange people from different parts of the globe, gathered together in an ancient place to buy, sell, trade. Or just look.

When I smell the cinnamon in the box (and this is true any time that I smell cinnamon anywhere), I am instantly reminded of the delicious sliced oranges with sprinkled cinnamon that I ate inside of one of the most beautiful restaurants that I have ever set foot in to this day, which was tucked inconspicuously into the end of one of the 9,000+ alleyways in the Fez medina, hidden behind a bland, non-descript door.

When the spicy scent of cumin hits my nose, I am again transported to my first day in the markets of Fez. The smell was overwhelming there, and I will never in my life forget that smell or that moment, and the beautiful sights and sounds they carry with them. I am also reminded of this past summer, as Jasmine and I were staying with my Berber family. I had a terrible stomach ache, and Kamal brought a quarter-sized pinch of cumin powder for me to swallow. It worked.

Each of these distinct smells carry distinct memories. They are the true treasures from my journeys in Morocco. From a simple smell, an entire moment from the past can be resurrected, complete with the sights, sounds, tastes, and textures that made that particular moment completely unique in all of human history.

I love these smells. I love these spices. I love Morocco. I love all of my memories from my three years traveling through and living in Morocco.

I really love this box.

A Sort of Resurrection

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:43:00 +0000

I've officially been back from my trip to Morocco for about, oh, two months now. I know, I know -- I haven't been too quick on the updates over here. For the most part, I was given to laziness under the justification that the majority of my readers were close family and friends who were well aware of my return, and the things that I have been doing, are doing, and will be doing since my return.

I'm also aware, however, of that marginal group that knows nothing more about me or my life than what they read here -- and for that group, I apologize.

I had every intention of making a "final update" blog entry regarding the end of my several months in Morocco, but I just never got around to it. I don't think I'll do it now, since the whole thing itself now seems so...post-mortem.

Suffice it to say that the trip went amazingly well, and will be a trip that I will never forget for the rest of my life. Something about throwing caution to the wind, very impulsively buying a little scooter, and then setting off across both the largest mountain range in North Africa as well as the largest desert in the world, will remain forever potent in my heart and mind. Most cherished, however, will be the memories of the time spent with my Berber family. Upon leaving, the Berber mother dressed in her best attire, walked us out to our taxi, and with tears streaming down her face bid us a safe journey home and love to our families. I didn't think I would cry when I finally came around to leaving, but as soon as I saw that first tear drop from the corner of her eye, I lost all restraint.

I balled.

Like a child.

Like a little schoolboy after getting his lunch money stolen from the 30-year-old-looking 4th grader. Not that it's ever happened to me--I'm just sayin'.

Also, Kamal, my best friend in the world, and the guy who has made all of this possible in the first place, rode with Jasmine and I in the small taxi over 10 hours to the airport, and rode all the way back by himself, just to make sure we got on the plane okay and were safely on our way home. Amazing.

Now that I'm back home, all of my current attention is being placed on turning my trip to Morocco (which was primarily concerned with gathering ethnographic research for my budding career as an anthropologist) into an academic project. I'm working very closely with one of my favorite professors on campus, an archaeology professor who has become my unquestionable mentor, to create either an undergraduate anthropology of religion thesis, or (more likely) an ethnography about the history, beliefs, customs, and culture of the Aït Ougarram Berber tribe in southern Morocco.

It's proving to be a very time-consuming task. I haven't quite taken on a project this ambitious in the past, and I'm really wanting to succeed here. I also landed a very amazing job at the Lake Afton Public Observatory, which allows me to feed my ever-present (but usually unattended) interest in astronomy. I run the telescopes, give tours to visitors, show them all the fascinating objects in our universe, and all sorts of stellar things. Hah--get it? Stellar. Stars. Astronomy....nevermind.

So that's the Barnes & Noble-severely-abridged-to-the-point-of-bearing-little-resemblance-to-the-real-deal version of what's been going on since the last blog update.

For those of you wondering, "What now?" regarding this blog -- my plan is to use this blog as my own personal blog regarding all the various inconsequential goings-on in my life, at least until my next big travel adventure at home or abroad. If the travels and the adventure are all you're really into here, then keep checking back, you never know when the next trip will come.

A Brief Glimpse at a Berber Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:25:00 +0000

Day: 50

Location: Kchait, Morocco

Here are a couple videos showing brief glimpses into the infinitely long traditional Berber marriage ceremony that Jasmine and I attended. I've spent the past few hours at this internet cafe wrestling with all of the videos that I shot at the marriage, but these computers aren't exactly cooperating with me, and I'm tired, so this will be a short post. Less than half of the footage I shot will be shown here, and the videos of the ceremony in full-swing will have to wait until I return home.

For now, here are the two videos of the marriage ceremony. It took place in a small Berber village called Kchait, just outside of Idallsan. Somebody in Kamal's family was getting married, so all of Kamal's massive family attended. There was food, singing, dancing, drumming, clapping, tea, talking, tea, more tea, and there was tea.

The first video is just some random footage of people getting ready for the ceremony, which hadn't actually begun yet. Already you can feel the festive spirit welling up inside everybody. Jasmine and Kamal make brief appearances in this first video.

The second video is of the ceremony just beginning, with all of the women getting up to perform another Ahouach ceremony full of drumming, dancing, and singing. At one point, one of Kamal's aunts makes a sort of prolonged appearance in front of the camera smiling and dancing. Jasmine can be seen dancing with her through parts of the video, and towards the very end, I also briefly join in on the fun and dance with her.

The ceremony itself ended up lasting until about 4am, at which point the bride went in a huge caravan of honking cars from her village of Kchait to the husband's village, Idallsan.

For a couple weeks now, I had been wanting to buy a djellaba -- the traditional Moroccan men's outfit, which is a long, flowing gown-like garb with a hood. Men all over Morocco, from the cities to the mountains to the desert, wear these djellabas. A few days before the wedding, I asked Kamal if he knew how much I might buy one for, and Kamal's uncle overheard us talking. A few seconds later, he literally gave me the djellaba off his back! It was a brand-new djellaba that he had just worn for the first time, and it fit perfect. I couldn't believe it, I was so overwhelmed by his generosity. He gave me his djellaba, which was exactly the color I was wanting, along with a nice white-button up shirt to wear underneat it and a white prayer cap. Here's a photo of me in the djellaba (minus the prayer cap):

Afterwards, the Berber mom and Kamal's little sister, Nadia (who is also like Jasmine's sister and best friend here), took Jasmine out to get her a traditional Berber outfit. Kamal and I tagged along. After trying on a few different outfits at one of the local shops in Idallsan, Jasmine found the perfect Berber outfit. It was literally one of the most stunning pieces of clothing I had ever seen. It was absolutely beautiful, and it fit Jasmine like a charm. Words can't even describe the Berber dress, so I'll just post this picture of Jasmine wearing it and looking like a Berber princess:

Hopefully, my next post will be sometime after our visit to the waterfalls at the Cascades D'Ouzoud, the markets of Marrakech, and the beaches of Essaouira! But for now, I'll wrap this blog up with a parting photo of me, Jasmine, and Kamal taken at the Berber marriage.

Until next time!

Not Out Of The Woods Yet

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:18:00 +0000

Things are looking up, but we're not out of the woods yet.

It turns out that Jasmine's mom was able to get all of our money returned to us after all, despite Expedia's shady dealings. I'm still not sure what all she did and how it worked, but the money is back and we're doing good. Thanks to Jasmine's mom, Debbie, for getting down to business with the folks at Expedia and clearing this mess up -- you've made it possible for us to rest easy at night and continue our trip! Thanks also to everybody who emailed offering help and support, and double-triple thanks to my good friend Ben Tyson for his overly-generous donation of almost $800 -- seriously, his generosity just blew me away! When he read that we were in a desperate situation, he didn't hesitate to help us out. Fortunately we got the issue resolved and his generous donation is no longer needed, but I'll never forget him coming to the rescue for us like that. From what I've witnessed of him on our little adventures together, he's always quick to the rescue whenever somebody needs help. Thanks again, bro!

We have tickets booked for August 18th, which gives us almost another month here. That's good, because there are still more people and places I'd like to revisit -- including our good friend Said at the waterfalls with whom we did some cliff-diving into the waterfall the previous year. So while we have our money back, and while we ultimately have tickets -- we're not out of the woods yet. I won't feel as though we're entirely free from the shady clutches of Expedia until we've finally landed at DFW airport completely intact.

As for now, Jasmine and I are itching to get back out onto the open road and make the most of our last few weeks here. I think this weekend we'll set off once again for the High Atlas Mts, where we'll revisit the waterfalls at the Cascades D'Ouzoud, and from there we'll head back to Marrakech for a couple of days before turning west towards the ocean for Essaouira. We're not sure if we'll be taking the motorcycle on this next journey, since we're thinking of taking Kamal with us. He's never been to many of these places, and we'd like for him to come along.

Speaking of the motorcycle -- here's an interesting story. It was bound to happen eventually, of course, and the only real surprise is that it didn't happen sooner. As Jasmine and I were leaving the town of Ouarzazate (the closest town with an internet cafe) the other night, we took a quick tour of Ouarzazate in search of a bookstore where we might be able to buy a book or two in English. After driving around for a while and failing to find it, we decided to head for home.

As we drove towards an intersection, we began to slow down so that we could stop for traffic. Just as we were preparing to stop, a police officer runs out from the other side of the street and waves for us to pull over. Now, as you all probably already know from my last post, every other time that this has happened I just blew right by the police without even stopping. Part of the reason for zooming past the police without stopping is because I refuse to deal with the corruption that exists within the Moroccan police system where they ask for money for no reason at all. Another reason is because we never bought "assurance" -- the Moroccan version of insurance. Since we weren't going to be in Morocco too incredibly long, we didn't feel like forking up all the money for a year's worth of insurance.

On this occasion, however, we couldn't blow past the officer because we were at a busy intersection with cars. So I pull over and stop, and as he approaches he begins asking for all of the paperwork and assurance. I pull out my paperwork for the motorcycle, and he asks for the assurance. I tell him we didn't have any. He looks at the title for the bike to make sure that I own it, but the guy actually pulled out the OLD title from behind the new one and started looking at me suspiciously.

"You're Arab?" He asks in French.

"No...why?" I respond.

He speaks a few hushed words into his radio, and before long two other police officers come up.

"Is there a problem?" I ask him.

"Yes," he replies with a smile and chuckle as if I'm stupid for even asking, "big problem!"

The other officer comes up and looks at the paperwork. They both begin looking at me suspiciously. Apparently they think that I stole the bike, since they were looking at the old title that had the name Ahmed Hanjou on it. I went over to them and pointed to the new one.

