A Stone-Cold Heart Have I (or the Realities of a Developing Country)

Some may say that I have a stone-cold heart.

I am not sappy. I am not one to make large emotional outbursts. I prefer calm and steady to turbulent and rocky in all situations. In addition to this, I consider myself a realist. And above anything else, I refuse to have a bleeding heart.

The States is so shrouded in a sea of wealth and utter comfort that people sometimes forget that life is a struggle. It is meant to be difficult. It is also meant to be unfair. That is human nature. Millions of people around the world break their backs and even sell their souls – daily – just to have a chance at seeing the next sunrise. This is reality. We, as a whole, will never be able to rid the world of this hard-working and abused subset of people. If the world is continued to be run as it is today, i.e. in a capitalistic fashion, we will always have people at the bottom rung of the ladder. It is unavoidable.

Some people get such a sickness of guilt when they think about the poor developing world that it makes them ill. You can see their eyes flood with tears as they watch the images of poor third world villages flash onto their television sets. They sit there and stare, in absolute sadness, at the starving children covered in flies, and they feel deep down, such sorrow. If they are so bent, they will get up from their comfy form-fitting sofas and chairs and make the five minute call so that they, too, can donate but pennies a day to save some unfortunate child halfway across the world. And after they put down the phone, they feel better. They have done something, however small, to make the world a better place.

I am not heartless. I want to help people, help to make their lives better and happier. It sounds idealistic, and it is idealistic. This is what I’m realizing during my time in Mauritania. I have seen how little those ‘pennies a day’ do when they finally reach Africa. I have seen the work of bleeding hearts, seen how they make bad situations worse, seen how emotionally charged people rush into doing something because “Something has got to be done, now!” I have seen all of these good intentions pave a dark and gloomy path.

What exactly is better and happier anyways? What might be better and happier for me is not necessarily true for others. Things are not always as black and white as we would want. I can’t save everyone. I can’t make everyone happy. I frankly don’t even care about everyone the same. If I must choose between bettering a friend’s life over that of a stranger’s, I wholeheartedly choose my friend’s.

Some people take for granted the superficial-ness of ‘plastic America’. They automatically feel sad for those things that we have learned to feel sorry for – starving kids in Africa, for example – and they worry not about those problems that our society wishes to sweep under the rug – the psychological problems that most youth in developed countries face on a daily basis, another example. We all are in fact conditioned so well, that even I find myself fighting a gut instinct to deem the prior more worthy than the latter. Is it really? – I ask you.

Before I ramble on even further, here is my message. Love and care about everyone around you. Don’t have a bleeding heart for Africa because it is Africa. If you want to make a difference in someone’s life, start at home. Make a difference in the lives of the people you already know and care about – your family and friends. Everyone has problems. They might not be as “sexy” as AIDS or prostitution or starvation or etc. (note: I mean “sexy” as in issues that get the most press time, the most attention, the most hype, etc.), but they are problems just as important and life threatening as those aforementioned. Get to know your family and friends. Ask them questions. Care about them and show them that you care. Show them that you love them. We all have but this one life – as far as anyone has been able to prove to me – so why not live it trying to make a difference in the lives of those closest to us first.

I’m terribly sorry about this. I’m not one to make soapbox speeches, but I wrote this while angry an impassioned. Since is it now written, and since I have nothing else to post, I post it grudgingly. Again, I’m terribly sorry. I will refrain myself from further such outbursts.

Morocco

I’m too exhausted, not to mention lazy, to delineate all of the tantalizingly juicy events from my Moroccan travels. What follows then are but some fleeting excerpts – not unlike the state of my writings in general.

The Arrival: I arrive into the Casablanca Mohamed V Airport at six o’clock in the morning. I stay there until seven in the evening, waiting for Lakshmy to arrive on her jet airplane. In the meanwhile, I read Thoreau’s “Walden” – a surprisingly wonderful book filled with insightful observations and commentaries that hold true for life especially today; I find the perfect sleeping chair, a small padded metal of a thing placed in a small room off into a corner, turned towards the glass window so that you can watch the clouds roll across the sky; I taste test all of the coffees being sold at the local vendors; and, of course, I people watch.

