What a looooonnnnng day! Very anxious in the end but all went well.
This morning I got on board of the most expensive public transportation I have been on thus far for such a "short" distance.
The Bamako-Dakar bus ride of 33 hours did cost me $60. But today's right of only 12hrs cost me $40. So it upset me quite a bit, but my other option would have been hitch hiking and I was way to tired for that. So OK, I got in a car with four other people, including a young Saharawi who lives in the Basque Country and this spoke Spanish. And off we went. The landscape out of Nouadhibou was beautiful. The closer we got to the border the more cadavers of old cars we saw all over the place. Especially on the no man's land separating the Mauritanian border from the Moroccan border. What a sight! Especially when everyone knows that 95% of these cars are all stolen cars from Europe. I kept on wondering the face their real owners would make if they saw their cars there. Lol
Exiting Mauritania was simple and smooth. But entering Morocco was another story. A lot more safety precaution and a lot more dumb brainless police officers. One of them, as I entered the visa office for people arriving from Mauritania even asked me 3 times if I was entering Morocco. Doh! What else could I be doing in this pit of the world of a location since i had just exited Mauritania. So I told him "yes" each time but he never seemed to really understand and finally gave up and let me through. Ufff...
All the other passengers had no trouble crossing the border and entering the country.
Oh yes, three funny events. First, when going through my bag at the customs, the office found a wooden slingshot I had bought in Mali. I started laughing at how ridicule if he had considered this a real weapon. He quickly realized how silly indeed it would have been, and let me through.
Second, the visa office has an officer just there to fill up the basic info form for each traveler. This for is the one that they give away to passengers in the plane about to land. Thus this form could be filled up by each traveler but no one seemed to know this and all queued up to hours waiting for their for to be filled up before being able to walk next door to get the entry stamp. So I asked for the form and filled I up myself. I saved a lot of time...but what for anyway as the other passengers and the driver blindly followed the rest of the flock though I tried to tell them.
Third, as i was in line to exit Mauritania, and since we were in the bright burning sun, a huge Libyan man asked if he could borrow my hat (i wasn't using it since I had my turban on). I have it to him. Later on when I was waiting for my entry stamp, he came to sit next to me on the curb to chit chat, in French and Spanish about the tragic situation of Africa which according to him is hopeless. Lol huge teddy bear who looks quite scary at first sight.
Anyhow, though all of us passengers had gone through without to much trouble we still had to wait literally hours for the driver and his car to go through the vehicle scanner and the entire procedure before being able to get on the road again.
The road up north was not all that amazing once we had left the Sahara area. All flat rocky ground without much to see other than a few tents here and there along the long sea shore cliff overlooking the ocean.
But the landscape we could see as we approached Dakhla was jus ridiculously unbelievably gorgeous. I had never ever seen before on !y life nor imagination such beautiful beach front and sea shore. Spectacular! To the point it felt unreal. I want to go back there for a longer period of time, not tired, not rushed, and with friends.
Though the area around Dakhla is spectacular, the town of Dakhla is not as breathtaking at all. Not much more than a simple ocean town...in intensive and obvious urban expansion mode. Fresh concrete sprouting just about everywhere.
Since I had sympathized with the Spanish speaking young lady (Fatima) in the car, she kindly offered that if I couldn't find a bus tonight to head to Marrakech, I was more than welcome to crash at her brother's place for the night. Thank you very much!
But I was as determined as can be to find a bus tonight and head out. And after dropping off all the passengers, the driver kindly took !e to every single bus agency in town. All 5 of them and each at a different location in town. I say town but it is actually rather a city.
Anyhow, each agency told me that they were fully booked for all destinations all the way till October 5th, the day of the biggest religious holiday in the Muslim world. I couldn't believe it and was so frustrated. At this stage, 9pm, I was hesitating between starting right to hitchhike a ride up north or to call Fatima. My guts told me to call her. Funny how traveling like I have been doing for so long, you start to develop a much better intuition and you start to actually listen to it.