"Ohhhh," the new officer says, "is YOUR bike!"

"Yes, it's mine! I bought it in Marrakech. What is the problem?"

"No assurance," he tells me.

They end up telling me and Jasmine that we have to leave the bike with them for the night, and then tomorrow we must get assurance and they'll return it to us. After arguing with them for several minutes, we reluctantly agree. But as we begin walking away, Jasmine and I talk about it some more. We're not entire sure we feel comfortable giving our sole source of transportation that we paid for to officers that are proven to be corrupt.

We turn back around and see the officers walking the bike up the street. I go over to them and tell them that I'm not leaving the bike, especially if I don't know where it's going and who it's staying with. They tell us we have to leave and the bike stays. I tell them we're not going anywhere without the bike. The officer just shrugs and tells me sorry.

I hold my arms out to him and make the gesture of a pair of handcuffs and tell him to arrest me and take me to jail with the bike, but that I'm not leaving it. The way I saw it, I have already spent time in a Moroccan jail two years ago with Tim, and I could probably manage another night or two without a problem.

He told me no, that he wasn't going to take me to jail, but that he was taking the bike to the police station. I told him to take me with him so that I could see that it actually got there. He told me no. I told him I wasn't leaving the bike.

On and on we argued back and forth for the better part of an hour. Eventually, one of the officers went to a nearby cafe and asked if anyone spoke English so that the communication between me and the officers would be more clear. A smiling young man came walking towards me with one of the officers. He shook my hand and told me his name was Yusuf -- Joseph -- and after asking where we were from, he told me that he had also lived in America for several years, in Michigan.

He talks to the officers in Arabic, and then to me, mediating the entire ordeal. I end up telling him that I wasn't sure I trusted the police and that I wanted to go with the bike to see it placed safely in the station. After another short episode of arguing with the police via Yusuf, they eventually agree to let a police truck come and pick the bike up. Apparently the best we could do is watch the bike get loaded up into the back of the truck.

Yusuf tells us that they will keep the bike in the station for the night, and that tomorrow we should return to Ouarzazate, buy short-term assurance for just a month or two (I didn't even know that was possible), and that the bike would then be returned to us without any problems. After giving his word of the bike's safety, I shook his hands and told the officers I'd return the next day.

Unfortunately, after we had walked some distance down the street, another Moroccan who wpoke decent English came trotting after me, telling me that shortly after we walked away, the police took Yusuf's cell phone away, and then demanded that he come to the station tomorrow with his National I.D. card and then pay 2,000Dh (about $250) on charges of being a "false guide" to tourists. It was a phony charge, as the police are the ones who went and asked Yusuf to translate. After Yusuf served his purpose, the police apparently returned to their corrupt selves and laid false charges on this man who just tried to help. Jasmine and I weren't entirely sure if the story was true, or if this Moroccan kid was just messing with a couple of Americans' heads, but I sincerely hope everything is okay for Yusuf.

So the next day, Kamal and I returned to Ouarzazate and bought assurance for three months -- the shortest period possible. It ended up costing around $50, which, in the end, isn't too bad. We returned to the police station with one of Kamal's cousins who knew the police commissioner. After talking with the commissioner, he informed Kamal and his cousin that the police had actually decided to give me a ticket (they told us they wouldn't) because I was being so "hard to deal with" last night, according to the police. They apparently told the commissioner that they wanted to take me to jail because I was being so "unruly" -- which is a flat-out lie because I actually tried to get the police to take me to jail and they were the ones that refused. Had they actually wanted to take me to jail, they would've done so when I asked them to.

Kamal and the commissioner exchanged a few more words, then told us to wait inside for a little bit -- which turned out to be about an hour. Kamal ended up telling me that the commissioner as actually going to make me pay the ticket, which was almost $100, but then the commissioner asked where I was from. Kamal told him that I was from America, and the commissioner's face lit up and he said "America?! Oh, it's okay then!" and then just ripped up the ticket. Kamal told me that the commissioner said if I was French he would've made me pay the ticket, but since I was American he would take care of the whole situation and there would be no problem at all.

It immediately made me think of all the people who ask me about North Africa and the Middle East in regards to how they view Americans. Most people seem to imagine that they hate Americans, and why shouldn't Americans think that way? For the past 8 years, we've had an administration who methodically indoctrinated fear and panic into American minds regarding the Middle East and all other Muslim nations. One visit to the official website of the U.S. State Department will show you overly-dramatic warnings about "hatred towards Americans" in any Muslim nation.

This is completely unfounded and not true at all. Never have I been treated better, more kind, and more hospitably than in Muslim nations. People all over the Middle East and North Africa actually want nothing more than to be our best friends. It's true that they despise our government -- but according to all the latest polls, so do the American people themselves. Everytime I talk politics with somebody over here, they always tell us how much they love the American people, but do not like our current president. I always tell them to join the club with the rest of the Americans, save a few of the still illusioned who support the administration that has done more to harm not just our own economy, but our global image, than any other in the nation's history.

When he learned that I was American, the commissioner immediately went and took care of the situation. He ripped up the ticket, and then he called to have the motorcyle brought over and personally saw to it that the motorcycle was still in perfect condition. Afterwards, he shook all of our hands, and then did something really unexpected to Kamal. He handed over the keys to his brand new car and told Kamal to take his car back home, and then return at 6:00pm to have dinner with his family. Kamal told him that he didn't have a driver's license, and the commissioner told him that he would personally help Kamal get one.

If any American out there has any fear whatsoever about traveling to Muslim nations in Africa, the Middle East, the Asias, or anywhere else -- shake off that fear. It's not true at all. It's been part of a misleading and ultimately criminal campaign against Muslims waged by our current administration and the corporate and media outlets that it's in league with, especially that pathetic excuse for a journalism outlet, FOX News (it pains me to even attach the word ' news' to their name).

It's safe. It's more than safe. People here love us, they embrace us, they invite us into their homes, into their families, into their lives. Go out and see the world, learn firsthand about the people on the other side of the globe, our brothers and sisters of the same blood. They are separated from us only by distance, ignorance of their cultures, and state-sponsored prejudices. Overcome the barriers of prejudiced views, cultural ignorance, unfounded fear, and reconnect with a people that will become as much a part of your family as your own blood.

If you can manage to do so, then I promise you this -- I promise you this much: your life will be all the greater for it.

Chaos, Mate!

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:09:00 +0000

Day: 39

Location: Idallsan

Not all has been well and full of sunshine in the Farthest Land of the Setting Sun (Al-Maghrib Al-Aqsa). The past couple of weeks have actually been filled with a fair amount of difficulties and misfortunes, all of which I'll try to recollect here in this post (but forgive me if I forget a misfortune or two -- my mind may have been trying to erase some of them from memory).

I'll begin with our journey home from the desert.

After our beautiful night at camp in the Sahara Desert, we awoke to what seemed like a beautiful morning. Originally, Jasmine and I had planned on spending at least a few days out here in the desert town of Merzouga before riding on to the other desert towns of Zagora and M'Hamid some 250km away. However, that night in the Sahara, Jasmine and I had talked about how we wanted to take Kamal out to the desert with us, since he had never before been himself despite having lived in Morocco his entire life. We decided that we would make the journey home early that afternoon, and would go get Kamal and head out to Zagora and M'Hamid, which is actually a great plan since Kamal has a good friend that lives in Zagora, which means free food and lodging.

We loaded up on our camels in the camp and set off through the desert in a clear, blue morning.

Once out of the desert, we took showers and washed all the sand from our bodies, and then packed up and got ready to go. The day was unbearably hot. We decided we'd wait until around 3pm, once the high sun had just begun to dip, before heading out. We didn't want to wait too late, because it was a very long ride and we were hoping to make it back before dark -- something that was easily manageable if we were to leave at 3pm. Or so we thought.

We jumped out under the scorching hot sun and set off for the long ride back home. Jasmine and I were both bundled up in our scarves and turbans to protect us from the sun, the wind, and the sand that had just begun to kick up in the air. Within half an hour, we were driving in a different world altogether. The sandstorm we had faced the previous day in the Sahara was nothing compared to what was being conjured up all around us as we drove.

Conditions did not improve at all the entire way home. The wind was blowing harder than I had ever seen it blow yet in Morocco. Sand filled the air, zipping past us in the wind and stinging our eyes and faces. The ride was absolutely treacherous. The winds were blowing so hard that we never reached over 30km/h topspeed on the motorcycle...and at most points we were only driving at a topspeed of 20km/h.

That was less than three times the speed with which we had driven out to the desert, which means it would take us three times as long. On top of that, the day was one of the hottest days we had seen so far. The thermometer was reading about 120 degrees. The water we had bought before we left was roasting in the saddlebags, and when we went to take a drink, it was like drinking water straight from an oven. Whenever we would buy a brand new, cold bottle of water, within 10 minutes of being on the road it was HOT again.

Talk about a nightmare. Visbility was greatly reduced to the point where we couldn't see far ahead of us, which also meant that cars could not see us as they went zipping by us. Riding in a sandstorm against winds so strong that it slows the bike to a crawling pace under a glaring, relentless sun is a truly horrible experience.

Because we were driving so slow in the wind, it took us much longer get anywhere. As the sun began to dip below the horizon and the land began to grow darker, we realized that we couldn't really recognize too much around us. On all sides of us were looming cliff faces, and it appeared as though we were driving through some never-ending gorge. We never drove through one on the way out to the desert.

Night had fallen in its entirety, and we were soon to find out another of our misfortunes: our bike's headlight did not work. Well, technically it worked -- but it didn't work properly. Instead of shining straight ahead, or at a slight downward angle so that one could see the road and what lay ahead of him, our bike's headlight shone directly up into the sky at about a 45-degree angle. You could've seriously landed planes by our motorcycle's headlight. What's worse, there was no fixing this problem. Upon inspection, it appears as though the bike was actually made this way.

So here's our scenario: we had just spent the past 7 hours driving through sun, wind, and sand on the most unimaginable, uncomfortable scale a human being could possibly fathom. We were in the pitch black of night, driving through a steep gorge with thousand-foot drop-offs all around us at every turn. One wrong move and we'd go flying over the edge of eternity. Our headlight didn't work, and we were narrowly avoiding running over people walking along the side of the street who we couldn't see until the last minute.

On top of all that, we were extremely sore and fatigued. We had just spent two whole days driving out to Merzouga on the motorcycle, and then two days into and out of the Sahara on the humps of camels, and then we had spent the past 7 hours again on the motorcycle. Our bums were beyond sore -- they were disintegrating beneath our weight as we rode, particle by particle. I was also dipping off into the beginning stages of sleep, which isn't exactly a great place to be while driving in the dark through steep cliffs.