I realize sometime around one in the afternoon that Moroccans in general are very fashionable. Men choose to wear tight form-fitting clothes, even when their form is not exactly form-fittingly appealing while women opt for beauty over comfort and add flare to their tight blouses and skirts (or designer jeans for the more young and trendy) with matching heals and jewelry. It hits me as I turn to my imaginary Toto: I don’t think we’re in Mauritania anymore. The hours pass, and I continue to watch the ebb and flow of people: some hugging with tears of joy streaming down their faces while others weeping out promises to call when they arrive at whatever be their final destination. The day is beautiful outside. My eyes follow the sun’s path through the baby-blue sky, our existences separated only by large glassy windowpanes.

Lakshmy arrives sometime after seven in the evening. It makes me giddy to see her after such a long while. We hug and laugh and catch up. We head to the train station and then to our hotel and catch up some more over dinner before eventually heading off to bed.

The Mountain: The following day we make our way to Imlil, a tiny village located in the High Atlas Mountains. We reach the place sometime in the late afternoon. After some confusion about the location of our hotel, Lakshmy and I finally follow two old women, both hunched over with massive packs of grass on their backs, up a lengthy and steep incline to a house jutting out from the hillside, the top floor of which is our lodging. We drop our bags in our rooms and step out onto the balcony-porch.

The place is beyond all description: breathtakingly beautiful. The stars twinkle overhead, drumming is heard from a distant village over the mountains, and below us lies the darkened village of Imlil with a stream gurgling through its midst. I’m exhausted after a day of traveling. The dinner, soup and tagine, is hearty and delicious. The night chill feels good against my skin as I cup my glass of warm mint tea. We eat leisurely and soon thereafter, and grudgingly, retire to bed. I feel giddy again as I fall of to sleep.

The next morning Lakshmy and I wake up early and begin our trek to Nelter Refuge, the base camp located just below Jbel Toubkal, which at 4,167 meters is the highest peak in all of North Africa. Along the way we meet and make friends with a Moroccan family who is hiking to Sidi Chambouch, an Islamic pilgrimage site and home to a powerful witch doctor, located halfway between Imlil and Nelter Refuge. We reach the Refuge sometime in the afternoon. We find some food and rest up. We will climb to the summit of Toubkal the next morning. In the meanwhile, we meet some Moroccan Peace Corps volunteers, a somewhat crazy English-Paki girl planning on climbing the peak by her lonesome, a young German woman who was abandoned by her parents on a commune farm with her brothers and sisters when she was 16 and her climbing partner, a Dutch man who hates the Netherlands for its culture of forced and insincere politeness. The five of us – Lakshmy, myself, the Paki, Dutch and German – have a good enough time together that we decide to form a small climbing party amongst ourselves for the following morning.

That night I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep. I feel some trepidation about the following morning: I don’t have hiking shoes with me but only a pair of Chaco sandals. I imagine all the gruesome possibilities the climb may hold for me as I toss and turn and toss and turn and toss and turn...

We get up at four in the morning and grab some breakfast. By the time Lakshmy and I get outside, however, our climbing party has left without us. We start climbing hoping to meet up with them. Not twenty minutes into the climb, however, I find myself stuck halfway up a scree, on all fours and on the verge of tears. I can’t find any footholds; everything I touch begins a rock slide, and I look down the steep slope and imagine my demise. As it turns out, Lakshmy and I had taken a wrong, a very wrong, turn. We eventually manage to get off the scree, and we continue on our way, fully determined to reach the top. The climb is difficult, but we manage. After hours of stumbling over rocks and whatnots, we reach the ridge of the mountain and see the summit some 100 feet off into the distance. Lakshmy and I, however, choose not to pursue the peak, as we can’t find a suitable path to the summit, and frankly, making a wrong turn at this point could turn very disastrous. From where I stand, I can see the other side of the mountain: it is a steep and very long and straight fall to one’s death. The height had also given Lakshmy a bad case of the nerves. All in all, we decide we did all right for our first mountain climbing adventure. We look at each other, smile, turn back around and slide down on our asses all the way back to the Refuge, literally.