Fatima's brother, Abdullah came to pick me up and took me to his house where he lives with his wife and dad. Both Fatima and Abdullah's wife are young and fully covered women. Yet the family offered me, a white non Muslim young man, dressed like a bum, the hospitality for the night with the most incredible kindness. This night was the absolute most perfect way to end my trip, by simply and concretely reminding me of the selfless random outmost generosity and kindness potential of any human beings. People have a good heart and all have the potential to be good, filled with love and compassion no mater who you are, where you are from, and what you believe in. The most important lesson I had learnt throughout my whole trip was reminded to me the very last night of my trip, kind of like a "see?! Dont forget this when your trip is finished!". Beautiful. The incredible importance of overcoming and ignoring people's background, faith, education, wealth, and rather focusing on the present interaction with them. Fatima works at a cash register in a small supermarket in a small town of the basque country of Spain, and I used to manage multimillion budgets for luxury brands over 5 different countries. Not only an interaction between these two opposite social worlds would rarely interact but if anything the gesture of hospitality would probably be expected in the opposite direction. But when you only consider the present interaction with a person, the smiles, the kindness, and don't ask what you do, what you believe in, how old you are, where did you study, etc... A lot of factors that would usually lead to the build up of judgments and obstacles are no longer at play and leave free ground to pure, sincere, genuine interaction. This is what the world needs more off...to break down all the social strata's of society or at least not let them become such barriers to people's friendly interaction. Everyone needs help at one point or another, everyone can use a smile or a hand, everyone could use a pad in the back or a hug, whether you are rich or poor, Muslim or Jewish, young or old, white or black...another way to look at it could be that surrounding yourself with people who are like you is securing in a way, but the ones who are different from you have so much to bring and teach you. Someone said once that to succeed in life you should always surround yourself by people who are smarter than you. But then is success defined? What is meant by smart?
I have learnt and am still learning that to succeed, no matter how you define success, you must be happy, and to be happy, you must surround yourself with people who behave with love and compassion. And those who have anger on them, you must try your best at helping them get rid of that anger and find that kindness in them.
Imagine a world where everyday everyone strived at doing as many random selfless acts of kindness as possible.
So to go back to this evening, it was so cute how the father, 73 years old, was trying to force feed me, telling me all the time "comer, comer!". He was worried about my health and the fact that I didn't eat enough according to his standards as if I were his son. I had a very interesting conversation with Fatima's cousin who is quite a devout Muslim but also works for the government, about religions. Very interested. Trying to explain to a devout Muslim who gives you such hospitality, that you don't believe in religion and even less in one religion being better than the others, and that one shall not say that one religious book is more true or better without first having read the other books, can be quite a scary challenge, but I happily managed to find the right words and get his full agreement. It was so interesting for the both of us I believe. He didn't reject the other religions yet maintained that to him Islam was truer than the other religions. But I tried to convey to him that perhaps it would be interesting to consider the fact that perhaps a religion is like a perfume or a shirt. Not everyone can wear the same perfume or wear the same size of shirt. A perfume will smell differently on each type of skin. A shirt will fit differently on each type of body. People just have to find the perfume or shirt that will fit them best based on their skin, their fragrance preferences, their size, and their fashion taste. I truly believe that religion should be approached in a similar way. Believe in whatever you want and need based on your faith, beliefs, spiritual needs, moral values, sociocultural environment, rituals, etc...but why bother looking at what your neighbor believes in? Who cares? Why not instead simply look at how your neighbors behaves with other people in society? Thoughts and beliefs are most definitely very powerful and can be dangerous, but actions and behaviors speaks louder than anything else.
Today was a very long day...I am exhausted. I have the privilege to sleep in the living room where the father also sleeps.
Again, the incredible kindness and generosity of this family at such hour of the night for a total stranger was quite overwhelming. But throughout the whole evening I was fully conscious and aware of the reason why I was unable to find a bus for tonight. And I was more than happy to not have found any and actually relieved to not have missed such a fantastic evening. I couldn't have enders my trip in a better way...or perhaps yes...by being the one offering such kindness and generosity...but I know I have before and will strive to do so for the rest of my life.
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