We were really hoping to reach the family's village before the night ended, but we soon realized that it would be nearly impossible. I highly doubted we were even driving in the right direction, since nothing looked familiar, and we were both getting too tired to continue. We decided to find somewhere to pull over and sleep for the night, and in the morning we'd try to get our bearings and head home.

It was difficult trying to find a place to pull over in the gorge we were driving through. For one thing, it was pitch black out and we couldn't really see what was around us. And to be honest, there really wasn't much around us anyways other than steep cliff faces and sheer drop-offs. I wasn't sure where we were going to pull over and rest, but I knew that we both needed it, and soon.

Before I knew it, there it was! I drove past it, so I turned the bike around. Sure enough, off to our right there was a little section torn out of the cliff face that we could sneak into along with our bike. We brought all of our stuff into that spot, arranged things so that nothing could be seen by passing motorists, and went to bed. Despite being very uncomfortable, for we were sleeping on a hard, rocky ground with a thousand stones under our backs, it was very beautiful and refreshing. The night air in the gorge was surprisingly cold, and the stars were as bright as ever. We passed out in a matter of minutes.

When we woke up at about 5am, our backs were completely stiff and sore from the rocky ground, but I was hard pressed to remember a time when I had felt more rested. We loaded up the bike and set off down the road in search of someone from whom I might ask directions.

I wasn't sure anybody would be up that early, but a few minutes down the road I spied an old man in a flowing white djellaba and a prayer cap on his head standing next to the edge of a cliff with an empty bucket in his hand. I pulled over and stopped close to where he was standing, and he turned around slowly with his age.

"Salaamu-alaikum," I greeted him. His eyes lit up and he had a goofy grin on his face. He returned my greeting in Arabic with a cute, gruffy old voice. He seemed like a jolly, old soul.

"Ouarzazate?" I asked him pointing down the road we were traveling. Ouarzazate was the city whose direction we needed to follow in order to get to the family's village.

In a high pitched, surprised voice, he replied back,"Ouarzazate? Ouarzazate? Ouar-za-zate?" And with a huge smile on his face and an overly-exaggerated hand gesture, he pointed the opposite direction from which we came. I smiled and said thank you before turning around. Something about that brief encounter with that jolly old man lifted my spirits, and despite having traveled in the completely opposite direction for who knows how long last night, I felt good.

It took us another few hours to reach the family's village. The ride in the morning wasn't too bad; it's only real treachery was its biting cold that nipped at our bones as we drove.

Aside from a nightmarish drive back home, we were beset by other hindrances as well. In the past two or three weeks we have had to replace the rear tire on our motorcyle four or five times. It would keep deflating or popping on us what seemed like every other day. We had replaced the inner tube probably four times, most of the time it was due to the heat. The road was so hot that it would literally burst open the inner tubes.

At one point, after we had already changed the tire about three times, Jasmine and I were driving into town for internet and errands, when all of a sudden, cruising along at about 60km/h, the tire just explodes and threatens to send us face-first into the pavement. The bike was nearly impossible to control, but fortunately we were able to pull it over without incident. W

We ended up standing out in the heat in the middle of the day, in the middle of the desert, waiting on some gentle soul to pick Jasmine and I up and take us to town. The bike was going nowhere. Before long, a little car heading back towards the family's village pulled over, and an older man peered out the window at us. I ran up to him, greeted him in Arabic, and then asked him in French if he would be willing to take Jasmine back to Idallsan. The plan was for her to go back to the village and get Kamal, while I waited with the bike to make sure it wouldn't get stolen. The man smiled and nodded, and soon they were off.

It turns out that the man knew Kamal's family, and he drove Jasmine right on up to Kamal's house without asking for any money. After what seemed like hours, Jaz and Kamal showed up and we went through the process of trying to flag someone else down all over again. Our new plan was to find a truck that could haul all of us, including the bike, into Ouarzazate to get the tire fixed. We stood by the side of the road as vehicle by vehicle passed us by. Nobody was stopping.

Suddenly, a white pickup pulled over, and Kamal ran up to speak with the driver. Kamal came back and said "This man Berber. Good man. We go!"

So we loaded up the bike and drove into Ouarzazate to get it fixed. The guy asked for no money.

Aside from hellish rides and constantly-popping tires, Jaz and I have also been recovering from a string of horrible sicknesses. About a week ago, I was more sick than I could ever realistically remember being in my entire life. Something I had eaten sorely disagreed with me, which I have traced back to an egg omelette mixed with tomatoes, cumin, and all sorts of other spices, and later, a huge heaping of flavorless, strangely-textured rice.

My stomach was in knots, a fever had declared war on my body, my head was pounding, and my joints were aching. I didn't get more than an hour of sleep that entire night. I was literally running to the toilet every half hour to throw up. I had waste coming out of both ends of my body. I couldn't recall throwing up anything at all since I was a child, and I never imagined a person could throw up as much as I was every hour.

What's worse, after I had successfully thrown up everything I had eaten in the past day or two, I ran to the bathroom and in a series of excruciating heavings that woke Jasmine up, I ended up throwing up what Jasmine and I believe to be the lining of my stomach. It was bad.

Things were so bad, in fact, that I had almost made my mind up to fly home the next day to simply see to my sickness. In fact, I probably would have if it weren't for the fact that flying and going from airport to airport probably would've made my situation worse. I told myself that if the pain and sickness continued on into the next couple days, I would go see a local doctor. Fortunately, a couple days later the sickness had passed -- and very gratefully on my behalf. That was torturous.

And so began what seemed like a series of sicknesses for me and Jasmine. If I wasn't sick, than Jasmine was sick. If she wasn't sick, than I was sick. In fact, as I sit here typing, Jasmine has just recovered from a sickness that rocked her pretty hard the past couple of days.

Perhaps the only shining light at the end of this tunnel occured not quite a week ago as we were swimming again at the Royal Golf with Kamal and the old gardener. A Moroccan family from Belgium showed up: a husband and wife with two sons and daughters -- all in their teens and around the ages of Jasmine and I. They were all extremely nice people, spoke great English, and much to our delight, we found out they were Berbers. When Kamal found that out, he and the father embarked on a series of long discussions with plenty of handshakes and cheek-kisses. It's amazing the fraternity that exists among the Berber ethnicity.

The family seemed overly excited about having Jasmine and I come stay with them in their house in Belgium. They gave us their phone numbers and home address in Belgium, and almost made us promise that we'd come out to Belgium some time and stay with them. I also have no doubt that if I ever find myself tramping through Belgium, I'll do just that.

I realize at the end of all this that you have to take the good with the bad. Traveling isn't always about being carefee and high-spirited. There are ups and downs in traveling as in all of life. I also realized more than ever, after being sick in Morocco, that foreign countries are never designed to make foreigners comfortable, only their own people. Traveling takes compromise, patience, understanding, and perhaps most of all, it takes committment. Committment to go on, to not give in to pressures or uncomfortable situations, to stick to your ideals, to overcome all the hurdles and obstacles placed in your way.

Traveling is a load of fun, and is more of a life-changing experience than anything else in the world, I believe. But it can also be very trying, very difficult, very scary, and sometimes, just downright shitty. The good and the bad of traveling is what makes traveling such a unique, life-changing experience. It forces you to overcome difficult situations on your own that you might have otherwise given to someone else to handle back home. It forces you to be resourceful, and to realize just how capable you are of being free and alone out in the world. It's all part of the adventure of the open road, the unexpectedness that comes from unfamiliar and uncertain situations.

Or, as Tim would say it:

It's all part of the Chaos, mate!

P.S. - While I'm sitting here typing this blog entry, Kamal is out helping us change the back tire yet again on the motorcyle. This time, it's the inner-tube AND the tire itself that need to be replaced. We are just throwing cash away on fixing this bike.

Here's to hoping things get better soon...

...and if not, then I guess it's all part of the Chaos!

Road to the Sahara Desert

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:49:00 +0000

Day: 34

Location: Idallsan

This post is going to be a real treat! It's a LONG post, but it has TONS of pictures and even several videos of our trip out to the Sahara Desert and back by motorcycle. It's been a crazy week, and not really knowing where or how to begin, I'll just start from the very beginning.

I'm going to try and let the pictures and videos speak mostly for themselves regarding our trip out and into the desert; I want to keep the writing fairly short, given that these computers out here are treacherously slow and I don't have a lot of time. I'll try to give a quick summary.

Last Friday, after a nice lunch of couscous with the Berber family, Jasmine and I set off on the motorcycle for Merzouga, the little oasis town on the edge of the Sahara Desert -- one of the southern-most towns in Morocco. The road pretty much ends after Merzouga.

As we were saying our goodbyes to the family, Kamal tells us, "Please, you drive slowly. Safely. I wait you here. Please, slowly...I need you."

Jasmine and I thought it was really adorable how protective and concerned for us he was. I have no doubt that Kamal would go to any lengths to make sure we're both safe and happy, even if it was at the sacrifice of his own comfort or safety; I have no doubt that I would also do the same for him.

It's hard to describe the strange mixture of emotions that swept over us before we headed out. It was a combination of suspense, anticipation, excitement, doubts, fear, and something else that can't quite be conceptualized from thought to word. People everywhere had told us that driving out to the desert on a little motorcycle was impossible. I kept responding by telling them that that's what everybody told us about driving through the mountains, and that we had made it just fine.

But for all of my reassurances, I was plagued with uncertainties and doubts. Two years ago, my travel mate, Tim, and I both drove the same route out to Merzouga in a small two-wheel drive Euro car. It had nearly cost us our lives. We ended up getting bogged down in the sand and stuck in the middle of the desert, tires popped, buried in sand, low on gas, and hardly any food. And here I was, two years later, about to do the same exact drive on a little 50cc scooter. What was I thinking??

I was thinking that I had a longing to go beyond the usual risks, to force myself over a kind of threshold of calculation, to jump into a situation where to assess the risks ahead was utterly and absolutely impossible. I wanted to be free, if only for a handful of precious days, of the tyranny of knowing what to expect in advance; to ride, in effect, a high wave of uncertainty until I could no longer feel its motion. I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that it was possible to travel in those very places that others had told us was impossible -- and traveling with a motorcycle and tent seemed the perfect way to put all this to the test. I would be beyond everything in an untried space, without the comforts of the city, no foreknowledge, a place both cruelly harsh and beautiful, hot, sweltering, inhabited by Berber tribes.

