Inspired by...Morocco

Well, hello again. It’s been awhile. It’s not that I haven’t been “inspired”, it’s just that I haven’t written about it. So without further ado, I’ll pick up where I left off six months ago...

After my first expedition to Antarctica, I realized that a goal of setting foot on all seven continents was suddenly attainable, and, since I already had six under my belt, it was attainable before the end of my (insert an unmentionable milestone birthday here) year. Last fall, when a girlfriend of mine sent out an e-mail asking if anyone was interested in joining her on a camping trip in the Sahara the following month, I jumped on it. Africa? Check. Seven continents? Check. My favorite? Still Antarctica. BUT…Africa was amazing. Now, it wasn’t sub-Saharan Africa…I still need to do that…but riding on a camel at sunset, into the darkness of the Sahara, and camping out on the top of a sand dune under magnificent stars wrapped in wool blanket? Brilliant. Waking up at sunrise and watching the sand turn to movie-set red in front of my eyes? Magic. I wanted to stay in the desert for a week. I was sucked back into the Antarctica-like feeling of isolation that I love…the feeling that no one else existed in the world except for the few of us on that dune. Here we were, three American girls, with three Berber Moroccan guides, singing, drumming, laughing, and drinking tea. They tried to help us understand jokes in Arabic, we tried to teach them American campfire songs. We were all the same…people living life and enjoying it, learning about differences and respecting them. Learning about similarities and feeling dismayed that such judgment exists in the world between our two cultures. Not there. Not on that dune.

I’ll summarize my Moroccan inspiration with a story. Khalid, our new friend and talented guide, had patiently taught me to speak some of his language, answered my questions about his culture and religion, showed me how to eat traditional Moroccan food, and made sure I didn’t freeze on that dune. On the way back to Marrakesh, we stopped in the mountains to shop and I asked Khalid where I could get a tajine dish to take home. He told me that the best place would be coming up in a little while. I forgot all about it. We arrived to our riad in the old city and began to say an emotional goodbye to our new friend. Khalid reached into a bag and presented me with a tajine…a gift. A gift?? From my tour guide? That demonstration of heartfelt generosity will never be forgotten. You see, in Morocco I learned about true generosity, but also about family values, about the beauty and origin of the word “inshallah”, about discipline, and that most people who seem very different from me are, in fact, not at all.