After a quick lunch, we climb back down to Imlil, exhausted. The sunset through the mountains, however, is – much like everything else so far in this country – amazing. We change our itinerary and decide to spend an extra day in Imlil enjoying the fresh mountain air. I am sorry to leave when we do, as we make our way to Marrakech.

The Passport (Marrakech): The day begins with Lakshmy retrieving money from her ATM account. We then head off into the market and wander aimlessly. Lakshmy is not soon thereafter lured into a harmless looking boutique selling postcards. I interest myself in cookbooks in the meanwhile. After paying the man for her purchases, we continue on our way and rediscover a clothes store where Lakshmy had wanted to buy some outfits. After choosing three or so and bargaining down to a reasonable price, Lakshmy reaches into her bag to get her money out. She, however, finds nothing of the sort. She had forgotten her money, along with her passport and credit cards, at the postcard store. We hurry back to the place only to find that there is no sign of Lakshmy’s moneybag.

The rest of the day is spent going from police station to police station. No one seems to want to help. Eventually I lapse into a foul mood and do a poor job of hiding it. At the sound of the evening prayer call, we return to the Djemma El Fna square and head back to our hotel. We refuse to let the situation dampen our spirits any further and head off into the square again as night falls. We pass the remainder of the time in Marrakech shopping and eating. Lakshmy, who had gotten more money out of the ATM, even makes a trip to a local hammam and comes out thoroughly refreshed and relaxed.

Fes: We follow Marrakech with Fes, where we meet up again with the British-Paki girl we had met on the mountain. She, in the meanwhile, had decided to travel out into the desert – in a moment of madness, as she later recounted – spent the night on a dune with a handful of Frenchmen, and had grudgingly refused an attempted seduction, as her heart already belonged to another.

Fes is a wondrous place. The medina is built into the hillsides, with narrow alleyways rising and falling, winding this way and that – all of it leading to some unforeseen sight or smell.

While there, we file a fake police report for Lakshmy’s passport, buy obscene amounts of embroidered products, and visit an overpriced McDonald’s. All in all, a good time is had by all.

Meknes: After Fes, we travel by train to Meknes. We spend some time walking around the medina and doing last minute shopping. Our time in Morocco is almost up.

Lakshmy unfortunately gets sick, and we can’t go to the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis. I spend the day wandering the streets of Meknes, getting to know the city, while Lakshmy lies in bed. The British girl leaves us that day to catch her plane back to the UK. We all exchange emails and whatnots. It’s sad to see her go.

The Heart-to-heart and Goodbye: The following day, Lakshmy and I come back to Casablanca a day earlier than we had planned at the beginning of the trip. Lakshmy needs to go to the American Embassy to get an emergency passport.

That afternoon, Lakshmy and I take the grand tour of the third largest mosque in the world, an obscenely ornate building that is beyond any description I could provide. We also meet up with Ellie, a fellow Mauritanian Peace Corps volunteer. After a few quick hellos, Lakshmy heads off for her final hammam experience. I pass away the afternoon lying under a shady tree in a park and chatting the hours away with Ellie.

That night, after we send Ellie back to her hotel, Lakshmy and I find ourselves locked out of our own hotel room. While the hotel manager attempts to break down the door, we decide to grab a late night cup of coffee. Over coffee, I decide to spill my guts to Lakshmy and confess my sins, so to say. I had been in a somewhat tartish mood of late and wanted to apologize for my behavior as well as explain myself. It’s a good talk and after some time, we head back to the hotel to find that the door has been broken open. It is late, and we eventually fall asleep.

Lakshmy leaves early the next morning. We hug and say goodbye.

I go and see Ellie again before I leave for the airport later that afternoon. We spend the day walking around and eating good food. At 5 in the afternoon, I say goodbye for the second time that day and start my voyage back to Mauritania.

All in all, it has been a very good time. No regrets, whatsoever.

Well, there you have it folks, my adventures in Morocco! Laters ~