On the first day, the drive out was beautiful, and it was clear after about an hour that we were leaving behind all traces of cities and towns. The landscape was cruelly beautiful. It would be wrong to call it countryside; there was no softness for the eye to caress along the route, no fields studded with grazing livestock or shady coppices of tended farmland. Instead, stretching in every direction towards an unreachable horizon were vaulting ridges of purple rock fractured by infinite corrugations, their bases piled with sun-scorched, sand-scoured boulders -- and beyond them, the empty expanse of the world's largest desert.

Where there was human life in that landscape it was made sweeter by the harshness of its surroundings. When, sweating and exhausted after hours of riding through hot wind and furiously blowing sand, I glimpsed a village in the valley beyond, flanked by a patchwork of towering palm trees, I felt I had glimpsed a tiny corner of paradise.

As we drove, we passed through beautiful ancient towns with names like Kelaà M'Gouna, Boulamne Dades, Tinghir, Aitssir, Erfoud, and on the list goes. As we passed through these villages, we would glimpse human life in the forms of old men and women dressed in colorful, flowing gowns walking along dusty streets. Here and there, young Berber girls would be riding atop a donkey stuffed full of hay and reeds, or old women with huge loads being carried on their shoulders.

It was precisely the sort of view one would want to have on a long motorcycle drive. Everywhere we drove, people would stop what they were doing and just stare at us as we drove past. I don't think it's too often they see foreigners zipping through their villages on an old, beat-up motorcycle.

In Morocco, there is a sort of 'National Security' agency known as the Royal Gendarmerie -- sort of like police, but on a national level. In almost every town that we passed through, the Royal Gendarmerie would have checkpoints where they would make everyone who was driving by stop. Officially, these checkpoints have been put into place in order to combat the high rates of marijuana smuggling -- but more often, many of the corrupt Royal Gendarmerie have been using the checkpoint opportunities to demand money from all passers-by. Kamal told me that everyone who stops is forced to give up 10 or 20Dh ($1 - $2) to these corrupt officials.

I had already decided long ago that, should I ever come across one of these police checkpoints, or if I was ever told to stop and pull over, that I would blatantly ignore it and just zip right on through. Further, if I was ever told by a Royal Gendarmerie officer to give up 10 or 20Dh just for the sake of his own corrupt greed, I would just turn it around on him and ask for him to give me 20Dh, and then drive away.

It probably doesn't seem like a big deal to give a buck or two to some corrupt police officers in order to keep the heat off, but I just can't justify taking part of something that serves no other purpose than to fuel the corruption that already exists. I talked to Jasmine about it, and we both agreed that we would just ignore the checkpoints and drive straight through.

Sure enough, we began to drive through towns where the police on the side of the street would blow their whistle and wave at us to stop and pull over. Jasmine and I, every single time, just waved back and blew right by them at 60km/h. Nothing ever happened. Nobody ever gave chase.

Before long, the sun began to drop, the stars began to come out, and the threatening gray clouds looming in the sky began to drop little silver bells of rain. We decided we'd find a place to camp for the night and continue the drive the next day. We pulled off on a little dusty side-road and eventually came across some village's garden. Noticing a little trail through the garden, we drove the bike on the trail through and past the garden, out to an open field. We set up camp and called it a night.

We awoke early in the morning -- early enough to be up and gone before anybody else. We slept peacefully and undisturbed through the night, and so far, the only problem we had encountered was a a brief fight with a massive, nasty spider that kept trying to get into our tent.

We packed up and drove back down the trail through the garden, only to find that we were NOT up before everybody else. Several men from the village were already out working in the garden. It was only about 5 or 6am. The men paused and looked at us with confused faces, and when I waved at them, they waved back with the same look of confusion on their faces.

We continued our drive out to the desert, and before long it was clear that we were reaching into the outer threshholds of the Sahara. All around us we saw herds of wild, grazing camels.

After an hour of driving, we reached a town called Tinghir (pronounced 'Tinehrir'). At this town, there was a shortcut to the desert town of Merzouga. The shortcut consisted of a little road through the piste and the desert -- a road pretty much reserved for only 4-wheel drive vehicles. Tim and I didn't even take this road two years ago because it seemed too difficult. Other cars, buses, and taxis all took the longer, better-paved road through a town called Er-Rachidia and on to Erfoud, Rissani, and then to Merzouga. It was about 4 hours longer.

Throwing caution to the wind and deciding we wanted both to save time and to have a little adventure, we decided to drive our little scooter through the shortcut road. Soon, it was apparent that this was a little-traveled road, and for a good reason. Sands from the Sahara were overtaking the road all around us, making it difficult at times to steer around them and avoid crashing.

For a better taste of what it's like driving to the desert on our motorcycle, here's a short video I put together using footage that Jasmine shot while riding behind me on the motorcycle (just click the 'Play' button).

If you look off into the distance, at times you can see the large dunes of the Sahara Desert looming above the horizon. We were getting close.

At one point, we saw nomad tents on the side of the road, and shortly after, we saw a troth on the side of the road for camels, and decided to pull over for a bit and rest.

Shortly after we stopped, a couple of Berber men in turbans appeared and seemed interested in our motorcycle. We exchanged greetings. Soon, a couple of Berber women dressed in bright, flowing gowns, hijabs, and veils also appeared. The women seemed especially interested in Jasmine and her camera.

After resting for a bit, and taking a quick toilet break behind a grove of palm trees, we said our goodbyes and hit the road again. We drove for another couple hours before reaching Erfoud, a major town just before the lonely drive south to Merzouga. Erfoud seemed to spring out of the surrounding landscape like a fresh well.

After Erfoud, we reached a town called Rissani, the last 'modern town' before we hit the desert town Merzouga. Pulling up to an intersection at which we had to turn left to continue on to Merzouga, a horde of young men came running out from an internet cafe waving at us and calling to us to stop for a second.

They approached an immediately began telling us that it was impossible to drive out to the desert on this little motorcyle. "No road," they would tell us, "impossible on moto."

I simply told them that this was my third time going to Merzouga, and although this was my first by motorcycle, I knew that there actually was a road going out to Merzouga. Seeing that they couldn't pull of their lies, they immediately began soliciting their services by telling us that they have families who live in the desert, and that they can arrange a trip for us for a "small fee."

We just smiled, waved, and drove away. We preferred waiting until we got to Merzouga to figure out our desert arrangements.

It took us about another hour and a half driving through the desert to reach Merzouga. Once there, Jasmine and I found the same kasbah hostel that Tim and I had stayed at two years earlier after we returned from almost two weeks in the Sahara with Moustafa bin Ishma and the other bedouin.

Returning to the Sahara Desert is always a strange experience. It is my favorite place in all the world. The greatest experience of my entire life was the two weeks that Tim and I had explored the Sahara Desert from Morocco to Algeria and back with our bedouin friends. For those of you who have not heard the story, or read my old travelogue from two years ago, I will eventually get around to posting the story on this website.

While at the kasbah, it appeared that Jasmine and I were its only visitors. We decided to stay inside and rest for a little while, as the sun was at its highest point in the sky. Half an hour later, a few people walked in, and I noticed one of them speaking French with touches of Arabic and Berber. I turned around to see a tall, smiling man who looked eerily like Tim. We introduced ourselves, and it turns out that this man, Younes, is from France and is half-French and half-Berber of Algerian descent. He had with him two boys, each about 15/16 years old (I believe), who were the sons of two of his friends. One of the boys, Toufik, was an aspiring DJ and electronic music afficianado, and the other boy, Otheman (I hope I'm spelling that correctly!) was actually of Moroccan descent (although living in France) who wanted to be the next president of the United States.

Jasmine and I instantly warmed to their company, and the oldest man, Younes, spoke surprisingly near-fluent English. He was full of humour, intelligence, and deep conversations. He was a fellow-traveler, a man whose passport bore all the marks and visas of someone who had backpacked through all the countries in Southeast Asia for over 6 months -- which is exactly what he did. It was good company to have.

We found out that they had already arranged a small caravan into the desert for themselves, and it wasn't too much of a problem for us to go with them.

Our guide was an old man named Mohammed, who was no stranger to the desert. As the sun began to lower in the sky, Mohammed brought the camels, I wrapped my head and face with a turban, and we all prepared to head off into the dunes.

If you look at the pictures above, you'll notice a large palm tree with a small tent in front of it, and a small crowd of people. This was actually a Berber marriage ceremony taking place in the Sahara. It's an interesting ceremony which lasts for an entire week.

The bride and her family/friends are in the tent far away from the groom and his family/friends, who are located in the groom's house. Each day of the week, the bride's tent moves closer and closer to the groom's home, until they finally meet up. On the seventh and final day, the two are finally wed.

Below is a short video showing the bride's procession marching to and fro with their dowry (the bride's price in this case was apparently a couple of camels).

As chance would have it, just as we were about to set off into the dunes, a ferocious sandstorm erupted from out of nowhere. The wind was blowing extremely hard, throwing up large amounts of sand in the air, blotting out the sun and casting an eerie, pale orange glow over the whole sky.

Here's a video showing our caravan through the Sahara during the sandstorm. Jasmine is riding the lead camel, with Mohammed on foot guiding. I'm on the camel directly behind Jasmine, and behind me were Younes, Toufik, and Otheman.

Towards the end of the video, you can clearly see the sand flying through the sky and over the dunes.

After about an hour into the desert, the sandstorm began to die down, revealing a bleak, gray sky.

After a couple of hours of riding through sand the color of honey, we reached our camp for the night.

Once at camp, Mohammed went inside the tent to prepare a tazhine for dinner, while the rest of us climbed the nearest high dune to watch the sunset behind the dense, thick clouds.

Here's a short video mix of a few random clips from our camp in the desert. The first part is just some footage of the surrounding dunes, and then it goes on to our guide Mohammed explaining to Younes and Toufik the marriage customs of his tribe (he's speaking in a mix of French and Arabic). I pan around to a sleeping Jasmine (she was feeling a little sick), and then quickly to myself, and then the final clip is of Younes being pressured into singing the French national anthem inside the Berber tent before dinner. It was a very, very good time with very good people in the middle of the desert.

Shortly after Younes attempted his national anthem, we all convinced Jasmine to sing America's national anthem. I think her beautiful voice surprised everyone in the tent, because every soul was silent, and immediately afterwards there was an eruption of applause. Here's the video of Jasmine singing our national anthem in the Sahara:

After a nice, hearty dinner in the tent, we all went outside to sleep on the dunes beneath the stars. The clouds had cleared, and soon the black sky was peppered with a thousand shining diamonds. I could think of no better way to end a night.

I can also think of no better way to end this post. It's been long enough already, and the internet cafe is about to close down. In the next post, I will update everyone on our trip out of the desert, and our nightmarish journey all the way back to our Berber family's village in Idallsan. It was a trip of pure, sheer, 100-percent HELL....kinda'.

Eating Couscous the Traditional Berber Way

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:57:00 +0000

In this short little video clip, Jasmine demonstrates the proper technique of eating couscous the traditional Berber way: hands-only, no silverware.

In Berber homes everywhere, everybody sits around a table eating out of a common bowl with their hands. They reach in, grab some couscous, and shuffle it around in their palm until it forms a perfect little ball which is then popped into the mouth.

It's truly an artform in itself, and is much more difficult than it seems.

Enjoy this little video, and hopefully by tomorrow evening (inshallah!) I will have a blog posted about our adventures going out to the Sahara Desert!

Choose To Live Your Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:26:00 +0000

"Money can't buy back

All your youth when you're old,

A friend when you're lonely,

Or peace to your soul."

Jeff Buckley, Satisfied Mind

Which is more important in life: money or experiences?

I received a message from someone the other day telling me how much they wished they could do what I'm doing; how they've always dreamed about it and want nothing more than to travel the world open and free.

The funny thing is, this person is considerably more well-off than I am or probably ever will be. I made about $6,000 last year. Not last month. Last year.

This one message got me thinking about all the people who I've heard over the years tell me that it's their dream to travel the world.

"I would love to travel," they often say, "but I just can't afford it."

What these people can't afford is NOT to travel! They are enmeshed in the cancerous web of 'Security', and in the worship of this false idol they fling their lives beneath the wheels of routine -- and before they know it, their lives are gone.

What does a person need -- really need in this life? A few pounds of food each day, water to drink, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in at night, and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment.

That's it. That's all -- at least in the material sense.

And we know it, all of us. But we are indoctrinated by our consumer-driven economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath the pyramid of monthly payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, and numerous playthings that divert attention away from the sheer idiocy of the entire charade. I know people who tell me it's their "dream" to travel, and then they turn around and spend $2,000 on a brand new laptop, $400 on a fancy new cell phone, they constantly buy newer cars with monthy payments, spend hundreds of dollars each month on clothes, and so on. I have some friends who spend about $60 in one night just drinking at the bar.

The thought of it all! It's all so outrageously silly! Do they realize, I often wonder, how far and wide they could be traveling this very instant with the amount of money they're throwing away on fleeting, material things? A week under the canopy of stars in the open desert, riding atop a camel, is far more preferable than a night's worth of drinking, or that new pair of designer jeans or shoes. A month in the mountains, with surging waterfalls and the crisp, clean air is infinitely more satisfying than a drive in that new car, or a call on that new cell phone.

"Oh, but I'll travel one day," they usually say, "when I have a good career and plenty of money."

And so the years thunder by, the dreams of their youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience and waiting.

Before they know it, the tomb is sealed. Closed forever. It is too late.

Where, then, lies the answer?

In choice. Choice.

I'll write the word again because it is so important, so crucial: choice.

Which shall it be -- bankruptcy of dollar and coin, or bankruptcy of life and dreams...?

The Prices We Pay...

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:56:00 +0000

Day: 28

Location: Idallsan, Morocco

It's about 2:00 in the afternoon right now, and I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Ouarzazate, about 40km away from Idallsan, recovering from a nasty sunburn and heat sickness.

The past week has been spent out in the 100+ degree heat of the open sun -- most of the exposure coming from constant swimming. The days get so unbelievably hot in the Berber family's village, and naturally, they don't have any air-conditioning or fans. The solution to this dilemna was to go swimming.

First, Kamal, Jasmine, and I went to a nice hotel in Ouarzazate called Hotel Ibis. Kamal used to work there as a gardener, and so for 50Dh (about $6) a person we could swim all day as long as we wanted. It was a bit pricey by Moroccan standards, but well worth it for a dip in a nice, cool pool.

After a full day of swimming and relaxing, we still hadn't had enough. The next day, Kamal and I drive out to a place called 'Royal Golf Ouarzazate' -- a very, very nice villa of fancy, expensive hotels and kasbahs, swimming pools, palaces, and one of the largest lakes in all of Morocco. For those of you familiar with the story of my first trip to Morocco, this is where Tim and I stayed for the night at the Moroccan Ambassador's summer palace.

Kamal knew a man who was working on developing one of the fancy kasbahs, so we figured we'd talk to him and see if we could go for a swim. Luckily, he was cool with it -- even jumped in himself.

We swam for about half an hour, before returning back to the village to tell Jasmine that the next day we would all go out there and swim all day.

So the following day, we all return to Royal Golf and swim in a beautiful pool overlooking the lake. We had the whole area all to ourselves, and it was incredibly relaxing.

All around the pool, the landscape was teeming with plants, flowers, palm trees, and the greenest grass anywhere in Morocco.

It was a beautiful sight, but looking back on it all now I only wish I had known the price that had to be paid by thousands of local Berbers to make this beautiful setting possible.

The old landkeeper who Kamal knew, Abdul Haqim, came out and began telling me a tragic story regarding the history of Royal Golf. Apparently, Abdul and Kamal's village, Idallsan -- the village that I had been living in and had visited several times over the past couple of years, once stood on this very ground.

For almost 200 years, Kamal's village, Idallsan, had a different location than where it was now. Forty years ago, it had stood on the very location where Royal Golf Ouarzazate now stood. Looking around the Royal Golf complex, one could still see remnants of the former village, crumbling walls and corners of buildings that once sheltered generations of Berber families.

Before the old village was destroyes, it was huge, and it was thriving. It was built quite intelligently around a large lake that flowed directly through its center, providing a constant source of clean water. Everyone had huge, bustling gardens overpopulated with all sorts of fruits and vegetables. The village was healthy and strong. Because of its prime location, and the abundance of their fruits and vegetables which could be sold in markets, Idallsan was a thriving little village, and the people were all living well. Many had cars and trucks, including Kamal's family, with which they could drive to and from surrounding villages and towns for work or for trading.

Times were good.

Then, forty years ago, things changed forever. The King of Morocco (not the current king, Mohammed VI, but his father Hassan II) gave in to foreign pressure from Europe and America to build more restort-style retreats so that wealthy, pampered old tourists could have somewhere in Morocco to "recreate" what they're used to back home. The King decided to build a huge manmade lake, a large golf resort complex, and fancy hotels.

He only had to pick a prime location.

He decided, of course, on the site where Kamal's old village of Idallsan lay. It was perfect. There was already a large river cutting through the desert which could easily be expanded into a large lake. It was 15 minutes outside of the large town, Ouarzazate -- just far enough removed from the city to afford a beautiful, unspoiled view of the desert, and just near enough to the city that the old rich tourists could be nice and comfortable.

Only one problem.

Villagers were living there -- hundreds of them.

Deciding that money was more important than the lives of his own people, the king came in and physically forced the entire village of Idallsan to abandon the village and all of their possessions. The entire village was forced to flee, leaving behind homes, gardens, cars, and trucks -- all of which were either completely demolished or sold by the government.

The villagers who the king kicked out were not given any funds or resources to re-settle. They were simply kicked out and left to fend for themselves. Fortunately, the village was very close-knit, the people very close to one another and determined to rebuild. They set up tents in the desert to live in while some of the villagers went off to look for a new place to rebuild.

It's a striking thing to imagine: hundreds of people living in simple tents out in the middle of the desert, when days before they had beautiful homes in a flourishing village.

Eventually, some of the villagers found a location where they could pitch a well and draw water. One by one the villagers marched over 25km in the searing desert heat to the new location -- the place where Idallsan stands to this day.

They had to rebuild everything from the ground up. They were given zero resources. They rebuilt their entire village using the mud from the ground and reeds from a nearby grove. They pitched a well. They planted gardens.

Over the years, the village began to develop -- but in forty years' time, it still isn't complete. A walk through the village will show constant construction being done by the local villagers. Last year marked the first reinstatement of the weekly market in Idallsan after forty years of no trading.

As he and Kamal told me the story, feelings changed from shock and surprise, to disgust and outrage, and eventually to feelings of remorse, regret, and shame that I came from a people who had repeatedly exploited these villagers.

The same thing happened, as I mentioned in my second blog post of this trip, in Casablanca when the former king wanted to build the train station and train tracks from the airport outside of Casablanca to the heart of the city in order to make transportation more 'convenient' for the American and European tourists who weren't satisfied with riding the same dirty buses as the locals. To build the station and the tracks, hundreds of local citizens were forcibly evicted from their homes, thrown into the streets, and left to fend for themselves.

I realized that the only price I had to pay for my swim in the pool of Royal Golf Ouarzazate was a blistering sunburn, terrible heat sickness, and growing stomach cramps. I developed a fever so bad it was difficult to go to sleep the following night. And yet, still, I can't help but wish that I could trade a lifetime and discomfort for a full refund of the prices paid by the locals who lost everything.

When a developing nation places profit over people, and begins to cater to wealthy Europeans and Americans seeking a nice "vacation" -- it is inevitably the local inhabitants who always pay the fiercest price. In this case, hundreds of people lost their homes, their gardens, their food, their source of water, their vehicles, their jobs -- their very livelihood. It was a price not worth the outcome.

I never quite felt the same after hearing the story, and still don't. And although I clearly separate myself from the type of wealthy, spoiled travelers for whom these people lost their homes, I still came from the same "tribe" as these people, and I would represent them, and they represent me, no matter how far I tried to remove myself from them.

And this doesn't just happen in Morocco, either -- but all over the developing world in Africa, the Middle East, Central/South America, and the Asias. The next time you pay for a bar of chocolate, or a cup of coffee, don't just think about the dollar and coins you paid for such a simple delight. Think about the prices paid by the locals. Think about the thousands of men, women, and children who lose their lives every year in the illegal coffee and chocolate trades in Africa and South America. Every year, hundreds of people in several African nations are kidnapped and forced to participate in slave labor in order to provide the rest of the world with the constantly supply of chocolate, coffee, and diamonds that we so prize in America and Europe.

We don't often think far beyond the prices we pay for such pleasures, but there is always a dark side to the things we find so lovely and convenient.

I don't know if I can ever look at a hotel, a resort, a train station, an airport, or anything else "modern and convenient" without being plagued with questions and worries of whether or not people lost their homes and lives.

For more information on the illegal chocolate and coffee trades in Africa and elsewhere, which supply a large part of our chocolate and coffee in America and Europe, please visit the links below.

I think we might all benefit from being more aware and conscious of the real prices paid for the things we enjoy so much.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12754

http://www.american.edu/TED/chocolate-slave.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1272522.stm

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0717/p04s01-woaf.html

Ben Tyson

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:42:00 +0000

Taking a break from the usual line of posts to say a few words about one of my closest friends, Ben Tyson. Ben and I have had several amazing adventures together, including:

Scaling mountains in Colorado:

Surviving waterfall death-traps:

Kayaking down the Arkansas River for several pre-Winter days:

Cooking pancakes on rocks

And surviving some raging floods in the Lost Valley trail in Arkansas:

We've also been scheming up some great ideas together on some great new adventures in the hopefully-not-too-distant-future.

The great thing about Ben is that we both share very similar outlooks on life, including world-views, beliefs, and travel philosophies, which make us perfect travel buddies. Because of this I think that, perhaps more than anybody else, he understands clearly what my experiences in Morocco and elsewhere are all about, what they mean to me, and how they affect me; and to this end, he's been lending his support, both emotionally and financially (thanks bro!), which truly means so much to me while I'm out here.

Ben just got back from about a month in East Africa, trekking and roaming through several East African nations in the pursuit of humanitarian filmwork, capturing evocative footage of genocide survivors, refugee camps, a startling flamingo situation, and haunting stories of men, women, and children in cancer institutes -- all of which he is planning on turning into several amazing documentaries.

While he was over there, he was running a frequently-updated blog on his encounters with the beauty, harshness, and reality of day-to-day life in one of the most amazing places on earth. You can check out his blog and read about his experiences in East Africa at the address below:

http://tysonafrica.blogspot.com/

He is also in the process of working on a fully-loaded website that I'm assuming will focus on his travels, film work (aside from documentary work, he's also filmed several hilarious and well-made indie comedy films: The Ultimate Showdown trilogy), music (he's an awesome pianist and is working on an album as I type), and other interesting things, I'm sure.

He's a really talented and gifted guy who has alot of promising things in store for him in the near future. Whenever he gets his website fully online, I'll link to it from my own site here for everybody to check out.

In the meantime, the best place to find Ben, like myself, is always on the open road...

Life in a Berber Village

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:58:00 +0000

Day: 22

Location: Idallsan, Morocco

I know it's been a little while since my last post -- we've been spending our time living with the Berber family in their village, far, far removed from the graces of internet technology. It's been noticeably hotter this year than I remember it being last year or the year before. My hair had been getting long and wild, my beard was growing in, and the heat was making all of this hair on my face and head a literal heat-trap -- so what did I do?

Shaved it, of course. All of it, just took it all off. Aside from my head now feeling much, much cooler, there's also something liberating about shaving all of your hair off: a sense of freedom, a sense of renewal and refreshment, starting over or beginning anew. I think I'll keep buzzing it all off for a while to come.

Life in the Berber village has been good; we are eating more with the Berber family than what we'd normally be eating back home, so our bellies are full; we've been visiting and spending time with the Berber family and their family and friends, so our relationships and social interactions are great; and we're in a place where we can lay our bodies comfortably at night, shower more often than while on the road, and able to wash clothes when they get too unbearably stinky -- so our health and hygiene is also good.

One thing, however, is amiss: our restlessness. I absolutely love this Berber village, and I could truly stay here and live for a very long time, but there is just one thing wrong at the moment.

Itchy feet. The travel bug.

As much as I love staying with the Berber family, staying motionless in one place for an extended period of time does several things to the traveler: it causes him to sink back into a daily routine and repetition -- the very things from which the traveler seeks to escape from back home; it forces the traveler, in his stillness, to think about things alot -- mostly these thoughts are about back home, friends and family (and dogs!), and all the things that he misses; and finally, and perhaps most importantly, being motionless in one place for an extended period of time restricts the traveler's motion, his momentum, the freedom with which he travels all over the land and explores without bounds or limits to the places he might see or things he might do on any given day.

Jasmine and I are both growing restless and are ready to continue on our travels with the motorcycle. I think our plan is to stay with the family a couple more days, and then head south towards the Sahara. On the way, we'll pass through valleys and gorges cutting through red rocks and pink cliffs, just before emptying out into the open expanse of the desert. We'll probably go first to Merzouga, the town on the edge of the Sahara Desert near the Moroccan-Algerian border, trek out into the Sahara, spend time amongst the dunes and stars. Maybe I'll even find bin Ishma again...

After Merzouga, we'll head out to Zagora, a beautiful oasis town on the edge of the desert. After Zagora, we'll go a short drive away to M'Hamid, another town on the edge of the Sahara. After M'Hamid, we'll try to track down the elusive Le Source Bleu -- a natural spring welling up out of the ground with a small natural waterfall and pool. It's hidden somewhere in the desert of the south, amid sun-scorched rock and green palm trees. We'll probably camp there for a day or two, relaxing, swimming, and just enjoying the view.

After all of that, we'll probably head back to the Berber family's village, spend another week or two with them, and then continue north to travel around the rest of Morocco, revisiting familiar places and old friends.

We've spent the last few days in the Berber village of Idallsan exploring the surrounding landscape. One day, Kamal and I walked out of the village, down the road, and sat down on a huge rock, looking off into the distance at the Atlas Mts., reminiscing on our past adventures with Tim, the crazy Australian who made my first trip in Morocco absolutely unforgettable.

As we sat there talking and thinking of Tim, the sky had suddeny lit ablaze in the burning flame of sunset, and the mountains darkened to a rich purple above a northern horizon so distant it gave the impression of tracing the curvature of the earth.

It was the kind of sight that made me long to explore, to take a friend and a pair of horses and simply head into the nameless mountains and wander, drawing from the richness of their magnificent solitude and learning whatever lessons from the spirit of such places as they might offer.

I told Kamal about my desire to go explore the mountains, and he smiled and said yes, we could explore them. We talked about taking a couple of backpacks stuffed with food and water, and heading off across the hammada desert toward the mountains. It would probably take a couple days' worth of walking to reach the mountains, he said. He also told me that the mountains were inhabited by dozens of small, traditional little Berber villages, and that the people were very friendly. I think that whenever Jasmine and I make our way back to the Berber family's house after heading south, we'll grab Kamal and all head out to the mountains to camp out and explore for a week or so.

On another day, Jasmine and I walked out of the Berber village, across the street, and into the open hammada desert.

After walking a certain distance, we decided to climb this huge mountain-hill of rock and dirt that Kamal has called 'The Volcano' because it's shaped like, well, like a volcano. We climbed to the top of the volcano and sat for a while as the sun began to set. The view around us was spectacular. It was as if we were standing at the very center of the earth -- the horizon seemed to stretch on forever in all directions, before disappearing into the fading phantom of fog and dust that clouded the sky around us.

The day after that, Jasmine, Kamal, and I all set off across the hammada towards an ancient village called Affra.

On the way, we passed by a well from which water was drawn, just before spying the first sight of the village: the jutting white minaret tower of the village's mosque.

The village had a crumbling, antiquated beauty to it. All around were the broken remnants of former buildings, the mud and reed from which they were once made returning slowly to the earth. There were explosions of greenery all around us -- flowers, plants, palm trees everywhere. Little streams and channels of water cut through the rock and dirt to give life to the plants desperately clinging to life in the middle of a barren landscape.

On the other side of Affra, a river wrapped itself in a long arc around the village. Beyond the river was an even older village nestled in a thick grove of palm trees, and to the right were a series of caves poked into the side of a tall, steep cliff face. Kamal confirmed that they were the same caves that I had explored two years ago.

It was a nice, but very, very long walk, and it soon had me fantasizing about a clear, cold cup of water back at the family's house.

A Note on Berber Hospitality and the West's Misunderstanding of Islam

People here have been nothing but overly kind and gracious to Jasmine and I since we've been here. The family always makes sure we're well fed, comfortable, and taken care of. When walking through the village, people everywhere greet us with Salaamu-alaikum, 'Peace be upon you' and follow up with "How are you? Fine? And your family? They are good? How is your health? Or your house? You are good? Praise be to God!" -- or as we would say back home, "Hello."

People we pass in the streets invite us for tea and conversation. Whenever we visit an aunt's house or a grandma's house (Kamal seems to have dozens of aunts, and more than a couple of grandmas), they smile, giggle, invite us to sit in the shade, drink tea, eat, and on it goes. Truly amazing, friendly people. In most cases, they sacrifice their own comfort for ours, with the old women often standing up, getting the pillows on which they were resting, and handing them to us.

These people, the Berbers, are infected with a seemingly incurable bout of happiness, warmth, generosity, and exceptionally good humour. They are perhaps the happiest people that I have ever known. The old women, wrinkled and worn by lifetimes of difficulties and hardships, sit on the hard concrete floors and laugh, smile, and joke with us until they fall asleep from the sheer exhaustion of it all. Natural comedians, always happy.

It strikes me that in traditional Berber societies, there is no wrestling with questions of identity, purpose, or self-worth as there is back home in the Western world (America and Europe). In the West, men and women are almost always afflicted, usually during the decade between their 20's and 30's, with severe emotional crises in which they question the meaning of their lives, their purpose on earth, their role in society, and even their own identity.

Here, in North Africa, everyone knows their place and purpose. Both strong, inherent religious beliefs as well as long-lasting traditions and custols imbue these people with everything they need to know regarding this life -- their place within it, their purpose and meaning, what awaits afterwards, etc. The West might be a place of privilege, but people suffer differently also. Exempt from many of the relentless physical and social obligations necessary in a traditional life for survival, people back home become spoiled and fragile, neurotic and prone to a host of emotional crises unknown in other parts of the world.

Much of their hospitality and kindness stems from their deep devotion to their faith, Islam. The Qur'an (the Muslim holy book) demands that all Muslims treat guests with the utmost kindness and generosity, as guests are ata Allah, gifts of God.

As I examine their devotion to Islam, their generosity, their peacefulness, it hits me harder than ever before how misunderstood and mistreated Muslims all over the world are by people in America and Europe. Far too often, we identify Islam and Muslims everywhere with radical fundamentalists, terrorists, and jihad-loving militants. There is no historical equivalent anywhere in the world, in the reverse sense, to the centuries of derogation, defamation, and sheer cruelty that people in America and Europe have unleashed upon Islam as a religion and as a system of faith, or the amount of utter disrespect and hatred heaped on their prophet, Muhammad (PBUH).

Largely because of the acts of a small band of tribal cults (Al-Qaeda) who parade their hatred and misguided ideologies under the false isguise of Islam, we in the Western world have lowered to the level of equating all of Islam with these misguided peoples. Nowhere in the Middle East or Africa do Muslims equate all of Christianity as a religion with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, or with Jim Jones and the Peoples' Temple. They did not, and we did not, demonize Americans and white people everywhere whenever Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber committed their unforgettable acts of terror. So why do we, back home, fail to treat them with the same respect and intelligence with which they treat us?

But this goes beyond current events to earlier history, as well. So far as I am aware, Vietcong soldiers fighting the Americans were never referred to as 'Buddhist rebels' any more than French resistance to German occupation was termed the reaction of 'Christian insurgents'.

But wait, we can go back even further in history. While Christians everywhere were burning books and destroying human civilization during the Dark Ages and the numerous 'Inquisitions' started by the Christian churches, Arab Muslims were busy copying ancient Greek works on science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy, ensuring that mankind could continue its search for truth and understanding. Few people today realize just how much we owe our current understanding of the universe, mathematics, and perhaps most importantly, medicine, to these Arabs and Muslims who so many of us are quick to identify as backwards, primitive, hateful people.

The Jews fled to the Middle East and North Africa to escape persecution from the Europeans, and to be given life and rights under Islam. It is the concept of the dhimmi - the individual who is protected by Islam and allowed to retain their own faith and beliefs.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli war was the first true military conflict between these two people, and was due to European occupation, not religious intolerance or any feelings of spite or ill-will between Muslims and Jews.

In 1492, as Colombus set sail to "discover" the New World (and commit mass rape, pillaging, enslavement, and genocide of entire indigenous populations), Granada - the last stronghold of the Islamic Empire in Iberia - was defeated, ending more than 400 years of a prosperous, highly advanced Islamic civilization - the great empire of its time. Immediately after that, the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula were persecuted by the Catholic Church, their religion outlawed and their people were murdered, displaced, and forced to convert.

Before that, as throughout the entire Islamic reign, Jews thrived under Islamic rule; their religion was respected, and they had the right to engage in socio-economic lives. Ever hear of a dhimmi?

The Prophet Muhammad had a Jewish neighbor living right next to him. Muhammad rushed him a doctor when he was ill - and why wouldn't he? He was his neighbor and a man of ancient faith which Muhammad had based his own teachings and his own faith upon.

Few non-Muslims are aware that Lebanon had a thriving Jewish community that prospered there in Lebanon for centuries until very recently. In fact, the last Jewish synagogue in Beirut was still being used until the Israeli invasion in 1982, and was destroyed, quite ironically, by Israeli jet-fighters bombing Beirut.

Even fewer non-Muslims are aware of the profound reverence, admiration, and respect throughout the Islamic world for Jesus, or the high esteem in which Mary is held by practicing Muslims. No prophet anywhere in all of the Qur'an is quoted more times than Christianity's own Jesus Christ, not even their own final prophet Muhammad (PBUH). And while many Christian churches are busy preaching about the hellfire that awaits all those who have not been 'saved' or 'baptised' in Jesus' name, practicing Muslims everywhere regard both Christians and Jews as 'People of the Book' -- fellow believers in the same God who all have their place in paradise. And by the way -- Allah is not their own, specific, separate God; it is the same God, the God of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Israel. 'Allah' is simply the Arabic word for 'God', used by Arab Christians just as much as by Arab Muslims.

As I travel through this Muslim nation, witnessing acts of generosity, kindess, and hospitality that I would never see back home among strangers or, in some cases, even among my own family, I feel a sense of remorse, deep regret, and ultimately embarassment that back home in America we fail to truly understand who these people are and what their faith is all about.

That's it for now -- my belly is hungry and my body is sweaty. If I get a chance, I'll post another blog entry before Jasmine and I head south on our travels. Otherwise, I'll be in touch as soon as I get the chance.

Berber Tribal Ceremonies

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:45:00 +0000

I don't have much time at the moment to make a full-fledged post, but here are a couple of exciting videos of Berber ceremonies in the Berber family's village in Idallsan. Jamine, Kamal (my Berber brother), and I all make brief appearances in both videos -- so if you have a few moments, check them out. You'll be glimpsing a part of Berber tribal life that is seldom seen by outsiders.

The first video is of the entire village of Idallsan marching through the streets at about midnight clapping and chanting in celebration of the victory of Idallsan's football (soccer) team in the finals. I got to glimpse a little bit of the game firsthand several days ago, and the young boys of Idallsan are fine football players!

The second video is of a Berber Ahouach ceremony, again at about midnight and again in celebration of Idallsan's victory. An Ahouach ceremony is a tribal song-drum-dance ceremony in which men sit in a circle beating drums while women move in circles around the men clapping and singing. It was exciting to watch, and I feel privileged to have been able to glimpse this little-seen side of Berber village life.

Everywhere there was an infectious enthusiasm for life, and I felt all the richer for it. The volume of activity around us made me forget that I was a mere visitor to this tribal spectacle, and not a local participant -- though Jasmine and I attracted plenty of stares by all of the villagers.

On The Road, Through Mountains And Desert

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:55:00 +0000

Day: 14

Location: Idallsan, Morocco

Today marks the end of our first full two-weeks in Morocco, and what a journey this past week has been!

I am genuinely surprised that our scooter, The Little Camel, was actually able to make it up and over the High Atlas Mountains without any problems. By car, the trip from Marrakech to Ouarzazate over the High Atlas Mts. is about 4 hours -- it took us twice that riding The Little Camel. Mostly, it was because not only did the bike have to haul two human beings, but also our rucksacks and food. We traveled at an average speed of about 50 km/h -- up the steep mountain hills that pace slowed to a crawling 10-15 km/h, but on downhills we were racing along at 70 km/h.

A motorcycle, I have found, is definitely the best way to see a country firsthand. For seven hours the road raced under us and all around us reared a mountainous, cloudy world, peopled with hidden little Berber villages, Berber children chasing goats around the mountainside, donkeys grazing on the sparse grass, and mosques and minaret towers that glowed a hard white in the glaring rays of the sun.

We would stop every hour or so to give the bike a rest, and every time we stopped, out of nowhere a family of Berbers would appear on the side of the mountain, their children curious at the sight of these two foreign intruders. At one point, a group of Berber children came and sat near us staring at us and giggling. We would give them some of the trail mix we were eating, and they would lay it all out on the ground and begin separating the individual pieces.

The beauty of the surrounding mountains through which we rode was matched only by the merciless heat of the sun. Jasmine and I both developed sunburns on our arms, necks, and faces. As we rode through the mountains, I remember thinking that there was something about modern air travel that I'd come to dread. There's no arousing sense of passage towards your destination: no slowly changing landscape reaches back along the line of your motion, adding to an awareness of where you will soon end up. The quantitative measure of the distance you are traveling loses all relevance; miles mean nothing as you leap across oceans and continents in a single bound, across barriers that have guided, ever since humankind stood vertical enough to get over them, the very passage of civilizations.

But here, riding slowly through the High Atlas Mountains, over every bump, crack, and rock in the road, we felt intimately closer to the land, and it seemed only natural that we would keep riding through the mountains forever.

The dream of the eternal mountain ride came to a close after a solid seven hours, when the looming walls of the mountainside began to give way to the spellbinding, cruel beauty of the hammada desert.

For another couple hours we rode through a landscape like the surface of the moon, crater-like and devoid of life -- until, out of nowhere, palm trees, date trees, and the mark of human civilization would explode into view.

In the distance, villages seem to rise organically from the soil, built from the same red clay as the earth around them. Jasmine and I would stop to rest in the shade of a tree, and take the time to explore ancient, ruined villages long since abandoned. On the far side of the hills I could see what resembled crumbling castles clinging to high cliffs, and felt a pang of longing to stay in this wild place for a year and explore.

And turning the bend of a corner in the road, I spotted the white-washed domed roof of a marabout tomb. A marabout tomb is the shrine of a saint in the tribal Islam that exists in the south of Morocco. Inside each domed shrine rests the body of a person regarded as a holy man, or saint, and people from surrounding villages will often make pilgrimages to the shrines where they enact elaborate religious rituals and ceremonies, and then pray and ask for health, wealth, rain, fertility, or a number of other things. The so-called "Cult of the Dead" and their "maraboutic" traditions are one of the major things I'm seeking to study in my pursuit of North African religious studies. Now is not the time, but later I will better explain the role and purpose of marabout tombs and saints in the tribal Islam of Morocco.

Shortly after, we arrived in the Berber family's village. We were greeted by warm, bright smiles, and a thousand hugs and kisses. I have never known a place to feel more like home in recent years than this tiny house built of mud and reeds in the south of Morocco. There is no question that this Berber family, the Aït Ougarram, is as much my own family as the family who shares my blood back in the U.S.

Soon, I will post a second blog detailing our time spent over the past several days with the Berber family -- but for now, the heat of this stifling internet cafe two hours outside of the Berber family's village is too much to bear.

From This Hour, Freedom!

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:58:00 +0000

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

From this hour, freedom!

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I will, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will,
Divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

Walt Whitman, from Song of the Open Road

-------------------

It is complete. Done. I bought the motorcycle.

Jasmine and I have been itching to travel Morocco on our own whim, our own schedule, to go wherever we want to, whenever we want to, not confined by bus, train, or taxi schedules and fares. Not confined by predetermined routes through well-traveled roads.

We have been itching to break free from all that and see the land as closely as possible. We want to travel by bike and camp under the stars by the side of the road each night. We want to visit little Berber villages tucked away in the remote regions of the mountains and deserts, places where buses or taxis never travel to. We want nothing more than to feel the breath of the open road in our faces and the wind in our hair.

We originally bought a brand-spanking-new two-stroke 49cc moped with an awesome 1970's vintage look and feel to it, as seen below:

However, after much contemplation, discussion with friends and locals, and online research, we came to the conclusion that this spiffy little beast, though very cool looking, probably wouldn't make the long haul through the treacherous High Atlas Mountains and beyond through the merciless hammada desert. Not to mention it ran only on a precise mixture of both gas and oil (4 percent) -- something that's harder to come by once you leave the cities.

Luckily, one of the young guys at our hotel is leaving Morocco soon for Belgium, and was looking to get rid of his motorcycle. His was also a 49cc engine, but it was a little motorcycle scooter, not a moped, and was also a 4-stroke instead of a 2-stroke. Stronger, faster, and running purely on gas instead of some strange mixture, this bike was definitely the better bet for taking us all across Morocco.

We nicknamed our little scooter جمل Jumail -- which is Arabic for "The Little Camel." This tiny little scooter will be hauling both me and Jasmine, along with our two rucksacks all across Morocco, over mountains, through cities and villages, and across deserts. Admittedly, the vintage saddlebags look slightly awkward on the more modern and sleek design of The Little Camel.

We celebrated our buy and the upcoming freedom with a steaming, and only partially-delicious bowl of snail soup.

So tonight marks our last night in the city of Marrakech, and the onset of a new adventure. Our first goal is to attempt to cross the High Atlas Mountains on the dangerous and difficult road from Marrakech to Ouarzazate, "the most difficult road in all of Morocco" one man told me. We have been told repeatedly that such an attempt is impossible, to cross the High Atlas Mountains on a little tiny scooter. It's true enough -- I've traveled the road from Marrakech to Ouarzazate that winds through the High Atlas Mountains many times, and it is always an experience. There is only one real road that cuts its course through the mountains, and the road is narrow, narrow, narrow and winding, curving, snaking. In many cases, there are no guardrails to keep travelers from shooting off the edges of 4000+ ft cliff ledges, and there have been times when buses full of travelers have actually flew over the ledge of a cliff and down a four-thousand foot drop-off in an attempt to avoid a head-on collision with another vehicle coming around the corner. I trust that I can navigate the roads safely enough, but there still loom questions in my mind of whether our little scooter can actually make it up and over the steep, hilly roads at such high altitudes.

Here is a preview of the High Atlas mountain range that we'll have to cross over tomorrow (Note: these photos are not mine, but belong to Maroc Tourisme Online):

No, those are not clouds in the background, but the High Atlas Mountains.

I think that there comes a time on any journey when one must leave behind the comforts and certainties of the familiar and the known and head blindly into the uncertain and the unknown, to submit oneself entirely to the precarious, but often rewarding, hands of fate. Tasleem. Submission. Two years ago I made just such a blind, dangerous, uncertain journey with Tim, the Australian traveler whose fate became intertwined with my own in a series of incredible events that would come to shape my life. It was the experience of a lifetime, and I'm itching for another.

From this hour, freedom!

Wrapping Up Marrakech

noreply@blogger.com (INDIANA JOSH) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Day: 6

Location: Marrakech

It's great to reconnect with old friends half a world away after you haven't seen them in a year. Around this same time last year, over the summer of 2007, Jasmine and I were here in Marrakech. While browsing the markets last year, Jasmine decided to buy a pair of leather sandals from a merchant, and after assuring us that the sandals were great quality, handmade, we bargained for a fair price and bought the sandals.

Not three days later they fell apart. Obviously, we took them back to the merchant, nestled deep within underground markets where fewer and fewer tourists ever frequent. We asked for either a repair or a refund, and the merchant intially refused. Not taking no for an answer, we demanded that he stand by his statement of quality and at least repair them for us. Exasperated, he took the sandals from us and told us to return at 4pm the next day.

The next day we return early for the merchant's own convenience, but what do we find instead of a somewhat disgruntled merchant with a fixed pair of sandals ready to hand over? Closed doors and nobody home. For some reason, the merchant had closed his shop up entirely. At this point, the merchant had both our money and our sandals, and he also had the knowledge that Jasmine and I were planning on leaving early the next day -- it smelled oddly of a rip-off.

We decided to ask the surrounding merchants, who certainly knew our sandal merchant, why he was closed, where he was, or how he might be reached. All we received were shrugs from the merchants. I then demanded that one of them call our merchant, because I knew they had his number, but when they refused to do so it became clear that further action was required.

I sat my bags down outside of the merchant's closed chop, and Jasmine did the same. A protest, I thought, is perfectly in order here. I told the other merchants that I would wait here, and not budge one inch, until the merchant either returned and opened his shop, or until somebody called him. They didn't seem to care.

Next, I began driving away every customer who visited the shops of the surrounding merchants. Whenever somebody would visit, either a tourist or a locals, I would yell out "No business! Thieves! They steal money and shoes! No buy!" Obviously, this caused some very angry glances from the shopkeepers, understandably upset at the continuous loss of customers. Still feeling cheated by our merchant and by the lack of action of the surrounding merchants, I refused to quit.

The sit-in protest lasted for a full 6 hours. Over the course of 6 hours, we drove away customer after customer with repeated cries of "No business!" Whenever confronted by one of the merchants, I would stand up, shake my head no, point at them to get out of my face, and continue to shout "No business!"

Eventually, however, something happened that I didn't expect. Our cries of "No business!" turned into a game with the children of the merchants. A couple young boys would glance out of their fathers' shops with wide, bright smiles and yell "No business!" probably without a clue of what it even meant. Humored by their behavior, I would smile back and say "No business" and give them a thumbs up.

It then turned into a song, with not just the children of the merchants, but the merchants themsevles taking part in. The merchants and their children would clap to a beat, all the while repeating the phrase "No business, no business, no business!" I began clapping back and singing along with them, and at a certain point I stood up and started to dance, sending waves through my body and popping to the beat of the clap. Smiles and laughter from the merchants greeted my actions, and before long we were all shaking hands and introducing ourselves.

They began immediately trying everything they could to help. They tried to call our merchant, but there was no answer. Another merchant said that our merchant was at a wedding, and would not be back for two more days. Finally, in an act of unparalleled kindness that I still don't cease to think about, one of the merchants offered to let us take any pair of shoes or sandals from his shop for free. We looked, but couldn't find a pair like Jasmine's that we wanted. We kindly and graciously refused, and said that we would return in a couple of days.

Over the course of those six hours that a strange and unlikely friendship had formed, we played cards with the merchants and their children, we laughed and we joked together, and we imprinted upon each others' minds memories as bright and vivid now as a year ago when they were fresh. Out of the depths of exhaustion and frustration, a friendship had bloomed and a certain connection had been formed that I felt would never wither or break.

Last year, after that incident, we had returned three weeks later and, much to our surprise and delight, all of the merchants had instantly recognized us, shouted out "No business!" and greeted us with smiles, handshakes, and kisses on the cheeks.

So this year, back again in Marrakech almost exactly a year later, Jasmine and I returned deep into the markets to the place where our merchants set up shop. We both wondered if they would remember us at all. We initially walked right past them, almost not realizing, and after continuing on down into the market even deeper, we turned back around.

Soon, a handsome, beared man about the age of my father stepped out into the walkway with a huge smile, bright eyes, and then said "No business!"

They had remembered us! A year later, they had remembered us!

We replied back with "No business!" and before we knew it, we were shaking hands, being embraced warmly, and receiving cheek-kisses from all of the familiar merchants and their children. Smiles lit up the darkness of the market like a torch.

"How are you my friend," they would ask us, "you are good? And your family is good? Perfect? How are you? Very good....perfect. How are you, you are good my friend?"

They must've asked how we were doing a thousand times, and how our families were doing just as many.

It was a warm reunion of unlikely friends.

I knew that in the company of these men I had a brotherhood of friends from whom I could trust and be trusted from. We drank tea, we talked, we joked, we continues shaking hands and asking how each other were. It was simply fantastic, and I know now that we will have these great and noble men as friends whenever we return to Marrakech, for as long as we might live to return.

----------

Another interesting incident occured yesterday. While searching for a moped that Jasmine and I could cruise around Morocco on, we were taken by a seedy looking older man to an outdoor "moped market." This was a very interesting place. It was very much like the traditional Middle Eastern 'camel markets' where hundreds of Arab traders and desert nomads with their camels would fill up an open space bargaining and shouting in an attempt to either buy or sell camels.

There were probably hundreds of Moroccan men of all ages gathered in an open pile of dirt and debris outside of the old city. Everywhere mopeds roared to life in attempts to show potential buyers that they actually worked. Men shouted in Arabic at the top of their lungs yelling out prices, and curious buyers wandered to and fro inspecting the bikes. There were old and new bikes, strong and weak bikes.

Our seedy and certainly questionable guide navigated Jasmine and I threw the dense, thick web of mostly poor and dusty Moroccan men. As Americans, we stood out like sore thumbs, and attracted the attention of everyone there. All of the prices quoted to us were outrageously high -- that much was apparent to us for this reason: virtually every person there was poor and broke, and virtually every person there was still managing to buy a moped. If the mopeds were being sold at the prices quoted to Jasmine and I, which were roughly anywhere from $600 to $1000, then not a single person at that moped market would've been able to afford one.

I tried bargaining hard, but all I got in return was angry comments. It was obvious to them that we were Americans, and Americans to them always equal rich, regardless of how little money we might've actually had.

At one point, I tried to cut the outrageous price offered to us on an old, beat up moped directly in half, in an attempt to counterbalance the high price offered to us. In return, our guide says to us "What, are you joke him? You just joke him? You no buy just joke?"

Nothing irritates me more than merchants who ask me if I'm joking whenever I play the very game they're playing with me. In North Africa and the Middle East, bargaining is a way of life, but sadly it is rapidly disappearing. Every year, more affluent and rich tourists from France, Japan, and the U.S. visit these places and DO NOT BARGAIN -- they just pay outright whatever price is quoted to them. Originally, this had offended the merchants with whom bargaining had been a traditional way of life for thousands of years. But over time, it equaled profit, which slowly overruled tradition. Nowadays, it is sometimes difficult to find merchants who still follow the traditional rules of bargaining.

I told our guide that no, I wasn't joking, and that yes, I was very serious about buying. I also told him that I did not appreciate being treated like a fool and an idiot, and that I was aware these bikes didn't cost a fifth of the price being quoted to us. He tried to respond, but with me and Jasmine both very irritated, I shrugged him off and walked away.

We decided that we had enough, and that we would just walk back to Djemma el-Fna and buy a brand new moped from a street vendor with fair prices. Our guide ran after us calling for us to stop. I turned around, and he asked me for money so that he could get a taxi home. I flat out refused, telling him that he is friends with taxi drivers, and that he wasn't going to get any payment from me for his services as a false guide and potential rip-off artist. He refuses to give up, and so I get in his face and tell him that I'm not giving him any money at all, and that if he so chooses, he can walk back with us to Djemma el-Fna.

Again, he insists that I give him money. I'm not stupid -- I've been to Morocco many times and know how these seedy sleazeballs operate. I tell him no again, and he gets even more angry.

At one point, he starts slinging insults, so I quickly throw off my backpack and get up in his face, half a second away from knocking the daylights out of the guy. It was a very tense situation, and certainly the closest yet that I've been to actually getting in a full-out brawl with somebody in Morocco. Obviously, the man never does anything, and so Jasmine and I begin our walk back to Djemma el-Fna, with our seedy guide walking away visibly pissed off.

Most Moroccans, as I've said before, are the nicest people I've ever known -- but as in anywhere in the world, there are always the shady slimeballs lurking in the shadows looking to feed on whatever prey they can find.

Lastly, Jasmine and I bought a moped! No details for right now -- I gotta get off this thing and grab some lunch. Be expecting a blog entry soon, though, with information on the moped and what we intend to do with it. I haven't been this excited about anything in a long time!